“Stacy!”
Laughing, she disappeared out the door with a teasing wave.
Five seconds later, Mackenzie heard a step on the stairs and whirled to find the “hunk,” as Stacy described him, standing on the landing. Mortified, she could have sunk right through the floor. Had he heard what Stacy said?
Mackenzie only had to see the glint of humor in his eyes to know that he’d heard every word. She was, she decided, going to hang Stacy by her ears the next time she saw her.
Heat climbing in her cheeks, she lifted her chin and met his gaze head-on. “Did you see anything you like?”
His lips twitched. “That depends. For the right price, I could take just about everything in your shop home with me.”
Studying him through narrowed blue eyes, she told herself he surely wasn’t including her in “everything.” But there was something about the man’s confidence that told her there was little he wouldn’t dare.
“What, in particular, were you interested in?”
He shrugged. “Oh, I don’t know. Let’s start small. I noticed you had a framed letter from one of the soldiers at Valley Forge. What’s the price tag on that?”
“You won’t like it.”
She watched as he literally and figuratively rolled up his sleeves and braced himself. “Try me.”
“A thousand.”
“What?! That’s outrageous!”
“For an original piece of American history?” she scoffed. “I don’t think so. I can get twice that much on eBay.”
“eBay? Bite your tongue!”
His reaction didn’t surprise her. Many serious collectors didn’t believe in buying anything they couldn’t see and examine before money exchanged hands. “I have to make a sale where I can. If you’re not interested—”
Not fooled by her ploy, he grinned. “You’re damn good at this.”
“I come from a long line of horse traders,” she said, “and I have a feeling you do, too.”
“I’m Irish,” he said simply. “It’s in the blood. So how about a trade?”
Wary, she frowned. “What kind of trade?”
For an answer, he pulled out a yellowed, folded piece of paper in a sealed Ziploc bag. “Just a little something I picked up years ago that you might be interested in,” he told her casually.
Curiosity threatening to get the best of her, Mackenzie just barely resisted the urge to reach for it. “If you’re wanting to trade even-steven,” she warned, “you need to know that I don’t usually do that. You’d have to offer something pretty phenomenal for me to agree to an equal trade.”
Amused, he said, “You’re assuming your letter is more valuable than my map.”
Mackenzie’s ears perked up at that. She loved maps—and so did her customers—but she had no intention of letting him know that. “A map, huh? I don’t know about that. Most of my customers are more interested in first edition books.”
Not the least bit worried, he held the Ziploc bag out to her. “You might want to look at it before you make a decision,” he told her. “It’s a map of Gettysburg hand-drawn by General Lee. There are also notes in the margin containing his field strategy.”
Already reaching for it, Mackenzie looked up sharply.
“This is the General’s Map?”
A cool smile touched his lips. “So you’ve heard of it.”
Heard of it? Of course she’d heard of it! Who hadn’t? It had disappeared soon after the Battle of Gettysburg and hadn’t been seen since. There’d been rumors that it had been owned over the years by everyone from P. T. Barnum to the Rockefellers to a Saudi prince who was a Civil War collector. If the map was authentic, how had it ended up in the hands of the man before her?
“Go ahead,” he said when she gave him a wary look. “Take a look at it. Tell me what you think. I already know what it’s worth, of course. I’m wondering if you do.”
Another dealer might have been insulted by his words, but Mackenzie didn’t need to defend herself to anyone. Her master’s was in American history, and she’d worked in the business of buying antique documents and rare books for more than half her life. If the map was genuine, there was no doubt that it would be worth a small fortune.
Questions—and doubts—tugging at her, she took the map and moved to the reading table that was situated in front of the fireplace. Armed with the magnifying glass she carried on a cord around her neck, she carefully pulled the map out of the Ziploc and unfolded it under the light in the center of the table. The paper was yellowed with age, the bold, scrawled notes in the margin still legible despite the fact that the map was, reportedly, nearly a hundred and fifty years old.
Mackenzie loved old maps, but she knew better than most that they weren’t always what they appeared to be. Forgery was a serious problem in her business…and so was theft.
“Where did you say you got this?” she asked casually as she put her magnifying glass to the map.
“I didn’t,” he said just as casually. “It belonged to a friend of mine. He’s had a hell of a lot of bad luck lately—he got divorced, then lost his job when the company he worked for shipped out to India. Last week, he lost his house.”
“So he was desperate and sold a family heirloom,” she concluded. “Or was he a collector? Maybe I know him.”
“A collector?” he scoffed, laughing shortly. “Not hardly. He’s into motorcycles and NASCAR. His grandfather left him the map years ago—he was just hanging on to it for a rainy day. He doesn’t even have money for an apartment. It’s not just raining—it’s a damn hurricane.”
“I see.” Continuing to examine the map, she saw, all right, more than he wanted her to. His story had lie written all over it and didn’t make a bit of sense. If the real owner had been saving it for a rainy day, the last thing he would have done was sell it to a friend when he was in desperate straits. Instead, he would have taken it to Sotheby’s or another high-dollar auction house that would have advertised it and gotten him a fortune for the sale.
If, she silently amended, the map was authentic. Looking at it under the glass, she had to admit that she had her doubts. There were file notations from the U.S. War Department on the back of the document that didn’t quite look right. And while that might not be enough to indicate that the map was a forgery, the fact that the present owner and previous one were strangers to her made her very uneasy. The people who collected the more valuable Civil and Revolutionary War memorabilia were a relatively small group. Everybody knew everybody else, for the most part, especially in the Washington, D.C./Virginia/Maryland area. And she had never laid eyes on the man standing before her.
If she had, she certainly would have remembered him. With his sharp green eyes, wavy black hair and chiseled good looks, he wasn’t the kind of man a woman forgot.
Especially when he smiled. Those dimples of his were downright dangerous.
Suddenly realizing she was staring at the sensuous curve of his lips, she stiffened. What was she doing? She didn’t care how good-looking the man was, he may very well be trying to selling her a forged map!
Deliberately pulling her attention back to the document spread out before her, she was tempted to buy it just so he couldn’t walk out with it and sell it to someone who might mistakenly think it was authentic. Just