She lifted her chin. “And you know that because…?”
“You kept your distance from that day we met in your father’s kitchen—despite the obvious attraction between us. I thought it was because of Evan. Then suddenly two nights ago, out of the blue, you ask me to kiss you.”
The way her eyes had darkened and the frantic way her pulse had begun to beat at her throat distracted him. He could kiss her again right now. He could taste her again—have her. Need sharpened until it was an ache, and once more he had to clamp down hard on his control.
“I didn’t have to be a rocket scientist to put it together. You kept me busy while someone else got out of the suite with the Monet.”
She winced slightly, and then swallowed hard. “Yes. Okay. Maybe I did kiss you to distract you. But it’s not what you think. At least, it’s not exactly what you think. It’s…it’s complicated.”
“Good,” he said. “Because I was figuring it was pretty simple. That you’d helped your ex-lover Evan Atwell steal his own painting.”
4
Friday, February 13—2:00 p.m.
PEPPER JUMPED UP from the rock. “You think that I helped Evan steal the painting? That’s not true. Evan’s not involved in this, and I’ve already told you he was never my lover.”
“You dated him exclusively for three months. You’re friends enough with him to continue seeing him even though you claim you’ve broken things off.” Out of simple curiosity, he asked, “Why didn’t you become lovers?”
A hint of color rose in her cheeks. “There was no chemistry. I liked him. He liked me. We had a lot in common. But that was it.”
“You could have figured that out on the first date. Why did you go out again?”
“It seemed to please my father that I was dating Evan.”
Of course, it would, Cole thought. Peter Rossi was planning a run for mayor in the next election, and the Atwells were a very well-connected family in San Francisco.
“Luke and Matt thought it was terrific. So did Evan’s mother. We just sort of got carried along on the waves of approval.”
“Ah.” Cole thought he understood. If Pepper had married Evan, then that would have solved the “Pepper Problem” for Luke and Matt.
She met his eyes. “I know Evan. He would never steal the Monet.”
Cole stared at her as feelings streamed through him: admiration for her loyalty and jealousy of the man who inspired it. She’d denied that Evan was her lover, but that didn’t seem to matter. Her relationship with Evan still rankled him. Pepper Rossi had been able to push emotional buttons in him from the moment that Luke had shown him that photo six months ago. Luke had been so proud, bragging that his sister had agreed to move to San Francisco.
Oh, Cole had been attracted to women on first sight before. But never to a photo. One look at Pepper and he’d decided to take Luke and Matt up on the standing job offer that had been on the table since they’d thought of opening their office. The warning bells had jangled then, and they’d reached the pitch and volume of a five-alarm fire alert that first Sunday in Peter Rossi’s kitchen.
With a sigh, Pepper sat back down on the rock beside him. “I have to admit it looks bad. But there has to be some explanation.”
Right now, he wanted nothing more than to put his arm around her and tell her that everything was going to be all right. But he couldn’t—not until he found out what connection she had to the disappearance of the Monet.
“Two heads are better than one.” He opened the wicker basket he’d been carrying. “Why don’t we have something to eat and pool our information?”
He tamped down his impatience while he spread a small cloth on a nearby flat rock and opened containers of cold chicken, fruit and buttered rolls. When he’d dished up two plates, he opened the Thermos and filled two plastic glasses. Handing her one, he said, “They do a nice job here.”
She turned and looked out at the sea.
He took a sip of his drink and let her mull over her next move. Because that was what she was doing as she sipped her Island Fling. He could almost hear the wheels turning in her head.
He glanced at his watch and was surprised to see it was only a little after 2:00 p.m. Minutes seemed to slip by more slowly here on the island. Glancing back at Pepper, he studied her profile, taking in that lifted chin and the way she tightly clasped her drink. He’d interrogated reluctant people before. Instead of letting her push his buttons, he should be pushing hers.
With an inaudible sigh, he put down his cup and plucked hers out of her hand. Then he handed her one of the plates he’d filled. “You need to eat something before you have much more of that Island Fling. I don’t want you fading on me.”
When she’d taken a few bites of a chicken leg, he said, “Why did you decide to leave Philadelphia and move to San Francisco?”
She placed the chicken back down on the plate and turned to him. “You’re trying to distract me.”
He shrugged. “You don’t want to talk about the Monet—so I thought I’d widen the scope of our conversation. Luke and Matt told me about how they’d been separated from you when your parents split up years ago. I don’t have any family. If I suddenly learned that I did, and that they’d known where I was but hadn’t contacted me for most of my life, I’m not sure I would have packed up and moved across the country to join them.”
She broke off a piece of her roll. “I wasn’t going to at first.”
“What made you change your mind?”
She began to shred pieces of the roll. “I wasn’t happy in Philadelphia. I never quite got the knack of being a Pendleton. Plus, the Rossis are persistent.”
“Tell me about it,” he said and had the pleasure of seeing her lips twitch.
“My father was the worst. He kept calling, and finally, Luke and Matt came to plead their case in person.” Her mouth curved slightly as she met his eyes. “They can be persistent and persuasive.”
Cole thought of Luke and Matt, who were as different as two brothers could be—a computer genius and an ex-cop, respectively. What they had in common was incredible charisma, no doubt inherited from their father, Peter. “I always thought they could sell the Brooklyn Bridge again if they put their minds to it.”
She met his eyes then. “Why did you come here?”
It was the first personal question she’d asked him. A small sign of progress, he thought. What would she say if he told her the simple truth? A truth he still wasn’t comfortable with. He’d moved to San Francisco because of a photo of a woman. Instead, he told her a truth he was more comfortable with. “I wanted a change from the kind of work I was doing. Your brothers had been after me for some time to join their firm.”
She stiffened. “Yes, I suppose they were.”
“But you still haven’t answered my question. Why did you finally give in to them and leave the life you had in Philadelphia?”
“They convinced me that they wanted me.”
The sudden trace of pain in her eyes had him frowning. Did she still doubt that they wanted her? One thing he knew for certain was that her brothers loved her. Whatever mistakes their parents had made all those years ago, he was convinced that Peter and his sons wanted Pepper with them now. His first impulse was to try to set her mind at ease on that score. But then he remembered why he’d started this little interrogation. He needed information. There wasn’t a doubt in his mind that Evan Atwell was involved somehow in the theft. And she was still protecting him. He needed to subtly work the conversation around to that.
“It must have been hard knowing that you had a family who didn’t contact you all those years.”
“They could have,” she said flatly. “In fact, Irene did. Oh, I know that they thought they were keeping a promise they’d made to my mother on her deathbed. I’ve tried to understand that.”
She set her plate on the rock. Then she pulled off her wig and ran fingers through her damp dark hair until it stood up in little spikes. “I still get angry if I let myself think too much about it. At first I blamed all of them. But I especially blame my grandmother.”
“Why?” Cole asked.
She whirled to face him. “Because once my mother became ill, my grandmother was the one who orchestrated everything. She even admitted to it. More than that, she was proud of herself.” She pushed up from the rock and began to pace back and forth in the ankle-deep water. A waiting seagull flew out of her way.
“What exactly did she do?” he asked.
“My parents’ marriage was always volatile. Peter says that he and my mother had split before. He claims that they loved each other very much, but my mother could never quite get used to the life of a cop’s wife. They’d have these arguments, then my mother would return to Philadelphia for a while and eventually they’d reconcile and she’d move back to San Francisco. The last time my mother left Luke and Matt with Peter because they were in school by then. She took me with her because I was a baby. Then she got ill. Cancer.”