Authors: Shannon McKenna
“Of course. And call me Thad. Ask away. May I call you Leslie?”
“Yes, of course. I’d love that,” she said. “I was overhearing some people talk about the Wycleff Library. Wycleff is one of your major donors to the Foundation, right? I just wondered if that building is here, in Spruce Ridge, or is it somewhere else?”
Greaves laughed, throwing his head back as if she’d said something witty. “Let me show you the Wycleff Library.”
Her heart started to thud. “So it’s here? Physically here? In the Convention Center, you mean?”
“Actually, the Wycleff Library does not exist yet.” He led her over to the model of the proposed Greaves Insitute that dominated the center of the banquet hall. The detail was amazing, the perfect miniature buildings, the carefully sculpted rugged natural features of the hillside campus. There was even water from a spring, leaping and rushing down the hill in a constant gurgling flow. The light from the chandelier above blazed, illuminating every detail.
“Now, I’m going to ask you to use your imagination,” Greaves said. “It’s a beautiful spring day, and there’s a bracing wind coming down off the mountains. It’s, oh . . . let’s be conservative, and say, 2017. The way things go, it will be at least that long. You and I are strolling here”—he pointed at a walking path—“right outside the Payne Whitthom Building, which will hold the class-rooms and seminar rooms for the humanities courses. We’ll stop . . .
here.” He pointed. “The Shay Cafeteria. Grab something in the multicultural food court, an ice cream cone, a calzone, a shish kebab, a skewer of Thai chicken, a hot crepe filled with crème Chantilly, an espresso drink. With our snack, arm in arm, we’ll make our way up . . . here.” He pointed again, tracing the path as it wended through a rocky natural park. “The botanists and landscape architects will work with natural indigenous vegetation. So in the spring, we might see lupine, Indian paintbrush, colum -
bine. Wild flora is unpredictable, but if we’re blessed by luck . . .”
He lifted her hand again, kissed her scraped knuckles. “We might be graced with a glimpse of alpine wildflowers.”
“Let’s assume that we’re lucky,” she murmured. “And then?”
“Then, the bridge over this torrent, which the artist has recreated with unbelievable detail. He must have hand-sculpted it while studying aerial photographs. In the spring, the brook should be full, making a beautiful chattering loud noise. We circle the Meineke Braun Science Building, and over here, at the top of the hill, the Bauer Observatory, with its state-of-the-art telescope.”
“Incredible,” Nina said, since admiring noises were called for.
“It will be. This place will eventually be on par with Stanford and MIT, and offer comparable excellence in arts and humanities. It will be the go-to place for physics, astronomy, computer science, engineering, biotechnology. Everything to face our brave new world.”
His choice of words made her shiver. “Brave new world? Is that what you’re making here?”
“I don’t presume so far.” He gave her a modest shrug. “But for humanity to continue, we will have to evolve, adapt. Everyone will have to try a little bit harder. Don’t you think?”
“I hesitate to agree until I know exactly what we’re talking about.”
He let out that laugh, like she’d gotten in a clever quip.
“Cautiously said. But back to our stroll. We stop at the lookout point here, to admire the view. Clear sky, valley before us, majes-tic mountains in the distance. Around the curve, and behold.
The Wycleff Rare Book Library, with its climate-and humidity-controlled vaults that will house the Greaves Collection of rare books and manuscripts.”
“Wow.” Nina’s heart, which had sunk at the news that the library did not exist, began to thud. Greaves pointed at a building on the second highest of the two hills, made of what was meant to be marble.
The tower on that model was big enough to tuck syringes inside.
“The exterior will be made of slabs of translucent white marble,” Greaves said. “Look how the artist used those squares of translucent rubber to get the perfect matte finish. The building is translucent. It will glow like a lamp at night, and during the day, the sun will shine through it. It will be constantly flooded with light. Beautiful, isn’t it?”
“Incredible.” Nina shook with excitement. The little model was too far up and in to touch, far out of any normal human’s reach. To get to it, a person would have to crush and trample the rest of the display underfoot. And she was oh, so totally up for that.
“Where did you get this amazing model?” she asked.
“It was a gift from one of my colleagues, Harold Rudd. We worked at the same company together years ago, though he’s abandoned the world of business now for politics. I’m not sure how sound that decision is, but I’m sure he’ll go far. All the way to the top, in fact.”
“How long have you had it?” she asked.
He chuckled. “About four hours. Rudd brought it this afternoon, so my staff had to scramble to get it put together in time for the gala.”
Helga could have gotten access to this. Smuggled the B doses into the model, knowing it would be transported here. Maybe they could hide, and check out the model after hours. “Is this going to be its permanent location?” she asked. “It looks gorgeous here.”
“No, we can’t leave it here. The Convention Center is hosting a medical conference tomorrow, and they are using this banquet hall. The model is too precious to leave out. I believe it cost Harold upward of a hundred and fifty thousand dollars. Human nature being what it is, the pieces would soon start to disappear.
No, we’ll dismantle it as soon as the party’s over, and take it to my residence. We’ll display it under glass in the entry hall of the Wycleff Library eventually. The light there will be perfect. A constant glow, changing with the angle of the sun.”
“Amazing,” she said.
“Oh, yes. And that’s even before you see the collection,”
Greaves said. “In the entrance hall alone, we will be displaying a stunning Book of Hours made for the king of France, in 1342. A truly marvelous collection of St. John’s apocalyptic visions, and my collection of medieval tapestries, as well. I think they would look well there.”
She put on a look of dazzlement. “I love looking at antique manuscripts and tapestries. I can hardly wait to see them.”
“Interesting that you should say that,” Greaves said. “Because you don’t have to wait.”
She blinked at him. “Ah . . .”
“I’ve had quite enough of this party. I’ll take you to my residence, where I keep the most precious pieces of the Greaves Collection. I’ll show them to you, and my chef can serve us a light supper. In the conservatory. Under the stars.”
“You have an appetite, after that meal?”
“You don’t mean to tell me you actually ate that swill?”
She had not, in fact, being far too nervous to eat, but certainly not because she had disdained the food. “In my universe, if you pay fifteen thousand dollars for a meal, you’re inclined to let yourself be pleased by it,” she said drily. “Just to avoid the cognitive dissonance.”
He looked charmed. “Clever. What a funny universe you live in. But I don’t suffer from any cognitive dissonance, and I did not enjoy tonight’s meal. In fact, my staff is going to hear about that tomorrow, at some length. I can call my chef right now. Do you like duck?”
“Ah, isn’t it a bit late to call your chef?” she hedged. “It’s after midnight already.”
“For what I pay him, my chef would prepare a meal for me hanging upside down and naked. Not that I would recommend that. So, duck, then? An apple-and-roasted-walnut-and-goat-cheese salad? I’m thinking light. Some cured meats and cheeses, or a brie-and-artichoke tart? My chef does that divinely, with a golden puff pastry that just melts in your mouth. I’ll call him right now.”
He lifted a questioning eyebrow. “Unless you’d rather eat some
thing else. Say the word. I need, say, forty minutes to thank all the donors on the short list.”
“Short list? Who makes the short list?”
“A million and up,” he said.
She blew out a tight, nervous breath. “This is incredibly gratifying. But perhaps you didn’t notice, when I came in. I’m here with my husband, so I cannot come up to, ah . . . look at your etchings.”
He gazed down for an unnerving moment, and lifted her left hand. “I saw the gentleman you came in with. But I did not see a ring on this hand. Not any of the many times that you allowed me to kiss it.”
“If I sent mixed messages, I apologize,” she said. “I don’t have a ring, but I am very married.”
“Don’t apologize. Life is like that. Mixed. Messy. But it’s a cruel joke on me. Because we have something very important in common.”
She was acutely aware of how prominently displayed they were. Greaves was an eye magnet, being tall, handsome, and a billionaire. And she was hanging on his arm, lingering in the floodlights, like she had a death wish. “Yes?” she forced herself to ask. “And what’s that?”
“Something very intimate,” he said. “Very special.”
And you are so very full of shit.
She bit the words back. “And what is that?”
He lifted his hand, pointing at the rhinestone pendant gleaming at her collarbone. “Let me illustrate. That pendant. Pretty. I estimate that it cost, at most, sixteen dollars at a drugstore, perhaps three or four dollars more, if it was bought at a department store.”
She lifted an eyebrow. So much for his oozing charm. The pre-sumptuous blowhard. “And your point is, Thad?”
“No point, really. Just trying to put all the pieces together.
There’s a piece in my private collection that I would have showed to you this evening, had things been different. A necklace that I got at an auction in London, from the collection of the Duchess of Creighton. Passed down from a French great-great-great-grandmother, guillotined in the French Revolution. The necklace was given to her by an aristocratic married lover in the French court. An object lesson, to remind us that violence lurks all around us. And that passion knows no rules.”
“Oh, really,” she murmured. “Is that what it reminds us?”
A flicker in his eyes showed that he had registered her sarcasm.
“Anyway, the pendant,” he went on smoothly. “It is a magnificent square-cut ruby, surrounded by diamonds and seed pearls, with a silver-gray teardrop pearl dangling from it. I can’t help but picture how it would look with that dress. The pearl would nes-tle right . . . there.” His finger touched the top of her cleavage.
She moved hastily back.
“Perfect,” he murmured. “The way the pearl would echo the perfect, gleaming, luminous roundness of its new home.”
She felt pulled, as if by some massive magnet. She swayed toward him, trying to brace herself. “Thad,” she said. “Are you trying to buy me? Because I’m not for sale.”
“I know you’re not. I can feel it; I can see it. You cannot be bought. I am an extremely wealthy man, Leslie, and no one better than I can know just how rare that is, and how precious.
Which is why I am tormented by the urge to drape you with priceless gemstones.”
Oh, please. “I sympathize with your torment, I guess.”
“Please don’t be facetious,” he begged. “I’m not trying to buy you. But certain things about you only I can understand, you see.”
Enough of this crap. “Well, I’m afraid I’ll have to pass on the—”
“Look down, Leslie,” he said. “At your pendant.”
She looked, and her breath stopped. The rhinestone had floated up, by itself. It hung in midair.
She didn’t dare move, or breathe. She met his eyes. “You?”
“Yes, Leslie,” he whispered. “If that is really your name. Me.”
“Ah . . . ah . . . did you . . .” She stopped, swallowing. Oh, God.
“Did I notice your telepathic probe?” He laughed. “Certainly.
But it is the most delicate, subtle mental probe I have ever felt.
Or barely felt, I suppose I should say. More a caress than a probe.
Lovely. Intriguing. My compliments.”
“Why compliment me?” she asked bluntly. “I failed to read you.”
“And you will always fail, unless I choose to open to you. I can be reasonable about that. With the right incentives.”
“Ah.” She licked her trembling lips, thinking at a frantic pace.
“Based on that experience of your mental probe, I really need you to work for me,” he said. “Name your price. I’ll meet it.”
She was terrified of messing up. No idea how to call it. One would think being a telepath would give a person more of a clue, when it came to things like this, but no. The higher the stakes got, the lower her confidence fell. “I guess, um . . . we do have quite a lot to talk about.”
“My conservatory, tonight? Over duck, and artichoke puff pastry? Can you make it happen?”
She swallowed. “I’ll, ah, make it happen. Forty minutes?”
He nodded. “A silver Porsche will be waiting out front.”
The necklace drifted down to rest on her collarbone, as delicately as a kiss, and he strode away.
“You told him you would meet him
where?
” Aaro gripped Nina’s upper arms, so angry he barely heard her speak.
Her crimson lips were moving, but his mind was melted down into a red, seething hole after watching that self-important asshole billionaire slobber all over his bride’s hand, grope at her tits.
Whisper in her ear.
Prick.
Nina was patting his cheek, and the pats were getting sharper.
He dragged himself into line, just enough to understand. “. . .
bonehead! Hello? Earth to Aaro? Just because I told him I would meet him doesn’t mean I will! I lied to him, Aaro! OK? You got that? You connecting?”
He processed that. Lied? OK. So she’d lied. Good. But he was still agitated, scared to death, his balls still zinging nastily. “That guy is the evil emperor,” he said. “He is bad news, Nina. Serious bad news.”
“Sure he is, but you’re focusing on him and missing the point, you idiot! Didn’t you hear me? The Wycleff Library, Aaro! Right here!”
His jaw sagged. “Here? You mean, like, in this building?”
“No, I mean, in the ballroom! See the architectural model?