After a little while she took a break, sinking down into a velvet-covered sofa near the front of the store. Her head was starting to hurt again, and she massaged her temples until it stopped. All this gem-searching was exhausting.
Gabriel strode over to her, and he no longer had the canvas bag full of packages, she noted.
“Did you see anything you like?” he asked her. “Just say the word.”
Argh. He was offering Kelly her choice of the achingly gorgeous jewels here. And, assuming that his desire to marry her was sincere, he was also offering a lifetime of hot sex. All she had to do was completely abandon her scruples and live with the fact that he was a thief who deprived other people of their treasured and beloved possessions.
“Having scruplessucks,” she muttered under her breath.
“What’s that?”
“I said you have a gem empath working for you,” she said, standing up.
“I’m pretty sure that’s not what you just said. Ready to go to lunch?” he asked.
She let him lead her out of the store.
“You’re changing the subject, by the way,” she said as they strolled down the street. It was a gorgeous downtown, with coffee shops and restaurants and clothing stores and old-fashioned lantern-style streetlights with carved metal dragons on the top of them.I could get used to this, she thought.
Gabriel reached out and grabbed her hand, and for a minute she let him fold his hand around hers and they walked down the street as if everything was right with the world.I could live in this town, I could wake up in Gabriel’s arms every morning…
Then her phone rang, and it was the ring-tone indicating that her mother was calling. She quickly turned her cell phone off, but the spell had been broken. Gabriel reached for her hand again, but she pulled away.
No. No. Focus.
“You’re trying to distract me,” she said to him. “I recognized Marvin. I went to school with him.”
He shrugged. “I’m not saying it’s him, I’m not saying it’s not. But it’s not illegal for us to employ him unless he’s working in the capacity of a gem empath.”
“Isn’t he?”
Gabriel smiled. “That would be hard to prove. He’s also a regular gemologist. I was thinking Italian for lunch, what about you?”
“When you hired him, you may not have gotten what you think you did,” she said.
Gabriel gave her a puzzled glance, but before he could say anything, she saw him look across the street. A scowl creased his brow. There was a group of people standing there and staring at them, and they looked decidedly unfriendly. One of them, she realized, was Pandora. And they were crossing the street now and heading their way.
“Who are those people with Pandora?” she asked Gabriel.
“Pandora’s parents, Roger and Maura. Roger is a used-car salesman.”
Kelly burst into laughter. “Shut up, he isnot.”
“True story. A used-car salesman who gets sued all the time. And the fat guy in the police uniform is Quinton Teague, the head of the Tri-Valley dragon centurions. He’s like a police chief, but his title is Vigiles Principe. He’s an ice dragon, which means he automatically has it in for me. He’s got two centurions with him. So he’s expecting some kind of confrontation.”
The group crowded onto the sidewalk in front of them and blocked their path. That drew a warning growl from Gabriel. Gabriel’s eyes flashed red and his pupils went vertical, and smoke began drifting from his nostrils.
The two centurions stepped forward, and their eyes also turned red.
Pandora’s father glared at Gabriel. “How dare you parade her around in public?” he demanded, pointing at Kelly, his finger shaking with rage.
Shoppers who’d been walking by them on the sidewalk paused to stare.
“You mean my wife-to-be?” There was an edge of steel to Gabriel’s voice.
“I mean thiscriminal.” Roger gestured dramatically at Kelly. “She drugged my daughter and impersonated her!”
“Think very carefully before you bad-mouth Kelly. I hear third degree burns are quite painful. Especially when they cover your entire body.” Smoke drifted from Gabriel’s nostrils, and the air around him rippled and grew warm.
