Honest Illusions

  Luke paused to distract himself and admired a Corot painting. “Exquisite,” he said when Miranda looked questioningly over her shoulder.

  “You into paintings?” She pouted a little as she turned back to his side to study it with him.

  “Yes, I’m quite an admirer of art. Corot, with his dreamy style, is a favorite of mine.”

  “Corot, right.” She didn’t give a damn about the style, but she knew the value of the painting to the last cent. “I can never figure out why people want to paint trees and bushes.”

  Luke smiled again. “Perhaps to make people wonder who or what is behind them.”

  She laughed at that. “That’s good, Charles, very good. I keep a card file in the kitchen. Why don’t you join me for something cold while I find you your landscaper?”

  “It would be a pleasure.”

  The kitchen carried through the soft, female charm of the rest of the house he’d seen. Potted African violets sat in sunbeams on mauve and ivory tiled counters. The appliances were streamlined and unobtrusive. A round glass table with a quartet of padded ice-cream-parlor chairs stood in the center of the room on a pale rose rug. Incongruously, the hard-edged pulse of Eddie Van Halen’s screaming guitar spouted through the kitchen speakers.

  “I was working out when you knocked.” Miranda moved to the refrigerator for a pitcher of lemonade. “I like to keep in shape, you know?” She set the pitcher down and skimmed her hands over her hips. “That kind of music makes me sweat.”

  Luke rolled his tongue inside his mouth to keep it from hanging out and answered as Holderman would. “I’m sure it’s stimulating.”

  “You bet.” She chuckled to herself as she took out two glasses and poured. “Sit down, Charles. I’ll find that card for you.”

  She set the glasses on the table with a quick chink of glass to glass, then brushed lightly against him as she walked over to a drawer. Her musky scent went straight to his grateful loins. Loins, he thought now, he hadn’t been able to put to good use since he’d passed out courtesy of Jack Daniel’s on top of Roxanne.

  Down boy, he thought and straightened the knot of his tie before reaching for his drink.

  “Beautiful day,” he said conversationally as she rummaged through the drawer. “How fortunate that you can be home to enjoy it.”

  “Oh, my time’s pretty much my own. I own a little boutique in Georgetown. Keeps the wolf from the door, you might say, but I have a manager that handles the day-to-day nuisances.” She took a business card from the drawer and stood flipping the end against her palm. “Are you married, Charles?”

  “No. Divorced.”

  “Me too.” She smiled, pleased. “I discovered I like having the house, and my life, to myself. Just how long will you be in the area?”

  “Oh, only a day or two longer, I’m afraid. Whether or not my employer purchases property here, my business will be completed.”

  “Then it’s back to . . .”

  “Boston.”

  “Hmm.” That was good. In fact, it was perfect. If he’d been staying longer, she would have dismissed him with the drink and the landscaper’s card. As it was, he was the answer to a long and frustrating two weeks. Every so often—every so discreetly often—Miranda liked to change partners and dance.

  She didn’t know him, and neither did the senator. A quick, anonymous fuck would do a lot more for her state of mind than an hour on the damn Nautilus.

  “Well . . .” She slid her hand down to rub it lightly over her crotch. “You could say you’ll be—in and out.”

  Luke set down his glass before it slid out of his hand. “In a manner of speaking.”

  “Since you’re here now.” Watching him, she slipped the business card down into the triangle of her spandex bikini. “Why don’t you take what you need.”

  Luke debated for nearly a heartbeat. It wasn’t going precisely the way he’d imagined. But, as Max was wont to say, an ounce of spontaneity was worth a pound of planning. “Why don’t I?” He rose and, moving much faster than she’d given him credit for, hooked a finger under the slanted line of spandex. She was hot and wet as a geyser.

  Even as she arched back in shock, the first lusty cry tumbling from her lips, he’d dragged the material down. In two quick moves, he’d freed himself and plunged violently into her. The first orgasm took her by surprise. Damned if he’d looked that clever.

  “Oh, Christ!” Her eyes popped wide with pleasure. Then his hands had cupped her hips and had lifted her up in surprisingly strong arms so that her legs were wrapped around his waist. She managed a few gargled gasps and held on for the ride of her life.

  He watched her. His blood was pumping hot and fast, his body was steeped in the velvet lightning that was sex. But his mind—that was clear enough so that he could see the faint lines around her eyes, the quick darts of her tongue. He knew the dogs had scrambled in, nervous and curious at the sounds their mistress made. They were crouched under the glass table, yapping.

  Van Halen was wailing on the speakers. Luke set his rhythm to theirs, down and dirty. He could count her climaxes, and saw that the third he gave her left her dazed and limp. It was his pleasure to gift her with another before he succumbed to his own. But even as he reached flash point, he had enough control to keep her from rapping her head back against the white oak cabinet door—and enough to prevent her from snatching at his hair and dislodging the wig.

  “Sweet God.” Miranda would have slid bonelessly to the floor if he hadn’t held her up with that easy, eerie strength. “Who’d have thought you had all that under that Brooks Brothers suit?”

  “Only my tailor.” A bit belatedly, he tilted her head back for a kiss.

  “When did you say you had to leave?”

  “Tomorrow night, actually. But I have some time today.” And he might as well use it to case the house. “Do you have a bed?”

  Miranda wound her arms around his neck. “I’ve got four of them. Where do you want to start?”

  “You look pleased with yourself,” LeClerc noted when Luke dropped his suitcases in the foyer of the house in New Orleans.

  “Got the job done. Why shouldn’t I look pleased?” Luke opened his briefcase and took out a notebook filled with notes and drawings. “The layout of her house. Two safes, one in the master bedroom, another in the living room. She’s got a Corot in the downstairs hallway and a goddamn Monet over her bed.”

  LeClerc grunted as he scanned the notes. “And just how did you discover the painting and the safe in her bedroom, mon ami?”

  “I let her fuck my brains out.” Grinning, Luke peeled off his leather jacket. “I feel so cheap.”

  “Casse pas mon cœur,” LeClerc muttered, amusement gleaming in his eye. “Next time I’ll see that Max sends me.”

  “Bonne chance, old man. An hour with that lady would have put you in traction. Sweet Christ, she had moves you wouldn’t—” He broke off when he heard a sound at the top of the stairs. Roxanne stood there, one hand gripping the banister. Her face was blank, coldly so, but for two flags of color that could have been embarrassment or fury and rode high on her cheeks. Without a word, she turned and disappeared. He heard the echo of her door slamming.

  Now he did feel cheap, and dirty. He would have rejoiced to strangle her for it. “Why the fuck didn’t you tell me she was here?”

  “You didn’t ask,” LeClerc said simply. “Allons. Max is in the workroom. He’ll want to hear what you found out.”

  Upstairs, Roxanne lay prone on her bed, fighting back a horrible urge to hurl breakables. She wouldn’t give him the satisfaction. She didn’t need him, didn’t want him. Didn’t care. If he wanted to spend his time screwing overendowed tarts, it was strictly his business.

  Oh, but damn him to a fiery hell for enjoying it.

  There were a dozen—well, at least a half dozen—men who would be more than happy to relieve her of the burden of her virginity. Maybe it was time to pick one out.

  She could brag, too, after all. She could f
launt her sexual exploits under his nose until he choked on them.

  No, she’d be damned if she’d make a decision like that out of pique.

  And she’d be double damned, she decided, sitting up, if she’d wait in the wings this time while the men had all the fun. When they moved on the house in Potomac, she was going to be right there with them.

  Come hell or high water.

  “I’m fully prepared, Daddy.” Roxanne transferred a neatly folded blouse from her suitcase to a drawer in her room at the Washington Ritz. “And I’ve kept my part of the bargain.” She arranged lingerie tidily in the drawer above. “I’ve completed my first year at Tulane, with a three point five grade average. I fully intend to do the same when classes start back in the fall.”

  “I appreciate that, Roxanne.” Max stood at the window. Behind him, the Washington summer baked the pavements and rose again in oily waves. “But this job has been months in the planning. It’s wiser for you to make your debut, as it were, with something smaller.”

  “I prefer starting at the top.” With the careless precision of the innately tidy, she began to hang dresses and cocktail wear in the closet. “I’m not a novice, and you know it. I’ve been a part of this aspect of your life—behind the scenes, unfortunately—since I was a child. I can pick a lock as well, and often quicker than LeClerc.” Conscientiously, she shook a fold out of a silk skirt. “I know a great deal about engines and mechanics thanks to Mouse.” After closing the closet doors, she shot her father a bland look. “I know more about computers than any of you. You know yourself that kind of skill is invaluable.”

  “And I’ve appreciated your help in the early stages of this job. However—”

  “There’s no however, Daddy. It’s time.”

  “There are physical aspects as well as mental,” he began.

  “Do you think I’ve been working out five hours a week for the last year for my health?” she tossed back. They’d reached a crossroads. Roxanne chose her path and planted her fists on her hips. “Are you standing in my way because you’re having fatherly qualms about leading me down a dishonest path?”

  “Certainly not.” He looked shocked, then affronted. “I happen to consider what I do an ancient and valuable art. Thievery is a time-honored profession, my girl. Not to be confused with these hooligans who mug people on the street, or bloodthirsty klutzes who burst into banks, guns blazing. We’re discriminating. We’re romantic.” His voice rose in passion. “We’re artists.”

  “Well, then.” She crossed over to kiss his cheek. “When do we start?”

  He stared down into her smiling, smug face and began to laugh. “You’re a credit to me, Roxanne.”

  “I know, Max.” She kissed him again. “I know.”

  15

  The Kennedy Center lent itself to large-scale illusions, as did the network television cameras that were filming the event for a special to be aired in the fall. Max had staged the one-hundred-and-two-minute show like a three-act play, with full orchestra, complex lighting cues and elaborate costumes.

  It began with Max alone on a darkened stage, caught in the moonlike beam of a single spotlight. He was draped in a velvet cloak of midnight blue that was threaded with shimmering silver. In one hand he held a wand, also silver, that glinted in the light. In the other he cupped a ball of crystal.

  So Merlin might have looked as he plotted for the birth of a king.

  Sorcery was his theme, and he played the mystic necromancer with dignity and drama. He lifted the ball onto the crown of his fingertips. It pulsed with lights as he spoke to the audience of spells and dragons, alchemy and witchcraft. While they watched, already snagged by the theatrics, the ball began to float—along the folds of the velvet cloak, above the tip of the magic wand, spinning high above his head at a shouted incantation. All the while it pulsed with those inner lights, flickering scarlet and sapphire, amber and emerald onto his uplifted face. The audience gasped as the ball plummeted toward the stage, then applauded when it stopped, inches before destruction, to rotate in a widening circle, rising, rising toward Max’s outstretched hands. Once more he held it poised on his fingertips. He tapped it once with the shimmering wand and tossed it high. The ball became a shower of silver that rained down on the stage before it went black.

  When the lights came up again, seconds later, it was Roxanne who stood center stage. She was all in glimmering silver. Stars glittered in her hair, along the arms the column of sequins left bare. She stood straight as a sword, her arms crossed over her breasts, her eyes closed. When the orchestra began to play a movement from Beethoven’s Sixth Symphony, she swayed. Her eyes opened.

  She spoke of spells cast and love lost, of witchery gone wrong. As she uncrossed her arms, lifted them high, sparks flew from her fingertips. Her hair, a flame of curls nearly to her shoulders, began to wave in an unseen wind. The spotlight widened to show a small table beside her, on it a bell, a book and an unlit candle. Cupping her palms, she made fire in them, flames rising and ebbing as if breathing. As she passed her hands over the candle, the flames guttered in her palms and spurted from the wick in a shimmer of gold.

  A flick of her wrist, and the pages of the book began to turn, slowly, then faster, faster, until it was a whirl. The bell rose from the table between her outstretched palms. As she swayed her hands, it tolled. Suddenly, beneath the table where there had been only space three candles burned brightly. Their fire licked up and up until the table itself was aflame with Roxanne standing behind it, her face washed in its light and shadows. She threw her arms out and there was nothing left but smoke. At the same instant another spotlight shot on. Luke was there, upstage left.

  He wore sleek black trimmed in glistening gold. Lily’s clever makeup had accented his cheekbones, arched his brows. Nearly as long as hers, his raven hair flowed free. He looked to Roxanne like a cross between a satyr and a pirate. Her traitorous heart gave one thump before she quashed the flicker of need.

  She faced him across the stage with smoke twining between them. Her stance was a challenge, head thrown back, one arm up, the other held out to the side. A streak of light shot from her fingertips toward him. He lifted a hand, seemed to catch it. The audience erupted with applause as the duel continued. The combatants moved closer together, whirling smoke, hurling fire as the stage lights came up rose and gold, simulating sunrise.

  Roxanne threw her arm over her eyes, as if to shield herself. Then her arms fell limply, her head drooped. The silver gown sparkled, hissing with light while she swayed, as if her body were attached by strings to Luke’s hands. He circled her, passing those hands around her, inches from touching. He passed his spread hand in front of her eyes, indicating trance, then slowly, slowly gestured her back, farther back. Her feet lifted from the stage. Her back stayed straight as a spear as he floated her up until she lay on nothing more than wisps of blue smoke.

  He whirled once, and when he faced the stage again he held a slim silver ring. Graceful as a dancer, he moved from her feet to her head, sliding her body through the circle. Unrehearsed, he leaned forward, as if to kiss her. He felt her body stiffen as his lips halted a breath away.

  “Don’t blow it, Rox,” he whispered, then whipped off his cape, tossed it over her. It held for a moment before the form beneath it seemed to melt away. When the cape fluttered to the floor, Luke held a white swan cradled in his arms.

  There was a crash of thunder from backstage. Luke bent for his cape, praying the damn swan wouldn’t take a nick out of him this time. He crouched, swirling the cape over his head. And vanished.

  “I didn’t care for the ad-lib,” Roxanne told Luke the minute she caught up with him.

  “No?” He handed off the swan to Mouse and smiled at her. “I thought it was a nice touch. How about you, Mouse?”

  Mouse stroked the swan—he was the only one who could without endangering fingers. “Well . . . I guess. Gotta give Myrtle her snack.”

  “See.” Luke gestured after Mouse’s retreating back. “Loved
it.”

  “Try it again and I’ll do a little ad-libbing myself.” She stabbed a finger into his shirt. “You’ll end up with a bloody lip.”

  He caught her wrist before she could storm away. From the sound of the applause he knew that Max and Lily were keeping the momentum high. His own emotions were a rising riot. He wasn’t sure he’d ever felt better in his life.

  “Listen, Rox, what we do onstage is an act. A job. Just like what we’re going to do tomorrow night in Potomac.” Some inner demon had him shifting his body, effectively sandwiching her between it and the wall. “Nothing personal.”

  The blood was humming in her head, but she dredged up a friendly smile. “Maybe you’re right.”

  He could smell her—perfume, greasepaint, the slight muskiness of stage sweat. “Of course I’m right. It’s just a matter of—” His breath wolfed out as she rammed an elbow into his gut. She slipped easily away and smiled with a lot more sincerity.

  “Nothing personal,” she said sweetly. She stepped inside her dressing room, shut—and locked—the door. It was time for a costume change.

  The next time she had to deal with him they were nearly nose to nose with only a thin sheet of plywood between them. They were locked in a trick box and had only seconds before transmutation.

  “Pull that again, babe,” Luke hissed even as they were flipping positions. “I swear I’ll hit you back.”

  “Oh! I’m shaking.” Roxanne sprang out of the box in Luke’s place to thunderous applause.

  They took their bows graciously after the finale. Luke pinched