The Truth About Harry

2

“CAN YOU BELIEVE RAY didn’t announce the guy’s name until the very end? Talk about burying the lead!” Lauren complained into the mirror of the ladies’ room. She had to lean to the right because the notice to buy Tupperware from Elaine in Accounting was taped smack in the middle of the glass.

“Forget Ray’s journalistic failings.” Phoebe rummaged through a small Fendi pouch containing makeup. “You’re on the verge of possibly being fired. There are far bigger issues to worry about. Apricot or pink?”

Lauren looked at the two tubes in Phoebe’s hand. “You criticize me for discussing journalistic competence when you’re debating the merits of lip gloss?”

“This is not simply a matter of lip gloss. We’re talking about your image as you’re about to face Ray and Harry Nord’s grandson.”

“Phoebe, how many times do I have to tell you? Harry Nord never had a grandson.”

“Are you sure?”

Lauren nodded. “According to the press release from the funeral parlor, the real Harry Nord had no family survivors.”

“Well, the fake one—the one you invented—appears to have acquired one, and, trust me and my little heart, which is still going pitter-patter, he is very real.”

Lauren tipped her head. “You’re right.”

Phoebe surveyed her with an arched brow. “And frankly, even though you are one of my nearest and dearest, you are hopeless in the image department. I mean, really, that ersatz-graduate-student look of chinos and clogs is so passé.”

Lauren held her hands out wide and looked down at herself critically. Okay, not that critically. “And here I thought wearing an eggplant mock turtleneck sweater was daring. What did I know?”

“Obviously, not enough. Darling, extreme décolletage is daring.” Phoebe thrust a tube toward her. “Here, take the pink. We’ll simply play up your baby-fine blond hair—capitalize on that innocent look of yours.”

Lauren stared at the lip gloss and did as she was told. Innocence was a rare commodity these days, as she knew only too well. She tossed her cold cup of coffee into the trash, turned to Phoebe and, holding herself erect, declared, “I can do this.” She punched the air and pushed open the bathroom door—

And ran smack into trouble, aka Sebastian Alberti. To be more precise, the top of her head plowed into his pronounced and very hard chin. Which left her momentarily stunned. She put out a wobbling hand and connected with something hard, very hard. And it wasn’t the door.

The material of his designer suit may have been soft as silk, but the fabric of the body underneath was as solid as marble, and as well-chiseled as a Rodin statue. Sebastian Alberti might be a phony, but there was nothing insubstantial about him.

Lauren attempted one of those cleansing breaths that relaxation gurus are so fond of. To say that inner calm was hard to achieve when her nose was pressed into a silk tie and her nostrils were filled with the heat and woodsy scent of a drop-dead gorgeous male was something of an understatement. Still, calm, or the illusion of calm, was absolutely essential if she had any hope of rescuing her career—and her sanity.

She pulled her head back and looked up, her eyes level with a half-Windsor knot. “Sorry, I didn’t see you coming.”

Sebastian Alberti rubbed his chin, then dropped his hand and smiled a heartbreaking, melt-in-your-mouth-and-on-the-gray-industrial-carpeted-floor smile. “That makes two of us.”

Lauren nearly sank back into him with more than her nose. But propelled by an even stronger sense of professional decorum, she mustered what little self-control she still had and took a step back. “Yes, well, um…” Words were supposed to be her forte. “You might not realize this, but we’re actually supposed to see each other in Ray’s office.” She gulped. “I’m Lauren Jeffries, the reporter who wrote your grandfather’s obituary.” The dramatic emphasis could have registered as far south as Baton Rouge.

Her words seemed to ruffle—albeit momentarily—his composure. Was it a flash of surprise or sexual interest?

Foolishly, Lauren was hoping that sexual interest would win out. She shook her head. Foolishly was right. She hadn’t been foolish since she’d cooed over the engagement ring that Johnny Budworth had given her when he’d proposed at an Outback Steakhouse. She’d actually believed that the sparkling brilliant had been genuine and not cubic zirconia from the Home Shopping Network.

Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me, as the saying went. Lauren looked up at the small cleft in Sebastian Alberti’s chin—such a nice cleft, by the by—and said out loud the obvious. No, not that she found him amazingly attractive and would desperately like to throw caution to the wind and check into the Four Seasons and have wild, abandoned sex and use all the bath towels. But rather, “I think it’s safe to assume we have much to discuss about our situation here.”

He arched a brow. “You think?”

“I know and you know,” she said emphatically, with a lot more confidence than she was feeling.

He crooked up the corner of his mouth. “Meaning that our involvement makes us both—”

“Liars?” she offered.

A sexy dimple appeared in his right cheek as his smile broadened. “And here I was going to say soul mates.”

Lauren looked into Sebastian Alberti’s dark eyes—up close they were a deep, sinfully dark, chocolate brown. If they were supposed to be the windows to his soul, then she was in real trouble.

She swallowed. And was saved from coming up with some witty, sophisticated reply by a loud rapping from the other side of the ladies’ room door.

Phoebe maneuvered her head around the corner. “Is it safe to come out yet?”

“It all depends on what you mean by safe.” Lauren waved her through. “Phoebe Russell-Warren, Sebastian Alberti. Phoebe is the Sentinel’s Lifestyle editor.

He nodded. “It’s not every day I get to meet a Lifestyle editor.” He was the very embodiment of charm, but was it Lauren’s imagination, or had the tension that had zinged back and forth a second ago like a cue ball ricocheting off the side pocket, instantly lessened?

Not that that deterred Phoebe. “Well, it’s not every day I get to meet the grandson of one of our obituaries.” She smiled broadly, displaying the dazzling effect of diligent dental care.

Sebastian smiled smoothly. “And it’s not every day that you get an obituary like my grandfather’s, either, is it?”

“You’re darn tootin’,” Ray greeted them, his enlarged waist preceding the rest of him by a second or two. “Well, I see you’ve already met the little lady who wrote the story.” He nodded to Lauren.

She closed her eyes and told herself she would not lecture Ray on his choice of words.

“I would hardly call Ms. Jeffries little in terms of her capabilities,” Sebastian said.

That opened Lauren’s eyes.

Phoebe’s eyes were already locked on Sebastian’s in killer seduction mode. “I bet your capabilities aren’t little, either—in any terms.”

Sebastian raised one eyebrow. “You know, I’m beginning to wonder why I never met a Lifestyle editor before.”

Lauren went back to rubbing her forehead.

“Maybe I can run a feature on you?” Phoebe offered, stepping close enough to discern the warp and woof of his suit jacket. Woof was right.

“Don’t be ridiculous.” Ray wagged a finger at Phoebe. “You’ve got a luncheon to go to or whatever it is you do.”

“I only fill six pages on weekdays and a half section on Sunday, but then, don’t mind me,” Phoebe huffed before turning to Lauren. “Let me know if there’s anything I can do to help.” On the last word, she looked pointedly at Sebastian and inhaled loudly before sauntering off in regal fashion.

“Is she for real?” Sebastian asked as he watched Phoebe depart, her long legs striding and her narrow hips swaying around the corner.

“I sometimes wonder myself,” Lauren admitted. “I think it has something to do with going to too many cotillions at an impressionable age.”

“Ray—Ray, we’ve got a situation.” Huey Neumeyer bounded over—definitely not a pretty sight in Lauren’s opinion. Here was a man who wouldn’t know a cotillion if he tripped over one. Actually, tripping was his usual mode of entrance.

“We’ve got reports of a hostage situation at the State House, but I’m here because of the press conference and not in Harrisburg to cover the story,” Huey panted. A rivulet of perspiration meandered down his right cheek, and a distinct whiff of body odor mixed with Aramis.

Lauren smelled a story—among other things. “I’ve got a source in the State House. And I have his cell phone number,” she volunteered. The minority leader’s chief of staff had been the best man at her brother’s wedding, and during the rehearsal dinner they’d shared a few too many tequilas, along with several wet kisses and a quick feel. Since all the action had stayed above the waist, it meant he was still a reliable source.

Huey stamped his foot. “This is my beat.”

Sebastian wisely sidestepped Huey’s little hissy fit. “Not that I want to get in the way of a pressing news story, but I was ever so hoping to meet up with Ms. Jeffries.” He turned his southern drawl up another notch.

“Huey, pull yourself together and go to my office,” Ray barked, his face turning an alarming shade of red. Lauren wondered if she should send him an e-mail suggesting the merits of a stress test. “I’ll get the governor’s press secretary on the phone and the spokesperson for the Pennsylvania State Police. You can head out with a photographer as soon as we know what’s happening. And you, Jeffries—” Ray jabbed an index finger in the air in front of her sweater “—take Mr. Alberti to the conference room. And don’t even think about calling your source and muscling in on this story.”

Forget the e-mail, Lauren thought as she watched him lumber down the hall. She spun around and was immediately aware that she was alone with Sebastian.

“I believe you were going to show me the conference room?” he asked.

A sense of foreboding overcame her. She nodded toward the hallway. “This way.” She didn’t bother to linger and, instead, quickly clomped down the linoleum floor to the open door at the end. She sounded like a Clydesdale. Maybe clogs weren’t the best shoe choice after all.

“Here we are, Mr. Alberti.” She pushed the door open. “Is that your real name, by the way?” She waited for him to go through first.

Sebastian paused in the doorway and thought, now’s the time to bring out the truth, at least, carefully edited portions of the truth. “Please, as a Southerner and an Italian, custom prevents me from preceding a lady through the door.” He waited. “And my name really is Sebastian Alberti. Actually, Sebastiano Alberti, but I anglicized it years ago.”

That was only one of the changes he’d made when he was young—not that change solved everything.

Sebastian had long ago learned to accept the notion that he was destined to be an outsider, no matter how much he adapted. He had left Italy as a child. The land of Valentino and Visconti had grown and altered, and so had he. There was no way it could ever be home again.

Nor could Alabama be, either. His family had moved to the deep South. Their strange accent was noticeable—their ignorance of the great god Bear Bryant even more egregious. Sebastian had arrived having never thrown a baseball and never eaten fried chicken. He immediately devoted himself to becoming the most American of Americans. Ah, the fervor of a convert.

But never mind that he played tight end in high school and dated a cheerleader. He was still different, never fully accepted. His mother made sure of the latter—having run off with the rival high school’s football coach when he just started junior high.

Still, he couldn’t blame all of his sense of alienation on his mother. He had never completely fit in because, well, he just never had. No amount of time could erase the moments when he yearned to bite into crusty Italian bread instead of eating hush puppies, when he would have given anything for a bowl of creamy risotto instead of gravy on mashed potatoes.

But the anxiety of being an outsider that had so plagued him during his teenage years had gradually subsided. Now it was something he actually cultivated like a protective cloak, a cloak that even extended to his place of residence.

Besides his farm in the country, miles from anyone else, he had a small but tasteful townhouse in Georgetown. His neighbors were diplomats—strangers in a strange land.

But Sebastian was home. And he wasn’t.

But a place to plant roots wasn’t the issue at hand—it was getting a handle on a possible lead. He smiled in a way that he knew left women and thieves feeling both intrigued and slightly uneasy. And if his hunch was right in this case, the two might just turn out to be mutually inclusive. “Please, why don’t you go in first?” he offered, forcing Lauren to ease by him.

Strange, but in all the editorial meetings she had attended in this space, Lauren had never experienced the entryway as being too narrow for comfort. She eased her way through. “So you’re from Italy originally?”

“I was born in Italy, but my parents moved here when I was ten,” he said, following her into the room. He motioned to the chairs pushed into the long table. “Have a seat,” he said, and she nodded, slipping into one on the opposite side. “My father was an aerospace engineer, and he worked for the government in Huntsville, Alabama.” He waited for her to sit before unbuttoning the front of his suit jacket and lowering himself into a seat.

Lauren decided to let Sebastian be the one to dispense with the usual small talk and move on to the subject of Harry Nord. Playing the waiting game, she contented herself with looking at his large hands spread calmly on the surface of the table. Contented probably wasn’t the right word.

Sinews formed ridges on his tanned skin, and his nails were bluntly cut, attesting to strength born of outdoor activity. He wore a small, gold signet ring on his left hand, nothing effeminate—no, not by a long shot—just kind of classy, understatedly sophisticated. She had an almost irresistible urge to touch him and feel the contrast between the smooth ring and the rugged power of the muscles in his hands.

Lauren cleared her throat. “That explains your accent and your command of English,” she said and tucked her hands in her lap under the table. She didn’t feel like having him stare at her chewed nails. Strange, but their gnawed appearance had never worried her when she’d been engaged. That should have been a tip-off right there.

“Yes, well, even before we moved to the States, my mother insisted I learn English.” He coughed softly and covered his mouth. Then he lowered his hand again and drummed lightly on the table.

Maybe not so relaxed, after all.

“She was enamored of all things American—cheeseburgers, skyscrapers, baseball, Harrison Ford,” he said.

“How unItalian of her—except for the Harrison Ford part, that is.”

“Her enthusiasm was so great I can safely say I was the only kid in Poggibonsi whose mother asked him to turn the radio up when it was playing American music.”

Lauren looked at him askance. “Really? Somehow I can’t picture you humming along to Metallica.”

“You’d be surprised.” He rubbed his chin, his finger passing over the little cleft.

No, she guessed she wasn’t surprised at all. There was something dangerous about him. She instinctively knew he was bad for her health, but somehow she was drawn perversely closer. It was like succumbing to eating that second donut. No, she corrected herself, it was potentially far worse than several hundred empty calories.

“But not you?”

Lauren blinked. “Me?”

“You weren’t a heavy metal fan?”

She held up a hand in confession. “Strictly Motown. The Four Tops. The Supremes. Aretha Franklin’s ‘Respect’ was my personal anthem.”

He studied her. “I can see you standing on top of your bed, belting out ‘Ain’t No Mountain High Enough.’”

“Actually, it was mostly in the bathroom, with my toothbrush as a microphone and my brother Carl pounding on the door to get in.”

Sebastian grinned, and his eyes opened wide, making the contrast between the milky whites and the dark, rich irises all the more pronounced, like chocolate Hostess cupcakes with a vanilla crème center—only in reverse. Ah, she really had empty calories on the brain. No, she knew she had other things on the brain.

“You know,” he said, still smiling and looking so, so appealing, “if you tell me stories like that, I’m almost inclined to believe you’re innocent.”

3

“BUT I AM INNOCENT,” she protested. I may be lusting in my heart, she thought, but I am innocent. “Well, in a fashion,” she amended.

Sebastian leaned closer and reached out. He gently cupped her hand in his and let his fingertips—with their rough calluses, Lauren couldn’t help noticing—brush her palm. “We all know there’s no such thing as innocent.” He studied her closely. “Though heaven knows if anyone is, it could possibly be you.”

The pulse in her wrist throbbed with an aching urgency. “It’s the lip gloss,” Lauren mumbled.

“Lip gloss?”

“It’s pink. You see?” She raised her other hand and rested her index finger on her lower lip.

He stared. At her hand. At her extended finger. At her cherry-blossom-stained lips.

And she gazed at his chest. Time became measured by the rise and fall of his pectorals.

And then he turned his gaze and let go of her hand.

Lauren stared at the table and rapidly pulled her hand back into her lap. “Well, if nobody’s innocent in your book, doesn’t that mean you’re not innocent, either?” she asked. She looked up defiantly.

He played with a gold cuff link.

And then it hit her. “Hey, if you’re here to bilk the paper with some kind of con, you’re talking to the wrong person. The Sentinel might be a two-bit rag, and Ray is a scumbag in every sense of the word, but that doesn’t mean I’m about to help you commit a crime. In fact, I’ve pretty much decided the only honorable thing to do about this mess is to own up to the fact that I concocted the whole thing—Harry’s childhood, his war record, the philanthropy. True, it was meant to be a little joke—”

Sebastian looked at her askance.

“All right, more than a joke. I was pissed at Ray, but then that’s another story.” She waved her hand. “In any case, I never meant for the story to go to print. But seeing as it did, I think it’s only fair that I take responsibility.”

He sat up straight. “I don’t think so.”

That stopped Lauren. “You don’t think so?” She narrowed her eyes. He was deadly serious. “Who are you, anyway?”

“I’m an investigator for the European division of the World Organization for Retrieving Stolen Art. It’s an international registry of looted works of art.” Sebastian slipped a picture ID from the inside pocket of his suit jacket.

Lauren quickly scanned the card. She shook her head. “I’m still not clear about what you do.”

“I recover stolen art. The commission has an Internet site that lists items of cultural value taken by thieves. Publishing this information as widely as possible gets the public involved and helps us retrieve the items. It’s been very successful. Since 1999, we’ve recovered roughly four hundred and twenty works of art, and we have over seven thousand cases under investigation. At the moment, I’m working with the Italian Carabinieri Unit for the Defense of the Cultural Heritage, in the hopes of lowering that figure by four.”

“Looted art? Italian police?” She held up both hands as if to motion stop. “What does this all have to do with me?”

“Possibly a great deal.” He reached into the same pocket and pulled out a wallet-size photograph. He slid it across the table toward Lauren.

She inclined forward and picked it up. It was an old black-and-white snapshot of a man in uniform. Not a man really, more a kid, judging by his puppyish features and wide-eyed stare. And from the age of the photo and the vintage of the uniform, he was a babe in the woods who had served in World War II. She flipped it over but there was no identification on the back. She glanced up.

“Bernard Lord,” Sebastian said in answer to her silent question.

“Bernard Lord?” Lauren frowned and looked at the photo again. “Sorry, it doesn’t ring a bell.” She placed the snapshot on the table.

Sebastian tilted his head. “Are you sure? Why not take another look? The photo’s old, and there’s a chance that you came into contact with him when he was older, much older.”

Lauren glanced at the picture and shook her head. “No, neither the name nor the face mean anything to me.”

Sebastian sat up straighter and crossed his arms. “Bernard Lord was born in Camden eighty-three years ago. An orphan, his formal education was spotty at best. During World War II, he enlisted in the army and was assigned to the air corps. He was later shot down over northern Italy.”

Lauren shook her head in disbelief. “That’s amazing. If I didn’t know better, I’d say Bernard Lord was Harry Nord. I mean, not the real Harry Nord, but my fake Harry Nord.”

“You sure it was fake?” He stared without blinking.

“Of course I’m sure. I realize there are a number of coincidences—” She was feeling flustered and rubbed her hands together before planting them squarely on the table.

Sebastian uncrossed his arms and leaned forward. He joined his hands, a mirror image of hers. The photo of Bernard Lord rested halfway between them, a link. A bone of contention.

“Over the years, I’ve come to realize there is no such thing as coincidence.”

Lauren gulped. “Maybe this is the exception to your rule?”

Sebastian pushed the photo closer to her clenched hands. “Sixteen years ago, Bernard Lord made a sizeable contribution to a small hill town in northern Italy, at least, sizable by the village’s standards. Later the villagers discovered that while Lord giveth, he also taketh away.” His smile was enigmatic.

Lauren shivered and shook her head. “I don’t understand.”

“It seems that on his visit to the town, Mr. Lord may have also liberated a small but exquisite painting by Caravaggio from the church, in addition to a rare Carolingian silver chalice and a pair of marble candlesticks attributed to Nicola Pisano. The thefts were only discovered after his departure. And not only did he depart, he disappeared into thin air. Without any real proof, the townspeople couldn’t pin the thefts on a man many still considered to be their benefactor. The case was only recently reopened when the local police chief retired, and the new one decided he should contact the Carabinieri. They, in turn, contacted me.”

Lauren peered down at the photo of the young man whose skinny neck looked lost in his uniform collar. “Let me guess. The painting, the chalice and the candlesticks were worth more than his contribution?”