Dangerous Ladies

by Christina Dodd

  From far off down the corridor, Brandi heard a rumble. Conversation? Laughter?

  “Yes, Mrs. Pelikan. I’m sorry, Mrs. Pelikan.” Brandi warmed to the woman who so greatly resented being lied to and used. Brandi could relate to that.

  The rumble got louder. Definitely laughter.

  Mrs. Pelikan relented. “I know you couldn’t tell me, but what an immense amount of work for nothing!”

  The sound of many voices carried more and more clearly into the office.

  What was going on out there? “I promise, I won’t be doing anything exciting ever again.”

  Mrs. Pelikan looked over Brandi’s shoulder. She subdued a smile. “I don’t know that I’d agree with that.”

  From the doorway, Roberto said, “Brandi, I’d like to speak to you.”

  Brandi stiffened. Slowly she turned.

  And found herself facing a six-and-a-half-foot dragon.

  30

  The dragon was mostly green. Small green scales on his pointed snout, large green scales on his ridged back, green scales on his fat, three-foot-long tail, iridescent green scales on the ridiculously small wings that sprouted from his shoulders. Pointed white teeth grew from his long mouth. His black eyes, set deep into the sides of his head, shone softly. But it was the gem in the middle of his forehead that really caught her attention.

  It was the fake of the Romanov Blaze, and it glittered with the same violet fire as the real thing.

  Roberto looked . . . ridiculous.

  “Brandi? Can we talk?” It was definitely Roberto’s voice coming from inside the dragon.

  “I don’t talk to mythical fire-breathing reptiles.” But she had to cover her mouth to hide her grin.

  The whole floor, maybe the whole building, was watching. The men dug their elbows into one another’s sides. The women giggled softly.

  “You have to talk to me. I’m your dragon.”

  Her amusement died. “My dragon is broken.”

  “I know, and I’m sorry. I can’t fix him, but if you’ll let me, I can fix the things I broke.”

  “I don’t want to talk to you.” Brandi had been stomped by enough men lately. She didn’t need to give this one a second run at her. Especially since this one was the only one who mattered.

  “What did you break?” Shawna asked him.

  “Her trust.”

  Brandi snorted. And my heart.

  Roberto continued, “But if she’d listen to me for just a few minutes . . .”

  “Brandi, you ought to be nice to the dragon,” Diana said. “We don’t want him to start breathing fire. There are a lot of papers in this place.”

  Their onlookers chuckled.

  It wasn’t fair. How had he gotten her whole office on his side? “Give me one reason why I should listen to you.”

  With his hands, Roberto opened the dragon’s mouth and looked directly at her. “Because I love you.”

  Their onlookers aahed.

  The impact of his dark, intent eyes and firm declaration made her back up two steps. “Tell me why I should care.”

  He came toward her, claw outstretched. “Give me a chance and I will.” Then his large backside caught in the door.

  “As touching as this is, I’ve got work to do.” Mrs. Pelikan looked over her glasses at the people crowded into the corridor. “As does everyone in this department. Sanjin, they’re going to borrow your office. Show them where it is.”

  Sanjin stood immobile, his face blank with astonishment. “But I have work to do, too!” A jab in the side brought him to his senses and he said, “Follow me.”

  Roberto shuffled backward and gestured to Brandi to precede him. She walked down the hall, clutching her briefcase, acutely aware of the dragon shambling on her heels.

  Damn Roberto. He made her want to laugh. He charmed her. And no matter how mad he made her, no matter how he hurt her, she still loved him.

  Damn him. Damn him.

  Sanjin opened the door to his office and gestured them in. He had a desk, a chair, a file cabinet, a view of the next building, and so little floor space the dragon made it a tight fit. He had to squish his tail sideways so Sanjin could shut the door behind him.

  Even though most of Roberto was just a costume, she backed to the far side of the desk. “What made you think of doing this?”

  “I wanted your attention.” He opened the dragon’s mouth again and looked at her. “My father told me I’d better crawl, and I said absolutely not, no woman was worth that, and he said . . . he said rather rude things.” He winced as if they still stung. “He’s a man whose opinion I respect very much, so I followed his advice.”

  “Because you respect him.”

  “No.” He waggled that enormous, outrageous head. “Because every minute you’re apart from me, my heart bleeds.”

  “Nice. Poetic. I’m not impressed.” Although she sort of was, but he didn’t need to think he could spout some romantic nonsense in that deep Italian voice of his and she would roll over like some kind of dragon groupie.

  “In your absence, I wanted to know everything about you, so I begged Charles for photos and stories about you. I saw your baby picture. I saw ballerina Brandi in her first recital.” He reached out a claw. “I heard all about your father.”

  She opened her briefcase and fussed with the contents, arranging the already neatly arranged notebook, pen and pencil, PDA, and shining-new laptop. “How nice of Uncle Charles to tell you that.”

  “But I am not like your father.”

  “No, you’re a whole different bag of beans.”

  “Nor am I the son of Count Bartolini.”

  She looked up. She shut her briefcase. She placed it on one side of the desk and seated herself on the other. “Okay. You win. You have my complete attention.”

  “Two years ago, my mother was diagnosed with breast cancer.”

  “I’m sorry.” And why was he telling her this?

  “She got very ill, and she believed—we all believed—she was going to die. So she called me to her bedside and told me the secret of my birth.” Roberto clasped his clawed hands across his scaly chest. “My father is a man she got involved with while at college, a man who got her pregnant and left her. She came home to Nonno, who sent her to his family in Italy. Before she gave birth to me, she met the count. She married him, I was born, and I grew up believing he was my father.”

  “No one told you differently?” That was hard to believe.

  “Except for my mother and the count, no one knew the truth. Everyone thought they’d had an affair during his visit to the States. Gossip said that they fought and my mother, in her pride, refused to tell him of her pregnancy, but when she went to Italy, they found each other again and married.”

  “Look, I hate to dispute you, but Mossimo knows. He called your mother a . . . he called your mother names.”

  “Mossimo suspected the truth, and probably there are rumors. But really—does anybody believe Mossimo when he spouts venom?”

  “No. No, it never occurred to me to pay attention to him.” She swung her foot and watched the motion. “What has this to do with you and me?”

  “My mother would not tell me who my father is.”

  “Ah.” That would grate on Roberto. He would need to know.

  “She says she sinned. She says she’s ashamed. She says that he isn’t a good man, and she would not tell me his name. I would make a scene, but thank God she’s in remission, doing very well, and I don’t want to upset her.”

  “What about your father? The count, I mean.”

  “He’s in every way a good parent to me. I can’t tell him that I need to know”—he shook his dragon head as if his own emotions bewildered him—“to see this man who begat me. What was it about him that made my mother reject him and flee in such horror?”

  Brandi began to understand the events of the last week. “But you had to know, so you searched for a way.”

  “And I found it. I’m not an international jewel thief—not usuall
y—but I know the family business and I keep up the Contini contacts. Nonno called and said that Mossimo Fossera intended to steal the Romanov Blaze. I used my contacts. I went to the FBI and told Aiden Tuchman that if he would find out who my father was, I would help him bring down the Fosseras.” The dragon shrugged his massive shoulders. “It’s as simple as that.”

  “As simple as that—for you. For me, I made a mistake. I saw you at Charles’s party and I thought it was fate.”

  “That was no mistake. It was fate, for once I saw you, made love to you, I wanted you with me. When I discovered you were one of my lawyers, I thought fate had given me the woman of my dreams.” He touched his claw to his chest. “I was wrong.”

  “Not the woman of your dreams, huh?” For a man who was good with words, he was lousy with words.

  “Definitely the woman of my dreams, but not given to me.”

  “Oh.” Better.

  “Not given to me. I had to earn her. Still have to . . .” He shut the mouth. He looked down.

  He bonked her in the head with his snout. “Ouch!”

  “Cara! I’m sorry!” He tried to get close and got stuck between the wall and the desk. “Are you all right?”

  She rubbed the bruise. Green glitter drifted onto her shoulders. “I’m fine, but I think you mashed his nose.”

  Roberto felt around and found a misshapen nostril. In a mournful tone, he said, “Now when I breathe fire, I’ll singe myself.”

  “You’re ridiculous.” He made her want to laugh again, and that would never do. Laughter would indicate softening, and if there was one thing Tiffany had taught her, it was that a man should work if he wanted a woman, and then work some more. Besides, Brandi might still love Roberto. She might still want him. But he had lied by omission . . . although now she understood why . . .

  Hastily, before she could think of more reasons to become sympathetic, she said, “So you trapped Mossimo. Did Aiden come through?”

  “Yes. The night of the sting, after you went storming out the door, I met my half brother.”

  She leaned forward, her interest well and truly caught. “Your father’s child by another woman?”

  “Carrick Manly. He’s the only legitimate son of billionaire industrialist Nathan Manly.”

  Memory stirred. “Nathan Manly. Didn’t he steal all the capital from his collapsing industry about ten or fifteen years ago and flee to South America?”

  “That’s the rumor. I thought that on my mother’s side I was the descendant of an ancient clan of jewel thieves. It turns out I’m also the son of the corrupt man who stole the livelihood of thousands of his employees and stockholders.” Roberto laughed bitterly. “He also, before he left, spread his sperm throughout the land, impregnating young women indiscriminately and without conscience. I’m one of those who knows how many of his children. Of his sons—apparently he fathered only sons.”

  “So you have a whole family spread out across the country and you don’t know who they are?” She could almost hear her mother’s voice in her head. Don’t feel sorry for him, Brandi! Don’t you dare! He hasn’t given you a single gift today!

  But he sounded so grim and sad. He was a man who had known his place in the world. Then his identity had been whisked away and replaced by uncertainty. Being Roberto, he hadn’t moaned or complained; he’d taken action, and now the mystery he had sought to solve had deepened.

  “Carrick is tracking down my brothers. He wants whatever information they have about his father.”

  Brandi noted that Roberto didn’t call Nathan his own father. His father was the count.

  “Carrick’s mother has been accused by the federal government of being in collusion with Nathan to steal the money. Carrick says she’s innocent. Certainly she has no money. I don’t know, but I told him I would help him find my brothers. For him. And for me.” Roberto tried to squeeze closer to her. “No one else knows the whole truth, Brandi. Only me . . . and you.”

  She stared at him, trying to resist the appeal of a man who did trust her enough to confide in her.

  “Tell me, did I forever ruin my chances to love you as you deserve to be loved?”

  Don’t let him seduce you with green scales and big white teeth! “Take off that stupid dragon suit.”

  “I have sworn to wear this until you agree to marry me.” He put his claw over his heart.

  “That is the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard.” Which it was. Also the most romantic.

  “So tell me you’ll be my bride.”

  “Tell me one reason I should marry you, Roberto.” Oops. Impatience had driven her to indicate how very much he charmed her.

  He knew it, too. “I have two. I love you. How can I not? And when you thought I was in trouble, you came to rescue me. No woman has ever done that before.”

  “I was an idiot.” That was the real problem. She’d gone off to rescue a man who didn’t need rescuing.

  “No. You were a woman in love.” His voice took on that warm, intimate tone he used during sex.

  “Like I said—an idiot.” When she thought about how humiliated she’d felt when those FBI agents poured into the restaurant, she could . . . she could shoot Joseph again. The little weasel. “But I’m not going to be an idiot anymore. You made a fool of me, and I don’t trust you.”

  “How can you not? I’ve told you what no one knows. I trust you with everything I am.” As he took a step toward her, his large, scaly foot kicked over the trash can. It clattered against the desk. Wadded-up papers rolled across the floor. “Can you learn to trust me again? I’ll spend my life making you happy.” He scooped up her hand with his claw and raised it to his teeth. “I beg you, Brandi, please marry me.”

  She looked at her fingers. They were covered with green glitter. She looked at him. He was an insensitive jerk who never stopped to think that he might be hurting her by dragging her along on his adventure. Yet he flattered her because he had been unable to leave her behind.

  And he was sensitive enough to recognize the importance of a dragon in her life. . . .

  “Just a minute.” Opening her briefcase, she located her PDA in its pocket. With her stylus, she flipped through her lists until she found:

  Qualities Required in a Man.

  1. Honest

  2. Dependable

  3. Goal-oriented

  4. Sober . . .

  She pushed ERASE ALL.

  The list disappeared forever.

  Carefully she placed the PDA back into her briefcase, shut it, and turned back to Roberto. “Take off the dragon costume and we’ll talk about the possibility of marriage.”

  He crowed like he’d already won.

  Man, he was irritating. “I said talk.”

  “I have a gift for you.”

  Irritating, but he knew just the right words to say. “What gift?”

  “Can you see the zipper under the dragon’s arm?” He twisted sideways.

  “Yes. What do you have for me?” She pulled it down.

  “A ring.”

  “I threw the last diamond ring at the toilet.” She hoped he realized what that meant, coming from Tiffany’s daughter.

  “It’s not a diamond. Open the zipper wide. Can you see my pocket?”

  “Yes.” He was wearing a T-shirt and jeans that fit like a glove.

  “Get the ring out.”

  So she had to grope him. He was a very clever strategist. Slowly she slid her hand into his pocket. His hip was firm against her hand, tempting and warm, and she just stood there a minute, her eyes closed, as she relished the chance to touch him once more.

  She was so easy.

  “Are you having trouble finding it?” He sounded amused and pleased.

  “Yeah! I mean, no, it’s right here.” She delved all the way to the bottom and felt the small, smooth circle. She drew it out, then stared at the old, worn yellow gold and the polished stone in puzzlement. She’d seen this before. On Mossimo’s hand. “It’s Mossimo’s ring.”

  “No.” He t
ouched her cheek with his claw. “It’s the Contini ring, stolen by one of my ancestors so many years ago its origins are lost in myth. The head of the Continis wears that ring. My nonno wore it until he married; then he gave it to Nonna with love and honor. She wore it until she died; then my nonno put it back on his finger. It should never have left him until the moment he passed on the mantle as head of the Continis.”

  “How did he lose it?” As if she couldn’t guess.

  “When Mossimo smashed Nonno’s hand, he stole the ring.”

  When she thought how she and Roberto had faced off against that beast, she wanted to faint from fear and beam with pride. “And how did you get it back?”

  Roberto opened the dragon’s mouth and grinned at her. “At the Stuffed Dog, I lifted it off Mossimo when I threw him.”

  He looked so pleased, so mischievous, she couldn’t hold it back anymore. She laughed. “You are so bad!”

  “Nonno told me to give the ring to you.” Roberto put his scaly arm around her shoulders. “I would be honored if you’d wear it and add my name to yours.”

  She carefully placed the ring on the desk. She laid her head on his scaly chest. “I do like dragons, but I like Roberto better.”

  In a flash the two of them started tugging, trying to free him from the costume that encased him.

  They thumped around Sanjin’s office.

  “There’s got to be another zipper.”

  “Don’t you know how you got in here?”

  “The person at the shop dressed me, and I didn’t know if you were ever going to let me out.” As they struggled to free his head, his tail repeatedly hit the door.

  “You liar. You knew all you had to do was bat those beautiful dark eyes at me and I’d melt.” She found another zipper. “Here. Right here. That’s it!”