Cole dragged his thoughts back to her original question. It was a loaded one. “I imagine he had his reasons.”
“Hmph.” She fisted her hands on her hips. “Well, they didn’t convince Irene. She thinks he’s just trying to be all macho and protect her, so she decided to do something to prove that she’s bad enough for him.”
Cole’s eyes narrowed as the light finally dawned. “Your aunt Irene stole the Monet?”
“She just borrowed it. She says he’ll give it back once he knows it’s stolen. Then I’ll take it back to San Francisco.”
Cole had a strong urge to shake his head to clear it. This was one scenario he hadn’t foreseen. Oh, he’d met Irene at the Rossi Sunday dinners, and he’d been impressed with her. She’d created and sold a highly entertaining local TV show in which she demonstrated how vulnerable homeowners were to theft by demonstrating how easily their homes could be burglarized. Irene Rossi could easily have stolen the Monet. “Where is the painting?”
Pepper’s brow wrinkled. “I’m not quite sure. I lost her in the Miami airport, and she missed the connecting flight here. Gari says there isn’t another one until tomorrow. But perhaps she chartered a flight the way you did. What do you think?”
“You’re sure she just didn’t take off with it?”
“No. Of course she didn’t. She plans on giving it back as soon as she makes her point to Butch. She’s going to present it to him tomorrow on Valentine’s Day.”
Cole studied her for a moment. Up until this moment, he hadn’t thought that Pepper Rossi was capable of lying. Was he wrong about that? “Let me get this straight. You helped your aunt steal the Monet so that she could prove to her old lover that she wasn’t too good for him?”
Pepper considered his summary for a minute, then nodded. “In a nutshell, that’s it. Except that I didn’t know that I was helping her until she broke into the bedroom of the Atwells’ suite. I knew that she was planning on doing something drastic, but not that she’d set her sights on the Monet. That thought only occurred to me when she showed up at the preview party. That’s when I began to get this queasy feeling in my stomach that something bad was going to happen. When I went into the bedroom, she was there. I tried to talk her out of it.”
“You could have given me a chance with her.”
“I—” She raised her hands and dropped them. “I know, but Butch is being unreasonable. And Irene is going to give the painting back. Besides, I followed her just to make sure that Butch doesn’t decide to return to his life of crime and keep it.”
“And you kissed me in the Atwells’ hotel room to distract me.”
“Yes.” She bit her lower lip, then added. “It was the only thing I could think of to do. I knew you’d stop her if I didn’t do something. Plus…” she drew in a breath and let it out “…to be perfectly honest, I did want to kiss you. I know it doesn’t make any sense, but I’d been thinking of kissing you for a while. Even though I knew it would be a mistake. Just like making love was a mistake.”
For a moment Cole said nothing as a flood of feelings washed through him. They baffled him. Pepper Rossi baffled him. The only thing that he was pretty sure of was that she wasn’t lying to him. There was a deep-down streak of honesty in her; it was one of the things that attracted him to her. And in spite of the fact that she was up to her neck in the theft of a priceless painting, he was determined to get her out of the mess. He’d never before had this urgent need to protect a woman. Even if her brothers hadn’t asked him to help them out with the “Pepper Problem,” he would have wanted to help her out of her scrapes.
But right now, the fact that she was in a jam and he had to figure out a way to fix it—all that had become secondary. He couldn’t seem to stop thinking about making love to her again. Perhaps it was the island getting to him, but his gut instinct told him it was the woman.
“Well? Do we have a deal?” she asked.
“Why do you think that our making love was a mistake?”
Her brow furrowed. “For several reasons. First of all, we’re just so different. Second, at work we’re always in competition. And third, now that we’ve made love once, we’ll probably want to do it again.”
“And that would be a bad idea because…?”
“I can’t afford the distraction.” She began to tick items off on her fingers. “I have to find my aunt Irene, then I have to figure out a way to get the Monet back to San Francisco in time for the charity auction, and at the same time I have to keep my aunt from being arrested. Plus, I have to save the reputation of Rossi Investigations. All of which I had pretty much under control until Irene missed the plane from Miami. Now she won’t be here until tomorrow. Plus, I need to figure out why Evan is here.”
“So you agree that his presence on the island is suspicious?”
“Yes.”
“Had you ever seen his companion before?”
“Just on the plane. He took the last seat on my flight, the one I was praying Irene would take.”
“Do you have any idea why Evan would be meeting with Butch?”
“No. So I have a lot to figure out.” She paused to meet his eyes steadily. “I think we ought to treat the fact that we just made love as an isolated incident—something we did just to get it out of our systems.” When he said nothing, she continued, “I have a lot on my plate right now.”
Cole reached out to take the hand she’d been ticking items off on. “Yes, you do.”
They both did. He wasn’t quite sure when he’d made the decision—right then when she’d used the phrase isolated incident or back when he’d first laid eyes on her in Peter Rossi’s kitchen—but he knew that making love to Pepper Rossi was not going to be a one-time deal. He’d known it when he’d been making his plans to come to the island. He’d bided his time for six long months, and he was through with waiting. “The thing is I don’t think we’ve gotten it out of our systems.” He sure as hell hadn’t. “We’re going to make love again. We’ll be just as distracted thinking about it, so we might as well do it and enjoy ourselves.”
Pepper sighed and sat down on the rock beside him. “I figured you’d say that.”
He nearly smiled at her tone. “Maybe there’s a way to work it into our deal.”
Her eyes met his. “You’ll go along with my deal? You’ll let me handle the recovery of the Monet?”
Cole had already decided he could agree to that. After all, he’d be there if she got into too much trouble. “With one added stipulation. Since neither of us is in a position to do much about the Monet until Irene gets here, we’ll have some time to enjoy each other. To explore this out-of-control attraction we have for each other. How does that sound?”
She didn’t say anything for a moment, but Cole heard her breath catch. “You mean we’ll…”
“We’ll be lovers,” he finished. He saw her eyes darken and the pulse at her throat begin to beat frantically. He pressed a finger to it. “Are you always this responsive?”
“I don’t know, I—” She ran her tongue over her lips. “I’ve never felt this way with anyone else. I don’t understand it.”
Cole moved his finger to touch her lips. They were moist and soft. “Let’s not worry about understanding it. There’ll be time enough for that later. The only thing we have to do right now is enjoy it. Deal?”
When he took his finger away, she said, “With one more stipulation.”
He hesitated for a moment, then said, “Fair enough.”
“Whatever happens between us can only be temporary. When we get back to San Francisco, we go back to our previous relationship.”
Cole studied her. If she really believed that they could do that, he wasn’t going to try to convince her otherwise now. Not with words, and not when he could use much more persuasive means. He thought of the need she had to please her family and how she never felt like she quite measured up. The one thing he could do in the time they spent together was show her all the many ways she pleased him. “Our time on the island—no more, no less?”
“That’s the deal.”
“Accepted,” he said.
In spite of his resolve to wait until they were in a more secluded area, he leaned toward her, unable to resist taking a taste of her lips. His mouth was just touching hers when they heard laughter from behind the rocks.
“We have to find some place more private,” he murmured. “Any suggestions?”
“We could go to the bungalow.”
“Good call.” Keeping her hand in his, he scooped up the hamper and together they walked back toward the hotel.
6
Friday, February 13—3:30 p.m.
BUTCH GLANCED AT HIS watch for the fourth time in as many minutes. Then he let his gaze sweep the lobby again. The line at the concierge desk had been three to four couples deep all day. And Renie hadn’t been among them. He’d checked with Tommy himself.