She’d forgotten. During their weekend of overwhelming, completely fabulous monkey sex, she’d found herself liking Roberto. Rallying her defenses, she said, “Well. Thank you. But you’re a jewel thief, so how good a judge of character can you be?”
“First—I am not a jewel thief until a jury convicts me.”
Which, as his lawyer, she knew.
“Second, a jewel thief must be a very good judge of character.” He leaned across her.
She shrank back from his warmth, his scent, the pressure of his body against hers.
Taking her seat belt, he buckled it for her. “It’s almost more important than being able to hold myself by my fingertips on a ledge five stories over the street.”
The car started, and she stared at him in horror and fascination. “Hold yourself by your fingertips on a ledge five stories over the street? You could be killed!” She flinched at the idea of this beautiful man plummeting toward the pavement. . . .
Unbidden, a memory popped into her head . . . Roberto, unbuttoning his shirt, revealing that rippling, muscled chest . . . No wonder he had such a buff body. Hanging by his fingertips required conditioning, practice. . . . “No. Wait.” Remembering that, and what followed, was the last thing she should do. “You just admitted to being a jewel thief. Don’t ever say that to anyone else. Ever.”
“What have I done, sweet Brandi, to make you think I am foolish?” His accent was rich and full in a way she had never heard it . . . except when they made love. Then each word he murmured in her ear was opulent with the tones of Italy, and when his body moved on hers, she could forget Chicago, the cold, her furniture, her ditz of a mother, her bastard of a father, and that son of a bitch who had spent their engagement screwing another woman. This weekend had been the best of her life . . . and this Monday was the worst day ever.
“I don’t think you’re foolish.” That was the last thing she thought about him. “I think you’re immoral. Why didn’t you tell me who you were?”
“What did you think I did for a living?”
“I don’t know. You’re an Italian count!”
His mouth twisted wryly. “Count doesn’t pay as well as it used to.”
“No, I suppose it doesn’t come with a salary.” What had she been thinking?
“You knew my name. You didn’t seem to know what I was accused of, but I saw no reason why that would matter to us.”
Oh, fine. He was just like Alan. He was shifting the blame to her.
He continued, “Not until you were speaking to your mother and mentioned going to work for Charles McGrath did I realize we had committed a legal impropriety.”
“Oh.” He wasn’t blaming her. He wasn’t blaming either one of them. How refreshing. “Then it was too late.”
“Exactly.”
“Wait. That was Saturday morning.” She remembered the conversation with Tiffany very well, for immediately afterward he’d come to her and proposed they stay together, and she’d melted all over him like hot fudge on ice cream.
He smiled at her, his dark eyes alive with amusement, his lips quirked knowingly, and waited for her to come to the same conclusion he had.
“Okay, so the damage was done,” she admitted begrudgingly. “Couldn’t you have told me?”
“And have you call Charles McGrath and tell him you had to quit? I think not. Besides”—he leaned forward and whispered—“I wanted to sleep with you.”
He sounded just like he did when they made love. Oh, no. She looked down at her lap as she knit her gloved fingers together. She needed to concentrate. She could not jump his bones. “Look. I didn’t have the nerve to tell Mrs. Pelikan the truth right away”—her voice trembled and she steadied it—“but I won’t jeopardize this case. When we get back, I will do what’s right and recuse myself and . . . and take the consequences.”
It was good for her peace of mind that she didn’t see the expression on his face.
“Now why are we going to meet a judge?” she asked.
“Weren’t you paying attention?”
She turned and glared at Roberto.
“Okay!” He lifted his hands as if trying to stop a punch. “Judge Knight wants to meet me. He’s been assigned my case. My instructions are to be earnest, to remind him of my reputation as an international businessman with ties to Chicago”—his voice hardened—“and to ease his case of the ass.”
“This shouldn’t be difficult. You’re very charming. I’m charming, also.” She practiced a Southern belle smile at Roberto. “We should be out of there in half an hour.”
11
“How could you have said those things to Judge Knight?” Brandi stalked down the broad corridors of the courthouse toward the door.
“He’s too sensitive.” Roberto strolled beside her, his hands in his pockets, his collar unbuttoned, his tie loose around his neck.
“You told him the American justice system was a farce. You told him the FBI can’t tie their shoes without reading the instructions. You as good as told him you were guilty and should have been caught years ago except that the CIA was a bunch of incompetents.” She was hissing. She knew she was. But she couldn’t stop. “This has been the most mortifying three hours of my life.”
“But at least we get to stay together.” They were nearing the outer doors.
She struggled to stick her arms in her London Fog.
He caught her collar and helped her into the sleeves.
“What is Mrs. Pelikan going to say when she finds out you’ve been remanded into my custody? She’s going to fire me. I don’t have to worry about recusing myself, because”—Brandi’s voice rose—“she’s going to fire me!”
People walking down the corridor stared.
Roberto shrugged at the police manning security and indicated he didn’t know what she was carrying on about. “See? You didn’t want to explain why you had to recuse yourself, so everything came out for the best.”
“For the best? I’ve screwed up the first thing she asked me to—Wait!” Suspicion struck, and she stopped cold.
Roberto jerked her clear of oncoming traffic.
“What did you say?” she asked.
“I said, ‘Everything came out for the best.’” He slid into his overcoat.
“No, before that. You said, ‘At least we get to stay together.’” Her voice rose with her indignation. “Did you do this on purpose?”
“Cara.” He faced her. Put his hands on her arms. “You really do think I’m stupid. I adore you, but I wouldn’t risk a lifetime in jail for a few weeks in your custody. That doesn’t make sense.”
“No.” She calmed. “No, it doesn’t. But neither does what you did in there.” She pointed back at the judge’s chambers.
“He’s an American judge. I’m an Italian count.” Roberto slouched against the wall. “He was insolent. I reminded him of his place.”
Roberto’s snobbery reminded her all too clearly that they had nothing in common. Nothing. “You certainly did. While you were out of the room visiting the men’s room, Judge Knight told me that he grew up on the streets of Chicago to become the most respected official in the city.”
“To impress a pretty girl, I’m sure he exaggerates.” Roberto dismissed the judge’s claim with an airy gesture.
She buckled her belt so tight she could barely breathe. Or maybe it was rage that constricted her chest. “He thinks he has the right to interrogate a man of your privilege who has turned to crime.”
“He does not have that right.” Roberto wasn’t joking.
And to think she used to admire arrogance in a man.
She pulled her gloves out of her pocket. The white velvet case from the pawnshop came tumbling out with them.
He picked up the case and handed it to her. “I hope there’s nothing valuable inside.”
“No, I’m wearing the earrings.” She shoved it back in her pocket, put on her gloves and her hat, and headed out the doors.
He followed.
When they stepped ou
tside, the frigid wind whipped at her. The limo. The limo was heaven. She headed toward it.
He didn’t. He stopped on the courthouse steps and looked up and down the street. His gaze lingered on two guys huddled next to the huge monument Picasso had presented to the city.
They were dressed up like polar bears with hats, mittens, boots, scarves over their faces, yet they had to be freezing their keisters off.
Then Roberto said the stupidest thing she’d ever heard. He said, “Let’s walk.”
“Walk?” Her lips were already numb. “Are you insane?”
“You already think so. I might as well confirm your opinion.” He draped his scarf around her neck and over her ears, and smiled at her pinched crankiness. “Come. Let’s tell Newby. He can follow us in the car.”
“The office is miles from here!” The soft cashmere wrapped her in his warmth, his scent, his self-assurance.
“We’re not going back to the office. We’re going to a restaurant. I haven’t eaten.”
She glared at him.
“It’s not far,” he assured her. “Only a few blocks.”
She wanted so badly to tell him that she would watch him walk from the car, but Judge Knight had been furious at his treatment at Roberto’s hands, and his anger had spilled over to McGrath and Lindoberth, and specifically on Brandi. He’d been very detailed about what would happen to her and her budding career if she misplaced Roberto, so she didn’t have the nerve to leave him. Not in front of the courthouse. Probably not until the case was over. “All right. We’ll walk.”
Roberto spoke to Newby, then joined her, setting a brisk pace down the sidewalk.
She marched along with her head down, muttering, “I hate this. This isn’t winter. Winter is hot chocolate and marshmallows. Winter is snow lightly falling on a hill. Winter is sledding. It’s too damned frigid to snow. It’s too damned glacial to do anything except freeze to death walking through Chicago.”
“Here. Let me keep you warm.” Roberto wrapped his arm around her.
She knocked him away.
He didn’t look offended. Worse, he didn’t look cold.
Only a few people cared enough to fight the wind and walk the streets. For the most part, pedestrians waited for summer and warm weather—even those two guys at the statue had apparently decided it was too bitter to stay out on the plaza, because they were trudging along about a block back. One of them was coughing—something must be going around.
“Why did you move here if you hate winter so badly?” Roberto asked. “It’s not as if Chicago hides its reputation. It is the Windy City.”
“Fiancé.” He needn’t think she was over that stunt he’d pulled in the courthouse. Her rage was the only thing that kept her from freezing.
“You moved here to get away from him?”
“I moved here because he lives here.” She knew where the questioning was going, and she didn’t want to tell him the truth. Finding a gorgeous Italian lover had removed the sting of Alan’s rejection. Discovering her gorgeous Italian lover was a jewel thief had created a whole different range of humiliation. “How much farther to the restaurant?”
“A block.” He glanced back at the car, then glanced back again. “Newby’s right behind us with the car. You can get in.”
She glanced behind them, too. Newby was cruising along at the same speed they were, blocking traffic without any apparent thought to the other drivers’ convenience. “No. As soon as I turned my back, you’d make a dash for it.”
Roberto laughed at her. Actually laughed at her. “If I wanted to make a dash for it, how would you stop me? Hang on to my ankle to slow me down?”
“You’d be surprised,” she said darkly. Actually, ballerina Brandi could kick him right in the back of the head, but he didn’t need to know that. She might need to do it sometime. Or at least, she might want to. “Where is this restaurant?” The only place she could see was a good ol’ American greasy spoon with fluorescent lights that flashed advertisements for Budweiser and Old Milwaukee.
“That’s it,” Roberto said. “The Stuffed Dog.”
The greasy spoon it was. “That doesn’t look like your kind of place.” Not the kind of place a full-of-himself Italian count would frequent.
“You’d be surprised. So . . . you moved here last week and you’re no longer engaged this week?”
Wow. He was sort of like a boomerang, flying out, then coming back to the same spot. “That’s right.”
“Who broke it off?”
She timed her answer so that he was opening the door when she replied, “His wife.”
The place had black-and-white linoleum on the floor, padded booths, and stuffed animals—poodles, chows, German shepherds, golden retrievers, yellow Labs—hanging on the walls wrapped in cellophane. The chairs didn’t match, the table legs were metal, the tops were lacquered wood, the lunch counter was chipped, and the aromas were divine.
Brandi hadn’t eaten since last night when she left Roberto. At the onslaught of mouthwatering aromas, a sudden loud complaint from her stomach told the grizzled waitress about it.
“Sit down, honey, before you fall down.” She waved them toward a booth, then did a double take and stared at Roberto. “Say, aren’t you that guy? The one in the paper? The guy who stole all those great jewels from those society women?”
He was in the paper? Everybody knew about him?
“The jewels were gifts.” He bent all his attention to the plump, worn-out waitress and flashed her a smile.
She put her hand to her chest. She blushed. Blushed for probably the first time in forty years. Fervently she smiled back. “I’d believe it.”
Yeah, his smile lit up the restaurant. It seduced a simper out of a woman wearing orthopedic shoes, a burn on her left arm, and an expression that said she’d seen it all and it hadn’t impressed her. For sure it could seduce jewels out of any woman.
Roberto looked toward the back corner, toward the long table where men sat huddled over their plates, smoking, eating, and talking. No other customers sat around them.
Because of the smoke, Brandi supposed.
“I see friends of mine back there,” Roberto said. “We’ll join them.”
The waitress started to object, then took a long look at Roberto. “It’s your funeral.”
Brandi recognized the feeling that she’d been played for a sucker. She ought to—she had been often enough in the last three days. “Are they why you wanted to eat here?”
“They’re famous for their hot dogs.”
Which was no answer at all. “What kind of friends are these?” she asked.
“Old friends of the family.”
They’d already been spotted. At the sight of Roberto and Brandi advancing on them, the men rose to their feet. In fact, she was going to be the only woman here, and the way they were looking at her, as if she were a . . . a moll, made her feel out of place.
Some guy of around fifty-five with broad shoulders and a rotund belly stepped out from behind a plate of two hot dogs and a huge mound of fries. He advanced on them, arms wide. “Bobby! Bobby Bartolini! How good to see you. You’re all grown up!” His Italian accent was stronger than Roberto’s, and his voice rumbled in his large frame.
Brandi’s eyebrows rose. If he dared called Roberto “Bobby,” then these people were old friends of the family. But other than him and another guy at his right hand, they were all about Roberto’s age. About thirty, various heights, and in good shape, with muscular arms sticking out from rolled-up shirtsleeves.
“Mossimo Fossera, what a pleasant surprise.” Roberto embraced him heartily. “Who would have thought I would meet you here, now?”
Yeah, right. They’d come in here to meet them.
“We Fosseras hang out here a lot,” Mossimo said.
Roberto patted Mossimo’s belly. “As I can see. Greg, is that you, man?” He shook hands with a guy almost as handsome as he was. “Dante, hey. You still going out with that gorgeous girl, Fiorenza?”
Dante beamed. “No, I stopped going out with her . . . when I married her.”
The men laughed.
Dante and Roberto exchanged fake punches.
“Fico, hey, your complexion finally cleared up. Ricky, when did you lose all that hair? Danny, great tattoo. Son of a bitch must have hurt like hell.” Roberto had lost the faint Italian accent and sounded like any American man. He acted like an American man, too, all con and horseshit—although maybe Alan had made her a little prejudiced against the gender.
“What’s this?” Mossimo talked to Roberto and indicated her with his head.
“Brandi, let me take your coat.” Roberto unwound his scarf from around her face.
“Whoa.” The exclamation slipped from Fico as if he were unaware.
Roberto slid her London Fog off her shoulders and hung it on the coatrack.
The men stared without subtlety, making Brandi all too aware that her booby-smashing bra and conservative suit weren’t hiding her figure as well as she’d hoped.
Slipping his hand around her waist, Roberto pulled her close against him. “This is Brandi Michaels. This is my lawyer.”
Much cackling and jabbing of elbows followed the introduction: “Hey . . .” “Yeah, sure.” “Leave it to Roberto, heh?” “That’s a new name for it. Your lawyer.”
The men denigrated Brandi right to her face and laughed as if she weren’t there. As if she were some superficial blonde.
As if she were her mother.
She smacked Roberto hard in the ribs with her elbow, and when his breath oofed out of him, she stepped forward and offered her hand to Mossimo. “My name is Brandi Michaels. I work for McGrath and Lindoberth, and not only am I his lawyer; he’s been remanded into my custody.”
The younger men stopped chortling and gaped at one another as if they didn’t know how to respond.
Mossimo bowed over her hand. “I should have expected Bobbie to have the best-looking lawyer in the business.” Like Popeye, he talked out of the side of his mouth. She was surprised he wasn’t eating spinach and popping biceps. “Sit down, Miss Michaels.”