The men who want to marry us, we don’t want.
And the men we shouldn’t want…
The memory of a certain male mouth closing over hers took her breath. She pressed her sore knuckles against her lips, wishing she could drive away the ache that had never left her body since he’d first kissed her.
“Signore di Varano! This is a great pleasure.”
“Commissioner? Allow me to introduce my cousins, Lucien de Falcon and Nicolas de Pastrana. We’re here to interrogate the prisoners.”
“What a tragedy that sisters so beautiful have found themselves on the wrong side of the law.”
Max didn’t want to hear it. “Did you arrange their cells the way I instructed?”
“Yes. Of course.”
“How long have they been here?”
“Approximately two hours.”
“Good. Have they caused any problems?”
“Problems? No. The one with the violet eyes was dismayed to be shut up without knowing her crime. I must admit I was moved.”
Despite his frustration over their incredible disappearing act, Max had to struggle not to laugh. “Did you enlighten her?”
“Si.”
“How did she respond?”
“She protested her innocence. At that point they all protested their innocence and demanded to phone their attorney long distance. The one with the aqua eyes put a damp twenty dollar bill across my palm for a bribe.”
A sound bordering on a chuckle broke from Nic.
“The one with the flame-blue eyes informed me every prisoner in the United States is given a square meal their first night in jail and she was in need of one. It was very amusing as she clearly expected me to comply with her wishes. She, too, handed me a damp twenty-dollar bill.”
“Mademoiselle Olivier had her chance to eat earlier,” Luc declared in a cold tone, but Max noticed his cousin’s lips twitching.
The commissioner glanced at the three of them. “All in all, the signorine were well behaved. I have to admit I was surprised. They didn’t complain about not having a change of clothes or any makeup.”
Women that beautiful didn’t need makeup, but Max said something quite different to the commissioner. “That’s because these sisters happen to be professional thieves.”
“They must be to have carried off the jewelry collection without being detected. Per your instructions I ordered the guards to take them to different floors for the night where they’ve been put in isolation.”
“Excellent. May I have the pendant please.”
“Of course.” The commissioner opened the drawer of his desk. The police had put it in a bag they used for forensic evidence. He handed it to Max who put it in the pocket of his jeans.
Now that he possessed all three, he would have them examined by Signore Rossi who would know immediately which one was the genuine article.
“If you’ll inform the guards we’re ready to begin our questioning of the prisoners.” Three foreign beauties, alike in some ways, different in others. Intelligent, unpredictable. And all of them…criminals.
The commissioner nodded and picked up his phone to summon them. No longer smiling, Max told his cousins he’d meet up with them in an hour before they returned to the villa. The balding guard beckoned him down a hallway and through a door that had to be unlocked.
“She’s in the middle cell of that corridor where there aren’t any other prisoners.”
“Did she tell you anything you felt could be important?”
“Only that her parents gave her the pendant she was wearing, thereby admitting that they must have stolen it. Of course she said it had been passed down from generation to generation in the Duchesse family. I told her there was no such family.”
“I see. Thank you for the information. I’ll knock when I’m ready to leave.”
“Bene.”
In the shadowy light, the first thing Max noticed were her sandals set out to dry. Next to them lay her skirt, her top, then her underwear. His eyes traveled over each item neatly placed in a row down to the individual twenty-dollar bills. Four of them to be exact.
He was intrigued by the way her mind worked. How orderly she was. There was something essentially feminine about the arrangement. Very prim and proper, yet oddly forlorn because it represented all her worldly possessions.
When his gaze discovered her body cocooned in a prison blanket and huddled against the cell wall on the narrow, insubstantial cot, he experienced a strange tightness in his chest.
But the possibility that she’d heard voices when the guard opened the outer door and she was only pretending to sleep, hardened his resolve to vet her.
“Signorina? Come! Wake up!” He rapped on the bars.
She stirred and rolled toward him, still covered in the blanket. “Are you going to let me make my phone call now?” By the sound of her voice, she was still half-asleep.
“To whom?”
“Walter Carlson.”
“Who is he?”
“My father’s attorney.”
“Why not phone your father?”
“I can’t, he’s dead.”
Max blinked. His experience in the courtroom questioning hostile witnesses led him to believe she was telling the truth.
“Where does this attorney live?”
“In Kingston, New York. He’ll vouch for my sisters and me.”
“He’ll have to do a lot more than that, signorina. You’ve passed yourself off as a relative of the House of Parma-Bourbon, and you’re in possession of the stolen Duchesse pendant. All of which constitutes a major crime against the Duchy of Parma. I’m afraid you’re facing a stiff prison term.”
Greer had heard that distinctive male voice before. Her eyelids fluttered open. She sat up so fast, the blanket slipped to the floor.
In the semidarkness she could see the first mate’s powerful physique standing in the hall outside her cell. More, she could feel those eyes of black flame scrutinizing her, scorching whatever part of her skin the sheet didn’t cover.
With her heart tripping all over the place, she clutched the scratchy material to her neck. “You have your nerve coming here when you’re the one who should be behind bars, signore.”
“I’m afraid I wasn’t the one caught wearing the pendant around my neck when the police plucked you and your sisters from the sea.”
“But you stole the other two pendants, so don’t bother denying it!”
“I had no intention of doing so.”
The man was amoral.
“How did you get in here? No—don’t bother to answer that question. You’re all so corrupt there’s no point.”
“All?” His demand came out sounding like ripping silk.
“What part of that word don’t you understand? All,” she repeated. “Every last one of you down to the captain, the chef, the owner of the boat, the commissioner, the guard, the waiter at the Splendido. Need I go on?
“You’re all members of that good old boy network. You scratch my back. I’ll scratch yours. It’s sickening.”
His fingers curled around the bars as if he’d like to get them around her neck. “Since I saw pretty good evidence of the good old girl network in operation today when you executed your escape from the Piccione, that’s a lot like the pot calling the kettle black, wouldn’t you say?”
Her chin lifted a little higher. “I’d say your knowledge of American sayings makes you out to be an even more worldly con artist thief than I’d first supposed.
“But the last laugh’s going to be on you when you try to sell off those pendants and discover they’re not worth more than a couple of hundred American dollars a piece.”
“And what about the one you were wearing when you swam for it?” he reminded her. “Are you going to tell me it’s only worth two hundred American dollars, too?”
“What if I am?”
“No jury on earth will believe it. Not when you chose to leave your passport behind, something not even silver and gold can
buy if you should happen to end up in the wrong country.”
“This is the wrong country all right. Nevertheless, a passport can be replaced, signore. A family heirloom can’t…” Her voice trailed off.
“Ah—now we’re getting somewhere.”
“Getting somewhere? You’re sounding more and more like a slick-tongued lawyer with every word. Why don’t you pick on a real criminal, like the one the guard said stole a pendant from the museum?”
“Don’t think we haven’t tried,” he admitted with breathtaking honesty.
“You know something? Though you’ll probably continue to get away with your perfidy in this life, you won’t in the next!”
“Then I guess we’ll burn together, signorina. If you recall we were already halfway consumed by the flames in your stateroom today.”
She swallowed hard. “Only a real playboy would remind me.”
“There speaks a woman who instead of slapping my face enjoyed every breathtaking moment of it. If your sisters hadn’t chosen that moment to interrupt us…”
“Yes?” Greer prodded. “Would you have made an honest woman of me and asked me to marry you?”
After a pregnant silence, she heard a sharp intake of breath. “Is that what this has been all about? Marriage?”
A smile of satisfaction broke out on her face. “For such a clever jewel thief, I’m surprised it has taken you this long to figure it out.”
Max was surprised, too. Stunned was more like it. He’d wanted a confession, so why all of a sudden didn’t it sit well with him?
He and his cousins had been forced to deal with fortune hunters all their adult lives. So far they’d been able to spot them and take the necessary steps to elude them. It was the unpleasant if not ugly part that went with the territory of belonging to the House of Parma-Bourbon.
“So…the whole pendant business was a ruse to win an introduction that could result in a marriage proposal?”
“Exactly. But I suppose it’s poetic justice that the men we targeted turned out to be several degrees more unscrupulous than ourselves.”
Just when he thought he had things figured out, she said something that shot his theories all to hell. “Then you admit the pendants are copies of the original.”
“Except for one of them.”
“The one your family inherited.”
“Yes.”
Max cursed softly. This woman had the ability to twist him in knots. “Which one of you was the mastermind behind that plot?” He might as well hear the rest. In truth he’d never in his life been this frustrated and entertained all at the same time.
“Our parents. But only indirectly,” she amended.
“How indirectly?”
“We could only use the money from the Husband Fund our father willed to us to go spouse hunting.”
Husband Fund? Spouse hunting? A bark of laughter escaped his throat. “How much money?”
“Oh, $15,000. $5,000 apiece.”
“I thought the pendants were only worth $200.”
“They are, except for the real one and I have no idea how much it’s worth. Since we’re triplets, and there was only one pendant, our parents had two more made up just like it. They gave them to us on our sixteenth birthday for us to pass on to our future children.
“That was the whole point of the Husband Fund, of course. Mom and Dad wanted to ensure there would be another generation of Duchesses. That’s something none of us is interested in yet.”
Max’s eyes closed tightly for a minute. Was this one of those cases where her story had to be true because no one could manufacture such a fantastic tale?
“Anyway, we used the fund for this trip and to charter the Piccione.”
“Why did you pick the Piccione?” This ought to be good.
“Because Daddy always called us his pigeons. You know, in honor of our ancestor the Duchess of Parma who had a pigeon named after her. It’s on our business logo.”
Just as he’d suspected, whoever had coached these triplets was intimately associated with his family and its history.
“What, exactly, is on your logo?”
“The white Duchesse pigeon!”
More and more Max felt he was in the middle of some amazing dream. She seemed to delight in weaving lies. “And this business…what kind did you say it was again?”
“I didn’t. We own a company called Duchesse Designs.”
Max rubbed bridge of his nose. “What is it you design?”
“Calendars. Actually Piper does the drawings and Olivia does the marketing.”
“And what do you do?” This was getting better and better.
“I do everything else.”
“Like what for instance?”
“Provide the research and keep the books.”
“I see.”
“I’m surprised you’re asking all these questions. If you and your cohorts weren’t so obsessed with taking advantage of rich women, you would have noticed our samples in the bottom of Piper’s suitcase while you were rummaging through our personal belongings.”
He blinked.
“We passed out some to a few distributors in Genoa yesterday hoping to expand our company to an international business.”
So much information had been thrown his way, Max could scarcely digest it, let alone decide what part if any of it was true. But he did seem to recall Signore Galli telling him the signorine had come to Europe for a little business, as well as pleasure.
The notes made by the police officers assigned to tail the women after they’d left the airport would clear that up in a hurry.
“You still haven’t answered my question about why you chose the Piccione.”
“I’ve been leading up to that. When we got on the internet and were looking at a list of catamarans to charter because they were cheaper than a yacht, we saw that one of them was called the Piccione. It seemed like fate, so we clicked on to it. As it turns out, it was the biggest mistake we ever made!”
“Do not worry, signorina. If you cooperate, we might be able to arrive at a bargain which will be mutually advantageous for all.”
There was a prolonged silence. “I knew it!” Her voice came out sounding more like a growl. “Admit that one of your cronies on the police force tipped you off that three women wearing the Duchesse pendant would be staying at the Splendido!
“Admit you were up to no good following me and my sisters around! Explain why the waiter obeyed you like a servant!
“Oh yes, and please explain if you can without lightning striking you, how you could suddenly show up on the Piccione as the first mate if you hadn’t been orchestrating lucrative conspiracies like these for years! Answer me that!”
Her challenge brought an effective end to a conversation that had held him spellbound. There were a few dozen matters he needed to research before he spoke to her again.
“All in good time, signorina.”
“That’s what the guard said. Typical male rhetoric. You don’t fool me. You came to the jail to find out if my sisters and I have more jewels hidden away somewhere.
“Well you won’t get that information out of me, not even if the commissioner gave you a key to this cell. I’m warning you now, your powers of seduction leave a lot to be desired.
“Any coward can manhandle a woman confined to a life jacket or behind bars. I have to tell you I would have been a lot more impressed and possibly more forthcoming if you’d tried your best technique while you were escorting me back to my room at the Splendido.
“For a Riviera playboy, I have to tell you that on a scale of one to ten, ten being the ultimate male, you came in a four. Unfortunately a four still isn’t passing. Even Don rated a five. Sorry.”
“Don? As in Don Juan?” he scathed.
“No. Don as in Don Jardine, an American. I should have given him more credit the first time.
“Arrivederci, Signore Mysterioso. Oh—before I forget. On your way out to plot your next heist with your henchmen, turn off the hall
light, will you? I’d like to get some sleep.”
His body stiffened. “I guess you can try to rest, but for a woman who has as much on her conscience as you do, I don’t hold out great hope for you. Ciao, bellissima.”
His mood foul, Max went in search of his cousins. He found both of them outside the door to the commissioner’s office. When they saw him, they stopped pacing.
“You look like the survivor of an explosion,” Nic observed.
“I was going to say the same thing about both of you.”
A nerve pulsed at the side of Luc’s mouth where a tiny scar from the crash was still healing. “You won’t believe what I have to tell you. It has to do with that old wives’ tale concerning one of Marie-Louise’s granddaughters who supposedly had a liaison with a monk.
“Mademoiselle Olivia claims she and her sisters are the descendants of their love child.”
Max’s jaw went slack. “That rumor was proven false years ago and few people outside the immediate family ever even heard of it. Can there be any doubt our jewel thief is someone operating from the inside? When we wring a full confession from the signorine, we won’t have to look far to find the culprit.”
“The story goes from one absurdité to another,” Luc declared. “According to our lovely jailbird, the granddaughter was purported to have suffered a miscarriage. In reality she delivered a son whom the monk, her lover, secretly christened with the last name Duchesse to protect his identity.
“He then arranged to have the baby taken to Corsica where it was raised by a childless woman loyal to the Bonapartes. Inside the infant’s blankets he’d wrapped the pendant.
“Several generations later that pendant traveled to America where the Duchesse name was changed to Duchess. It ended up in New York in the hands of the father of the belles mesdemoiselles.
“Not wanting to slight his offspring, he had two more pendants made identical to the original so they would each have one to hand down to their posterity.”
The sheer scope of the lie left all of them dumbfounded.
Max eventually glanced at Nic. “Did Signorina Piper tell you the same fiction?”
“No—she fed me another lie,” Nic said with asperity. “Something crazy about these pigeon drawings she has done for their family calendar business.
To Catch a Groom Page 9
