Wes watched her scratch the dog’s neck, her shiny red manicure disappearing into the animal’s thick ruff. There was no doubt in his mind the mutt had it made.
“She looks pretty well-adjusted.” He didn’t mention his St. Bernard was twice the size of Eloise and managed to keep entertained in Wes’s shoebox of an apartment on Roosevelt Island. “Can you tell me what happened here today?”
“I was coming home from a meeting and I noticed the front door was unlocked.” Her fingers buried deeper into the dog’s fur. “Eloise went in first because I was a little unnerved by the open door. I had safety measures drilled into my head at an early age, and I can assure you, I’ve never forgotten to bolt a door in my life.”
“Is anything missing?”
“I honestly haven’t looked around. I called the police as soon as I saw the mess.” Her eyes drifted over the debris. “I’m not sure I’d know where to start looking for missing items.”
Wes followed her gaze, his eyes slowing on a haphazard pile of lacy undergarments spilling out of a tall armoire. Black ribbons mingled with pink straps, bright blue satin billowed over yellow see-through netting. He’d have to be a dead man not to notice the distinctly feminine intimate apparel, but he refused to envision Tempest wearing any of the slinky outfits.
Although the thought tempted him. Mightily.
As a compromise, he told himself he would not only work on finding another girlfriend in the very near future, but he would also seek out one who had a taste for lingerie. Of all the times for his libido to make a comeback after staying in hiding for months.
“Consider if you have anything here that someone else really wants. Something with monetary value? Something with significant value to a particular person?” He studied her face for hints of guilt or subterfuge, but only found deep thought. “The level of destruction in the apartment indicates that the perpetrator conducted a thorough search for something specific, or else the person responsible holds a personal grudge.”
His thoughts ran to the old lady neighbor he’d seen peering out her apartment door earlier. Had she been monitoring the goings-on in the hallway for reasons beyond general nosiness? Maybe some of Tempest’s neighbors didn’t appreciate the inevitable media frenzy that followed young, beautiful socialites around New York.
Wes found himself wondering if she brought a lot of men back to this apartment. Was the unassuming address her rendezvous point for booty calls she hid from her ritzy family?
“Obviously my intruder didn’t think my sculptures were worth a damn.” She clutched the smoky crystal at her neck and Wes spied the rapid beating of her pulse there.
What would it be like to make this woman’s heart pound faster?
“You collect statues?” Of naked men?
Perhaps Tempest’s snooping neighbor was an old prude who resented anyone with such an obvious interest in male nudity.
“I am the artist.” She lifted her chin with vaguely injured pride. “I had been hoping to convince a local gallery to do a showing once I had enough of a collection, but now…”
Certain a wealthy heiress whose face frequently graced the social pages could buy her way into any gallery she chose, Wes wasn’t too concerned. He needed answers from Tempest Boucher and he certainly wasn’t getting them by being subtle.
Time to be a bit more relentless with his questions.
“Did you keep valuables here? Jewelry? Other artwork besides your own?”
TEMPEST STARED BACK at Detective Heartless Shaw and assured herself he must not have a creative bone in his body. How else could he ask her something so insensitive as whether or not she owned any artwork that was actually worth something?
Of all the damn nerve.
“As a matter of fact, my statues were the most valuable items here. I don’t keep much at the apartment besides the tools for my sculpting.” And a few pictures for inspiration. Could she help it if she liked to mold male bodies? Judging by what her first few pieces had sold for, she wasn’t the only woman who appreciated a naked masculine torso around the house.
Detective Shaw might actually make for great male inspiration himself if he didn’t have such abrupt crime-scene manners. With his close-cropped dark hair and classic Roman features, he possessed a timeless appeal women would have found irresistible in any era, though his dove-gray eyes and the hint of a dark tattoo curling around one wrist gave him a uniqueness she wouldn’t confuse with any other classically handsome male. He wore a vintage suit that had probably cost a fortune in its prime, but the threads had seen better days, settling into softer lines around angular shoulders.
Definitely the sort of shoulders a woman wouldn’t mind molding. In clay, of course.
He peered around her apartment as if to test the truth of her assertion that she only came here to work. Curse the man and his unwanted sex appeal. Wasn’t she the victim here? Shouldn’t he make a passing effort to ask her if she was okay? She’d never been a paranoid woman, but it seemed as if even the toughest of chicks would be shaken by the sight of their personal lives churned through a giant blender and spit out like an aftertaste all over the floor.
“As soon as we’ve finished collecting evidence, we need to do a thorough walk-through to see if anything’s missing. In the meantime, I’ve got some other questions I’d like to ask you about Boucher Enterprises.” His gray eyes slid back to her, fixing her with unsettling directness. And something more? She could almost imagine a hint of male interest there. Then again, she could be dabbling in big-time escapist thinking to drool over Wesley Shaw instead of focusing on the criminal act some scumbag had committed against her.
“You recognized the name?” She had rather hoped he wouldn’t want to discuss her connection to the famous family, but no doubt reporters would have jumped on the police report the moment it was filed anyhow.
Her misfortune would be all over the papers and would certainly prompt more irritated phone calls from her mother about the need to move back to the safety of the family’s Park Avenue building on a full-time basis. The media would discover the location of her weekend hideaway and make life in Chelsea impossible. And then there would be the outcry from the Boucher board of directors who never understood her desire to have a life separate and distinct from her commitment to the company.
“There aren’t many people in New York who wouldn’t. The Post ran a feature on you just a couple of weeks ago—”
“I remember.” How could she forget the story that implied she had a fixation with younger men? As if her last-minute decision to go to the cinema with the barely-legal performance artist who ran a coffee shop around the corner counted as a date. “Can we move on to your questions, please?”
Adopting her best all-business demeanor, she dismissed the topic, unwilling to think about what kind of man she would have rather been dating than the coffee guy. Tempest might not enjoy her role in Boucher Enterprises as a corporate bigwig, but that didn’t mean she couldn’t play the part when necessary. After coming home to a trashed apartment, finding her last year’s worth of work destroyed and missing Days to boot, she wasn’t really in the mood to put up with a lot of innuendo. And she definitely didn’t want to find herself daydreaming about the detective’s shoulders again.
Before he could say anything, however, one of the officers called Wes from the other side of the room.
“Looks like we’ve got a message from our perpetrator, Shaw.” Standing next to the computer armoire, the cop held a pile of clothes that had been draped over the monitor. Now that the mountain of lace and satin had been moved aside to reveal the screen,