Every toughened wall of his lying heart.
Pinned behind her left ear, swaddled by a ruffle of raven hair, was a single star-shaped white Siberia lily.
Such an ordinary thing. But it unlocked an undiscovered door in his head. And when it creaked open, the music and clinking glasses and the snobby conversation in the hall faded to a muffled hum.
She wasn’t skinny; she was elegant.
Her arms and legs weren’t long; they were endless.
She wasn’t pretty; she was knee-weakeningly, dazzlingly beautiful.
Lowe blinked several times and looked again. Not a dream. Still beautiful. She nodded her head in answer to her companion’s question while stealing a glance at the crowd, and her gaze found his.
They stared at each other. Or rather, she looked at him while he stood rooted to the marble floor like a small child who’d been asked a question in class and was too embarrassed to admit he didn’t know the answer. He became lost looking at her. For how long, he wasn’t sure. But one moment he was drowning, and in the next, he felt the stem of his champagne coupe slipping through his fingers.
In a panic, he fumbled and juggled the glass until he gripped it with both hands.
Nice. Smooth. Oh so debonair. Probably looked drunker than Satan on vacation. Her squinting eyes only confirmed his fears. He set the empty coupe on a nearby table and did his best to regain his lost bravado as he headed her way.
Her companion was about Lowe’s age, tall and lanky, dark hair. His formal tails were a little too long, his wing-tipped shirt a little too starched, and his face a lot too handsome. He was also alone with Hadley, so Lowe hated him on sight.
“Hello, Hadley.”
“Hello, Mr. Magnusson.”
No more first-name-basis, eh? Should’ve expected as much. “Hope I’m not interrupting an intimate conversation.”
“Mr. Oliver Ginn, this is Mr. Lowe Magnusson.” His own name fell off her tongue like a burden in that ridiculous posh accent.
“The treasure hunter,” Mr. Ginn replied, sizing him up with a cool look.
“I prefer treasure finder.”
“Mr. Ginn is a patron of the arts,” Hadley said, as if she were defending his good character in front of a jury. “He has financed several excavations in Mexico through his contributions to university research grants.”
“The Aztec program at Berkeley?” Lowe asked, trying to place the man’s name.
Ginn shook his head. “I only moved here recently. My family is from Oregon.”
Lowe honestly didn’t give a damn.
“Mr. Ginn’s the one who encouraged me to do more speaking engagements, so he’s indirectly responsible for me accepting that seminar in Salt Lake City.”
Oh, was he, now? “How kind,” Lowe said. “I suppose I owe you thanks, Mr. Ginn, because if you hadn’t encouraged her, then Hadley and I wouldn’t have met and had our little adventure on the rails in that cozy little—”
“May I have a word in private, Mr. Magnusson?” Hadley said in a rush.
“Why, yes, you most certainly may.”
Hadley excused herself from Moneypants and stormed off without a backward glance. Lowe guessed he was supposed to follow her like a dog, and he did—oh, he did. The spider web of black beads hugging her bountiful backside vibrated with every angry step she took. Mesmerizing. So much so, the great bronze door she opened nearly conked him in the head when it swung back.
Cool night air chilled his face as he trailed her into an Italian courtyard dotted with palm trees. A few stray partygoers mingled here. Servants smoked cigarettes in the shadows. Hadley strode to a marble gazing pool in the center of the cortile and stopped at the edge. Lowe heard her counting from several feet away.
• • •
Hadley focused on her watery reflection in the moonlit pool. Her specters gathered in the distance, hungry, waiting to be loosed. But somewhere between the count of eighteen and nineteen, another reflection floated over the water behind hers. It was enough of a distraction to send the specters scurrying away.
“I heard you doing that in your father’s office.” Lowe’s deep voice at the crown of her head sent chills down her neck. “Are you managing your anger?”
“That’s none of your business.” She crossed her arms over her breasts to ward off the chilly air. “Are you drunk?”
“I wondered that myself, actually. Because I can’t seem to stop staring at you, and that doesn’t make any sense.”
The two statements dueled in her head. She’d seen him staring at her in the hall—how could she not? He stared so intensely, she’d felt it. And for a moment, she’d almost believed, stupidly, that he was seeing her for the first time. That they were explorers on Mount Sinai, trapped on opposite rocky cliffs, and he’d thrown her a rope, and she wasn’t going to faint from starvation and lie there until vultures plucked her eyes out.
And then he’d acted like an ass in front of Mr. Ginn and her imaginary rope snapped.
“Staring at your backside, that’s a given,” he continued. “I’m a man, after all. If I were a religious man, I might believe the devil himself sculpted your ass to lure me into temptation. But your front side—”
“My front side?” She spun around to face him. “My front side is what, exactly? Harsh? Odd? Too skinny? Have I been studying mummies so long that I’ve started to look like one? Because I’ve heard all those things before, so do your worst.”
He gaped at her for a moment, and then shut his mouth. Had she shocked him? Was he angry or embarrassed? Good.
“You want to know what I was going to say? Do you?”
“Say it,” she challenged.
Agitation transformed him into something foreign. His eyes narrowed to dark slashes under a rocky brow; his jaw tightened. Nothing jovial or casual or charming about him now—all of that vanished and was replaced by brute intensity and darkness.
He loomed over her, leaning in far too close. Their noses nearly touched. “I was going to say that you look goddamn bewitching in that dress, and I hadn’t realized how extraordinarily beautiful you are because all I’ve seen you wear are those ridiculous funerary outfits.” He pulled back, putting some space between them. “There. Happy now?”
Happy? Happy? Hadley’s heart nearly stopped beating.
The taut lines of his body softened. And in a low voice he added, “I was also going to say that your lily reminds me of a tomb painting I saw in the British Museum last spring, of Nebamun hunting in the marshes with a beautiful girl who wears a lotus in her hair. And that it’s lovely on you. Extraordinarily lovely.”
A strange sensation pinched her chest. No one had ever said anything like that to her. Why was he saying it, of all people? He wasn’t teasing. He couldn’t be teasing.
Please, let him mean it.
She blinked, pushing away unwanted emotion, waiting for a punch line that never came. He was so painfully attractive, towering over her in his black tuxedo jacket and white vest. His loose stance radiated confidence. Her body wanted to sway closer, as if it could drink up all his easy self-possession, all that golden light he seemed to emit.
Then she remembered what he was.
A liar. And a flatterer, too. He was good—very good. And she was a fool.
She snorted a bitter laugh. “After a man tells a woman the first untruth, the others come piling thick and fast,” she quoted loosely.
“Fair enough. I’ve given you little reason to trust me. Tell me what I can do to gain it. Swear on a Bible? Get down on one knee? Name it, Hadley.”
She shook her head, confused by feelings that tugged her good sense in different directions. In search of an anchor, her eyes followed the notch of his black tie to the broad ledge of his shoulder, limned with tawny light from the mansion. But when her gaze dropped to the crisp sliver of white cuff peeking from his dinner jacket, and his injured bare hand below, she decided to take him up on his offer.