Priceless (43 page)

“But how would it ever be traced back to you?” Yasha asked. “I promised you I would keep you safe from any repercussions, and I will. Don’t go to the police. You have no idea who you’re up against, and everyone says they were coerced. You’ll go to jail, my darling.”

“Don’t call me darling.”

“You’ll go to jail and you’ll lose your daughter. And where will she go? You’ve already told me that it’s hard to persuade your ex-husband to have her for a whole weekend. Do you think his new girlfriend is going to want Katie in their lives on a permanent basis? She’ll end up in foster care. Maybe a children’s home. It’s no place for a young girl. For any young child.”

“That wouldn’t happen,” said Serena. But she thought about the options. If Tom really didn’t step up, then where could Katie go? Serena’s mother was months away from needing to go into a nursing home. Would her brother be willing to offer a home to his niece?

Serena began to cry. Yasha stopped walking and pulled her to sit down on the grass beside him.

“I’m sorry. I’m sorry,” he said. “I didn’t mean to sound so harsh. Look. So what if the painting is yours? There’s no reason why you should worry at all. In fact, I think you should be very pleased with yourself. You convinced some of the world’s most highly respected art experts. Apparently any one of the big auction houses would have been happy to take it on. I told you it’s a great painting, Serena. Here’s your proof.”

“It won’t last,” said Serena. “Someone will question its authenticity again at some point, and then …”

“It won’t happen,” said Yasha. “No one wants to hear it. Too many people would end up red-faced. The painting will sell. Probably for way more than its estimate. And then we won’t hear of it again for years. Paintings like this don’t keep turning up at auction. And even if it did, every time it is sold, it gets that little bit harder to trace it back to us.”

“Yasha, the thing is, I think someone is on to Julian and me. The police came looking for him at my place. And, well …”

“It could have been about anything.”

“No. I don’t think so. They were from the Metropolitan Police’s department of art and antiques. I tried to raise Julian afterward, but he didn’t return my calls.”

“But they haven’t come back for you? Then it’s fine.”

Serena bit her lip. She was on the point of telling Yasha about the pictures she had taken on her phone and sent to her former lover. If Julian was wanted in connection with the forgeries, then wasn’t it likely that someone would seize his phone and see the evidence?

“I’m just so worried,” she said without elaborating.

“Serena,” Yasha promised, “I will deal with this. You are safe. I swear to you. I will keep you safe. No one will ever find out that you painted
The Virgin
. As for Julian Trebarwen, the only thing you can do is keep your mouth shut. I very much doubt that this is about the paintings you did for him. He’s not an honest man, Serena. I can think of a thousand reasons why the police might want to question him.”

Serena’s brow wrinkled.

“I promise you,” said Yasha, “that so long as you let me handle this, and follow my instructions, everything will be fine. Now, I want you to carry on as normal. Forget about Julian Trebarwen. Whatever you do, don’t call
him again. The less ways there are for anyone to link you to that loser the better.”

Serena shook her head. She had to tell him about the photographs she had taken and forwarded. Then he would realize how serious the situation could be. If Julian was fingered by Ludbrook’s for the other paintings, then Serena couldn’t be sure that he wouldn’t use those photos of the Ricasoli to get himself out of a hole. But she didn’t have a chance. Suddenly, Yasha gathered her into his arms. Being held like this, she felt for a moment that Yasha really might be able to protect her. She had missed the feeling of a man’s arms around her like this. She couldn’t remember when Tom had stopped trying to comfort her physically. She breathed in the warm scent of Yasha’s chest. His clean blue shirt.

Yasha kissed her gently on the top of her head. Serena found herself turning her face toward him quite instinctively. Their eyes met. A smile softened the corners of his.

“I’m glad you came to find me,” he said. “I’m sorry it was only because you were scared. I have thought about you often.”

Slowly, but inevitably, their mouths moved closer, and soon they were kissing.

“Come on,” said Yasha, finishing the kiss and holding her hand. “I’ll look after you. Come with me.”

They went back to his house. Yasha led Serena by the hand up the stairs to his bedroom. She didn’t resist. This was the culmination of a long-held desire for both of them.

It was the last thing Serena had expected, and yet it felt so natural. This was what should have happened that night in Italy when, with a glass of wine inside her and an empty kitchen table between them, she’d almost felt brave enough to touch him.

The smell of Yasha’s skin was so delicious to her. Absolutely right. She fingered his face tenderly and smiled as he returned the gesture. She loved the way he almost hummed with pleasure when she touched him as he wanted to be touched. His approval both reassured her and turned her on.

“I’m so sorry,” said Serena. “I came straight from the spa. I must look a mess.”

“You look beautiful,” Yasha told her. The way he gazed at her told her he was telling his truth, and as a result she started to feel beautiful, not worrying about what Yasha would find beneath the shirt and jeans she had pulled on that morning in the darkness of her farmhouse in Cornwall as she’d hurried to catch the early train.

Under Yasha’s gaze, Serena glowed. As he unbuttoned her shirt, she swayed toward him as though entranced. His hands roamed her neck and her shoulders. When she was naked from the waist up, he lay one palm flat on her breastbone as though feeling for her heart. It was racing.

Serena pressed her own hands against Yasha’s broad chest. He was wearing a silky soft blue shirt that she remembered from Italy. Closing her eyes she could picture him back there, standing in the garden as she watched from the window.

“I watched you take this shirt off and dive into the pool and do twenty laps,” she said.

Yasha blushed. “I watched you swimming too. Early in the morning when everyone else was still asleep.”

The memory of the way they had circled each other for those three weeks only intensified what Serena was feeling now. She could recall so well how he had looked, and now she was touching him. The hair on his chest felt rough beneath her fingers. Comfortingly masculine like the taut muscles beneath.

Pulling Yasha close, so that their naked torsos were pressed together, Serena slid her hands around to his back. She smoothed her palms across his shoulder blades and down toward his waist. Then she followed the curve of his belt around to the buckle and started to work it free.

Yasha helped her out of her own jeans and, once she was completely undressed, lifted her off her feet and placed her gently in the center of the bed.

If sleeping with Julian had reminded Serena what it felt like to lust after someone, then going to bed with Yasha reminded her of the real meaning of “making love.” Yasha didn’t take his eyes off hers, ensuring Serena that it wasn’t just her body he wanted to connect with.

Yasha’s hands were warm and soft as they followed the contours of her body. He murmured his approval of her smooth skin. He placed a kiss on each of her nipples and a whole line of them connecting the notch at her throat to her belly button. He rested for a moment with his head on her stomach.

“I want you,” she said.

“I want you too.”

But he wouldn’t let her have him. Not quite yet. Instead he teased her with more fluttering kisses across her body and down to the place where her hips met her pubic bone. Feeling his hot breath on her pubis, she sighed at the exquisite agony of wanting what he wouldn’t yet give her. She felt herself arch toward his mouth.

When finally he entered her, his long hard shaft encountering no resistance from her waiting body, Serena wanted to cry. She held his head in her hands as he moved inside her. She kissed his face. He kept his eyes on hers.

When he came, he begged her to hold him. She wrapped her arms tightly around him, holding him so close.

•          •          •

Afterward, they slept for what seemed like hours. Serena felt safe in his arms. When they woke, the sky outside was dark. They turned to face each other and murmured their happiness.

They were interrupted by Yasha’s phone.

“I have to go out,” said Yasha as he frowned at a text.

Serena put her arm across his body. “Are you sure?”

“I’m sorry.” He got out of the bed and began searching for the clothes he had discarded.

“Shall I wait here?” Serena asked hopefully.

“Look. The more I think about it, the more I think you’re right. We need to be more careful. You need to stay away from me. At least until all this is concluded. You should leave now. Go back to Cornwall. Keep your head down and don’t answer questions. Never talk about the Ricasoli. Never mention my name. If anything should go wrong, I don’t want you to be connected to me in any way. It’s safest like that.”

“But …” Serena didn’t want to be disconnected from Yasha. Not now.

“It’s the safest way,” Yasha insisted. “You have no idea how vengeful my client can be.”

Yasha picked up Serena’s jeans from the floor and handed them to her. “I have to meet someone in my office. You need to go now.”

“You’re serious.”

“I’m afraid so.”

Later that night, Serena found herself in a hotel in Earls Court. There was no point going back to Cornwall when she had to pick Katie up the following day. She didn’t want to go back to the Berkeley and face Jane’s questions. So she booked into the kind of hotel that made backpackers wonder why they’d ever left Bondi, and cried. Much
as she wanted to believe Yasha’s insistence that they had to stay apart for her safety, she couldn’t help wondering if he simply hadn’t wanted her to stay the night.

CHAPTER 60

S
erena wasn’t the only person surprised by the news that
The Virgin
was up for auction. Yasha hadn’t seen Julian Trebarwen face-to-face since that night in Cornwall. But as soon as the sale
of The Virgin
was announced, Trebarwen was on Yasha’s doorstep, as large as life and twice as ugly. He looked as though he hadn’t slept in a week. He was sporting a scruffy beard and exuded alcohol fumes as though he had been marinating in whiskey.

“You look tired,” said Yasha. “So I suppose you ought to sit down. Now, what is this about?”

“As if you don’t know. I see you’re selling
The Virgin
through Ludbrook’s.”

“Not me,” said Yasha. “It’s not my picture.”

“But you commissioned it. You know it’s a fake.”

“Don’t be ridiculous. You think Ludbrook’s would consign a fake?”

Julian snorted.

“It’s real,” said Yasha. He assumed that Julian was bluffing. How could he know that the painting Ludbrook’s would be selling wasn’t genuine? Nat Wilde hadn’t been able to tell.

“Prove it.”

“And if I can’t? What are you going to do about it?”

“That depends on what you can do for me. Tell your client I need a million. I’ve got to get away.”

“A million in exchange for what?”

“My silence. And these.” He brought an envelope out of his pocket. It contained a series of grainy printouts, pictures of Serena working on the painting. “She sent them to my mobile phone, which is currently in a bank vault.”

“Is this blackmail?” asked Yasha.

“If that’s what you want to call it. One million for my old phone’s SIM card, and you’ll never see me again.”

Yasha shook his head. “Trust me, Julian. It’s really not a good idea to talk to anyone about this. There is no question of you making any money out of this situation. It’s simply not going to happen. But should you choose to make things difficult, then the cost to you could be far greater than you could ever imagine.”

The two men stared at each other across the desk. Julian’s hard-man act was let down by the shakes that were a symptom of alcohol withdrawal.

“I need the money.”

“You need to take a bath and go to bed.”

“I’ll tell the police everything about you and Serena and Italy.”

“What is it with you people, thinking that’s the worst you can threaten me with? You need to keep your mouth shut, Mr. Trebarwen.”

“Get me a plane ticket. Five hundred grand.”

“You’re dreaming.”

“You need to make sure I keep the fake a secret. That’s worth at least a hundred.”

“Take me to the vault,” Yasha said, and sighed.

CHAPTER 61