“Sounds good to me.” She leaned into Gavin’s shoulder. “I bet there’s a safe, comfy place I can hang out.”
“Of course, dove.” Gavin was still looking at the map. “So you’re breaking into Farkas’s house.”
“Yes. It’s near Lake Balaton.” Ben put more pictures on the table. “An old baroque mansion with a winery attached. Farkas runs the winery now. Claims to be totally legitimate of course, but access to the house is limited. As far as I can tell, there are no pictures of the interior. No plans of any kind on file at city or county offices. He doesn’t get visitors. He entertains a little, but it’s all at the winery, not the house.”
“Big old house like that,” Chloe said. “Lots of walls. So many possibilities.” She nudged Gavin. “If you want to go…”
“No, it’s fine.” Gavin stared at the pictures. “Totally fine. I don’t need to go.”
Tenzin said, “You can come if you want.”
Gavin looked at Tenzin, then at Chloe. “No. It’s fine.”
Chloe broke into peals of laughter. “Oh, you so want to go break into the old art thief’s house!”
“No.” Gavin straightened his tie. “I’m a legitimate businessman now. Not some thieving rake.”
“Well, we’re not thieving rakes.” Ben looked at Tenzin, then back to Gavin. “We’re going to break in the thieving rake’s house and then… recover an icon that rightfully belongs to Radu.”
Chloe asked, “And we know it belongs to Radu how?”
“Because” —Ben cleared his throat— “he told us so.”
Chloe pursed her lips. “Just admit that you have different standards about stealing things from a thief than you do from a normal person. I completely understand that justification.”
Ben spread his hands. “I mean, Farkas obviously stole it from someone, right? If it’s there, it’s Radu’s icon. And Radu knows the entire history of the thing and he’s Poshani, which means that his people pray to Sara-la-Kali, so obviously the history of the thing…”
Tenzin was frowning at him.
“What?”
She turned to Chloe. “If you’re an art thief, then you have to expect people to try to steal from you. It’s only fair.”
“Agreed,” Chloe said. “That makes sense to me.”
Ben turned to Tenzin. “So do you expect people to try to steal from you?”
“Obviously. Why do you think I move my gold regularly and keep very little art?”
“Are we ignoring your jewelry and armor collection?”
She waved a hand. “That’s more fashion than art.”
“The armor is fashion?”
“It is if you ask me.”
“Arthur loves the armor,” Chloe said. “Even though he’s a little creeped out by it.”
“Do we have any blueprints at all?” Tenzin asked.
“Nope. I scoured online archives but couldn’t find anything. It’s possible there’s something in the local county records, but I figured it would be just as easy to break in and look for ourselves.”
“Sounds good.”
Chloe and Gavin went to the galley to grab a snack for Chloe, leaving Ben and Tenzin at the table alone.
“I talked to Sadia last night,” Ben said. “She wants you to call her.”
“Then I will do that.”
“Do you talk to her often?”
“I try to call at least once a month.”
“Why?”
Tenzin looked up with wide eyes. “Does it bother you?”
“I’m just—”
“You know what? I don’t care if it bothers you.” Tenzin looked back at the pictures of the house. “You cannot keep me from speaking to Sadia if she wants to speak to me. I love her.”
“I’m not trying to keep you from Sadia.”
“Good.”
Ben could tell she was pissed. “You need to stop assuming the worst about me.”
Tenzin looked up. “Why? You assume the worst about me constantly.”
“I do not.”
“Of course you do.”
“I don’t—” He raised a hand. “Okay, look. I don’t want to fight about this.”
“You don’t want to fight because you weren’t winning,” she muttered.
“No, this is supposed to be just business, and it’s getting into the personal.” He gathered up the papers. “We agreed to keep it business.”
“Our lives have been entwined for over ten years,” Tenzin said. “Do you really think we can keep anything only to business at this point?”
“Doesn’t matter.” His throat felt tight. “That was the agreement.”
Tenzin stared at him for a long time. “So it was.”
She rose and left him alone with his files.
They’d all agreed to stay in Gavin’s house in Budapest since he had plenty of room for them all, and with any luck, they’d only be there for a night. Knowing that Tenzin was going to be not-sleeping in a room right next to him was messing with Ben’s mind.
He wanted to talk with her. He didn’t know what to say. He probably shouldn’t talk to her, but he found the urge to just be in the same room with her was nearly impossible to resist.
Was it her blood? Was this because he’d taken her blood and his amnis wanted her? Ben felt slightly desperate thinking about the end of this job. In a matter of days, they’d be finished and he’d have no excuse to be near her. What would he do? Where would he go?
He had no obligation to return to China to be near Zhang because his sire had asked nothing of him.
He had no obligations in Los Angeles except with family.
When he thought about his future, the only thing he wanted to do was what he had been doing. He wanted to look for lost art for clients.
Ben found her in her room. He knocked on the door and waited for her to open it, but all he heard was a clatter of what sounded like plastic hitting the floor.
“Tenzin?”
She opened the door, her cheeks flushed. The sight sent an immediate surge of arousal to his groin even though he knew she’d probably just been having blood-wine.
“What?” She was irritated. She glanced down at the sudden tent in his pants. “I don’t have time for that right now.”
“I wasn’t… What was that?” Ben found her irritation oddly comforting. “Did you break something?”
She spun and looked at a scatter of yellow plastic on the ground. “This… thing! It’s driving me crazy.”
He walked into the room and stared at the mangled plastic and circuitry. “Is that the new Nintendo portable console?”
“Yes. If I wear thick gloves, it’s too clumsy. If I wear thin gloves” —she held up her hands in light pink driving gloves— “then it breaks in under a half an hour!”
He looked at the stack of boxes next to the bed. “How many of these things have you wrecked?”
“This is the third.”
“Tenzin.”
She kicked the pieces toward the wastebasket. “What else am I supposed to do? I’m going crazy waiting. Why aren’t we flying to Farkas’s house tonight?”