Take Me Two Times Page 23

  Please, God, let this baby stay with me. She wanted to be born fifteen years ago. Now she’s back.

  Only a child of Quinn’s could be so stubborn.

  chapter 30

  Gwen made the short walk back to the Europa e Regina by herself, even though Liam gallantly offered to escort her. The doorman admitted her without hesitation and she started for the elevators.

  A man uncoiled himself from an armchair in a cozy little sitting area to her left, and without warning she looked up into Quinn’s cognac-colored eyes. “Hello, darlin’,” he said. “Why is it that you never, ever say good-bye?”

  Her whole body began to tremble.

  This was it. Unconsciously, her hand went to her abdomen, her fourth finger brushing the diamond beneath her sweater. Would he yell at her, make a scene right here in the lobby? Try to muscle her outside, where he could give vent to his feelings freely? There could be no doubt that he knew.

  His eyes were unreadable, and she shivered. “How did you find me?”

  “How do you think?”

  “You bribed Sheila. How much did she soak you for?”

  “You might be surprised to hear that she wouldn’t take any money. She just wants to be godmother.”

  She couldn’t even laugh at that, couldn’t think, didn’t know what to say. Her eyes filled, and she looked at the black-and-white tiled floor.

  He took a step forward, and she took two back.

  “It’s okay,” he said.

  No, really. It’s not okay.

  He closed the gap, put a finger under her chin, and tilted it up. “Are you all right? How are you feeling?”

  Kindness was the last thing she’d expected, after the way she’d disappeared. She nodded, and her eyes overflowed. Damn it.

  “C’mere, honey.” Quinn took her in his arms and stroked her hair. “Want to take a walk? Better yet, a gondola ride?”

  Conscious of all the hotel personnel and guests surrounding them, she nodded again. She dashed the tears away and let him take her hand as they walked outside. Quinn signaled a gondolier, settled on a price for a half-hour tour, and held her steady as she climbed into the small watercraft. He got in behind her and sat next to her as the other man stood in the bow and cast off the line holding them near the dock.

  The night air was cold, but she didn’t mind. All around them the city prepared for the start of Carnevale, its biggest tourist attraction. The crowds had started pouring in, and during the day merchants catered to them with souvenirs, specialty foods, colorful displays, and signs advertising costume ateliers, the more upscale operating by appointment only.

  Tonight the moon had stolen the show, though, bathing the city in sparkling silver. Quinn’s fingers laced unexpectedly through hers, and she looked up at the strong column of his throat, the firm jaw, the proud, slightly Roman nose.

  “You’re not angry with me?” she asked. “Why not?”

  He was silent for a moment, letting the gentle lapping of the Grand Canal and the creaking of the gondola speak for him. “Gwen, isn’t it time to let the anger go? Yeah, sure, initially I was mad. You didn’t even leave me much of a note this time.”

  She started to speak, but he tenderly put a finger over her lips. It wasn’t a controlling gesture, more of a silent request that she let him finish.

  “I felt like busting some things at first. But then, I don’t know . . . I guess it hit me that it takes two to make somebody run. And I don’t want to be the kind of guy you run from. I want to be the kind that you run to.”

  Oh, Quinn.

  “I tried to put myself in your shoes, honey. You’d just found out about the baby yourself, right?”

  She nodded.

  “And there you were, convinced that I hadn’t even wanted the first one—erroneously convinced, wrongly convinced, but still sure of it. How the hell were you gonna tell me about this one? And we’d just had a fight. So you ran.”

  “I—”

  He shook his head, half smiling. “You’re somethin’ else, Gwennie. You can break into buildings, crack safes, and kick the hell outta that Cato guy, but you run from me. Why is that?”

  Maybe because her feelings for Cato weren’t nearly as complicated. “He doesn’t scare me nearly as much as you do.”

  “Whatever. I can’t say that I was prepared for this, but I want this baby, Gwen. I want it more than anything in the world. I’ll marry you tomorrow, if that will make you happy. You gotta appreciate the irony of a second shotgun wedding with your pissed-off parents.”

  She chuckled weakly. Marry Quinn all over again? She tried to bend her mind around the concept.

  “But if you don’t want that,” he continued, “then we’ll come at it some other way. Some way that works for us and the baby, both.”

  She couldn’t think. Could barely breathe.

  Living together? Living separately? Sharing custody? Gwen placed her hand, again, over her flat stomach. Still so hard to believe there was a tiny life growing inside her. Such a fragile life . . .

  His next words just about killed her. “Be my people,” he said, cradling her. “You and the baby. Please. Give me someone to share my life with.”

  Oh, God. Her eyes overflowed again. He was saying all the right things, touching her the way her body begged to be touched . . . and yet it was the omission of three little words that stopped her cold.

  I love you. He hadn’t said it to her. She hadn’t said it to him. Perhaps the past had swallowed the sentiment whole. Maybe the future loomed too large. Was it too soon? Or too late?

  She didn’t have the answer, so she pushed the thoughts away and gave in to other, more immediate ones. Ones that were just as hard to verbalize.

  “Quinn, I’m so scared. . . . I’m scared that if my body couldn’t hang on to a baby at nineteen, how will it hang on when I’m thirty-four?”

  He took her face in his big hands and kissed her, a kiss full of the magic and moonlight of Venice after dark. “It’s gonna be fine,” he said.

  “How can you possibly know that?”

  “This baby wants us for parents, sweetheart. It’s chosen us twice. And I think it’s here to stay this time.”

  His certainty and his heat soothed her as nothing else had. His gentleness caught her off guard. She realized that she’d grown accustomed to the idea of Quinn as a combatant. Letting him onto her “team,” so to speak, didn’t come naturally. But it did feel good. Still, she had questions.

  “Are you ready to be a parent?” Gwen asked bluntly.

  “Scared out of my mind,” he admitted. “But . . . in a weird way, yeah. You?”

  “Petrified. Overjoyed. Ready? No. I have this urge to run out and buy a hundred books on how to do this. But I’ll be ready when the time comes.”

  “Will you feel trapped?” He carefully didn’t look at her as he posed the question.

  She put her hand over his. “I’m thirty-four now, Quinn. Not nineteen. I’ve had some years to live my life. So though it may be hard, no—I don’t think I’ll feel trapped this time. I’ll feel blessed.”

  He nodded, but still wouldn’t look at her.

  “What is it?”

  He sighed. “You said just a few days ago that you didn’t want me in your world. I gotta tell you, Gwen, I’d walk through hell in gasoline-soaked underwear for you—but what I won’t do is back out of my own child’s life. No way, no how. You can’t ask that of me.”

  “I wouldn’t.” She squeezed his hand.

  “So you’ve changed your mind?”

  “Quinn, hasn’t everything changed? Hasn’t everything turned upside down since the day I walked into your office?”

  “Yeah. I guess it has.”

  They fell silent as the gondolier took them around the darkened, lovely old city. Gwen held Quinn’s hand on the water, and when they returned to the hotel’s dock, she was surprised to find herself attached to him still. As he helped her out of the gondola, he murmured a few words. “You don’t seem to want a proposal, so
how ’bout a proposition instead?”

  She had to smile at that.

  “Let’s you and me shack up for the night. It might just grow on you.” He bent down and kissed her, sending familiar heat rushing through her system.

  Gwen held his hand all the way through the lobby and up to her room.

  Venice by dawn was just as breathtaking as Venice by moonlight. Spectacular striations of pink and gold lit the still-drowsy sky, bathing the old palazzos and villas in warm, honeyed light.

  Quinn lay on his side next to Gwen, his big, nude body radiating comforting heat. His breathing was deep, even, content. During the night he’d unconsciously curved an arm around her, and his hand rested protectively on her abdomen. This simple gesture convinced her more than any words that he truly wanted this child.

  And so did she. But she knew instinctively that she didn’t want to stop working—and what about Quinn himself? He was a high-powered executive who was sure to find another job as soon as they cleared their names. Where did that leave the baby? In day care? With a nanny? Gwen couldn’t say she liked either of those options, though they were reality for millions of children all over the world. Children who grew up just fine.

  Outside the hotel she heard heels on cobblestones, murmured conversations, and a few businesses opening their doors and hosing off the sidewalks of debris from the night before. The smell of baking wafted up, even through the closed windows of her room. Life went on, ignoring the momentous decisions ahead of her and somehow reminding Gwen that she could hardly make them all this morning.

  “Hey, sleepyhead,” she said, nudging Quinn. “Since you’re here, you may as well help me get on with things.”

  “Mmmmm.” He opened his eyes. “Yeah, where were we?” He moved his hand south of her stomach with evil intent.

  “No,” she said. “We have to get up.”

  “I am up.” Quinn placed her hand on a part of his anatomy that evidently needed no caffeine. Then he rolled her onto her back and made free with her breasts.

  “Really, you cannot distract me this way—”

  He spread her thighs. “No?”

  “Naaah!”

  “Nah? I’m getting mixed signals here,” Quinn said, gently easing home as if she were made of glass. Like glass at four thousand degrees Fahrenheit, she melted. “You still want me to stop?”

  “Stop and you’re a dead man,” she promised. He was certainly full of himself . . . but then again, she was full of him, too.

  “I can give it to you fast, baby, if you’re in a hurry.” He teased her with clever fingers, scraping teeth, hot mouth.

  “T-take your time.”

  “Yeah, I can do that,” Quinn said, smoothing her hair back from her face as he moved masterfully inside her. “It’s been fifteen years, so what’s another half hour?”

  After breakfast, Gwen and Quinn walked over to Costumeria Barzini. The shop was tucked down a small side street and held an astonishing number of costumes for its size. Ball gowns, breeches, cloaks, petticoats, wigs, and masks of every size, shape, and color confronted them. Sheila would love this place—it was a theatrical gold mine.

  Gwen laughed as Quinn tried on a jester’s cap in orange and silver, complete with tinkling bells. He struck a pose.

  The shop smelled of mothballs, old fabric, and fresh lavender, with an underlying odor of ripe shoe leather. In the far northeast corner, a tired-looking woman in a navy blue dress busied herself with steaming costumes.

  In the northwest corner was a cash register, where a man—maybe her husband?—took money from a line of customers and handed them their rentals.

  Gwen left Quinn donning another hat—this one something like a musketeer’s—and approached the woman, since she was alone. “Buon giorno, signora, come sta?”

  “Bene, grazie.” She barely looked up from her task.

  “Signora,” Gwen said in passable Italian, “I wonder if I may ask you . . . have you seen this particular mask before?” She reached into her handbag and produced several snapshots of the elaborate jeweled Columbina. She held them out.

  The woman hung the end of the steamer on its hook, wiped her hands on a small cloth, and took the photos. Her eyes widened in shock or alarm, and she handed them back immediately, then crossed herself. She shook her head.

  “We do not have this mask, signorina.”

  “But have you seen it?”

  “It is cursed. Stay away from it.”

  “I’m looking for someone who duplicated a mask like this one. It’s very important. Please. Can you help?”

  To Gwen’s surprise, the woman was very close to tears. “No, I cannot help you. Please leave.”

  “But—”

  “Leave now. Per favore.” Her aghast expression and tone of voice had attracted her husband’s attention. He looked over at them, curious.

  “And don’t come back here again.” Her voice was sharp enough to alert Quinn, and he immediately took off the hat.

  “Mi dispiace, signora.” Mystified, Gwen took his arm and they left.

  “What was that all about?” he asked.

  “I don’t know, but the sight of the mask clearly upset her. She says it’s cursed.”

  “I’m beginning to agree with her.”

  Gwen nodded and looked at her watch. It was still early, and Avy might not yet be awake, so she and Quinn took a train to Padua next, the jeweler’s address burning a hole in her pocket.

  Padua was a bustling little university town, lively with students and two street markets around the Palazzo della Ragione. Gwen checked her map and they made their way on foot to the Piazza dei Signori, where the jeweler’s shop was located.

  The front room was small and sunny, with scrupulously clean glass cases displaying traditional gold jewelry—necklaces, earrings, rings, bracelets, and watches. On the floor was a large Oriental rug that Gwen pegged as an early-nineteenth-century Chelaberd in the Kazak style, a little worn but in decent condition for its age. Overhead hung a sparkling Murano glass chandelier, which added a touch of modernity to the otherwise classical room.

  “Buon giorno,” she said to a young, chicly dressed salesclerk who had eyes only for Quinn. “May I speak to Signor Brancato?”

  With difficulty, the girl tore her gaze from Quinn’s biceps and responded. “May I tell him what business you have with him?”

  “It’s a private matter of some urgency.”

  The girl nodded and disappeared into a back room. She returned almost immediately and gestured to Gwen to follow her.

  Quinn raised his brows, asking a silent question. Did she want him to go back with her? He didn’t speak a word of Italian, so she shrugged, leaving it up to him. He glanced toward the jewelry cases. “I’ll stay out here.”

  Gwen nodded and followed the girl into the rear of the store.

  An aging man with surprisingly broad shoulders and arms ropy with muscle sat at a battered desk. His shirt-sleeves were rolled up and he wore a lamb’s-wool sweater-vest to keep him warm. His pale blue eyes were myopic and watery, but shrewd behind thick jeweler’s glasses. The glasses were held on his face by an elastic band that went around his head. The band had mussed a few strands of his hair in back so that they stood up like antennae.

  The girl went a little too eagerly back out front, no doubt to flirt with Quinn.

  “Signor Brancato?” Gwen queried.

  “Si?”

  She launched into Italian. “Mi chiamo Gwen Davies, and I work for an American company called ARTemis. We’re hired by insurance companies to track down and recover stolen art objects.”

  Signor Brancati looked at her for a long moment. Then he took off the jeweler’s glasses and set them down. He rubbed wearily at his eyes. “Yes? Continue.”

  “A couple of months ago, a very valuable gold Venetian mask encrusted with jewels was stolen from a U.S. company.”

  Signor Brancati dragged his age-spotted, blue-veined hands down his face and clasped them in front of him on his worktable, a
lmost as if he were praying. He nodded.

  “A duplicate of this mask was made by a jeweler using a technique called repoussé. You’re a well-known master of this technique. You also own a very expensive laser welder, which was used to seal layers of gold over the lead needed to approximate the weight of the real solid-gold mask.”

  Brancato wouldn’t look her in the eye.

  “Signore, I’m afraid this isn’t just a case of simple fraud. Two people have been murdered.”

  Silence.

  “Dead, Signor Brancato. Please, if you know anything or if you created the copy yourself . . . please help me.”

  Brancato sighed. At last he spoke. “I expected you,” he murmured, “but not so soon.”

  “You expected me?” Gwen was mystified for the second time that day. “Why?”

  “My daughter called me. You went to see her earlier today—Silva Barzini.”

  “She was very upset when I showed her pictures of the mask.”

  “And for good reason. The safety of my grandchildren has been threatened.” He raised his clasped hands to his mouth, and she noticed a visible tremor.

  “What? Why?”

  “Because initially I refused the job.”

  “Who—”

  “Sit down, Signorina Davies,” he said, gesturing to a wing chair covered in threadbare tapestry.

  Gwen sank into it and waited as he gathered his thoughts.

  “I will talk to you, but you must keep in mind that I have done nothing wrong: To make a duplicate of a famous piece is not illegal. It is laborious, it is time-consuming, but in itself the process is not a criminal act.”

  “I realize that, Signor Brancato. Were you paid?”

  The edges of his thin mouth turned down, seeming to slice into his jowls. “Si, she paid me, but I only kept enough to cover my materials and expenses. The rest of it I gave to the Scrovegni Chapel for the preservation of Giotto’s frescoes. The woman who came to see me would do well to spend time kneeling in front of the Last Judgment on the west wall.”