Chapter One It had taken Max Fortune nearly a month to locate Jason Curzon's mistress. Now that he had found her, he didn't know what to make of her. Cleopatra Robbins was definitely not the sort of woman he had been expecting to find.
Max stood quietly near the roaring fire and surveyed the chaos that filled the cozy lobby of the Robbins' Nest Inn. In spite of her evocative first name, Ms. Robbins certainly did not look like a sultry charmer who made her living by seducing wealthy men old enough to be her grandfather.
She looked exactly like what she purported to be: a cheerfully harried innkeeper trying to deal with a flood of new arrivals.
Max glanced at the series of insipid seascapes hanging on the walls as he listened to the hubbub going on around him. He smiled with faint derision. It was obvious that Cleopatra Robbins was not only not a typical seductress, she was not much of a connoisseur of art. Anyone who would hang those bland views of storm-tossed seas would be incapable of appreciating the five Amos Luttrell paintings that had been left in her care.
It was just as well she preferred the seascapes, because Max intended to take the Luttrells from her. They belonged to him. They constituted his inheritance from Jason Curzon, and Max had every intention of claiming them.
He was prepared to use whatever tactics were necessary to recover the legacy. Having to fight for what was his would be nothing new for Max. Since the age of six, he had done battle for everything he had ever wanted in life. Sometimes he lost, but more often he won.
Max rested both hands on the intricately carved hawk that formed the grip of his cane. With an effort of will that was second nature to him, he ignored the persistent ache in his leg. The old wound was acting up again tonight, bringing back memories he had no intention of indulging.
He concentrated instead on Cleopatra Robbins as she bustled about behind the front desk.
Max remembered that Jason had called her Cleo. The nickname suited her much better than the more dramatic Cleopatra.
Trust Jason to choose a mistress who did not fit the stereotype. But, then, Jason had always had a gift for looking beneath the surface. He'd had the discerning eye of an intuitive collector, a man who trusted his own instincts rather than the opinion of others. The stunning array of paintings he had bequeathed to his favorite art museum in Seattle bore testimony to his unerring taste. But the five Amos Luttrells had formed the centerpiece of his collection.
Curzon had owned close to two hundred paintings at the time of his death. As far as Max knew, Cleopatra Robbins was the only mistress Jason had ever collected.
An unexpected sense of wrongness rippled through Max as he tried to envision the woman behind the desk in bed with Jason Curzon. Jason was the closest thing Max had ever had to a father. He told himself he should have been glad that the old man had had some feminine companionship during the last year and a half of his life. God knew, Jason had had many lonely years after the death of his wife.
But for some reason Max didn't like the idea that the female providing that companionship had been Cleo Robbins.
Max concluded that she was somewhere in her late twenties, perhaps twenty-seven or twenty-eight. He studied her precariously listing topknot of thick, dark, auburn hair and found himself wondering what it would look like tumbled down around her shoulders. There was no particular style to the design of the topknot. The rich mass of hair had obviously been twisted into position in a hurry, anchored with a clip, and left to flounder under its own weight.
Instead of the exotic kohl her namesake might have used to outline her eyes, Cleo Robbins wore a pair of round, gold-framed glasses. Max realized that in an odd way they served the same purpose as elaborate makeup, concealing the real expression in her wide, hazel green eyes.
The lady he had been hunting for the past month looked out at the world with the professionally friendly gaze of a successful innkeeper, but he sensed something deeper and more compelling about her.
Max had an inexplicable urge to try something that he knew from experience rarely worked. He looked into Cleo Robbins the way he looked into a painting.
To his surprise, the commotion and noise around him receded, just as it did when he was transfixed by a work of art. The world and his focus narrowed to include only Cleo Robbins. He felt the familiar stirring deep inside himself almost immediately. It made him uneasy. He was accustomed to feeling this sense of fascination and longing only when he was in the presence of the things he collected.
Jason had told Max that the talent could be applied to people as well as art and books. But Max had discovered the hard way that the ability to see beneath the surface had its limits when it came to dealing with other human beings. People were more complex than art, and all too often they had an ability to hide the deeper truths about themselves.
Nevertheless, there was no denying the kick-in-the-gut feeling he was getting now as he studied Cleo with what Jason had called his inner eye.
"Just one moment, Mr. Partridge. I'll have someone take your luggage up to your room." Cleo gave the irritable-looking Mr. Partridge a spectacular smile as she banged the silver bell on the desk.
"About time," Partridge muttered. "Took me nearly three hours to get here from Seattle. Don't know why in hell the company had to pick an inn way out here on the coast for this damn fool motivational seminar. Could have held it at one of the big hotels in the city. "
"I'm sure you'll find that at this time of year the Washington coast provides a wonderful setting for an educational retreat." Cleo glanced anxiously toward the staircase. "I'm afraid my bellhop is busy at the moment. I'll give you your key, and you can go on up to your room. I'll have the luggage brought up to you later, if you don't mind."
"Forget it. I'll carry it myself." Partridge snatched up the suitcase at his feet. "Can I at least get a drink somewhere around here?"
"An excellent selection of Northwest wines and beers is available in the lounge, Mr. Partridge."
"Damn. What I really need is a martini." Partridge snatched up his key and stalked toward the staircase. The next three people in line behind him surged forward in a wave.
Max watched as Cleo braced herself for the onslaught. He saw her glance again at the stairs. When the missing bellhop did not materialize there, she turned back to face the wave with a warm smile of welcome.
The lobby door slammed open with a crash. Max saw lightning crackle across the night sky. Rain, wind, and two more drenched inn patrons blew into the hall. They joined the crowd milling around in front of the hearth.
"Lucky Ducky go swimming."
Startled by the high, squeaky voice that came out of nowhere, Max looked down. A small boy with a head full of blond curls looked up at him. He was dressed in a miniature pair of jeans and a striped shirt.
He appeared to be no more than five years old, and he had a thumb stuck in his mouth.
"I beg your pardon?" Max could not recall the last time he had conversed with a child.
The small boy yanked his thumb out of his mouth long enough to repeat his statement. "Lucky Ducky go swimming." Jamming his thumb back into his mouth, he gave Max an expectant look.
"I see." Max sought for a suitable response. "It's a cold night for swimming, isn't it?"
"Uncle Jason said ducks can swim anytime, anywhere."
Max's hands tightened around the hawk-headed grip of the cane. "Uncle Jason?"
"Uncle Jason's gone," the child confided with a wistful expression. "Cleo says he's in heaven."
"Jason Curzon in heaven?" Max contemplated that. "Well, anything's possible, I suppose."
"Did you know Uncle Jason?"
"Yes."
The boy took his thumb out of his mouth again and gave Max a bright, toothless smile. "My name is Sammy Gordon. Did you know my daddy, too?"
"I don't think so." A staggering thought occurred to Max. "Not unless your daddy was Uncle Jason?"
"No, no, no," the child said, clearly impatient. "My daddy isn't in heaven like Uncle Jason. My daddy's lost."
Max realized he was beginning to lose the thread of the conversation. "Lost?"
Sammy nodded quickly. "I heard Mommy tell Cleo that he had to go find himseIf."
"I see."
"He never did, I guess."
Max did not know what to say to that. He glanced across the crowded room and saw a pretty woman with short, honey-blond hair emerge from the office behind the front desk. She went to give Cleo a hand.
"That's my mommy," Sammy volunteered.
"What's her name?"
"Sylvia Gordon." Sammy eyed Max's cane with deep interest. "Why do you have to lean on that? Did you hurt yourself?"
"Yes."
"Will you be all better soon?"
"I hurt myself a long time ago," Max said. "This is as good as I'm going to get."
"Oh." Sammy was intrigued.
"Sammy?" Cleo came around from behind the desk. "Where are you?"
Max's head came up swiftly. Jason's mistress had a rich honey-and-cream sort of voice, perfectly suited to a Cleopatra. Another jolt of awareness went through him. He could almost hear that warm, sensual voice in bed.
"Here I am, Cleo." Sammy waved a wet thumb at her.
Max's eye was caught by a glimpse of silver as Cleo emerged from the crowd. He glanced down and frowned when he saw that Jason's mistress favored shiny, silver-toned sneakers with glittering, metallic laces. The rest of her attire was not nearly as tasteless, but it wasn't particularly inspiring, either. It consisted of a yellow oxford cloth buttondown shirt and a pair of faded jeans.
"I wondered where you were, Sammy." Cleo smiled at the boy, and then her eyes met Max's.
He saw the startled expression that appeared in her soft hazel gaze. For a few seconds her gold-framed glasses afforded her no protection at all. In that brief moment she was as open to him as a work of art, and he knew that she was as aware of him as he was...
