Widow - Anne Stuart [19]
It was the promise of a good story, he told himself. It was the thought of all the money he’d make from it, after too many lean years.
And it was the challenge, the temptation of Charlie Thomas, shut off from everyone and everything. She held secrets even he couldn’t begin to guess at. Hell, he’d slept with women before for the sake of a story. Women liked to talk when they were in a postcoital daze, and he was very good at getting them into that place. With any luck, all he had to do was fuck Charlie’s brains out and she’d tell him everything she knew about Pompasse.
He could do it. He could rise to the occasion, he thought with a wry smile, and enjoy seeing if he could make the ice princess scream.
Hell, he ought to sleep with all Pompasse’s castoffs if he were going to be really thorough, though he drew the line at senile Madame Antonella. And he could probably get just as much information out of Lauretta if he simply complimented her cooking. That way he wouldn’t have to risk Tomaso’s ire.
He didn’t want to sleep with Gia, either. She’d already dismissed him as not being worth her time, but it wouldn’t take much to convince her otherwise. She was young and healthy, and it would be a piece of cake to appeal to her animal nature.
But the problem was, she didn’t appeal to his. And he doubted she’d know much, either—like most beautiful young women she was completely self-absorbed. Probably anything she knew about Pompasse would have only been in relation to herself.
And he doubted that she’d blurt out that she’d killed him when she came.
No, he had other ways of pumping Gia than the old-fashioned way. He didn’t think she was the one who killed Pompasse, but she might very well know who did. Or at least know something that could lead him to the killer, assuming one existed. He still had no proof other than his own sure instincts. It would be a damned shame if it were an accident, after all. Nothing sold books so well as murder.
He’d work on Gia if he had to, and even sleep with her if it was necessary.
But in the meantime he was more interested in seeing what he could get from the widow.
He skirted the building, moving around back to the narrow path leading up to the abandoned church. He could hear voices from the studio, women’s voices, and he leaned against the back of the building, well hidden, trying to make out their words. It was too good a chance to miss. He recognized Gia’s strident tones even through the thick stone walls, and the soft responses could only belong to Charlie.
But a moment later he heard the slamming of the studio door, and then nothing but silence. A missed chance, but there would be others. It was Wednesday—by Saturday Pompasse’s ashes would be buried and Maguire would be out of there. Much longer and he’d be caught, and Charlie Thomas wouldn’t be the sort to take kindly to a viper in her midst.
If he couldn’t find out who killed Pompasse and why in the next four days, then he wasn’t the reporter he thought he was.
And he had no illusions. He was a ruthless bastard, a heartless user when it came to people. He cared about no one and nothing, but he was a damned good reporter, whether it was dealing with international conflicts or Euro-trash. He already knew a great many of Pompasse’s dirty little secrets, his obsession with young girls, the disturbing number of suicides and disappearances among his former models and lovers, the games he’d played and the astonishing amount of money he’d squandered.
But he still didn’t know where the missing paintings were. And of equal importance, who killed Pompasse and why. Once he discovered the answers he could leave, with or without nailing the repressed Charlie Thomas.
Hell, maybe she wasn’t repressed, he thought, climbing up the narrow, twisting path by the olive grove. Maybe she just hated him at first sight and didn’t mind showing it. He was used to rubbing women the wrong way when they first met. He was hardly the lady’s type—he was brash, working-class, no-bullshit and no-charm. She probably saw him