“Shaddup,” Brandi said into the phone.
“Sapphires to match your beautiful eyes.” Mr. Nguyen smiled at her, but he had white lines around his mouth and a birthmark on his cheek . . . or a bruise.
She glanced at the two guys. They’d moved to the computer counter. They were chatting in low voices, seemingly focused on the array of iPods in the case. They weren’t standing close, and they seemed unconcerned about her transaction, but both had their scarves wrapped over the tops of their heads and over their mouths. A niggling unease worked its way up her spine. It almost looked as if they were trying to disguise themselves.
“Kim, hold on a minute. . . .” She leaned across the counter. “Sapphires might be just what I need.” In a lower voice, she said, “Do you need help?”
“What’s happening?” Kim spoke softly in her ear.
Mr. Nguyen smiled even more broadly as he placed a small white box on the counter. “No. I’m hiring no one right now. It’s too cold and business is not good.”
“What’s wrong?” Kim repeated.
“Nothing. I think.” Brandi picked up the box and asked Mr. Nguyen, “Those guys aren’t bothering you?”
“They’re in the neighborhood all the time. They came in to get warm and to see what I have in electronics.” He shrugged. “They’re hackers.”
“Hackers?” That wasn’t good.
“Maybe I said that wrong. They’re computer geeks.” Leaning across, he flipped open the lid.
What met Brandi’s eyes made her catch her breath. Held upright on the tiny white velvet showcase, the sapphires blinked in a glorious shade of blue.
“Whoa.” They must have been a carat each, set in yellow gold. Brandi forgot how to haggle, how to play hard to get. She was almost salivating on the counter when she said, “Gorgeous.”
“I swear to God, Brandi, if you don’t talk to me . . .” Kim sounded pissed.
“Sorry. I got distracted. There are these sapphires—”
“Good ones?” Kim liked her jewelry and had been a willing student when Tiffany taught the girls how to tell the real from the dross. “No, wait! You can’t divert me. Is there something wrong in that place?”
Brandi glanced at the guys again. They were pointing down at an antique tiara and laughing. They looked youthful and carefree, and one laughed hard enough to start coughing. He sounded sick, like he had bronchitis, and the other pounded on his back. Brandi supposed the scarves might be because they were cold or ill. She didn’t know why Mr. Nguyen wouldn’t tell her if there was a problem.
And the sapphires drew her gaze like hot coals. “Everything’s fine. Now let me look at these stones.” Brandi accepted Mr. Nguyen’s offer of his jeweler’s glass. She wiped it carefully, then held it to her eye. “Cornflower blue,” she pronounced.
“From Kashmir,” Mr. Nguyen said.
“From Kashmir,” Kim echoed. “The best.”
“One has an inclusion partially covered by the prong. The other has a blemish. I think they’re real.”
“They are real! Ask around. I have a good reputation. I don’t rip off anyone!” Mr. Nguyen was obviously indignant. “One thousand!”
“Apiece?” she asked, incredulous about the price.
“For the pair!”
The sapphires were real, with the flaws only genuine stones contained. They were cornflower blue, the most desirable shade. He wanted only a thousand, and just as pawnbrokers were known for buying low, they were also reputed to sell high.
Kim reflected Brandi’s suspicion. “A thousand for the pair? Why?”
“It is my birthday, and a Vietnamese tradition to treat the first guest with honor on that day.” Mr. Nguyen, who so far had been speaking and acting like an American born and raised, bowed like an Asian.
Caught by surprise, Brandi bowed back. “Happy birthday.”
With a return to his businesslike demeanor, Mr. Nguyen said, “So I owe you seven thousand dollars—that’s the eight for the ring minus the thousand for the sapphires. I’ll cut you a check and wrap the earrings for you.”
“Yes. Thank you.” Into the phone Brandi said, “Maybe my luck has changed.”
“I’ll say!” Kim’s enthusiasm was contagious. “What’s the plan now?”
“What makes you think I have a plan?”
“Honey, you’re a lawyer. You don’t take a shit without a plan.”
“Hey! That’s not true. I can be spontaneous!” Sometimes. Once in a while. Occasionally.
“Yeah, yeah. You and your master lists and your daily lists and your daily planner and your PDA.”
“You are such a bitch.”
“Yes, I know, and what you are is the antithesis of spontaneous.” Kim sounded wry, amused, and not at all offended.
After the divorce, Kim had been the older sister who helped Brandi through the trauma of losing her father, of seeing her mother fall apart, of eventually losing their house and of dealing with the slow, difficult drift down into poverty. Kim had been the one who insisted Brandi look forward and see that someday she would be able to take control of her own life and no longer be driven by circumstances.
Brandi scrutinized Mr. Nguyen as he slid the earrings into the holes in the display insert. He affixed the backs to the posts; then, noticing the way she watched him, he smiled and lifted the insert out of the box. “Do you want to wear them?” He held it out.
She did. They were so beautiful, and sapphires were reputed to bring good luck. Or bad luck; she couldn’t remember. At this point, who cared? She would survive. She would prosper. She would make that son of a bitch Alan sorry.
She leaned over the mirror and inserted first one post, then the other into her pierced ears. “My God, Kim. They’re fabulous.” They were the same color as her eyes. Smiling into her reflection, she groped for the display insert and handed it back to Mr. Nguyen. She heard the click as he shut the case, and tore herself away from the enthralling sight of her ears in those gorgeous earrings. Straightening up, she accepted the small velvet box from Mr. Nguyen and stuck it into her pocket.
“Who do I make the check out to?” Mr. Nguyen asked quietly.
“Brandi Lynn Michaels.” B-R-A-N-D-I L-Y-N-N . . .” Brandi spelled each name slowly and carefully.
“The plan,” Kim demanded.
“I don’t have any water at my house. I’m dirty and I’m tired of peeing in a frozen toilet. I’m taking this money. I’m going to a five-star hotel.”
“Okay, I’ll buy that.” But Kim sounded cautious, as if she heard something awry in Brandi’s tone.
“I’m getting myself a suite on the concierge level. I’m going to bathe in a huge tub; then I’m going down to the shops on the Miracle Mile and I am buying myself the best dress ever. Red. I’m going to buy red, one that shows off my cleavage.”
“If I had your cleavage I’d show it off all the time,” Kim said.
“With touches of blue so I can wear my sapphires.” She smiled as she contemplated her next move. “I’m going to buy great underwear. Fancy, lacy panties and a bra that would make a statue drool.”
The guys at the end of the counter stopped laughing and stared at her. Stared as if they were memorizing her figure.
She must have been talking a little too loud.
She didn’t care. “Great shoes. I’m going to wear the highest heels, the most impractical fuck-me shoes ever created.”
She accept the engraved check Mr. Nguyen handed her. It was for the right amount, and she shook it at him and beamed. “I’ll be back!”
“Go on now.” He made a shooing motion at her. His hands were really shaking now.
“Are you sick?” Brandi asked.
“Yes. Sick. You should go. Go!”
“Thanks. It’s been great doing business with you.” She headed for the door.
“I’m not going to like the next part of your plan, am I?” Kim asked.
“You always told me I was old before my time.”
“Now I know I’m not goin
g to like this.”
Brandi stepped outside. The blast of cold air felt as if it scoured the flesh off her face. “You always said I should do something wild while I was still young.”
“Now you listen to me?” Kim moaned.
“I’m going to have a massage and a pedicure and a manicure and get dressed in all my glory.” Brandi pulled her scarf close around her ears. “And I’m going to a huge, prestigious charity party at Charles McGrath’s home.”
“Don’t do this,” Kim warned.
“I’m going to pick up a man.”
“This is not right,” Kim said.
“And I’m going to have one fabulous night of sex to remember for the rest of my life.”
4
As the cab drove Brandi deeper into Kenilworth’s wooded streets, a pang of guilt struck her. With its old-fashioned lampposts, its huge estates, and the mansions set back among the trees, Kenilworth was the epitome of the classic old-money neighborhood. “Wow,” she murmured. “Mother would love this.”
“What?” As he’d been doing since he picked her up from the Tirra Spa on West Erie, the driver glanced in his rearview mirror, then apparently decided he didn’t care about restraint or public safety, and stared.
Not that she didn’t appreciate the proof that the spa makeup artist and hairstylist had both been brilliant, but she truly didn’t want to hike the miles to Uncle Charles’s house because the driver had hit a lamppost. Not in stiletto heels. “Look out!” she said.
He whipped his head around and stared into the evening shadows. “What?”
“Oh. I thought I saw a dog.” Not true, but at least he was peering forward again.
“A . . . dog?” He swerved, his already awful driving exacerbated by her warning. “These people in here are so rich they’ll get your license taken away for hitting their dog. Can you imagine?”
Yes, she could imagine very easily. To take her mind off the peril she faced with every screeching turn, she took out her phone and cradled it in her hand.
She still hadn’t called her father. And she had to. And if she did it right now, he would probably be at dinner and wouldn’t answer, and if by bad luck he did, she could be on the phone only until she got to the party.
Part of any plan for calling her father always included an impending reason to hang up and the good possibility that she could leave a message.
“Are you warm enough?” The cabby’s hand crept toward the heat to turn it off.
“Barely.” Tiny gold straps curled around her feet and up her ankles, and she used her bare, red-polished toes as the excuse to demand warmth. Actually, with her London Fog buttoned and belted, she was comfortable, but she wasn’t about to admit that. The heater had two speeds, full-blast and off, and when it was off the windows frosted over so quickly the driver couldn’t see.
Not that that seemed to worry him.
Closing her eyes for a moment, she took a few calming breaths and punched Daddy’s number.
He answered. Bad luck.
“Daddy, it’s Brandi.” She kept her voice cheerful and warm, a direct contrast to the cold roiling in her belly.
“Oh. Brandi. What do you need?”
She’d obviously caught him in the middle of something. He had that I’m-too-busy-to-bother tone going. “I don’t need anything, Daddy. I called to wish you happy birthday.”
“Yeah. Thanks.”
Keep the conversation rolling, Brandi. “What are you doing to celebrate?”
“I’m working.”
“Oh. Well.” What a surprise. When she was a kid, he’d missed more birthday parties—hers, his, Tiffany’s—than he’d made. “I arrived in Chicago safely.”
“You did, huh?” She heard him shuffling papers. “How’s the job going?”
“I haven’t started yet. I start on Monday.”
He grunted. “That’ll be interesting. I’ll bet they’ve never had a ballerina working at McGrath and Lindoberth before.”
“I haven’t taken ballet lessons since I was thirteen.” When Tiffany had run out of the alimony money and they’d had to make a choice between ballet and eating.
“Bullshit. You took it in college. Stupid thing to do. Why didn’t you take a sport? That would have taught you some backbone, some competitive spirit.”
“Dance isn’t stupid, Daddy.” Of course, it wasn’t dance that he considered stupid. It was her, and he took every chance to make sure she knew it.
She didn’t know why she cared; she knew it wasn’t true. Yet when he used that cold, lashing tone, he took her back to that moment fourteen years ago when he’d walked out on her and her mother, and all the anguish she’d felt rushed back and she shivered with the pain of an abandoned child.
“Yeah. How’s McGrath?”
“I’ll see Uncle Charles tonight. Shall I give him your regards?”
“Sure. The old coot doesn’t like me, but what the hell. It’s always good to keep up connections.” Someone spoke to him. A woman. His secretary, maybe, or his newest lover, or both. “Listen, Brandi, I’m busy. Call me back after you’ve started the job and let me know whether you’re putting that damned expensive law degree to use.”
Sometimes she just wanted to wring his fat neck. “Daddy, you convinced me to borrow the money from you rather than use a student loan. You said it made sense because you wouldn’t charge me interest.”
“I didn’t say I didn’t want to get paid,” he shot back.
“I’ll pay you,” she said softly.
“You bet you will.”
The driver said, “Hey, is this where I turn in?”
He veered so suddenly that her shoulder hit the door. “I hope to God.” She had never meant anything so devoutly. She wanted out of this cab. She wanted off this phone call. And not necessarily in that order. She spoke into the receiver. “Daddy, I have to go. Talk to you later.”
But he’d already hung up.
The cab passed through the open iron gate and tore up Uncle Charles’s long, softly lit driveway at thirty miles an hour.
Viciously she shoved her phone into her bag. She could feel her cheeks burning. Damn her father. He always made her feel like some kind of shiftless no-account mooch. She should never have borrowed the law school money from him. Even when she’d done it, she knew it was the wrong thing, that he had offered it only so he would keep the power to manipulate her. But like the sucker she always was about him, she hoped that this time he’d offered because he’d realized, at last, that he cared about her.
Sucker.
The driver slammed on his brakes ten feet past the wide, curving stairway that led to the front door. “Thirty-seven twenty-five,” he said, pointing at the meter.
“Back up to the door.” She articulated each word in tones so clear they rang like struck lead crystal. She was in no mood to take shit from any man, much less a cabdriver who tried to cheat her by going the wrong way and then kill her with his ineptitude.
He started to object, but he looked in the rearview mirror one last time, and something of her simmering rage must have shown through her still mask, for he slammed it in reverse and got her to the right spot.
A man in a long, dark coat and dark hat decorated with an escutcheon waited to assist her. Was he . . . a footman?
He was.
He opened the door.
A blast of cold air hit her.
He extended his gloved hand. “Welcome, Miss . . . ?”
“Miss Michaels. Miss Brandi Michaels.”
He touched his gloved hand to his hat. “Miss Michaels, Mr. McGrath asked that I extend a special welcome to you. He’s looking forward to seeing you.”
“Thank you.” Oh, yes, Tiffany would definitely enjoy this.
Brandi handed him her brand-new Louis Vuitton duffel bag and shoved two twenties at the cabdriver. “Keep the change.”
“Hey, that’s only three bucks tip. I got you here in a hurry!”
“And I wanted to be late.” Taking the footman’s hand, she li
fted herself out of the warm cab and into the frigid Chicago winter.
In these shoes she was over six feet tall—five inches taller than the footman and two inches taller than Alan. Not that she cared about that, but for the first time in four years she didn’t have to cater to some man’s ego.
She looked up at the well-lit exterior of the stone English Tudor home.
The house spread its wings wide in both directions. Its conical towers rose four stories, and the stones were arranged in fantastic patterns, with half-timber work and roofs and gables that swooped and rose to delight her eyes.
She knew Uncle Charles’s history; he’d bought the house for his wife—they’d delighted in decorating and entertaining—and when she’d passed away over ten years ago, he’d mourned sincerely. He’d called to talk to Tiffany occasionally; he seemed to feel she understood, and in some ways Brandi supposed she did. After all, death was a kind of abandonment, too.
“Go on in, Miss Michaels,” the footman advised. “It’s thirty below and the wind’s starting to kick up.”
She shuddered at the report and hurried up the steps. A tall, burly man with a shaved head and frosty blue eyes surrounded by pale eyelashes held the wide door open for her. She sighed in delight as the heat of the foyer enveloped her.
“May I see your invitation, please?”
Brandi glanced at his name tag. Jerry. Security. And everything a security man should be: He was muscled, his suit was black, his shirt was white, his tie was gray. Two black men and one Asian woman, all dressed precisely like him and with similar impassive expressions, stood in the foyer waiting to welcome other guests.
That, more than anything, told Brandi how many important people were attending this event to raise money for the Art Institute of Chicago. Uncle Charles feared party crashers, and wanted no violent incidents involving his very wealthy clients and friends.
Brandi stood, poised and calm, while Jerry examined her invitation, the guest list, and her face.
Behind her, a well-groomed older Hispanic couple stepped into the door and were treated to the same scrutiny by another security man.
“Miss Michaels, would you mind if I went through your, er, satchel?” Jerry indicated her bag.