Page 7 of Dangerous Passion

The three newcomers gathered along the strip, oohing and ahhing, walking slowly along it, eyes glued to the miniature coastline, pointing out familiar buildings.

Feinstein pulled the strip more tightly so they could see better and Drake nearly had a heart attack. Fuck, a little more pressure, the paper would rip, and something irreplaceably precious would be lost.

Drake barely stopped himself from attacking the gallery owner. He had to consciously freeze his muscles and hope Feinstein understood enough to pull with only enough power to pick up the slack and not rip the strip apart.

Otherwise Drake would riphimapart.

Whoa.Where had that thought come from? The man was portly, elderly, with the soft mottled hands of the old. An art gallery owner, for Christ’s sake. Drake didn’t attack civilians and he certainly wouldn’t attack an elderly gentleman, particularly not one who’d been instinctively kind and was this remarkable artist’s friend.

But still. For a second there, when he thought that miracle strip of paper was going to be ruined, he could feel his handsclosing around the man’s neck, dewlap and all. He wouldn’t have lasted a second. Drake had known how to snap a man’s neck since he was ten and he’d only gotten better with the years.

The trio was shuffling along the strip, pointing out landmarks, excitement in their voices.

“Franco,” the woman drawled, her red-painted lips pursing at the final O, “this would look just divine in your studio, wouldn’t it? All along the yellow wall.”

“Sì, cara.” Franco shook his head admiringly. “I’d frame it simply, not to distract from the clean lines.A giorno.”

No! Mine!Drake clamped his lips together tightly or he’d have shouted the words.

They reverberated in his chest, rolling around like huge granite stones, pinging off his rib cage.

Mine.

He couldn’t remember the last time he’d desired something this intensely.

He’d been rich for a long, long time now. There was nothing material he couldn’t buy. Nothing. He’d even been offered his own country, a minute island. More a speck of land barely rising above the water, really, but still.

He owned an entire skyscraper in Manhattan, plus villas scattered around the world. He had expensive planes, expensive cars, expensive clothes, expensive women, though lately he’d been off sex.

It had been years since he’d felt that burning in his chest that meant he coveted something. In his childhood, it had flared particularly strongly in winter, when he wanted a warm room. And always when he caught the whiff of a restaurant and his empty stomach growled.

How he’dwantedthen. Ferociously. But that was a long time ago, another life ago.

So the intensity of this wanting took him completely aback, the echo of a child’s desperate need in a man’s mind.

Things shifted in his head, taking in this new, completely unexpected desire, making it fully his. At times, it was as if the very concept of desire had fled his life and he welcomed it back, a little gingerly. An old foe who had somehow morphed into a friend.

He looked around at the walls and knew that he had to have everything on it. Oils, watercolors, drawings. Everything. It all had to be his, there was no other way.

It would have to be done anonymously, through one of his many lawyers, using one of his shell companies.

He turned his head slightly, to where Grace Larsen was watching the three patrons and Feinstein, full lips slightly upturned. He had the distinct impression she didn’t smile much. Which he understood completely, because neither did he.

The gray winter clouds outside must have parted because suddenly she was suffused with light, making her skin glow, picking out an incredible play of colors in her shiny hair. She stood in the center of the rectangle of light painted on the hardwood floor, as if on a stage.

Feinstein was starting to roll the strip up. He glanced over to her and said, in a quiet voice, “Well done, my dear. Bravo.”

Her head bowed just an instant, a knight accepting a king’s just praise.

More things shifted in Drake’s head and in his chest while the wordmineroared in his head again, reverberating, nearly flooring him with surprise.

If it had been years and years since he’d wanted things, he had never wantedpeople. Not specific people.

He didn’t have lovers, he had sex partners.

He didn’t have friends. He had employees.

He hired the best at what they did, paid them more than market price and let them do what they did best.

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