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wished they would leave. I had wanted to see Connor Todd again, but not like this. The contempt in his gaze was hurtful, and I wondered why I cared so much. The other man was looking avidly around my house, and I knew he was itching to get up and search it. Like my house hadn’t already been thoroughly searched by the police from the basement to the attic in the days following Miguel’s arrest.
    I’d been questioned for hours—again and again, over and over, day after day—the same questions about the missing artwork until I finally decided to shut down and stop paying attention to them altogether. That’s when my attorney, Andrea Jones, told me later that she stepped in, and the next thing I knew I was coming back to myself in the county hospital under “observation.”
    I’d stayed there for three days before Andrea Jones finally got me released into her custody. After the hearing with the judge six weeks later, I was more than ready to go back home to the old house I lived in with my grandfather after my parents died. Built in the 1850s, it was a real beauty, though it had long since seen the last of its glory days. It was built in the antebellum style, a two-story home, with a wide front porch that wrapped around three sides, and two white columns that stretched up by the entrance, with shorter columns along the front and sides. It had another, smaller porch area up over the front door. A door at the end of the upper hallway led out to this small balcony, though it probably had rotten floorboards. That door had been boarded up years before and was never used.
    My grandfather had bought the home when he first took me in and had replaced the furnace and made a few updates to the plumbing, but other than that, the house was pretty much in its original condition. I’d tried to get him to repaint and remodel for years, but he always put it off until later. I’d been putting it off for a couple of years too, since his death, but while I was in the hospital I’d decided to finally get started as soon as I could.
    The moldings and fireplaces in each room were beautiful. I was in the process of painting the walls in each of the rooms and had finished most of the downstairs. The old plaster walls had been painted and repainted so many times I’d had to do a lot of prep work, but in the end the soft creamy color I used had begun to have an effect on the house, like an old woman who had fixed her hair and makeup and was able to call back an echo of her former beauty.
    I couldn’t afford to put down new hardwood floors, so I used an old trick of my grandfather’s, mixing wood stain and polyurethane to repaint the floors until they could be properly refinished. I thought the result wasn’t too bad, especially once they’d been covered with area rugs. I rubbed my bare toe across a black scuff mark that I didn’t remember being there by the edge of the rug.
    The two men in my living room glanced at each other again as the silence drew out, and some kind of unspoken message passed between them. Jim Allen got up and stood looking down at me. “I have some paperwork to finish in the car. Mr. Todd has a few more questions for you, so I’ll let myself out.”
    I started to get up anyway, but Connor Todd put a hand out to cover mine, and I looked up at him. We both listened to the sound of the front door closing, and he leaned in closer, peering into my eyes. “Gavin? Tell me the truth. Is this act of yours for real?”
    “Act? I don’t understand.”
    He ran a hand over his face and blew out a breath. “Shit.” He lifted his gaze to mine again. “The other night—at the bar in the hotel. I had no idea…I mean, I didn’t even get your name, and when I woke up you were gone. You have to believe, I would never…I wouldn’t take advantage of you, Gavin. I want you to know that.”
    “I know.” I gave him a little smile. “I couldn’t stay, but I enjoyed it very much. I was coming back to see if you were still in