She nodded and stepped down into the empty pool.
Max glanced around and decided to start over by the four statues. He stood behind one, searching the marble carving for any clue. The cloth draped over the woman’s hips below her navel, then fell to her bare feet. It was an exquisite piece of work, with realistic details, from her toenails to the delicate curve of her cheekbones. Around the front of the woman’s body, he found a small harp dangling from a tie at her waist. Her hair fell in loose curls around her face, and a handful of them sat like marble springs over her round, pert breasts. Her slight smile was forever immortalized in the stone. But he found no sign of a dove or any other bird, so he moved on to the next statue.
She was much the same, with only a few small differences. But he continued his perusal—one never knew where one would discover the unexpected. After several moments, he heard Sabine make an exasperated little huff. He turned to find her glare aimed right at him.
“What?” he asked.
She walked toward him, but stayed in the pool looking up at his face. “We are searching for a clue, and all you can do is ogle the naked women?” She pointed at the statues.
He glanced back at the statue he’d been examining. “Iwaslooking for the clue.”
“By staring at their breasts?” Sabine nodded knowingly. “You’re certain to find the dove there,” she said drolly.
“Are you embarrassed?” he asked. He cupped the statue’s breasts for emphasis.
“Embarrassed about what, precisely?” She propped her hands on her hips in what Max considered the universal stance of disgruntled women. “Your juvenile behavior?”
He jumped down from the edge into the empty pool. His boots made a great thump as he landed. “I can assure you I’ve seen more than my fair share of breasts, real ones,” he reminded her. “Not ones made of stone. And should I desire to again see them in the very near future”—he let his eyes drop to her own chest—“I will find no difficulty.” He had closed the distance between them and stood merely a breath away. A wolf with his prey, he had her cornered.
She swallowed visibly. “Are you threatening me?” she asked, her voice barely a whisper.
“I would never threaten the virtue of a woman.” He flashed her a smile.
She took several steps away from him. “Clearly, my virtue, as it were, is no longer an issue. Though Ineverclaimed to be a virgin.” She turned to examine the far end of the pool. Bending, she followed the engravings that lined the stone’s edge.
He had wondered, but there were lines even he wouldn’t cross, so he’d never asked. It mattered not to him. He found her demure attitude while making such a bold admission intoxicating. She was a divine mixture. Saucy minx cleverly matched with her fierce determination. “So you admit that you have had lovers,” he said.
“I admit no such thing. My personal life is of no concern to you,” she said tartly. “Which is precisely my point. You shouldn’t make assumptions.”
“And you’ve never made assumptions about me?” He cocked one eyebrow. “How about just now when you assumed I was standing up here wasting time gawking at the statues?”
She said nothing, but had the grace to look appropriately guilty.
“Your veiled denial gives me plenty of information,” he said. “Someday perhaps you’ll tell me about those previous lovers.”
She said nothing.
“Shall we continue our search?” he asked.
He stepped out of the pool and back over to the statues he’d been examining. He knew she still stared after him, but he pretended not to notice. He’d flustered her and that pleased him. More than he was willing to admit.
But he also needed his distance from her. His focus on her breasts had begun a string of fantasies flowing through his mind. Images of Sabine naked and writhing beneath him, or beckoning him into a pool like the one she stood in now—only with water lapping at her naked breasts, flesh, and not carved of marble. He felt himself grow heavy with desire. Damned if he wasn’t behaving as a randy schoolboy would.
He turned around and found himself facing the fourth nude statue. A lute hung from her waist, and like her three sisters, she had been sculpted by a master’s hand. But again, Max found no sign of a dove or bird of any kind.
From his vantage point, he watched Sabine continue to study the engravings that lined the inner rim of the pool. She moved along the edge until she ended up where she’d begun. “Nothing,” she said. “No sign of a dove anywhere.”
“It’s got to be here somewhere,” Max said.
She climbed out of the sunken pool and walked to the far side of the room. “Unless you were wrong.” Sabine tossed him a sweet smile from over her shoulder that he knew meant quite the opposite.
“I was right about there being a bathhouse here. And I do have experience finding objects other people have been looking for.” He winked at her. “You’ve said that yourself.”
She glared at him, then stepped back through the arches to the next adjacent room. He followed her, and they found themselves in what he assumed had been a steam room where the water had been heated for a plunge bath. Another statue of a woman occupied this room, though she was larger than the four by the pool. She looked vaguely familiar. Again, she stood draped with a sheet hanging seductively on her hips, the rest of her bare. But instead of an amphora, she held a scale.
More carvings covered the stone walls. There were tributes to the gods and goddesses: Zeus, although the Romans would have called him Jupiter, on a chariot led by winged horses; Venus reclining while a throng of men fanned her and fed her grapes; Diana with her bow and arrow aimed at a boar. The walls were covered with such images from floor to ceiling.
They moved through the room in opposite directions, each carefully scanning the images lining the walls. He was examining an image of Achilles toppled over with a spear in his ankle when Sabine gasped.