by Diana Palmer
Gaby had been transported to the hospital, her grandfather to jail. Gaby’s grandmother had filed for divorce the very next day, leaving her immoral husband penniless and furious at his changed circumstances. Sadly, Gaby’s assailant was a foreign diplomat, and he used his diplomatic immunity to escape any charges. His three friends vanished like smoke. Gaby’s grandmother had been furious, but her attorney had been forced to relinquish the criminal charges against the diplomat. Gaby’s grandfather, however, had been arrested and tried and convicted. Thanks to a friend, an influential and rather shady judge, his sentence had been lessened and the penalty also reduced. Now, a mutual acquaintance had told Madame that Charles Dupont, who’d lost his law license, was planning to demand a retrial due to new evidence so that he could get his license reinstated. What new evidence he had, the acquaintance didn’t know. It was enough to panic Gaby’s grandmother, nevertheless.
Her grandfather’s nephew, Robert Mercer, a business colleague, had also been left out in the cold financially as a consequence of his uncle’s arrest. He was claiming that property given to Gaby in a will from their mutual great-aunt was actually his and he was planning legal action. The property was Gaby’s only real means of support. Well, her grandmother would never have let her starve, of course, but the property was rented to a large corporation which established an agricultural operation on it, and the profits were enormous. Gaby was wealthy in her own right because of that inheritance.
So the two of them, Gaby’s grandfather and her cousin, posed a danger to Gaby and her grandmother. In fact, Madame Dupont had hired a new bodyguard, a former mercenary named Tanner Everett, just for Gaby. She was that afraid for her. Gaby had insisted that her bodyguard be invisible, especially when she went to see the attorney. She had more trouble than she could handle already. He agreed, but he had that amused smirk that made her want to hit him.
She’d never really liked her grandfather, whose obsession with material things had left her nauseated. Her grandmother, Melissandra Lafitte Dupont came from titled French aristocrats, although she’d lived in Chicago since she was a girl. She owned a palatial estate in France where she always went for the grape harvest, because Dupont wines from her winery sold all over the world. When Gaby’s adventurous parents, Jean Dupont and Nicole Dupont, had died while on an archaeological dig in Africa, Gaby had come to live with her grandparents at the age of thirteen. She’d always loved her grandmother. But her grandfather had been a different story. She had more to fear from him now. He was asking for a retrial, charging that the evidence was sketchy at best, and that some of it had been manufactured to convict him. He had an attorney, a small time one who was just starting out in the business and, therefore, less expensive. But gossip was that he was going to ask Nicolas Chandler’s firm to represent him once more. Since Chandler was the best criminal attorney in the city, Gaby had a great deal to lose if he took the case. But he wasn’t, from reputation, the sort of man who could be approached about a potential client. He was incorruptible, arrogant, and afraid of nothing on earth. So Gaby was going to try a soft approach. Perhaps he could be reasoned with by the victim of a client he might be considering.
* * *
GABY WAITED OUTSIDE the apartment after she rang the bell. She hoped that she could get Mr. Chandler to speak to her about his firm’s involvement in her grandfather’s case. She wanted a private chat, hence her trip to his apartment rather than to his office. It took a long time before the door finally opened.
A girl of about fifteen with spiky, purple dyed hair and piercings everywhere, dressed in a short skirt and slinky blouse with overdone mascara and popping bubble gum just stared at her.
“Well, what do you want?” the girl asked insolently. She gave Gaby’s gray pantsuit with its pink camisole and her unmade-up face in its frame of upswept thick, red-highlighted brown hair an insulting scrutiny.
Gaby’s pale blue eyes twinkled. “My goodness, I thought an attorney lived here,” she said. “Is it an agency? You know, for call girls...?” She added a speaking glance of her own at the girl’s attire.
The younger woman’s eyes almost popped.
“Who’s at the door, Jackie?” a deep, curt voice called.
“I have no idea!” the girl said, dripping sarcasm. “Maybe she’s selling magazines or something.”
“Not likely. I don’t read those sorts of magazines,” Gaby returned pleasantly.
The girl’s indrawn breath was interrupted by the arrival of a big, husky man. He looked like a wrestler. He had wavy black hair with a few threads of silver, in a leonine face with deep-set dark eyes and a sexy, chiseled mouth. He was wearing slacks and a designer shirt in a shade of beige that emphasized his olive complexion.
“You’re late,” he said abruptly, and looked at his watch. “I specifically told the agency no later than one p.m.” He glared at her. “Do you want this job or not?”
She was lost for words. She’d come to ask him a delicate question and he was apparently offering her a job. Her heart jumped at the unexpected opportunity.
“I thought it was for one thirty,” she improvised.
“One,” he returned curtly.
She almost gasped. “You are a very rude man,” she said.
His eyebrows arched. “And you are one step away from the unemployment line,” he shot back. “I need someone to organize my library and catalog my books again.” He gave the young girl an angry, speaking glance as he spoke.
“I just knocked over a bookcase or two,” the girl muttered.
“On purpose and with help.” He took a breath. “Well?” he shot at Gaby. “Can you do it?”
Her degree was in anthropology, but probably it wouldn’t take a scientist to rearrange books. “Of course I can,” she said confidently. “I minored in library science.” It wasn’t quite the truth, but she didn’t expect that he’d go that deep with a background check.
He gave her a brief scrutiny, obviously saw nothing that interested him, and opened the door wider. “Do you have references?”
“Pages of them,” she replied, and offered up a silent prayer of thanks that she actually did have them in her purse, because she’d just come from an interview for a job she didn’t get at a local museum. She had a nice income from the legacy her great aunt had left her, the one Robert Mercer, her cousin, was trying to get away from her with a proposed challenge to the will. She wanted to do something useful with her life, not sit in a luxury apartment all day and do nothing. That was a one-way ticket to insanity.
“Don’t hire her, Uncle Jake,” the wild girl said angrily. “She’s got a mean mouth!”
“Look who’s talking,” Gaby returned. “And at least I’m not in danger of septic infection from dozens of piercing and that colorful tattoo down your arm. How do you blow your nose with that ring in it?” she added. “And how in the world do you eat soup...?”
“If you say one more word...!” the girl threatened.
“Jackie, go back to your room,” the man said curtly. “Now.” He never raised his voice, but the raw power in it could have backed down a mob.
Gaby would have known that he was an attorney just by the way he used his voice. He headed a prestigious law firm in Chicago, Chandler, Morse and Souvillant, and he had a national reputation as a trial lawyer, famous for celebrity cases.
“Mr. Chandler?” she asked politely.
He nodded. “And you are...?”
“Gaby Dupont,” she said with a polite smile. The name would mean nothing to him. There were dozens of people with her surname, no need to make up something that might come back to haunt her later.
He cocked his head. “And why do you want this job?”
“I’m starving?” she replied hopefully.
He didn’t smile, but his eyes had a faint twinkle. “Come in.”
He led the way back to his library. The apartment was huge, done in tasteful
dark Mediterranean furniture and cream and brown curtains and carpets. The library had a burgundy Persian rug, an oak desk, and a library that covered all three walls from floor to ceiling. The floor was full of stacked books, boxes and cartons of them.
“I’ve just moved in,” he said, indicating the disorder. “I don’t have the time or the patience to catalog and place all that, and the assistant I hired decided to go back to school and study architecture,” he added gruffly.
“Hence, the job opening,” she mused.
“Exactly. Put the books on the floor and sit down.” He’d indicated the seat in front of the desk. Impressive. Burgundy leather and hand-tooled wood. Expensive. She did as he asked and sat down.
“Your qualifications?” he asked.
She handed him a sheet of paper. It outlined her college degree and her hobbies.
He looked up at her curiously. “Are you married?”
“I am not.”
“Engaged? Involved? Living with someone?”
Her eyes almost popped. “Mr. Chandler, I hardly think any of that is your business. This is a job interview, not an interrogation.”
He gave her a long-suffering look. “I want to know if you have entanglements that will interfere with the work you do here,” he returned. “I also need references.”
“Oh. Sorry. I forgot.” She handed him another sheet of paper. “And no, I’m not involved with anyone. At the moment.” She smiled sweetly.
He ignored the smile and looked over the sheet. His eyebrows arched as he glanced at her. “A Roman Catholic Cardinal, a police lieutenant, two nurses, the owner of a coffee shop and a Texas Ranger?” he asked incredulously.
“My grandmother is from Jacobsville, Texas,” she explained. “The Texas Ranger, Colter Banks, is married to my third cousin.”
“And these others?”
“People who know me locally.” She smiled demurely. “The police officers want to date me. I know them from the coffee shop. The owner...”
“Wants to date you, too,” he guessed. He stared at her as if he had no idea on earth why any male would want to date her. The look was fairly insulting.
“I have hidden qualities,” she mused, trying not to laugh.
“Apparently,” he said curtly. His eyes went back to the sheet. “A Cardinal?” He glowered at her. “And please don’t tell me that he wants to date you.”
“Of course not. He’s a friend of my grandmother.”
He drew in a breath. Her comments about men who wanted to date her disturbed him. He studied her in silence. He was extremely wealthy, not only from the work he did but from an inheritance left to him by a late uncle.
“You don’t want the job because I’m single?” he asked bluntly.
Now her eyebrows lifted almost to her hairline. “Mr...” She glanced at the paper in her hand. “Mr. Chandler,” she continued, “I hardly think my taste would run to a man in his forties!”
His dark eyes almost exploded with anger. “I am not in my forties!”
“Oh, dear, do excuse me,” she said at once. She had to contain a smile. “Honestly, you look very much younger than a man in his fifties!”
His lips made a thin line.
The smile escaped and her pale blue eyes twinkled.
He wadded up a piece of paper and threw it at her.
She just grinned.
He sat back in his chair. “Well, you can obviously deal with Jackie, which is a plus. She drives me crazy. Her mother’s in Europe with her latest boyfriend and unlikely to return until her daughter’s grown or married or in prison.”
She laughed.
He shook his head. “And you have qualifications.” His dark eyes narrowed. “You aren’t connected with any foreign spy service?”
“Not unless I joined in my sleep,” she assured him. “Honestly, I’m just a plain working girl.”
“Working at what?” he returned with a cold smile. “You don’t cite any previous job experience. How old are you?”
“Twenty-four.” She thought fast. “I worked for my grandmother as a social secretary after I got out of college.”
“You don’t list her on your sheet of references.”
“Why would I list a relative?” she asked.
“You did list a relative. The Texas Ranger.”
“Oh. Him.” She sighed. “Well, a man who’s married to a distant relation is less likely to lie for you than a close blood relative, right?”
He laughed. “I give up. All right. We’ll try it for a couple of weeks and see how you work out. You can start by cataloging the library. Can you take dictation, answer the phone, make appointments...?”
“Well, yes,” she began, hesitantly.
“We’ll add all that into the job description, then. You can be my private administrative assistant. It’s getting harder to avoid bringing work home as the business expands, and I do need someone in that capacity. Can you handle it?”
“Of course,” she said without hesitation. She’d done all that for Grandmére, after all, without pay.
He mentioned a figure that was a little surprising. It was a great deal more than most women could expect for the services he’d outlined, and her face betrayed her.
“You’ll be living in. Did I forget to mention that?”
Oh, dear. Complications. However, it would be convenient. Her grandfather wouldn’t know where to find her. Neither would the cousin who kept trying to force her to give up a fortune in property that he swore rightfully belonged to him-despite the concrete will that left it to Gaby. The cousin, Robert Mercer, was disturbed. Very disturbed, to her mind, but Gaby had heard that he intimidated his mother to the point that she avoided even speaking to him. Probably, she reasoned, the Outfit ties made his mother nervous as well.
“Living in will be fine,” she said after a minute. “Do I have to room with the Goth Girl?” she added with raised eyebrows.
He chuckled. “No. You’ll have your own room. And please don’t call her that to her face,” he added. “I have too many breakables in here that I’m fond of.”
“I’ll restrain myself,” she promised.
He got up. “Well, it will be interesting, if nothing more,” he said. “You’ll start Monday, how’s that?”
Today was Friday. That gave her the weekend to organize things. Since she owned her apartment, she had no worries about the rent going unpaid. “I’ll be here first thing Monday morning,” she promised.
“I leave the apartment at eight in the morning to get to the office on time. You’d better be here before then. Or you might not be able to get in,” he added with pursed lips.
She took his meaning. The Goth Girl would probably lock her out once she knew Gaby was going to work here. She chuckled. “Okay. I’ll be here before eight.”
“Do you have other relatives besides your grandmother?” he asked curiously.
Her face closed up. “No,” she said, without elaborating.
That expression made him curious. But there would be plenty of time later to dig deeper, if he wanted to. He needed an employee. Her private life was no concern of his. “Monday, then. Good day.”
He let her out of the apartment and closed the door.
She was fumbling in her purse to put away the sheets of paper he’d returned to her when she heard an absolute feminine wail come through the door of the apartment she’d just left.
“She’s going to work here? No!”
Gaby smiled to herself all the way to the elevator.
* * *
HER BODYGUARD WAS waiting downstairs beside a black limousine. It was a sedan, not the stretch limo he usually drove for her grandmother. Gaby had wanted to be discreet, although the last thing she’d come here for was a job. She lived near her grandmother, who was one of the wealthiest women in the country and Gaby was her only heir. The jo
b was an opportunity, though, and she was going to take it.
“How’d it go?” Tanner Everett asked with a smile.
She looked up, trying not to stare at the black eye patch over the blue eye that had been damaged beyond repair in some foreign country while he was plying his former trade as a mercenary.
“I got hired.”
His black eyebrows arched. “Hired?”
“Well, he was expecting someone to interview as a personal administrative assistant. I let him think I was the person. And I got cold feet about asking him questions when the Goth Girl answered the door.”
He put her inside the sedan and got in under the wheel. “The Goth Girl?”
“You had to be there.” She laughed and shook her head as he cranked the car and pulled cautiously out into traffic. “It seems that Mr. Chandler has a niece with enough tattoos and piercings to put her in line for a job making license plates in some big federal facility.”
It took a minute for that to penetrate, and he roared. “She sounds like a handful.”
“She is. I’m going to be Public Enemy Number One.” She grinned. “I love the sound of that. I’ve led such a quiet, uneventful life with Grandmére,” she added.
“You didn’t get to talk to him about your grandfather, I gather.”
“No. He isn’t the sort of man you approach directly with such questions. I almost made a fatal faux pas,” she told him. She leaned back against the seat. “I hope my grandmother isn’t going to be mad because of what I did. It was an opportunity I didn’t feel I could overlook. If I get to know him, I can find out all sorts of things without having to beg for information.”
“That way lies disaster,” he said quietly, glancing at her in the rearview mirror. “Lies catch up with you.”
“This is just a little white lie,” she argued with a smile. “And nobody’s going to get hurt. Honest.”
“If you say so.”
“I do.”
* * *
HER GRANDMOTHER, SMALL and wizening and fierce for all her size gave Gaby a severe stare when she was told about the position. She gave Everett one, too, but it just bounced off him.