Dangerous Ladies (35 page)

T
he next day, neither Tiffany nor Brandi would answer when Roberto called. It took a trip to McGrath’s mansion for him to discover the two women had moved back to Brandi’s apartment.

Charles McGrath was none too complimentary about the way Roberto had handled the whole situation. “Damn it, boy, when I told you and the FBI I’d help with this operation, I didn’t mean I wanted to lose my fiancée to a crisis with her daughter! I had Tiffany living here with me. I was buying her things, she was helping me decorate the house, we were going to parties. We were happy! Then Brandi comes to the door sobbing, Tiffany finds out I was in on the sting, and now neither one of them is speaking to me. Thank you very much!”

So Roberto loaded his flowers and his presents back in the BMW—Newby was an FBI agent, and now that the sting was over Roberto was driving himself—and went to Brandi’s apartment.

When he rang the doorbell, Tiffany answered. “What lovely flowers!” She relieved him of the cheerful mixed bouquet of golden sunflowers and purple asters. “Are the gifts for Brandi?” She took them, too. “Not that any of this is going to work,” she said cheerfully. “You’ll have to do better!” She shut the door in his face.

He stood there, sure she would now open the door and announce she was merely joking.

She didn’t.

After two days of leaving first reasonable, then abject, then angry messages on Brandi’s answering machine, he finally had no choice. He called in an expert—Count Giorgio Bartolini, who had been married to Roberto’s temperamental mother for over thirty-two years.

When the count heard the whole story, he sighed deeply. “All these years, and you still know nothing? This young woman, Brandi—you admire her intelligence, you love her independence, yet you used her.”

Roberto was outraged. He had expected his father to take his side. “It wasn’t like that, Papa.”

“Most certainly it was. She has her pride, and you made a fool of her.” Roberto could almost see his father shaking his dark head in disgust. “Love that survives trial and strife withers at the sound of laughter.”

“I did not laugh at her.” Roberto was beginning to think this call was a mistake. “I phoned so we could talk sensibly about strategies to win her back. Instead you make it sound as if this rift is all my fault!”

Papa said nothing for a long minute. “If you were here with me in Italy, I would slap your face. Of course it’s your fault! With a woman, you don’t worry about
sensible.
With a woman, even if it’s not your fault, you take the fault! That is what being a man is!”

“I have been a man for a long time, Papa, and no woman has ever required me to take the fault.”

“No woman has ever saved your insignificant life before.”

Roberto began to feel backed against the wall. “I saved hers in return!”

“That
is
what a man does. Do you love this Brandi?”

“Yes, but—”

“Then find a way to make her listen to you, admit you were wrong, and if you’re lucky, perhaps she’ll forgive you!”

“Roberto Bartolini crawls for no woman!”

“Good-bye, honey. You’re going to make them all love you!” Tiffany kissed her daughter as if she were a girl going off to her first day of school.

In fact, Brandi was a woman going off to face the gauntlet of disgruntled McGrath and Lindoberth employees who now were sure her work ethics were lousy. “I’d settle for a little tolerance.”

“I know it’s going to be rough, but you have to go. You’ve got to pay off that loan from the bank!”

Ah, yes.
The loan from the bank. The loan she’d taken out to pay back her father. The loan for which Uncle Charles had cosigned. “I’ve got three years to pay it back. Three years of working at McGrath and Lindoberth with people who will make my life hell.” Brandi took a breath. “Three years isn’t so long.”

“That’s the spirit!” Tiffany’s cheerleader training was showing through. “Don’t forget, you look great!”

Brandi did look great in a blue Dolce & Gabbana suit, a white cowl-necked sweater, and Donald J. Pliner pumps. Yesterday Tiffany had pulled out the credit cards Uncle Charles had given her and assured Brandi he had
begged
them to indulge in retail therapy. Brandi would have refused—knowing Uncle Charles had been in collusion with Roberto made her none too happy—but she had to do something about her hair. Joseph Fossera’s knife had whacked off a one-inch-by-two-inch piece of her hair close to her scalp, and she desperately needed a professional to create a new style.

So Tiffany and Brandi had gone to the spa. Brandi’s hairdresser had been horrified, then driven to a frenzy of creativity that resulted in an asymmetrical cut that made Brandi look almost French. A manicure and shopping had made both Brandi and Tiffany feel better about their lousy love lives.

Talking to Kim did
not
make either of them feel better about anything—Kim was madly in love, and while she tried to sympathize with their plight, it was clear nothing could penetrate her happiness.

But Brandi and Tiffany had had fun, and if Brandi was given to sudden bouts of tears disguised as temper, she never directed it at Tiffany.

Now, as Brandi entered the McGrath and Lindoberth building, the guard waved her in without checking her badge. “Don’t bother, Miss Michaels; I know who
you
are.”

She nodded and smiled, figuring that after the elevator incident every security guard in the place knew her name.

She closed her eyes as the elevator took her to the twenty-seventh floor and tried not to think about falling. The trouble was, when she emptied her mind, that opened it to the memories of lying on the floor with Roberto between her legs, coming with a desperation that shook her still. And to the memory of that moment when she’d realized she loved him.

But what good was love when the man was a lying creep?

When she’d posed that question to her mother, Tiffany had waved a hand at the presents and flowers and said, “He may be a lying creep, but he’s a lying creep with excellent taste.”

Brandi looked around at the open boxes filled with jewelry, glass objets d’art, and books selected especially for her. “We’re not keeping that stuff.”

Tiffany’s answer left Brandi breathless. “But darling, we shouldn’t let our dislike of him spoil our pleasure in the gifts. We want to hurt him, not ourselves!”

Even with their newfound accord, Brandi didn’t know how to reply to that.

When the elevator doors opened, someone yelled, “She’s here!”

Brandi opened her eyes to see the hallway lined with people—attorneys, law clerks, the secretarial staff—staring at her. She braced herself for a ration of trouble and instead heard a sound she had never expected to hear from them—applause.

Were they making fun of her? Was this some kind of office joke?

Brandi stepped cautiously out of the elevator and walked down the hall past the gauntlet of smiling people.

Diana Klim was bouncing while she clapped.

Tip Joel punched the air as Brandi walked by.

Even Sanjin smiled and clapped—coolly, but he clapped.

When Glenn called, “Good work, Brandi!” she knew the elevator had dropped all the way to the ground and she was dead and in some kind of purgatory.

The sight of Shawna Miller standing outside her cubicle clutching a legal pad gave Brandi a measure of sanity. Shawna hated her. She would tell her what was going on without prettying it up.

“What’s with everyone?” Brandi asked.

“We saw the pictures,” Shawna said. “We read the story! Oh, my God, you must have been so scared, but you looked cool as a cucumber.”

Brandi stared at the bubbling Shawna. “The pictures? The story?”

“We got the memo yesterday afternoon, and the story broke on the
Chicago Tribune
Web site this morning.” She dragged Brandi inside her cubicle and indicated her computer. “You’re in the
paper.
”

Front and center on the
Tribune
Web site were two photos of Brandi—one looking elegant and graceful in Roberto’s arms as they danced the tango, and one in the Stuffed Dog looking intent and calm as she pointed her pistol at Joseph.

Brandi sank into Shawna’s chair. “Where . . . ? How . . . ?” She started reading as fast as she could.

“I don’t believe it.” Somehow Brandi had gone from dupe to heroine.

“That picture of you shooting that guy was so cool. You’re my new hero!”

“Yeah. Thanks.” The pictures must have been culled off the security cameras, or maybe the FBI agents had been wired. Brandi didn’t know how this worked, because she hadn’t been in the know. No matter what the
Tribune
said, Roberto had made a fool of her. But if the
Tribune
’s story smoothed her way at McGrath and Lindoberth, she would be ungrateful to complain.

“You’d have volunteered to help with the sting, too, if Roberto Bartolini was in on it,” Brandi said as she stood. “It was no sacrifice on my part.”

“You did get to go to parties with him, but no way. He’s a hunk, but when the FBI told me there was going to be shooting, I’d have been out of there. He isn’t worth getting killed over!”

“No, I suppose not.” Brandi certainly shouldn’t think so.

As she walked past Mrs. Pelikan’s office, Mrs. Pelikan called out, “Miss Michaels, if I could see you for a moment?”

Mrs. Pelikan didn’t sound nearly as infatuated with Brandi as the rest of the office, and she was shuffling papers when Brandi stepped in. “It would seem we need to assign you to a different case.” She peered over her glasses at Brandi, and her brown eyes were cold. “Since this one was a front for you and Mr. Bartolini, and all the work we did on it useless.”

From far off down the corridor, Brandi heard a rumble. Conversation? Laughter?

“Yes, Mrs. Pelikan. I’m sorry, Mrs. Pelikan.” Brandi warmed to the woman who so greatly resented being lied to and used. Brandi could relate to that.

The rumble got louder. Definitely laughter.

Mrs. Pelikan relented. “I know you couldn’t tell me, but what an immense amount of work for nothing!”

The sound of many voices carried more and more clearly into the office.

What was going on out there? “I promise, I won’t be doing anything exciting ever again.”

Mrs. Pelikan looked over Brandi’s shoulder. She subdued a smile. “I don’t know that I’d agree with
that.
”

From the doorway, Roberto said, “Brandi, I’d like to speak to you.”

Brandi stiffened. Slowly she turned.

And found herself facing a six-and-a-half-foot dragon.

T
he dragon was mostly green. Small green scales on his pointed snout, large green scales on his ridged back, green scales on his fat, three-foot-long tail, iridescent green scales on the ridiculously small wings that sprouted from his shoulders. Pointed white teeth grew from his long mouth. His black eyes, set deep into the sides of his head, shone softly. But it was the gem in the middle of his forehead that really caught her attention.

It was the fake of the Romanov Blaze, and it glittered with the same violet fire as the real thing.

Roberto looked . . . ridiculous.

“Brandi? Can we talk?” It was definitely Roberto’s voice coming from inside the dragon.

“I don’t talk to mythical fire-breathing reptiles.” But she had to cover her mouth to hide her grin.