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“I didn’t card him, Monica. That’s not normally how I do business. And remember, he called me.” The call had come just as Karena had returned from Maryland, where she’d been attending the grand opening of the Gramercy II, the casino her best friend, Noelle Vincent, and her boyfriend, Brock Remington, had built.
The resort was the East Coast version of one of Las Vegas’s hottest casinos owned by Lincoln Donovan, of the illustrious Donovan clan. It was through Linc that Karena had met Noelle and forged one of the closest friendships she’d ever had.
The moment she’d stepped off the plane from Maryland and turned on her cell phone, it rang. On the other end, calling all the way from Pirata, a medium-size town in Brazil, was Leandro, the reclusive oil-painting artist now blowing up in the art world. The minute he’d said his name, she’d been ready to board another plane to visit him.
In less than a week she’d been in Brazil, soaking up the gorgeous scenery and sitting across from the man who was about to give her the biggest sale of her art-buying career.
Had he lied to her?
“Maybe you need a lesson in how to do business?”
Both Monica and Karena stilled at the sound of his voice. He’d opened the door and walked right into her office, no announcement from her secretary needed. After all, he owned Lakefield Galleries and the Lakefield Foundation.
“If it’s truly stolen, where did it come from? Because right now there’s no proof that the man I met with wasn’t Leandro,” Karena said, trying like hell to hide the nervousness being in the same room as her father inevitably brought.
He was angry. No, not quite so, more like annoyed. His broad body wore a designer suit as if Ralph Lauren himself had come to the mansion and cut the material around him. His thick wavy hair hadn’t started to fall out, which was more and more common for men over fifty-five these days. Instead, Paul Lakefield’s hair had turned a sparkling gray, taking him from handsome to distinguished in the past five years. His dark eyes were what threw off the otherwise handsome package. Those eyes always seemed to pin Karena with accusation.
Her birth wasn’t a mistake, not entirely, just her sex. Her entire life her father had made no secret of the fact that he’d wanted a son. Proving that there were some things Paul Lakefield could not control, the good Lord blessed him with three daughters instead.
“How did you ship the painting?” her father asked, slipping his hands into his pant pockets.
“Like I always do, Federal Express International, with insurance. I packaged it myself before it left the estate where we stayed. I labeled the box and spoke to the carrier. From that point on anything could have happened.”
Monica was already shaking her head. “Jacques thinks it’s one of the paintings stolen from members of the royal family.”
Karena’s head ached. She wanted to rub her temples but refrained from showing any sign of weakness in front of her father. And her sister, for that matter. Neither of them would understand what she was going through. Hell, she doubted she understood it herself.
“There’s a royal family in Brazil?” Paul asked.
“A prince, I think,” Monica said and reached for the folder, which Karena quickly closed and gripped tightly.
“Great,” Paul huffed. “Now they’ll think the Lakefields are thieves.”
“I doubt they know who the Lakefields are all the way in Brazil,” Monica stated quietly, her eyes sweeping to Karena.
“Exactly my point. Now their first impression of us will be that we stole from them.”
Karena felt sick. Her stomach quivered and her head throbbed so hard she could feel the vibration throughout her entire body. This room was too small for all three of them. In fact, sometimes she thought the whole world was too small for her and her family.
“I’ll take care of it,” she snapped and was already moving toward the door.
“Let me help, Karena. This is our name on the line,” Monica stated coolly.
“No, it’s my buy, I’ll handle it.”
“Yes. You handle it, and do it fast before word gets out,” Paul said solemnly.
Karena opened her mouth to speak then clapped her lips shut.
Three things were drilled into her and her sisters as they grew up in the Lakefield household: Loyalty. Honesty. Respect.
Only her upbringing held the words she’d longed to say to her father at bay, while the terrible fear that she’d truly messed up guided her quick steps.
Samuel Desdune fell back on the ground laughing as his two-year-old blue Great Dane tackled him to the ground, red ball hanging from his mouth.
Fall was just creeping up on the quiet Greenwich, Connecticut, neighborhood he lived in, delivering a crisp morning breeze in its wake. The trees and shrubs surrounding Sam’s waterfront home were just beginning to show signs of color change, and Romeo was enjoying his morning exercise.
It had been a year since Sam had adopted Romeo from National Great Dane Rescue after Romeo’s battle with kidney failure. Initially Romeo had a fear of all men except Sam, which made it quite difficult when Sam’s older brother, Cole, or his father, Lucien, came for a visit. But then his sister Lynn had brought her four-year-old son, Jeremy, over and Romeo’s attitude toward the male gender had changed.
Rolling Romeo off him, Sam retrieved the ball from the dog’s mouth, got to his feet and tossed it the length of the yard once more. Romeo, with his shiny blue-gray coat and long legs, practically leaped across the grass to retrieve it.
Oh, the joys of being his own boss. D&D Investigations was in its sixth month of business. For two years prior Sam hadn’t had a partner, but after the biggest case of his new career so far—tracking and capturing the man who stalked and terrorized the Bennett family—he’d decided a partner would be nice. For that he’d called on his old friend, Trent Donovan, an ex-Navy SEAL with instincts Sam trusted and a kick-ass attitude he admired even though it still scared him a bit.
Trent ran the West Coast location while Sam concentrated on the East Coast cases. Right now they were handling the surveillance of a cheating husband and the disappearance of a four-year-old girl. For both cases, his twin sister, Sabrina, and Trent’s cousin Bailey could hold down the fort. Bree, the nickname he would always use for his twin, no matter who she married or how many kids she had, was a former Marine. She could hold her own, as she’d shown without a doubt when she’d chased and injured the stalker who was about to shoot her husband, Lorenzo Bennett.
Bailey Donovan was, for lack of a better term, a loose cannon. She was antsy and reckless and itching for some action. That’s why Trent had sent her to Sam, because he didn’t have time to babysit her now that he was married and about to become a father.
For now, however, the missing-child case was making good use of Bailey’s excess energy as she followed lead after lead in the hopes of finding the child before Christmas.
Romeo was back, his natural ears flapping against the breeze as he returned the ball once more. “Good boy,” Sam was saying as the cell phone at his hip began to ring.
“Desdune,” he said answering after the second ring.
“Hi, I hope you remember me. This is Karena Lake-field.”
The red ball fell out of Sam’s hand as Romeo with his large, sometimes awkward body danced around Sam demanding attention.
Of course he remembered her. The petite, brown-skinned beauty with intriguing eyes and tight body he’d met while in Maryland helping Trent with a family problem. How could he forget her?
“Hi, Karena,” he said cheerfully. “It’s nice to hear from you.”
They’d exchanged phone numbers on the plane ride back from Maryland in August and then saw each other again briefly at the opening of the Gramercy II in early September.
No. Sam hadn’t forgotten. She’d felt like sunshine in his arms, then dripped like molten lava when he’d kissed her. He’d wanted to take her up to one of the rooms at the Gramercy II, thought she wanted the same. Then she’d pulled away, left him standing, getting wet in front of the water show, and he hadn’t spoken to her again.
Until now.
“I need your help,” she said, her voice sounding less like the sexy timbre he remembered and just on this side of desperate.
“What’s wrong?”
“I’m in trouble,” she sighed. “Big trouble.”
Chapter Two
Sam couldn’t say he was happy about driving into Manhattan on a day he’d planned to spend rolling around in the yard with Romeo.
And he couldn’t say that he liked the tone of Karena’s voice as she asked for help.
What he could say was that he was looking forward to seeing her again. As his body heated thinking about her in the tight jeans and even tighter T-shirt she’d worn on the plane ride they’d shared, he admitted he was really looking forward to seeing her.
Talking to her on the two occasions he’d seen her had been like a breath of fresh air. While she tended to talk too much about her job, as if there was nothing more interesting in the world to her, Sam got the impression she was witty and adventurous, even if she didn’t know it herself. From Noelle he’d learned that she was the middle child of three daughters, born into a very wealthy family now making their name in the art world. Upon returning from his first trip to Maryland he’d run a check on Karena’s father, Paul Lakefield, and came up with a brief family history.
The Lakefields’ wealth stemmed all the way back to California’s historic Gold Rush in 1848, when a slave named Celia Smith was taken by her master’s cousin from Virginia across the country. George Lakefield had instantly fallen for his cousin’s housemaid on a visit to Virginia, and before he’d left he’d had Celia in his bed. Upon agreement with his cousin, George took ownership of Celia and headed west to take up with the other panhandlers in search of gold.
That search led to George Lakefield’s first taste of fortune. In 1863, when President Lincoln declared the freedom of all slaves, Celia Smith had stayed by George’s side, and in the years ahead gave birth to four sons and one daughter. Two of the Lakefield sons moved on to Texas, where they struck oil, while the other two ventured into the steel business. The daughter married and stayed in California, where her descendents now ran the successful Genoa Winery.
It was Paul’s great-grandfather, Mathias Lakefield, who took Lakefield Steel to its victorious holdings, leaving a legacy for Paul and his two brothers to follow.
A very impressive history, Sam remembered thinking as he read, leading to more intrigue about Karena. The first time he’d met her, she’d seemed worried about Noelle and the idiotic ex-boyfriend of Noelle’s Sam had helped Trent and the other Donovan brothers capture. But once that situation was settled and Sam talked to her on the plane, he’d noticed something else about her: she was totally dedicated to her job and her family.
Did that sound familiar?
Of course it did. There was nothing—and Sam readily emphasized the word nothing—that he wouldn’t do for his family. Born and raised in Louisiana, Lucien and Marie Desdune were Creole. That was the name given to persons of various racial mixes who were descended from the colonial French and Spanish settlers of Louisiana and from African-Americans and Native Americans.
The Desdunes were a cultivated mixture of French and African-American ancestry. As such, twenty years ago Lucien had opened his self-named Creole-and-Cajun restaurant in New Orleans. Since that time, Lucien’s had expanded to four popular restaurants along the eastern seaboard. Unfortunately, Lucien’s children hadn’t all gone into the same line of work. Sam’s oldest sister, Lynn, was a domestic law attorney, while Bree had gone the military route before settling into security and now private investigation with Sam. Cole, the second oldest, was the only one who’d taken to his father’s love of cooking, now working as an executive chef and manager of Lucien’s in New York. To be closer to their children, who all seemed to move from Louisiana once they’d graduated high school, Lucien and Marie also lived in Connecticut.
So yes, Sam knew a little bit about being loyal to his family, to a certain extent. In talking with Karena on those previous occasions, Sam had immediately sensed she had problems drawing the line between her family’s expectations and her own desires.
The sound of blaring horns and the stop and go of traffic reminded Sam of how much he hated coming into the city. Still, he’d kept his composure even when one of those notorious cab drivers cut him off. It was that control that had gained him his reputation of being levelheaded and the best person to have around in high-pressure situations.
He’d almost smiled as he remembered finding out that Bree had been assaulted. At that point, Sam recalled, he lost that reputed composure, wanted to lace his fingers around the neck of Harold Richmond, the now-jailed former colonel from the United States Marine Corps. The only other time Sam had lost his cool was when his older sister Lynn’s ex-husband had been stupid enough to slash her tires and kick her door in before packing and leaving his wife and young son for good.
He sighed, realizing he definitely knew about loving one’s family.
The address Karena had given him was coming up just ahead, and Sam made one last maneuver through busy Manhattan traffic before pulling into the narrow garage opening. Stopping again, he retrieved the parking ticket, tucked it into his windshield and proceeded through the rounding maze until he found a spot.
Ten minutes later he watched as the elevator doors opened to the seventh floor. Stepping off the elevator onto the dark marble floor, he walked the few steps to the glass doors with Lakefield Galleries in wide gold letters hanging above.
Inside those doors the floor was carpeted, a dusky gray color with cool black furniture and an even paler gray paint on the walls. Behind the reception area sat an Asian woman, her long hair dark as onyx, her eyes friendly as she turned to him.
“Good afternoon, welcome to Lakefield Galleries. How may I help you?”
Her voice echoed in the large space.
“Sam Desdune, here to see Karena Lakefield,” he replied easily.
“Of course,” she stood, coming around the desk to stand beside him. “Ms. Lakefield’s expecting you. Follow me, please.”
Sam surveyed more of his surroundings while walking behind the courteous receptionist.
No money had been spared in the building and maintaining of this gallery. As they’d rounded the corner to a long hallway, the walls turned to a crisp white. Pictures were hung at carefully measured intervals. Not a real fan of art that went beyond green pastures and lakes, he found himself pleasantly surprised by the abstract designs that carried a theme throughout the office space. He was wondering what the rest of the gallery looked like when the receptionist stopped in front of double black-lacquer doors, opening one and waving him inside.
“Thanks,” he said before stepping inside. Behind him he heard the quiet click of the door being closed.
Although it was only a couple of feet away it sounded distant, and the memory of the receptionist’s smile and friendly voice faded from his mind. The curiosity about the rest of the gallery also fell to the side as she stood from the high-backed leather chair she’d been sitting in and walked toward him.
This was the scene in movies where the music supervisors played an up-tempo track then let it pause. The camera captured his eyes then hers, panning out until her entire body was in view.
Petite didn’t accurately describe her, although she was no more than five feet two or three inches without heels. It was the curves that made that word an understatement where she was concerned. The dip of a slender waist spanned to perfectly rounded hips, taking his gaze on a slow, heated ride down to toned legs covered only midway to her thigh, where the dress she wore abruptly stopped.
Nylons covered her legs, he sensed, although the sheer, silky caramel color could have been her bare skin. Classy, expensive and sexy black leather pumps sported heels so high their purpose could only be to tempt a man to distraction.
The song “Fire and Desire” by Rick James and Teena Marie immediately played in his head. Although he hadn’t loved and left her, Karena Lakefield was definitely tempting him, positively heating a fire in him that he’d wondered if he’d ever experience again. Just as petite didn’t accurately describe her,
desire did not fully capture what he was feeling for her at this very moment.
“Hi, Sam. Thanks for coming so soon,” she said, extending her hand to him.
Swallowing the thick ball of lust that had lodged itself so comfortably in his throat, Sam took her hand and knew exactly what Rick James had been singing about.
Taking her hand in his, Karena Lakefield had effectively turned on a fire in Sam that would be hell trying to put out.
Chapter Three
Sam cleared his throat and shook his head as if trying to rid his mind of something.
His hand gripped hers tightly and Karena lifted her free hand to his elbow. “Are you okay?” she asked, full of concern.
“Fine,” he said, his voice breaking just slightly. “I’m fine. You said you were in trouble,” he finished and released his grip.
“Yes,” she said, still not sure if he was all right but resigned to getting down to the pressing matter at hand. “Something strange is going on and I wanted to see if you could help me.”
Moving back to her chair, she sat then motioned for Sam to sit in the chair beside hers. They were in the west conference room, the smaller one on this floor but still large enough to hold fifty people. This was where they held press conferences or hosted small receptions.
Reaching out, she spread the papers and photos from the file she’d been reviewing all morning. After Monica’s bombshell about the stolen painting, she’d wanted to read up on everything she had on the artist known as Leandro and compare it with the man she’d met in Brazil.
Sam sat, quickly looked down at the papers and touched a finger to one of the photos.
“It’s called ‘Awake,’” she informed him about the painting she thought she’d purchased from Leandro.
He nodded. “Because of the sun rising,” he stated blandly.
“No,” she touched the picture, tracing her finger along the line where the ocean met the simmering rays of the mounting sun. “Because it awakens the senses. It pulls you in from the moment you look at it. Whether you think of the coolness of the water against your skin or the scent of the tropical air blowing in the distance, you instantly become a part of the painting.”
His fingers moved from the intense orange-and-crimson tone of the sun to stop just beside hers. Where she traced the water line, he did the same, until the tips of their fingers touched.
Karena felt a jolt to her system. A quick piercing sensation started at the exact point where he’d touched her and moved quickly throughout her body. Frowning, she moved her hand and picked up another sheet of paper.
“Two weeks ago I went to Brazil to meet an artist,” she said, then recounted a brief history of Leandro. “He does oil paintings and has been on the scene for about two years now. His work is in high demand but extremely hard to come by. He doesn’t do shows, no appearances, no interviews. All pieces are purchased directly from his agent and he usually remains anonymous.”
“But you met him?” Sam inquired.
“He called me,” she said, looking up at him.
He lifted a brow in question. “The reclusive artist called you? Why?”
A woman would kill for thick, even eyebrows such as his. His complexion was the color of honey fresh out of the jar. Eyes that were dark, yet warm, held her gaze steadily. He wore brown slacks and a lighter-shade short-sleeved shirt that fit his muscled chest precisely. It was still reasonably warm outside so a jacket wasn’t really necessary. This fact afforded her the opportunity to see even more of his toned arms, ribboned with veins that showed his sheer strength.
