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The Stars of Mithra: Hidden Star - Нора Робертс - Читать любовный роман онлайн в женской библиотеке LadyLib.Net
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Робертс Нора
The Stars of Mithra: Hidden Star
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Chapter 5
“Your brother-in-law owns Westlake Jewelers?”
“Not personally. It’s a family thing.”
“A family thing.” Bailey’s head was still spinning. Somehow she’d gone from cleaning molded sandwiches out of filing cabinets to eating strawberry ice cream on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial. That was confusing enough, but the way Cade had whipped through traffic, zipping around circles and through yellow lights, had left her dizzy and disoriented.
“Yep.” He attacked his two scoops of rocky road. Since she’d stated no preference, he’d gotten her strawberry. He considered it a girl flavor. “They have branches all over the country, but the flagship store’s here. Muffy met Ronald at a charity tennis tournament when she beaned him with a lob. Very romantic.”
“I see.” Or she was trying to. “And he agreed to let us use the equipment?”
“Muffy agreed. Ronald goes along with whatever Muffy wants.”
Bailey licked her dripping cone, watched the tourists—the families, the children—clamber up and down the steps. “I thought she was angry with you.”
“I talked her out of it. Well, I bribed her. Camilla also takes ballet. There’s a recital next month. So I’ll go watch Camilla twirl around in a tutu, which, believe me, is not a pretty sight.”
Bailey choked back a chuckle. “You’re so mean.”
“Hey, I’ve seen Camilla in a tutu, you haven’t. Take my word, I’m being generous.” He liked seeing her smile, just strolling along with him eating strawberry ice cream and smiling. “Then there’s Chip. That’s Muffy’s other mutant. He plays the piccolo.”
“I’m sure you’re making this up.”
“I couldn’t make it up, my imagination has limits. In a couple of weeks I have to sit front and center and listen to Chip and his piccolo at a band concert.” He shuddered. “I’m buying earplugs. Let’s sit down.”
They settled on the smooth steps beneath the wise and melancholy president. There was a faint breeze that helped stir the close summer air. But it could do little about the moist heat that bounced, hard as damp bricks, up from the sidewalks. Bailey could see waves of it shimmer, like desert mirages, in the air.
There was something oddly familiar about all of it, the crowds of people passing, pushing strollers, clicking cameras, the mix of voices and accents, the smells of sweat, humanity and exhaust, flowers blooming in their plots, vendors hawking their wares.
“I must have been here before,” she murmured. “But it’s just out of sync. Like someone else’s dream.”
“It’s going to come back to you.” He tucked a stray strand of hair behind her ear. “Pieces already are. You know how to make coffee, use a computer, and you can organize an office.”
“Maybe I’m a secretary.”
He didn’t think so. The way she rattled off information on diamonds the evening before had given him a different idea. But he wanted to weigh it awhile before sharing it. “If you are, I’ll double your salary if you work for me.” Keeping it light, he rose and offered her a hand. “We’ve got some shopping to do.”
“We do?”
“You need reading glasses. Let’s hit the stores.”
It was another experience, the sprawling shopping center packed with people looking for bargains. The holiday sale was in full swing. Despite the heat, winter coats were displayed and discounted twenty percent, and fall fashions crowded out the picked over remains of summer wear.
Cade deposited her at a store that promised glasses within an hour and filled out the necessary forms himself while she browsed the walls of frames available.
There was a quick, warm glow that spread inside him when he listed her name as Bailey Parris and wrote his own address. It looked right to him, felt right. And when she was led into the back for the exam—free with the purchase of frames—he gave her a kiss on the cheek.
In less than two hours, she was back in his car, examining her pretty little wire-framed glasses, and the contents of a loaded shopping bag.
“How did you have time to buy all of this?” With a purely feminine flutter, she smoothed a hand over the smooth leather of a bone shoulder-strap envelope bag.
“It’s all a matter of stategy and planning, knowing what you want and not being distracted.”
Bailey peeked in a bag from a lingerie store and saw rich black silk. Gingerly she pulled the material out. There wasn’t a great deal of it, she mused.
“You’ve got to sleep in something,” Cade told her. “It was on sale. They were practically giving it away.”
She might not have known who she was, but she was pretty sure she knew sleepwear from seduce-me wear. She tucked the silk back in the bag. Digging deeper, she discovered a bag of crystals. “Oh, they’re lovely.”
“They had one of those nature stores. So I picked up some rocks.” He braked at a stop sign and shifted so that he could watch her. “Picked out a few that appealed to me. The smooth ones are… What do you call it?”
“Tumbling stones,” she murmured, stroking them gently with a fingertip. “Carnelian, citrine, sodalite, jasper.” Flushed with pleasure, she unwrapped tissue. “Tourmaline, watermelon tourmaline—see the pinks and the greens?—and this is a lovely column of fluorite. It’s one of my favorites. I…” She trailed off, pressed a hand to her temple.
He reached in himself, took out a stone at random. “What’s this?”
“Alexandrite. It’s a chrysoberyl, a transparent stone. Its color changes with the light. See it’s blue-green now, in daylight, but in incandescent light it would be mauve or violet.” She swallowed hard because the knowledge was there, just there in her mind. “It’s a multipurpose stone, but scarce and expensive. It was named for Czar Alexander I.”
“Okay, relax, take a deep breath.” He made the turn, headed down the tree-lined street. “You know your stones, Bailey.”
“Apparently I do.”
“And they give you a lot of pleasure.” Her face had lit up, simply glowed, when she studied his choices.
“It scares me. The more the information crowded inside my head, the more it scared me.”
He pulled into his driveway, turned to her. “Are you up to doing the rest of this today?”
She could say no, she realized. He would take her inside then, inside his house, where she’d be safe. She could go up to the pretty bedroom, close herself in. She wouldn’t have to face anything but her own cowardice.
“I want to be. I will be,” she added, and let out a long breath. “I have to be.”
“Okay.” Reaching over, he gave her hand a quick squeeze. “Just sit here. I’ll get the diamond.”
Westlake Jewelers was housed in a magnificent old building with granite columns and long windows draped in satin. It was not the place for bargains. The only sign was a discreet and elegant brass plate beside the arched front entrance.
Cade drove around the back.
“They’re getting ready to close for the day,” he explained. “If I know Muffy, she’ll have Ronald here waiting. He may not be too thrilled with me, so… Yeah, there’s his car.” Cade shot his own into a space beside a sedate gray Mercedes sedan. “You just play along with me, all right?”
“Play along?” She wrinkled her brow as he dumped stones into her new handbag. “What do you mean?”
“I had to spin a little story to talk her into this.” Reaching over, he opened Bailey’s door. “Just go along.”
She got out, walked with him to the rear entrance. “It might help if I knew what I was going along with.”
“Don’t worry.” He rang the buzzer. “I’ll handle it.”
She shifted her now heavy bag on her shoulder.
“If you’ve lied to your family, I think I ought to—” She broke off when the heavy steel door opened.
“Cade.” Ronald Westlake nodded curtly. Cade had been right, Bailey thought instantly. This was not a happy man. He was average height, trim and well presented, in a dark blue suit with a muted striped tie so ruthlessly knotted she wondered how he could draw breath. His face was tanned, his carefully styled hair dark and discreetly threaded with glinting gray.
Dignity emanated from him like light.
“Ronald, good to see you,” Cade said cheerily, and as if Ronald’s greeting had been filled with warmth, he pumped his hand enthusiastically. “How’s the golf game? Muffy tells me you’ve been shaving that handicap.”
As he spoke, Cade eased himself inside, much, Bailey thought, like a salesman with his foot propped in a door. Ronald continued to frown and back up.
“This is Bailey. Muffy might have told you a little about her.” In a proprietary move, Cade wrapped his arm around Bailey’s shoulder and pulled her to his side.
“Yes, how do you do?”
“I’ve been keeping her to myself,” Cade added before Bailey could speak. “I guess you can see why.” Smoothly Cade tipped Bailey’s face up to his and kissed her. “I appreciate you letting us play with your equipment. Bailey’s thrilled. Sort of a busman’s holiday for her, showing me how she works with stones.” He shook her purse so that the stones inside rattled.
“You’ve never shown any interest in gems before,” Ronald pointed out.
“I didn’t know Bailey before,” Cade said easily. “Now, I’m fascinated. And now that I’ve talked her into staying in the States, she’s going to have to think about setting up her own little boutique. Right, sweetheart?”
“I—”
“England’s loss is our gain,” he continued. “And if one of the royals wants another bauble, they’ll have to come here. I’m not letting you get away.” He kissed her again, deeply, while Ronald stood huffing and tugging at his tie.
“Cade tells me you’ve been designing jewelry for some time. It’s quite an endorsement, having the royal family select your work.”
“It’s sort of keeping it in the family, too,” Cade said with a wink. “With Bailey’s mama being one of Di’s cousins. Was that third or fourth cousin, honey? Oh, well, what’s the difference?”
“Third,” Bailey said, amazed at herself not only for answering, but also for infusing her voice with the faintest of upper-class British accents. “They’re not terribly close. Cade’s making too much of it. It’s simply that a few years ago a lapel pin I’d fashioned caught the eye of the Princess of Wales. She’s quite a keen shopper, you know.”
“Yes, yes, indeed.” The tony accent had a sizable effect on a man with Ronald’s social requirements. His smile spread, his voice warmed. “I’m delighted you could stop by. I do wish I could stay, show you around.”
“We don’t want to keep you.” Cade was already thumping Ronald on the back. “Muffy told me you’re entertaining.”
“It’s terribly presumptuous of Cade to interrupt your holiday. I would so love a tour another time.”
“Of course, anytime, anytime at all. And you must try to drop by the house later this evening.” Pumped up at the thought of entertaining even such a loose connection with royalty, Ronald began to usher them toward the jeweler’s work area. “We’re very select in our equipment, as well as our stones. The Westlake reputation has been unimpeachable for generations.”
“Ah, yes.” Her heart began to thud as she studied the equipment in the glass-walled room, the worktables, the saws, the scales. “Quite top-of-the-line.”
“We pride ourselves on offering our clientele only the best. We often cut and shape our own gems here, and employ our own lapidaries.”
Bailey’s hand shook lightly as she passed it over a wheel. A lap, she thought, used to shape the stone. She could see just how it was done—the stone cemented to the end of a wooden stick, a dop, held against the revolving lap wheel with the aid of a supporting block adjacent to the wheel.
She knew, could hear the sounds of it. Feel the vibrations.
“I enjoy lap work,” Bailey said faintly. “The precision of it.”
“I’m afraid I only admire the craftsmen and artists. That’s a stunning ring. May I?” Ronald took her left hand, examined the trio of stones arranged in a gentle curve and set in etched gold. “Lovely. Your design?”
“Yes.” It seemed the best answer. “I particularly enjoy working with colored stones.”
“You must see our stock sometime soon.” Ronald glanced at his watch, clucked his tongue. “I’m running quite late. The security guard will let you back out when you’re done. Please take all the time you want. I’m afraid the showroom itself is locked, time-locked, and you’ll need the guard to open the rear door, as it engages from inside and out.” He sent Bailey a professional-to-professional smile. “You’d understand how important security is in the business.”
“Of course. Thank you so much for your time, Mr. Westlake.”
Ronald took Bailey’s offered hand. “Ronald, please. And it’s my pleasure. You mustn’t let Cade be so selfish of you. Muffy is very much looking forward to meeting her future sister-in-law. Be sure to drop by later.”
Bailey made a strangled sound, easily covered by Cade’s quick chatter as he all but shoved Ronald out of the work area.
“Sister-in-law?” Bailey managed.
“I had to tell them something.” All innocence, Cade spread his hands. “They’ve been campaigning to get me married off again since the ink was dry on my divorce decree. And you being royalty, so to speak, puts you several societal steps up from the women they’ve been pushing on me.”
“Poor Cade. Having women shoved at him right and left.”
“I’ve suffered.” Because there were dangerous glints in her eyes, he tried his best smile. “You have no idea how I’ve suffered. Hold me.”
She slapped his hand away. “Is this all a big joke to you?”
“No, but that part of it was fun.” He figured his hands would be safer in his pockets. “I guarantee my sister’s been burning up the phone lines since I talked to her this morning. And now that Ronald’s got a load of you—”
“You lied to your family.”
“Yeah. Sometimes it’s fun. Sometimes it’s just necessary for survival.” He angled his head. “You slipped right into the stream, sweetheart. That accent was a nice touch.”
“I got caught up, and I’m not proud of it.”
“You might make a good operative. Let me tell you, lying quick and lying well is one of the top requirements of the job.”
“And the end justifies the means?”
“Pretty much.” It was starting to irritate him, the disapproving ice in her voice. He had the feeling Bailey wasn’t nearly as comfortable in gray areas as he was. “We’re in, aren’t we? And Ronald and Muffy are going to have a rousing success with their little party. So what’s the problem?”
“I don’t know. I don’t like it.” A lie, the simple fact of a lie, made her miserably uncomfortable. “One lie just leads to another.”
“And enough of them sometimes lead to the truth.” He took her bag, opened it and pulled out the velvet pouch, slid the diamond into his hand. “You want the truth, Bailey? Or do you just want honesty?”
“It doesn’t seem like there should be a difference.” But she took the stone from him. “All right, as you said, we’re here. What do you want me to do?”
“Make sure it’s real.”
“Of course it’s real,” she said impatiently. “I know it’s real.”
He merely arched a brow. “Prove it.”
With a huffing breath, she turned and headed for a microscope. She employed the dark-field illuminator, adjusting the focus on the binocular microscope with instinctive efficiency.
“Beautiful,” she said after a moment, with a tint of reverence in her voice. “Just beautiful.”
“What do you see?”
“The interior of the stone. There’s no doubt it’s of natural origin. The inclusions are characteristic.”
“Let’s see.” He nudged her aside, bent to the microscope himself. “Could be anything.”
“No, no. There are no air bubbles. There would be if it was paste, or strass. And the inclusions.”
“Doesn’t mean anything to me. It’s blue, and blue means sapphire.”
“Oh for heaven’s sake, sapphire is corundum. Do you think I can’t tell the difference between carbon and corundum?” She snatched up the stone and marched to another instrument. “This is a polariscope. It tests whether a gem is singly or doubly refracting. As I’ve already told you, sapphires are doubly refracting, diamonds singly.”
She went about her work, muttering to herself, putting her glasses on when she needed them, slipping the eyepiece into the V of her blouse when she didn’t. Every move competent, habitual, precise.
Cade tucked his hands in his back pockets, rocked back on his heels and watched.
“Here, the refractometer,” she mumbled. “Any idiot can see the refractive index of this stone says diamond, not sapphire.” She turned, holding up the stone. “This is a blue diamond, brilliant-cut, weighing 102.6 carats.”
“All you need’s a lab coat,” he said quietly.
“What?”
“You work with this stuff, Bailey. I thought it might be a hobby, but you’re too precise, too comfortable. And too easily annoyed when questioned. So my conclusions are that you work with stones, with gems. This type of equipment is as familiar to you as a coffee maker. It’s just part of your life.”
She lowered her hand and eased herself back onto a stool. “You didn’t do all this, go to all this trouble, so we could identify the diamond, did you?”
“Let’s just say that was a secondary benefit. Now we have to figure whether you’re in the gem or jewelry trade. That’s how you got your hands on this.” He took the diamond from her, studied it. “And this isn’t the kind of thing you see for sale at Westlake or any other jeweler. It’s the kind of thing you find in a private collection, or a museum. We’ve got a really fine museum right here in town. It’s called the Smithsonian.” He lowered the stone. “You may have heard of it.”
“You think…I took it out of the Smithsonian?”
“I think someone there might have heard of it.” He slipped the priceless gem casually into his pocket. “It’ll have to wait until tomorrow. They’ll be closed. No, hell, Tuesday.” He hissed between his teeth. “Tomorrow’s the Fourth, and Monday’s a holiday.”
“What should we do until Tuesday?”
“We can start with phone books. I wonder how many gemologists are in the greater metropolitan area?”
The reading glasses meant she could pore through all the books without risking a headache. And pore through them she did. It was, Bailey thought, something like rereading well-loved fairy tales. It was all familiar ground, but she enjoyed traveling over it again.
She read about the history of intaglio cutting in Mesopotamia, the gems of the Hellenistic period. Florentine engravings.
She read of famous diamonds. Of the Vargas, the Jonker, the Great Mogul, which had disappeared centuries before. Of Marie Antoinette and the diamond necklace some said had cost her her head.
She read technical explanations on gem cutting, on identification, on optical properties and formations.
They were all perfectly clear to her, and as smooth as the carnelian tumble stone she worried between her fingers.
How could it be, she wondered, that she remembered rocks and not people? She could easily identify and discuss the properties of hundreds of crystals and gems. But there was only one single person in the entire world she knew.
And even that wasn’t herself.
She only knew Cade. Cade Parris, with his quick, often confusing mind. Cade, with his gentle, patient hands and gorgeous green eyes. Eyes that looked at her as though she could be the focus of his world.
Yet his world was so huge compared to hers. His was populated by people, and memories, places he’d been, things he’d done, moments he’d shared with others.
The huge blank screen that was her past taunted her.
What people did she know, whom had she loved or hated? Had anyone ever loved her? Whom had she hurt or been hurt by? And where had she been, what had she done?
Was she scientist or thief? Lover or loner?
She wanted to be a lover. Cade’s lover. It was terrifying how much she wanted that. To sink into bed with him and let everything float away on that warm river of sensation. She wanted him to touch her, really touch her. To feel his hands on her, skimming over naked flesh, heating it, taking her to a place where the past meant nothing and the future was unimportant.
Where there was only now, the greedy, glorious now.
And she could touch him, feel the muscles bunch in his back and shoulders as he covered her. His heart would pound against hers, and she would arch up to meet him, to take him in. And then…
She jumped when the book slapped shut.
“Take a break,” Cade ordered, shifting the book across the table where she’d settled to read. “Your eyes are going to fall out of your head.”
“Oh, I…” Good God, she thought, goggling at him. She was all but trembling, brutally aroused by her own fantasy. Her pulse was skidding along like skates on bumpy ice. “I was just—”
“Look, you’re all flushed.”
He turned to get the pitcher of iced tea from the refrigerator, and she rolled her eyes at his back. Flushed? She was flushed? Couldn’t the man see she was a puddle just waiting to be lapped up?
He poured her a glass over ice, popped the top on a beer for himself. “We’ve done enough for one day. I’m thinking steaks on the grill. We’ll see if you can put a salad together. Hey.” He reached out to steady the glass he’d handed her. “Your hands are shaking. You’ve been overdoing it.”
“No, I…” She could hardly tell him she’d just given serious thought to biting his neck. Carefully she removed her glasses, folded them, set them on the table. “Maybe a little. There’s so much on my mind.”
“I’ve got the perfect antidote for overthinking.” He took her hand, pulled her to the door and outside, where the air was full of heat and the heady perfume of roses. “A half hour of lazy.”
He took her glass, set it on the little wrought-iron table beside the rope hammock, put his beer beside it. “Come on, we’ll watch the sky awhile.”
He wanted her to lie down with him? Lie down cupped with him in that hammock, while her insides were screaming for release? “I don’t think I should—”
“Sure you should.” To settle the matter, he gave her a yank and tumbled into the hammock with her. It rocked wildly, making him laugh as she scrambled for balance. “Just relax. This is one of my favorite spots. There’s been a hammock here as long as I can remember. My uncle used to nap in this red-and-white striped one when he was supposed to be puttering around the garden.”
He slid his arm under her, took one of her nervous hands in his. “Nice and cozy. You can see little pieces of sky through the leaves.”
It was cool there, shaded by the maples. She could feel his heart beating steadily when he laid their joined hands on his chest.
“I used to sneak over here a lot. Did a lot of dreaming and planning in this hammock. It was always peaceful over here, and when you were swinging in a hammock in the shade, nothing seemed all that urgent.”
“It’s like being in a cradle, I suppose.” She willed herself to relax, shocked to the core at how much she wanted to roll on top of him and dive in.
“Things are simpler in a hammock.” He toyed with her fingers, charmed by their grace and the glitter of rings. He kissed them absently and made her heart turn over in her chest. “Do you trust me, Bailey?”
At that moment, she was certain that, whatever her past, she’d never trusted anyone more. “Yes.”
“Let’s play a game.”
Her imagination whirled into several erotic corners. “Ah…a game?”
“Word association. You empty your mind, and I’ll say a word. Whatever pops into your head first, you say it.”
“Word association.” Unsure whether to laugh or scream, she closed her eyes. “You think it’ll jog my memory.”
“It can’t hurt, but let’s just think of it as a lazy game to play in the shade. Ready?”
She nodded, kept her eyes closed and let herself be lulled by the swing of the hammock. “All right.”
“City.”
“Crowded.”
“Desert.”
“Sun.”
“Work.”
“Satisfaction.”
“Fire.”
“Blue.”
When she opened her eyes, started to shift, he snuggled her closer. “No, don’t stop and analyze, just let it come. Ready? Love.”
“Friends.” She let out a breath, found herself relaxing again. “Friends,” she repeated.
“Family.”
“Mother.” She made a small sound, and he soothed it away.
“Happy.”
“Childhood.”
“Diamond.”
“Power.”
“Lightning.”
“Murder.” She let out a choked breath and turned to bury her face against his shoulder. “I can’t do this. I can’t look there.”
“Okay, it’s all right. That’s enough.” He stroked her hair, and though his hand was gentle, his eyes were hot as they stared up through the shady canopy of leaves.
Whoever had frightened her, made her tremble with terror, was going to pay.
While Cade held Bailey under the maple trees, another stood on a stone terrace overlooking a vast estate of rolling hills, tended gardens, jetting fountains.
He was furious.
The woman had dropped off the face of the earth with his property. And his forces were as scattered as the three stars.
It should have been simple. He’d all but had them in his hands. But the bumbling fool had panicked. Or perhaps had simply become too greedy. In either case, he’d let the woman escape, and the diamonds had gone with her.
Too much time had passed, he thought, tapping his small, beautifully manicured hand on the stone railing. One woman vanished, the other on the run, and the third unable to answer his questions.
It would have to be fixed, and fixed soon. The timetable was now destroyed. There was only one person to blame for that, he mused, and stepped back into his lofty office, picked up the phone.
“Bring him to me” was all he said. He replaced the receiver with the careless arrogance of a man used to having his orders obeyed.
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