Page 81 of Homeport

There was a shot of Ryan with Colleen, grinning identical grins, and a group picture of the entire family obviously taken near Christmas. The lights from the tree were prettily blurred behind the crowd of faces.

They looked happy, she thought. Unified, and not at all stiff the way people often appeared in posed photos. She found herself lingering over them, studying another of Ryan kissing the hand of his sister, who wore a princess-in-a-fairy-tale wedding gown, and the glow that matched it.

Envy moved through her before she could stop it. There were no sentimental photographs arranged in her home to capture family moments.

She wished, foolishly, that she could slide into one of those photographs, snuggle under one of those casually welcoming arms and feel what they felt.

Feel love.

She shook the thought off, turned determinedly away from the shelves. It wasn’t the time to speculate on why the Boldari family was so warm, and her own so cold. She needed to find Ryan and give him a piece of her mind while her annoyance was still fresh.

She headed downstairs, biting her tongue to keep from calling his name. She didn’t want to give him the satisfaction. He wasn’t in the living room, nor in the somewhat hedonistic den with its big screen TV, complicated stereo, and full-sized pinball machine—appropriately titled “Cops and Robbers.”

She imagined he thought that ironic.

Nor was he in the kitchen. But there was a half-pot of coffee left on warm.

He wasn’t in the apartment at all.

She snatched up the phone with some wild idea of calling Andrew and telling him everything. There was no dial tone. Cursing viciously, she dashed back out into the living room and jabbed the button on the elevator. It didn’t make a sound. Snarling, she turned to the door, found it locked.

Eyes narrowed, she flicked on the intercom and heard nothing but static.

The son of a bitch had unlocked the bedroom, but he’d simply expanded the perimeters of her cage.

It was after one before she heard the quiet hum of the elevator. She hadn’t whiled away the morning. She’d taken the opportunity to go over every inch of his living quarters. She’d pawed through his closet without guilt. He definitely leaned toward Italian designers. She’d riffled through his drawers. He preferred sexy silk boxers, and shirts and sweaters of natural fibers.

The desks—bedroom, library, and office—had all been annoyingly locked. She’d wasted quite a bit of time attacking the locks with hairpins. The passwords on his computers had blocked her, the stone terrace off the living room had charmed her, and the caffeine she’d continued to drink as she pried had her system jumping.

She was more than ready for him when he walked through the elevator door.

“How dare you lock me in this way. I’m not a prisoner.”

“Just a precaution.” He set aside the briefcase and shopping bags he carried.

“What’s next? Handcuffs?”

“Not until we know each other better. How was your day?”

“I—”

“Hate, loathe, and despise me,” he finished as he took off his coat. “Yes, we’ve covered that.” He hung it up neatly. She’d been right, his mother had trained him well. “I had a few errands I had to run. I hope you made yourself at home while I was out.”

“I’m leaving. I must have been temporarily insane when I thought we could work together.”

He waited until she was at the base of the stairs. “The Dark Lady is being held in a storeroom at the Bargello until it can be decided where she came from, and who cast her.”

She stopped, as he’d known she would, and turned slowly back. “How do you know?”

“It’s my business to know. Now, with or without you, I’m going to Italy and liberating her. I can, with little trouble, find another archeometrist, and will eventually figure out just what happened and why. You walk out, you’re all the way out.”

“You’ll never get it out of the Bargello.”

“Oh yes.” His smile was quick and wolfish. “I will. You can have a pass at her once I do, or you can run along back to Maine and wait for your parents to decide you’re not grounded anymore.”

She let the last comment pass. She supposed it was close enough to the truth. “How will you get it out?”

“That’s my problem.”

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