“It’s lunch. I’m going to cheat and use bottled dressing.”

“Why is that cheating?”

“Forget I mentioned it.”

“I’m not looking for a cook or a fire tender, or nightly parties. And right at the moment? You’re the most exciting woman I know.”

Exciting? No one, herself included, had ever considered her exciting. “It’s the situation. Intense situations breed excitement—anxiety, too. Probably ulcers, though they poo-poo that now. Still, it would be a shame to waste the excitement and intensity.”

After tossing the salad, she opened the bread drawer. “I’ve got one left.” She held up a sourdough roll. “We share.”

“Deal.”

“I’m going to ask you for another deal. A little breathing space to think this through before the plunge. Because I’m usually a plunger, and usually end up going in too deep. Add the situation, because we have one. Your brother, that spectacular egg and what to do about both. So, I’d like to try inching instead of plunging.”

“How far in are you now?”

“I was already past my knees when you started sketching me. About hip-deep now.”

“Okay.” Her response—fresh, simple, straightforward—struck him as sexier than black silk. He needed to touch, settled for toying with the ends of her hair, pleased she’d left it down. “Do you want to eat this on the terrace? Leave the situation inside for a little?”

“That’s an excellent idea. Let’s do just that.”

They couldn’t leave it for long, she thought, because the situation had weight. But she appreciated the sun, the easy food and the puzzle of the man who wanted her.

Other men had, for short sprints, even for a lap or two. But she’d never experienced a marathon. Then again, her life was a series of short spurts. Any sort of permanence had eluded her for so long she’d decided the desire for it was self-defeating.

She believed she’d crafted her life around the temporary in a very productive, interesting way.

She could do exactly the same in a relationship with Ash.

“If we’d met through Julie—maybe at a show of your work—all of this wouldn’t be so strange. Then again, if we’d met that way, you might not be interested.”

“You’re wrong.”

“That’s nice to hear. Anyway, we didn’t.” She looked across to the window, still boarded up. “You’ve got a lot going on, Ash.”

“More all the time. You didn’t push me out when you had the chance, so you’ve got the same.”

“I’m the queen of multitasking. In a couple of days, I’ll have a view of the river, a little dog, orchids to tend and a personal gym that’ll either intimidate me or inspire me to exercise. I’ll still have a book to write, a blog, a present to buy for my mother’s birthday—which I think is going to be one of those little lemon trees because how cool would it be to grow your own lemons inside in Alaska? And I’ll still have what may be a stolen Imperial egg worth more than I can fathom to figure out, the low-grade anxiety that I may have a killer watching me and the puzzle of potentially really good sex with a man I met because he lost his brother.

“That takes some juggling,” she decided. “So I’ll try to be nimble.”

“You forgot the painting.”

“Because it intimidates me more than the personal gym or the sex.”

“Sex doesn’t intimidate you?”

“I’m a girl, Ashton. Getting naked in front of a guy for the first time is monumentally intimidating.”

“I’ll keep you distracted.”

“That could be a plus.” She drew a tiny heart in the condensation on her glass of lemon water. “What are we going to do about the egg?”

And so, he thought, the situation was back. “I’m going to show it to Oliver’s uncle—the one he worked for. If Vinnie can’t identify and verify, he’ll know someone who can.”

“That’s a really good idea. Once he does . . . Because either way it’s valuable. Either reasonably valuable given the craftsmanship or scary valuable. So once he does, what are you going to do with it?”

“I’m going to take it with me tomorrow, to the compound. The security there rivals the U.S. Mint. It’ll be safe while I deal with the rest.”

“Deal with how?”

“I’m working that out. Vinnie’s bound to know collectors—big collectors. Or again, know someone who does.”

She had an excellent imagination, and put it to work trying to imagine someone with countless millions to indulge a hobby. She house-sat annually for a g*y couple who collected antique doorknobs. And had house-sat over the winter for a twice-widowed woman who had a fascinating collection of erotic netsukes.

But multiple millions? She’d have to work harder to imagine that. She needed a picture, she decided, a face, a background, even a name to give her a boost.

“There has to be something about this client in his files, in his correspondence, somewhere.”

“I’ll go through it.”

“I can help with that. I can,” she said when he didn’t respond. “Sometimes clients pay me an additional fee to organize their home offices or paperwork while they’re away. In any case, she had to know. Oliver’s girlfriend, Sage, had to know about this. All those intense conversations,” Lila continued, staring at the boarded-up window, remembering. “All the arguments, the excitement, anxiety. I took them as personal relationship stuff, but now . . . It had to be about the egg, the client, what he, or they, were trying to pull off.”

“She knew some,” Ash agreed, “but not enough. You said she was crying, pleading, terrified. I think if she’d known where Oliver stashed the egg, she’d have given it up.”

“You’re probably right. She knew what it was, what he planned, but maybe not where he kept it. So she couldn’t tell, and he was out of it, so he couldn’t. Whoever killed them made a mistake, drugging him that way, assuming the woman would be the easier mark, would tell once she was scared or hurt enough.”

She rose, picked up dishes. “You’ve got things to do, people to see.”

He stood with her, took the dishes out of her hands, set them down again. Then closed his hands around her arms. “He’d have told her it was to protect her. ‘Listen, beautiful, what you don’t know can’t hurt you. I’m just looking out for you.’ Part of him would’ve believed it.”