But he probably didn’t need her money, and if he cared one bit about forgiveness, he would have made good on his vow to retrieve the painting years ago. If she wanted him to follow now, she was going to offer him something she hoped he still craved—a chance to win her back.
It wasn’t going to happen, of course. She might have put on her sexiest dress and flown across the country to lure him back to Chicago, but she wasn’t going to sleep with him. She’d been there, done that and had the heartache to prove it.
Though she had to admit—he was still hot.
She knew better than anyone that any living, breathing woman within close proximity to David Brandon, aka Daniel Burnett, would be subject to a raging surge of lust. But while she’d come here anticipating a tug of attraction from the leftover riptides of their fast and furious affair, she hadn’t expected to nearly drown.
The minute she’d seen him from across the crowded casino, she’d fallen backward in time. Her nerve endings had sizzled and her brain, conditioned over the past five years to block out the memory of the night he’d approached her for the first time in a darkened museum gallery, had betrayed her with pImages** vibrant with sex and sensuality. From that first whispered innuendo, he’d turned her inside out, exposing the desires she’d kept so carefully hidden from everyone in her life, her fiancé included.
But she was older now. Stronger. She’d tried other avenues to reclaim her painting before it exposed her family—mostly her father—to derision and ridicule.
Lust aside, she couldn’t allow her fears to stop her plan. It wasn’t a wise plan. It certainly wasn’t remotely ethical. But that ship had sailed a long time ago. Trying to reclaim her good-girl status now was like trying to win back her virginity. The only thing she had left from her days before Daniel had charmed his way into her life was her reputation. If she didn’t act soon, that would be at risk, too.
“Abby, wait.”
His voice traveled over the retreating sounds of the casino, but she didn’t break her stride. The doors from the lobby to the street slid open, blasting her head to toe with cool night air that had, only hours before, clung to her with the warm, wet heat that made Louisiana so infamous. Tracking Daniel down to New Orleans had been no small feat. She might never have found him if he hadn’t made the unexpected mistake of getting himself arrested in California. “Abby!”
He grabbed her arm and his touch was electric. The sensation of his palm wrapped around her wrist ratcheted up her heartbeat until she was certain he could feel her pulse. She tried to yank herself free, but he held her fast.
“Let go of me.”
“We need to talk.”
He pressed his thumb intimately on her pulse point. The pounding intensified in her ears and heat suffused her system until tiny beads of sweat trickled at her nape and between her breasts. Her brain flashed with a memory. The two of them, naked, in front of her fireplace. Ice cubes. His thirsty tongue.
She pulled harder. “Don’t touch me.”
His face twisted with confusion, but he instantly let her go.
“What the hell, Abby? You came on to me back there, not the other way around. Now I can’t lay a hand on you just to stop you from running?”
“I wasn’t running,” she said, gulping in air. “And yes, that’s the deal.”
“What if I don’t agree to the terms?”
She took another deep breath and released it slowly. She hadn’t come here to give him an ultimatum. She’d meant to entice him to do this one favor, to repay her for what he’d put her through. She’d expected residual chemical attraction to him, but she hadn’t expected fear.
“If you won’t help me, I’ll find someone else who will.”
He eyed her warily, but didn’t immediately walk away. She had to get herself together. Remember her endgame. Stick to her plan. She’d banked on Daniel still caring about her. She’d hoped, stupidly perhaps, that he’d cultivated a bit of real remorse since she’d left her bedroom the night before her wedding with her dress unzipped and Daniel long gone.
“Why do you need the painting all of a sudden?”
“The man who owns it now plans to not only display it, but auction it off. I have less than a week to get it back before everyone knows about my grandmother and her affair with that artist.”
“I don’t get it,” Daniel said, his voice doubtful. “You’re the original owner. If he puts it on display, the whole world will know it was stolen.”
“After you took it, I never reported it stolen. My father hated that portrait. To him, it’s salt in the wound of his mother cheating on his father and all the years of bullying and taunting he suffered through as a kid because of it. He’s had years to forget about that pain, and now it’s going to be dragged up again because I let you steal it. My grandmother gave the painting to me to keep it safe, to keep our family secrets just that.”
“Why didn’t she destroy it?”
Abby’s blood heated. “I don’t know,” she lied. “Maybe she appreciated the artist’s talent. Maybe she intended to keep it as financial insurance. All I know is that I was supposed to keep the painting out of the public eye. Once this collector shows it, art historians will trip over themselves trying to figure out who the subject is. She was the wife of a prominent Chicago businessman. Her picture dominated the society columns every other day. It won’t take long for our family secrets to be made very public—including mine.”
Daniel snorted. “No one cares about scandals anymore, sweetheart. With the publicity, your father can probably double the per-square-foot price of his properties.”
“Do you know how hard it is, still, for someone with the last name Albertini in a city like Chicago? Italian last name? Whispered ties to the old mob? It never really stops, no matter how many charities you fund or legitimate businesses you own and operate without so much as a fine from the IRS. And how do you think my father will feel, personally, when a nude portrait of his mother is all over the papers?”
“As I recall, she was a gorgeous woman.”
Abby growled. “That’s not the point. The painting is proof of an affair my grandmother had with the artist—an affair that has been a family secret for a long time. But people gossiped like crazy and my grandmother’s greatest regret was how those whispers hurt my father, who was just a little kid. I can’t let my mistakes drag out all that old pain again. Besides, once art experts start digging into the painting’s authenticity and history, someone is going to connect the dots about us, too. Ever consider what that kind of publicity will do to your business?”
His eyebrows shot up, but only for a second. “You had an affair with some jerk named David Brandon. No one will connect him to me.”
“Oh, really? I did.”
“I told you who I was.”
“And the police in California made note of that same alias when you were arrested for attempted murder. It won’t take long for a good reporter to make the connections. And I expect it will be hard to sneak into people’s homes or famous museums when your face is splashed all over the latest news feeds. You have as much on the line as I do.”
She turned back to the street, hoping to spot her limousine from the line outside the casino entrance. Maybe this was a mistake. Five years felt like five seconds with Daniel standing so near. The emotions he provoked, from lust to anger to passion to betrayal, rushed at her from every direction.
The deeper she tried to dig herself out of this mess, the worse it got. She’d managed to keep