He dried the last of the dishes. Tracy closed the door to the family room and opened a box of chocolates.
“Want one?”
“No thanks. Tracy, listen. There’s been somethin’ I’ve been meaning to say for a while now.”
Tracy noticed that Blake’s hands were shaking. He was always so calm. She began to feel nervous herself.
“You’re not sick, are you?”
“Sick?” Blake frowned. “No. I’m not sick. I’m . . . well, fact of the matter is . . . I’m in love with you.”
Tracy stared back at him with naked astonishment.
“I’d like you to consider becoming my wife.”
For a long time, Tracy said nothing. Once she’d had time to think about it, she came back with the impressively articulate: “I . . . wow.”
“Now, I know I’m older. Too old for you, really,” Blake continued in his quiet, comforting, gentle manner. “But I reckon we get along pretty well up here. And I love the boy like he’s my own.”
“I know you do,” Tracy said. “Nicky loves you too. And so do I.”
Blake’s heart soared.
“But I can’t be your wife, Blake.”
The old cowboy took two deep breaths. “Is there someone else, Tracy?”
She hesitated. “Not in the way you mean. But in my heart, yes. There is.”
“Is it Nick’s father?”
Tracy felt utterly miserable in that moment. Because the answer to Blake Carter’s question, the answer she could never admit to, was yes.
She’d told Jean Rizzo that she needed to leave New York to get back to her son, and that was true as far as it went. But there was another need, equally strong, another force propelling her to take the first plane out of the city and never look back. Being in New York, talking to Elizabeth, reading about the theft of the Byzantine coins, Tracy was forced to face the truth. She was still in love with Jeff Stevens. She’d never stopped loving Jeff, and never would stop. She hated herself for it, and she cried and screamed and railed at the heavens. But the feelings were still there, as deep and true as they had been the day she married him in that tiny Brazilian chapel, years ago.
Blake saw the torment in her eyes. His compassion trumped his disappointment. He took Tracy’s hand.
“Nick’s father isn’t dead, is he?”
“No.”
“You can talk to me, you know. I know you aren’t who you claim to be. I know you’ve got some kind of past. I’m not stupid, Tracy.”
“I never thought you were,” Tracy said vehemently.
“It’s that Rizzo character, isn’t it?” There was a bitterness to Blake’s voice that Tracy had never heard before. “He’s the one that’s sucked you back in. To whatever it was you came here to forget.”
“Jean Rizzo’s a good man,” Tracy said. “It may not seem that way. But he is. He’s doing what he has to do.”
“And what about you?” said Blake. “What do you have to do? For God’s sake, Tracy, what hold does that man have over you?”
Tracy said nothing. A heavy silence hung in the air between them.
When Blake next spoke he’d regained his composure. Looking Tracy steadily in the eye, he said, “I don’t need to know who you were before, Tracy. Not if you don’t want to tell me. I’m in love with who you are now. I’m in love with Tracy Schmidt. I want Tracy Schmidt back.”
“So do I.” Tracy started to cry. Hot tears rolled down her cheeks and splashed onto the chocolate box. “But it isn’t that simple, Blake.”
“Isn’t it? Marry me, Tracy. Choose this life, our life, not your old one. You’re happy here in the mountains with Nicholas and me.”
Tracy thought, He’s right. I am happy here. At least I was.
Will I ever be happy again?
“Don’t say no,” said Blake. “Think on it awhile. Think about what you want the rest of your life to look like. Yours and the boy’s.”
Blake left. The movie finished and Nicholas went to bed.
Tracy followed suit, but she couldn’t sleep.
She thought about Jeff Stevens and Daniel Cooper and Jean Rizzo and Blake Carter. The four of them weaved in and out of her consciousness like dancers around a maypole, their ribbons becoming tangled and entwined as the music played on and on and on.
CHAPTER 20
PROFESSOR DOMINGO MUÑOZ TURNED the Byzantine coin over in his hand. The gold gleamed as if it had been minted yesterday. The engraver’s artistry was exquisite.
“Beautiful.” Domingo smiled at Jeff Stevens. “Truly beautiful. I can’t thank you enough.”
“Please. It was a labor of love. Those coins are where they were always meant to be.” Jeff raised a glass of vintage Tempranillo in salute to the elderly professor. “Not that the half a million dollars didn’t come in handy,” he added with a grin.
“Well, you earned it, my boy.”
It was March, three full months since Jeff had left New York with the Heraclian Dynasty coins safely Bubble Wrapped in his luggage. He’d spent a month in England, organizing his affairs and spending time with Gunther Hartog, who was close to death. Gunther’s physical deterioration was hard to watch, but it was the unraveling of his once-razor-sharp mind that Jeff found the most heartbreaking. He talked a lot about Tracy. In particular, he had one rambling fantasy about Tracy living in the mountains somewhere and working with the FBI. Jeff humored him, nodding and smiling in all the right places.
“You should find her, you know,” Gunther would mumble during his bouts of lucidity. “She always loved you.”
Each word was like a dagger in Jeff’s heart. He changed the subject as often as he could. Gunther still loved hearing about his capers and exploits. He was delighted by Jeff’s tales of New York, and stealing the Russian oligarch’s priceless coin collection while the Winter Ball was in full swing.
“Do tell me more about bedding the vile Svetlana. How long did it take her to fall for Randy Bruckmeyer’s charms? You know I’ve always been keen on the Texan. One of your better characters, if you don’t mind my saying so.”
Through Gunther’s eyes, everything seemed like fun, like a great game that they were all caught up in. Jeff thought, It used to be like that for me. Not anymore.
He decided not to tell Gunther about his encounter with Elizabeth Kennedy. It would only get the old man back onto Tracy again, and Jeff couldn’t stand that.
Bizarrely, Elizabeth had discovered Jeff was in town and had come to see him at his hotel, supposedly to bury the hatchet after all these years. In fact she had some splashy jewel theft planned that she wanted to cut him in on. It was odd meeting her again. Jeff had expected to feel all his old anger toward her, but in fact there was nothing, no feelings at all. Elizabeth was flirtatious, coquettish even, but Jeff felt nothing toward her. It was a disappointment and a relief at the same time, which made no sense, but there it was. They’d parted on cordial terms. Only after he left New York did Jeff learn of Elizabeth’s arrest for her failed con on Bianca Berkeley. Thank God I didn’t take her up on her offer to get involved.
Jeff felt guilty admitting it, but it was a relief to leave Gunther and get away to Spain.
Professor Domingo Muñoz was Jeff’s client. It was he who’d commissioned the theft of the Byzantine coins. But he was also a friend and fellow lover of the ancient world. Domingo had extended an open invitation for Jeff to stay at his “casa,” an idyllic, sprawling farmhouse nestled in La Campina, the fertile valley surrounding the Rio Guadalquivir in the south of Spain. About twenty miles outside Seville, the farm boasted stunning views of the Sierra Morena countryside, with its gently rolling hills thickly clad with oak trees and its patchwork fields of wheat and olive groves. The combination of Domingo’s hospitality, the idyllic surroundings and so much history and art and architecture on one’s doorstep was too much for Jeff to resist.
A maid brought another enormous platter of paella to the table. They were dining outside, beneath a pergola overgrown with laurel, watching the bloodred sun bleed into the horizon.
Jeff said, “I have to get out of here soon. Leave you in peace.”
“Nonsense. Stay as long as you like. Spain is good for the soul.”
“Less good for the waistline, though.” Jeff patted his groaning stomach. “A few more suppers like this and I’m gonna have to take up a new profession. Maybe opera singing. No one wants to hire a fat cat burglar.”
“You’re hardly a cat burglar,” Domingo corrected him, refilling his glass. “You’re an artist.”
“And a thief.”
“A gentleman thief. As you said, the coins are where they’re supposed to be. You could hardly leave them in the hands of that grasping, philistine young woman, could you?”