Or like a cheap hooker, she thought, as the case may be, but actually, not so cheap. Besides the Get Out of Jail card she’d had to pony up for, Marceline had bargained hard for every piece of fashion she’d dragged out of her and Marcella’s closet. Suzi had never been afraid of a short skirt or a tight top in her life, but she didn’t have any illusions about how she looked.
Or any illusions about Levi Asher. He was rich for a reason, disgusting by nature, older than he appeared to realize, and getting drunker by the minute.
Just as well. She was hoping to catch him off his guard, get him to babble a bit, instead of just drool. If the old slimeball knew something, she wanted to know what.
She smiled. “Levi, we’re both a long way from London or New York right now.”
The waiter stepped forward to pour more champagne, while another refreshed the first course, bringing a second round of tapas.
Levi reached for a couple of bacon-wrapped dates and popped them in his mouth.
“Yes, a long way,” he said, chewing and leaning closer, his pale blue suit clinging to him in a dozen bad, sweaty ways. His hair was gray and very sparse across the top, his full face flushed with the heat, but his watery eyes were alight with excitement. “It’s the Sphinx, Suzi, she brought us here. She exists. She wasn’t just a figment of Howard Carter’s imagination. She is here. Now.”
“Where?” she asked bluntly. That was the damn question of the day, and by her count, that was the third time she had successfully brought the conversation around to it, so far without much luck in getting an answer. “I was with Remy when the police came to the gallery. He told me you were in the viewing room with Esteban Ponce. We were headed that way, but when the police started destroying everything and the shooting started, I ran out the back.”
“You were very wise to do so, my dear, very wise.” For once, he patted her hand instead of her ass or her knee, then he picked up his glass of champagne, drained it in one go, signaled to the waiter again, and popped another bacon-wrapped date in his mouth.
The man was a consumption machine.
“What happened in there, Levi? Did you see it? Was it there? The Sphinx?”
“No,” he said, shaking his head, and another burp escaped him. “Beranger showed us a fake in the viewing room.” His gaze moved impatiently over the fresh plates of tapas, going from one to the other. “I knew what it was, of course, but Ponce thought it was authentic. Beranger took the fake with him, when he went to greet you, I’m guessing. Then the shooting started. Good God, the service in Third World countries is usually better.” Spotting a waiter across the way, he snapped his fingers in the air. “Why don’t we have any tapenade?” he muttered. “There’s always tapenade on a tapas tray.”
“So where’s the real statue?” And that made four times.
Levi opened his mouth to say something but then seemed to think better of it and smiled instead, which was a shame, because Levi Asher had very gray, crooked teeth.
He obviously needed another glass of champagne, or two, or three, whatever it took to keep loosening his tongue.
“Well, that’s the million-dollar question, now isn’t it?” he did say, sounding like a jerk for a reason. “Fortunately, I have a lead I’m following, and I’m guessing you do not?”
He was always easy to hate.
“I’ve got a couple of things I’m working.” Like you.
For a moment, he looked at her, measuring her, chewing away with a chomping, swaying roll of his jaw. She didn’t have a clue what he was thinking-and that was not good.
“It’s been a difficult day,” he eventually said, then swallowed. “Stressful.”
He had that right.
Suzi leaned in closer, resting her hand on his leg and giving him a comforting little pat.
“Would you like some help, Levi? I’m very good at following leads and finding things,” she said, and under the table, she rubbed her strappy platform heel up and down his calf.
And that’s when she felt all the little hairs on the back of her neck start to rise.
Noticeably so.
Unavoidably so.
With her hand still on Levi’s leg, she glanced across the dining room, and ran smack-dab into an iron-gray gaze locked onto her like a tractor beam.
She considered herself very cool under pressure and oblivious to the unsolicited demands of men, and she was-except, it seemed, when it came to this man.
Her pulse instantly picked up in speed, and she quickly broke the contact between her shoe and Levi’s calf. She straightened up, sitting back in her chair and loosely linking her fingers around her champagne glass.
“Absolutely, Suzi dear,” Levi said, and she dragged her attention back to him. “No question about it. We should be working together on this. I’ve been thinking about it all day, ever since I heard you were here. Partners, yes, that would be best.”
Suzi stared at him for a moment, surprised-and wary. His offer appeared generous at most, and benign at the least, but she could guarantee it was neither. Levi Asher made his money by knowing other people’s business and knowing how to work it for his own gain. He was calculating and ruthless, and not anybody’s friend-least of all hers.
None of which dissuaded her, not at this point.
“I’m in,” she said unequivocally. “What did you have in mind?”
So she’d run out on Dax. So what. She refused to feel guilty. The whole fifty-fifty deal would never have worked-and yet she did feel a little twinge of guilt. He had gotten her out of Beranger’s, and considering what had happened in there, it was a damn good thing. He’d come after her at the Gran Chaco, and kept on coming, even after seeing what had happened to Jimmy Ruiz. He’d tried to protect her from going back into the gallery, and he’d paid Marcella and Marceline a hundred dollars to watch over her while he’d gone out to get her some dinner. She knew, because it had cost her another hundred to get them to sell her some clothes and let her out of the Posada.
He was practically a saint, and she’d run out on him.
Guilt, that’s what drew her gaze back across the dining room, and oh, hell, he looked good.
He’d changed clothes, cleaned himself up from the sludge and mud of the day’s misadventures. Unlike her, he looked very elegant, and yet still very tough, in a black polo shirt and a pair of dark gray slacks. She noticed he was still wearing his trail boots.
You can take the boy out of the jungle, she thought, but you can’t take the jungle out of the boy.
The polo shirt was almost a crime, really, the way it hugged his shoulders and how the material stretched around his biceps. He’d gotten the mud off his face and combed his hair, but it was sticking up a little in front. His jaw was hard and still stub-bled with beard, and he was relaxed back in his chair with all the barely leashed power and grace of every big bad boy who’d ever been at the top of the food chain.
Long legs, strong hands, oh, yes, there was a reason she’d been kissing on him all day.
“There’s a place up the river,” Levi said, leaning in closer, taking up the slack of her retreat. “And a man there who is… involved with the Sphinx.”
Her gaze shot back to Levi.
Her first score had netted her two points: a place up the river and an involved man. Maybe this was all going to be easier than she’d thought-but probably not.