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He nodded as though that meant something to him. “Where’d all this furniture come from?”
“Where didn’t it come from? Do you like it? It’s modern, but not sterile, don’t you think?”
“That’s exactly what I was going to say.”
“You were not,” she responded, picking up her spoon and going to work on one of the pots boiling on the stove. She indicated with an elbow toward an open bottle of wine sitting on the counter. “Have a glass. But be warned, it’s a bit cold. I just pulled it from your cellar.”
“I have a wine cellar?”
She switched to the French she was more comfortable with. “Of course! Fully stocked!”
He found a glass and examined the label on the bottle. Not surprisingly, he’d never heard of it, but the fact that it had been produced before he’d learned to read worried him a bit. Through a few bizarre twists of fate and his brother’s financial genius, Rapp had amassed a fair amount of money. Not this much, though.
“Claudia?”
“Yes?”
“First, let me say that the place is amazing.”
“You love it, right?” she said, twisting around to look at him with a broad smile.
“Absolutely. I do. But could I ask you how much it cost?”
“Oh, not much. I was a little overbudget but I just paid for that myself.”
“Paid for what?”
“The overbudget part.”
“How much are we talking about?”
“Not much.”
“Is there some reason I shouldn’t know the number?”
“With the artwork?”
“Yes. With the artwork.”
“But not the wine.”
“The artwork, the wine. Everything.”
She shrugged at the sheer triviality of the amount, making a show of carrying out the necessary calculations in her head.
“Twoish . . .”
“Two hundred thousand?” Rapp said, deciding to fall off the wagon and pour himself a glass of what was apparently extremely expensive wine. Still, it could have been worse. He could reimburse her for that without too much juggling.
“Million.”
The glass stopped a few inches from his mouth but then he decided to just go with it. That number was so big, it didn’t bear worrying about.
“Now go away,” she said. “I need to concentrate. Go see Scott and Anna.”
“Scott?”
“Well, I couldn’t leave him in that horrible hospital and he didn’t have anyone else to take care of him. They’re in the guest bedroom playing LEGOs.”
