“Nick?” she whispered, terrified and thrilled at the same time

Jordan reached out one finger to touch his soft bottom lip. Yep. He was still there, tangible and 3-D. “Wow.”

“Do I know you?” he asked.

He narrowed his eyes, boldly surveying her from top to bottom, making her feel warm under his intent gaze. And more turned on than ever. She didn’t feel free and saucy anymore in her miniskirt and camisole. Instead with her skirt scrunched up and covering almost nothing, Jordan felt indecent, naked, exposed.

“I thought—” He broke off and then started again, pulling his eyes away from her body to focus on her face. “You seem very familiar to me. But surely I’d remember if we’d met before.”

“Only in my dreams,” she said without thinking. The vivid memory of the lovemaking in those dreams was making her heart beat fast. She smiled. “You don’t know how glad I am to finally meet you, Nick.”

Closing her eyes, she tangled her arms around his neck. She held on tight, enjoying the feel of his arousal, so amazingly right . She’d been with him many times in her fantasies. All the things she associated with Nick came flooding back. Comfort, belonging, destiny…

And sex. Oh, yeah.

Dear Reader,

When I was asked to be part of the PERFECT TIMING miniseries for the Harlequin Blaze line, I was eager to jump in. I have always loved time travel. There’s something romantic and exciting about characters leaving their old world behind and leaping into somewhere dangerous and different.

It didn’t take me long to choose turn-of-the-century Chicago, with the lovely White City of the 1893 Columbian Exposition and World’s Fair as a backdrop.

Like my heroine Jordan, I studied history, with “Scandalous Women” such as Catherine the Great and Marie Antoinette showing up in my favorite classes. I love the idea of someone like Jordan—perfectly normal in her own time, longing to rock a few more boats than she really does—hitting Victorian times with a bang!

I tossed Jordan into the White City alongside Nick Tempest, who is himself chafing to break free of the restrictions of wealth and privilege of his time, and upped the ante by sticking them both under a shockingly beautiful marble arch carved with sexually charged images. For Nick and Jordan, the arch’s erotic powers are impossible to resist.

Scandal, sex, art and romance…Sounds like the stuff history is made of!

Happy reading!

Julie Kistler

Scandal
Julie Kistler

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Julie Kistler is well-known for her fast-paced romantic comedies for the Harlequin Temptation and Harlequin Duets lines. Now she’s excited to be writing for Harlequin Blaze—and flirting with the past in Scandal , part of the PERFECT TIMING time-travel miniseries. “I love a challenge,” this former RITA® Award nominee exclaims with a grin. Julie and her husband live in Illinois. Check out Julie’s Web site at www.juliekistler.com.

Contents

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

1

How to Be a Scandalous Woman, Rule 1:

Throw out the rules.

J ORDAN A LBRIGHT’S OFFICE DOOR creaked open. “Professor Albright? Can I ask you something?”

Without even looking up from her laptop, Jordan said automatically, “No, Catherine the Great did not have sex with a horse. And, no, Marie Antoinette was not a ‘major ho-bag,’ as somebody put it last week.” She smiled as she glanced at the young woman hovering in the doorway. “Anything else you want to know, you’ll have to come to class. And I’m not Professor Albright. Just Jordan, okay?”

But the student lingered, shifting her weight to her other platform sandal. “How did you know what I was going to ask?”

Jordan tried to be patient. “It’s not hard. I’m only teaching one class this semester. Scandalous Women 101. Everybody wants to know the same thing.”

“And you’re sure Catherine the Great never, you know, did it with a horse?” the girl persisted.

“Yes, I’m sure.” With that, Jordan turned her attention back to the display on her computer screen, trying not to be frustrated by this latest in a series of interruptions.

“Thanks, Professor Albright.” The student ducked into the hallway, already moving on.

“Come to class, okay?” Jordan called out after her. This time she didn’t bother to correct the “professor” thing. At twenty-six she was only a few years older than some of her students, so she kind of enjoyed being called “professor” every now and again, even if she hadn’t really achieved that status yet. Nope. Just a lowly grad student. A lowly grad student working desperately to get her PhD sooner rather than later.

Jordan heard footsteps patter down the wood floor of the hallway as the student departed.

Thank goodness. Now if only she could concentrate long enough to figure out a decent ending to the damn dissertation that had been plaguing her for the better part of four years.

Ending. Right. She wiggled in her wooden chair, twisted her long, dark hair into a loose knot, stared down into her laptop screen, and tried to focus. Focus.

Methodically, she scanned the outline that formed the spine of her project, which centered on one particular scandalous woman. She’d begun with her subject’s childhood and family life, moved on to her education and an important trip to Europe, and then dealt with her artistic influences and the effects of wealth and privilege on her development.

She had everything in order, everything perfect, step by step, up to the point that Isabella Tempest, notorious sculptress and the subject of this blasted, never-ending dissertation, had vanished from the pages of history. It was what made Isabella so fascinating and yet so frustrating, all at the same time.

Jordan frowned. The story of a talented artist who’d created the work of a lifetime—a magnificent marble arch brimming with erotic nudes—and then up and disappeared should’ve been the perfect topic for someone involved in the study of scandalous women. It should’ve been a piece of cake. But how could she fully analyze Isabella’s place in history without knowing what had happened to her after the big whoop-de-doo that ended her career in June of 1893?

There had to be something she’d overlooked. Jordan tried to put herself in the right frame of mind to puzzle it out. “Okay, so it’s June 1893,” she mused. She pulled up a picture on her laptop, a wide shot of the Columbian Exposition and World’s Fair in Chicago. “The White City is open for business.”

It was called the White City because of the magnificent, bright white buildings built just for the fair, all gleaming under a dazzling display of electric lights. Famous politicians, dukes and princesses, the cream of society, artists, writers and inventors, citizens from far-off lands including belly dancers, gondoliers and a tribe of alleged cannibals, as well as regular Joes off Chicago’s mean streets, had all come together to see the wonders of the new age and celebrate the 200th anniversary of Columbus “discovering” America. Buffalo Bill, Susan B. Anthony, Teddy Roosevelt, Thomas Edison…Anybody who was anybody was there. With Isabella Tempest right in the middle of it, kicking up a huge scandal.

Jordan stared into space, imagining herself in the middle of the White City. It wasn’t hard. It had happened practically on her doorstep, and the Midway Plaisance, the long, grassy area where the Ferris wheel and hot-air balloon and other popular attractions had sat, was still part of the University of Chicago campus.

Besides, the Chicago World’s Fair had been the event of the century, so there were thousands of photographs and souvenirs of the place. Jordan had plowed her way through stacks of them since she’d started this dissertation. She’d even bought herself a coin on eBay, a commemorative half-dollar sold at the fair with Columbus’s face on one side and one of his ships on the other, and she’d kept it on her desk for good luck ever since.

“I could use a little luck right now,” she murmured, pushing papers aside to get to the cup where she kept it. Quickly, she found her lucky coin, held it tight and closed her eyes, picturing in her mind what it must’ve been like at Chicago’s turn-of-the-century World’s Fair.

The shining White City. Blue skies. A breeze off Lake Michigan. The world’s first Ferris wheel twirling in the background. Art and treasures from around the world. And Isabella’s outrageous arch.

Jordan opened her eyes. Ah, yes. The cool white marble arch, etched with figures of Greek gods and goddesses in flagrante delicto . Once displayed at the exposition, the piece had created a huge triumph and an even huger scandal. And then both of them—Isabella and her fabulous, scandalous arch—had simply vanished. Not one more word about their whereabouts, not in newspapers, magazines, books, journals, diaries…It was one thing for a woman to go missing. But how did a six-foot marble arch evaporate into thin air?

It was infuriating. And it had kept Jordan stuck for months. If only she could think of some new way to look at the facts.

“So Isabella creates the most sensual, most beautiful thing she’s ever done,” Jordan said out loud, spinning around in her chair to glance at the wall behind her desk, where she’d taped up pictures of all things Isabella Tempest, including a poster-sized representation of the sculpture in question. “Her masterpiece.”

Even in a poor re-creation like the sketch on her wall, the arch looked fantastic. And fantastically sexy, with all those nubile, naked marble bodies wrapped around each other, and all those women in the midst of ecstasy. Jordan couldn’t help getting a little flushed every time she gazed at it.

She moved closer. Yes, the arch was a stunner. No question. Her finger traced a figure of Apollo on the upper curve of the sketch, where his mighty, muscular thighs pinned Daphne against a laurel tree. In the myth, Daphne had turned into a tree to escape the god’s advances, but here, carved into Isabella Tempest’s risqué arch, Daphne was clearly enjoying herself, tree or no tree. Head back, mouth open, nails raking Apollo’s back, she looked as if she were in mid-climax, and a pretty steamy one at that.

“Isabella certainly knew how to heat things up,” Jordan said with a shiver, her gaze sliding around the arch. “Daphne and Apollo up against the tree, Psyche blindfolded with Eros behind her, Artemis on top of Orion…Whew. Each one is hotter than the last.”

Isabella had carved sixteen images like that, the extremes of pleasure and passion, up front and unashamed, into the pale, creamy stone. But all that flesh and all that ecstasy had apparently put Chicago society blood pressures in overdrive. And Isabella Tempest under arrest.

It was hard to pull herself away from the erotic power of the arch, but Jordan forced herself as she mentally went through the story one more time. Methodically. Dispassionately. Like a scholar.

“So Isabella gets a coveted spot in the Women’s Building at the Columbian Exposition,” she said out loud, looking for something, anything, she might’ve missed. “The World’s Fair officially opens on May 1, but Isabella and her arch aren’t there. Not finished, presumably. Sometime between then and June 16, she puts her arch in the Women’s Building. And then, on the sixteenth, suddenly there’s an uproar when society matron Mrs. Prentice Stanhope takes Susan B. Anthony on a tour of the building and one or the other catches sight of Isabella’s ‘indecent’ creation. Shame, horror, outcry, all that good stuff. Isabella is arrested and then she and the arch vanish, never to be heard from again.”

Jordan perched on the edge of her desk, gazing at the sketch, reflecting on what a shame it was that Isabella had only had time to make one masterpiece. Genius like that should never have been stifled.

“But where did it go?” she asked with an edge of frustration, tossing the Columbian half-dollar back into its cup with a loud, disappointed clink. “Where did Isabella go?”

She reached onto her desk, picked up and put down three large binders, crammed full of notes about Isabella’s life, and riffled through a stack of folders containing information she already knew. She chewed on the end of a pen. She went back through her outline.

But there was nothing. No spark of inspiration. Just like every other time she’d tried this exercise.

She’d already tried to leave it with an ambiguous “we’ll never know” ending and it just didn’t work. It was like admitting that she was a failure when it came to research and analysis.

“Maybe I am a failure. Maybe that is the answer,” she grumbled. She wanted to scream.

Finally, giving up, Jordan dumped the whole pile of folders back onto her desk and yanked open her desk drawer. She knew what she wanted, what she needed. It was getting to be a habit. She skirted away from words like addiction and obsession . It wasn’t so bad, was it? To feel better because she could look at the two small pictures?

His pictures.

“Nick,” she whispered, feeling a rush of relief just to look at him. “If you’re going to keep driving me crazy like this, the least you can do is send me a psychic message from the Great Beyond to tell me where Isabella and the arch went. C’mon, Nick, help a girl out, will you?”

If only he could. She’d already spent far too much time examining every grain of the two existing photos of Nicholas Tempest, and she hadn’t gotten any answers yet. But that didn’t stop her from trying. She’d even made one of the pictures her screensaver, which meant every time she was stuck long enough for her laptop to go dark, she ended up gazing at Nick, daydreaming about him and drifting even farther away from working.

It was odd how attached to those photos she was. Nick Tempest, the man in the photos, who just happened to be Isabella’s older brother, was only peripheral to her dissertation. But for some reason, Jordan kept finding herself coming back to him, somehow convinced that this man was the answer to every question she had, if only she stared at his picture long enough.

It was bizarre. It was unlike her. She’d never been one to sigh over rock stars or movie idols or sports heroes, not even when she was twelve. When her high school friends had swooned over Johnny Depp or Tom Cruise, she’d just rolled her eyes. No attraction there. Not even a flutter. How strange that Nick Tempest was her first fantasy crush, and he’d been dead for 110 years.

She’d stumbled over his photos on eBay when she went searching for background on the Tempest family and their department store. Nick was one of the founders of Tempest & Trent, a stylish store that still sat, grand and imposing, in the exact same spot on State Street it’d occupied since 1894. In fact, Tempest & Trent had always been her favorite department store, and she and her grandmother had come to look at the Christmas windows every year when she was little. Funny she’d never wondered about its founder, not until she saw those pictures on eBay.

But once she saw them, she was determined to have them at any cost. Which meant she’d paid a small fortune and then agonized by the mailbox every day, waiting for the photos to arrive.

Even though she’d scanned them into her computer to use with her dissertation, she still kept the originals in her desk, safe inside small plastic sleeves. That made it easy to take them out and look at them if she needed to, which she’d found herself doing more and more often lately.

There was just something about Nick. Something that got under her skin, inside her brain, deep inside her fantasies.

“My dream lover,” she whispered.

The first picture was ordinary enough, a sepia tone wedding portrait, with the words “Mr. & Mrs. Nicholas Tempest, May 1894,” scrawled in spidery handwriting on the back. The other was a more candid shot, showing him standing next to an early version of an automobile. That one was marked simply “1895.” He was unsmiling, even a little grim, as he stood next to his new wife in the first photo, and grinning with health and happiness in the second, but hot as blazes in both.

“It’s not just the hotness factor,” she argued to his picture, feeling a shade defensive to be this gaga over a guy she knew only from a couple of old photos. But the hotness factor was hard to deny. She whispered, “Okay, so you are totally hot.”

Totally. Amazingly. Overwhelmingly.

Maybe it was just that she’d spent so much time looking at sketches of that damn arch, with all its salacious imagery, and in her mind, Nick Tempest had become part of those steamy couplings. She didn’t want to think about it or admit to herself just how deep this went. But it was deep.

Almost immediately after she’d found his pictures, she’d started to have dreams about him. Erotic dreams. Extremely erotic dreams. Like nothing she had ever known. They always involved the positions and stories from the arch, and they always involved Nick.

In the first one, Nick was playing Apollo and she was Daphne, and he was naked and hard and taking her up against a tree. She could remember how vivid the images were and how potent the clash between them. As he thrust into her, slamming her into the hard trunk again and again, as she wrapped her legs around him and took him deeper, she knew she hated him, she loved him, and mostly she wanted him so bad that it didn’t matter. It was plain, straight-ahead, no-frills, banging-up-against-the-wall sex, and it blew her mind.

She’d awoken in the morning, sweaty and exhausted, wondering if she was going to find splinters in her bottom from the tree. That’s how real it was. But there were no splinters, just rumpled sheets and a sleeping boyfriend. He’d been studying late and spent the night at her place, and she hoped she hadn’t thrashed or moaned too loudly, giving away just what kind of dream she was having. But he was oblivious.

And the dreams went on.

A few nights later, with Daniel, the boyfriend, safely in his own apartment, Jordan had dreamed that she was Artemis to Nick’s Orion. Since in that story she was the goddess and he was the mortal, this time she was in charge, riding him for hours, teasing him, denying him, and then taking what she wanted and demanding more. And when she woke up, she’d actually felt as thoroughly sated as if she had been romping all night with a warrior.

Uh-oh. Not good. Remembering the dreams, staring down at Nick’s picture, Jordan felt heat and moisture rush to her core. She squeezed her thighs together, willing the tingling to stop.

Now it didn’t even take the dreams, just the memory of the dreams, to push her to arousal. In the middle of the afternoon. In her office! And that just couldn’t be.

“Damn you, Nick,” she said out loud. “First you came around, haunting my dreams, boinking me silly, and then you don’t come into my dreams. I’m turning into a crazy person!”

This part had to be sheer frustration. While the visions were coming every night, she looked forward to going to sleep, just to meet and stoke the fire with her dream lover, eager to find out whose myth they’d be acting out tonight.

Until a week or so ago, when the dreams stopped. No nightmares, no fantasies, no Nick. Clearly, it was the disappointment over losing her dreams that was making her even nuttier than she was before, even more obsessed.

Jordan gulped and sat up straighter in her chair, deliberately putting the photos aside. “It’s not my fault. It’s just…stress. Stress over not finishing the dissertation.”

But she grabbed the photographs back before they’d even left her hands. She couldn’t not look.

So handsome. So mesmerizing.

In the first picture, the wedding portrait, he stood tall and starkly handsome, in an immaculate long, dark coat with a stiff white shirt and white tie, with a small flower pinned to his lapel. Nick’s posture—shoulders back, chin up, facing square into the camera—was comfortable, assured, maybe even arrogant. Next to him, his new wife looked remote and unremarkable.

Jordan chewed her lip. Who cared about the wife? She was doing her best to block out the fact that he’d even had a wife.

“That’s bizarre,” she chided herself. “Why should you care if a guy from 1893 was married? For all you know, they were the love story of the century. Or he was a jerk, or she was a saint, or…”

But she did care. Because, in her heart, she was having a love affair with him, and she didn’t want him to be married.

For whatever reason, she felt completely connected to Nick. She’d known from the moment she’d spotted those pictures on eBay that he was important to her. The overheated dreams only made that more obvious.

And that was why she continued to moon over his photos during the day, and then toss and turn at night, hoping she could reach the dreams where the two of them tangled together, naked and aroused, in the very positions depicted on the arch.

“The dreams have stopped. So let’s not even think about them anymore,” she said quickly. But she couldn’t stop thinking about them, not when she looked into his face in the pictures. It was that face that haunted her fantasies.

His features were beautiful, with high cheekbones, dark brows, a slightly crooked nose that gave him character, and perfectly shaped lips, a little fuller on the bottom. She really liked the look of those wide, sensual lips, with the hint of a dimple on one side. She remembered tasting and nibbling those lips in her dreams. She remembered those lips trailing fire up her thigh…

“Okay, not thinking about that,” she ordered herself, squirming a little in her hard wooden chair. “Not!”

But if she didn’t look at his lips, then there were his eyes. They were so intense and compelling, pinning her, pulling her in, hypnotizing her. They weren’t exactly safe, either.

The other photo was a little less sharp, but even more attractive, because he was smiling. Hatless, with his dark hair tousled by the wind, he looked carefree and adorable, as if his whole life were ahead of him and he couldn’t wait to jump right in.

It made it that much more affecting to realize he’d died just a few months after it was taken. The more attached she became to Nick, the more tragic that seemed.

“I feel like I know you inside and out, Nick,” she said softly, fingering the hard angle of his jaw in the small photo. “And you know me. Like it’s always been that way. But why?”

She’d felt guilty taking time away from her main research into Isabella and the arch, but she’d done it, anyway, to glean more details about Nick. Not that she’d managed to find much. She knew when he was born and married and when he died. She’d read about his travels to Europe with Isabella from reports in the society columns at that time, and it sounded as if the brother and sister were fairly close. But when he got married to Lydia Trent, and when he died just a year after that in, of all things, America’s first car race, his beloved sister wasn’t there. Not in the list of wedding guests, and not in the list of mourners at his funeral. She wasn’t even mentioned in his obituary.

“Do I keep staring at you because it seems weird your sister didn’t come to your wedding or your funeral?” Jordan questioned aloud. “Or because it’s so hard to think about you dying just a year after your wedding?”

Or because he was handsome and tragic and amazingly hot?

“Or because I am one crazy, mixed-up chick,” she whispered. “Because fantasizing about a guy who’s been dead since 1895 is not exactly sane.”

“Jordan?”

Recognizing the voice, she looked up, hastily shoving the photos back inside her drawer as Daniel edged into her office. Daniel. Her boyfriend. Sort of her fiancé. Really just her boyfriend, though. And she needed to get a grip and stop thinking about Nick and the tree and his thighs and her thighs and his lips and his…

Yeah, time to get a grip.

2

How to Be a Scandalous Woman, Rule 2:

Gossip is great. It’s when they’re not talking about you that you have to worry.

1893

N ICHOLAS B ONAVENTURE T EMPEST was bored. Bored down to the soles of his fine leather boots.

Alone in the third-floor music room of his family mansion, leaning back with his feet propped on a wooden table, Nick aimed and then tossed a souvenir Columbian Exposition half-dollar into an empty china cup he’d set on a piano stool about five feet away. Clink. In again. Just like the past eleven times he’d played this game. After an even dozen, he supposed he ought to move on.

Not for the first time, he reached for the brandy decanter at his elbow. He’d already had quite enough to be thoroughly sloshed, but in the mood he was currently in, there just wasn’t enough liquor in the world. Tedious dinner parties, tedious women, tedious conversation…Even his father’s best Napoleon brandy wasn’t enough to make that nonsense palatable.

“Ah, well. I’m done with it for one more night, at any rate.” He saluted himself with his glass. “Until tomorrow.”

“Nick, darling, it’s already tomorrow,” his sister, Isabella, noted sweetly as she swept into the room.

Nick sat up straighter. One look told him something was up. Trouble was pretty much the norm with Isabella, but the sparkle of mischief in her pretty blue eyes was even more ominous than usual. He hoped she hadn’t fallen in love again. He didn’t need to get into any more fights defending Isabella’s honor. Not that there was any honor left as far as he could tell, or that she cared. Still, a good fistfight might provide a diversion.

“Are you just getting home?” he asked. “A bit late, isn’t it?”

“Not for me. I don’t believe in living my life by the clock. Besides, you’re hardly one to talk,” she pointed out. “You’re the one who has to make an appearance at the store bright and early.”

“Don’t remind me.”

Isabella was clearly too wrapped up in her own good mood to pay attention to his gloom. She discarded her cloak and gloves, dumping them on a nearby music stand. “It’s not my fault you’ve become such a respectable citizen. I warned you time and again that Father would turn you into a drudge if you let him.”

“I’m hardly a drudge. I run the place.”

“You’re a drudge. And you’re much too good for that.”

She began humming some cheery tune, dancing around in her loose artist’s smock, the kind she always wore over her gowns when she was working on a sculpture. That explained why she was coming in so late. When she was in the middle of a project, she didn’t notice anything else. It did not, however, explain her good spirits. Ever since she’d come home from Europe, Bella had been moody and unhappy about her future as a sculptress.

Spinning around to look at him, she set her pretty face in a pout. “Play something on the piano for me, will you, Nick? You’re so much better at it than I.”

“And wake up the entire household? I don’t think so.”

“Not just a drudge but a shriveled-up old prune,” she mocked him. “I want the old Nick back. My dashing brother, always running off after some fast woman or fast horse. He would’ve played me a tune in the wee hours if I asked him.”

“One of us had to grow up,” he commented dryly. “It certainly wasn’t going to be you.”

She shrugged. “I hope I never grow up. It’s quite disgusting.”

Nick managed a smile. Lightly he said, “If everyone in this family were an artiste like you, you’d have no pretty dresses, there would be holes in our shoes, our stomachs would be empty, and we’d all be living in a shack in the middle of the woods.”

“You stole that from Father. I’ve heard him say that a hundred times.”

“Yes, well, he’s right. Don’t waste your time worrying about me. I’ve decided that if it’s my destiny to mind the store, at least I’ll do a good job of it.” Nick purposely changed the subject, both because he was bored with that one and because he was still trying to figure out what mischief Isabella was up to. “What are you working on, Bella? Haven’t seen much of you lately. Must be something big.”

“Not that big,” she murmured.

She unbuttoned her smock and tossed it on top of her cloak, revealing a frilly green dress with a nipped waist and the huge, pouffy sleeves that were all the rage. Isabella might consider herself a rebel and an artist, but she still liked to wear the latest fashions.

“Did you hear that, Nick? The grandfather clock in the hall just rang five. That means it’s not late. Why, it’s positively early. Almost time for you to do your duty and report to the store to play Lord High Pooh-bah.” She raised an eyebrow as she picked up his still-burning cigar resting in a cut-glass ashtray. “Mother will have your hide for smoking up here.”

“Mother never comes up here,” he said coldly, rescuing the fine Cuban before she snuffed it. “Besides, cigars are a mere misdemeanor in the record book of my crimes.”

“Ah. Ducked out of the Trents’ dinner party early, did you?” She made a sympathetic face. “Father won’t like that. He’s determined to deliver you to Lydia Trent all wrapped up like a Christmas package.”

The idea sent Nick straight to the brandy decanter again. “Yes, well, he has visions of a department-store dynasty. Tempest & Trent, purveyors of fine luxury goods, a step ahead of anything Marshall Field can come up with.” Nick scowled, knocking back his drink. “All he needs is for me to marry Lydia.”

“So that’s what’s got you up here at all hours, swimming in brandy and cigars? The specter of a future hog-tied to Lydia Trent?”

“I suppose. It was a dreadful party. Dreadful people. I stayed approximately five minutes past dinner before I pleaded a headache and got out of there.”

“And then what?”

Putting aside his drink for the moment, Nick swung his legs off the music table and took a long puff on his cigar. “And then what, what?”

“Well, you can’t have escaped from the Trents and come right here. You’d have been drinking for, oh, the past seven hours. Even you don’t hold your liquor that well.”

“I checked in at the club, played a few hands of poker, won an outrageous amount of money, tried again to convince Freddy Montgomery to sell me his new horse, tried again to convince Freddy Montgomery to buy my old carriage…It’s so dull, I’m boring even myself.” Nick tried not to sigh. “Someone’s got to find something more interesting to do in this town or I’m going to lose my mind.”

“Face it, Nicky,” his sister said, fingering the strings of a violin no one ever played. “You’re just not cut out for the workaday world. You need to take me to Paris again. We’re overdue for an adventure.”

He eyed her warily. “When are you going to tell me what your new project is?”

Her lips curved into a very smug little smile. Now he knew he was in for trouble. “I don’t know what you mean.”

“I mean whatever it is you’re working on that has you so excited. So excited you lost track of time and came wandering in at 5:00 a.m. with your hair all disheveled and smudged like a chimney sweep.”

“Nonsense. And it’s not new. If you must know, I’ve been working on it forever,” she said saucily, her smile widening. “That’s why I’m excited. I’m finally finished, Nick. I’ve finished my masterpiece.”

It was his turn to raise an eyebrow. “I take it you’re not talking about another statue of my hand.”

“It’s an excellent hand, but I’ve moved on to bigger projects.”

“Such as?”

Isabella giggled, covering her mouth with one hand. He didn’t like the sound of that. Finally, she whispered, “I don’t think I should say.”

“Why not?”

Her glance skittered away from him. “Maybe I want it to be a surprise.”

Nick narrowed his eyes. “How big a surprise?”

“About six feet.”

The same height as a man. Oh, no. Not again. When she was studying in Italy, Isabella had done several nude torsos of one of her beaus. When she brought the pieces back to Chicago, they’d set every tongue in the city wagging. Now he suspected she’d moved on to the entire body of a naked man, complete with genitalia. Maybe Nick could convince her to add a fig leaf…

“Who’s your subject?” he asked. He wasn’t sure which would be worse—an anonymous naked stranger or someone recognizable by Chicago society. If she’d sculpted the son of a prominent family without his trousers, the entire Tempest family might have to pick up and move far, far away.

“Apollo, Zeus, Eros…” Her words trailed off dreamily. “They’re all there. And they’re spectacular.”

He allowed himself a sigh of relief. Greek gods didn’t sound so bad. Representing them in stone was quite popular, as a matter of fact. Except…Except he knew his sister. “What have you done with these Greek gods? Are they clothed?”

She shrugged, looking pleased with herself. “I told you, they’re spectacular. Stunning. I’ve added something new this time. I’ve added passion . Far and away my best work ever.”

Given the fact that she had sidestepped his question about clothes, he could only conclude that all these Greek deities were, in fact, naked. That wasn’t unusual, either, as far as classical or modern sculpture went. He’d seen enough of it on his travels with his sister to know that much, and also to know that she was fascinated by the human form.

“Is this a commissioned piece?” he inquired, trying to pin her down. “Is someone going to pay for this and hopefully whisk it away to Outer Mongolia?”

“Of course not. My art is intended to be seen. I want people to experience it, to feel and change because of it. This sculpture is definitely going to change people.” Isabella swished her skirts as she began to pace back and forth. “I’m counting on this piece to make my name.”

“That’s exactly what I’m afraid of.”

She shot back, “Don’t mock me, Nick. You wait and see! By morning, when it’s on display, people from around the world—artists and collectors and scholars—will be smitten. I wouldn’t be surprised if potential patrons waving huge sums of money were breaking down my door tomorrow, begging me to create pieces just for them.”

“Where?” he asked suspiciously. Isabella had no gallery, no studio, where buyers could see this supposed masterpiece. “Where is it on display?”

After stewing for a moment, she confessed, “It’s at the Women’s Building. At the fair.”

“But I thought…” Nick stubbed out his cigar. “I thought they didn’t want you there.”

“Well, they didn’t.” She shrugged again. “But Mother got me in.”

Isabella and their mother had argued about this very subject for months. The last Nick had heard, Mother wasn’t budging and was not going to use her influence as a member of the prestigious Board of Lady Managers to find a spot for Bella’s work, specifically because she didn’t approve of her daughter’s preoccupation with nude male torsos or female faces with a lascivious look in her their eyes. So far, thank goodness, Isabella had not combined the strapping males with the provocative females, because that would…

“Good God, Bella, you didn’t.”

All innocence, she inquired, “Didn’t what?”

“What exactly is the theme of this work, this masterpiece with all the Greek gods and goddesses? Have you named it?” he asked impatiently, standing up and advancing on her.

“It doesn’t have a name yet, actually. Maybe you can help me with that, Nick.” Eagerly, she perched on a stool near him. “At first I thought I would call it Erotikos , but then I thought perhaps Sexdecim would be the right name. It has an intriguing ring to it, don’t you think? It’s Latin, though, and I’d prefer Greek, since my figures are Greek.”

“ Sexdecim just means sixteen,” he told her. “How can the same statue fit either Erotikos or Sixteen? Good Lord.” He’d just had a horrifying thought. “You’re not sculpting erotic sixteen-year-olds into a statue, are you?”

“Heavens, no.” Isabella twirled the other way on her stool, avoiding his eyes. “It’s not exactly a statue, anyway. It’s an arch. I’ve intended it as a stand-alone work, something like a mantel for one’s fireplace, but much more beautiful than that. It’s marble. I love working in marble. It’s so unforgiving, and yet so stunning if you get it right. Father had a fit, of course, since it was also wretchedly expensive. But I think it was worth every penny.”

“Sixteen?” he prompted.

“Oh, about the sixteen. Yes, well, there are sixteen couples on my arch. Sixteen pairs of gods and goddesses. So…”

“Couples, you say?”

That whole Erotikos thing was becoming clearer. And more unpleasant, all at the same time. Sixteen couples on an arch, all carved to look lusty and sensual. Bella wouldn’t have done that. Not after their mother had put her own reputation on the line with the ever-so-lofty Lady Managers to push her daughter’s work into the Women’s Building. Isabella might be foolish, but she would never abuse their mother’s trust and good name, would she?

Of course she would. With a sense of dread, hoping against hope that the sixteen couples were merely looking erotic and not acting erotic, Nick asked, “What are your gods and goddesses doing, precisely?”

“It’s a depiction of the mythology for each of the couples,” she explained. “So, for example, Apollo and Daphne are depicted wound ’round a tree, while Perseus and Andromeda are chained together. I was rather proud of that. Using the chains, I mean, since she’s chained to a rock in the myth.” She sighed deeply. “The chains give so much more urgency and tension to that particular coupling.”

“Coupling?” he echoed. That sounded so much worse than mere couple . “You have all of these Greek gods in the midst of couplings? You’ve actually thrown them together and portrayed them while they’re…” How did one say this to one’s sister? “While they’re in the act? ”

“Well, yes, actually.” His sister—his infuriating, irresponsible, reckless sister—ducked around him to pick up his brandy snifter. She held it out to him like a peace offering. “Do you remember, Nick, when we were in Italy, and you went off to Germany to look at somebody’s engine or something?”

He grabbed the brandy and knocked back the rest of it, all in one gulp. That demonstrated a reckless disregard for good brandy, but he didn’t care. “The motor-wagons, yes. I spent a few days in Stuttgart.”

“Right. That was when Franco asked if I’d like to see his private collection.”

Nick tightened his jaw. He’d never much cared for Franco, the count his sister had carried on a brief flirtation with while they visited Rome. He’d tried to keep a careful eye on her, but it appeared he had failed miserably, if she was off looking at the private collections of oily Italian counts the moment his back was turned. “That sounds ominous.”

“Not at all,” she assured him. “Franco had acquired a most intriguing volume, with sketches and poetry to illustrate something called the Sixteen Positions. Apparently it was quite scandalous in the sixteenth century, and the author and artist were excommunicated and burned at the stake or drawn and quartered or something equally dreadful.”

It sounded pornographic. Sixteen positions? He didn’t even know sixteen positions, and he was a man of the world! Nick’s hands clenched into fists. If Franco had been in front of him at that moment, he swore he would’ve knocked the count’s teeth in.

“Sixteen sexual positions, you see?” Isabella said helpfully, as if he hadn’t already figured that out on his own. “My inspiration was to combine those positions with characters from Greek mythology to say something about how earthly passion and supernatural power combine.”

As she gazed into space, enraptured by her idea, Nick didn’t know how to respond.

“It’s very strong, Nick,” she said dreamily. “Very beautiful. Simply bursting with lust and ecstasy and all of the things I wanted to—”

“Lust and ecstasy…You’ve gone too far this time,” he muttered. Clearly, they never should’ve let Isabella study in Italy. Or get anywhere near the depraved Franco Pirelli, Conte di Bassano. “Much too far.”

“But, Nick, you haven’t seen—”

“I will soon enough,” he growled. As he glanced around to find his jacket, he hastily redid his collar and began to tie his cravat. “Where is it? Where are you working these days?”

“It’s not at my studio.” She folded her arms, laying the immense puffs of her sleeves over the dainty bows on her bodice, looking defiant and stubborn, as well as about twelve years old. But twelve-year-olds didn’t create artwork bursting with lust and ecstasy and the lewd sexual encounters of Greek gods.

“Where then?”

Isabella lifted her pointy little chin, so much like their mother’s. “By now, it should already be in place at the Women’s Building. The delivery men had already arrived and carted it up before I left. So you see it’s too late for you to stop it.”

This time, he didn’t bother to keep his voice down. “How exactly do you think Bertha Palmer and the Lady Managers are going to respond to something like that? If your statue is one-tenth as lurid as I’m imagining it, there will be a scandal that even you can’t live down.”

“Nick, really,” she said indignantly. “There are nude statues all over the fair. Have you seen the naked mermaids frolicking in the fountain in the Grand Basin? Perhaps you noticed one or two of the gigantic, half-draped women called Lady Victory or Spirit of Discovery or Westward Ho or whatever it is they’ve named them. As long as they’re not real people, but some sort of symbol, nobody minds if their breasts are spilling out all over the Fine Arts Building.”

“It’s not the same, Bella,” he insisted. “And I don’t have time to discuss it with you. I have to find this monster you’ve created and get it out of there before anyone sees it. The Women’s Building, right?”

“The fair isn’t open yet,” she called after him as he dashed out the door. “Not for several hours. When you see how beautiful it is, you won’t be able to destroy it. It’s a fool’s errand, Nick!”

He ignored her. Bored no more, energized by his mission to find and do away with whatever it was his sister had created, Nick Tempest set off for the grounds of the world-famous Columbian Exposition.

3

How to Be a Scandalous Woman, Rule 3:

There are times you have to draw a line in the sand. Any crab that crosses? Dead.

“H I THERE ,” Jordan managed, doing her best not to sound flustered or guilty in front of Daniel. “What are you doing here? I thought you’d already left for San Francisco.”

“San Diego.”

“Right. San Diego. I meant San Diego.” How lame was it not to know where your boyfriend was taking off to for a week? Okay, so she was too busy cheating on him in her dreams to notice where he was going. Not exactly a good excuse. “Sorry. But I thought you’d already left.”

He stood there on the other side of her desk, holding a briefcase in one hand, shifting from one foot to the other. “I canceled my trip.”

“The whole thing?”

That was surprising. Daniel never canceled anything, especially not a trip like this, where he was combining a conference with a job interview. Unlike her, with her never-ending dissertation, Daniel had already finished up his PhD in economics, and now he was scoping out the best job prospects at the best universities in his usual precise and methodical way.

Looking him over, Jordan asked, “Are you okay? You’re not sick or anything, are you?”

“No, no. I’m fine. I just had a change of plans.”

“That’s…not like you.”

“I don’t need to go.” He gave her a small smile. “I just heard from Princeton. I’m in.”

“In? You mean they offered you a position? At Princeton?”

He nodded, his smile still firmly in place.

“Daniel, that’s amazing. Wow. When did this happen?”

“I got the call this morning.”

She blinked. “And this is the first you’re telling me?”

He lifted his narrow shoulders in a half-shrug. “I needed to get my thoughts in order, come up with a plan.” Propping the briefcase on the edge of her desk, he flipped it open and rustled around inside. “This will mean a lot of changes for both of us.”

“So…that means you said yes?” she asked slowly.

“Of course I said yes. They were my first choice.”

“Well, of course, but…” But it involved her, too. In ways she didn’t even want to think about. She put that aside for the time being. “Maybe we should, you know, celebrate.” She wasn’t sure what she was supposed to do. Leap over her desk and hug him? Pick up the phone and get some champagne delivered? Daniel didn’t seem all that excited, though. More…determined. Which was odd.

“I’d rather get things squared away first.” He pulled a sheaf of papers out of his briefcase, reaching over the laptop to hand her the top sheet. “This is the schedule I came up with. I thought we could go over it together.”

Princeton, changes, schedules, all pondered, decided upon, and neatly typed up and printed out, without even consulting her. Jordan felt her hackles begin to rise as she glanced down at the paper.

“You’ll see,” he went on, “that item one is me moving out there, item two is finding a place for us to live, and item three is the wedding. Something small, just the two of us and maybe my parents, is probably best. We could do it after we get to New Jersey, since that’s so close to where my parents are. You wouldn’t need yours there, would you?”

She glanced up from his list. “What? I’m sorry. What are we talking about?”

“Your parents. Our wedding. I didn’t think you’d want them there. I mean, no offense, but they’re sort of problematic.” Daniel grimaced. “They haven’t laid eyes on each other in twenty years, have they? And your father’s new family with Stacey…What’s the total? Four kids under five?”

He was waiting for an answer, but she was still way behind in this conversation, back where he’d said, Item three is the wedding …. “I’m sorry, but I’m lost.”

“Your dad,” he prompted. “Stacey. Four kids under five.”

Jordan lifted a hand to her head, mumbling a response on automatic pilot. “Not Stacey. Michelle. Stacey was his second wife. Then Tracy. Michelle is the new one.”

“Right. The thing is, both your parents are, well, kind of nutty,” he told her. “Your mother would probably want to write us some erotic Ode to Fertility or something, and your dad would bring his new wife who’s younger than you are, not to mention their passel of toddlers, and my parents would go through the roof. They have very specific ideas about what my wedding should entail.”

She was well aware that Daniel didn’t like her parents. They didn’t like him, either. Or each other, for that matter. They hadn’t been married very long—actually, no one was sure if they’d bothered to get married at all—and they were crazy, unconventional and high maintenance in all the ways she wasn’t and Daniel certainly wasn’t. But still…Moving to New Jersey and dealing with his parents and—

A wedding? Was he insane?

“I don’t mind postponing a honeymoon till later, do you?” Daniel rolled on. “I put that down as item twelve, if you want to look ahead on the schedule.”

She frowned. “Daniel, I need you to stop. This is…impossible! I can’t do it.”

He didn’t look pleased, but he did pause at least. Finally, he asked, “Which parts?”

“All of it!”

“Why?”

“Because…” She leaned forward to push her stomach into her drawer, just to make sure it clicked shut with Nick’s pictures inside. “Because I’m not ready. I’m teaching a class this semester. And I’m not finished with my thesis. You know all of that. I’m not at a place where I can leave Chicago, let alone think about weddings.”

He sent a pointed glance at the jumble of notebooks and folders on her desk. “Maybe it’s past time you cut your losses and moved on.”

“Cut my losses?”

“Maybe you should find another dissertation topic,” he said coolly.

“Dump my dissertation? Are you kidding?” First he blindsided her with this marriage stuff, and then he went totally off the deep end. “I’ve worked my butt off to get this far. And what I have is really good material. I’m not going to abandon it.”

He shook his head. “You still don’t have an ending, do you?”

No, she didn’t have an ending, which he very well knew. But that didn’t mean she was going to give up.

After a long pause, Daniel added, “I’ve been as patient as I can. But we had a plan, an agreement. I’m on schedule. You’re not.”

Jordan already knew the rest of it. If you don’t finish your dissertation, we can’t move on to the next step of the life we’ve so carefully planned…. Remember, full professor by forty…

It was the mantra he lived by, not just for himself, but for the two of them. Daniel wanted them to be the perfect faculty couple, brilliant in their own fields, moving toward the top of the academic ladder faster than anybody else. She’d thought that was what she wanted, too.

At some point, however, the whole idea had become suffocating. She thought of the scandalous women she’d studied and taught about. They would’ve laughed at a “full professor by forty” decree.

“Maybe I’m sick to death of living my life by a schedule,” she began, thinking things through as she spoke. It was a radical idea for her, not to have a plan set down, but this whole freedom and spontaneity thing was starting to sound really good.

Daniel just regarded her balefully.

“Maybe it’s time to rip up the schedules and throw away the rulebook,” Jordan said with more conviction than she felt. “Maybe it’s time for me to do what I want to do.”

“When have you ever done anything else?” Daniel scoffed. “I don’t know what’s going on with you, Jordan. Really, I don’t. I didn’t want to say anything, but, well, you’ve been acting strange for months. I’ve been trying to plan ahead for this new phase of my life, all the while wondering why my fiancée is dragging her heels.”

“I’m not dragging my heels. I’m just…” What? What could she possibly say to explain why she didn’t want to marry him now? And maybe not later. Because there was clearly something wrong with their relationship if the sex was way hotter with her dream lover than with her real one? “I have to point out that I’m not technically your fiancée. We agreed that we wouldn’t talk about marriage again until I was done.”

“But you may never be done.”

“I will finish, Daniel. You know I will.” She stopped, not sure what to say. “I love this project. Is it so wrong to hold out for the perfect ending?”

“I don’t think this has anything to do with the ending,” Daniel retorted. He turned away, muttering, “That’s a symptom, not a cause.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“It means that yes, you’re a perfectionist. So am I. But…” He spun back to face her, pinning her with his gaze. “You know as well as I do that there are a million ways to finish the damn thing whether or not you know where the twit disappeared to. Hypothesize that she fell off a cliff or ran away to Mexico or her family got tired of her acting out and stuck her in a loony bin or sent her to a nunnery. Go with one, argue it and be done with it. See? Problem solved.”

“I can’t even believe you’re saying this!” She stood up, pacing back and forth in the small area behind her desk. Who did he think he was, ordering her around? And calling Isabella a twit? The two of them prided themselves on never arguing, but this seemed like a perfect time to start. “Actually, I do believe it. You never did respect anything except your own field. As if economics is next to godliness. Ha! Heaven forbid anybody else care about their own work.”

He looked shocked. He wasn’t used to being insulted. But she couldn’t seem to stop herself.

“Numbers aren’t everything, you know,” she said angrily. “I happen to think that Isabella and her arch say something very important about women and sexuality. I argue in my thesis that she was the first mainstream female artist to give women orgasms. Did you know that? Huh?”

His sneer was very unattractive. “And you really think that’s an appropriate topic for a real scholar?”

“Absolutely. Just because you’re not interested in whether Victorian women were completely repressed sexually and even denied the right to their own orgasms—”

“Oh, please!” he interrupted. “We both know the reason you’re not finished has nothing to do with Isabella or her pornographic arch or the repressed orgasms of Victorian women.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“It means…” His eyes narrowed. “It means that you’ll never find the right ending. Because you don’t want to.”

“Why? Why would I not want to?”

“Because that would mean being done with him .”

The word him hung there in the air between them for a long moment. Jordan started, stopped, and started again. Finally, she hedged with, “Him who?”

“You know who! The brother. You’re obsessed with the brother.”

She backed away from her desk, shaking her head. Did he know? About her dreams? No, he couldn’t. Keeping her dignity, she declared, “My only interest in him is because he’s important to the project and hopefully to finishing the project.”

“Why?” he snapped. “Do you think he had something to do with her disappearance? What’d he do, kill her?”

“Are you kidding? Of course he didn’t kill her. Nick would never have murdered his sister!” But she broke off when she saw Daniel’s triumphant expression.

“You are completely obsessed,” he declared. He came around her desk, grabbed her laptop and spun it toward both of them. “See? You can’t deny it. He’s your freaking screensaver!”

There it was, Nick’s face, photoshopped from the picture with the car. Smiling, full of life, absolutely gorgeous…She gazed down at him. Nick…

“Jordan!”

She jerked back to real life. “Okay, yes, of course that’s him, but—”

“Don’t bother,” he said flatly. “You’ve been distracted for months. Drooling over his damn picture for months. I wouldn’t be surprised if you were spending all your days writing ‘Mrs. Nicholas Tempest’ and ‘I Love Nick T’ over and over in your spiral notebooks.”

Her mouth dropped open. “I don’t have any spiral notebooks.”

“I’m not stupid, Jordan. Or blind.”

She sat down in her chair with a thump, edging her laptop back to face her, then rolling the trackball so the screensaver would disappear. Too little, too late.

“I thought we were on the same page,” Daniel argued. “I thought we were so much alike. Both mature, responsible adults, crossing our t’s, dotting our i’s, getting the job done, making each other proud. But ever since you started this whole scandalous women kick…” He shook his head in disgust. “I just don’t understand why you ever got into it in the first place. You could’ve studied Lincoln’s boyhood or George Washington’s teeth like everybody else. You just don’t fit this scandalous women thing. You are the least scandalous person I’ve ever met.”

She didn’t know how to respond to that. Somehow, it didn’t seem like a compliment. Stubbornly, she avoided the whole subject, insisting, “I’m not giving up now. I just can’t. I need to know what happened to Isabella before I write the end.”

“And if you never find out? What then?” Reaching once more into the briefcase, Daniel pulled out a glossy trifold brochure, slapping it down on her desk, next to her hand. “This was stuck to your door. It looks right up your alley. Maybe you can even take your class to it. Looks like a real magnet for ridiculous, sex-crazed women.” And then he smacked his case closed and made a move for the door.

“You’re leaving?” She couldn’t believe he was pushing some silly ad for a campus film fest or rock concert into the middle of their first argument and then just walking out.

“I have things to do. Plans to make.” Daniel sent her one last quick look. “Push has come to shove, Jordan. I’m moving to New Jersey. You’re going to have to decide what you want.”

“I know what I want. And it’s not moving to New Jersey!”

But he was already out the door and stomping down the hall. Damn him, anyway. Was it so wrong to want to finish up her beloved project before deciding what to do with the rest of her life?

“I am not dragging my heels!” she announced to the empty room. “I’m just linear, that’s all. I want to finish this before thinking about that .”

Liar, liar, pants on fire, mocked a little voice inside. She ignored it.

“I am furious with you, Daniel,” she shouted, even though he was long gone. “You’re trying to make me sound like some irresponsible, juvenile, swooning nutcase, and I totally reject that. And I reject you! ”

Jordan Albright, irresponsible or juvenile? Not likely. She’d been valedictorian of her high school class. Her undergraduate degree came summa cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa. Everybody knew she was someone who could be counted on, who came through, who sweated the details and produced great work on time every time. Well, she saw through Daniel’s transparent attempt to bulldoze her into planning a wedding and leaving Chicago. So unfair. It was all because he was jealous of the attention she paid to Isabella and the arch. And Nick.

Okay, so probably the fact that he was jealous of Nick wasn’t so unreasonable, considering the steam factor of those dreams and the level of her obsession. But still…

Fuming, she glanced down at the brochure he’d left behind, noting the words “Sex Through the Ages” and “Now in Chicago!” swirling over an illustration of two marble lovers tangled in an intimate embrace. Hmm…

Not the normal college promo piece, that was for sure. Sex Through the Ages? What did that mean? Some kind of art exhibit, apparently.

Maybe she should go. At least it would get her out of the office and she wouldn’t have to think about Daniel and his outrageous insults anymore. Besides, the picture on the cover was reminiscent of some of Isabella’s work.

Jordan always followed up on any exhibit, any museum show that had anything remotely like Isabella’s work. You never knew when you might stumble over a small statue or a sketch. In fact, she had a piece of sculpture, a man’s hand, sitting in her living room at home. She felt sure the object was Isabella’s handiwork, even if she hadn’t exactly proved it yet. There was just something about the power and the passion in those elegant fingers that cried “Isabella Tempest” to her.

Although “Sex Through the Ages” sounded like a theme Isabella’s sculptures would fit, a lot of late Victorian artists had worked with nudes, and the chances that this show had anything of Isabella’s weren’t good. “Highly unlikely,” she reminded herself as she peered at the pamphlet.

“‘Many periods and cultures,’” Jordan read aloud off the front. “‘Lingerie, lacing and leather. Fertility icons and totems. Erotic paintings, drawings, pottery and sculpture.’”

She scanned the rest of the flyer, looking for any details about the specific sculpture in the exhibit, about ninety percent sure there wouldn’t be anything of interest to her. Maybe more details on Victorian nudes, but she already had plenty of sources on that, so…

“Wait a minute,” she whispered. “It can’t be.”

But it was.

There, on the inside panel of the tri-fold brochure, was a small picture of an arch.

An arch just like Isabella’s.

4

How to Be a Scandalous Woman, Rule 4:

Leap before you look.

T HE PICTURE WAS TINY , and there wasn’t a lot of detail, but it was definitely an arch. Could it be Isabella’s?

“Too small to tell for sure,” she decided, peering at the picture. Her eyes swept over the poster-size reproduction on her wall, and then back at the tiny illustration in the brochure. They looked the same, but…

Stunned, Jordan took a deep breath. It couldn’t be Isabella’s arch! Not in some crazy advertisement stuck to her door. That was too easy, too weird, too coincidental. Her arch? The one that might provide the missing piece of the puzzle she needed so desperately? Showing up out of the blue?

Jordan had done all the research, looked high and low for references to the arch in every collection, every museum, every estate, leaving no stone unturned. How could it turn up like this?

It would almost be insulting if it were her arch.

“Okay, this is no time to stand on pride,” she chided herself. “If there’s even a tiny possibility it’s the right one, I have to go. I have to find out. If this is it, there could be a paper trail to tell me where it’s been all the time. Maybe all the way back to Isabella. Oh, my God.” She gulped. “That would be huge .”

Even without a paper trail, the arch would be a crucial, dramatic addition to her dissertation. Exactly what she needed to finish and prove to herself and to Daniel that she was a serious scholar.

“Art Institute, opening Friday,” she read aloud.

Damn. It was only Tuesday. Maybe if she grabbed a cab and got to the Art Institute right now, she could talk her way into the gallery where they were setting up the exhibit.

Deciding quickly, Jordan pulled open her yellow messenger bag and stuffed the slim brochure in there, alongside her wallet, cell phone, PDA, keys, an umbrella, a package of gum, a small notebook, several pens, aspirin, a lip balm and all the other things she usually carried. She liked to be prepared.

But then she looked down at her outfit. It’d been blazing hot and humid all week, and she’d planned to be in the office with no appointments for most of the day, so she hadn’t exactly dressed professionally. In fact, she’d thrown on clothes that made her feel more free and saucy, in the hope of sparking enough creativity to get around her dissertation impasse. Which meant she was wearing a too-short jeans skirt, a slinky camisole with a bold red-and-black print on it, and her favorite high-heeled sandals, the ones that made her taller and more confident. For a woman who believed in emphasizing brain over body, it was actually kind of a shady outfit. One not likely to convince museum officials that she was a trustworthy academic type.

She briefly considered going home and changing into something more businesslike—at least throw a jacket over the cami and change into a longer skirt—but she was too impatient. This might be the arch. Her arch. It might be a breakthrough. Finally!

Jordan had never believed in karma or fate or anything crazy like that. Never. But maybe this was the time to start.

“It can’t just be a coincidence that something so close to my arch showed up in that brochure. It was meant for me,” she said with determination. “It’s the message I’ve been waiting for.”

Hefting her bag over her shoulder, she took two steps toward the door. But at the last minute, she turned back and scooped up her lucky Columbian Exhibition half-dollar out of the cup, sticking it in her pocket. And then she leaned over far enough to edge open the drawer, grab the two photographs of Nick Tempest in their plastic sleeves, and carefully slide them into the bag next to the “Sex Through the Ages” brochure. It didn’t make any sense to take Nick with her, but she didn’t care. She wanted him along for the ride.

Jordan stewed all the way to the Art Institute on the “L”, wishing the train would move faster, pulling out Nick’s pictures to make sure she hadn’t lost them, rubbing her coin for luck, and then checking the “Sex” flyer one more time to be sure she’d really seen what she thought she’d seen.

“It sure looks like my arch,” she whispered.

But what would she do if it was? Actually locating Isabella’s arch would change everything. How far back into the dissertation would she have to go if it was the right arch and it had a paper trail? What if it wasn’t as magnificent as she thought from the sketches and not a masterpiece at all? What if Isabella was just a mediocre artist with a smutty arch that didn’t mean anything to anybody?

What if it did provide the answer and she could now write the ending and that was it? Over? Done? No more Nick haunting her dreams?

Jordan closed her eyes and tried to stop herself from coming up with more questions and driving herself even crazier. “If it changes everything, maybe it’ll be in a good way,” she said out loud, getting a strange look from the person across from her on the train.

Finally, she hit her stop and practically ran over to Michigan Avenue, hustling down the sidewalks and then huffing and puffing up the stone steps of the Art Institute. Luckily she was a member of the Institute, so she didn’t have to wait to pay. Still, she stopped at the information desk.

“‘Sex Through the Ages,’” she said impatiently to the woman behind the desk. “Which way?”

“Well, it will be in the Beckwith Gallery, southeast side of the second floor,” the clerk responded, “but that exhibit isn’t open yet.”

“Yes, I know. Thank you!” Jordan called back, already dashing for the stairs.

If she’d been anxious before, she was practically humming with impatience by the time she ran up one flight of stairs, down two long halls and into an elevator, until she was finally standing in front of the tall, imposing doors to the Beckwith Gallery. Unfortunately, the doors were closed, with a chain fastened between the handles, and a sign placed in front of them that said No Admittance During Installation Of New Exhibit.

She stopped for a minute, testing the chain, noting that it wasn’t tied or secured, just dangling there. She bent closer to the crack between the doors, squinting. There wasn’t much to see. It was dark and quiet on the other side.

Quickly, she made up her mind. Jordan wasn’t exactly the breaking-and-entering type, but she could at least try to get in there. After sending a quick glance around, seeing no one, hearing no one, she drew back carefully on the chain.

It jangled loudly, surprising her, making her drop the end, which caused even more of a racket when it banged against the brass handle. She jumped away, all ready to act innocent if a guard came running.

But no one came. Thank goodness. After waiting for one long minute and then two, Jordan gathered her courage and sidled up to the door again. This time she pulled the chain all the way through to one side, with a fast yank, ignoring the noise. And then she grabbed the handle, tugging, expecting the doors to be bolted, wondering how she was going to jimmy the lock.

But…Her eyes widened and her hand trembled around the knob. She couldn’t believe it. There, under her fingers, the handle was turning. It wasn’t locked .

The massive wooden door creaked as she dragged it open enough to sneak through, and the sudden sound almost gave her another panic attack. She figured at this point she should be immune. She would have plenty of time later to reflect on just when she’d decided to break and enter and become a criminal. It wasn’t like her at all. The usual her, anyway. So she was acting like somebody else, somebody wilder and more reckless. Too bad. For now, she was going to get into that gallery and find the arch come hell or high water.

Once the doors closed behind her, the air felt hot and stuffy. Or maybe it was fear making her overheat. It was also shadowy and dim, but she didn’t dare search for light switches. She crept along, as quiet and careful as she could manage. The only thing she heard was her own heartbeat, pounding in her ears.

Jordan sneaked farther into the gallery, peering into corners, her eyes adjusting to the dim surroundings as she tried to figure out if there was any rhyme or reason to what was where. There were no guards, no museum staff puttering around, just paintings and pottery here and there, some unopened crates and boxes, and quite a few placards already in place on brass stands, detailing the exhibits to come. She saw parts of “The History of the Condom” in one room, and a display of phallic-shaped household items recovered from the ancient city of Pompeii in another.

“Who knew Pompeii’s patron god didn’t wear pants?” she asked out loud. Every piece of art devoted to him was all about his huge, erect penis, right out there in the open. It seemed the citizens of his town celebrated his amazingly large asset with all sorts of things shaped in its image. There were spoons, cups, vases, jewelry and more penis-shaped wind chimes strung up than seemed reasonable. They tinkled when she walked by, as if they were happy to see her.

Jordan backed away from the Pompeii exhibit, only to find herself up close and personal with a series of gorgeous Japanese woodcuts depicting women having sex with sea monsters.

“I guess I’m in the right place,” she murmured uneasily. This was definitely all about sex. Everywhere she looked. Sex, sex, sex. It was making her a little dizzy.

Under other circumstances, it might’ve been a fascinating exhibit and she might’ve been able to switch gears into Jordan Albright, Academic, so she could look at it objectively, without all the funny feelings. Hot, lightheaded, starting to perspire…

“They really need some air conditioning in here,” she muttered. Sure, blame it on the lack of AC.

She raised a hand to swipe at the moisture on her forehead, reminding herself fiercely that she was on a mission, a professional mission, and she needed to block out all the salacious etchings and naughty bits of pottery if she was going to find the elusive arch before anybody noticed she was there.

As she turned into a larger room, she noticed tall statuary shrouded in white drapes. It created an eerie mood, with giant, looming figures casting deep shadows into the rest of the space. She reached out to test the edge of a drop cloth.

And a hand touched her elbow.

Jordan jumped about a foot, shrieking something indecipherable, as she spun around to face the intruder. She raised two fists in the air, prepared to act menacing.

But all she saw was a small, older man in a uniform, with wisps of silver-gray hair escaping from under a smart military cap. He sort of looked like Captain Kangaroo in that uniform. He was even smiling kindly. Nobody scary. She set her hand over her pounding heart.

“So sorry to frighten you,” he declared. “I’m the curator of this exhibit. May I help you find something in particular?”

What? It took her about two beats to get the sense of that. He wanted to help her? She was expecting him to kick her out or have her arrested for breaking and entering and skulking suspiciously around a museum full of priceless objets d’art.

She inhaled, trying to get her breathing back to normal. If only the air weren’t so hot and heavy in this place. Her silk camisole was sticking to her skin, and she felt as if she were suffocating. “I’m so sorry. I know I’m not supposed to be here, but I—”

“No, please, don’t worry.” His smile widened, and there was a definite twinkle in his bright blue eyes. ‘“Sex Through the Ages’ is a very unusual collection, and not everyone’s cup of tea. So it does my heart good to run into someone so eager to see it that she couldn’t wait for the official opening.”

“That’s true, I suppose,” Jordan managed. “You’re sure you don’t mind?”

“I’m here to help,” he said in a conspiratorial tone.

“Okay, well, there’s one piece in particular I need to find.” She scrambled to pull her bag around to the front, quickly tugging out the flyer for the “Sex” exhibit and opening it to show him the tiny picture of the arch.

“Oh, that’s a spectacular piece,” he said with hushed awe. “One-of-a-kind.”

“Do you know who the sculptor is?” she asked quickly, but he didn’t answer.

Without another word, he turned and marched from that room, motioning for her to follow. She did. She didn’t have much of a choice.

Down the hall, around a corner, passing several dark rooms, he led her into a narrow hall lined with statues. If possible, it was even more stifling and confining in this small space, even harder to breathe. The curator was wearing a long-sleeved jacket over a shirt and tie and he had set a brisk pace to get to this corridor, yet he looked immaculate, without a hint of perspiration. It was freaky.

“Here it is,” he said quietly, flipping a switch.

Jordan blinked. Holy hell in a handbasket .

With one lone light bulb shining directly above it, the marble sculpture gleamed like a beacon in front of her. Isabella’s arch?

Isabella’s arch.

Six feet tall, Greek gods and goddesses entwined in eternal embraces, oozing sex and sin from every marble pore…She took a deep breath, exhaled and then just stared. She dropped her messenger bag next to her feet with a thump, edging closer, wiping her sweaty palms against the fabric of her denim skirt.

She’d never really believed she would ever see it. But this had to be it. Even without authenticating the marble or the signature or anything else, Jordan knew in her heart that this was Isabella’s arch.

“Wow. Just…Wow,” was all she could get out.

In person, it was so much more than she expected. So much more everything. It was powerful and beautiful and overwhelmingly sensual. All Jordan could do was gape. Even in the midst of “Sex Through the Ages,” with flesh and passion depicted at every turn, she could feel the erotic power of the arch reach out and wrap around her, pulling her closer.

Leaning in, mesmerized by the sensuous figures carved into the cool, creamy stone, she couldn’t seem to breathe or move. Her skin was glazed with sweat and there was a haze in front of her eyes.

She couldn’t get her fill of gazing at it. Just taking it in.

The people on the arch pulsed with life and vitality, wound together with their blatant sexuality. It felt like an invasion of privacy even to look at them.

Jordan blinked again, seeing stars dancing in the air between her and the statue. But she couldn’t glance away.

Her fingers ached to feel its surface. If she touched the piece, she was afraid she might combust right there. One touch and poof, she’d be a pile of dust under winged Eros’s foot, down there at the base of the arch, where he was making love to blindfolded Psyche as she twisted with an orgasm so real that Jordan was surprised not to hear Psyche’s cries of pleasure echoing right there in the Beckwith Gallery.

Her gaze trailed over Psyche and Eros, the back of Pygmalion’s head between Galatea’s marble thighs, Aphrodite and Ares, tangled in a net but more entangled with each other, Narcissus with Echo’s eager mouth hovering near his erection…

Fighting against an arousal of her own, so sharp it threatened to topple her right over, Jordan glanced away. Was it just the effect of a stuffy room, too many oversized penises back in the Pompeii room, a day already marked by memories of Nick in her dreams, or was the erotic lure of Isabella’s arch driving her mad all by itself?

The curator’s voice puffed soft near her ear. “Would you like to touch it?”

She was dying to. But she still wasn’t sure.

“Touch it,” he whispered.

The statue was mesmerizing. Impulsively reaching out, she filled her hand with the marble curve of Apollo’s sinuous buttock, three-dimensional now instead of merely sketched, flexing as he pressed himself into Daphne.

Her fingers closed over his flesh. Jordan gasped. How was it possible that marble could feel warm and alive against her skin?

She pulled back, shocked, burning, at the exact moment the curator said intently, “Don’t forget, Jordan, you must come back the same way you go.”

“What? I don’t underst—” But there was no time to finish her words before he inexplicably shoved her. Hard.

One minute she was gazing spellbound at Apollo, and the next she was tumbling under the arch. She tripped, skidded, reached out to catch herself and…

And fell headfirst into open space.

5

How to Be a Scandalous Woman, Rule 5:

If you want him, grab him. You can worry about the consequences later.

1893

N ICK WAS HAVING a devil of a time finding his sister’s outrageous artwork.

“She wouldn’t have lied to me about where it was, would she?” he muttered. “Damn Women’s Building, anyway.”

Like most everyone else in Chicago, he’d visited the fair several times, but he hadn’t set foot inside the Women’s Building. No wonder. The place was full of the silliest items imaginable.

To try to find Isabella’s arch, he’d had to traverse a model kitchen and kindergarten, exhibits ranging from the latest in egg-beaters to frying pans, and an entire gallery crammed with dainty, hand-painted china cups and saucers. That was a lot more china than any man should have to encounter in a lifetime.

After the cups and saucers, he’d somehow wandered into an auditorium where a cadre of angry women, half of them wearing trousers instead of skirts, were carrying on a lecture about the evils of corsetry, complete with diagrams and a half-clad model who looked every bit as fearsome as the ladies in bloomers. He could see why she wouldn’t be anxious to strap a corset on over that mountain of flesh. He’d barely escaped with his life, as the ladies of the Anti-Corset Brigade made it clear men were not welcome.

“What man would want to be welcome for that sort of thing?” he grumbled. “Teacups and lace doilies. Lectures on corsets. Talk about your bull in a china shop.”

Finally, he took a path away from the general public, searching the second floor, away from the main atrium. Women were milling around downstairs, but absolutely no one was up here. After passing “Kentucky Home,” which appeared to be a recreation of an entire rural household from some not-too-distant past, and “Women in Savagery,” whatever that was, he saw a gallery that looked more promising. This one said it was “The American Sculptress,” which sounded as if it fit Isabella. Better than “Kentucky Home” or “Women in Savagery,” at any rate.

Although the room was crowded with display cases and small statuary, there wasn’t a soul around. Thank goodness. If he was lucky, no one had seen the arch yet.

As Nick entered, he knew at once that he’d come to the right place. The marble arch she’d described was standing in the center of the room, all by itself, shining in the soft morning light. He set his jaw. So this was Isabella’s handiwork.

It was lovely, in an obscene sort of way. As he came nearer, Nick wasn’t sure whether to avert his eyes or appreciate the enthusiasm with which his sister had depicted the men and women pleasuring each other. There was a certain undeniable power to the blasted thing.

Nick shook his head. He simply couldn’t look at it. It was too carnal, too raw, knowing that his own sister had created something like that.

One thing was certain—that arch was guaranteed to shock the petticoats off every society woman in town.

“I suspect the ladies of the Anti-Corset Brigade down in the auditorium wouldn’t be too fond of it, either,” Nick said dryly. Even if the women on it were certainly free of corsets.

Free of corsets, free of dresses, free of drawers…And free of good sense, it appeared. If anyone saw it, Isabella would be a pariah, and the Tempest family would no doubt be shunned along with her.

Which raised the question of what he was going to do with it. The piece was too big to carry away, and even he wasn’t enough of a monster to take a sledgehammer to something his sister considered her masterpiece. This just wasn’t the right venue for it. If she could take it somewhere less conspicuous—far less conspicuous, as well as far, far away—he supposed it might be of use to someone. After all, wealthy men the world over had collections of erotica.

“Perhaps if it were in a private collection in Siberia,” Nick said with a certain edge. Anywhere but here.

He glanced quickly around the room, looking for some tool or device that might suggest a temporary solution to the problem. If he could move a marble stand or two in front of it, place some statuary there, maybe even shove a display case that way, he might be able to camouflage it. Awfully heavy work by himself, however. But if he went to get a crew of workmen, he risked them seeing and gossiping about the thing. Of course, Isabella had hired a crew to get it this far, so it seemed that genie was already out of the bottle.

Hmm…He noticed a pile of heavy canvas tossed in the front corner of the room, near the entrance, as if painters or movers had carelessly left a drop cloth behind. That might just do the trick.

But as Nick bent to unfold the fabric to see if there was enough to cover Isabella’s sculpture, he heard a curious noise behind him, back by the arch. There was a distinct thump, and then, just as he spun around, a louder thud.

“What in blazes?”

Where there had been no one before, now a young woman lay under Isabella’s arch. A very oddly dressed young woman. Pretty, too. He felt the strangest zing of awareness and recognition, as if he knew her, as if he knew her well. But he was sure he didn’t. Not someone who looked like that. Her arms and legs were bare, her hair was loose, she had no hat or gloves or proper coat…In fact, she appeared to be wearing less than the lightskirts down by the river. Much less.

Plus there was the fact that she had appeared out of nowhere. First he was alone in the room, then he turned away from the arch for a few seconds, and suddenly, poof, a mysterious woman landed in the room as if the gods themselves had dropped her from the sky. Truly bizarre.

“Where did she come from?” he asked out loud, looking around. It just didn’t make sense.

She would’ve had to walk past him to get into the gallery unless she’d been hiding behind a potted palm or something when he arrived. And if she had, why run out into the middle of the room and throw herself under the arch the moment his back was turned?

Given that she was still lying there, motionless, he took a step her direction. “Miss? Are you all right?” But she didn’t answer, just reclined there with her eyes shut.

“Damnation,” Nick swore.

He crossed immediately to her side, kneeling next to her. Quickly, he lifted her head an inch or two off the floor, feeling around for any sort of injury. She had a lump, all right, just at the crown of her head.

As he stripped off his coat and pillowed it under her head, he wondered what he should do next. “Damnation,” he said again. Well, he’d wished for a diversion, hadn’t he? It looked like he’d gotten what he wished for, in the form of one beautiful, strange young woman.

Glancing down at her, he concluded, “Definitely beautiful. Definitely strange.”

People from all nations had gathered in Chicago for the World’s Fair, including Egyptian dancing girls with their undulating bellies and barefoot Polynesian ladies wrapped in a few yards of bright cloth, but even so, he’d never seen anyone dressed remotely like this . In fact, she looked as though she’d cobbled together her small costume by grabbing a scrap of this and that from the flotsam of a shipwreck.

Speaking of cobbled…He gave her feet a gander. What in blazes had she done to her shoes? There were no more than a thin strap bound around her toes and another around her heel, balanced on very high heels, with more foot left bare than covered. And her toenails appeared to have been painted or dyed. Painted toes? He suddenly had visions of exotic women lying about in some tropical paradise, sewing together fragments of denim and silk for garments and carefully painting each other’s toenails with the tiniest of brushes.

It was an intriguing image, if one he felt hadn’t the slightest chance of being true. So where did she come from? And how had she come to be here?

He knew it was a risky maneuver, but he leaned in closer and began to feel around her waist and bodice. “Steady,” he told himself. “It’s not prurient. Has to be done.”

Yes, indeed. No choice but to paw an unconscious woman.

“I’m not pawing,” he argued with himself. “Just checking for hidden belts or pockets where she might be carrying something that could help identify her.”

Right. That’s why it was imperative, for example, to search around the plunging neckline of her silk camisole, revealing some sort of curious, even briefer undergarment, a sinful shade of red, peeking out around the edges of the first one. Or edge a finger or two up under the lace hem of her camisole, where her stomach was soft and warm, or trace a line all the way up her beautiful bare leg and under the brief slash of well-worn denim barely covering her hips.

So little clothing. So very dangerous to let his fingers roam around that skin. She was luscious, that was for sure, slender and yet curvy, with all the right assets in the right places. Her strange attire seemed to offer all of those assets up for his perusal, not covering anything completely, just teasing enough to stoke his appetite.

“Ah, well,” he murmured, his hand flat over her left breast. “I can now safely say that she’s still breathing, can’t I?” He withdrew his hand, regretfully. No matter how fetching she was, it wasn’t right to sample the wares when she was out cold.

In the end, his clumsy search produced nothing in the way of identification and nothing to explain her bizarre appearance. All he found was one small pocket right out in the open, over her hipbone, sewn into the minuscule denim garment. She let out a soft moan as he poked into the tight pocket, making him almost drop the lone coin he pulled out and held up to the light.

Hmm…Nothing earth-shattering, just a souvenir Columbian Exposition half-dollar, much like the one he’d been tossing around back home. Fifty cents would get her one camel ride down Cairo Street on the Midway Plaisance, or two trips on the World’s Fair steamship. Not much. And she didn’t appear to have anything else.

Strange. The coin he’d extracted from her pocket had a small scratch across Columbus’s eye. So did the one he’d been playing with in the wee hours of morning. After throwing one coin into a cup for hours, he’d gotten pretty familiar with it.

He examined this one more closely. There were thousands of the coins circulating around the fair and the city, but it looked exactly like the one he’d had earlier, scratch and all. Strange. Had she stolen his half-dollar in the past few hours? If so, how? And why?

Tucking the coin into his vest pocket, trying to stay dispassionate, he gazed down at her. “Who are you?” he asked out loud.

She blinked, opening her eyes. “Nick?” she mumbled.

He didn’t move. She knew his name.

After propping herself up on one elbow, she opened her eyes wide and shook her head, as if trying to dislodge the cobwebs. Then she looked at him again, and smiled.

“Nick,” she said, but this time it came out stronger and more sure, and she gazed at him with this dreamy, adoring gaze that shook him down to his boots.

Who was she? Why was she licking her lips at him as if she were the cat and he were a bowl of cream?

Quickly, before he had time to react, she slipped onto his lap, framed his face with her hands, and kissed him like there was no tomorrow.

Right from the start her mouth was wide open, wet and demanding, as if she was very familiar with how to fan his fire. She nibbled him, tasted him, owned him, sending the message that she wanted him down to his soul. Now.

At first he was so shocked he didn’t do anything. But it didn’t take long to start giving as good as he got.

He might be a gentleman, but he was no saint. If she was hungry for it, so was he. After all, he was already half aroused from sliding his hands over her sweet curves.

It had been a damn long time since he’d had a woman this delectable, this bold in his lap. He liked his lovers hot and fast, and that was exactly what she offered.

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