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Synopsis
New to the art recovery world, agent Gwen Davies takes on her very first “repo” assignment for Artemis, Inc.: restoring a solid gold, bejeweled Venetian mask to its rightful owner. But she’s mortified to learn that she’s stolen back a carefully engineered fake, and the disappointed client is a man she’d hoped to never see again.
Quinn Lawson’s clean-cut corporate image belies his troubled, tattooed, bad-boy past. But when he’s held accountable for the missing mask, he’s forced to return to his shady ways and team up with Gwen in order to find the real one. Unfortunately the mask’s centuries-old curse is alive and well—and so is the stranger who’s prepared to kill for it. As their quest for the original mask takes Quinn and Gwen through the romantic, twisting canals of old Venice, danger forces them closer together than they ever expected to be—again.
Release date: April 7, 2009
Publisher: Berkley
Print pages: 336
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Take Me Two Times
Karen Kendall
Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright Page
Dedication
Acknowledgements
chapter 1
chapter 2
chapter 3
chapter 4
chapter 5
chapter 6
chapter 7
chapter 8
chapter 9
chapter 10
chapter 11
chapter 12
chapter 13
chapter 14
chapter 15
chapter 16
chapter 17
chapter 18
chapter 19
chapter 20
chapter 21
chapter 22
chapter 23
chapter 24
chapter 25
chapter 26
chapter 27
chapter 28
chapter 29
chapter 30
chapter 31
chapter 32
chapter 33
chapter 34
chapter 35
chapter 36
chapter 37
chapter 38
chapter 39
About the Author
Praise for the Novels of Karen Kendall
Take Me If You Can
—New York Times bestselling author Christina Dodd
—USA Today bestselling author Julie Kenner
—USA Today bestselling author Cherry Adair
—national bestselling author Roxanne St. Claire
—Romance Reviews Today
—Fresh Fiction
—New York Times bestselling author Nicole Jordan
—Booklist
—Romantic Times
—Fresh Fiction
—Romance Reviews Today
First Date
—Publishers Weekly
—The Best Reviews
—The Romance Reader’s Connection
First Dance
—New York Times bestselling author Carly Phillips
—Publishers Weekly
Also by Karen Kendall
Take Me If You Can
Fit to Be Tied
First Date
First Dance
SIGNET ECLIPSE
Published by New American Library, a division of
Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hudson Street,
New York, New York 10014, USA
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First published by Signet Eclipse, an imprint of New American Library,
a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.
First Printing, April 2009
eISBN : 978-1-101-02884-1
All rights reserved
SIGNET ECLIPSE and logo are trademarks of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.
Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.
PUBLISHER’S NOTE
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party Web sites or their content.
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For Don, as always
Acknowledgments
Thanks are due to so many people who helped with this book!
To my editor, Kara Cesare; my agent, Kim Whalen; and authors Lisa Manuel, Linda Conrad, and Marianna Jameson for reading drafts and providing thorough and insightful feedback—the good, the bad, and the ugly.
To Claudio Cambon, for vetting my terrible Italian. To Dennis Pozzessere for being a sounding board on my Carnevale research. To Judie B. Raiford for sharing her expertise on how a solid gold Venetian mask could be forged—and who could do it. To Mona Risk, for her insight on how to poison such a mask.
To my husband, relatives, and friends, for putting up with me during the writing process and understanding that authors are strange and complex beings.
And, of course, many times over to everyone at Penguin: Anthony Ramondo, for brilliant covers on this series. Angela Januzzi for great PR. Kara Welsh and Claire Zion for sticking with me throughout the vagaries of the publishing market.
You guys are all my heroes more than any fictional characters. Thanks again.
chapter 1
Gwen Davies had a license to steal. Though she’d once been paid to re-cover furniture, she now got paid to recover missing art. For all intents and purposes, Gwen was a high-class repo man—just one who wore Dolce & Gabbana instead of a bad toupee. She stole for justice, on commission, and because it made her feel alive.
But a thief—even one with a permit—often encountered people who objected to her activities, so she had to stay in top shape. That explained why she was in this brutal joke of a gym on Brickell instead of at a coffeehouse with a venti mocha and a nice, fattening Danish . . . or on Miami Beach, watching the sun come up.
Gwen was also there to kill off a relentless, recurring dream . . . starring a man she never wanted to see again—naked or not. Quinn Lawson wasn’t welcome between her sheets, but he turned up there almost every night she turned them down. He’d never been a man who waited for an invitation; he’d engraved his own right underneath her skirt.
On her fourth set of crunches, the tiny hairs on the back of Gwen’s neck rose, despite the fact that they were drowning in sweat at the end of a murderous workout. She couldn’t hear a sound over her own labored breathing and the groan of her muscles, but she acted on pure instinct.
Gwen hurled her body to the right with all the stamina she had left. She spun on her tailbone, raised her feet, and kicked out, taking her would-be assailant down with a solid hit to the knees.
Armando Romeu, aka “Cato,” crashed to the ARTemis gym floor and lay blinking for a moment before he grinned up at her, his spiky bleached hair making him look like a hungover Miami sun. A very muscular, Cuban sun. “Not bad, princess.”
Gwen grimaced at him, refilled her lungs with the cold gym air, and flopped onto her back. She caught a whiff of stale sweat and eau de rubber from the mats under the fitness machines, as well as the more pungent odor of paint from the room’s freshly touched-up trim.
She sucked in another lungful of air and ignored the ripe odor emanating from Cato, despite the valiant efforts of his deodorant. He must have gone for a run in the Miami heat.
She stared up at the scratches and smudges on the bottom of a punching bag above her. Beyond it stood all the other exhaustion-inducing equipment: the weight circuit, the elliptical, the treadmill, and the rowing machine.
The sight of it all was enough to scare any self-respecting slug right back to the Godiva shop in the mall. Gwen briefly fantasized about her former days as a not-so-busy interior designer. A leisurely latte, a book of fabric swatches, a manicure followed by a long lunch . . .
And you were bored to tears. Remember?
Then there were the clients you wanted to tar, feather, and ride out of town on their own custom curtain rods. Not to mention the battles with workrooms . . .
“Yep, not bad at all,” Cato said, sitting up in one fluid motion. His torso was a perfect isosceles triangle of buff, South Beach male.
“Not bad? You mean it was great.” Gwen shoved her feet under the toes of his trainers and finished her set of crunches. “Not only did I anticipate, but I brought you to the floor.”
“Don’t get a big head, missy. I caught you napping last week,” he reminded her.
“It was an off time of the month.”
“Oh, that old excuse . . .”
Gwen sat up and leveled her gaze on him. “Listen, Cato—”
“Yes, Inspector Clouseau?”
“If you’d ever had PMS or cramps you’d understand. You got me one time out of the last, what, thirty attempts? Give me a break.”
“It only takes once. And a dead art recovery agent is not an effective art recovery agent.”
“Yes, Cato. Thank you, Cato. May I have another scare, please, Cato?”
“You bet, mamita.” He winked at her and got up. “That’s my job: to keep all of you worthless agents in shape and on your toes.”
“And here I thought my Jimmy Choos took care of that.”
“They do, they do. But me and Jimmy? We’re like this,” Cato said, holding up two fingers close together. Then he laughed. “And we both make your ass look good.”
Gwen shook her head at him and wiped her face and neck with a towel. “Go do a sneak attack on someone else.”
He rubbed his hands together with glee. “Gladly. I can’t believe I get paid to have this much fun.”
An hour later, Gwen walked into the Miami offices of ARTemis, Inc., art recovery specialists. Outside, the breeze off the water seemed unseasonably humid, and the royal palms yawned languidly under the insistent sun. Like most of the city, they weren’t eager to wake before ten a.m.
Gwen had traded her gym shorts for a silk Pucci dress with an empire waist, no panty hose, and a pair of cream sling-back sandals. She’d dried and gelled her short hair; the soft orange streaks picked up the tangerine hues in her dress. She looked pretty good for a repo man.
“Hiya, doll face,” said Sheila. Sheila Kofsky was the ARTemis office manager and looked like a trendy white raisin with a cloud of improbably blond hair. She presided over the reception area and the wardrobe room, her inch-long acrylic nails striking fear into any would-be interloper’s heart.
Sheila always cut a somewhat astonishing figure. Today’s reading glasses were electric blue with little hot-pink flamingos painted at the top outside corners of the rims. She wore matching hot-pink lipstick and nail polish, tight black pedal pushers, a tight black cleavage-revealing top, and a hot-pink faux-linen jacket. But the pièces de résistance were the electric-blue calf-hair mules that she had to have dyed herself.
Gwen still hadn’t figured out why anyone had hired Sheila. She swore like a sailor, had no couth, and didn’t fit in to the elegant atmosphere of the office. But she never missed a day of work and was a true genius with the recovery agents’ wardrobes and, when necessary, disguises.
“Hi, Sheila. How are you today?”
“Never mind that. There’s another package for you from Sid Thresher.” Sheila reached under her desk and handed Gwen a box from Van Cleef & Arpels.
“You opened it?”
“Of course I opened it, doll. It’s part of my job.” Sheila grinned.
“It is not part of your job to unwrap it and steam open the personal card,” Gwen said, wondering why she bothered. Sheila was incorrigible.
“Saves you the trouble. Sid’s begging you to taste just a little of his Subversion and he wants you to wear these with the satin bustier and thong he sent last week.”
Subversion was Sid’s world-famous British rock band. Gwen had been targeted for seduction by an older, uglier, less stable Mick Jagger. She sighed and opened the box.
Inside was a pair of diamond chandelier earrings so long that they’d bang her shoulder blades if she were to put them on. They glittered in the fluorescent lighting.
Agent Eric McDougal sauntered through the front door, took a look, and raised his ginger eyebrows. “Gwendolyn,” he drawled. “Whatever did you do to earn those?”
Gwen ignored him, shut the box with a snap, and turned to Sheila. “Please return these immediately. Send Sid a computer-generated note saying thanks, but I can’t possibly accept.”
“Such a nice girl,” McDougal said sardonically. “So well brought up.”
Sheila closed the mouth she’d left hanging open. “You’re kidding me, right?”
“No.” Gwen dropped the box on her desk.
“Listen,” Sheila said. “Why waste the postage? Just let me keep ’em.”
“Send them back. I don’t want to encourage him. Sid is crazy and he makes my skin crawl.”
“Doll, I could do a lot of lying back and thinking of England for these beauties, and maybe the matching necklace, too. . . .”
“Now, there’s a visual,” said McDougal. He turned to Gwen. “Coming to the assignments meeting?”
Gwen nodded and followed him down the hall to the conference room. She sat down at the long maple table as if she belonged there with all the other art recovery agents.
She sipped at her morning fruit smoothie and reminded herself that she did belong there. Today she’d get her first solo assignment. She was a newly minted coin just being put into circulation—and it was up to her to prove her worth.
Gwen scanned the faces of the other agents on the team.
Dante di Leo, who looked as if he owned the place but didn’t, leaned casually against the end of the table, reviewing his notes for the meeting. Since he was out of the field for now as he struggled with a broken leg, he ran the presentations and handed out assignments. Gwen much preferred Dante to McDougal. Dante looked out for her, tried to help her.
McDougal, despite the fact that he looked like a hot cross between Prince Harry and a young Paul Newman, could go kiss a speeding MTA bus. His wiry auburn hair looked as if it hadn’t been combed in a week—probably the last time he’d stopped partying and slept. On the table, he tapped out the rhythm to an unknown song with his thumbs, his laser blue eyes far away.
Avy Hunt typed furiously into her BlackBerry. Dressed in slim, dark leather pants and a snug T-shirt, her light brown hair piled messily on top of her head, she did own the place—or at least half of it.
Little blond Chloe Atwell seemed hip and studious with her rectangular, trendy black eyewear and smooth asymmetrical haircut. As usual, she had a Starbucks cup in her hand.
Valeria Costas wore a smug feline expression, her black hair gleaming blue under the fluorescent lighting. She looked well massaged and oiled, as if she’d just stepped out of an exclusive spa. As she dug into her Vuitton satchel, the diamonds on her fingers glittering, Gwen couldn’t help but hope that Cato would go after her next.
They all waited for Dante to start the meeting. Avy glanced at her watch and then at him.
Dante met her gaze calmly and took his time, maneuvering on his crutches to the laptop computer that would run his PowerPoint presentation. “Lights, please.”
Gwen got up to hit them, but Sheila chose that moment to pop in. “Communiqué from Kelso.” Over her bizarre reading glasses she gave a look that was a little self-important.
“And what does our fearless and invisible leader have to say?” Avy asked. Nobody had ever seen Kelso, though he owned fifty-one percent of the company. He operated off the grid and out of the ether—rather like Liam, Avy’s former-thief fiancé.
Sheila employed a hot-pink nail to shove the reading glasses higher on her nose. “Word on the street, Ave, is that the Greek ambassador you got arrested is out for revenge. Kelso doesn’t know how or when, but he says to keep your eyes open. Possible Mob connections.”
Avy nodded. “Is that it?”
Sheila stared at her. “Yeah, sweet cheeks. The Mob could be after you, that’s all. No biggie.”
Avy’s face remained serene. “Okay. The phone’s ringing. Will you shut the door on your way out, please?”
“I serve at your pleasure,” Sheila growled.
“And you give me so much of that, Kofsky.” Avy said it with a grin.
Sheila snorted and stomped out.
“Ambassador?” Gwen asked.
Avy nodded. “Three years ago, way before we brought you in to train, I did a recovery through Lloyd’s of London that ended with the arrest of Constantin Tzekas, the U.S. ambassador from Greece. He was prosecuted for the theft of a Masaccio painting and deported in disgrace.”
“And now he’s out to get you?”
Avy shrugged, seeming unconcerned. “Apparently so.”
Gwen shivered. Avy was her former college roommate at Sweet Briar. She was close to fearless, but Gwen was not. She didn’t like the idea of anyone being after her best friend. Particularly not anyone with Mob connections.
Dante looked concerned as well. He gestured with his head toward the lights, though, and Gwen turned them off. The first slide flashed up on the screen. “Toulouse-Lautrec,” Dante said, “circa 1892. Worth just shy of eight hundred thousand.” A damning portrait of a night on the town in turn-of-the-century Paris, the painting exhibited the ghoulish, overly painted faces of tawdry women in a nightclub and the men who leered at them. The hues were weird and bluish, the contour lines exaggerated—half-witty, half-menacing.
“This was stolen from the home of an elderly couple in Paris. There was no sign of a break-in, and one of the possible suspects is their bachelor nephew. They want this kept quiet—no police. Chloe, you’ll take this one. The insurer is Giroux Freres.”
Chloe nodded, looking pleased, and Dante slid a file down the long table toward her.
“McDougal, you’re going to Scotland.” Dante flashed the next slide. “An entire suit of armor, sixteenth century, has walked out of the great hall at Edinloch Castle. It belonged to the current Duke of Edinloch’s ancestor, who fought in the Battle of Arkinholm while wearing it, so he wants it back. It’s not insured.”
Dante’s lips twitched. “As he put it, ‘Ach! Why the fook would I insure a bloody bit o’ tin?’ So he’s paying us a flat ten-percent fee for the recovery, plus expenses.”
“Just tell me the ancestor’s bones aren’t still rattling around in there,” said McDougal, yawning. “What’s the Tin Man worth?”
“Conservative estimates put it at four hundred thousand.”
Dante sent another file folder spinning toward McDougal, who didn’t look as pleased as Chloe.
Poor guy, he’d collect a mere forty thousand for his troubles. Gwen would be lucky if they gave her a piece with a five- or ten-thousand-dollar commission.
The sight of the next slide produced a couple of audible gasps within the room.
A Venetian mask stared sightlessly out at them. It was not made out of painted paper, but of pure gold, with stylized peacock feathers picked out around the eyes in diamonds, sapphires, and emeralds. A fringe of faceted diamonds, sapphires, and emeralds poured like a priceless waterfall from the bottom of it and would completely obscure the face of the wearer.
“You are gazing at five-point-four million dollars,” Dante said. “This mask is a Columbina Oriente dating to 1508. It was created for a cousin of the Borgia family who resided in Venice. He was being cuckolded by his wife, who had a much younger lover.
“While the wife enjoyed her fresh meat—please pardon the expression—the husband plotted revenge. He had the inside of the mask painted with a lethal poison, just in time for the Venetian Carnevale, a celebration before Lent.
“Not coincidentally,” Dante added in a dry tone, “the term carnevale means literally ‘to remove meat.’”
A ripple of laughter went through the room.
“Eccolo,” he continued, “the wife’s lover, delighted to receive such a lovely gift from his inamorata, donned it immediately and paraded about—only to die writhing in agony hours later. And voilà,” Dante said with a flash of white teeth and a flourish. “The husband’s rival meat was . . . removed.”
As Avy’s BlackBerry vibrated on the conference table, Valeria said avidly, “I want this recovery.”
Dante didn’t even cast his hooded eyes toward her as he shook his dark head. “The mask, as the plum assignment, goes to Avy.”
Avy wasn’t even listening, her gaze intent on the screen of her BlackBerry. She began to type a response with her thumbs.
Valeria blew out an audible breath of resentment and tossed her hair over her shoulder. “Of course. I should have known.”
“This mask was, until recently, part of the corporate art collection at Jaworski Labs, right here on Brickell. It was stolen from there two nights ago—”
“Wait,” Gwen interrupted. “Why would a pharmaceutical company have an art collection? Isn’t that odd?”
“Not at all,” Dante said. “Banks, insurance companies, technology giants—many of them seek to diversify their assets through acquiring art. And in the case of Ed Jaworski, the founder of the lab, his wife was an artist. So the old man began stockpiling art in the seventies, before the insanity of the eighties market. Smart move. That art collection is one of the only reasons the company has been able to ride out some of its storms.”
“Like the recall of their cholesterol drug and the resulting class action suit,” McDougal said.
Chloe frowned. “Wasn’t there some kind of scandal with Jaworski about a year ago, something about a painting?”
Avy finally punched send on her BlackBerry and looked up. “Yeah, you could say that. The CEO of Jaworski was taking great care of a Renoir original acquired with company funds—he hung it over the couch in the living room of his Fisher Island home. He claimed, of course, that he only had it at his place for safekeeping.”
“Nice,” Gwen murmured.
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