Read Online White Heat by Cherry Adair - Free Book Online Page A

tea he didn’t want. Emily’s loyalty to Daniel was sorely misplaced. But he wasn’t going to be the one to burst her bubble.
“You didn’t have to. Your eyes sneered.”
    “Eyes can sneer?”
    She covered a yawn with her hand. “Yours do.”
    He’d heard worse. Did Frank Bozzo’s eyes sneer? Max bet not.
    Emily sipped from her cup, watching him over the rim. She had gorgeous eyes, but right now they were heavy-lidded with exhaustion. He could go another couple of hours. But he was going to need to sleep soon. He had an unexpected but familiar itch that told him something murky, and relevant, was rearing its ugly head out of his sperm donor’s past. Max didn’t know what, or where, but he sure as shit suspected that there was something going on. Something bad. Something urgent.
    He’d arranged to get copies of those reports he hadn’t bothered reading. Perhaps there’d be some clues to be found there. It was a start.
    “You speak Italian very well.” Emily rubbed her eye and yawned. “You had an excellent teacher. You know all the nuances of the language. Did you learn at—where was that? Stanford?”
    Max hadn’t shared that information with her. A year ago, he’d made sure she’d done most of the talking. That nugget could only have come from her mentor. The old man had known that much about him. Interesting. He wondered if her source had also known he’d attended MIT.
    “Yeah. Turns out that I have a natural aptitude for languages.” Especially after T-FLAC recruited me in my first year of college.
    “Do you still live in San Francisco?” she asked, her speech a little slurred with exhaustion. Max knew he was postponing going heir separate ways to get some sleep. But looking at this woman was enough to turn a saint into a sinner. And he’d never been a saint.
“Yeah. Off and on. More off. I travel a lot.”
    He knew she’d been born in Seattle, Washington. But with her dark hair and eyes she could easily pass as Italian. He knew more about her than he’d let on in the car. He knew her mother had been a model. He knew where and when she’d gone to her fancy, overpriced boarding school, and that she’d stayed to attend Istituto tatale d’arte diVenezi, the art school in Venice, followed by several rears at Accademia di belle arti di Roma.
    She’d graduated top of her class and been sought after, and fought over, by top museums all over the world. She was that good s a fine art restorer. Her CV was long and impressive. In art circles he was considered number one, having surpassed her mentor several years ago.
    And through it all, Daniel Aries had been beside her. Teaching and guiding her. Her mentor and surrogate father.
    Max wondered if her mother and his sperm donor had had an affair fifteen years ago. Probably, if the mother looked anything like the daughter.
    Emily yawned again, then lifted her arms over her head, hands clasped, and arched her back, stretching like a lazy cat. Dropping her arms she leaned a jean-clad hip on the table. She waved a vague and around the room. “Would you consider living here?”
    “Hell no.”
    She gave him a disapproving look. “Then you should sell. Everything in the villa should be donated to museums. Your father’s talent made him an extremely wealthy man. He spent his money on what he loved most—”
    Wine, women . . . “Himself?”
    “Art,” she said crossly. “He has—had—an enviable collection that people would kill for—” Her eyes widened. “Lord, Max. Do you think that—no. Now I’m believing your nonsense. Nobody killed your father. Not for his art collection,” she trailed off, shaking her head. “Of course nobody killed him for his collection. Nothing was stolen?’
    She had a clever imagination, and the ability to rein in the quantum leap of logic her tired brain had just made. At least she was now tacitly acknowledging that the man had been murdered.
    She rubbed a hand over her face, fatigue evident in every line of her