Dangerous Ladies (12 page)

And when life had brought a reversal of fortune, he had done what he must to find his way back. Right now he was paying the price, but it would be worth it.

Yet Brandi worked for McGrath and Lindoberth.

He looked away from her. He had to look away from her. He needed to think, and that was impossible when she stood silhouetted against the windows and all her peaks and valleys called to him.

Had she known who he was when she beckoned him? She’d known his name. Of course she had to know the cause of his celebrity. His picture had been in all the papers.

But apparently she’d just moved to Chicago. If she’d been unpacking, if she’d had no water, if she had no Internet, it was possible she hadn’t heard about him. Perhaps the gossip at the party hadn’t reached her ears. Assuming that was all true, and that she wanted her job at McGrath and Lindoberth, then last night had been a hell of a miscalculation—on both their parts.

Should he tell her?

What good would that do?

The damage had been done.

They couldn’t go back.

So why not enjoy themselves and pay the piper when the time came?

Was he making this decision out of logic or desire? As she said good-bye and shut the phone, he slowly paced toward her. It didn’t matter. Nothing mattered . . . as long as he could have her one more time.

He caught her around the waist from the back. “I would like to extend my invitation to remain here for the weekend.”

He felt her spine straighten. She was going to say no.

But he had powers this
piccola tesora
could barely imagine.

He opened her robe, then ran his hands down her thighs and up to linger on the golden fluff of hair that barely concealed her lips.

She caught her breath.

Bending his knees, he pressed himself against her, and whispered in her ear, “I haven’t shown you what I can do with my . . . tongue.”

“Yes . . .” She cleared her throat. “Yes, you have.”

“There’s more. So much”—he slid his tongue along the shell of her ear—“more.”

She wasn’t easy. She tried to think about it. About her resolve to take only one night for herself. “I have to unpack,” she said faintly.

“So you can go to your cold apartment with the frozen pipes and work to finish unpacking—the unpacking that you can easily do next week—or you can spend the time with me being warm and bathed and pampered . . . and loved.” He opened her to his fingers and tenderly explored her, touching all the right places, making her melt against him. “I can show you such pleasure as you’ve never imagined. You’ll be insensible with joy. You won’t be able to stop smiling. Come,
cara
, be mine for one more day.”

Her phone rang again, a series of sharp rings. She still held the phone in her hand, but she looked at it as if she didn’t understand what she should do. Then she shook her head as if coming out of a daze and lifted it to her ear.

Accidenti!
He had almost had her.

“Hi, Kim. Everything’s fine. Yes, I did.” She listened. “I know you didn’t, but you were wrong. It was everything I could have wished. In fact”—she cast a long, even look over her shoulder at him, a look that teased and revealed—“I’m going to have to call you back on Monday, because I’m spending the rest of the weekend with him.”

As Brandi walked down the hall toward her new apartment, she couldn’t wipe the smile off her face. It was Sunday. Sunday night. She had spent the entire weekend in the arms of a man who made her forget what’s-his-name. Roberto had everything any woman could ever desire—smoky sensuality, sexy accent, great cheekbones, muscular body, slow hands—and best of all, she would never see him again.

Her smile slipped.

She would never see him again.

But that was what she wanted. She sighed only because he’d introduced her to decadent pleasures she’d scarcely imagined, and she knew she would miss watching with hungry eyes as he strode from the bathroom to the bedroom to the sitting room.

She fumbled to insert her key in the lock.

Clothed, he was glorious. Naked, he was—

Before she succeeded, the door swung open on its hinges.

For a long, long moment, she stared, not understanding. She had locked the door. She knew she had. Yet she examined the lock. It was smashed.

Someone had broken into her apartment.

Stunned, she pushed the door open and stared, hands limp at her sides.

The cushions on her new sofa had been tossed. Papers were strewn everywhere. The boxes she’d left packed were opened and dumped. The glasses she had put in the cupboard were shattered on the floor. Across the cream-colored wall, red paint dripped a message—DIE BITCH.

And her dragon . . . she whimpered and rushed inside. She knelt beside the green shards and touched the sharp edges with tender fingers. All these years, she’d kept her dragon pristine with nary a chip on him. She’d dragged him from the home where she’d lived with her parents through a series of smaller and smaller apartments, then to the college dorm, then to the law school . . . and now someone had come in and broken him.

She stared around at the mess with disbelieving eyes. She’d been robbed.

And how dumb was she to be inside? The criminal might still be here.

She rushed back into the hallway and called 911.

“I
might point out, Miss Michaels, that it’s not a good idea to be late the first day of work.” Mrs. Pelikan stood at the head of the conference table, her team assembled before her, and reproved Brandi as she slipped in the door.

“It’s okay when Mr. McGrath is your family’s best friend.” Sanjin Patel smirked.

Brandi considered how pleasant he’d been Friday night when he’d been hoping to get into her pants, and supposed that a firm smack across his handsome chops was out of the question. “I apologize, Mrs. Pelikan. My apartment was vandalized. The police left about midnight. The locksmith left at one. I had to clean enough to get to the bed, so I didn’t crash until three. This morning I did call with a message.” Which she’d given to Shawna Miller knowing full well it would never be passed on.

“You could have e-mailed,” Sanjin said.

“They smashed my laptop.” They didn’t steal it. They smashed it.

“I’m sorry.” Mrs. Pelikan sounded sincere. “Not a good introduction to our fair city.”

“What did the police say?”

“They said the security in the building is actually very good. The apartment manager was completely apologetic.” So apologetic he’d arranged to let her insurance agent in today to take pictures of the damage and was paying for a crew to clean up the mess. Eric did
not
want to give his other tenants reason to worry. “He gave the police the video from the cameras at the doors. They’re going to study it and see if they recognize the perp, but usually in cases like this, one of the tenants was being ‘nice’ and let him in.”

“What was stolen?” Mrs. Pelikan asked.

“Nothing appears to be missing. It looks like an act of pure vandalism.” Somehow, that made the situation worse. To think someone attacked her things, slashed her new, wrong-size couch, dumped her drawers and the boxes she hadn’t yet unpacked, for no reason except spite seemed vindictive and far too personal.

Last night after everyone left, Brandi had tried to sleep, but every time she had drifted off, she jerked awake. Then she lay in the darkness, her eyes wide, waiting to hear the soft sound of a footfall or see a dark form move across the window.

“You could have stayed home, Miss Michaels.” Mrs. Pelikan frowned as she looked Brandi over. “Perhaps it would be better if you
went
home.”

Obviously Brandi hadn’t done a good job with the concealer on the circles beneath her eyes. “Of course, thank you, Mrs. Pelikan. But I have been looking forward to working with you and your team, and I didn’t want to miss the chance to be in on the ground floor of this exciting new case.” She stood there, clutching her briefcase in sweaty palms and hoping she maintained some semblance of professionalism, while she sounded like a major suck-up.

But she couldn’t bear the idea that on her first day everyone was sniggering at her, gossiping about her behavior at the party, taking the opportunity to make snotty comments about her connection to Uncle Charles. So she’d dragged herself up, put on her best booby-mashing bra, dressed in her most conservative, least wrinkled black
suit, and indulged in a cab to get her to McGrath and Lindoberth as quickly as she could. At least now Sanjin could make his snotty comments to her face.

“Good.” Mrs. Pelikan turned crisp and businesslike. “You know everyone here. Tip Joel, Glenn Silverstein, Diana Klim . . .”

Brandi wished she were back in the suite with Roberto, safe and warm and loved.

Not loved, exactly, but certainly cherished. Although he’d made no attempt to find out her last name or where she lived. He’d been content to let her walk out of his life forever . . . and that was right. That was just what she had wanted. In fact, a weekend had been far more than she’d wanted, and his indifference—for that was what it was—had kept her from calling him when she’d discovered the break-in. Thank God she still had her dignity.

Instead she had this room of coworkers who stared at their organizers, their notebooks, or their Palm Pilots. Anything to avoid looking at her and murmuring pleasantries.

Maybe that was the way they greeted people in Chicago, but Brandi was from Nashville. In Nashville, good manners were the standard, not the exception, and she wasn’t going to let them get away with it.

She marched up to Tip. “Tip, Friday night I thought you were fighting a bit of a cold. I hope you’re feeling better.”

Tip was an old lawyer, probably not the best because he was sixty and not a partner, but he knew how to play the game. He shook her hand. “I’m better, thanks.”

“Diana, how good to meet you again,” Brandi said. “I hope you’ll give me the name of your hairdresser. The guy who cut mine slaughtered it.”

Actually he’d been an artist, but Diana was thirty-something, married, with highlights that shouted “Beauty School” and a cut that accentuated her plump cheeks. A little flattery wouldn’t go amiss there, and didn’t. Diana’s brown eyes lit up, and she said, “Sure, I can do that.”

Glenn cleared his throat.

“Later,” Diana added.

“Sanjin—” Brandi offered her hand, but she didn’t think Southern charm would get far with him. Never mind a woman scorned—he was single, intelligent, from India, and didn’t like the fact she hadn’t been interested in a man who worked at her firm.

He touched her hand and inclined his head with a chill that told her she’d made an enemy.

“Miss Michaels, if you’re done with the chitchat?” Mrs. Pelikan managed to sound severe and look as if she knew exactly what Brandi was doing. “Glenn is the team leader on your first case, so you’ll be working for him.”

Brandi saw Glenn nod pontifically and knew she faced trouble. He was fifty, balding, and fighting it with a bad comb-over. Friday night after he’d slavered over her like a rabid dog, she’d spent ten minutes joking with his wife about old fools. Perhaps it hadn’t been wise, but in her opinion a man who was willing to cheat on his wife should be put down and then neutered, and not necessarily in that order.

“Glenn, why don’t you outline our case for Brandi?” Mrs. Pelikan sat down and crossed her arms over her chest.

Brandi opened her notebook and held her pen at the ready.

“I’ll try to be succinct, since everyone here already knows the details and our client will be in soon.” Glenn rose and spoke directly to Brandi while everyone else looked disgusted. “He has dual citizenship, American and Italian. The FBI claims he’s a jewel thief. They assert his specialty is diamonds, big diamonds, and that he’s stolen from museums and private citizens in New York City, San Francisco, and Houston. The CIA also has an interest in him, claiming he’s committed similar crimes in Rome, Bombay, and London. But the FBI landed him first.”