Maureen Child - The Highest Bidder

“Is this what I think it is?” he asked, lifting his gaze to hers.

“If you’re thinking it’s the Rayas collection, including the Gold Heart statue,” she whispered almost reverently, “then yes. It is.”

“But it’s been missing for more than a hundred years,” Vance murmured, gaze dragging up and down the photo of the statue.

“Roark found it,” Ann told him, with barely restrained glee. “Honestly, your brother can be hard to deal with and even harder to keep track of, but he makes some truly miraculous finds for the house.”

Miraculous . Exactly what tracking down this piece of art was. Stunned, Vance stared down at the photo of the famed statue. Everyone who lived and worked in the fine art world knew the story of the lost statue from the Middle Eastern kingdom of Rayas.

One of only three in existence, each of the statues was a woman, two feet high, her heart etched and inlaid in gold. The pedestal the female figure stood on was an inch-thick block of pure gold and stamped with a unique seal. Legend said that centuries ago, the king of Rayas commissioned three Gold Heart statues, one for each of his daughters, to bring them luck in love.

The daughters were lucky, as were all the generations to follow—as long as the statues remained in their respective palaces. One of the three matching works belonged to the family of Sheikh Raif Khouri, another still graced the palace of the original family to inherit it. And about a century ago, the third statue went missing—presumed to have been either stolen—or sold by a member of the family. Either way, without the statue in the palace, that branch of the family met with heartache, disaster and eventually died out altogether. Which made a man put a little more faith in the strength of a legend.

But for this Gold Heart to suddenly turn up as part of the collection was damn irregular. Where had it come from? How had his brother found it? And why hadn’t he told Vance?

They’d spoken only two days ago, so he must have had a line on the statue then. Why wouldn’t he have mentioned it? Frowning now, Vance asked, “Roark sent these photos to you?”

“Just got them this morning by fax.” She grabbed the top paper back and skimmed over the full-color picture. “Gorgeous. Just gorgeous. And Waverly’s has it.”

This was huge. Vance stared down at the paper she’d left him with and examined photos of three of the other items that would be included in the auction. He felt a satisfied, proud smile crease his face. Roark had done it. He’d secured the most sought-after auction items in the world at a time when Waverly’s really needed the good press. It was a gift, he thought. A damn timely one.

“Where’s the statue itself?” he asked.

Ann looked up at him and blinked as if she had to refocus her mind. And who could blame her? Things had been tense and ugly here for a couple of weeks and this news could change everything. For Ann as well as for the house.

“He locked it in his overseas vault. It’s safe until he can bring it back home. But he’s authenticated it, Vance. There’s no mistake. This is the missing Gold Heart.”

He nodded.

“I want to announce this to the press,” Ann said. “But before I do, I wanted your take on it. We can’t afford any mistakes about this. Once the Gold Heart acquisition is announced, we’re putting Waverly’s reputation on the line.”

Vance knew what she was talking about. If it turned out that the statue was a copy or something even worse, it would shatter the house. They were already under siege and couldn’t afford any more bad press.

Looking at Ann, he said, “You know as well as I do that Roark knows his stuff. No one else on this planet has his kind of instincts—or his knowledge of antiquities. If he says it’s real, then it is.”

His brother had the unerring ability to locate treasures that others either overlooked or missed completely. Roark had an encyclopedic knowledge of the weird and the unique. He had managed to acquire collections for the house that no one else would have been able to procure.

She let out a relieved sigh. “That’s exactly how I felt about it. I just needed that feeling verified. God, Vance. Do you know what this will mean for Waverly’s?”

“I do. It’s an amazing find and right when we need it the most.”

Ann sent him a quick look. “It’s been rough, I know. But this will turn things around.”

“Undoubtedly,” he agreed. “But why the hell did Roark leave something this valuable overseas? Why not bring it home right away?”

Ann waved that question aside, but said simply, “He didn’t have time. After his stop in the Middle East, he was on his way to the Amazon, for some top secret meeting with another one of his contacts. If he’d taken the time to bring the Rayas treasures home, he might have lost out on the next acquisition.”

Vance still didn’t like it. The Gold Heart was legendary. Collectors all over the world had been looking for this missing statue for more than a century. Leaving it in a vault, no matter how safe, was taking a risk. “When will he be back?”

“I’m not sure,” Ann said, still smiling down at the photo she held in her hand. “He said he might run into some trouble with his latest quest.”

“Trouble? What kind of trouble?”

“He didn’t say.”

His brother didn’t say much, dammit. If he was expecting trouble, then Vance wanted to know about it. “Well, what the hell is he after in the Amazon?”

“He didn’t tell me that, either.” Lifting her gaze to his, Ann said, “Roark doesn’t exactly keep us in the loop when he’s on one of his trips. You know that yourself, Vance. And you just admitted that no one is better than Roark at what he does.”

“Yeah,” he muttered. “Doesn’t mean I like it.”

“Forget about everything else for a second, Vance. Don’t you see what this means for us? At auction, the Gold Heart could bring in as much as 200 million . Maybe more. And that’s not even taking into account the rest of the collection, which is pretty extraordinary.”

“I know, Ann.” Still, he had a bad feeling. Maybe it was the fact that he’d been steeped in a morass of suspicion for the past couple of weeks. But his internal alarms were ringing. Oh, not about the statue. As he’d told Ann, he had no doubts about its authenticity. If Roark gave his approval, that was good enough for Vance. But why now? Didn’t it seem just a little bit coincidental that the one thing that could pull Waverly’s out of this mess just happened to show up at the perfect time?

“It isn’t just the sale itself that will do a world of good for us. With all that’s going on right now,” Ann was saying, “this is just the big news we needed. The fact that Waverly’s acquired this statue to sell at auction is the kind of cachet you can’t buy.

“We’ll be above reproach and no rumors will be able to touch us. Any of us. This will push all speculation out of the paper. When word of this gets out, no one will be talking about anything beyond the fact that Waverly’s is the top auction house in the world. Let’s see Dalton try to pull something now.” She whispered that last part and Vance shot her a look.

Was there more to the rumors about Ann and Dalton than she was saying? She’d denied it all to the board, but that didn’t mean she was telling the truth. Of course she would lie to save her ass—the question was, would she sell out Waverly’s to do it?

He didn’t think so, but the woman was clearly on the raw edge of emotional meltdown. Her usually cool, dispassionate gaze was fired with an excitement he hadn’t seen in her before.

Maybe it wasn’t only Charlie dealing with threats from an unknown source. Maybe Ann was doing battle with a few demons of her own.