One-Night Man. Jeanie London
would inquire about people who’d never had the time of day for her. Then again, he shouldn’t be surprised. Quinevere McDarby had reared her, and she was a woman who opened her heart to everyone. Including him.
Which was another reason he’d come tonight.
Miss Q had always been full of the hugs and approval Josh had professed not to need, but had secretly placed himself in the line of fire for. He remembered thinking that fate had played a nasty trick by not allowing his grandfather to meet Miss Q long before he’d met Josh’s own grandmother.
Then again, if his grandfather had met Miss Q first, Josh would never have been born. That just proved how satirical love could be. One of the reasons he made no time for it in his life. He did short-term relationships. Period.
“The family’s fine.” At least he hadn’t heard otherwise. And what was the cliché? No news is good news….
“Then what’s up?” Lennon took another long swallow of espresso, appeared to brace herself.
“A few hours ago, Miss Q left the museum to get some papers from your car. Someone assaulted her with a flash-and-bang grenade. She wasn’t hurt, but we think it was a protest of my grandfather’s collection.”
“What are you…Auntie Q…someone threw…” Lennon’s features blanked in the sort of stunned expression he knew all too well, from being a frequent bearer of bad news. She finally zeroed in. “A grenade? As in…hand grenade?”
“A flash-and-bang,” he explained. “It’s a nonlethal stun device used to disorient an enemy.”
A clever device, and one he’d been grateful for on more than one occasion. But the way Lennon gaped drove home the differences in their interpretations of nonlethal.
A flash-and-bang grenade was useful in his line of work, but he doubted Lennon had ever heard of one, which reminded him why he didn’t invite pretty, pouty-mouthed blondes into his life for more than a quick visit.
“It’s a nonfragmenting type of grenade,” he offered, hoping to reassure her. “The kind that doesn’t explode.”
Lennon didn’t look reassured. “Josh, you must be mistaken. Auntie Q is in her office, asleep.”
“It’s almost six in the morning and I just put her in the car with Olaf. She’s on her way home.”
“I’m confused.” Lennon ran a shaky hand through her hair, sending waves of honey-gold tumbling around her face, and inspiring thoughts about what that silky blond hair would feel like beneath his fingers. “Auntie Q couldn’t just go out to my car. We’re in a secure museum. The security guard has to let her out of the building after hours.”
“The guard was asleep. She didn’t want to disturb him when she can disable the system for the Eastman wing herself.”
Apparently Lennon didn’t have any trouble believing her great-aunt capable of that sort of recklessness. A frown creased her smooth brow and she shivered.
Plucking the cup from her hand, Josh marched her toward a nearby bench and forced her to sit. He didn’t dwell on the awareness that ripped through him the minute he touched her bare arm. And he refused to acknowledge the naked lovers twined around each other on the canvas directly above her head.
“She’s okay?”
“She’s fine. The noise startled her.”
“Thank goodness.” Breathing deeply, Lennon cradled her face in her hands. She shivered again.
“Are you okay?”
Looking back up at him, she nodded. “But I don’t understand why you’re here. Where are the police?”
Josh shrugged. “Miss Q decided she doesn’t want an investigation. She’s afraid the museum will postpone the gallery opening. Instead of reporting the incident so the authorities can conduct an inquiry, she hid the discharged grenade in her handbag, lied to security and called me and Olaf.”
“Where have I been while all this has been going on?”
He glanced over his shoulder at the phallic sculpture resting beneath his grandfather’s portrait. “Given the way you were hanging on to that penis, chère, I’d say you were dreaming.”
“Josh.” Scowling, she grabbed the coffee cup and slugged back the remains defiantly.
He couldn’t contain a laugh at her look of outrage.
“Well, I can’t say I’m surprised,” she finally said. “Auntie Q isn’t about to let anything come in the way of this opening. Great-uncle Joshua loved Mardi Gras. ‘A celebration of being alive,’ he used to call it. She has had her heart set on this weekend ever since he died. I won’t even bother trying to convince her otherwise.”
Great-uncle Joshua. Damn, but that reference to his grandfather brought him back a lot of years. Lennon wasn’t related, yet his grandfather had been as much a part of her family as his. Her posthumous concern for this memorial showed a graceful acceptance of the sordid triangle of man-family-mistress that Josh couldn’t help but admire.
Though he’d grown up knowing his grandfather divided his time between two families, he couldn’t help perceiving the entire situation as strange. True, people had done things differently back then. Otherwise his grandmother might have divorced his grandfather after realizing she wanted no part of marriage save the social and economic position it provided her.
She hadn’t. Instead, she’d suggested her husband tend his needs outside their marriage. Her solution had offended his noble grandfather, who’d resisted for well over a decade—until Quinevere McDarby had come to work for Eastman Antiquities. Thus the Eastman-McDarby connection had been born, and this gorgeous woman before him had become a part of Josh’s life.
“I tried reasoning with your great-aunt,” he admitted. “Didn’t work.”
“So she wants you to investigate. Isn’t this a little out of your normal line of work? I heard you freelance for a bunch of government agencies. Looking for missing people and heavy stuff like that.”
Evidently Lennon knew a lot about him, and for some reason the realization pleased him. He nodded.
“How’d Auntie Q rope you into this, then?”
“She called me Josh Three and I caved. I haven’t been called that since she gave me the nickname to distinguish me from my father and grandfather. It was a time warp.”
“Joshua Eastman the third sounds so…highbrow.”
“Confusing.” At least while he’d been home.
“That’s it?” Lennon eyed him doubtfully. “All a girl has to do is call you Josh Three to get her way with you?”
“And heap on the guilt. Works every time.”
She tipped the cup at him and said, “Aha! I knew it.”
“She laid a whole trip on me. Told me that she and my grandfather had been watching every move I’ve made during my career. She knew all about my college education, the civil and criminal programs, the certifications and the police training seminars. She even knew the exact date when I graduated with my master’s degree.” He shook his head, still staggered by Miss Q’s revelation. “She said they’d thrown a party for every damned milestone, that they still had the right to celebrate my accomplishments, even if I chose not to be there.”
“Whoa. She worked you over big time.”
“Like a pro.” He had to force a smile. “She resorted to threats, too. Told me my grandfather would haunt me for the rest of my life if I let her—or you—get blown into bits all over the parish. Then there’d be no one left to fund-raise for the Eastman Gallery until the museum can afford to support it. It would be sold off piecemeal…all my grandfather’s acquisitions, his life’s work—”
“Gotcha.”