Vanessa Fewings - The Game

Can she outwit the ultimate master in a timeless game of seduction?

Chasing Icon, the world’s slickest art thief, was the most seductive thrill of London art investigator Zara Leighton’s career...until the clues led her to the man who holds command of her body and heart, Tobias Wilder, an American billionaire with charisma to spare. Her duty to capture him is complicated by the intensity of their passion. Her will to end their connection is tinted with red-hot need to never let him go.

Tobias’s heists are about more than money and ego. His plot to orchestrate the perfect deception in Los Angeles is destiny. No one—not even Zara—knows the depths of his motivation. And no one suspects the truth behind a single artifact that holds the secrets to an entire civilization. Forced to deny one calling to satisfy another, he knows something must be sacrificed: his code of honor or his loyalty to Zara.

The Game

Vanessa Fewings

www.millsandboon.co.uk

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To all creators of art past and present, both professional and personal. This story is for you.

Contents

Cover

Back Cover Text Can she outwit the ultimate master in a timeless game of seduction? Chasing Icon, the world’s slickest art thief, was the most seductive thrill of London art investigator Zara Leighton’s career...until the clues led her to the man who holds command of her body and heart, Tobias Wilder, an American billionaire with charisma to spare. Her duty to capture him is complicated by the intensity of their passion. Her will to end their connection is tinted with red-hot need to never let him go. Tobias’s heists are about more than money and ego. His plot to orchestrate the perfect deception in Los Angeles is destiny. No one—not even Zara—knows the depths of his motivation. And no one suspects the truth behind a single artifact that holds the secrets to an entire civilization. Forced to deny one calling to satisfy another, he knows something must be sacrificed: his code of honor or his loyalty to Zara.

Title Page The Game Vanessa Fewings www.millsandboon.co.uk

Dedication To all creators of art past and present, both professional and personal. This story is for you.

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Extract

Copyright

1

This way through The Wilder Museum promised to lead to one of the most significant paintings of French Impressionism, a masterpiece renowned for igniting a sensation in the late nineteenth century for its stunning realism. A work also famed for altering your experience of art irrevocably.

My stilettos carried me across the white marble floor of one of Los Angeles’s most distinguished museums, and my heart beat faster as I made my way toward the room showcasing Jean-Jacques Henner’s 1879 Madame Paul Duchesne-Fournet.

More than this, these sprawling hallways would lead me back to him.

Tobias William Wilder, the owner of this grand palace of art, and the reason I’d traveled all the way from London.

I’d flown in to LAX just this morning, arriving on this balmy Monday with my heart heavy with what lay ahead. By the time I’d checked into my hotel in Beverly Hills, I’d rallied my courage to see him again.

Amongst Wilder’s many talents, which included running a billion-dollar tech empire and taking the world by storm with his inventions, he was also Icon—history’s most notorious art thief. It was this secret that was destroying me.

All I believed about us is a lie.

I hurried onward refocusing on the reason I was here.

I’d worn a deep blue laced dress, the color calming, and the detail of the scalloped lace hemline pretty and nonthreatening. The style made me feel feminine but strong; with the strappy high heels, my height would at least be closer to his. Tucking my Dooney and Bourke pouchette purse behind me, I took a moment to center myself, prepare for what lay ahead.

Taking in a deep, steadying breath, I raised my gaze skyward to the architectural wonder of the multicolored glass ceiling showering shards of radiant light upon me. A vivid display bridging the old world with the new, the complex prisms were quite simply beautiful and provided a rare glimpse into Tobias’s nature.

The first curator to greet me had advised that the route I was now taking was the best way to approach the gallery’s most treasured piece, generously on loan from the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. The one portrait everyone came to pay homage to.

Along with the imminent visceral experience from viewing such a masterpiece, this moment was filled with a ribbon of emotions unfolding with the complexity they deserved, from seeing the man who I’d thought of as my one true love to the strain of having to persuade Tobias to surrender to Interpol. Or, if it was easier, he could come with me to the police. I’d do everything in my power to make his arrest a little kinder on him.

Tobias had single-handedly shaken the art community to its core by stealing some of its most precious portraits, and all this without leaving a trace.

Right up until that raven had dive-bombed his heist back in France, leaving a few feathers to mark its uninvited descent into a priceless rotunda in Amboise. Such a chaotic misadventure proved nothing fazed him. Tobias had gotten away with a self-portrait by Titian, no less.

In his own indomitable style he had also incapacitated my world when he’d swept me up into a rapturous love affair that had left me questioning my integrity. I had to know if I’d been merely a means to an end because as a forensic art investigator, I’d seemingly been a pawn to move and manipulate and provide him with insider glimpses into his case. If it were not for me, our private investigation would have otherwise remained secured away on Huntly Pierre’s database—the company I worked for and the firm that had tasked me with tracking him down.

I wallowed in guilt that so far I’d done nothing.

Until today.

I’d needed time to analyze the evidence to prove Wilder was our man. Such an accusation could devastate a reputation. There was no room for error or even doubt. It was impossible to deny the raw truth I’d personally witnessed at his home in Oxfordshire, having stood right there in that cold vault and viewed those stolen paintings. My uncanny ability to spot a fake had proven a curse as I’d known I was viewing an authentic Rembrandt, and a Monet. Along with the others I’d viewed, it had added up to irrefutable evidence.

I’d left his home with nothing to corroborate my story. Accusing one of Huntly Pierre’s most exclusive clients would see my thin thread of credibility gone, along with my dream job. My future hinged on doing the right thing.