The rapidly filling room was a hive of activity. Folding chairs, arranged in neat rows, covered the center of the polished hardwood floor. About three-quarters of the chairs had already been claimed, the occupants chatting quietly to one another and fanning themselves with their assigned bid numbers.
No, it wasn’t Sotheby’s. But a good deal of money would exchange hands that day, and it was up to Antonio—correction, Michael—to see that it moved smoothly.
Antonio glanced at his watch. “Would you like me to start?”
“It’s your ball game,” Joseph said. “I have complete faith in you. Throw out the first pitch whenever you’re ready.”
Antonio made a rapid inventory of the items in front of him. Gavel? Check. Sale catalogue? Check. Glass of water? Check. He was prepared. He knew exactly what to do.
Filing away every thought, every impression, every sight and sound, to be carefully detailed in his notes later, he picked up the gavel and banged it solidly against the table. The time for worry, speculation and nervousness was over. It was show time.
“Good morning, ladies and gentlemen,” he announced in a strong voice. “Welcome to the Merrill Auction Gallery. Today we have some very special items for your consideration. If everyone is ready, let us begin.”
He turned to the large screen at his right, on which was projected a sterling silver tray. To his left, an assistant held up the actual item.
“Our first item up for bid is this beautiful tray. It was designed in the Chippendale style by Henry James Ashworth of Massachusetts. The U.S. Ambassador to Tunis received it as a gift from a visiting dignitary in 1957.”
Antonio swept his gaze over the crowd. “Who will give me five hundred dollars for this coveted collectible?”
The hands started going up, and he was on his way.
“Laura! Laura, where are you?”
Laura Langley continued walking through the crowd, her gaze focusing on each bidder as a bid was offered. It took all of her self-control not to react to the woman who was calling her name. She was Ruby O’Toole, she reminded herself. The odds of anyone who knew Laura Langley being in this room were not high.
“There you are.” The urgency in the woman’s voice changed to fond exasperation. “I can’t turn my back on you for a minute, you little minx.”
Out of her peripheral vision, Laura saw a woman scoop up a toddler. The tension left her body, and she relaxed.
She was Ruby O’Toole, she reminded herself again. She couldn’t afford to forget that.
The image brought to her mind by the name she had been saddled with was of a zaftig, peroxide blonde, something she most definitely was not. At five-six, with stubbornly straight brown hair, and weighing at most 125 pounds soaking wet, not to mention almost as flat-chested and hipless as her brother, she could hardly be called zaftig.
Though the thought amused her, she didn’t smile. In her role as Ruby O’Toole she did a lot of smiling. But, left to her own devices, Laura Langley rarely smiled.
There were other differences between Laura and Ruby. Considerable differences. Laura had an IQ of 145 and was a member of Mensa. Ruby had an IQ of 110, which was strictly average. The nickname braniac had haunted Laura throughout her school years. Ruby had never been accused of deep thought. Laura cared nothing about fashion. Ruby was obsessed with clothing and accessories. Laura hadn’t looked at a man in a romantic way for four long years. Ruby lived and breathed for male attention. Laura was real. Ruby was purely make-believe.
They did have one thing in common: their knack for appraising art. That knack was the reason why Laura had spent the last part of April and all of May in Pittsburgh, instead of on the streets of New York City, which was her home. It was now the first weekend in June. The way things were going, it looked as if she’d be spending this month here, too.
She had never intended to be a cop. In fact, she’d been teaching art history in a Queens high school when, at the age of twenty-four, fate had stepped in and turned her life upside down.
Four years ago her husband pulled into a gas station with their infant son strapped snugly in his car seat. A drug deal gone sour on the opposite corner led to the exchange of gunfire. When the bullets stopped flying, Laura no longer had a husband or a child. They had become just another statistic, a line item on a police report indicating the NYPD was losing its war on drugs.
After she’d climbed out of her depression, which had taken the better part of a year, she had gotten mad. Raging mad. The way Laura saw it at the time, she had two choices. She could either go insane with anger and grief, or she could do something to make the loss of her husband and son mean more than a senseless waste. For a while it had been iffy which alternative she would select. In the end, though, she had chosen to act.
Thus, an unprepossessing art history teacher had been transformed into first a patrolwoman and later an undercover cop for the New York City Police Department. A highly decorated undercover cop who seemed fearless in the face of danger because she had nothing left to lose.
Unfortunately, the Laura who had arrived in Pittsburgh six weeks earlier was not the same woman who had excelled at the Police Academy. For one thing, she was no longer quite so fearless. The rage that had consumed her for so long now was abating, as was the single-mindedness with which she had allowed her job to swallow up every aspect of her life for three long years. While she still keenly mourned the loss of her husband and son, the memory of that loss no longer filled her every waking moment.
In its place Laura felt an unexpected restlessness. And a powerful yearning she couldn’t define. Chalking the emotions up to too much work and too little rest, she had determined to take a much-postponed and much-needed vacation once the Merrill case was brought to a close.
If it was ever brought to a close.
As anxious as she was to take that vacation, now was not the time to think of all that. A glance at her watch told her it was time, however, for her break.
Signaling to her replacement, she grabbed a cup of coffee from the concession stand and propped her feet on an empty chair in a quiet corner of the room. Sighing, she took a sip of coffee and tried to ignore the way her breasts pinched in her push-up bra and her feet pinched in three-inch stiletto heels.
The coffee went a long way toward reestablishing her equilibrium. It was shattered a moment later when she saw Joseph headed purposely toward her. Her break was only ten minutes long, and she’d hoped to be able to use that time to rest her aching feet in peace. She should have known better. When they were out in public, Joseph rarely left her side.
Trailing behind him, predictably, was Matthew Rogers, his right-hand man and bodyguard. Matthew’s massive shoulders strained against his suit jacket. His hands were as big as hams. He looked as if he could bench-press three hundred pounds easily, without breaking a sweat. He also looked like the thug that rumor whispered him to be.
“Well, what do you think?” Joseph asked.
He moved to stand directly behind her, while Matthew took up vigil a few feet away, his watchful gaze scouring the crowd. Leaning down, Joseph laced his arms loosely around her shoulders.
Trying not to flinch at the contact, Laura took another sip of coffee. “About what?”
He nodded toward the podium. “My newest employee.”
She followed Joseph’s gaze to the man who was currently in the middle of a bidding war, two women equally determined to be the proud possessor of a pair of diamond earrings. Already the bidding had surpassed the earrings’ assessed value, and was climbing steadily higher, with no end reasonably in sight. Laura couldn’t help wondering what the women wanted more: ownership of the earrings, or Michael Corsi’s undivided attention.
He was worth vying for. It had been a long time since she’d seen any man with such striking good looks off the movie screen.