Gold of Kings by Davis Bunn Page B

nobleman, the nose of a bird of prey. “Our shop is in the process of closing.”
    â€œI am not offering the item to your shop, Ms. Syrrell, but to you personally.”
    The night swirled around her, only now it left her untouched. “Is the item in Palm Beach?”
    â€œPerhaps.”
    â€œHow do you want—”
    â€œIt would be best if our discussion remained confidential. Most particularly in regards to your aunt.”
    â€œWhat do you have against Claudia?”
    But the man had vanished, and her question was directed at empty air.

ELEVEN
    T HE NEXT MORNING, STORM LEFT Harry in charge of the booth while she went to rush several final items through the vetting process.
    Harry was no monk, and his absence of physical desire for this softly vulnerable woman astonished him. He did not feel fatherly. As Harry stood in the booth’s entrance and waited for the convention’s starting bell, he decided there was only one way to describe how Storm made him feel.
    He felt needed.
    Nothing—no smiling lady crossing a smoky bar with promise in her eyes, no find uncovered in a forest of coral and old bones—nothing felt quite so fine as the kiss she had laid upon his cheek. One touch to flesh scarred by a lot more than prison, and Harry tipped a mental hat to the lost friend who had sent him here.
    As soon as the gates opened, the convention center aisles became rivers of two-legged money. People strolled and shopped and greeted one another with confident tones and polished laughter. Harry made no attempt to hide Storm’s cheat sheet. He was amazed at both the prices he quoted and the way people didn’t even blink. An hour into the show, he had red reserve tags on two paintings, a jade sculpture, and one of the ruby amulets.
    As soon as he spotted the woman in the booth’s entryway, Harry knew her as Sean’s daughter. Claudia Syrrell was sophisticated, refined, and statuesque and carried her fifty-plus years with the same elegance as another woman might wear pearls.
    But she was not Sean.
    Storm carried the old man’s stamp. Claudia Syrrell merely bore the name.
    Claudia searched the booth for her niece. Even her frown was graceful. Harry said, “Ms. Syrrell?”
    â€œYes.”
    â€œHarry Bennett. Storm got called away. She asked me to handle things for a second.”
    â€œHow kind, Mr….”
    â€œBennett.” He remembered manners drilled into him by a pair of Ivy League lieutenants. How a man never offered a lady his hand, but rather waited for her to decide if she wanted to shake. Which Claudia Syrrell most definitely did not. “I was very sorry to hear about Sean.”
    â€œDid you know my father, Mr. Bennett?”
    He liked the quiet sigh that inflected the name. An emotion too strong for even this stylish woman to fully disguise. “He was one of my closest friends.”
    She studied the vendor’s badge dangling from Harry’s neck. “Are you a collector?”
    â€œI have been. Most of it’s gone now.”
    â€œSold through us, I hope.” Not even her cultured tones could quite mask the question’s mechanical quality. “Did you have any particular passion?”
    Harry noted the delicate way she pried. Her clients weren’t in the market for something. They collected. They didn’t shop for an item. They had a passion. As though the extra zeros required a different lingo. Harry replied, “Gold, jade, and porcelain mostly. Some silver and pewter, not enough of either. Most recently, sixteenth-century conquistadors’ booty.”
    â€œHow very interesting. Three years ago, we carried quite an interesting line of Spanish gold artifacts from that same era.”
    Harry spotted Storm walking the aisle toward them. He saw how people paused in their shopping and their discussions. Some probablybecause of the shadow of loss she carried. But most of them, Harry surmised, because of the