The Second Lie (Immortal Vikings Book 2) Read online

  “To what do I owe the pleasure of your visit?” His words had the stretched roundness of British vowels, frustratingly stuffy-sounding to her West Coast ears.

  She ignored his question to study the bottles displayed like statues beside subtle tags. The Lathan Estate Chardonnay was a Washington State wine she’d sold to Lord Seymour so he could cellar four cases for female guests, but the discreet sign listed two lots of three cases each. Wine wasn’t rabbits. Bottles didn’t make babies when left alone in the dark.

  “I can see we’ll need privacy.” Hearing the different British pronunciation, “priv—” rhyming with the first part of “shiver,” reminded her to tread carefully. She wasn’t at home. “Wait here.”

  Instead of responding, she scanned the next shelf as he moved to the end of the cave. Yes, she could verify one magnum and a case of the 1997 Toujours Meritage blend, but again, the bastard had listed a second lot with another twelve bottles.

  The imposter shook hands with the patrons at the small bar and did one of those arm-grip moves it seemed only men could achieve until somehow they were moving past her toward the exit.

  Despite holding two fewer people, the cave tightened around her the closer she and this man came to being alone. Then her tormentor waved aside the sommelier staffing the space and poured two glasses of ruby-colored cabernet. The idled sommelier’s smile didn’t slip when the wine rose over the one-ounce amount for a tasting pour, but she could identify his disapproval from the way he squinted. She pegged him as the type who didn’t think grapes and women mixed outside of méthode champenoise and believed that a wine of this caliber would be wasted on a mere female.

  Although she knew a beautiful label was no more indicative of the contents of the bottle than a beautiful cover or a beautiful haircut indicated the quality of a book or a brain, the bottle in his hand was one of her favorite designs. The subtle shapes of colored leaves curled into each other like two bodies, a celebration of autumn harvest and sensuality in each stroke of the paint the artist had applied to the original.

  She sensed another silent male communication that made her grit her teeth, and then the sommelier left, as professional as every other Bodeby’s employee.

  The departure signaled the end of the need for restraint. Alone with this cheat, she could finally speak her mind.

  “That bottle looks almost authentic.” As she probed with a comment intended to make him wince, she focused on his face.

  “It is.”

  She snorted. Nature hadn’t blessed her with more than sixty-two natural inches, and even with three artificial ones from her heels, she was stuck looking up at almost every man in the world. Her nemesis was probably a fraction below six feet, although his cat-burglar physique made him appear taller.

  “Here. For you.” Wrapped around the stem of the crystal glass, his fingers didn’t look like her banker or venture capitalist clients’ hands. He had the strongly developed knuckles of a field worker. As he offered the wine, the play of light on the edges of the ruby liquid captivated her, the subtle glow from the wall sconces deepening the original red almost to purple-black at the meniscus. It was magic, liquid magic, and she reached for the offering.

  She was too tired and on edge to enjoy this properly, too preoccupied with the challenge of this man pretending to be her boss and scared to death of six or twenty or fifty worst-case scenarios, but she was unable to resist the lure. She’d tasted this vintage twice and remembered its tantalizing aroma of plums, earthiness and licorice, a blend that defied description with concrete terms.

  Before she brought the glass to her nose, she caught something else. Cinnamon? Musk? Not this wine—him. He stood close enough, and she was so tuned to him, that his scent intruded. Her nose twitched.

  His eyes dropped a fraction. Not low enough to be staring at her breasts, which weren’t particularly revealed by her conservatively cut dress. Elaine was right.

  “Have you caught a scent?” He’d seen the twitch.

  She felt like a small animal trapped in a predator’s lair. She raised the glass and swirled too quickly.

  The corner of his mouth quirked when he reconnected with her eyes. He recognized her fluster and didn’t bother to conceal that he thought he had the upper hand.

  His hubris had the opposite effect and concentrated her on one goal—winning. If he thought he could toy with her, she’d play his game. Staring back, she lowered the glass until the rounded bowl hovered a few inches in front of her well-covered chest. To look at the wine would require him to gaze ten inches below her face. A slow exhale curved her body into a deliberate softness that she knew signaled surrender.

  His nostrils flared very slightly, but it was enough to prod her further.

  “Delicious,” she said without taking a full breath. Her voice sounded soft on the shush sounds and she tilted her chin down, using her face to lead his gaze to the place she held her wineglass. One deep inhale at the same time she swirled her glass, slowly this time, and she caught the widening of his eyes. Yes, he was a man who liked breasts. “It’s unforgettable.”

  “I’m sure it’s hard once you’ve tasted it.” He leaned closer.

  “Have you?” She licked her lips and moved the glass slightly toward him. “Tasted it?”

  “Not yet.”

  “Why not?” They’d drifted close enough that she could see the individual details of his eyelashes.

  “I’ve been waiting.”

  “For what?” Her fingers held the stem where she wouldn’t warm the liquid in the bowl with her body heat.

  “For you to go first.” He easily inserted his hand above hers at the base of the goblet and lifted with the lightest pressure until she released the glass. He was playing with her too, and doing a better job, because he didn’t look as flushed as she felt. “The scent alone is intoxicating, isn’t it?”

  Her senses had opened so fully that his scent wrapped around her, almost as if he’d brushed his body across hers, when the only parts that had touched had been their hands. They were standing too close to each other. That was the issue, the reason why her bones felt quivery. She needed space, air to breathe that didn’t link her to him, but stepping away would break the connection that might elicit answers.

  He brought the glass to his lips. His jawline was firm and square, not a hint of softness around his chin. All of him would be that honed, she suspected. His throat worked when he swallowed, the only movement in their tableau.

  Intellectually, she knew he was deliberately distracting her, just as she was trying to do to him. She cursed herself for letting his pheromones send her into the same softening craving other women at the preview had displayed. Like them, her body had become putty.

  Unlike the rest, she knew he was a liar and a fraud.

  She shivered. The cave was colder without other people, and as a female she was beginning to feel like the prey of a much larger hunter. Time to hit hard and leave. “You counterfeited dozens of my wines, didn’t you?”

  His grin was lazy and slow, as if he couldn’t or didn’t want to abandon the tension that had been flowing between them a moment ago, even as fake as it had been. “Check the labels. Corks. Capsules.” He shrugged. The movement emphasized how perfectly fitted his clothes were, because they moved with him like skin. “Call a glass expert if you wish.” One hand gesture encompassed the wall of bottles behind him. “Taste them. I guarantee not one of these will fail whatever examination you choose.”

  “You’re too smart to pour a substitute at Bodeby’s, I’ll give you that.”

  “Then what will you do?” His grin made her back teeth hurt.

  “I’ll prove it.” She had her records, and the director was on the other side of these walls. She could unwind his scheme in five seconds.

  “Will you? With expensive tests that show the world Morrison and Mancini sold
Spanish tempranillo doctored with oak essence as premier Napa cabernet?” He held out the mostly full glass. “Or will you use a handful of flimsy receipts signed by the disgruntled employee I recently sacked?”

  The pinch of her fingernails digging into her palms only made her angrier. He’d ruin her business. She’d never have her down payment for a vineyard, never make her own wine, if he didn’t pull the bottles. “You can’t sell fakes.”

  “I have paperwork to prove they’re genuine. Signed by Christina Mancini. Some of it signed by Geoffrey Morrison.”

  “There is no Geoffrey Morrison!” She’d said it.

  “I beg to differ.” One-handed, he reached inside his tuxedo jacket and retrieved a flat rectangle with the familiar wavy gold color scheme of a California license. Geoffrey R. C. Morrison. His face on the blue background. An address on First Street in Napa, above her store and café. “Here he is. Did I get any of it wrong?”

  Her mouth opened, she thought, but she couldn’t speak. He’d used the shop address. What else had he done?

  “Sorry to be presumptuous with your little creation, but Geoffrey needed middle initials. I chose Robert and Charles. Three names sounds more English, don’t you think.” It wasn’t a question.

  “How could you?” She stumbled two steps backward until her hip bumped a shelf. “How?”

  “You provided excellent credentials. The internet did the rest.”

  “You’re an imposter. A liar.”

  “Miss Mancini, so are you.”

  “No. No, I’m not.” He couldn’t know the full truth. There was no way he could have guessed her status. No one knew except her half brother and maybe her uncle. For all his faults, and they were numerous, she couldn’t imagine Uncle Robert would have told a stranger about her citizenship. And her brother wanted to sponsor her as soon as he’d finished his Marine Corps training, so he wouldn’t have let a word slip.

  “What would Elaine and Jack Johnson think about how you fooled them?”

  Relief swept through her and she slumped into the shelf, the cool glass of a bottle and the corner of a sign display pressing her shoulder blade through the dress fabric. He didn’t know. Even if her business reputation took a hit, the temporary insanity that had urged her to buy a ticket to London wasn’t going to cost her the ability to return to California.

  “They’re friends.”

  “Men like Jack don’t like to look foolish, and being Elaine’s surrogate daughter only goes so far. No, you can’t risk telling them. Or anyone. Certainly not Bodeby’s.”

  It was frigid in here now.

  “I think your evidence will stay in whatever ugly American rucksack you brought with you. I think you can’t do anything but watch.” He set the glass he’d been holding in an empty niche.

  The tiny ringing as the thin walls of crystal vibrated, imperceptible to anyone who wasn’t as focused as she was on the moment, acted like an alarm. She jumped to the side, away from his orbit, closer to the door.

  “Fine. You win this round. But I’m not done either.”

  “I wouldn’t respect you if you were.” He looked at a gold wristwatch, a brand she couldn’t recognize but that screamed money. “Shall we disband our tête-a-tête? I’ll give you a moment to blend into the crowd outside. Do try not to look so blushy.”

  She put her fingertips to her cheeks. They were hot, or else her hands were frozen. Damn him. She yanked the door but remembered to moderate her steps as she glided back into the preview.

  The lights felt like stage glare after the dimness of the cave, but the connoisseurs chatting throughout the room remained oblivious to the scam artist in their midst. He fit with them and told them what they wanted to hear, exactly the way men like him pulled their schemes. Critics might accuse her of the same tactics, but she knew that creating a fake person wasn’t as bad as creating fake wines and selling them. The distinction seemed fundamental.

  A fringe benefit of being small and wearing even smaller jewelry was that she could pass through the crowd as invisibly as a waiter, because if someone stopped her to talk, she didn’t know if she could be civil. By now, Elaine should be finished in the loo or the WC or whatever the English called it, and Christina could safely hide there to plan her next step.

  Although intellectually she believed her wrong was minor compared to passing counterfeit wines, the imposter was right about one thing. She wouldn’t denounce him. The super-wealthy didn’t like to confront any gullibility. If she wasn’t extremely discreet, her own dreams would circle the drain as surely as the junk in the fake bottles.

  But no way in hell would that man con Christina Alvarez.

  * * *

  “Miss? Miss?”

  The hand and voice were gentle, but she didn’t want to wake up. Too tired. Wasn’t it Sunday? The café didn’t open until brunch. “Leave me alone.” She tried to roll over but she wasn’t lying down.

  “Miss? The party’s over.”

  Party. Over. Holy crap, she’d fallen asleep and her watch said one o’clock. London time? Yes, she’d reset it when the plane landed, so this must be one a.m. and she was fucked. She uncurled from the floral print chair, realizing she didn’t have a hotel room and probably wouldn’t be able to retrieve her luggage or her trench coat. The checker would be long gone. To a bed.

  She apologized to the two women waiting with spray bottles and rags as she stood, not bothering to stuff her swollen feet back into her heels. They had to clean and make a long trek home, a schedule she knew because her mother had lived that life until she’d married Big Frank. Her mother’s friends had been housekeepers even after the wedding.

  Hair tickled her left shoulder. Half her bun had escaped its confines, so she unpinned the rest while she used a hip to open the swinging door.

  The hall was dim and deserted except for the cleaning cart. She’d missed the opportunity to talk to any Bodeby’s bigwigs, to check the rest of the wine, to delve deeper into this mess.

  The realization that she’d gambled with her entire life in the United States by coming here, and yet she’d blown it napping in the ladies’ lounge, crashed through her hard enough to stop her. Almost two thousand dollars in airfare and sixty dollars on the cab, money she couldn’t afford to spend without results that would protect Morrison and Mancini. Each wasted dollar weighed like a backpack full of two thousand rocks.

  A vacuum propped open the door into the dark party room, where the greenish glow of emergency lights reflected off dark wooden tables stripped of their linens. The empty room beckoned.

  Her feet took a step closer. The fake cave occupied the middle of the room, reminding her that tomorrow night—no, tonight—would be a special preview for Asian collectors. They too would see certifications of authenticity backed by her reputation.

  The carpets gave slightly under her feet as she crossed to the structure. Without the lighting and chattering crowds, it squatted in the center of the room like a mausoleum.

  She shivered, her bare arms chilled even as her palms felt damp and sweaty. The antique door handle was cool and slippery. As soon as it swung open, she wiped her hand on the fabric over her thighs, and the conversation with the fake Geoffrey Morrison returned.

  An off-brand dress.

  Her dress didn’t define her any more than it had when she was a little girl wearing thrift shop clothes, so she walled his words away. His snobbery and fake values were a pathetic attempt to demean her, one she wouldn’t think about, not while she had the freedom to investigate the wine display.

  The interior of the cave was as dark as a covered vat. She groped to the right until she felt a switch, and soft light illuminated wall niches filled with bottles ready for the second round of previews. Chinese, Japanese and Korean characters had been added below the hand-lettered script on Bodeby’s tags. She hadn’t begun to pursue the Asian market f
or high-end wine, but that bastard had jumped ahead of her. If Morrison and Mancini pulled out of this intact, maybe she could develop a few new clients from his work.

  Without the presence of living, breathing people, the cooling system had sanitized the space. A real wine cave smelled alive in an indescribable way, not organic, not the rampant attack-force of brewery yeast, but yet alive. This space had less aroma than a walk-in refrigerator.

  She set her purse on the bar and dropped her shoes while she scanned the rows for her most prized acquisitions. The Argentinian Incarnadine was there, its label glowing with the fire of sunrise on a wine-red sea. Two years ago, she’d secured a half case for Lord Seymour by swapping tickets to the owner’s box of the Los Angeles professional soccer team with the winemaker’s brother-in-law. She’d worked her ass off for six bottles, but there was a little twelve next to the lot size. She snapped a photo with her phone. The family who produced Incarnadine tracked their bottles like grandchildren, and they would notice the discrepancy. Of all the fakes, these had to be pulled.

  She pulled her master list out of her purse. The crackle of paper unfolding broke the still quality of the space and sent her heart racing. There was no one but her to hear, she reminded herself. That didn’t prevent the paper from trembling in her hand.

  Over five years, she’d sourced six cases of a fine, but not rare, syrah that Lord Seymour claimed went well with roast pork. Seventy-two bottles, minus a healthy number for consumption, but there were three lots of four cases each available for Friday’s bidding. She could multiply twelves in her sleep, and the answers were the same. Fakes.

  She took a photo of this sign too. Might as well be thorough. Whoever the imposter was, there was no way he’d get away with this, not so blatantly.