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“Nobody does. Everybody’s called him Gorgeous for years.”
“Well, he’s definitely that,” said Mara. “Here he comes!”
“I don’t want to read too much into this,” Signe said nervously. She was only a waitress in the museum’s café. It wasn’t exactly an esteem-building job, either. She tried not to compare herself to her girlfriends, but over the past year, she’d watched each of them achieve career ambitions. Diane had opened Wacky Weekends, C.C. had begun taking on her own accountancy clients and Mara had become a Realtor.
But Signe wasn’t giving up hope. In college, she’d studied art and library science. While working for the New York public library, she’d kept applying for jobs at the Met with no luck, so she was trying this new tactic. She’d do anything she could to meet the curators and get them to consider her for one of the coveted jobs in the archives department.
She loved everything about this museum. Its dark, gloomy corridors, marble staircases and smell of oil paint all made her heart sing. Just breathing the air inside the cavernous rooms quickened her blood almost as much as Gorgeous Garrity. Spending the past six months slugging coffee and helping at these private parties had finally paid off, too.
Tonight, her boss, Edmond Styles, had told her that one of the archives assistants was quitting. Come Monday morning, when the woman’s two-week notice was official, Signe would be offered the job of her dreams. She was so excited. Edmond knew everything about art, and was reputed to have connections with the Garritys, through the museum, since they frequently donated artwork.
Signe took another deep breath. It would be so wonderful if something—even just one sizzling night of sex—would happen with Gorgeous….
It was a fantasy, of course. Just a dream, but who knew? She could feel her own star peaking, bright on the horizon. Sighing with satisfaction, she drifted her gaze over the pagan statues the computer mogul had borrowed for tonight’s bash. Most had come from private collectors around the city, and all were displayed on lit pedestals. Yes, she’d done a great job, if she had to say so herself. Tonight, presumably anticipating her promotion, Edmond had entrusted her with the responsibility of logging the borrowed artworks into the archives department, arranging them on the pedestals and even flipping the alarm switch that protected the pieces from theft. From start to finish, this display was her baby.
“Those statues are something to behold,” commented Diane, catching her gaze.
“Well hung,” added Mara dryly.
Signe grinned. Most of the figurines were fertility gods with noticeably disproportionate male hardware.
Diane pointed, laughing. “I think I dated him once.”
“You wish,” joked Mara.
C.C’s voice sharpened. “Here comes Mister Wonderful!”
Signe braced herself. “He’s so…out of my league.” While her parents were professionals in Minneapolis—her father was a lawyer, her mother a history teacher—their lives were modest compared to Gorgeous’s jet-setting lifestyle.
“Don’t sell yourself short,” said Mara. “You’ve got that Winona Ryder thing going for you.”
“True.” Everybody thought she looked exactly like the movie actress. “But that might not be a plus. “She was arrested for shoplifting, remember?” Signe said nervously.
“That was years ago,” Diane assured.
Signe barely heard. Her knees weakened as Gorgeous came nearer. He was definitely…well, gorgeous, dressed as a seventeenth-century courtier. A richly embroidered purple cape swirled over a white doublet with a standing ruffled collar. A sword was strapped to his narrow hips, and it thrust from beneath the cape, its sheathed length brushing tight breeches. Signe’s eyes riveted to the pants fly, which was tightly laced over a bulge that the man was hardly bothering to hide.
All three women blew out a shaky breath in unison.
C.C. softly whispered, “You go, girl.”
Realizing that every muscle in her body had tightened, Signe forced herself to inhale as she lifted her gaze, taking in the rakish white-blond wig that hung to his powerful shoulders. He was wearing a conical velvet hat in lush purple.
“Well, we’re off, Sig,” whispered C.C.
“Don’t forget to get something from him,” coached Mara. “His pen. Or a lighter.”
“Something you can throw into the wiccan’s cauldron,” said Diane.
At the thought of casting a spell on Gorgeous Garrity, Signe felt pin prickles actually rise at her nape. Should she cast a spell to marry him, she wondered, or just have sex? “Casting a spell won’t work.”
“Probably not, but it’s worth a try,” said Mara.
C.C. was scissoring her fingers in a goodbye wave. “See you in the morning at Sarah’s. Let’s make it ten o’clock.”
Eyes on Gorgeous, Signe nodded. “See you.”
Her heart was still hammering when Gorgeous leaned casually over the bar a moment later. Somehow she managed to find her voice. “What can I get for you?” She paused. “George.”
He flashed a dazzling, hundred-watt smile that was like something straight out of the movies. “You can get me out of here,” he said confidentially. “If I’m accosted by one more milkmaid who wants a date, I’m going to scream.”
As Signe strained to hear him over the beating of her own heart, she vaguely wondered at the power this man seemed to wield over her. “Get you out of here?” she echoed. “Where would you like me to take you?”
“Where a woman like you could,” Gorgeous said with an easy grin. “We could start with heaven and just take it from there.”
When it came to flirtation, the man had a thousand smooth moves. Every time he got this close to her, Signe felt like Cinderella. Right now, she’d almost chuck her life dream of working at the Met, just to drag him into the cloakroom and divest him of his costume. Who cared what her boss would think? Despite her nervousness, she shot Gorgeous what she hoped was a game smile. “Well, you’ve got to admit that the art’s interesting.”
“Very. I think my uncle Harold lent Jack some pieces.” Jack was the computer mogul.
As Signe tried to imagine a life in which one lent others personally owned priceless artifacts for parties, she glanced around, noting the number of cute, costumed kids who’d been brought to the party by their parents. “Really?” she managed to say.
He nodded. “Among them, the statue of Eros.”
Her cheeks warmed. Given the elongated penis of the fetish, she didn’t exactly want to stare at it, but then, she didn’t want to glance away too quickly, either. If she did, Gorgeous Garrity might think she was what her friends accused her of being—a prude. “I read about Eros in an art history class,” she said, returning her eyes to Gorgeous Garrity’s, which were blue and sparkling. “They say it brings sexual potency to whomever possesses it.” Just saying the word potency while staring into such astonishing eyes made her feel giddy.
His lips curled in a half smile as if to say he was well aware of the fact. “Really? Well, maybe so. Uncle Harold’s been married more than once.”
“Reproductions of the statue are sold in the gift shop. They do a booming business.”
“Even a reproduction may ensure great sex?”
“Apparently.”
His smile broadened. “Do you have one?”
“A statue of Eros?” Her heart missing a beat, she vaguely wondered how she should respond. Imagining Gorgeous in her Village apartment, naked and between the sheets, had occupied most of her dreams lately. Still, despite her girlfriends’ endless admonishments that she should loosen up, she didn’t want to give the impression that she was easy. She had no doubt that women flung themselves at Gorgeous Garrity all day. “No,” she finally admitted. “No Eros reproductions. I can, however, offer other types of potency.”
Gorgeous looked very intrigued.
Lifting a wine bottle, she raised an eyebrow in question.
He considered. “What about a Stoli and tonic instead?”
“Coming right up.” As she fixed the cocktail, her eyes slid over his costume. Most removable items—the sword, hat and belt—were too large or too hard to get for the purposes of the spell she meant to cast on him. She could borrow a pen, or ask for a business card….
Her eyes settled on the edge of a red silk handkerchief tucked in his waistband. Just looking at him, she shuddered. He was big all over. The kind of guy who, naked, would be covered with silken curling hair—all dark blond in his case. His legs were bunched with muscle, probably from playing polo, which Signe knew he enjoyed. He flashed her a smile.
She smiled back. She simply couldn’t believe it. Before she’d started this harmless flirting with Gorgeous, she’d never had sex on the brain—at least not like this. She considered herself sexually healthy, of course, but usually, when it came to men, she was much more practical. Gorgeous, despite his bank account and prospects, had looks that made her nerves quiver.
Schooling her hand not to shake, she gave him the drink, then she stepped back and feigned a sneeze. Without hesitation, he lifted the red handkerchief from his waistband and pressed it to her palm. Making a show of blowing her nose, she smiled. The ploy had worked like a charm. “Why don’t I launder this?” she suggested. “I’ll keep it here for you, since you come in so often.”
“And you’re always here,” he returned with another of those smiles that made her feel as if she was the only woman in the room. “Don’t they give you time off?”
This was his entrée! Was New York City’s most eligible bachelor really going to ask her out? “Actually, yes, they do. I’m going to the Catskills this weekend.”
“Whereabouts?”
“The state park. An area called the Clover Fields.”
“Sounds lucky.”
Was he asking if he could get lucky? “Maybe.” She giggled. “I’m in cabin seven, too. Isn’t that a lucky number?”
“It sure is.”
The cabins only slept three, so she’d decided to let her girlfriends stay together while she was to share with a roommate—one of the New Jersey wiccans—whom she hadn’t yet met.
It might have been her imagination, but Gorgeous’s eyes looked veiled. “Going alone?”
“With girlfriends.” When he looked disappointed, she took a deep breath and plunged on. “Unless you decided to show up.”
“Me? Show up?”
She wasn’t sure if she’d made a mistake. “You know, if you were in the area.”
As if he just so happened to pass the Catskill Mountains every day of the week, he smiled and said, “You know, I just might run into you.”
His eyes locked into hers then. They were the same blue as the ocean under a burning sun hung in a cerulean sky. Breath left her lungs, and full years could have passed before she managed to blink. When she did, it was only because someone in the room had screamed.
“What was that?” she managed, tearing her eyes away.
“The statue of Eros!” shouted the voice as if in response to her question.
Her heart pounding with worry, she shifted her eyes to the pedestal on which the artifact had been displayed moments before, and then she blinked, feeling as if she was watching her life flash before her eyes. She saw Edmond Styles snatching away her promised promotion into the archives department. For a moment, wishful thinking almost made her believe the statue was still there. She could almost see it—about a foot tall, carved of dark wood.
And then she whispered, “It’s gone!”
THE NEXT MORNING, with only a day left until Halloween, Signe found herself shifting uncomfortably in a roller chair in the Met’s boardroom when Detective Alfredo Perez from the Eighty-fourth precinct stopped pacing to cast a suspicious glance toward the overnight bag at her feet. He was tall, pencil-thin, with short, spiky dark hair, ink-black eyes and a handlebar mustache that Signe thought made him look like a Mexican thief from an old spaghetti western.
Not taking his eyes from her bag, he said, “I was going to tell you not to leave town.”
Not a good sign. “Am I under arrest?”
He didn’t bother to answer. “Where are you going?”
She wasn’t sure she should admit it. “A wiccan retreat.”
“Wiccan?”
“Uh…you know. Witches.”
“Ah,” he said. “You’re a witch, then?”
Great. She could see the wheels turning. Detective Perez was connecting this information with the stolen statue, which was pagan. “No, actually, I’m not.” She lunged into a quick explanation of the trip and finished by flashing a smile and intoning, “I do not know, nor have I ever known, any real witches.”
He wasn’t amused. “What about cats?” He slid a grainy photograph toward her, probably reproduced from a security video. It was of her at the bar, talking to C.C., Diane and Mara. Signe hedged. It was bad enough that they thought she hadn’t turned on the alarm, even though she knew she’d done so, but she’d definitely be fired if she admitted to signing friends into the party under fake names.
“I know I turned on the alarm.”
He eyed her a long moment. “Who are these women?”
The man’s distrustful attitude was beginning to unnerve her. “I don’t know.” Surely, it would be proved that she’d flipped the switch on the alarm. If so, she’d be in the clear. Besides, her friends weren’t involved in the theft, and a priceless statue was bound to be found quickly, right? “Whoever took the statue will try to sell it,” she ventured. “Won’t they? I mean, don’t you think it will show up on the black market…?” Noting the pleading tone in her own voice, she let the remark trail off.
“Maybe.”
She took that for a yes, and sighed in relief. No, she wasn’t about to jeopardize her future at the museum by admitting she’d added her friends to a private party’s guest roster, just so they could grab some free drinks, catered hors d’ oeuvres and meet some good-looking rich men.
Detective Perez was staring at her coldly. “What were these cats talking about?”
She thought fast. “Mostly volunteer work.” That sounded positive and upbeat.
His voice sharpened. “And they were volunteering…?”
“I’m not exactly sure,” she managed to say. “But it was clear they were very nice women. Not the sort to steal artifacts. You know,” she continued, the lies not coming easily, “they sounded as if they loved…uh…small children. And pets. I think they even mentioned giving gifts to people less fortunate than themselves.”
“Cat burglars,” he muttered. “Cute.”
Was Detective Perez really considering her friends as suspects? “They seemed like very nice women,” Signe repeated.
His eyes pinned her. “You said they didn’t talk to you.”
“Well—” Her throat constricted, and she swallowed hard. “It was in the way they ordered.”
“The way they ordered?”
“They didn’t sound like thieves.”
“How do thieves sound?”
She searched her brain. “Not like…nice women.”
“Our conversation is getting a little circular.”
At least he’d noticed. Reaching down, she clutched the handle of her overnight bag. As she did, she thought of Gorgeous for the first time since the interview had begun. He’d been truly kind after the theft was discovered, and while he’d never again referred to her invitation, she was sure she’d seen something promising in his eyes. Ten to one, he was going to turn up in the Catskills tonight. “Look, Detective Perez, I’d like to help—I really would—and if you need to speak to me again—”
It was the wrong time for her cell to ring. Wincing apologetically, she slid a hand into her purse and drew out the phone. Quickly opening it, she whispered, “Hello?”
“I’m on my way in a fabulous yellow convertible,” chortled C.C. “I’ve already picked up everybody else. Be in front of the Met in ten.”
