Love Story (8 page)

“How old is she?”

Uh-oh.
This
had to stay off-limits. He was mad at himself for telling her about Mellie the night he’d
hit his head and was out of it. He couldn’t share his family with her. “I’d rather not get that personal, if you don’t mind. We haven’t talked about our families much, and I’d like to keep it that way.”

God, her face was expressive. He saw the hurt he’d caused etch itself out on every pretty feature. He came to the edge of his seat. “Look, Elizabeita, we don’t know each other well. You agreed
that the first night was casual. And I assumed tonight would be, too.”

“I know I did.”

“So I’m right about not sharing our personal things with each other.” Even to his own ears, his words sounded hollow. Maybe because he didn’t believe them either.

She stood. “Then let’s go fuck now.”

He startled. Not much shocked him, but this change in mood, and her vulgarity, did. He didn’t
know how to react. So he followed her lead. “Fucking sounds great.”

“Fine.”

Fine
, the catch-all word that, when coming from a woman, meant nothing but trouble for a man.

He followed her back to the bedroom. Once there, she started to take off her pretty silvery top and pants. He came up behind her. “Let me undress you.”

“No, thanks. I’d rather strip myself. You do the same.”

Dangerous territory here, he realized. “O-kay.” He removed his clothes. She climbed on the bed and he joined her. She rolled on top of him. Started kissing him, hard, almost savagely. He remembered the last time they’d had sex, she’d joked, and he had, too. He didn’t want it like this, despite what he’d told himself earlier.

So he tried to gentle the kiss. Tried to soothe her with long, tender
strokes down her back. She was impossibly tense. When her hand trailed lower and grasped on to his cock, massaged him mercilessly, he tore his mouth away from hers. She lifted her head. Her gaze was like liquid amber, only it wasn’t fiery with passion. She was pissed. She didn’t say anything.

He did. “Her name is Mellie. She’s six years old.”

So,
so
stupid to feel tears
prickle behind her lids. She hadn’t even known what she needed from him until she got it. Gently, before she could say anything, he eased her off him, over onto her back and began to kiss her with a soft brush of his lips, so light it felt like feathers. She held on to his arms and kissed him back in kind. Let him deepen the contact. He moved his mouth to her neck. Then her breasts. She would have
jackknifed up if he hadn’t been half on top of her. So she caressed his back, ran her fingers through his hair and let herself go.

A long time later, she felt him spread her thighs. He slipped into her with utter gentleness. He murmured words, “…sweetheart…baby…yeah, that’s it.”

When it came, the orgasm crested over the edge, like some gentle wave on the shore, giving her pleasure and
something else, that made her call out his name.

“What do you call these again?” Nick asked.

“Pirogues.”

They’d heated up the food she’d prepared ahead of time, and sat in bed with it. “These are terrific. Did you make them?”

“Yep. My mother and I get together to cook sometimes. It’s fun. We don’t invite the rest of the family.”

He was uneasy asking. “So you
said your family’s big?”

“Pretty big.” She set the bowl down and turned to him. “I’m not much of a game player, Nick. I know you’ve only been at the Met for three weeks. We’ve known each other for nearly two. But I’m not sure how to act now.”

“I hurt you when I said I wanted to keep my private life private.”

“Yeah, and I don’t even know why.”

Disgusted with himself, he told her
the truth. “I only knew I didn’t want a mindless fuck. From you.”

“I didn’t, either. But we should talk about parameters, if that’s what you want on this…whatever we have together. So I don’t make any mistakes.”

She was so young sometimes.

He picked up his drink and sipped. How much to tell her? He couldn’t reveal who he was and how he came to be at the Met, even if he wanted to. She
could hinder his investigation. But he’d drawn them into something tonight that he’d had no right to do. So he said, “Let’s not set anything. Let’s see how all this unfolds. I’m fourteen years older than you are, so…”

“Yeah. I can count.”

“No sass.”

She watched him with naked emotion in her eyes. “You’re right. Tonight isn’t the time for sass.”

Dean Morris sat
across from Nick the next day, unhappy. “Tell me again why you believe it can’t be this Ludzecky woman.” He angled his head. “You aren’t thinkin’ with your dick, are you, Casella?”

No, he wasn’t thinking at all. He’d planned to leave her house last night around ten, and he was still there at 3:00 a.m. when he awoke wrapped around her. “I’m not. But she isn’t the culprit. For one thing, she’s
got a famous family.” He told Dean about the ex-president and the Secret Service. “Then there’s the fact that she’s enthralled with modern art.”

“You’re probably right. Any other potential insiders?”

“I’ve gone through their files. There’s a worker who’s disgruntled because her exhibit didn’t get budgeted for, but that was after the emails began. A department head who’s prickly, but has
been there for years.”

“Hmm.”

“Hell, Dean, there are crazy people out there in a city of millions. It’s like trying to find a needle in a haystack.”

“I hope we find it before anybody gets hurt.”

“You and me both, buddy.”

Nick left Dean’s office with a heavy heart. Earlier, his step had been light because he’d suppressed his recriminations about getting involved with Elizabeita.
Now the euphoria of last night had dimmed, and he could see he needed to handle the situation at work more carefully. But he probably wouldn’t be able to stay away from her unless he alienated her completely and made her hate him. He could do that, but he sure as hell didn’t want to.

Pulling out his phone on the cab ride uptown, he called up his messages. He did this throughout the day in
case Mellie or his mother needed him.

There was one from his mom, which caused a hitch in his pulse. He worried about their everyday safety.

Hi, honey. Mellie and I are fine. My sister called from upstate. She wants Mellie and me to come up this weekend. You’re welcome to join us, but I’d like to see the fall colors there and visit with Nancy even if you can’t get away. Let me know if
it’s okay for us to go Friday.

Hmm, their absence would give him more time with the case. Maybe he could wrap this up sooner than expected. Then he wouldn’t be forced into proximity with Elizabeita. And maybe, if he didn’t have to see her, he could break the hold she seemed to have on him.

Elizabeita felt different today. She couldn’t put her finger on it, except that
her mind and body were in sync, butterflies, of the good kind, bounced around in her stomach and she couldn’t get last night out of her mind.

Truthfully, she didn’t want to. Nick was due back after lunch, she’d discovered when she got to the museum this morning. They were planning to work on the exhibit all afternoon. So at noon, she sat in her office with food bags from Zabar’s spread across
her conference table.

He came to the door at twelve. She was perusing an art book of Dali’s works but looked up when he said, “Hi.”

“Hi.” Today he seemed even more attractive. The gray-checked shirt he wore made his eyes glimmer. He gestured to the table. “Some of that for me? Because I gotta tell you, sweetheart, Zabar’s is one of my favorite places.”

“Mine, too. I thought we could
tell anyone who happened by we were discussing the exhibit.”

He came inside and sat.

Elizabeita set out the sliced pastrami, potato salad, sourdough bread and a dozen thin and crispy chocolate-chip cookies. “I didn’t know what you’d like, so I guessed, based on your Reuben preference.”

Snatching up a cookie, he bit into it. She watched his mouth chew, remembering what it had done to
her only hours ago. She had to quell the shiver that went through her.

Leaning over the food, he captured her gaze. “Don’t do that. Or we’ll end up right on top of this food.”

Her laughter sounded girlish, even to her. “All right. Tell me about your morning.”

He opened a Coke for him and a bottle of water for her. As he began heaping the meat onto bread, he talked. “No work stuff.
I had some personal business to attend to.”

“I thought you were doing errands for the museum.”

“No. Who told you that?”

“Delores.”

“She was mistaken.” He bit into the sandwich. “Hmm,” he said with his mouth half-f.

She was still looking at him. “Yeah, hmmm.”

At the end of day, when Nick was touching up the walls for Lizzie’s upcoming art exhibit, the
lights dimmed. Then he heard over the PA system, “This announcement is from security at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. The building is now on lockdown. Patrons are to stay in the room they currently occupy, with the security guards assigned there. Thank you for your cooperation.”

Nick went to the hallway and saw that some floor lights had come up, and people were heading in different directions.
When he caught sight of Delores, upset and panicky, he hurried to her.

The woman’s eyes were glazed. “Somebody shut down the computers in the museum. Backup security is in place, and there’s a generator for lights, but this has never happened to us before.”

Nick’s first thought was to find Elizabeita. But he had other responsibilities. Instead, he headed for the security office. He walked
in to find Will on the phone. “That’s right. Everything’s on hold, but we need the NYPD.”

Nick would have to stay out of the police’s way because he hadn’t left the force that long ago and someone could recognize him. “What can I do?”

Davidson looked up. “It’s related to the emailer, right?”

“So far, he’s not done anything of this magnitude. We didn’t know he’d had the capability.
But we can’t ignore that it might be him. Or her.”

“Fuck.”

“Have you found what made the computers go down?”

“No, but I—”

The full lights came on, and the computers in Davidson’s office rebooted with loud bleeps and hums. “What the hell?”

Nick’s brows rose. “A glitch in the system?”

“Too coincidental.”

“A show of force?”

“For what? To keep modern art out of the
Met?”

“No, to scare us. I think that’s what the emails are for.” He frowned. “Will, I was sent here because of the importance of the Met to society. If this is some kook, I have to find him. If it’s more serious, we’ll need Homeland Security. But right now, we should call Cyber Crimes in. I have them on speed dial. Let’s see what we’re dealing with.”

“What will they do?”

“My task for
the two weeks I’ve been here has been to observe the goings-on of daily activities and scrutinize the files of the employees in the Contemporary Art division to see if this is internal, if someone here might be the emailer. But I didn’t find anything that would lead to a specific staff member. Now we need professionals to comb through their computers and to look for any evidence of suspicious activity.
If the emails escalated, that would probably have been the next step, even if the computers hadn’t gone down.”

“It would be pretty stupid for anyone to use his work computer to orchestrate all this.”

“Crazies aren’t noted for their intelligence. Let’s see if Cyber Crimes can get to all the computers by the end of tomorrow.”

Elizabeita tried not to read anything into Nick’s lack of contact after they’d finished with the exhibit Wednesday afternoon. And there was no reason to expect to see him every night. She just…wanted to. So she sat in her office the next day, trying to decide what to do—seek him out or let him come to her. Her boss appeared at her door. “Hi, Dee. Anything new on yesterday?”

Delores blew out a breath. She seemed calmer today. “Cyber Crimes is here. They’re checking staff computers, starting with our department.”

“Was the emailer connected to the shutdown yesterday?”

“Apparently they suspect he was. Security wants to see if they can track him down through our individual accounts.”

“Why hasn’t security tried to trace him that way before?”

“I think
they scanned our network. Besides, the emails were sporadic and mostly considered a nuisance.”

“How long will each computer take?”

“Not sure. But be ready to switch gears anytime today.”

“I will.” When Dee had left, she booted her computer. Called up her email. A message from the curator from the Dali Museum came up first, inquiring about the shipping for the exhibit. She’d just finished
answering him, when a woman in a black suit and stark-white blouse came to the door.

“Ms. Ludzecky? I’m Agent Michaels from Cyber Crimes. We need to run some diagnostics on your computer.”

“I heard you would. Should I vacate the office?”

“It’s up to you.”

“How long will this take?”

“I’m not sure.”

“I’ve got some things to do on the floor. I’ll be in and out. Do you need
passwords?”

“Sure.” After Elizabeita gave them, Michaels said, “We’ll be changing them.”

A bit disturbed, Elizabeita left her office. She stopped in the break room to get coffee and once again wondered if she should seek out Nick. Sitting down, she sipped the brew—and almost spit it back into the cup. “Yuck.” The coffee tasted bitter, as if it had been made yesterday. Who knew? Maybe it
had. She fixed herself lemon tea instead. That was better. People filtered in and out. There was some discussion about Cyber Crimes, but most people were taking the time to relax—which was not her strong suit.

Her cell phone buzzed. Maybe it was Nick. She saw the caller ID. “Hi, Ana. Everything okay?”

“Couldn’t be better. I have a doctor’s appointment in town at three.”

“Your OB-GYN
is in Manhattan?”

“Yeah. Remember how Jared knew some guy in the city and wanted him as my doctor when I was pregnant with Opal? I decided to go back to him.”