Widow - Anne Stuart [11]
He snorted with amusement. “What, you don’t like my manners? Sorry, but I’m not about to waste my time on polite chitchat. I’ve got a job to do, and you’re not the one who hired me. I’m staying here at the villa until my work’s done and then I’ll be out of your hair. In the meantime, just ignore me.”
Charlie took a deep, calming breath. She didn’t want or need this complication, but she’d survive it. She’d survive anything. “I’m sure we’ll manage to get along just fine. As for ignoring you, that’ll be pretty much impossible. It’s going to be a full house in a couple of days, and you’ll have to make the best of it. My mother and my fiancé will be arriving soon and they’ll each need their own rooms. As I remember, the villa isn’t equipped for that many visitors.”
“Your fiancé? You’re not wasting any time, are you?”
“Mr. Maguire…”
“Just Maguire, sweetheart,” he said. He cocked his head, looking at her, and she felt an odd little shiver of discomfort slide down her backbone despite the heat of the sun overhead. “It’s none of my concern. I just wonder why your fiancé doesn’t share your room.”
“If that were any of your business I’d be certain to tell you,” Charlie said. “In the meantime, why don’t you attend to your business instead of wandering through the vineyard?”
“Can’t a man take a break?” he inquired in a low growl. “All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.”
She looked at him. Connor Maguire was never going to be considered dull by any stretch of the imagination. “Please play on your own time, not mine,” she said in a cool voice. “What’s your estimate on the value of his estate?”
“What’s the big hurry?”
“I just want to get the estate settled and go back to New York.”
“That’s where you live?”
“That’s where I live. I own a restaurant there,” she added, then could have kicked herself. What in heaven’s name was she doing volunteering information to a man like him?
“You cook?” He sounded completely skeptical.
“As a matter of fact, I do,” she replied. “On my chef’s days off.”
“Fancy that,” he murmured, clearly unimpressed. “Somehow you don’t strike me as the practical type.” He dropped his cigarette and stubbed it out beneath his scuffed shoes. He glanced up and met her gaze. “I suppose you’re going to tell me you don’t want me to smoke?”
“How did you guess?”
“You look the type,” he said enigmatically.
“What type is that?”
“Someone who doesn’t want a stray ash marring the perfection of her existence.”
She smiled wryly. “La Colombala has fallen to pieces in the last few years, Mr. Maguire, and even before then I hardly expected perfection. I live in Manhattan, remember? Full of dirt and drugs and crime.”
“But I imagine you’re safely isolated from all that. You strike me as someone who keeps herself well guarded from the ugliness of real life.”
“I wish.”
“Well, Mrs. Pompasse, you happen to be in luck. I was planning on quitting when I finished the pack, and that’s just happened. You see before you a changed man.”
Mrs. Pompasse. It certainly wasn’t the first time she’d heard that, particularly in the last seventy-two hours with the god-awful press hammering at her every chance they got. But it sounded strange, hostile, terribly wrong in Maguire’s rough voice.
“We were separated,” she said again. “I go by my maiden name.”
His entire bearing suggested he wasn’t particularly interested, but he simply nodded. “I’ll go back to work, then,” he said finally.
A relief, and she should have let him go. But some inner demon stopped her. “How long do you think it will take you?”
“What?”
“To catalog his estate,” she said patiently.
“If I could find your husband’s records I would be out of here already. At this point, it appears that as few as three paintings are missing, maybe as many as a dozen, but without the journals I can’t tell for sure. He may have sold some. There may be others the art world isn’t even aware of.”
“I doubt it,” Charlie said. “Pompasse didn’t believe in hiding his light under a bushel. When he completed a painting the world was informed.”
“Didn’t