I didn’t respond to the backhanded compliment. “There are quite a few items in every room. Can I offer you a cup of tea or coffee before we start?” I didn’t really want to, but my mum would have had my head if I didn’t offer a guest some refreshment.
“A cup of tea would be delightful.”
Ninety minutes later, my social battery was depleted, and I was masking that fact the best I could. We’d been in almost every room, and I had a notepad filled with estimates. Finally, we’d returned to the living room/dining area. The dining table was unusable because it was covered in smaller items I’d pulled out of Mum’s closets.
“And this is the last.” I gestured to the busy tabletop, relieved beyond belief this was almost over.
“Hmm, hmm, yes.” Edward White moved around it, picking up items. “So, none of this is yours, then?”
“No. All Mum’s.”
“And, uh … you live here alone?” His gaze flicked down my body and back up, lingering on my breasts, before he returned to inspecting the vase in his hands.
I wasn’t just socially depleted. I was exhausted from the past ninety minutes of dodging Edward White’s flirtations, his brushing past me when he didn’t need to, “accidentally” grazing his fingers over my arm, and at one point my chest. For the past hour and a half, he’d complimented me so many times I felt a bit sick, and I was starting to get very uneasy that we were alone together.
Sorry, Eddie, even if I didn’t have the libido of a starfish, it will never happen.
No, that wasn’t quite true anymore. For months my body couldn’t feel anything but grief, which was one of the many reasons I broke off my engagement to Frank. However, there had been a few moments over the last few months when I’d felt a flush of want, of arousal.
Unfortunately, the feelings were inspired by the worst possible candidate for romance who ever lived.
My ex-boyfriend.
My traitorous, heart-crushing, emotionally constipated arsehole of an ex-boyfriend, Quinn McQuarrie. Apparently, my erogenous zones disagreed with my heart and brain when it came to that emotional black hole of a human.
I threw thoughts of Quinn out of my head and tried to focus on getting the antiques dealer out of the house.
“See, the thing is, I’d love to take you out for dinner.” Edward flashed me another oily smile. “A beautiful woman such as yourself should get off this island for a bit.”
Ignoring his suggestion, I nodded to the pocket watch he’d picked up. “Anything interesting?”
He frowned in displeasure but turned to the watch, peering at it through his little black magnifying glass. When I’d called it that an hour ago, he’d pompously corrected me that it wasn’t a magnifying glass, it was a loupe.
I’d googled it when he was looking over my grandmother’s old armoire.
A loupeisa magnifying glass. Pretentious toad.
“So?” I asked. I didn’t know anything about the pocket watch. I’d found it in a shoebox in the back of Mum’s closet. She’d never shown it to me or Laird.
“Uh, well, it depends on your definition of interesting.” He lowered the watch to the table and gave me a tight-lipped smile. “It’s a Patrice Pellier knockoff.”
“Patrice Pellier?”
His smirk was condescending. “Only the most famous watchmaker of all time. A Patrice Pellier pocket watch today will cost a buyer anything between £15,000 and £100,000. An antique Patrice Pellier … well … those are worth significantly more. Yours, I’m afraid, is a fake. But it’s still around a hundred years old, so I’d list it anywhere between £200 and £400.”
I scribbled it down on my notepad. “Excellent.”
He picked up the vase next to it, and I thought I saw him quirk his brow.
“Familiar?”
“Uh … no.” He gave me another tight-lipped smile as he looked at the bottom of the vase. “It’s just someone has done a pretty good job of trying to make it look like a real Sèvres. It’s marked 1846, which is a good indicator it’s fake.”
“So not worth much, then?”
He gently set the vase down. “Uh … no, probably £50. Where are you intending to list these items?”
I told him what platform I already had a profile on. I’d been selling secondhand stuff to donate to charity for years, so I had a good reputation as a seller.
