For the whole time she knew him, Roberto had been working for the FBI. Had been working to trap Mossimo Fossera and his men in the process of stealing and receiving the Romanov Blaze and put them away forever.
And like a cat in a fan belt, she got caught up in the plot.
All of this—the worry about her job, the unwanted socializing, Roberto’s swaggering, her angst about having unethical and totally great sex with a client, her fear he would die and this wild chase across Chicago at night armed with a pistol and the resolve to rescue Roberto from his own folly, her mother’s broken shoe—had been for nothing. For a sham.
The damned diamond she’d put her life in jeopardy to protect wasn’t even the real thing.
Tonight, when she had woken up and thought Roberto had broken his promise to her not to steal the Romanov Blaze, she had felt like a fool.
Now she knew the promise he’d made, the one that had made her heart trill—never to steal anything again, to live on the right side of the law for her—was as big a fake as the cubic zirconium he held.
Because, hell, how could he steal the diamond out of the Art Institute when it had been out of the country for three days?
Carefully, before she could give in to her desire to shoot Roberto right in the chest where his nonexistent heart should reside, she placed his pistol on a table. She turned toward the door.
From the floor, she heard Joseph shout, “For you, Mossimo!”
Off balance, she spun and saw him aim a pistol at her head.
Roberto hurled the cubic zirconium.
With a thump it hit Joseph right between the eyes. He fell backward, unconscious, a huge, bloody welt on his face.
One of the FBI agents scooped up the pistol.
She stared at Joseph’s prone body.
She was so glad she’d shot him.
Of course, he was only a substitute for the man she really wanted to shoot—Roberto.
Roberto, who again started toward her. He looked wary. He looked furious. He looked like a man who’d been hiding the truth from her almost since the moment she’d met him.
She held up her hand. In a clear, carrying voice, she said, “I’m going home now. I won’t be seeing you again. I’d wish you a good life, but actually I hope you step outside and get hit by a flaming meteorite. That would be fitting retribution for what you’ve done to me.”
Roberto continued to stride toward her.
She limped out the door.
A gust of wind hit Roberto in the face. It smelled of rain and felt almost warm.
The cold snap had broken.
Aiden grabbed Roberto by the arm.
Roberto turned on him, furious to be stopped.
“Let her go. She’s pissed off and you can’t blame her.” Aiden was a stocky man with short, sandy hair and hazel eyes, and Roberto’s collaborator for the whole operation.
They’d known each other for years, and when Roberto had heard the rumor that Mossimo Fossera intended to steal the Romanov Blaze, he took it to Aiden. Aiden had had the authority to make the deal Roberto wanted, and Roberto had the expertise Aiden needed. They had been a good team—until now.
“She can’t walk around Chicago at two thirty in the morning looking for a cab,” Roberto said impatiently.
“One of my guys is taking her back to the hotel. No, wait.” Aiden put his hand to his earpiece. “She wants to go to Charles McGrath’s. She’ll be safe there. More than safe.”
“Safe from me.” Roberto knew Aiden was right. He was right, but Roberto hated it. She’d seen the whole operation go down, and right now she despised him. No explanation he made could change that. He had to rely on her own good sense to soften her feelings toward him.
Brandi was a rare, very rare woman—one who used logic on a daily basis. When she thought about it, she’d know he had had no choice but to lead her on. And she’d probably understand that he’d wanted her close as he went to those parties to be feted as an infamous jewel thief.
Hm. Perhaps it would be best if he took her flowers when he went to explain.
Mossimo Fossera was on his feet, his hands cuffed behind him, the rag lady holding a gun to his back. “This is entrapment! I didn’t steal anything!”
“You accepted stolen goods,” the rag lady said. “The Patterson ruby and the Romanov diamond.”
“It wasn’t the Romanov diamond,” Mossimo screamed.
“Could have fooled me.” The rag lady smiled.
“I want my lawyer,” he brayed. “I want my lawyer!”
“Shut up!” Roberto told him.
So Mossimo changed to, “You’re dead to us. You betrayed us. None of the thieves will speak to you again. Traitor!”
“Yeah, Count Bartolini here is really worried about that,” the rag lady said.
“Count?” Mossimo laughed hoarsely. “He’s no count. Everyone thinks he’s so smart, so rich, so continental, but he’s a bastard. Everybody knows it! The bastard son of Sergio’s whore of a daughter.”
“Get him out of here,” Aiden said.
The rag lady and one of the customers shoved Mossimo out the back door.
“I hate that guy,” Aiden said.
“Yeah, but I got what I wanted from him,” Roberto said.
“Revenge for what he did to your grandfather?”
“That, too.” Roberto touched his pocket.
New agents entered with cameras and tape measures to document the crime scene.
Aiden kept a close eye on the proceedings. “Let me tell you, Roberto, when my man at the hotel realized he’d been suckered into following Miss Michaels’s mother to the police station, and my agents here realized the woman watching Mossimo was Brandi, no one knew what to do. They were screaming in my earpiece like I could do something when I was following you.”
“Couldn’t they have gotten her out of here?” At least then she wouldn’t have actually seen the sting.
“If we’d had another five minutes, but we didn’t. We planned for everything except her.”
“That makes two of us.” She’d worn the strangest expression when she looked at him. Angry, yes, he expected that. But pained, too, as if she’d been hit below the belt too many times and was bleeding internally. “I’ve got to go after her.”
“Not right now. There’s someone here you want to meet.” Aiden nodded toward a tall, gangly young man who’d come in with the agents.
He sat in the booth, observing Roberto with keen curiosity.
“Who is it?” Roberto asked.
“He’s the guy with the information you did all this for.”
The news shook Roberto to the core. “He knows who I am?”
“He knows it all.” Aiden shook his head. “The poor son of a bitch.”
“He’s here to tell me now?” Roberto glanced around. The fluorescent lights glared onto the upturned tables and shattered chairs. The agents worked, talked, and took pictures. Blood stained the floor. When he’d begun his quest, he’d never imagined it would end in Chicago in the Stuffed Dog at two thirty in the morning.
Aiden obviously saw nothing odd about the scene. “We made a deal, didn’t we? You did your part, and I thought you wanted to know as soon as possible.”
“I do.” Yet Roberto wasn’t ready. He didn’t know if he’d ever be ready to know the truth about the man who had really fathered him.
A Chicago patrolman stepped in the door. “What the hell is going on?”
Aiden shouted, “Hey, the restaurant is closed. This is an FBI crime scene!”
“The hell it is!” the patrolman bellowed.
Aiden walked over to fight with the indignant, pugnacious policeman.
He left Roberto to introduce himself.
The young man was about twenty-three, tall and broad-shouldered. His hair was as dark as Roberto’s; his eyes were dark and intelligent. He watched as Roberto walked toward the booth, scrutinizing Roberto as Roberto scrutinized him.
“I’m Roberto Bartolini.” Roberto extended his hand.
The young man shook it. He looked into Roberto’s face as if seeking something. In a voice tinged with the accent of an East Coast aristocrat, he said, “My name’s Carrick Manly. I’m your half brother.”
29
The 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 stor
y 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.
Brandi Michaels . . . new attorney for McGrath and Lindoberth . . . volunteered to assist international businessman Count Roberto Bartolini in a sting operation to thwart the nefarious plan to steal the Romanov Blaze . . . infamous kingpin Mossimo Fossera is under arrest . . . FBI agent Aiden Tuchman said, “At great risk to her own life, Miss Michaels entered the fray and removed a threat to the operation with a kick to his chest, and when he again attempted to thwart us, she was forced to shoot him . . . cool under danger . . .”
“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.”