The Second Lie (Immortal Vikings Book 2) (2 page)

“Oh hush. This will be like a romantic comedy. I guarantee by the time I’m finished, your boss will think the stars shine in your eyes.”

* * *

The latest arrival wasn’t a bidder. She was the potential end of his fund scheme. The sight of Christina Alvarez Mancini’s smooth dark bun and tailored black dress, so similar to the news photo of her accepting the nomination as Napa County young entrepreneur of the year, made Stig Akason’s fingers tighten on the stem of his wine glass. The promotional crystal was strong and simple, like his plan, yet despite all indications to the contrary and all his investigation, this woman had walked through the door and tipped his delicately balanced strategy on its edge.

He hadn’t expected her to come to London. Although wine was an international commodity, she hadn’t traveled outside the United States in more than a decade.

At least the micro-pour Elaine Johnson was pressing in her hand was a genuine Realino Cabernet Sauvignon. Every bottle sampled tonight had been chosen by him from the real ones because tonight was the point of most risk. Once home, if the buyers drank the wine—a big if, because they rarely opened their prizes—they were unlikely to notice that a blend of forty-dollar plonk had been substituted for thousand-euro vintages.

“You should give that gal a raise, Morrison.” Jack Johnson, worth two hundred million from oil pipelines and two hundred more from natural gas, primary residences in San Diego and Houston, legal residence at a Luxembourg private bank, stood at his left elbow. Together they watched Jack’s wife approach towing Stig’s supposed employee.

The complication was beautifully timed, since both Lord Seymour’s daughter’s neediness and Bodeby’s decorum threatened to become tedious before the auction closed next week. The unanticipated challenge enhanced the sounds in the room, until he almost thought he could separate individual conversations while he waited for the two women. Christina’s website had offered an enticingly slim biography for his character.
After beginning his career in a premier Bordeaux vineyard and working with major British and European collectors, Geoffrey Morrison relocated from London to establish a custom wine sourcing service in the heart of California’s Napa Valley.
He knew why Christina had made her fictional boss an Englishman. For two centuries, the right plummy vowels had separated Americans from their money with haste, surpassed only by corner pros.
He is a board member of the North American Association of Wine Professionals, co-sponsor of the Victor and Francis Mancini scholarship for Viticulture and Enology students at University of California Davis, and a prominent member of numerous international wine organizations.

Rubbish, every word, but in five more steps its author would be in front of him, and he’d be forced to play to his toughest critic. His version of Geoffrey Morrison liked discreet and long-established steak restaurants more than fusion cuisine, enjoyed the quieter British parts of the Caribbean more than the flashy cruise stops and preferred brass collar stays to trendy tailoring. The opportunity to see what Miss Mancini thought of his portrayal and how she played the game was as tempting as any dare. If she unmasked him, he’d either have to flee or continue the charade by firing her on the spot. Neither course of action appealed as much as looking at her and sipping wine.

“Miss Mancini.” His lips curved into a formal greeting. Too formal, if the slight creases between Elaine Johnson’s eyebrows were a clue.

“Are you English always so stiff? You two have worked together for almost a dog’s year, so I want to see you act a little more friendly.” Jack’s wife smiled at Stig, but he recognized an order.

Geoffrey Morrison should flirt with his assistant enough to satisfy the clients, so Stig widened his lips until his teeth showed and his eyes crinkled. “Christina.” Perfect voice drop.

Her only response was a narrowing of her eyes.

“Everything well at the Double M?” Casually dropping the name of her shop made her eyebrows pull together. Good. Her arrival might be the end of his game, or it might not; regardless, he wouldn’t be bored. Boredom, he’d discovered more years ago than the word had been invented, was his worst enemy. “No emergencies to report?”

“Fine.” Her lips tightened and she blinked twice, but an observer like Elaine would assume that to be normal employer and employee tension. “Everything’s fine.” She was a shade too loud, but then, she’d had fifteen hundred years less time to master prevarication.

“Splendid. Ah, Elaine.” He lifted Jack’s wife’s hand, a move American women appreciated more than their British counterparts did. Even as he pressed his lips to the lotion-scented skin of the older woman, his senses remained focused on Christina. London drizzle filled the March night, but she sang of sunny climates and heat. Perhaps it was the golden tan of her skin that even obvious exhaustion couldn’t dim, or the trim outlines of her figure that needed to be shown in shorts and tank tops. Whatever it was about Christina, it warmed the air.

“In Texas, we don’t kiss other men’s wives, son.”

He’d forgotten to release the oilman’s wife.

“Oh, Jack, we’re in Europe, not Houston.” Elaine retrieved her hand and swatted her husband’s shoulder playfully as the younger woman at her side tried again to smile. “Don’t go zipping your chaps backward because of Geoffrey.”

At the sound of his assumed name, Christina’s shoulders tightened imperceptibly. He could tell because the slick fabric of her dress shifted, not because her body moved. The tension her presence layered on his plan made even the hair on his arms aware of her. He wasn’t quite sure whether this was the way the cat felt or the way the mouse felt, but either way, he had to jump to stay out in front.

“Did you locate another case of the Yamhill County Pinot Noir for the Gregorys, Christina?” He enjoyed how her gaze flew from his hands to his face, her eyes as wide as if he’d pinched her bum. He met her silent question with a raised eyebrow, presenting the picture of a man of power asking about a task he’d delegated.

“Don’t you ever give her a moment to enjoy herself without talking shop?” Elaine asked.

“How did you know about—” Christina bit her lip, leaving a smudge of burnt-red lipstick on the edge of her teeth that she quickly concealed behind a tight closed smile.

That flash of vulnerability arrowed into him until his stomach muscles tightened. Her eyes were deep and shadowed, a combination so mysterious compared to the vivid contact lens blues of the trophy wives, he felt a quixotic urge to scotch the auction, lose his set-up money, dump the fakes and inform Lord Seymour’s daughter that she should quaff the good stuff with her staff rather than sell it. There was, he had learned, always more money to shake from the rich, but self-respect was less available. He didn’t hurt women. Another way to fill his account would appear as easily as Lord Seymour’s daughter.

He lifted his hand to signal a waiter hovering with a tray of caviar toast points, needing something to bring him back to the moment before he completely forgot his part. The movement shifted his dinner jacket sleeve away from the edge of his cuff. The small diamond centered in the ornately scrolled platinum rectangle winked at him with the memory of Nora holding the tiny box of cuff links and saying,
You have to look first class. I know how these people dress. It’s the little things that trip the other ranks.

In three weeks, the bulldozers would arrive and Nora’s monument would disappear. Pieces might go to the basement of an unvisited local museum, but her face would never feel the mist on its marble cheeks again or become warm on a sunny August day. And the putti at her feet, the only images of Robbie he’d ever made, would be separated from her again. No, he couldn’t cancel this auction, not even for eyes like Miss Mancini’s.

“I selected the Pluvialis for special tastings in the cave.” He swallowed his self-disgust. “Shall we continue inside?” His gesture toward the structure included the Johnsons and Christina. If Miss Mancini didn’t fuss, he’d get what he needed, and Morrison and Mancini would be unscathed.

Jack looked eager until his wife dug her elbow into his waist and spoke for both. “We’ll let you two catch up alone. I’m off to visit that other thing. In England, do they call it the loo or the WC? I always forget.” She hauled the oilman off with a grip that creased his jacket.

“I asked how you knew about the pinot for the Gregorys.” Her voice was quiet and uninflected as he unlatched the rustic wooden door to the private cave. “Who are you?”

“Who do you think advised them to request that vintage?” Wisps of Miss Mancini’s hair that were too fine to stay in her bun floated on the back of her neck, but that shouldn’t blind him to the fact that she knew how to shake money from the rich tree too, given the Johnsons’ obvious fondness for her. He steered her into the dim light of the stone structure. “You do work for me.”

“I do not work for you.” Although each word was distinct as if forced individually through her lips, she was quiet enough that the tasters standing at the exclusive bar fifteen feet away couldn’t hear.

“Shall I inform the people outside that you’ve resigned?” In this intimate space separated from the buzzing crowd, he could smell the light combination of her scents. Nothing like the complexity of wine yet equally as alluring. He wanted to lean closer, but that would show his interest.

“You wouldn’t.” Her tension was obvious in the visible delineation of her neck tendons. Luckily, the two patrons and bartender were so focused, they hadn’t glanced at his little drama.

“Think they’ll listen to you?” He inhaled. No masking perfume, not for a woman who loved wine and made a living using her senses, only hints of simple fruits clinging to her hair and skin. “Or me?”

“Everyone knows me! They’ve never met—” she glanced at the men on the other side of the cave, and he knew she revised her sentence, “—you.” She rubbed two fingers over the skin at her temples, perhaps to loosen where her tightly scraped hair had pulled her eyes into a slight squint.

“You’ve convinced them they already know me. Jolly good job.” He studied the square neckline of her dress where it tickled the edge of her collarbone. As she lowered her hand, he caught it and delicately cupped it in his larger one. He was about to press the cruelest button available to him, and skin to skin would give him the best measure of her reaction. “Ask yourself. Will they listen to the man in the bespoke dinner jacket or the girl in the off-brand dress with a ladder in her tights?”

“I don’t—” She glanced at her leg, and then back to him. “That’s unfair.” Her voice had shrunk, and with it his enjoyment of their sparring diminished. A verbal jab was sporting, but a knife in the back was a streetfight. He didn’t think he had to be that brutal to Christina.

“When has life been fair?” He raised her hand but didn’t follow through on a kiss, a step too far. He only wanted to trap her a tiny bit. “I would have thought you knew that.”

An attendant with the discreet black-and-gold name tag of the auction house unlatched the door and stepped into the cave. “Mr. Morrison.”

“Yes?” Alert tightened in his gut. A beautiful woman with a grudge against him was the antithesis of boredom, but at this juncture he could live without inquiries from Bodeby’s.

“Two men have requested to join the preview. They are not on our preapproved list.”

He raised an eyebrow. The wine reporters and Lord Seymour’s insurance broker had been on the list, regretfully, but two unknowns, noticeably not referred to as gentlemen, could only signal a problem.

The security guard consulted a card. “A Mr. Grigor Wendel and a Mr. Skafe Thorsson.”

By Loki’s arrows, this had become a complicated evening.

Chapter Two

“Would you mind asking them to wait outside until the end of the preview, if you will?” The imposter’s amused expression hadn’t changed, but the two names he’d heard had made him squeeze Christina’s hand for a fraction of an instant.

She wouldn’t call him Geoffrey, wouldn’t even think of him that way, not least because other than his well-tailored tuxedo and his Shakespeare-perfect accent, he bore no resemblance to the aging bon vivant she’d imagined as her fictional business partner. But whoever he was, his reflex had been a giveaway.

As the Bodeby’s employee bowed out, careful not to reveal a single facial expression about either the instructions or their presence in the cave, she tried to decide if the imitation cellar was cheesy crap or brilliantly novel. The lighting was dim enough to make the faux-painted walls seem like real stone, and the goose bumps on her arms told her it was climate-controlled. The structure must be thick enough to keep coolness in and sound out because the gabble of the hundred patrons at the preview had faded. The two men at the far end seemed to be having an exclusive interaction with a sommelier, which was an inspired way to cultivate the elite of the elite. This was a setup she might try for herself if she established a pop-up store in Manhattan.

“To what do I owe the pleasure of your visit?” His words had the stretched roundness of British vowels, frustratingly stuffy-sounding to her West Coast ears.

She ignored his question to study the bottles displayed like statues beside subtle tags. The Lathan Estate Chardonnay was a Washington State wine she’d sold to Lord Seymour so he could cellar four cases for female guests, but the discreet sign listed two lots of three cases each. Wine wasn’t rabbits. Bottles didn’t make babies when left alone in the dark.

“I can see we’ll need privacy.” Hearing the different British pronunciation, “priv—” rhyming with the first part of “shiver,” reminded her to tread carefully. She wasn’t at home. “Wait here.”

Instead of responding, she scanned the next shelf as he moved to the end of the cave. Yes, she could verify one magnum and a case of the 1997 Toujours Meritage blend, but again, the bastard had listed a second lot with another twelve bottles.

The imposter shook hands with the patrons at the small bar and did one of those arm-grip moves it seemed only men could achieve until somehow they were moving past her toward the exit.

Despite holding two fewer people, the cave tightened around her the closer she and this man came to being alone. Then her tormentor waved aside the sommelier staffing the space and poured two glasses of ruby-colored cabernet. The idled sommelier’s smile didn’t slip when the wine rose over the one-ounce amount for a tasting pour, but she could identify his disapproval from the way he squinted. She pegged him as the type who didn’t think grapes and women mixed outside of
méthode champenoise
and believed that a wine of this caliber would be wasted on a mere female.

Although she knew a beautiful label was no more indicative of the contents of the bottle than a beautiful cover or a beautiful haircut indicated the quality of a book or a brain, the bottle in his hand was one of her favorite designs. The subtle shapes of colored leaves curled into each other like two bodies, a celebration of autumn harvest and sensuality in each stroke of the paint the artist had applied to the original.

She sensed another silent male communication that made her grit her teeth, and then the sommelier left, as professional as every other Bodeby’s employee.

The departure signaled the end of the need for restraint. Alone with this cheat, she could finally speak her mind.

“That bottle looks almost authentic.” As she probed with a comment intended to make him wince, she focused on his face.

“It is.”

She snorted. Nature hadn’t blessed her with more than sixty-two natural inches, and even with three artificial ones from her heels, she was stuck looking up at almost every man in the world. Her nemesis was probably a fraction below six feet, although his cat-burglar physique made him appear taller.

“Here. For you.” Wrapped around the stem of the crystal glass, his fingers didn’t look like her banker or venture capitalist clients’ hands. He had the strongly developed knuckles of a field worker. As he offered the wine, the play of light on the edges of the ruby liquid captivated her, the subtle glow from the wall sconces deepening the original red almost to purple-black at the meniscus. It was magic, liquid magic, and she reached for the offering.

She was too tired and on edge to enjoy this properly, too preoccupied with the challenge of this man pretending to be her boss and scared to death of six or twenty or fifty worst-case scenarios, but she was unable to resist the lure. She’d tasted this vintage twice and remembered its tantalizing aroma of plums, earthiness and licorice, a blend that defied description with concrete terms.

Before she brought the glass to her nose, she caught something else. Cinnamon? Musk? Not this wine—him. He stood close enough, and she was so tuned to him, that his scent intruded. Her nose twitched.

His eyes dropped a fraction. Not low enough to be staring at her breasts, which weren’t particularly revealed by her conservatively cut dress. Elaine was right.

“Have you caught a scent?” He’d seen the twitch.

She felt like a small animal trapped in a predator’s lair. She raised the glass and swirled too quickly.

The corner of his mouth quirked when he reconnected with her eyes. He recognized her fluster and didn’t bother to conceal that he thought he had the upper hand.

His hubris had the opposite effect and concentrated her on one goal—winning. If he thought he could toy with her, she’d play his game. Staring back, she lowered the glass until the rounded bowl hovered a few inches in front of her well-covered chest. To look at the wine would require him to gaze ten inches below her face. A slow exhale curved her body into a deliberate softness that she knew signaled surrender.

His nostrils flared very slightly, but it was enough to prod her further.

“Delicious,” she said without taking a full breath. Her voice sounded soft on the
shush
sounds and she tilted her chin down, using her face to lead his gaze to the place she held her wineglass. One deep inhale at the same time she swirled her glass, slowly this time, and she caught the widening of his eyes. Yes, he was a man who liked breasts. “It’s unforgettable.”

“I’m sure it’s hard once you’ve tasted it.” He leaned closer.

“Have you?” She licked her lips and moved the glass slightly toward him. “Tasted it?”

“Not yet.”

“Why not?” They’d drifted close enough that she could see the individual details of his eyelashes.

“I’ve been waiting.”

“For what?” Her fingers held the stem where she wouldn’t warm the liquid in the bowl with her body heat.

“For you to go first.” He easily inserted his hand above hers at the base of the goblet and lifted with the lightest pressure until she released the glass. He was playing with her too, and doing a better job, because he didn’t look as flushed as she felt. “The scent alone is intoxicating, isn’t it?”

Her senses had opened so fully that his scent wrapped around her, almost as if he’d brushed his body across hers, when the only parts that had touched had been their hands. They were standing too close to each other. That was the issue, the reason why her bones felt quivery. She needed space, air to breathe that didn’t link her to him, but stepping away would break the connection that might elicit answers.

He brought the glass to his lips. His jawline was firm and square, not a hint of softness around his chin. All of him would be that honed, she suspected. His throat worked when he swallowed, the only movement in their tableau.

Intellectually, she knew he was deliberately distracting her, just as she was trying to do to him. She cursed herself for letting his pheromones send her into the same softening craving other women at the preview had displayed. Like them, her body had become putty.

Unlike the rest, she knew he was a liar and a fraud.

She shivered. The cave was colder without other people, and as a female she was beginning to feel like the prey of a much larger hunter. Time to hit hard and leave. “You counterfeited dozens of my wines, didn’t you?”

His grin was lazy and slow, as if he couldn’t or didn’t want to abandon the tension that had been flowing between them a moment ago, even as fake as it had been. “Check the labels. Corks. Capsules.” He shrugged. The movement emphasized how perfectly fitted his clothes were, because they moved with him like skin. “Call a glass expert if you wish.” One hand gesture encompassed the wall of bottles behind him. “Taste them. I guarantee not one of these will fail whatever examination you choose.”

“You’re too smart to pour a substitute at Bodeby’s, I’ll give you that.”

“Then what will you do?” His grin made her back teeth hurt.

“I’ll prove it.” She had her records, and the director was on the other side of these walls. She could unwind his scheme in five seconds.

“Will you? With expensive tests that show the world Morrison and Mancini sold Spanish tempranillo doctored with oak essence as premier Napa cabernet?” He held out the mostly full glass. “Or will you use a handful of flimsy receipts signed by the disgruntled employee I recently sacked?”

The pinch of her fingernails digging into her palms only made her angrier. He’d ruin her business. She’d never have her down payment for a vineyard, never make her own wine, if he didn’t pull the bottles. “You can’t sell fakes.”

“I have paperwork to prove they’re genuine. Signed by Christina Mancini. Some of it signed by Geoffrey Morrison.”

“There is no Geoffrey Morrison!” She’d said it.

“I beg to differ.” One-handed, he reached inside his tuxedo jacket and retrieved a flat rectangle with the familiar wavy gold color scheme of a California license. Geoffrey R. C. Morrison. His face on the blue background. An address on First Street in Napa, above her store and café. “Here he is. Did I get any of it wrong?”

Her mouth opened, she thought, but she couldn’t speak. He’d used the shop address. What else had he done?

“Sorry to be presumptuous with your little creation, but Geoffrey needed middle initials. I chose Robert and Charles. Three names sounds more English, don’t you think.” It wasn’t a question.

“How could you?” She stumbled two steps backward until her hip bumped a shelf. “How?”

“You provided excellent credentials. The internet did the rest.”

“You’re an imposter. A liar.”

“Miss Mancini, so are you.”

“No. No, I’m not.” He couldn’t know the full truth. There was no way he could have guessed her status. No one knew except her half brother and maybe her uncle. For all his faults, and they were numerous, she couldn’t imagine Uncle Robert would have told a stranger about her citizenship. And her brother wanted to sponsor her as soon as he’d finished his Marine Corps training, so he wouldn’t have let a word slip.

“What would Elaine and Jack Johnson think about how you fooled them?”

Relief swept through her and she slumped into the shelf, the cool glass of a bottle and the corner of a sign display pressing her shoulder blade through the dress fabric. He didn’t know. Even if her business reputation took a hit, the temporary insanity that had urged her to buy a ticket to London wasn’t going to cost her the ability to return to California.

“They’re friends.”

“Men like Jack don’t like to look foolish, and being Elaine’s surrogate daughter only goes so far. No, you can’t risk telling them. Or anyone. Certainly not Bodeby’s.”

It was frigid in here now.

“I think your evidence will stay in whatever ugly American rucksack you brought with you. I think you can’t do anything but watch.” He set the glass he’d been holding in an empty niche.

The tiny ringing as the thin walls of crystal vibrated, imperceptible to anyone who wasn’t as focused as she was on the moment, acted like an alarm. She jumped to the side, away from his orbit, closer to the door.

“Fine. You win this round. But I’m not done either.”

“I wouldn’t respect you if you were.” He looked at a gold wristwatch, a brand she couldn’t recognize but that screamed money. “Shall we disband our tête-a-tête? I’ll give you a moment to blend into the crowd outside. Do try not to look so blushy.”

She put her fingertips to her cheeks. They were hot, or else her hands were frozen. Damn him. She yanked the door but remembered to moderate her steps as she glided back into the preview.

The lights felt like stage glare after the dimness of the cave, but the connoisseurs chatting throughout the room remained oblivious to the scam artist in their midst. He fit with them and told them what they wanted to hear, exactly the way men like him pulled their schemes. Critics might accuse her of the same tactics, but she knew that creating a fake person wasn’t as bad as creating fake wines and selling them. The distinction seemed fundamental.

A fringe benefit of being small and wearing even smaller jewelry was that she could pass through the crowd as invisibly as a waiter, because if someone stopped her to talk, she didn’t know if she could be civil. By now, Elaine should be finished in the loo or the WC or whatever the English called it, and Christina could safely hide there to plan her next step.

Although intellectually she believed her wrong was minor compared to passing counterfeit wines, the imposter was right about one thing. She wouldn’t denounce him. The super-wealthy didn’t like to confront any gullibility. If she wasn’t extremely discreet, her own dreams would circle the drain as surely as the junk in the fake bottles.

But no way in hell would that man con Christina Alvarez.

* * *

“Miss? Miss?”

The hand and voice were gentle, but she didn’t want to wake up. Too tired. Wasn’t it Sunday? The café didn’t open until brunch. “Leave me alone.” She tried to roll over but she wasn’t lying down.

“Miss? The party’s over.”

Party. Over. Holy crap, she’d fallen asleep and her watch said one o’clock. London time? Yes, she’d reset it when the plane landed, so this must be one a.m. and she was fucked. She uncurled from the floral print chair, realizing she didn’t have a hotel room and probably wouldn’t be able to retrieve her luggage or her trench coat. The checker would be long gone. To a bed.