Chapter Six
Kelly and Teresa left Gabriel’s room and went downstairs to the drawing room so that Teresa could verbally eviscerate Kelly in private.
They flopped onto an eighteenth-century sofa with bowed, hand-carved legs and blue silk cushions.
“Go on, have at it,” Kelly said. “Let it all out. I know you’re dying to.”
“I can’t believe this,” Teresa stormed at Kelly. “This has got to be the worst fiasco in…in the history of fiascos!”
“There’s a history of fiascos?” Kelly wondered. “Is it in encyclopedia form? Is our father in there?”
“Don’t you dare make light of this,” Teresa hissed. “I told you it was a bad idea from the very beginning, and now look where we are.” She glanced around wildly, gesturing with her hand at the enormous room.“Here.”
Kelly glanced around. True, things hadn’t gone as planned, but it was hardly a dungeon.
The antique furniture was all re-upholstered and immaculately polished. There were crystal vases of fresh flowers everywhere. The room was lit with electric torches set on the walls, and a massive chandelier which sprinkled light like diamonds on the flagstone floor. Servants glided noiselessly through the room, dusting and sweeping, and several younger dragonlings flapped through the air, chased by their scolding mothers.
Neither of them had ever been in a dragon’s castle before; Kelly was actually finding it fascinating. Granted, she would have greatly preferred it if everything had gone to plan, but she still had a fair shot at accomplishing her mission.
Teresa might be going with the “woe is me” thing, but Kelly had long ago figured out that panicking got you exactly nowhere. It just made you hyperventilate and get dizzy.
After all, this wasn’t the first time she’d had to think on her feet. “Oh, I don’t know. It might still turn out all right.”
“Are you crazy? First of all, I got arrested. Me! I don’t even jaywalk, I don’t have so much as a parking ticket on my record, and I gotarrested. And I had to sit in a jail cell withcriminals.” She glared at Kelly. “Chad better never hear of this. His family will lose their minds. I’m lucky they’re willing to forgive my past history.”
Kelly snorted. She couldn’t stand Chad and his enormous white teeth and his thick gelled helmet of hair, and she despised his blue-blooded snobby family, but there was no point in rehashing that conversation with Teresa. It wasn’t as if she and her sister were close enough to discuss things like that; she wasn’t even invited to Teresa’s wedding.
“And now you’re going to marry our suspect? That should really go down well with the Rossis. And…you-know-who.”
Kelly felt her insides twist in dismay at the mention of you-know-who. “Don’t be silly. I’m not really marrying Gabriel.”
“Oh, is that a fact?” Teresa scoffed. “Because his mother asked me if I was going to be the maid of honor and said she needed to measure me for a dress.”
Kelly winced. “The alleged wedding is a month away. I will find the jewel before then, and go home.”
“No you won’t. You’ll…you’ll fall in love with him and marry him, that’s what you’ll do! You always mess everything up!”
“Actually, I don’t,” Kelly said calmly. That was why Teresa resented her so much. Because even though Kelly’s methods were unorthodox and bent the rules, she got results.
“Hey, my mother needs to see you for a minute before dinner!” Gabriel was walking towards them, dressed in linen slacks and a button-down shirt and loafers, looking devastatingly handsome. “Something about getting a head-count of how many people you’ll be inviting to the wedding.”
“Told you,” Teresa sneered.
“None!” Kelly called out to him. “I’m basically an orphan…” she cast a glance at Teresa “…and I work too many hours to have any friends, so it will just be me.”
“Well, that sounds rather sad,” Gabriel observed. “Thank God we found each other and you no longer have to endure such a lonely life.”
Teresa’s cell phone rang, and she answered it and then looked at Kelly and held it out with a smirk of malicious triumph. “It’s for you. Apparently you haven’t been answering your cell phone.”
That was true, and there was a reason for that. But there was no putting it off any longer.
Kelly winced and grabbed the phone. There was only one person this could be.
“I should have known you’d fail,” said the shrill voice on the other end of the phone. “You’re such a complete loser.”
Kelly’s heart sank. She’d recovered eight stolen jewels in the past year. Eight. More than anybody else at their firm. But no matter what she did, it was never good enough.
“I didn’t necessarily fail,” she protested weakly.
