“You didn’t necessarily fail?” the voice mocked. “I should have listened to your sister. I never should have let you go ahead with this idiot scheme. You incompetent moron. It’s all over the news, and you’ve made our firm look like fools. I’ll be fired and lose everything. Have you found the ruby yet?”
“No,” she said.
“Then you failed! Because that’s what you do! You are a complete and utter failure! Find that damn ruby or I swear to God—”
Kelly thought she might throw up. She needed to halt the stream of abuse. “I’m standing next to Gabriel, so you might want to stop screaming at me.”
“Standing next to him! You pathetic moron! You loser! You incompetent, bumbling, sloppy, useless—”
Kelly felt her throat constricting just as Gabriel plucked the phone from her hand, and she suddenly realized that tears were pouring down her face. Teresa sat on the couch, arms folded across her chest and a big, smug smile on her face.
Gabriel stalked off, holding the phone, and Kelly ran after him.
“Listen the hell up,” Gabriel snarled into the phone. “That is my future wife you’re talking to. And if you ever talk to her like that again, I will hunt you down and burn you to a pile of ash.” And then he crushed the phone in his hand and dropped the pieces on the floor.
Winthrop scampered over to clean up the shards of plastic.
“That was my phone!” Teresa screamed. “You broke my phone! My fiancé might be calling me! I’m in the middle of planning my wedding! I need my phone!”
“Sorry, miss,” Winthrop said apologetically. He gave Gabriel a severe look of reproach. “Sir, that simply isn’tdone.”
“These people are monsters!” Teresa’s chest was heaving and her face was bright red.
Winthrop nodded glumly. “You have no idea.”
“I’ll buy you a new one,” Gabriel said irritably. Then he looked at Kelly and his voice softened. “Kelly, come with me.”
He led her out of the room and back up the stairs to his bedroom as Kelly wiped away her tears with the back of her hand.
“I’m sorry,” Kelly sniffled when they reached his room. “I shouldn’t let her get to me like that. I’m being stupid.”
A wave of misery washed over her.
He put his arm around her and pulled her up against him. It felt so warm and safe and right that she never wanted to leave. But she would – any minute now. Yep, she’d shrug his arm off walk away from him…any minute now…
“You aren’t being stupid at all,” Gabriel said. “I made things difficult for you by insisting on marrying you, which is selfish of me, but it’s what I want.”
She rested her head against his broad chest.
“It is?” He couldn’t possibly mean that, but it was wonderful to hear at a time when her feelings had just been stomped on with hobnail boots.
“Yes, it is. And whoever you’re working for is a vile, abusive bitch. Why do you let someone treat you like that?”
“Well, I guess because she’s my mother.”
Gabriel’s mouth dropped open and he began stammering apologies. Kelly burst into laughter and held her hand up to stop him.
“It’s all right,” she said. “You’re entirely right. She’s been like that to me ever since…well, ever since my father got arrested.” Then she flushed with embarrassment. “Go ahead. Mock me. Call me a hypocrite.”
“Why?” He looked puzzled. “Your father was arrested, not you.”
She managed a wry smile. “My mother doesn’t see it that way. My father was arrested for embezzlement; he financially ruined a lot of people in my mother’s social set. The big irony is, she was working as an insurance investigator even then. It nearly ruined the firm, which had been passed down to her by her father. So she had to sell most of her interest in the firm, and they changed it so the firm no longer has our family name on it. She’s co-owner, but she’s hoping to buy it back some day, and if we don’t get the Dragonsblood back, that can’t happen. I have lived my entire life trying to make up for what my father’s done, and I’ve got a perfect solve rate up until now, and even so, every time I make the littlest mistake my mother gets hysterical and starts yelling about how I can never do anything right and I’m my father’s daughter, and I’m determined to—”
Her voice was rising higher and higher. She was getting dizzy.
“Kelly!” Gabriel barked at her, and she stopped and looked at him.
“What?”
