Dangerous Ladies

by Christina Dodd

  And he had to run before his leg was worthless.

  Dimly he heard Meadow talking, talking. “The value of the painting is nothing if it’s stained with blood—”

  “Shut up,” Judith said fiercely. “Just shut up and give me that painting.”

  “If I give it to you, you’ll kill me,” Meadow said, “and I carry the future within me. Don’t you see, Judith—”

  Devlin gathered himself to dash into the open.

  As he did, the floorboards in the corridor creaked. He caught a flash of movement out of his peripheral vision.

  Four, that damned fool of a Four, staggered out of the corridor and into the room, bottle in hand.

  He spotted Devlin. He pointed—damn him, pointed right at Devlin—and in a slurred voice he yelled, “See, Devlin? I told you it wasn’t me. I didn’t push Meadow down the stairs.”

  “Go back,” Meadow yelled.

  “Fuck,” Judith said, and blasted Four with a shot.

  Four screamed, spun, and dropped like a rock.

  Devlin didn’t wait to see him hit the ground. Using his arms, he lunged up and over the buffet.

  Judith reacted a second too late. She shot. She missed.

  And he was still alive.

  He smacked the wardrobe with all the force of a linebacker.

  With a groan and in slow motion, the wardrobe tilted toward Judith. For a split second it hung in the air. The doors flew open. Books, dried tubes of paint, the bare ceramic base of a lamp fell out and rolled across the floor toward him.

  Judith backed up, hands up to protect herself, eyes bright with fury, pistol pointed at the ceiling.

  With a crash that shook the floor, the wardrobe slammed down. One door flew into the air. The cloud of dust blinded Devlin.

  “Bastard!” The epithet exploded from Judith with force and virulence.

  He hadn’t killed her.

  He couldn’t stop yet.

  But when he tried to take a step, pain ripped through him. His leg collapsed.

  Through the settling dust he saw Judith. She sat on a rickety trunk, blood trickling from a gash on her cheek and soaking her sleeve. She held the pistol with both hands, and she pointed it right at Devlin.

  He had nowhere to go.

  His leg couldn’t go there even if he did.

  He was going to die—and he hadn’t saved Meadow. She was going to die, too.

  His gaze met hers.

  No time for apologies. He was losing consciousness. He put his hand on his heart to indicate his love.

  Meadow inclined her head and, in the most detached voice he’d ever heard her use, she said, “Judith, if you shoot him, I’m going to stab the Rembrandt.”

  He couldn’t believe it. No matter how long he lived, he would never forget the sight that met his eyes.

  Meadow held the painting at an angle in front of her, the large silver key poised, point down, above the canvas.

  “What?” Judith whirled and stared at Meadow.

  “You can try to shoot me. You might succeed. You might hit the Rembrandt or damage it.” Meadow’s amazing blue eyes narrowed until she looked . . . menacing. Very unlike Meadow. “But if you shoot Devlin, I guarantee you’re going to end up with a painting so mutilated, the only thing you’ll get credit for is screwing up a masterpiece.”

  He’d never seen Meadow sound so calm.

  He’d never seen anyone look so cold as Judith.

  Carefully she aimed the pistol at Meadow’s head.

  Meadow’s cool look of menace was reflected on his face. Picking up the base of the lamp, he used all of his rusty football skills, aimed, and threw it at Judith’s head. It hit with a resounding smack, knocking her off the trunk and out of sight.

  He subsided, breathing harshly, pain-racked, covered with sweat.

  He was done.

  He had to trust Meadow to handle the rest.

  He drifted on a sea of pain.

  And when the pain turned into agony, he opened his eyes with a start.

  Meadow sat beside him, eyes intent, ripping off his leg.

  He was all for it if that would make the misery stop.

  Dr. Apps materialized out of nowhere with a large, white-coated goon carrying two huge bags. She didn’t even say hello. She merely took over the job of ripping off his leg.

  “Hang on, Devlin.” Meadow kissed a hand. His hand. “Just hang on.”

  Two of the security people walked past, holding handcuffs.

  The pain in his leg eased. A little.

  The security people walked past again, Judith staggering between them, a round, bloody circle in the shape of the lamp on her forehead.

  “Nice throw, Devlin.” The volume of Meadow’s voice wavered as if someone were changing the volume.

  Devlin tried to speak, but could only shape the word with his lips. Four?

  “The emergency people say he’ll be fine.”

  Devlin looked up at Meadow. He’d lost a lot of blood. He couldn’t feel his fingers. The bullet had shredded his leg. The world was narrowing to the tiny pinprick of light that was Meadow. He was dying, and he didn’t want to go. He wanted to stay here with her. He whispered, “Remember Majorca. Remember, you were walking down the beach in a sundress and you saw me and kissed me. . . .”

  “Because I loved you the first time I saw you.” She smiled at him, but her smile trembled as though she were scared. “Then I took your hand and led you down the beach to a secluded cove, where we made love.”

  He couldn’t see her anymore, but he could still hear her. And in his mind he could see Majorca, and feel her hands on him, and remember falling in love with her for the first time all over again.

  The story he’d made up wasn’t a lie.

  It just hadn’t happened yet. . . .

  40

  A t the sound of the scream, Devlin’s head whipped around.

  His gaze followed his mother’s pointing finger. Then he ran past Eddy and Firebird, down the beach through the small, muttering crowd, and toward the waves.

  “She’s making a break for it.”

  “I knew she wouldn’t make it through this wedding without trying to escape.”

  “Poor thing. All this trauma has been too much for her.”

  In a panic he plunged into the Mediterranean, ruining his leather shoes and soaking his Armani suit to the knees. Reaching down, he caught his nine-month-old daughter as she plunged under the surface. Lifting her out of the water, he held her to his chest and headed back for shore.

  She squalled and kicked at being pulled out of the waves, while from under the flower-strewn arbor he heard Meadow laughing—laughing because she had taught Willow how to swim and was proud of their fearless daughter.

  Sharon headed for him, her arms outstretched. “Aren’t you a smart girl?” she cooed.

  Willow wailed louder and tried to climb over his shoulder toward the sea.

  “Don’t encourage her.” Devlin pulled out his handkerchief to wipe the sweat of fear off his face, and realized it was soaked with seawater.

  “But of course we should encourage her,” Sharon said. “She’s learning her path, and as her guides, we should help her find her feet.”

  “Maybe she could find them somewhere besides underwater,” Grace snapped. Then, in a mournful tone, she said, “Oh, look. She ruined her outfit.”

  At the sound of Grace’s voice, Willow’s crying cut off as if by a knife. Her bald head swiveled around, her big blue eyes fixed on Grace, and with a gurgle of delight, she held out her arms.

  “No.” Grace backed up, her hands fending Willow off.

  Willow leaned forward, babbling her joy at seeing her grandmother.

  “No, no.” Grace wore a stylish hat, open sandals, and a beige linen suit, ironed within an inch of its life.

  “Here. Let me take her.” Sharon wore a yellow, off-the-shoulder cotton shirt and a gathered tie-dyed skirt and and she was barefoot.

  Willow shook her head no at Sharon, and again reached
for Grace.

  “Come on, honey. Your other grandma loves you.” Sharon also wore a scarf wrapped around her bare head, and a wide hat to protect skin made fragile by a massive dose of radiation and the subsequent bone-marrow transplant.

  “Oh, for heaven’s sake. Give her to me!” Grace took the dripping child and held her away from her pristine designer outfit.

  Willow gave her a big, one-toothed grin.

  “Oh, for heaven’s sake,” Grace said again, and cuddled his baby. Revulsion at the sopping diaper battled with delight at Willow’s adoration. She smirked at Sharon.

  Devlin exchanged a look with Meadow.

  Their mothers were fighting again—what a surprise. Two more different women there could not be, and their rivalry was intense and focused—on Willow. Willow, who adored them, and had already learned to manipulate them both.

  “Shall we start once more?” the minister asked.

  Devlin’s shoes squished with water and sand as he joined Meadow under the arbor and took her hand. He smiled into her eyes.

  The minister began the ceremony all over again.

  Meadow wore a simple white dress. She had flowers in her red hair, carried a bouquet of orange blossoms, and, like her mother’s, her feet were bare. Her nose was freckled, she had a burn on her finger from her latest glass project, and she watched him as if everything he did and was amazed her.

  Meadow was the bride of his dreams—and this was the wedding of his dreams.

  Although the other weddings had been, each in its way, an experience he would treasure. The first wedding, occurring within two weeks of those traumatic events in the attic at Waldemar, took place in the cedar grove outside Meadow’s home in Washington, and involved not one, but two invalids. Sharon refused to start her radiation and bone-marrow transplant until after the ceremony, but although she’d welcomed Devlin with open arms, she’d been wan and quiet, and leaned hard on the much-warier River.

  Devlin’s leg had supported him long enough for him to stand up with Meadow while the woo-woo holy woman (as his mother called her) had intoned a blessing and waved a crystal over the happy couple. Luckily, the pain helped him keep a straight face when he glanced at Grace, immaculate in her mother-of-the-groom dress with the matching pillbox hat, and standing lopsided with her Prada slingback heels sunk into the forest floor.

  And at Four, equally immaculate in his idea of spring-wedding casual—a Dolce & Gabbana goatskin blazer and striped poplin pants.

  And at Bradley Benjamin, dressed like a proper Southern gentleman and torn between horror at the other guests, who consisted of artists and distressingly casual locals, and worry and affection for a daughter he’d barely met and from whom he desperately wanted to win acceptance.

  But his bone marrow had matched Sharon’s on all six points, and his willingness—no, his need—to donate for Sharon and help her with her cure had begun the healing between father and daughter.

  An interesting couple had crashed the wedding in Washington—a tall, broad-shouldered, Italian-looking man with a tall, gorgeous blonde on his arm. Devlin had recognized them right away; his brother Roberto Bartolini and his new wife, Brandi. That had been an interesting, potentially uncomfortable meeting made easy by Meadow’s openhearted welcome and Roberto’s Italian enthusiasm for family.

  Now there were periodic phone calls and the occasional visits between the couples, and the idea of having brothers no longer seemed so alien to Devlin.

  After that first wedding, Devlin and Meadow had lived in Washington. Meadow had cared for the artists’ colony and grown ever more pregnant. While commuting between the two coasts, Devlin had gotten to know all her friends, especially the Hunters, the Russian grape-growing family up the road.

  Sharon received her father’s bone marrow—and damn near died. Devlin still broke a sweat when he remembered the look on Meadow’s face the day he walked in to find Sharon had checked herself out of the hospital and gone home to live out her days.

  She’d survived, but it had been a near thing, and Devlin didn’t know whether Willow’s birth or Sharon’s stubborn determination to survive longer than Grace had contributed more to her continued existence.

  A few months after Willow’s birth, he and Meadow celebrated their wedding and Willow’s christening at the Secret Garden in the secret garden by the waterfall. It had been, his mother announced with satisfaction, a real wedding with an ordained Methodist minister, Meadow trussed into a formal wedding gown, Devlin in a tux, and the guests, including Sharon and River, suitably if uncomfortably attired in dresses and suits.

  Eddy hadn’t been able to return from Europe in time for the first wedding in Washington, but this time he did indeed make a radiant maid of honor.

  The first two weddings had been for their parents.

  This wedding on the beach on Majorca at sunset was for them.

  When Devlin and Meadow finished their vows and faced the smiling crowd, he knew he had truly given his heart and soul into Meadow’s safekeeping.

  And she knew he nurtured her heart and soul with equal care.

  She looked around at her family and friends.

  At her mother, cancer-free at last. At her father, quietly pleased for his daughter, but even more than that, ecstatic at the chance to visit the famous glassblowing centers of Europe. At Grace, wrinkled, disheveled, and thoroughly in love with her granddaughter. At Willow, wearing Grandmother’s hat and teething on Grandmother’s Christian Dior sunglasses. At Four, fidgeting because he’d given up his cigarettes. And at Bradley Benjamin, who, God help him, had tried for casual and managed old-guy absurd in a flowered shirt, shorts, and sandals with socks.

  And at Devlin, still too rugged to be handsome, still tall and dark, still hers . . . and still alive. She had nightmares about that scene in the attic, about the amount of blood he’d lost before the paramedics got the bleeding stopped, about the damage done by the bullet to the muscle. He had survived both the hospital and rehab without incident, but when she woke at night and snuggled close and kissed him, he always kissed her back.

  He’d been too close to death for her to take his existence for granted.

  Now he lifted her hand in his and announced, “The party’s set up in my yard right above the beach. Let’s go up and celebrate our wedding!”

  “Again!” Four raised his sweating glass to them.

  “We’re well married,” Meadow answered.

  “Third time’s a charm,” Devlin said cheerfully.

  On the fringe of the crowd, an uninvited guest caught her eye. He removed his sunglasses and nodded once.

  She gripped Devlin’s arm. “Look. It’s Sam!”

  The day he rode away in the ambulance with Mr. Hopkins was the last time they’d seen him. The ambulance had been found empty except for the frightened driver and his dead assistant. Mr. Hopkins had disappeared completely. And repeated inquiries about Sam to the government and other officials had yielded no information.

  The Rembrandt had gone to auction and brought in twenty-nine million American dollars. Judith had plea-bargained for a lesser sentence, and with her testimony and Four’s, the feds had put a price on Mr. Hopkins’s head.

  The $29 million was rightfully Devlin’s, but he had declared he was no fool. He’d turned the fortune over to Meadow, who had paid her mother’s bills, given Bradley Benjamin a generous finder’s fee, set up a small trust fund for Four—because, as she told Devlin, how else was he going to survive? He wasn’t good for anything except entertainment—and used the rest for art scholarships in her grandmother’s name.

  Now Sam appeared, apparently hale and healthy. He watched their guests trudge up the path to Devlin’s estate; then, as solemn as ever, he walked toward them. “Congratulations on your marriage.”

  “Oh, Sam!” Meadow threw her arms around him. “We hoped you were alive!”

  Sam suffered her embrace without yielding an inch.

  When she let him go, Devlin shook his hand. “Good to see you again, Sam.�
��

  “Good to see you, too, Mr. Fitzwilliam. And thank you for asking about me. At the time I wasn’t able to respond to your inquiries.”

  “We suspected you were in deep cover.” It was so good to see his pleasure at meeting them. At least, Meadow thought it was pleasure—with Sam, pleasure looked pretty much like indifference or anger or relaxation.

  “I wanted to thank you both for your assistance with my investigation last year. In my line of employment I work for a lot of people, and Mr. Fitzwilliam, your organizational abilities and astute eye made my task easier.” Sam replaced his sunglasses. “If you ever would like a job with the government—”

  “What? No!” Indignant and incensed, Meadow stepped between Sam and Devlin. “He does not want a job with the government, and if I ever caught wind of him taking a job with the government—and I’m just as astute as he is—I would hunt you down and hurt you, Sam Whoever-you-are!”

  Devlin caught her arm and pulled her toward him. “I believe I just declined, Sam.”

  “So I see.” Something that might pass for a smile on anyone else tugged at Sam’s lips.

  “Would you like to come to the party?” Devlin gestured up the path.

  “No, actually, I’m leaving the island as soon as possible.” Yet Sam lingered, scrutinizing them as if looking for a flaw. Abruptly he said, “The investigation into your father and the disappearance of his fortune is reaching a climax, and soon there’ll be closure for you and your brothers.”

  “How many brothers?” Meadow asked.

  “What kind of closure?” Devlin took a step toward him.

  “I can’t say. I just wanted you to know.” With a peculiarly Sam-like nod of farewell, he strode off down the beach until the setting sun swallowed him.

  “That is a seriously weird guy,” Meadow said. “I thought so the first time I opened my eyes and saw him, and I think so now.”

  “Hmm. Yes. I remember. You took one look at me and fell at my feet.”

  “Who has amnesia now?” Smart-ass.

  Devlin tugged her toward him. “What did you think the first time you opened your eyes and saw me?”

  She sniffed. “I thought you were rude and scary.”