smiling at her and her sister, Wayne was constantly reaching out and touching them, petting them, hugging them. They were thirteen and just beginning to mature, but they both felt uncomfortable with what he was doing, even though they tried to reassure each other that it was just harmless.
And then they were forced to face the truth. One night Wayne slipped into their room, the one that she and Dani shared. Sensing someone’s presence, she woke up and screamed. Wayne was in her bed.
Anthony came flying in from the next room, his beloved baseball bat in his hand. He swung it against Wayne, knocking him out. She was sure that Anthony had killed the man. Amanda never came into the room. It was as if she didn’t want to know what was happening.
Grabbing their clothes, the three of them fled into the night. To hide from the system. To hide from a society that looked the other way when they were being herded around like so much chattel.
For the next few days, they stole newspapers from people’s front steps to find out if there was any mention of Wayne. If Anthony had killed him, there would have been a story, an article, a line. But there wasn’t. Wayne Toliver obviously hadn’t been killed and the law wasn’t looking for Anthony for murder.
It was a relief.
It was also a position they were determined never to put themselves in again. So they stayed hidden, living by their wits and talents. Outcasts again.
On the outside, looking in, that was how they always felt. Even after Jeremy came into their lives and took them in.
The feeling had only intensified because Jeremy found ways for them to make use of their unique talents, talents that set them apart from the rest of the world. A client coming to Jeremy for “help” could be assured that if he’d had something stolen, it would be returned, no matter where it was or how well guarded.
That laws had to be bent in order to retrieve stolen items was something no one concerned themselves about. “Don’t ask, don’t tell” was an active motto in all of their lives. Jeremy told them more than once that he didn’t care how they did something, as long as they covered their trail and that it didn’t lead back to them. Or him.
Elizabeth had used some of her personal talents to ensure that she’d gain entrance to the gallery tonight.
The invitation sitting inside her purse on the coffee table had not arrived via mail but via her rather uncanny ability to copy whatever she saw, whether it was a work of art or an invitation to an exclusive gala.
Right now, the latter promised to be more fun.
Elizabeth set the brush down and did a slow turn before the mirror, watching her hair move. She was really looking forward to tonight. Not just because she’d be crashing a gala where the rich were rubbing elbows with one another, but because she truly loved art. In whatever spare time she had away from her duties for Jeremy, she liked to haunt art galleries and museums.
Anthony had no patience with that sort of thing, and even Dani, when she’d been around, had no interest in spending her time staring at sweeping lines and trying to discern different brush strokes, so it had been the one thing she could do on her own.
Elizabeth had gone into her hobby the way she went into everything—wholeheartedly. She’d immersed herself in every single aspect and detail of art.
Her skills ran to forgery. She was able to copy adeptly any style, any artist.
She’d used both skills in printing up her invitation. The rest had required a little research. She’d gotten a lead on the company that had printed the original invitations. Paying a visit to the store, she’d affected a Southern accent and gushed, professing utter admiration for the look of the invitation when it had arrived at her home. The printer had been in the palm of her hand within two minutes, answering her questions unconditionally. After all, what was the harm in telling someone about the kind of paper that was used to print the invitation?
Armed with that and the newspaper photograph of the invitation, the rest was easy.
She smiled to herself as she slipped her wrap around her shoulders and gave herself one last look before picking up her purse. Ready.
Cole had no idea who she was. Only that he quite possibly—despite his wide circle of friends, acquaintances and business associates—had never seen a woman quite this beautiful in his life. In the crowded gallery, he’d noticed her the moment she’d walked into the room.
Taken possession of the room was a more apt description.
He could feel his gut tightening just looking at her, and that kind of thing just didn’t happen to him. It had never happened to him, in fact, not even his first time with a woman. And these days, well, women had proven a far too accessible commodity for him to feel anything but the mildest form of fleeting excitement.
He was blessed with good looks on top of his vast fortune, and all he had to do was crook his finger and women fell at his feet, ready and willing. There was no challenge for him. The outcome was always a foregone conclusion. The only eagerness in any physical encounter was displayed on the part of the women he encountered, women who wanted nothing more than to be part of the social whirl he always moved in.
But this one, he could see even at this distance, had a fire in her eyes. The way she moved through the throng, displaying the most self-assured manner he’d ever seen, created a wrinkle in his concentration. Outside of himself, he couldn’t recall ever seeing anyone look quite so confident.
And why shouldn’t she be confident? When you were drop-dead gorgeous, a certain kind of smugness had to enter into it.
Who the hell was she? And who had invited her? He knew she couldn’t be on the list his secretary had him initial. He knew everyone on that list by sight, if not immediately by name.
A possessive squeeze rendered on his forearm brought Cole back to his immediate circumstances. There was a blonde hanging off his arm and apparently on his every word.
Except that he’d stopped talking.
“If you’ll excuse me,” he began as he ably disengaged himself from the nubile blonde in the almost-dress that kept threatening to slip off her supple body. The woman—Ellen was it?—had hung herself on his arm some fifteen minutes ago, dangling there like an expensive bracelet.
One look at the pout on her face told him that Ellen was not about to go quietly into that good night.
“But I was hoping you could show me your private collection later,” she breathed suggestively. Her surgically perfect breasts all but put in a personal appearance, thanks to the filmy white material that was doing an inadequate job of covering them.
Very deliberately, Cole moved out of range. “Perhaps some other time,” he said over his shoulder. He’d forgotten about her before the words ever reached the woman’s ears.
His mind was elsewhere.
The woman with the killer body and the Gypsy face had just moved toward the centerpiece of the gala, the bronze statue of Venus Smiling.
From her expression, the lady in red seemed oblivious to the sensation she was creating in her wake.
Bathed in cool blue lights that shone on it from three directions, Venus Smiling was hauntingly exquisite. Almost as exquisite
