Manhattan
Friday, May 5, 1:00 a.m.
"GOOD LORD." Alex Spencer rolled onto his back, gasping
for breath, heart hammering against his chest. "No more
Asian sex manuals for you, woman. You've ruined me."
"I've ruined you?" Julia Covington managed through her own
heavy breathing.
With her dark hair tumbled loose and wild around her
shoulders and her skin gleaming pale in the light from her
entryway, she looked like some odalisque in a seventeenth-
century painting — beautiful, tempting and thoroughly
addictive. Even now, looking at her made him dry-mouthed
with desire.
If he'd been thinking straight, he'd have been worried.
Then again, he'd hardly thought straight once since that
evening she'd appeared at the museum fund-raiser in a
flame-hot red dress that had left nothing to the
imagination. The dry, serious Ms. Covington, who never
appeared in anything but utterly simple garments in shades
of taupe, charcoal and cocoa, was suddenly a siren. He
couldn't have said what had shocked him more — the dress
or the fact that she'd left with him.
And every moment since had pretty much been a toss-
up. "Yes," he murmured against her mouth, "you've ruined
me, milked me dry, left me a worn-out husk, old before my
time."
He could feel her smile. "I had some help with that, I
think. Some very enthusiastic help."
He worked his way down her throat, feeling the first faint
stirrings of arousal yet again. "Come on, what do you
expect a guy to do when you show up at the door in nothing
but a robe?"
"What was I supposed to be wearing at eleven-thirty at
night?" she said and caught her breath. "You were lucky I
let you in at all."
He smiled beatifically. "I got lucky, all right." He moved
his hands and felt her quiver in response. "And if you
give me a minute or two, I just might be in a position to
demonstrate my appreciation."
"Well, you'd better do it quickly, Lothario," she said — a
little unevenly, he noted in satisfaction. "I have to get
to sleep. I've got work tomorrow — today," she corrected
after a glance at the mantel clock. "Something you might
want to think about, also." She shifted away from him.
Alex calculated and tried for pitiful. "I spend four days
in D.C. fighting the sharks for NEA funding, and you're
throwing me out?"
It didn't work. "You told me last week it was going to be
a schmoozefest where the most challenging thing you'd have
to do was drink champagne and eat crab claws."
"And you think that's easy?" he demanded.
Julia just snorted and rolled to her feet, plucking her
Chinese silk robe off the living room carpet as she rose.
"Nobody made you come here, you know. You didn't even call
to warn me."
And, as always, the minute they stopped touching, brisk,
matter-of-fact Julia came back. "I thought you women
thought spontaneity was romantic."
"We're not having a romance," she reminded him firmly as
she tied the belt of the robe. Too firmly.
"Oh yeah, right. No relationship, no talking, just sex."
Alex reached for his trousers, pushed down the little
surge of annoyance.
"Exactly. You sales types should know better than to try
to renegotiate as you go along."
"Marketing, not sales," he corrected. "We don't sell
antiquities at the museum." He stopped in the act of
buttoning his shirt. "Unless you've got a sideline I don't
know about. In which case, we'll have to find out whether
they give conjugal visits to lovers."
She frowned. "We're not lovers."
"Right. If we were lovers, I'd be going to your bed right
now instead of getting kicked out into the hall." Even he
could hear the edge in his voice. "I came here because I
missed you." He'd come because he couldn't make himself
wait until the next day to see her. "You were off with
your skydiving thing last weekend and then I was gone.
It's just been a while. I thought you might miss me."
Julia got that countess look he'd learned she put on when
she felt she was losing control of a situation. She handed
him his shoes. "Alex, it was nice to see you, really. But
it's late." Her voice was brisk. "We're getting together
tomorrow night anyway."
"Good, because I think we should talk about this." Relief
flashed into her eyes, a relief that made him
wonder. "Good. I want to talk, too. But it's late and I'm
tired and husks like you need your sleep. You should go."
And then he was standing out in the hall, garment bag and
jacket in his hand, staring back at the door that was
closed to him.
Like Julia.
JULIA SAT IN HER OFFICE at the NewYork Museum of
Antiquities, staring out the window past the enormous
pillar that obscured half her view of Fifth Avenue beyond.
Alex Spencer. The good-looking charmer, the golden boy who
succeeded at everything he touched, always a nice word for
everyone. Always somehow sensing when she'd been down
during the worst of times with Edward, making her laugh
with a joke even though she'd said nothing to anyone about
how she was feeling. It had been temporary insanity the
day of the museum gala six months before when she'd bought
that outrageous dress purely because it would have
appalled Edward. It had been temporary insanity that had
made her wear it to the gala and definitely temporary
insanity that had had her leaving with Alex Spencer.
She'd quite clearly been out of her mind.
That was probably why the sex had seemed so amazing, just
as the skydiving might have been amazing if she'd been in
the right mood.
Or maybe not.
All right, bad example. Luck, that was it. It was just
pure luck that Alex happened to have an instinct for how
to touch her. It was just that charm monster thing he had
going that always made her feel so good around him. After
all, it wasn't as though they had a relationship or
anything. They had zero in common except sex.
Anyway, they'd rarely managed to get out even basic
pleasantries before ripping one another's clothes off most
times, which suited her to a T. If she had to talk to Alex
Spencer, she'd be forced to face how wrong, how
ridiculous, how brainless she'd be to think of them as a
match. The way she'd been with him, that wasn't her. That
was the artificial post-divorce giddiness. The real Julia
was quiet, sedate and studious.
The real Julia was someone Alex Spencer wouldn't give a
second glance.
Which was fine with her, she thought quickly, because he
wasn't her thing, either, any more than public indecency
at Mardi Gras was. She wanted a man who was serious,
focused, someone who was an achiever, not a fun-loving,
slick G-boy with no sense of propriety. Thinking of the
chances the two of them had taken together made her
squeeze her eyes closed.
Thinking of the chances the two of them had taken left her
awash in lust.
She made an impatient noise. It was time to end their
little arrangement, no matter how much fun it was. She was
ready, finally, to go forward with her life, and that life
didn't — couldn't — include Alex Spencer.
Putting Alex firmly out of her mind, Julia flipped through
the latest issue of American Curator. A major auction of
early Roman pieces was scheduled for fall, she saw, making
a note to herself. Some recent reports of ancient Egyptian
and Babylonian forgeries. And a story about the heist of
the Zander collection from Stan-hope's Auction House. No
leads there.
Reading the list of items taken was enough to make Julia's
eyes cross well before the end. A shame, but having met
Zoey Zander at a few of her mother's society dos, Julia
would have laid even money that the "antique" items
weren't even authentic. The jewels, perhaps, but as for
the rest of it, Zoey was more about flash than substance.
Having it look right was more important than having it be
right.
Julia had never understood that. To her, it was the
history of a thing that mattered, the story she felt when
she touched it. Absently, she rubbed a finger over the bit
of scrimshaw that sat by her telephone, a personal
treasure that she knew she shouldn't touch with bare hands
but was helpless not to. She could imagine the whaler
who'd spent long, windblown days working at the ivory,
setting it aside at the cry of "Whale ho." If she closed
her eyes, she could smell the salt tang of the sea, feel
the motion of the ship, imagine the distant blue horizon
and the pale vault of the sky overhead.
It had always been like that for her, since she'd been a
child. She remembered going to the Metropolitan and
staring at a pale blue glass cup in the antiquities wing,
a glass that had been in the ground so long it had turned
iridescent. It fascinated her so much she'd relentlessly
pestered her mother, her nanny, her great-aunt Stella to
take her to the Met over and over. An artifact from an
ancient desert kingdom, she'd read on the identification
card and imagined a little girl like herself who might
have drunk from it. And at night, she'd dreamed that she
was the little girl, a princess whispering in the desert
dusk with her favorite friend, a young boy who dreamed of
becoming a great warrior.
She hadn't had that dream for a long while. "Hey,
gorgeous."
No matter how wrong for her he might be, something about
Alex's voice always sent a warm shiver through her,
whatever she was thinking, whatever she was doing. Julia
opened her eyes and gave her visitor a bland look. "Well,
if it isn't the infamous Alex Spencer."
He leaned against her doorway, looking like some GQ model
in his expensive suit and hand-dyed silk tie. "Miss me?"
She rolled her eyes. "How can I miss you when you won't go
away?"
"I can't go away. I have to stick around to keep you from
falling asleep at your desk." He clicked his tongue at
her. "Maybe if you got to bed at a decent hour, you'd be
more awake."
"Sometimes I get pestered by late-night callers," she said.
"You shouldn't answer the door, then."
"I'll remember that next time." She folded her hands in
front of her. "So what can I do for you, Mr. Spencer?"
"A favor." He stepped into the office and her lungs took a
breath of their own accord. Honestly, there was nothing
the man could do that wouldn't look good. He had a gift
for it, from his cropped dark hair spiked with just a bit
of gel to his glossy Italian leather shoes. And she knew
from personal experience that he looked just as
effortlessly handsome in shorts and a polo shirt.
Or in nothing at all.
Maybe it was the thousand-watt smile, the square jaw,
those green, green eyes. Eyes currently glimmering at her
in humor, making her realize she'd been staring far too
long. "Making notes for a portrait?" he asked.
"Wondering if I maybe saw you on the post office wall,"
she replied. "So what's the favor?"
"Someone I want you to see today. My sister's got a friend
who wants to bring in something for you to look at. She
thinks it might be valuable —"
"Alex, no," Julia was groaning before he'd even
finished. "No, no, no. You know how it works. They've gone
to a flea market or on holiday to Morocco and they've got
some piece of trash they're convinced is the real thing."
"Maybe it is," he suggested.
"And maybe it's a tourist tchotchke. Do you have any idea
how often I've looked at those kinds of things?" she
pleaded. "They're never real. Trust me, antiquities don't
just fall in a person's lap." But he had that gleam in his
eye that he always got when he proposed something
outrageous, she saw sinkingly, that look that always
seemed to get her to do what he wanted.
"Look, it's a favor for my sister. Why don't you just give
it a look and see what you think?"
"I have a better idea," Julia said silkily. "Why don't you
look at it?"
"I've got to leave for lunch with a big donor —" he
glanced at his sleek Bulova " — like, right now."
"And I've got meetings all afternoon."
"Then it's good she's coming this morning, isn't it?" That
stopped her for a moment. "Well, aren't we sure of
ourselves," she said tartly.
"Oh, come on, Julia, it's five minutes. It's for my
sister. Family."