TWO
Five hours later they were airborne.
The 747 from Seattle to New York and on to London was full, everyone crammed in like sardines. The first-class cabin was more spacious, but Thorne still felt like he’d been shoved inside a tin can. The air smelled of the steak they’d had for dinner, and a faint, underlying scent of Isis’s ginger cinnamon soap. The cabin lights were dimmed. Thorne’s light was off. Isis, sitting between himself and the window, had a halo where her light shone on her hair.
She’d changed at Zak’s place into pale blue jeans and a long-sleeved red T-shirt, and wore dangling red and gold earrings that kept tangling in her hair. As much as it annoyed him—tempted him to untangle the glinting metal plates, touch her hair—Thorne kept his hands to himself. The urge to touch her was already ridiculous and required a good deal more discipline than he’d anticipated.
“How will your skill work when we get to the museum?” Isis asked quietly.
Business. That was safe. “You suspect where your father was when he was attacked, right?” She nodded. “I’ll touch the things you sent to the museum to complete his exhibit, and see if there’s a location match.”
Her eyes widened behind her glasses. “You do remember that there are thousands of artifacts in the collection, right?”
More than aware. “It’s a long shot, but it’s the only shot we have.” And given all that rubbish about assaults from mystery figures and murder, the quicker this was over, the better.
Even if a small part of him did settle into the instinct of years of training. In, out, put the bad guys down.
If there were even any bad guys.
“You won’t have to touch everything,” she countered, with what seemed like mild amusement in the dim light. “It’s thirty years’ worth of work. I can sort and eliminate things by obviously wrong locations and unlikely dates. That’ll cut down the time, won’t it?”
“Sure.” From ten years to five. Finding the right matching location, while not knowing what type of artifact would hold the GPS location, was akin to searching for a thief in a prison.
“I’m glad I can help you help me. I hate sitting around waiting, don’t you?”
Yeah. One of the things at the top of his list. He shifted in his seat so he could straighten his legs, and she moved her feet to give him more room. “You can stretch out some more if you like.”
“I’m good.” As good as it was going to get, anyway. He’d let the flight attendant take his suit jacket and cane, and had rolled up his sleeves in deference to the stuffiness on board, despite the air blowing down on him. It wasn’t cooling his unwelcome attraction to Miss Magee any.
She looked up at him, eyes earnest behind her black-framed glasses. Her breath smelled sweet from the Diet Coke she was drinking. Thorne didn’t drink sodas, but he wondered absently what it would taste like on her tongue if he kissed her. Which, of course, he was absolutely not going to do.
Curling her legs up under her on the wide leather seat, she pitched her body closer to his. Her closeness, and the subdued lighting in the cabin, made the situation far too intimate and made Thorne want to bury himself in her heat and cinnamon scent. She licked her unpainted mouth as if she were reading his thoughts. “Were you in an accident?”
“Yeah.” I accidently walked into Boris Yermalof’s boning knife. He watched the attractive flight attendant bringing around coffee. It was natural to think of the Russian when he was on his way to London and talking about Egypt. The bloody Russian was the reason Thorne had been banished to Seattle in the first place. The chase through Egypt eight months ago had ended in Israel, where his two partners had been brutally butchered, and when Thorne had avoided being gutted like a fish, it was more by accident than design. Everyone considered his survival a miracle.
He resented being put in a holding pattern when all he wanted to do was track Yermalof down and do unto him as the Russian had done unto Thorne’s partners. Twiddling his thumbs wasn’t Thorne’s thing. Babysitting a deluded big-eyed cutie while he served out his sentence was proving more challenging than he had time for. The fact that he was supposed to be recuperating didn’t make it less of a problem.
Isis predictably asked, “Was it a c—”
Without turning to look at her, he said unambiguously, “I don’t talk about it.”
“If there’s anything I can do…?”
“No.”
The flight attendant smiled and flashed her cleavage over the small tray holding china cups. The rich scent of Sumatra eradicated—for the moment—the smell of Isis’s skin. Thorne turned to glance at her.
“Do you want coffee?” He wasn’t a man who chatted. He didn’t want to be her friend, and he didn’t want to f*cking bond. London. Hopefully he’d find something that would satisfy her. He’d go back to Seattle, where the weather suited his mood, and she could go… wherever the hell she wanted to go. None of his business.
“No thanks. I probably shouldn’t have drunk those two Diet Cokes.” She reached up and turned off her overhead light, then pulled the thin blanket across her lap, up over her chest. “I want to sleep so I’m fresh when we arrive.”
She was plenty fresh. He took a coffee, ignoring the woman lingering at his side until she pushed off. “Good idea,” he told Isis. The coffee was hot and black. Not French press, but drinkable. He drank it in two gulps, then placed the cup and saucer on the wide space between their seats. It wasn’t a wall, but it marked his space from hers.
Isis wiggled down in her seat, curling up to get more comfortable, her elbow pushing his cup dangerously close to the edge as she shifted, trying to balance her head on her hand.
Mentally shoring the barriers, he moved the cup after all.
Now he couldn’t pretend that he wasn’t looking at her instead of the discarded cup. Eyes closed, Isis was close enough for him to see the way her long lashes cast shadows on her creamy cheeks, and feel her warm breath against his upper arm. She didn’t look very comfortable but her discomfort was none of his business. If she woke up with a stiff neck that was her own fault.
She wasn’t asleep. He could practically hear her mind working.
He knew he wouldn’t find what he was looking for without her help at the museum. She at least knew which decade of artifacts and paperwork to check as a jumping-off point. He didn’t want to go; that was a given. But he’d performed numerous jobs for queen and country that he hadn’t wanted to perform. Sometimes a man had to shut the hell up and just do what had to be done. His father was one of two people in London whom Thorne had no desire to see, but to get Isis and himself into the back rooms of the museum, he needed his father’s help.
Bloody hell. He’d then owe His Lordship a favor. No good deed went unrecorded in the Earl’s ledgers.
Still, with Isis’s tenacious assistance, he could make the trip quick and relatively painless. If anything in the professor’s artifacts was from his recent dig, Thorne would give Isis the information she needed and send her on her way. He didn’t need to go to Egypt with her. Just point her in the right direction.
She wanted the mythical tomb of Cleopatra? If her father had been in the Valley of the Scorpions and that’s where the tomb was, he’d find the connection.
She’d leave; he’d go back to Seattle. The end.
She’d have her answers, and he’d forget about the curly-haired woman who batted her long lashes from behind smudged glasses.
He’d learned something else about his client—besides that she was as tenacious as a Rottweiler. She was a tightwad who made every penny work twice, once for each side. The heated conversation between them at Sea-Tac Airport had drawn a small crowd of amused onlookers. It was only when he informed her with all the superior arrogance of his ancestors that with his bad leg, sitting in steerage for nine hours was completely out of the question, that she had partially acquiesced. He could go first-class. She’d go coach.
Thorne purchased two first-class tickets and told her to shut up and enjoy her heated nuts.
“You can talk to me,” she said drowsily, without opening her eyes. “I’m not asleep.”
He slipped off her glasses. Her mouth tightened at the unexpected contact. Not disgust; more like surprise. Thoughtful, he folded the earpieces and stuck the glasses in his shirt pocket, beside the photograph she’d given him—reluctantly—back at the Lodestone office. “How long have you been living with the Starks?” He’d taken her to Queen Anne Hill to pack and was not surprised that she’d directed him to Zak’s house.
“A month. They’ve been kind enough to let me camp out there while I regroup.”
Thorne could smell her hair and skin—cinnamon. She’d twisted her curls up on top of her head, and her face unframed by all that hair was pure and sweet. Opening her eyes, she gave him a drowsy smile. There were humor and charm in her big brown eyes and sensual mouth, elements oddly more insidious than overt sex appeal.
He removed the picture from his breast pocket. “Tell me what you see.”
She didn’t take the piece of paper from him, just touched his hand to bring it closer. An unwelcome frisson of awareness zinged up his arm at her touch. The speed with which she withdrew her fingers, the way her mouth did that tightening thing again, indicated she’d felt the same thing. Bollocks. He was a grown man, and she was the first woman on his radar in too long. “Need your glasses?”
“No, I see fine close up.” She straightened to push her fringe out of her eyes. “It was taken in the evening. Seven or eight, I’d guess. You can tell by the angle of the sunlight.” Her arm brushed his when she pointed. “This is clearly a tomb entrance. See the way the earth slopes, but the size of the rock is not uniform to its surroundings? That was backfill. This section here is undisturbed. This section here, where the team started to dig, is darker where the rocks and soil were excavated. The photographer was my father. He always manages to insert himself into pictures.” There was a wealth of love and amusement in her quiet voice.
“Usually it’s his thumb; this time it was his shadow. He sent this from his phone soon after he took the picture.”
“Who do you think this is?” Thorne pointed to a shadow off to the left.
“I thought it looked like a second man standing with his back to the light. But I blew up the image in my lab several months ago, and it’s too hard to tell. It wasn’t clear enough to make out if it’s a person or a rock formation. And when I spoke to him he said he’d left everyone back at camp.”
Because a man with Alzheimer’s would remember. “Probably rocks, then,” Thorne said easily, tucking the photograph back into his pocket behind her glasses. Or the man Dr. Magee claimed struck him on the head. Thorne’s gut told him it was the latter. That complicated things. He’d rather hoped recovery would be easy. He suspected Isis Magee was like crabgrass: insidious and hard to get rid of. But if someone had indeed attacked Professor Magee, Thorne couldn’t let her go off in search of Cleopatra’s tomb alone.
Bloody, bloody hell.
“Try to sleep,” he told her, reaching up to adjust the air nozzle. “Tomorrow’s going to be a long day.” Probably long and hellish as well as hellishly long.
Isis pushed back her seat to recline more fully and gave him a small smile as she snugged the thin blanket to her chin. “I’m equal parts excited and terrified,” she murmured as her lids dipped lower and lower.
Unfortunately, Thorne thought as he watched her eyes flutter and close, I feel exactly the same way.
London
ISIS LOOKED UP AT the imposing Georgian edifice with its warm brick façade and neat rows of blank-eyed sash windows. The building looked rigid, precise, and boringly symmetrical. If this was a hotel, there wasn’t even a discreet brass nameplate outside the glossy black front door.
The sun was shining, but the chill in the air caused her to snug the collar of her red Windbreaker up around her ears and stuff her hands deep in the jacket’s pockets. She’d thrown together her clothes for the trip based on digging through dusty antiquities in the museum and, hopefully, for a trip to Egypt, where the temperatures in June hit the high nineties. Not for fancy hotels or London’s chilly version of summer weather.
Jeans, T-shirts, underwear, socks. Two pairs of shoes. Her camera bag, which doubled as a purse. Although she was rarely without her Canon, she’d left it locked in the hotel safe for this “quick” trip. Too bad; she’d like to take some angled shots of the building, which looked like a buttoned-up virgin on her wedding night. The thought made her smile.
She didn’t care much about what she wore, but her silent companion was dressed in another beautifully cut business suit, which he’d changed into at the hotel, where they’d stopped long enough to drop off their luggage and wash up.
His clothes shouted armor. His crisp blue and white pinstriped shirt was open at the throat; his short dark hair ruffled in the breeze like the pelt of a seal. He looked deceptively at ease. But her artist eye saw the slight tension in his shoulders, and the grim line of his mouth.
Connor “Just Thorne” wasn’t casual or particularly approachable. In fact, he was a bit on the surly side and hoarded his words as if they were currency. Which was too bad, because Isis bet he’d be fascinating if he opened up. She spent her life getting silent things to speak, at least in her photographs. He’d be no different. She would search to find just the precise angle, and the form of lighting, that would reveal the story.
What drove the man?
What kind of accident had caused the limp? Why wouldn’t he talk about it? She wanted to pry him open like the clam he was. She wondered, as she glanced around, just what kind of crowbar would be necessary to pry inside his secrets.
He hadn’t clued her in to whom they were seeing or why, other than a brief mention that his father had something to do with the museum they needed to visit.
He rang the highly polished doorbell, the sound echoing discreetly inside.
“Where are we?” They’d already checked in to the hotel, and one wouldn’t ring a doorbell at a hotel in any case. Trying to guess where they were and why they were there, she glanced around at the neatly trimmed boxwood hedges surrounding a beautifully manicured Stepford-perfect flower bed filled with deep purple salvia. Bright red petunias would look better than the stick-straight salvia, she decided.
There wasn’t a bend or a curve to be seen. Everything was precise, straight, uniform. In fact, she bet that whoever was in charge of the plants had cut back any stragglers so they were exactly even in number on each side.
Before he could respond the door was opened by a distinguished, unamused man with snow-white hair and a beak of a nose. He wore a starched black suit so stiff it appeared to have the hanger still in it. Isis buried her instant levity, wondering if the man was aware he’d caricatured himself. “Master James,” he said in round, self-important tones. “This is something of a surprise.”
“To all concerned,” Thorne replied dryly as the man stepped back to let them inside. “Is His Lordship at home, Roberts?”
The butler glanced down his nose at Isis for a moment, his nostrils flaring, as if he smelled something unpleasant. “I’ll inquire, sir. Shall I bring tea to the yellow room?” The butler held himself with stiff dignity.
“Coffee and a diet cola. Heavy on the ice.”
“Certainly.” Roberts half-bowed and went right, while she followed “Master James” to the left. Roberts, she noted, disappeared like magic, and it was only her imagination that had her smelling sulfur in the air, which otherwise bore the scent of lemon polish and flowers.
Wowza! She’d been in hotels smaller than this place. “Your name’s James?”
He picked up speed, his hard-soled shoes and cane landing slightly uneven, staccato strikes on the marble floor. “Thorne.”
“Okay by me,” she said easily, looking around with interest as she trailed behind him. Tension rolled off him in almost visible waves. Isis closed the gap between them in a probably misplaced sense that he needed someone to stand with him. She kept her tone light as she tucked her hand into the crook of his elbow and adjusted her steps to match his. “My father always said, ‘A child with many names is a child loved.’ ”
He didn’t shake her off but made a derisive noise under his breath as they circumvented a large wood and marble table with an enormous floral arrangement dripping from a blue and white vase half as tall as she was. That many hydrangeas and Casablanca lilies couldn’t possibly get enough to drink, they were crammed in so tightly. “Not in every case,” he said coldly, finally disengaging from her hold to slip his hand in his jacket pocket.
Ow. “This is your parents’ home?” Isis asked in exaggerated hushed tones as their shoes clicked loudly on marble the color of beach sand and the tap of Thorne’s cane echoed in surround sound off all the hard surfaces.
“Already amused, I see.” Thorne let her catch up to him again in the vast entry hall. He wasn’t letting the grass grow under his feet. Whatever the reason for the cane and slight limp, the man moved fast. She had to trot to keep up.
She couldn’t imagine a child scampering through the halls or sliding down the magnificent curved teak banister. Not that she could imagine Thorne as a child, either. Feeling his unbearable tension as if it were a living thing in the too-still, unbearably grand house, she forced a small smile. “I was just thinking I’d like to get Roberts into a room filled with white Persian cats and photograph his reactions. I bet fluff never lands on that suit of his—it has super-repellent on it, doesn’t it?”
His lips twitched. “You have a very interesting mind, Isis Magee.”
She would have loved to linger, because the place was magnificent in an overly gilded, museumy kind of way, and her fingers itched for her camera. She got the quick impression of miles of pale marble, busy wallpaper, and gold… everything; of potted palms and large portraits of stern-faced people in period costume, as she hurried to keep up with Connor’s long-legged, if slightly uneven, strides.
“House. Not home. But yes. Rosebank House is their primary residence.”
The “House” seemed too tame a name for the palatial mansion. “Did you grow up here?” Isis asked, doing a quickstep to sync her steps with his.
“Third floor, corner bedroom. I fled the scene on my eighteenth birthday and never looked back.”
His fingers brushed hers as they walked. A pleasant little zing of electricity ran up her arm. He didn’t appear to notice. She wondered with amusement what he’d do if she slipped her hand into his. She liked touching him. Liked the smell of him, and the look of him. Resisting the impulse to twine her fingers with his, she said, “I suspect this house casts a long shadow.”
He gave her a surprised look. “Long and extremely… heavy. This way.”
The room he ushered her to was not yellow, but rather a pale Wedgwood blue complete with white plaster accents and an enormous crystal chandelier. Everything in the room looked expensive—as if there should be a velvet rope preventing visitors from entering. Even though James Connor Thorne, or Connor James Thorne, or Just Thorne, was a thoroughly modern man and should’ve looked completely out of place in a room filled with baroque furnishings and silk upholstery, he appeared quite at home. But then Isis suspected he’d look at home wherever he was. He had self-confidence to spare. It was very sexy on him.
She took it all in, her eye for detail cataloging the furnishings as if she were preparing for a photo shoot. He crossed to the fireplace to stand beneath a large painting, circa seventeen hundreds. The stiffly posed man exuded self-control and moral strength. Like Thorne, he stood, one hand in his pocket, his expression grim as he stared defiantly at the artist as if to say, “Hurry the hell up. I have things to do and people to kill.”
“He looks…” Isis observed. Surly and extremely unhappy. “Important,” she finished.
Thorne flicked a glance upward. “That was painted by Joshua Reynolds.”
“How many Thorne relatives back is this guy?” She crossed the thick area rug to inspect a portrait of a man in formal dress of the period. He had a strong face and piercing green eyes, and his hair was powdered and tied back. He wore a long, wide-collared lime-green frock coat over a silver waistcoat, a froth of white lace at his throat and wrists. His hand, with an enormous emerald ring on it, was on one hip as if to say, “So there, you peasant.”
“Garrett Thorne, sixth Earl of Kilgetty. My great-great—” He paused and gave her a wry smile. “Many greats back. The story is he had two wives, and two mistresses. A pair in town and the other at his country estate.”
She narrowed her eyes at the portrait. “Yes, I can see the exhaustion on his face.” Smiling, she noted, “You don’t look remotely alike.”
“Your refreshments, sir. His Lordship will join you in half an hour.” Roberts placed a silver tray containing a gorgeous silver coffeepot and paper-thin china cup, a carafe of soda and a glass, and a plate of cookies on a side table before bowing himself out.
“I’m surprised it isn’t two hours.” Thorne poured her soda into the glass. Using the silver tongs, he chose two delicate, lacey cookies and placed them on the china plate. Isis could’ve eaten a horse along with the cookies, but she politely took her drink and plate and went to sit gingerly on a slippery powder blue brocade sofa with crocodile feet.
If it were her sofa—which it could never be, because it was quite hideous—she’d paint its toenails fire engine red. She carefully put the plate of buttery cookies on a nearby side table. The fabric would probably stain just by one’s thinking about eating a cookie while seated on it.
Thorne stood beside the massive Carrara marble fireplace, filled with scentless white roses and Queen Anne’s lace. How on earth could he exude sex appeal while holding a teacup with little red flowers on it? He’d propped his simple black cane to the side of the fireplace and stood with his feet a little apart.
Isis wondered how such an unbending man could make her think of sex all the time. Not just sex, but hot, messy sex, sweaty-skin and twisted-sheets sex. Resting her palm on her throat she felt her rapid heartbeat, caused by just looking at him and imagining…
He’s not the One, she reminded herself. She suspected Thorne would be quite happy to take her to bed. And she was pretty sure the experience would be mind-boggling.
Too bad she wasn’t willing to risk sleeping with him and losing her heart to a man who she doubted had commitment on his mind.
Safer not to complicate their relationship and risk him not helping her on her quest.
Even though he was wreaking havoc on her senses, and firing her imagination, she’d lust in private and put on her game face for the duration.
“Why would he make you wait so long?”
“He’s sure to be thrilled to see I’m back.”
The sarcasm dripping from his tone made it clear the comment was facetious. She took a sip of her drink, then held the glass between her hands on her lap. She was in no position to judge father-child relationships, but it seemed he and Daddy Dearest didn’t see eye to eye. “I’ll take a wild leap here and say you don’t get along.”
He picked up a small jade elephant, then returned it to the end of a line of five others in descending size on the mantel. “I was the Great Disappointment.”
She looked at him over the rim of the cut crystal glass housing her humble Coke. “No siblings to disperse the brunt?”
“An older brother, Garrett.” His fingers briefly whitened on the edge of the carved marble mantel. “He died on his twenty-first birthday.”
She absorbed the undertones, and her heart felt what she saw in his eyes before he masked it. “I’m sorry. Were you close?”
“Extremely. We—”
“James.” The man’s voice was cold and crisp. Isis looked over her shoulder, fumbling with her glass and the slippery seat to get to her feet as the Earl of Kilgetty greeted his son.
Thorne didn’t walk over to greet his father, and his father came only a few steps into the room. Neither extended a hand to shake. Thorne put his cup and saucer on the high mantel and turned back, his face expressionless. “You look well, Father.”
“I can’t say the same for you. I thought you’d gone to live in America.”
“Seattle, yes. This is Professor Magee’s daughter, Isis. Isis, the Earl.”
The Earl and his son were the same height and shared the same hazel eyes, but on the father the color was muddier and less interesting. He looked stern and unkind. Bitter. Isis had the irrational urge to rush over and stand beside Thorne in solidarity. It would’ve helped if he’d introduced his father by the way Isis was supposed to address him. My lord? Your Earliness? Hell.
“Pleased to meet you,” she decided was good enough. The Earl gave her a cool, disinterested look, his gaze flicking from her sneakers up her jean-clad legs and over the open Windbreaker, then landing on her wildly curling hair. He didn’t look impressed with what he was seeing. Too damned bad.
“How is August?”
“I’m afraid he has Alzheimer’s,” she said. “I suspect his condition was exacerbated by the attack he sustained on his last trip to Egypt.” She’d come to terms with her father’s illness, and her voice no longer broke as she shared the news.
“Yes,” the Earl said vaguely, with all the interest of one looking over yesterday’s newspaper, then turned his attention to his son. “Your mother is in Paris shopping. I’m sure she’ll be sorry to have missed you.”
“I’m sure she won’t give a damn,” Thorne returned flatly.
“That’s uncalled-for.” His father’s thin lips disappeared in disapproval. “Why are you here?”
“I’d like you to contact the museum and have them grant us access to Professor Magee’s artifacts.”
“To what purpose? This is an odd time to show an interest in Egyptology.” He tucked his fingertips into his jacket pocket like the man in the portrait nearby, as if he were posing for his own portrait.
Thorne’s eyes narrowed. “Have I ever requested a favor of you? Can’t you just do this because I ask?”
“They’re preparing to exhibit Magee’s discoveries. They will be available on the ninth of next month. You can see everything then with the rest of the public.”
Ouch.
“This is a time-sensitive matter,” Thorne said tightly. “I’ve already spoken to the museum. They won’t grant us full access. You, however, are not only on the board, you’re their biggest sponsor. Make the call.”
Thorne’s father glanced at Isis. “Forgive me, Miss Magee, but your father has had… issues in the past. His drinking became a serious problem, and his veracity came under question with each preposterous claim. It was only with the help of my public relations people that I was able to smooth the path to this exhibit, and restore some verisimilitude to a career spanning thirty years. I don’t want any adverse publicity to taint the exhibit at this juncture. What do you hope to find?”
“W—” Connor started to say hotly, but Isis cut them both off.
“With all due respect, that’s my father you’re talking about.” Isis placed her glass on a spindly table with a sharp click. “We’re asking you to pick up the phone and make one call. If that’s beyond your capabilities, the name Magee still holds some weight. We’ll get what we need with or without you.” Her teeth ground together, and she held on to her temper by a thread. Her response was knee-jerk, probably rude and uncalled-for, but her father’s situation was already a sore spot for her without this sanctimonious man casting aspersions.
“The first time you bring a woman home, and she’s not only American, but as uncouth as her father. Congratulations, James. You have once again sunk to meet my low expectation.” If his tone could have gotten any icier, it would have frozen half of England in one go. “I’ll make a phone call. Roberts will see you out. I’ll tell your mother you stopped by.” His expressionless eyes flickered from his son to Isis. “Miss Magee.” The Earl of Kilgetty turned on his heel and walked out of the room.