hard to catch.
Belle wagged her tail once, sharply, as the woman appeared farther down on Eighteenth Street with a cell phone pressed to her ear. Tara had places to go and lots of things to do when she got there, Belle thought. Her hair was a shade darker than Whittington’s. Belle couldn’t tell exactly how long it was because it was tucked into her collar, but it seemed like there might be a lot of it. Her eyes were dark. She was very beautiful. She wouldn’t have much use for pheromones either, Belle decided. This was definitely the type of female that men chased for miles.
She took the phone from her ear and dropped it smartly into her pocket as though glad to be rid of it. This was going to be interesting, Belle thought as Tara drew closer to Whittington. She wasn’t watching where she was going, was still looking down at her pocket where the cell phone was. Maybe they’d walk right into each other. Then some sparks would fly.
But Tara turned left onto Race Street without even looking at Whittington. And Whittington began heading the other way, toward Logan Circle. Stop! Wait! Didn’t they smell each other? Didn’t they sense anything?
Within moments, they were ten, fifteen, twenty feet apart, still moving in opposite directions. Belle sighed. Stupid agendas, she thought. Humans always thought they knew exactly what kind of mate they needed. Disgusted, she left the Cathedral, trotting north now.
Any decent angel had more than one arrow in her quiver.
Chapter 1
Planning was the key to success. Tara had always believed that with all her heart. In fact, she had framed her life around the premise. Unfortunately, her stepbrother had always been a tougher lock than most.
She grabbed her cell phone from her coat pocket as she made her way down Eighteenth Street, heading home from her attorney’s office. It would be a long walk but her nerves were jumping and she needed the exercise. She punched Stephen’s number into the phone with her thumb.
“We need to talk about this,” she said when he answered.
Stephen Carmen laughed. “Should I fax you over a copy of the court’s Memorandum of Decision? Maybe you didn’t get yours.”
She hated him with an intensity that made her stomach feel awash in oil. “It’s a piece of paper. I’m talking principle. Ethics. Honor.”
“And I’m talking money.”
“I know.” The very idea of Stephen selling the Rose hurt Tara all the way down to her bones. But, of course, she’d considered the possibility—the probability. There was little Stephen craved more than the image and the lifestyle that money could buy. That was why she had planned a worst-case solution to this nightmare.
“Give it up, Tara,” Stephen said. “The Blood of the Rose is mine. Every last carat. Your mother gave it to me.”
She wouldn’t. That truth had never left Tara’s soul once in the nearly four years she and Stephen had been battling over the heirloom. He had possession of a will that said Letitia Cole Carmen had bequeathed the ruby to him, her stepson. Hours ago, the courts had ruled that the will Stephen had produced took precedence over Tara’s own.
But her mother would never have given Stephen the Blood of the Rose. Letitia would only have handed it on to Tara because that was part of its legend—and its curse. Her great-grandmother, Tzigane, a notorious Gypsy, had decried that her gem would never leave the hands of her descendants.
“I don’t know how you managed such a clever forgery on that will,” Tara muttered aloud.
Stephen laughed again. “It’s your mother’s signature. You had enough experts trying to prove otherwise. And my witnesses are squeaky clean.”
It was true—they were both topnotch, successful businessmen. The investigators she’d hired hadn’t been able to dig up any dirt on them at all. Tara took a breath. “I’ll buy it back from you.”
That kept Stephen quiet for a moment. “You’d spend money to get it back?”
“It’s mine,” she said simply. “I know you’re going to sell it to someone. Why not me?”
Stephen’s pause was ripe with calculation. “How much?”
“Four and a half million.” Let the games begin, she thought bitterly.
“Six,” Stephen countered.
“It won’t appraise for that.”
“I don’t give a damn what it’s worth on the market. What’s it worth to you?”
He had her there. “Meet with me tonight. I’ll see if I can scrape up some more money between now and then.”
This time the weight of his hesitation was different. “Where are you scraping it from?”
“An investor.”
“What kind of investor?”
“One who respects the stone’s legacy.”
“Your Uncle Charlie.” Stephen said the name like an epithet.
Tara didn’t answer, which was an answer in itself. The admittedly eccentric Charlie Branigan wasn’t her uncle by blood. He’d courted Tara’s mother for six wild and exciting months before Letitia had tossed him over for the staid and steady Scott Carmen. Tara was sure that her mother had broken Charlie’s heart because he’d never married anyone else. But he’d been there for both of them anyway through all the years that had passed since then, at least when he could be found. Charlie had a propensity for popping off suddenly and without warning. The last time they’d lost track of him, he’d turned up snorkeling with sharks off the Great Barrier Reef—at the age of seventy-two.
He was also the money and the power behind Philadelphia’s Hoyt Museum. When Charlie snapped his fingers, the entire board of directors jumped. He felt—and Tara agreed—that there was no harm in putting the gem on display once they got it back. They’d decided that Tzigane would have no objection to sharing its beauty, its fame, with the world, just as long as Tara owned at least a part of it.
Charlie’s identity would come out sooner or later anyway, Tara reasoned, and letting it out sooner might even be to her advantage. She and Charlie weren’t trying to strike a business deal. They were motivated by their hearts. Stephen would understand that he was unlikely to get as much for the ruby from the average investor. And he knew she didn’t have enough money to pull the deal off by herself. She’d inherited her mother’s share of Stephen’s father’s estate, but she had spent a hefty chunk of it on lawyers and experts, fighting with Stephen over Letitia’s will.
“All right,” he said finally, thoughtfully. “Come by at seven. We’ll talk.”
“I’ll be there.” Tara lowered the phone from her ear without saying goodbye.
She dropped it into her coat pocket as though something of Stephen’s greed and cruelty had rubbed off on it. This was not her mother’s doing, she thought again. Letitia had not knowingly signed that will. Tara would go to her own grave believing that and Uncle Charlie agreed with her. Somehow, Stephen Carmen had tricked Letitia. Or perhaps he had blackmailed her somehow. Letitia had seemed so edgy those last weeks of her life. Had she possessed
