Second Chance Temptation. Joss Wood

confusing gratitude with love...

      She could’ve written any or all of that, but she didn’t. Through tears, and with her heart breaking, she’d just said she was sorry and she couldn’t marry him.

      Tanna didn’t regret not getting married, didn’t regret, not for one moment, the last ten years, but she did regret hurting Levi, for running when she should’ve had the guts to face him.

      But she’d been scared...

      Scared she’d never be anything more than her brothers’ adored, overly protected sister, Levi’s wife, a socialite with ample funds who loved art and designer clothes.

      She’d wanted to be more...

      More grounded, more real. She’d wanted to be a person who gave rather than took.

      And, in time, she’d hoped to feel less guilty. But that had yet to happen.

      Tanna doubted it ever would. So, she would work at what she could control and that included facing the past, dealing with her PTSD and getting back to work...

      “Hell, Murphy, are you baking the damned bread? What’s taking so long?” Levi bellowed.

      ...and making Levi a damned sandwich.

       Two

      Standing in his light-filled office, Carrick Murphy, the oldest of the four Murphy siblings, looked across his desk to his two brothers. Finn, as per usual, was on his smartphone, occasionally sipping from his Nerd? I prefer intellectual badass coffee mug, a gag gift from their sister, Tanna, many Christmases ago. Carrick transferred his gaze to Ronan, who was staring out the window, his thoughts a million miles away.

      Carrick ran a hand through his dark hair and rubbed his hand over his jaw. He knew many Bostonians looked at them, three bachelor brothers—rich and reasonably good-looking—and their beautiful little sister, and thought they lived charmed lives. From the outside looking in it was easy to forget they’d lost their parents when they were young, that the brothers had jointly raised their younger sister and they’d all lived through Tanna’s near-fatal accident. Carrick’s marriage had imploded, Ronan’s wife died, Finn and Beah divorced, and Tanna left Boston...

      People seldom looked behind the wealth and success...

      Carrick, annoyed by his introspection when he had work to do, rapped his knuckles on the desk. Two sets of Murphy green eyes focused on him. “Before we get to work, let’s discuss Tanna.”

      “Something is up with her,” Ronan said, turning around.

      Carrick nodded. “I think so too.”

      “I have to wonder why she’s really back in town because Tanna doesn’t do vacations.” Ronan walked over to the coffee machine. He placed a cup under the nozzle and pushed the start button. Carrick drained his cup and passed it to Ronan for a refill. “And why does she have to live in London? She can save lives here as easily as she could there.”

      “We can’t pressure her to move back to Boston. That’ll just make her run in the opposite direction,” Finn said, placing his forearms on top of a stack of paper folders. “She’s more stubborn than all of us put together.”

      Stubborn and determined. Those two traits were the only reasons she was walking after the best specialists in the country had given her a ten percent chance of regaining her mobility. A decade later, nobody would suspect their fit and active sister had spent five months in the hospital after the ball of her right femur shattered her pelvis and her left ankle splintered into what they called a fountain break. The only clues to the hell she’d endured were a few livid scars and a barely there limp.

      “Does Levi know she’s back?” Finn asked.

      Carrick raised his shoulders. “I don’t know.”

      “Should we give him a heads-up?” Ronan asked, thinking of their close friend.

      Levi and the Murphy brothers had stayed friends after his breakup with Tanna, but Levi never spoke about their vibrant and gorgeous sister, refused to look at the many pictures of her in the Murphys’ Beacon Hill house. By the way he now acted, nobody would suspect that, at one time, Levi had loved Tanna.

      While they were all tight with Levi, he and Carrick had the closest relationship. And as Carrick was the eldest, being the bearer of news, both good and bad, was his responsibility. “I’ll tell him.” He picked up his phone and dialed his friend’s number. Putting the call on speaker, he waited for Levi’s terse greeting.

      “Yo.”

      Carrick exchanged a wry smile with Ronan. Levi was taciturn and abrupt and never used three words when one would do.

      Carrick opted to shoot from the hip, the way Levi preferred. “Just a call to let you know Tanna is back in town and she’ll be here for about six weeks or so.”

      Levi waited a beat before he responded. When he did, his tone was colder than an Arctic blizzard. “Too late. She’s here.”

      Carrick heard the call disconnect and shook his head. He took the coffee Ronan held out to him and sighed. “Levi should really stop wearing his heart on his sleeve.”

      Ronan smiled at Carrick’s sarcasm. “Yep. And he really shouldn’t be so open and forthcoming.” Ro leaned back against the credenza and crossed his foot over his ankle. “Well, he’s been told. That’s all we can do.”

      “I have news...” Finn stated after a moment’s silence. “And it’s big.”

      Happy to get off the subject of his sister’s and best friend’s nonrelationship, Carrick turned his attention to Finn. His younger brother was normally the definition of cool and collected, so the excitement on his face was strange to see.

      “As you know, Isabel Mounton-Matthews left her entire estate to Keely Matthews and to Joa Jones, whom she took in when Joa was fourteen. Keely and Joa have decided to sell most of Isabel’s extensive collection to raise funds for Isabel’s foundation and we are handling the sale.”

      The company they’d jointly inherited, Murphy International, was one of the most exclusive auction houses in the world, renowned for the quality and rarity of the pieces of art passing through their hands. The sale of Isabel’s well-documented art collection would be one of the biggest in the past decade and the items were causing a stir in their wealthy art and auction circles. “I’ve been cataloging the collection and I’ve come across three paintings I think might be sleepers—”

      Carrick exchanged a quick, excited look with Ronan. A “sleeper” was an artwork whose real value or attribution had been missed by either the owner or art dealers.

      “Keely said that Isabel thought it was painted by Winslow Homer. Two are iffy but there’s one that makes me think it might be.”

      “Provenance?” Ronan asked. In their world, provenance was everything.

      Finn shook his head. “There’s nothing but Isabel’s suspicions. But, damn, the painting I saw, stylistically, looked like it might be one of his depictions of African American rural life.”

      “A lost Winslow Homer?” Homer was one of the country’s most revered artists and a lost painting by him would set the art world on fire. Carrick would get excited but he also knew fraudsters loved to fake Homer. And they were good at it. “It sounds too good to be true.”

      Ronan looked at Finn, who was their resident art historian. “Are you going to chase this down?”

      “I’d love to but I’m slammed. And I think we need an expert in nineteenth-century American painters.” Finn gestured to Carrick’s phone. “If the paintings are by Homer, it would have to be authenticated by you-know-who.”

      You-know-who, she-who-should-not-be-named, Satan’s Bride.

      Also known as his ex-wife.