Take Me Two Times Read online

  “Yikes,” said Gwen.

  Sheila was entranced. She unfurled the note with a flourish and approximated Sid Thresher’s accent, which was quite funny, given her own Brooklyn one. “ ‘My dearest Gwendolyn, you don’t call; you don’t write. What’s a lovesick old sod to do? I dream of you nightly. If I don’t hear from you soon, I’ll be coming to Miami to find you, my sweet. I know you’re shy, but we’ll be so good together. All my love, Sid.’”

  Sheila looked up with an avid expression. “He’s coming to Miami! To sweep you off your feet and into his rock-’n’-roll life.”

  “Noooooooo,” Gwen moaned.

  “I’ll bet you could get him to buy you a castle, Gwennie!”

  “I don’t want a castle.”

  “I’ve always wanted a castle,” Sheila said. “But as cheap as Marty is, he’ll never be able to save that much. And he wouldn’t want to pay the taxes and upkeep on one of those old places, either.”

  Gwen tried to imagine Marty and Sheila living in a castle, but it was just too much of a stretch. “I’m sure the heating bills would be atrocious,” she said.

  “Yeah. And even with a ride-on model, Marty wouldn’t want to mow a whole moor, d’you think?”

  “Probably not.”

  “No castle for me,” Sheila said sadly. She fingered the diamond necklace. “So. I know you’re going to let me wear this to my next bunco night before you make me send it back, right?” Her blue-shadowed eyes became orbs of entreaty.

  Gwen sighed. “When is it?”

  “Wednesday night.”

  “Fine. Wear it to bunco, but tell everyone it’s made of rhinestones. I don’t want you knocked over the head for Sid’s stupid bauble. Then you have to send it back, okay? With another computer-generated note that says I can’t accept.”

  Sheila nodded, still gazing at the necklace. “Ooh, I’ll feel just like Liz Taylor in this.”

  “Mmmm-hmmm,” said Gwen. “Listen, I need to go to Italy. Can you book me a flight to Venice, leaving tonight if possible?”

  “Oh, milady wants to leave tonight, does she? Well, la-di-da. We’ll just see if we can find an airline to accommodate Her Highness. . . .” Sheila closed the velvet box and shoved it into her desk drawer. “You know, Avy’s in Venice.”

  “She is?” Gwen gulped. She hadn’t talked to Avy in a while—not that her friend would answer her phone. “What’s she doing there?”

  “Vacationing. So she says. I don’t believe it. Something strange is going on with that girl, and I’m gonna get to the bottom of it. I want the dirt.”

  As Sheila’s acrylic nails began clattering over the keyboard, Gwen decided that she was over her fear of flying. Because really, her fear of the reception area at ARTemis was so much greater—and she faced that every day.

  Venice. Such a romantic city . . . not a city to enjoy alone. We can be equal partners in this thing, Quinn had said. You’ll gain an extra pair of eyes and hands, and I’ll gain some peace of mind.

  She’d agreed, hadn’t she? Gwen rubbed her suddenly damp palms over her skirt. On the verge of asking Sheila to make the reservation for two, she realized that she couldn’t—not until she knew for sure whether she was pregnant or not.

  Because if Quinn was overprotective and in the way now, what would he be like if he had any inkling she might be carrying his baby?

  chapter 27

  Avy pulled down her mask again, clung to the shadows, and moved silently toward the house, her gun drawn. She slipped inside the open door, praying that the owner of the old palazzo wasn’t armed.

  She took a moment for reconnaissance, listening intently. All she could hear were slightly raised voices coming from the second floor. She crept toward the center staircase, only to see Liam sprinting down toward her, taking the steps two at a time. In his wake was a fat, florid man in a nightshirt, brandishing the rolled painting.

  “Per favore, non lasciare il dipinto qui!” he beseeched Liam. “La porti via con Lei, La prego!”

  Avy’s mouth dropped open. Please, he was saying, don’t leave the painting here! Take it with you, I beg you.

  “Hallo, my love,” Liam said, leaping past her and running for the door. “Shall we?”

  “No, no, no! Non riesco a ripagare la compagnia di assicurazione, signore. Per favore!” The owner of the house barreled past her, too, pale, hairy legs pumping, still chasing after Liam and waving the painting. No, no, I can’t pay back the insurance company. Please . . .

  Liam stopped and turned around, bracing his palms on the man’s tubby shoulders. “Look here, old chap. I’m doing a good deed to return it, though why I’m damned if I know, since you’re too cheap to climate control a national treasure. It’s going to rot, do you hear? Rot. Si decomporra! For God’s sake, sell it on the black market and pocket the cash, you fool.”

  The man babbled at him in Italian. No, he couldn’t do that. The insurance company still had eyes on him. They’d catch him for sure. Please, Signor Burglar, take it away. He beseeched him to spegnersi come una lume, to just fade away again. Yes, back into the night like a good thief.

  Half-hysterical, the man pressed the painting back into Liam’s hands.

  Liam looked at Avy. His eyes twinkled behind the plague doctor’s mask, which had slipped slightly to the side so that the beak tilted askew.

  This is the man I’m going to marry, she thought hopelessly. He’s enjoying this.

  “I pity the poor signore,” he said. “Really, he wants us to keep the painting. Why don’t we accept it as a token of his esteem? A small wedding gift?”

  “Are you out of your mind?” Avy could barely keep from strangling him.

  “But, my darling! You heard the man. He doesn’t want it back. I think if he had any money left, he’d pay us to take it away. Be reasonable, hmmm?”

  She gritted her teeth. He wasn’t the plague doctor; he was the plague itself.

  “He’ll ruin a masterpiece with his cheeseparing ways,” Liam continued. “I told you why I felt compelled to relieve him of the damned thing in the first place.”

  “No!” said Avy, pointing her gun at him.

  Liam clapped a hand over his heart. “My conscience begs me to retain guardianship of this painting. . . .”

  “You have no conscience.”

  “Unkindness does not become you, my love.”

  The homeowner looked from Avy to Liam and back. “Non la ascolti. Ma Lei é un uomo o un topo?” Don’t listen to her. Are you a man or a mouse?

  Avy narrowed her eyes on the good signore. He was starting to piss her off.

  He puffed out his chest, which made him look like a potato on toothpicks. He said to Liam, “La mostri chi commanda, no?” Show her who’s boss.

  In a voice sweet as sugar, Avy said, “Chi commanda sono io, pancione cretino.” I’m the boss, you fat fool.

  He had the nerve to look insulted.

  Liam looked at the floor, his shoulders shaking. “Alas, signore, it is true,” he said in Italian. “She rules me with an iron fist.”

  Avy was tempted to shoot them both. What in the hell were they all doing here in the small hours of the morning, having this bizarre argument? Surely they’d gone into some weird Italian twilight zone.

  The homeowner made one last valiant attempt, saying that gun or no gun, Liam shouldn’t let himself be governed by this skinny bitch. Women were attempting to take over the world now that they’d been let out of the kitchen!

  “Va bene!” Avy shouted at him. “Lei é cosi antipatico che rimarremo noi col dipinto.” Fine. He was so obnoxious that they’d keep his painting. She snatched the rolled canvas out of his arms and marched out of the house with it.

  Liam didn’t seem at all surprised when Avy smacked him as soon as he stepped out the door. He caught her around the waist and deposited a noisy kiss on her ear. “Crimes of passion, love—they give me a stiffie. Won’t you do that again?”

  I’m not pregnant. I’m just not. Gwen drove into the parking lot of her loc
al CVS pharmacy and cut the engine of the Prius, wishing she could cut off her worries as easily. But that was why she was here, after all.

  Inside, she quickly perused the aisles until she got to one in the back that stocked ovulation tests and pregnancy tests. EZ! one promised. Yeah, EZ. Peace of mind. Right away.

  She told herself that it was virtually impossible for her to have gotten pregnant in the very last days of her cycle.

  And yet . . .

  Gwen prayed as she made the trip back home. She prayed as she opened the package and read the instructions. She prayed as she followed them.

  God laughed.

  When two blue lines appeared on the tiny stick, she stared at it until it went out of focus and then came back in again. Then she laughed until her ribs hurt, a miserable release of pent-up emotion. She giggled hopelessly, helplessly. There was nothing else she could do. She wiped her overflowing eyes and headed back to the office.

  She was horrified. She was overjoyed. She was nuts.

  Gwen was indeed pregnant with Quinn’s baby—again.

  Quinn was sweating like a linebacker. He took off his baseball cap and wiped his streaming face on his already soaked T-shirt. Nothing like hard labor under a hot sun. He’d single-handedly polished every gleaming inch of his thirty-three-foot Sea Ray, and felt better for the exercise. It gave him something to do.

  Silvery canals and high-rises and watercraft stretched as far as he could see. A humid breeze off the water felt like the hot breath of a stripper and provided little relief from the sun. The air was redolent with salt and engine grease and the aroma of grilled fish coming from three vessels down.

  Old Rusty Harbough grilled snapper or grouper almost every evening he was in residence. He periodically got kicked out by his wife for bad behavior and sometimes stayed on his boat for weeks at a time. Quinn figured he offended his wife on purpose just to take a break.

  It was peaceful out here. Water lapped at the sides of the boats, which bobbed and rocked gently while rigging clanked against the metal masts of the sailboats. Quinn had come a long way from Oklahoma.

  Tomorrow, if he still hadn’t heard from Gwen, he’d don scuba gear and scrub every submerged inch of the Sea Ray’s belly. What else was an unemployed executive to do? He should get in touch with headhunters and find another job, but until they wrapped up this business with the mask, he couldn’t focus.

  What exactly did a woman mean when she said she needed time to herself? How much time? And what if that was just an excuse to get him out of her way while she did things that she didn’t want him to know about?

  Quinn grabbed a cold beer out of the little fridge below-decks, closed up and secured the boat, and then headed down the concrete pier for the marina showers. He didn’t want to admit it, but he’d thought of her constantly since driving her home.

  She was back under his skin again. He could still smell her perfume in his car. He could still taste her . . . still hear her moan as he bit the cookie-shaped birthmark on the inside of her thigh and savored the flesh, leaving his mark on her.

  He was hard as he entered the shower, and turning it on cold, full blast, did no good. “Cold” water in Miami was lukewarm, and it only made him want her more.

  He’d take her some flowers. A bottle of wine. She couldn’t possibly construe that as controlling, could she? Hell, who knew what women could construe.

  But twenty minutes later, he handed a small, wizened Costa Rican man ridiculously little money for a huge bouquet of tropical flowers. Birds-of-paradise, hibiscus, wild azalea, larkspur, lilies, and protea fought for center stage and put traditional roses to shame.

  He picked up a chilled bottle of sauvignon blanc and then drove well out of his way to a favorite little restaurant, Salmon y Salmon, to pick up a batch of chorros to go. Nobody, not even a moody ex-wife, could turn down these mussels, which were marinated in fresh lime juice and slathered with onion, tomato, and cilantro.

  He drove to Gwen’s little house in Coconut Grove, gambling that she’d be home by now. Sure enough, the Prius rested in her driveway under a shade tree, clashing with the pink flamingos on the mailbox.

  Quinn climbed the porch steps feeling a little silly with the giant bouquet. He rang the bell and waited expectantly. Her light footsteps sounded on the floorboards as she approached the door. There was a pause as she presumably checked to see who was there. The pause stretched on. Did she regret sleeping with him?

  Just as he began to wonder if she’d acknowledge his presence at all, the latch jiggled and she pulled open the door. Her face was carefully neutral, devoid of expression.

  “You’ve reduced me to making silly romantic gestures,” Quinn said, holding out the flowers.

  “They’re beautiful. Thank you.” She made no move to invite him in, and he felt about as welcome as a skunk at a garden party.

  He held out the wine next, hoping that would sway her. What was wrong? Where was the passionate woman of two nights before? Something awfully like hurt clawed at his gut, so he overcompensated for it by being brash. “You are going to invite me in, aren’t you, sweetheart?”

  Gwen might know how to shoot, crack a safe, and pick a lock these days, but her innate courtesy remained intact and made her unable to leave him on the doorstep. She knew he was banking on that and taking advantage of it, and he knew she knew. “Of course. Let me put the flowers in some water. Make yourself comfortable.”

  Nothing would make him comfortable at this point, but he faked it. Proximity to her was better than comfort right now, and he also wanted to know what was going on in that enigmatic little brain of hers.

  She moved toward the kitchen, the chambray shift she wore making her smooth, tanned skin look like caramel. She was very much there physically, because the sight of her had made him hard again. But mentally, she was somewhere else. And this time, an edge of wariness guarded that hidden territory like barbed wire. She wasn’t letting him in.

  What had happened? What was different? He walked into the dining room, still watching her out of the corner of his eye as she stood at the sink, filling a large amber glass vase with water. He set the bag of chorros on the table, along with the wine.

  Six Wonder Women stared at him from the plates in Gwen’s china cabinet. Wonder Woman. Independent, hell-bent on justice, didn’t need the help of a man. She’d zip off in her invisible plane and lasso the bad guy on her own.

  Was that what this was all about? Again?

  Gwen came into the room and set the vase of tropical flowers on the dining room table. She fiddled with them, rearranging them so that they appeared perfectly balanced in spite of all their different shapes and sizes. He didn’t know how she accomplished that, but she did.

  Once she had disciplined the flowers into symmetry, she went back to the kitchen and returned with a corkscrew and two wineglasses, which she set on the table. “Would you like to open the wine?”

  Sure, if you’ll open a little welcome. But Quinn nodded and did the honors. “So, how was your day?”

  “Good, good. How was yours?”

  “Peachy.” He handed her a filled glass and clinked his against hers.

  As she took a sip, he inclined his head toward her china cabinet. “So, you think Wonder Woman ever had multiple orgasms?”

  Gwen choked. Really choked, swallowing wine down the wrong pipe.

  “You okay?” He thumped her on the back as she sputtered and coughed.

  Finally, after wheezing and coughing some more, she said, “What kind of question is that?”

  Quinn shrugged. “I don’t know. I just remember, as a kid, wondering what Wonder Woman looked like naked. I always thought she had a hot bod. Think she ever hooked up with anyone? Ever got married, grew a Wonder Bun in her Wonder Oven?”

  Gwen started coughing again.

  “You want some water?”

  She shook her head, reached for her wine, and tipped half of it into her mouth. Then she froze before swallowing, her expression truly strange. Nex
t thing he knew, she was running for the kitchen sink, where she spit out the wine.

  Quinn was perplexed, to say the least. “What’s the matter with you?”

  “Nothing.” She gasped. “I just can’t—the wine won’t agree with me. Stomach issues.”

  “Then I guess you won’t be eating the chorros I brought, either.”

  “Shellfish? No . . . no, I’m sorry but I can’t right now.” She patted her mouth with a paper towel. “It was really sweet of you to bring this stuff, though. Thanks, Quinn.” She poured herself a glass of water and came back into the dining room, where she sat down and aimed a fixed smile at him.

  Quinn decided to cut through the BS. “You regret sleeping with me the other night. You’re afraid that it forces us into a relationship again.”

  Her eyebrows shot up into her hairline.

  “You want to be like your Superfriend, there—alone and free to pursue truth, justice, and the American way.”

  “You’re making a lot of assumptions,” she said quietly.

  “Maybe. Don’t take this wrong, Gwen, but when you won’t talk to me, I have to make assumptions—just like you’ve made them about me.”

  She stayed silent.

  “When you walked out on me after losing the baby . . .” He swallowed. Pinched the bridge of his nose. “I assumed that you ended things because you no longer needed a father for it. I thought you’d used me, and then you were done.”

  Her mouth dropped open. “You don’t have a clue why I left,” she said, shaking her head. “Not a clue.”

  He felt his jaw tense. “Then would you like to enlighten me now, sweetheart? After fifteen years?”

  Gwen stood up abruptly. Turned her back to him. Hugged herself, hard, as if to hold her own body together. “I left,” she said slowly, “because there was nothing remaining to discuss with you when I got home from the hospital. I saw the look on your face, and it said it all. You were relieved, Quinn!” She turned, her eyes blazing and throwing the shadows underneath them into even deeper contrast. “You were glad I lost that baby.”