But it wasn’t there.
She was angry, yes. Furiously angry at him for thinking that providing money for her college gave him the right to shout at her, and mad at herself for being foolish enough to fall into his trap instead of taking out a student loan.
But mostly she felt free, as if telling him off had released her from that spell of fear he’d cast the day he’d walked away from her and her mother. It didn’t matter whether he called her stupid. It didn’t matter whether he admired or despised her. She was done with him. She was an adult. He and his cruel words and his endless spite didn’t have the power to hurt her anymore.
She took a long breath and released it slowly.
But in this world there was someone who did have the power to hurt her.
Roberto.
Where was he? Why hadn’t he come back to bed to see what was going on? She needed to be held and praised, to be assured there was more between them than good sex.
Yet the suite was very, very quiet.
Slipping out of bed, she pulled on his robe and walked into the living room.
It was empty.
She checked the bathroom. Both bathrooms.
They were empty.
She looked in the extra bedroom. She looked under the bed.
She stood in the middle of the floor and took a long breath. This couldn’t be happening. There had to be another explanation than the obvious . . . that Roberto had sneaked away from her and right now he was stealing the Romanov Blaze.
Picking up the hotel phone, she called down to the concierge. In her most charming, carefree voice, she said, “This is Brandi Michaels in room . . . oh, dear, I can’t remember what room I’m in!”
“You’re in room four-oh-three, Miss Michaels.” The concierge sounded warm, entertained—and male.
Male. At least she had some luck tonight. “Oh, thank you. I never can remember numbers! Is this the helpful and handsome Mr. Birch?”
“You’ve guessed right, Miss Michaels.”
“It’s not a guess, Mr. Birch. I know you.” An older man, dapper and smart, good at his job and happy to be of service. The concierge should never give out information on a guest, but Mr. Birch liked women, and he liked her. If she struck the right notes, she could pull this off. “I am such a silly woman. I forgot to ask Mr. Bartolini if he would get me a bottle of my favorite nail polish while he was out. It’s L’Oréal’s Lollipop Pink; it’s such a beautiful color, and it smells like candy! I just love it! Can you catch him before he leaves?”
“Just a minute.” Mr. Birch put her on hold.
As she waited, she tapped her fingers on the table. The foolishness of her actions infuriated her. Looking under the bed. Calling the concierge and pretending to be a blithe, untroubled lady of leisure. But she couldn’t stand not knowing the truth.
She had to know if Roberto was gone. She had to know if he had lied to her.
The concierge popped back on, and he sounded a little wary. “We’re not sure if he left. There was a man, but he had his scarf over his face and his hat down, and he went out through the kitchen.”
“He wanted a snack. I told him to order room service. He probably charmed some hapless cook out of a cookie.” She lowered her voice and confided, “I swear, Mr. Birch, it’s not fair that Mr. Bartolini can eat all the time and still be so thin!”
“So true.” Mr. Birch sounded relaxed again.
“He’s not here. He has to be somewhere. . . . I wish I could find his cell phone number!”
“He met three men behind the hotel.”
“Yes, he went out to have a drink.” If life were fair, she’d receive an Academy Award for Most Indulgent and Amused, when actually she was Most Infuriated and Deceived. “With the Italian guys, right?”
“I couldn’t venture a guess about that.” Mr. Birch responded in the same spirit of amusement.
“Dark hair, dark eyes, all speaking Italian?”
“I believe that’s right.”
“Great! I do have Greg’s cell phone number. I’ll call him and catch Roberto that way. Thanks so much, Mr. Birch!” She hung up briskly—then flung the phone across the room. It thumped against the wall. It skittered across the table and bounced across the carpet. The antenna broke off with a snap. And that small act of violence wasn’t enough—she wanted to stomp it to smithereens.
Roberto had sworn he wouldn’t steal the Romanov Blaze. He’d promised her he would never steal anything again, that he would live on the right side of the law. For her. He’d said he would do it for her.
And instead the bastard had screwed her senseless, left her sleeping, and gone to do just what he’d promised he wouldn’t.
Her father had called her a groupie and a hooker.
She was worse than that; she was a fool. She was as stupid as Daddy had insisted she was—because with her father and Alan as examples of what men could be, she had still chosen to trust Roberto.
She put her hands to her forehead.
Could she be any dumber? She had known Roberto was an international jewel thief with an eye for women and a way with words spoken in an irresistible Italian accent. Why was she surprised to discover he’d slipped it to her, then slipped away?
Her stomach didn’t hurt, but her heart did.
She hated Roberto. She hated him.
Yet according to the courts and her boss, she was responsible for Roberto Bartolini. Her job depended on her keeping track of him, and if she was going to pay her father back—and by God, she was—she needed her job at McGrath and Lindoberth.
But how to find Roberto?
She eyed Roberto’s laptop. She stalked toward the desk. She would do it like one of the big boys.
A touch on the keyboard woke the computer from hibernation. But the screen that appeared didn’t hold a conveniently labeled PLANS FOR ROBBERY icon.
Yet not for nothing had she made it through law school with a decrepit computer prone to viruses. She knew a few things about searching for secrets hidden in the program code.
Settling down in the chair, she worked through the levels of passwords and encryptions until she had a file on screen that showed the briefest, barest of agendas for the robbery.
She had no time. No time to prepare. No time to plan.
Because if all was going as scheduled, Roberto was at this moment at the Art Institute of Chicago confounding the myriad traps and alarms around the great diamond and removing the Romanov Blaze from its case.
If all was not going well . . . he was dead.
She sat, her fingers still on the keyboard, frozen by the thought.
At this moment Roberto could be lying in a pool of his own blood, surrounded by the guards, by the police, by professionals pleased to have caught him before he laid hands on the diamond. He would be alone, with no one who knew his voice, his smile, his body, his mind. They’d call the coroner to put the body into a bag—
Brandi found herself on her feet.
She couldn’t bear it. She couldn’t bear the idea that she’d never see him again, that he’d be nothing but a noted criminal gunned down by the police.
Because she might hate Roberto, but she loved him, too.
“Damn it!” she whispered. She glanced at the rest of the schedule.
He was due to deliver the diamond to Mossimo at the Stuffed Dog in one hour and forty-five minutes. If she could intercept him, she could make him take the diamond to the police. He’d have to confess, but the courts would be lenient because he’d repented his crime.
Yes, she’d make him surrender the diamond if she had to shoot him to do it.
She opened the desk drawer and pulled out the pistol.
Aim at the largest part of the person you want to kill.
She’d aim at his fat head.
But she didn’t have much time. Going to the window, she looked out. The Fossera boys were still there, waiting for her to come out. Worse than that, that FBI agent was watching the Fossera boys. Brandi knew she could ditch Joseph and Ty
ler, but she wasn’t so sure about the professional skulker.
Picking up the phone, she called the one person she could always depend on. “Tiffany?” She could hear music and laughter in the background.
“Hi, sweetheart, how are you?” Tiffany sounded distracted.
“Not so good.” Tears prickled Brandi’s eyes.
“What’s wrong?” Brandi had Tiffany’s full attention.
“Mama, I need help.”
26
“Darling.” Tiffany swept through the door of the suite dressed in a long dark coat with her blond hair hidden by a fuzzy hat and her face concealed by sunglasses. “I can’t believe Roberto did this to you. This is an outrage!” She swept Brandi into a still-chilly embrace.
“I’ll make him sorry,” Brandi promised. She had the television on the local all-news channel, watching for a report of a break-in at the museum.
So far there had been nothing.
Roberto was still alive.
She’d make him sorry about that, too.
She gestured at the rolling suitcase Tiffany dragged behind her. “Did you bring the stuff?”
Tiffany inspected Brandi’s face. “Yes, and you’ve done a wonderful job with the makeup and the hair. This is such a clever plan, Brandi. I’m so glad you included me!”
“No one else could possibly understand.” Brandi rolled her eyes at her mother, but she couldn’t tell whether Tiffany saw her.
Tiffany was still wearing her sunglasses.
Odd, because her mother had very strong opinions about a person who failed in the essential courtesies of removing her hat or her sunglasses, and while sunglasses helped with her disguise, it was nighttime. She didn’t need them in here.
Peeling off her coat, Tiffany flung it at a chair. Kneeling beside the suitcase, she popped the latches. “I know you wanted one of my action outfits, but darling, I was packing for elegance.”
“It’s okay, Mama. Whatever you brought is fine with me.” Brandi knelt beside her.
Tiffany took clothes out of the suitcase—a pair of Calvin Klein chocolate-brown wool slacks, a matching cashmere sweater, and Jimmy Choo stiletto heels in chocolate with an an orange flower on the toe. Tiffany’s tone was worried as she said, “This was the best I could do. The heels are last season’s, but they’re my favorites, and I think so kick-ass. Don’t you?”
“It’s all right, Mama. I know one thing—I might not be able to run in those heels, but running isn’t what I do well. What I do well is walk and smile and make men forget good sense, and I’m going to need every weapon in my arsenal to pull off this diamond rescue without landing in jail.” Brandi grinned, expecting her mother to appreciate her sentiment.
“You can do it,” Tiffany said, but her mouth trembled.
“Did you break a nail on the suitcase latch, Mama?”
“No. Why would you think that?” Tiffany’s breath caught, and her fingers trembled as she brushed her hair back from her face.
“Mama.” Brandi carefully removed Tiffany’s sunglasses. “What’s wrong?”
“With me? Nothing! Right now, I’m concerned with you.” But her eyes looked as if she’d been crying.
With her own bad experiences to guide her, Brandi leaped to the logical conclusion. “Was Uncle Charles mean to you?”
“Charles? Heavens, no, he’s the best man in the world. . . .” Tiffany choked a little. “It’s just that you . . . you . . .”
“Me?” Brandi was taken aback. “What have I done?”
“You haven’t done anything! It’s just that . . . since the divorce . . . you’ve always called me Tiffany or Mother.”
“You are my mother,” Brandi said, bewildered.
“Yes, but tonight you asked for my help. Oh, honey, you haven’t asked me for help since the day Daddy announced he wanted a divorce.” Tiffany sniffed. “You always treat me like some sort of imbecile.”
“I don’t think you’re an imbecile.” But Brandi stirred uncomfortably. She hadn’t thought her mother was an imbecile, but she’d never seemed bright about anything but men and decorating.
“Tonight you called me Mama.”
Brandi sat back on her heels. Mother or Mama ? Shades of gray, unimportant in her eyes, or so she had told herself. But not really, because in her own mind she recognized the difference. Mama was the cry of an innocent, loving child. Mother was a teenage girl’s criticism. “I hadn’t realized you cared.”
“I know you didn’t,” Tiffany hastened to assure her. “I know I wasn’t any good as the head of the family. But sometimes I dreamed of the old days when you were ten and ran to me with your problems as if I could fix everything. You were such a sweet little girl!”
“Not so sweet as a teenager, huh?” Brandi remembered her disappointment as her mother went from one job to another and their income sank lower and lower, and she remembered, too, what a snot she’d been about it. What a snot she’d been ever since.
“I wasn’t cut out to hold down a job. I knew it, but I wanted to make you proud of me, so I kept trying, thinking someday you’d remember you loved me and call me Mama again.”
“My God.” As Brandi viewed her mother’s distress, revelation slapped her hard. “I’m turning into my father.” And she’d been engaged to her father. The man she’d most despised in her life, and she’d been imitating him. Why?
Because he didn’t feel. He didn’t hurt.
“No, you’re not! I didn’t mean that. Oh, dear, I shouldn’t have started this. I knew I’d mess it up.”
“You haven’t messed anything up.” Brandi started to place her hand comfortingly on her mother’s back, then chickened out. For a long time she’d barely touched her. The wall of their differences had seemed too high to breach.
But Daddy was like that. Touching no one. Connecting with no one.
Brandi couldn’t afford to be like him.
Taking a breath, she put her arm around Tiffany’s shoulders. “I have.”
“No, you haven’t!” Tiffany touched Brandi’s cheek. “You’re just a beautiful girl struggling to find her place in a world that thinks beautiful girls are stupid, like me. I’m so proud of you. You’re so smart, like your father, but you’re a good person, too, and I’ve wanted your approval for a long time.”
“You’re not stupid, and you don’t need my approval,” Brandi said fiercely. “You’re wonderful just the way you are. Everybody thinks so. I’ve been a shit.”
Tiffany laughed a little. “Maybe. Sometimes. But no matter how you act, I love you so much.”
“I love you, too, Mama. I always have.”
They hugged each other hard, in accord for the first time since the day they’d been left to face the world alone.
“You’ll tell me when I say the wrong thing now, you hear?” Tiffany said.
“You mean stuff like, ‘As long as Roberto’s with you, I know you’ll be okay’?”
Honestly bewildered, Tiffany asked, “What’s wrong with that?”
“It sounds like you don’t believe I can take care of myself.”
“Oh, darling.” Tiffany put her hands on Brandi’s cheeks and looked into her eyes. “You are the most competent person I know. Of course you can take care of yourself. But two heads are better than one, and . . .”
“What?”
“I don’t want you to have to spend your whole life alone. It’s nice to have a man—or in Kim’s case, a woman—to come home to. A bad relationship is just awful, but no relationship is very lonely.” Tiffany sounded wistful and looked . . . well, lonely.
“You need someone.”
“I have someone.”
Brandi blinked. She knew her mother had refused one man after another all the time Brandi was in high school and college—men who wanted another trophy wife or, more likely, a trophy mistress. She’d been proud when, time and again, her mother refused.
Now, at last, Tiffany had taken a lover. “Who is it?”
“Charles McGrath.”
“Uncle C
harles?” Brandi shouted.
Tiffany tentatively smiled.
Brandi got a grip on her incredulity and said a little more quietly, “But he’s . . . old.”
“And he’s rich. And kind. And he doesn’t cheat on his wife,” Tiffany pointed out. “He wants to marry me and shower me with clothes and jewels, and I want him to.”
“But”—Brandi shuddered—“you have to sleep with him.”
“Love makes all things better.”
“You love him?”
“Possibly. Maybe.” Tiffany waved an airy hand. “But that wasn’t what I mean. I mean, I know he loves me. He worships me. And when Roberto’s old and gray, won’t you still want to sleep with him?”
“Roberto? You mean . . . you know?”
“What? That you love him? Whew. Honey. If I weren’t here, you could never sneak out of the hotel. You glow.”
“But Mama.” Brandi took a breath. “What if he gets himself killed tonight?”
“Roberto? Get himself killed?” Tiffany laughed aloud. “I know men, and you could drop that man twenty stories and he’d still land on his feet.”
“Actually, twenty-four stories,” Brandi said reflectively, remembering the elevator.
“Honey, Roberto Bartolini is not going to get caught, and he’s not going to get killed. Don’t you worry about that. You just get yourself in and out of this mess tonight without getting hurt. That’s all I ask.”
“I’ll be careful,” Brandi promised. Tiffany’s assurances made her feel better. Tiffany was right: Roberto did always land on his feet.
“Come on, then!” Tiffany said. “We’ve got to get you ready to go. We don’t have much time.” Taking her makeup bag, she went into the bathroom.
“The dress is hanging on the hook,” Brandi called. “Everybody saw me in it, and apparently the pictures were in all the papers.”
“Yes, you’re famous!”
“Infamous,” Brandi corrected. Tossing the bathrobe aside, she donned her briefest thong and the beige slacks. She poured her boobs into her pointiest bra. She pulled on the beige turtleneck sweater. She looked down and grinned, then headed into the bathroom. “Look, Mama. Look at what I’ve got!”