She still could feel his mouth on hers and the effects of even a brief kiss. She gripped his arm again. The reality of his hard muscles brought her up short, and she jumped back.
He dropped his arm to her waist. “Easy. You don’t want to fall down the stairs.”
“I wasn’t going to fall.”
He smiled, leaving his arm around her middle. “That kiss was bound to happen, don’t you think?”
“No,” she lied. “It was adrenaline. Let’s go.”
Emma barely noticed her feet hitting the steps as she charged down the stairs, taking the lead this time. Colin stayed with her, following her through the empty rooms and out to the back porch.
She shivered involuntarily in the chilly air. Colin slipped off his jacket and draped it over her shoulders. She smiled at him. “Chivalrous. Thank you.”
“Chivalrous? I think that’s a first.” His black sweatshirt fit close against his broad shoulders and flat abdomen. He nodded to the painting she’d been working on. “Your work?”
“Yank thought my boat was a seagull. And don’t tell me you don’t know who he is, because you do.”
“Is painting a hobby?”
“A hobby I have less and less time to indulge.”
Emma realized he was getting her to talk through her nerves while they waited for the police to arrive. There’d be a big response. Two FBI agents had found a bomb at the family home and offices of one of them. If her brother or any of his employees had decided to start clearing out the attic, they could have accidentally triggered the bomb. There could have been serious injuries. Deaths.
She shut her eyes, picturing herself in the attic as a little girl, sitting in front of a painting as her grandfather fussed with a stack of files.
“Granddad, she’s so pretty. Is she sleeping?”
“I think so, darlin’. She’s a saint. A kind, lovely saint.”
“Why is she in the cave? Is she hiding from the Vikings?”
The remembered conversation wasn’t the result of stress and adrenaline—regret, she thought, and guilt. The shock of Sister Joan’s murder hadn’t somehow created a false memory. Emma was positive that the painting of the woman in the cave that Sister Cecilia had described had once been in Wendell Sharpe’s attic—in her grandfather’s possession.
How could it be a focal point in a Jack d’Auberville painting of an unknown private gallery?
Was that what Sister Joan had wanted to ask her? Had she recognized the painting of the woman in the cave?
Was it why she had been killed?
Emma was aware of Colin watching her, aware of wanting him to kiss her again. “I enjoy painting,” she said, although she knew he’d rather hear about her elusive memory of what was now, apparently, a second missing painting—the mysterious painting of a beautiful woman in an island cave, with a Viking longboat about to attack. “I have no airs about being an artist. I love the colors, the textures, the feel of acrylic and oil paint on a clean brush and fresh canvas.”
“Do time and worries fall away when you paint?”
“Yes. For you—?”
“Kayaking, canoeing, hiking. I don’t paint landscapes and still lifes.”
“I like kayaking and hiking. I haven’t gone canoeing in ages. I paint what’s around me here in Heron’s Cove. I did a still life of apples I picked myself that I like well enough. I hung it in my kitchen in Boston.”
“Yank’s going to want to know about the bomb,” Colin said.
She nodded. “Yes, he is.”
“Why would someone want to break into your grandfather’s house and set a bomb in the attic, Agent Sharpe?”
“I think after that kiss you should at least call me Emma, don’t you?”
“You’re avoiding my question. What was in the vault, Emma?”
She could hear the wail of sirens of the approaching police cars. They seemed to be coming from all directions.
“I’m not going anywhere until I get an answer,” Colin said. “I know all the guys about to descend here. I’ll tell them to leave you to me for now. They’ll do it.”
Emma had no doubt they would.
“Does your grandfather have a big unsolved case—some grand old masterpiece that he’s been on the trail of for decades?”
“I’m sure he has more than one unsolved case. Art theft cases can go on for decades. One of the most famous is the theft at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston in 1990. Thieves posing as police officers carried off thirteen paintings valued at half a billion dollars—works by Rembrandt, Vermeer, Manet and Degas. There are a lot of theories about who’s responsible.”
“What’s the relationship between the convent and your family?”
“We both deal in fine art, if in different ways—”
“It’s more than that,” Colin said.
The sirens were louder, blaring. She could see the lights of the police cars shining through the empty house behind her. “My grandfather and Mother Linden, the foundress of the Sisters of the Joyful Heart, were friends.”
“Before she became a nun?”
Emma nodded and pulled Colin’s jacket more tightly around her, noticing it was still warm from him. “She was an accomplished artist and a dedicated teacher. My grandfather was a security guard at a Portland museum. She encouraged him to pursue a career in art theft and recovery.”
“So you knew her.”
“I met her as a small child. She died when I was quite young. She was a lovely, cheerful woman dedicated to her work and her faith. Everyone adored her.” Emma felt the energy drain out of her. “We should go meet the police.”
She started back into the kitchen.
“Emma,” Colin said, waiting until she stopped in the doorway and glanced back at him. “The kiss was good.”
She smiled. “Yes, it was.”
He gave her one of his dark-eyed winks. “Let’s do it again sometime.”
She felt somewhat more energized as she went to meet the police, Colin Donovan right behind her.
CHAPTER 15
COLIN TOOK A HALF GALLON OF LOCAL APPLE CIDER out of the Sharpe refrigerator after explaining himself yet again to his former colleagues in the Maine State Police. The FBI and
