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“Thank you, Kace.”
“I would have helped sooner, but I didn’t realize until last night how worried you were. And Monday gives you time to pull together anything you think might help Walker find him.”
“Yes. Yes, that works.” What also works, I think, is the time this gives me to decide what to tell everyone, including Kace. I’ve lied to him about who I am, but I think he’s the kind of reasonable man who will understand why. For now, today, I just want to enjoy Texas with him. And so I do. We do. It’s a wonderful day and we don’t board the private flight home until nearly seven, which will put us home at midnight.
We sleep most of the flight and when we land, we load up in his car and head to his apartment. Tomorrow, I’ll go home. Not tonight. Tonight, I sleep in his bed, his real bed, with him.
Come Monday morning, I wake to Kace wrapped around me, and a call from Alexander that I decline, but it drives home a bit of reality. I have to attend to my customers. I have to face the real world of bills and demands. I have to decide if I will skip my mortgage to hire a private investigator. All that is huge, but for a little longer, I linger in the aftermath of the fabulous weekend.
Kace and I sit at the kitchen island, him in pajama bottoms and a delicious sexy stubble on his jaw, me in a robe, with my hair all over the place, eating egg whites he’s made for us, and drinking coffee. Alas though, the inevitable seeps into the air. “I need to get home,” I finally say.
“We’ll go, pack some things, and come back here.”
“I need to do some work and be ready for the meeting with Blake and Savage. And I have clients to attend to.”
“Then we’ll stay there.”
“No,” I say quickly. “My place is nothing like your place, Kace.”
“I’d love to see your store and the apartments you and Gio designed.”
I sip my coffee and think of Kace in my tiny bed. I reject the idea. I do not reject the reverse: me in his bed. “I can come back here, but I need a few hours to get some work done. I need to deal with my customer that Alexander is trying to freeze out for sure. I may need to go see him.”
“And do what with Alexander?” There is a sharp quality to his voice I imagine I have when Kiki comes up.
“I’ll handle him,” I promise.
“How?” he presses.
“I’ll decline Alexander’s offer. If I’m smart and lucky, I’ll get my client to match his retainer. Then I have to actually find him the wines he wants.”
“Chris’s family owns a winery and Sara does a bit of what you do, but for art. She finds art people really want to own. It seems like there could be some magic there. We could talk to them when we’re in San Fran for the shows.”
“I haven’t said I’m going,” I point out.
“I just gave you incentives to come. Did it work?”
I soften for this man oh so easily. “You are my incentive, Kace.”
His eyes light with my reply. I have pleased him in the way he often pleases me. “Kiki called to apologize,” he says, and when I obviously stiffen, he adds, “I told her she won’t be joining us for the remainder of the shows.”
My gut knots. “Now I feel bad. Sort of. Okay, I do. I don’t want her to lose her job.”
“It was already ending,” he says. “And I paid her and the entire crew a healthy sign-off bonus.” He glances at his watch and then back at me. “I need to go to the bank and handle a business transaction. Why don’t we shower, and I’ll be ready way before you, so I’ll go do that while you get ready and then we’ll grab a bite on our way to your place?”
“That sounds perfect.”
A half hour later, I’m in the three-hundred-dollar robe Kace bought me at his insistence and he’s fully dressed in faded jeans and a snug tan T-shirt that hugs his muscles in all kinds of perfect ways. He leans on the counter I’m now sitting in front of on a vanity chair. “You do remember I have two more Stradivarius violins for your inspection, right?”
“I do,” I say. “I can’t wait to see them.”
“Last room at the end of the hallway. I’ll unlock the vault on my way out. Feel free to take a peek if I’m slow getting back.”
My eyes go wide and I twist to face him. “I won’t dare touch them. You know that. I need you to do that.”
“Touch me. I’ll touch them. That works. But you can give them a quick look and you know you want to. The paperwork for the auctions when I bought them both are in the display case. Be back soon.” He winks and disappears.
