sidelong glances at them. “Your friends told me the tale of the grand rescue from the organ pirates,” he said. “They evidently think that you are a superwoman.”
“Hmmph.” She rolled her eyes. “They like to dramatize.”
“Strange how they trust you,” he said. “Especially the women.”
She looked offended. “Why would that strike you as strange?”
“Because of their men,” he said. “Women tend to be suspicious of other women who are as beautiful as you. It is a brutal fact of nature. You are an inherent threat to them.”
She grunted. “Bullshit. Besides, they’re all beautiful women themselves. Not one of them has any reason to worry.”
“No?” He yanked her into a possessive clinch. “You mean to say you have never taken any of the men in this room as your lover?”
She went motionless, mouth open. “Who, me? If any of those guys cheated on their wives, I would personally remove their testicles.”
He was taken aback. “That is vehement,” he commented.
“Those men are well taken care of,” she went on heatedly. “They have nothing to complain about. And if they did, they wouldn’t dream of messing with me. I’ve put the fear of God into every last one of them.”
He willed her to relax against the heat of his body. “Such high standards to hold them to,” he teased. “After all, they are only men.”
“They can damn well live up to those standards. They have quality women who trust them more than any man deserves to be trusted. If they ever, for one second, demonstrate any lack of appreciation for their good fortune, I will be there standing by. Garden shears in hand.”
He cleared his throat, trying not to smile. “They all seem…er, more or less intact. I take it that so far they have behaved well?”
She nodded. “Pussywhipped to the last man,” she said, with cool satisfaction. “And now kids are coming right and left. I doubt they have the energy to misbehave at this point. Not that it stops most men. Ass-sniffing, leg-humping dogs on the furniture that they are.”
He let that caustic attack upon his sex pass without comment, and spun her into a deep, sensual dip. “That reveals so much,” he said.
She almost tripped over his foot as he tugged her back up again. “Reveals what? What are you talking about?”
He grinned. “You are secretly a romantic.”
That startled a burst of laughter out of her. “Me? Hah!”
“You.” He put his mouth to her ear. “Your need for your friends to stay faithful to each other as living proof that true love is possible,” he whispered. “Because you keep hoping that it is, no? Even though you are sure in the depths of your heart that it is not, you continue to hope that you might be wrong. It is another one of those bleeding contradictions. You are full of them, Tamara Steele.”
“I…do not…” She squinted at him. “That’s such crap. Let’s not start the armchair psychology game again. And don’t even try to pin a softer side onto me. It won’t stick.”
“Say what you like. I draw my own conclusions.”
“Whatever,” she growled. “The truth is still the truth. I’m going to check on Rachel, so get your big groping paws the hell off me.”
She wrenched out of his arms, and stalked toward the corner where Sveti entertained Rachel, heels clicking smartly over the gleaming ballroom floor. Fury radiated from her tense, slender figure.
Their dining table was momentarily deserted, all of the other couples either dancing or dealing with their children. The chance he had been waiting for. He strolled back to the table, pulled out his cell, and feigned texting a message while he detached the quarter tablet of tasteless, odorless R-55-Triplex he’d taped inside his pocket.
He let it plop into Steele’s wineglass as he reached for his own.
Done. He took a deep swallow, tempted to eat the other three-quarters of the tablet himself, just for a break from this unbearable tension. But he could not. The image of his mother on the bathroom floor was etched indelibly in his mind. Drugs could never be a refuge for him. Nor would he dare risk losing his edge, tonight of all nights.
A quarter dose was the smallest effective dose he could give her in solid form. He’d reasoned that he would have no good opportunity to administer drops unobserved in public. R-55-Triplex was formulated by PSS’s lab techs for situations just like this. In larger doses, it had been favorably compared to Ecstasy—just more subtle, with no hangover, headache or thirst. A quarter dose should render her euphoric, mellow, more receptive sexually. Alcohol intensified the effect, food reduced it. But she ate so little. If he could get some more wine into her…if she didn’t realize that she’d been altered…maybe.
He took another swallow of wine and smiled and nodded as Davy and Margot McCloud swayed by, entwined. Davy’s eyes lingered on him thoughtfully, and then something his wife said drew his attention back to her. Davy smiled and kissed her. The kiss caught fire, right on the dance floor. When they surfaced, the redhead was flushed, heavy-eyed.
Touching, he thought glumly. How nice for them. Sex with no problems, no lies, no betrayal. How pleasant.
He had tried, for a time, to find weak spots to exploit in the McClouds in the process of reseaching various ways to manipulate Steele. But when it came to McClouds, there were no weak spots, no fault lines. Nothing to exploit. The entire clan was rigidly upright in their business dealings. It was evidently a family trait. Their bank accounts, stock portfolios, and tax returns baffled him. That kind of honesty and transparency in Italy would run a business into the ground in minutes. But to all appearances, they seemed prosperous. A mystery.
He had lost sight of Steele. Panic yawned wide in his belly. He searched the crowd anxiously for that bronze fabric, the flash of her pale face and arms, the gleam of coiled mahogany hair.
Only when he spotted her could he breathe again.
Tam reached across the table and ran her hand through the soft red ringlets of little Jeannie, Davy and Margot’s baby daughter, thinking how pretty the baby was with those huge slate-blue eyes, that crazy open-mouthed grin, the four little pearls of teeth popping out, two above and two below, from her pink gums.
Margot’s mouth fell open. Tam barely stopped herself from giggling at the other woman’s expression. True, she was feeling oddly mellow—for her. She’d downed quite a bit of chianti on an empty stomach, but it was finally relaxing her, thank God. She’d felt like she was made of steel cables strained to the snapping point. Tension that severe had to find some release. It was a physical law, like gravity. If you didn’t respect it, bad things happened.
Finally, that headache was backing off, and she could appreciate how nice the McCloud Crowd looked in their wedding finery. Easy on the eyes, as Nick was fond of saying. She leaned her chin on her clasped fingers, appreciating the tender way that Seth was cupping Raine’s pregnant belly, whispering something into her ear that made her blush.
Sweet. And it was. Really. She wasn’t even being snide. She smiled her approval. Seth caught it and did a startled double take.
Maybe
