Relentless (5 page)

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.”