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Ryland drovelike a bat out of hell to get back to his apartment before his mother could do too much damage with Caroline, but the New York traffic gods were not on his side.
There was an accident on one of the bridges, and the whole city was at a crawl. Thankfully, he was distracted by a phone call from Arabella.
“Hi, cutie,” she drawled into the phone. “I figured I’d call you with an update.”
“You already have something for me? It’s only been a few hours.”
“Well, the good thing about being the boss is that I can get my little lemmings to do the boring stuff. I don’t mind doing research for you, Ryland.” Her voice took on that too-sickly sweet quality again.
He was a jerk. He was an honest jerk who’d already told Arabella nothing would happen between them, but he was also a jerk with a job.
If he shot her down completely, then she might not share the information with him.
“Give me what you got,” he said curtly, hoping his tone would be enough to show that he didn’t actually have an interest in her.
“Well, it took some digging, but I learned that, originally, Luigi Bonetti was supposed to donate a pair of the Vases of Destiny to the museum. Only one ever came. Now, because it’s a donation, the curator at the time didn’t ask too many questions.”
“What? Why the fuck not?”
“It would have been rude to ask for more. The one vase was worth millions of dollars. It would have been greedy to ask for a second.”
“So … what are you saying? The Luigi Bonetti had another vase? One he kept?”
“That would be my guess, yes.”
Ryland sat quietly in the traffic jam as he let this new information sink in. “Okay, thanks, Arabella. This gives me a good place to start.”
“I can help some more if you like.”
“No, no. You’ve done plenty.”
“I …”
“Bye,” he said and quickly disconnected the call.
He had a feeling Arabella was about to ask him out or make advances. He didn’t want to hurt her, but he was also a bit annoyed. It had taken Arabella all of two seconds to call his mother to get information on this new girlfriend of his, but there she was, still trying to get something started between them.
Up ahead, traffic began to move a little steadier, and he hoped that whatever was happening at his place, it wasn’t too bad for Caroline.
His mother, the Wolverton matriarch, was not someone easily fooled.
THIRTEEN
CAROLINE
The second Ryland left the house, Caroline started to snoop around his place. She didn’t know what she was looking for, but she was pretty sure that she would know it the second she found it.
She didn’t exactly want to blackmail Ryland, but something close to that would be fine.
Caroline purposefully ignored a handful of messages and calls from Joan. All were various degrees of threatening.
Get the story, or else!
Your brother will pay the price if you don’t get this done.
Well, she was trying her damnedest.
It wasn’t her fault that Ryland Wolverton was annoyingandchallenging. And things were only made even more difficult because he was a total hottie!
