Lauren shook her head, and a tendril of hair coiled beside her face. “You didn’t force me into anything. Everything I’ve done hasbeen because I wanted to. I don’t regret a single moment I’ve spent with you.”
His throat contracted. “Lauren, if you decide to walk away from me after this, I will understand. Find another man to be happy with, and live a long and peaceful life. I will let you go because I love you.”
She smiled through glittering tears. “I will stay by your side, Joe, because I love you, too.”
The salt on her lips was the sweetest thing he’d ever tasted. He kissed her with a hunger he’d long denied, and she matched his passion with her own. He couldn’t lose her now.
He wouldn’t.
CHAPTER
31
MONDAY, JANUARY 18, 1926
Almost two weeks had passed since Lauren had last seen Joe. So when he surprised her by coming to her apartment, she was overjoyed to see him and afraid something was wrong all at once.
Judging by the way he kissed her before even taking off his coat, he’d missed her as much as she’d missed him.
Giggling drifted toward them from the direction of the living room, and Lauren placed a hand on his chest, gently pressing him away. “Not in front of the kids,” she teased, turning around and winking at Elsa and Ivy, whose girlish behavior totally earned the remark.
“Ooh! What’s in the bag, Joe?” Unfolding her legs from beneath her, Elsa scrambled from the couch.
Ivy quickly followed. “What’d you bring us, huh? Huh?”
“Anyone here like cannoli?” Joe held a paper bag aloft, resembling a father who stayed away too long and won back affection with treats. Lauren would have laughed had she not been staring at a variation of her childhood.
But this was Joe. And cannoliwascannoli. Her mood lifted again as the pastry flaked apart in her mouth, releasing the sweet ricotta.
“Oh, Ferrara’s,” Ivy sighed around a mouthful. “It’s good for whatails you, that’s what. Here, kitty.” Ignoring Lauren’s protests, Ivy let Cleo lick her fingers clean.
Minutes later, Elsa announced that she and Ivy had somewhere they needed to be. “We’ll be backany moment, you two, so don’t get too used to the privacy.” She grinned.
As soon as the door shut behind them, Joe’s expression sobered. “I’ve been looking into some potential forgeries these last couple of weeks, meeting with people and taking photographs of their items. Would you take a look at these and see what you think?” He sat on the couch, and she joined him.
“Of course.” They had agreed she would stop consulting on forgeries in person, but looking at pictures at home seemed a low risk, indeed. Joe wouldn’t ask if it weren’t important.
He handed Lauren a stack of photographs.
Every one of them showed some angle of a scarab. “Are these images duplicates?” she asked.
“No, that’s the front and back of six different scarabs from six different owners.”
She looked closer. “Then we’re looking at six different forgeries, all made by the same forger.”
“You’re sure?”
“It’s the same mistake in the hieroglyph text in every one of them. I’ll spare you the finer points of translation, but trust me, these are fakes.”
Joe passed her three more photographs, each showing a section of a papyrus. “And these?”
“The same mistake is in all three photos. Is it the same papyrus?”
“Three.”
The cat twisted between her ankles, likely hungry for dinner, but Lauren ignored her. “I’d bet anything the forger of the scarabs forged these as well. The articles don’t match the pronouns. In the Egyptian language, articles are feminine or masculine according to what they’re referring to. These don’t match. No literate Egyptian would have made such a mistake.”
“That’s what Peter Braun said, too.”
