Lover in the Rough by Elizabeth Lowell

take her. Nor had she seen him that night. She had had clients coming in to view a portion of Jeremy’s collection. As the clients had flown in from Egypt just for the appointment, she could hardly refuse to see them. But she had wanted to. They had stayed until two A.M. , too late for her to call Chance at his hotel. But she had wanted to. Since she had opened the shop at nine there had been wall-to-wall collectors, guards, and nervous insurance agents. There hadn’t been any time or privacy to call Chance.
    By four o’clock it had become obvious to Reba that the Objet d’Art was too small to contain the interest Jeremy’s collection had aroused. She had neither the time nor the energy to oversee an endless stream of collectors, or to answer their endless questions, endlessly repeated.
    She had cleared out the last client at four and spent the next hour making arrangements to show Jeremy’s collection in a few weeks at San Diego’s Hotel del Coronado. There would be a day of viewing the collection, then dinner, an evening auction and a midnight ball. Jeremy would have approved. He had loved combining champagne sophistication with the primal competitiveness of collectors bent on owning the same rare objet.
    Smiling softly, Reba ran her fingertips over the Tiger God. Even with her eyes closed she could visualize the powerful lines of the sculpture. It wasn’t an idealized or incredible figure of a man, a Hercules chiseled out of stone. It was simply very male, with solid shoulders and narrow hips, well-muscled arms and powerful legs, masculine ease and assurance in every line. The face was strong rather than handsome, compelling rather than perfect.
    If the Tiger God could talk, she wondered, would he have a deep voice with a suggestion of a drawl?
    “May I?” drawled a deep voice.
    Reba’s eyes flew open and she made a startled sound. Chance Walker was standing in front of her, his hand held out to the statue. Wordlessly, she gave him the Tiger God. He turned the statue over slowly, admiring the fine specimen of tiger’s-eye and the artistry of the figure itself. His brown fingers moved over the stone’s satin surface, delicately following the lines of stone and sculpture.
    “Extraordinary,” he said quietly, giving the statue back to Reba. “I’ve never seen a finer specimen. Not a fracture, not a displacement, not a single flaw. A mineral worthy of the artist who worked it.”
    “It was part of Jeremy’s collection,” Reba said as she set the statue in its niche behind her desk. She gave the tiger’s-eye a final stroke before she turned back to Chance.
    “I’m glad he’s only stone,” Chance said.
    “What do you mean?”
    “If the sculpture were alive, he’d be hard to take out in the desert and lose.” Chance looked at the tiger’s-eye sculpture, smiling slightly. “He’d be a mean one to tangle with. He’d be fair, though. No ambush. He wouldn’t have to. He’s strong and he knows it. He’d go hunting the devil himself with that solid gold bow.” Chance looked back at Reba. “Will this be for sale?”
    She shook her head. “The will gave me two choices from Jeremy’s collection. The Tiger God is mine.”
    “Tiger God,” Chance said softly. “It suits him. You named him, didn’t you?”
    “Yes.”
    Delicately, Chance’s fingertips traced from Reba’s eyebrow to her chin. “Never thought I’d be jealous of a damned stone,” he said, his voice almost harsh.
    “Don’t be,” she said softly, caught by the changing density of silver and green in his eyes. “I chose the statue and the name after Death Valley.”
    She felt the change in him as he understood what she was saying. His eyes closed and his fingers tightened on the curve of her chin. When he looked at her again, she forgot to breathe. His eyes focused on her with an intensity that was almost tangible.
    “Chaton,” he said, bending to kiss her. “We have to talk. There’s something I have to—”
    Tim walked into