“That won’t be necessary. I’ll take you.”

“No,” she said, picking up the receiver and dialing the front desk. “I appreciate your help at the gallery, but I can handle the rest of this. I can get myself back to the hotel.”

“Not just your hotel,” he said. “All the way home.”

She glanced over at him, the receiver to her ear, and he was giving her “the look,” the look men gave women who they thought needed a little help in their decision-making process.

It took an effort of will not to roll her eyes, but she managed.

“All those guys I dated from Steele Street?” she said. “They made sure I could take care of myself. Don’t worry, Mr. Killian, I can get myself home.”

For once, he looked satisfied with her answer.

“Senator Leonard, right?” he asked.

She nodded, and he smiled-like a wolf. And she noted, with all due respect, that there was nothing in that look that made her want to roll her eyes. Quite the contrary. No doubt, Skip Leonard was in for a very interesting conversation somewhere down the line.

“Yes,” she said into the phone when the clerk answered. “I need a…oh… un momento, por favor.” She handed him the phone, having used up her whole supply of Spanish. “This isn’t the Gran Chaco.”

At the Gran Chaco, the desk clerks spoke English, or at least a version of English that included limo service.

It took Killian about ten seconds to arrange her cab, before he hung up. “I’ll walk you down.”

“Thank you.” It didn’t hurt to be polite, and it didn’t matter if he put her in the cab, as long as he wasn’t going with her. “Curious, wasn’t it? The police showing up like that? I hope to God they didn’t actually shoot anybody.”

“Probably just a shakedown,” he said, opening the door for her, and when she was through, he locked it back up behind them. “They’ve got to make their lunch money somehow. I may just mosey over there, see what the damages are.”

“You mean see if there’s still a deal.” That’s what she would have done, if the deal weren’t already headed her way.

He just smiled, that slow wolfish smile, and she smiled back, a sweet and easy curve of her lips.

CHAPTER NINE

She was working him. God, was she working him. Dax knew it, and he was still taking the bait. She could melt a brick wall with that smile.

“I’m tempted to go with you,” she said, and all he wanted to say was, No, baby. This one’s not for you.

What he said instead was, “How about if I take you out to dinner the next time I’m in Denver?”

The words were no sooner out of his mouth than he realized that might not have been his wisest course-to ask her out on a date.

Yes, he thought, unbelievably, that’s exactly what you just did, boyo. You asked her out on a date when you know she’s done nothing but lie to you since you grabbed her in the Old Gallery.

He was fucking brilliant.

But she was fucking gorgeous. It was bound to go to a guy’s head.

“Denver, then,” she said, laying on another smile gee-fricking-guaranteed to slay him.

She knew it.

He knew it.

And she knew he knew it.

He had no defense, but he wasn’t getting sidetracked, not even close. He was multitasking. That was all. Guys did that sometimes, multitasked about some really important issue, like, say, the fate of the world… and sex. It was always sex, that second task, just humming away in the back of a guy’s brain.

And yes, he was well aware of the inherent contradiction of trying to get rid of a woman and get in her pants at the same time, especially, somehow, if the pants were white cotton undies.

They rounded the third-floor landing and headed down to the second. He was keeping her moving, hopefully without being obvious enough to rouse her curiosity. Curious women were dangerous women.

Unless they were naked and in your bed.

Right. He was all for curiosity in bed-or out of bed, or anywhere, actually, when a woman was naked, and if she was naked and dangerous, all the better.

More multitasking. Geezus.

His point being that he’d lied, too. That had been no shakedown at the Old Gallery. Before she’d gotten her optics out, the dust had been going up in rooster tails, the whole lot of them, police included, piling out of the building and burning rubber to get away-from what the hell what, is what he wanted to know. Ponce, his crew, and, for whatever reason, one of the cops, had been going one way, Asher the other, and that damned Jimmy Ruiz had circled back to get the Land Cruiser. The only person he hadn’t seen come out the front door had been Remy Beranger. The sick little Frenchman hadn’t been anywhere in sight.

“So when did you get interested in ancient Near Eastern artifacts?” she asked.

“A couple of years ago,” he said, giving her as good an answer as any. He took hold of her arm for the next few steps, because the carpet was lifted in places and torn in others. It was an instinctive gesture-three-inch heels, steep stairs, bad carpeting, hold on. He didn’t even think about doing it. “How about you?”

“My interest isn’t personal,” she said. “It never is, not with antiquities, and a piece like this Memphis Sphinx, a statue with no known provenance or verifiable authentication, has a good probability of being something other than what all these buyers have been told.”

“You mean it’s a fake.”

“There’s a good possibility of that, yes.” They reached the last flight of stairs, and he made sure they got down them and through the lobby as quickly as possible. He didn’t have a problem with the place, it suited his needs, but he understood why she did, and he’d noticed Marcella and Marceline over by the elevators get all but riveted to the floor by the sight of a real girl.

He didn’t blame them. Even in the great pantheon of real girls, Suzanna Royale Toussi was realer and girlier than most. Anyone who wanted to know how it was done would have been staring their eyeballs out-like Marcella and Marceline.

He hated to tell them, but it didn’t matter how hard they stared, or how hard they tried, even with a trowel and forty yards of spandex, they couldn’t get within spitting distance of the super-hot Ms. Toussi. Not on his Curve-o-Meter.

“Beranger could have the real deal,” he said, opening the hotel’s main door onto the street. The Posada Plaza didn’t have the world’s best air-conditioning system, but it was a damn sight better than the straight heat of the city. It was still a hundred and one outside, and the sidewalk was steaming.

“Yes, it’s a possibility,” she conceded.

“Do you believe in it, the Sphinx? The whole immortality thing, that it has mystical powers?”

The question seemed pretty straightforward to him, but he felt her stiffen, her body making a subtle shift from acquiescence to defense.

“No,” she said, reaching up and adjusting her sunglasses, settling them more firmly on her face, her voice coolly adamant. “Absolutely not.”

He’d hit a nerve, unintentionally, and it didn’t take him more than a moment to realize which one.

Hell. Under other circumstances, he would apologize, but he didn’t think her knowing he’d been investigating her would improve the situation, and this most certainly wasn’t the time to be bringing up the subject of her dead daughter.

He’d given her loss a lot of thought over the last few months, remembering how she’d looked that night in the gallery, so gorgeous it hurt, and absolutely untouchable, like she did now. More than once, he’d wished he could reach out over the miles and offer her some comfort, usually about the second glass of Scotch, sure, but the intent had been pure. She was cool, all right, firmly in control, and he’d bet that was exactly the way she needed to keep things.

Well, she had a lot better chance of doing that if she got out of Ciudad del Este inmediatamente.