by Day Leclaire
A hint of anger flashed across her expression. “Stop and think, Draco. I was just there for the initial lease negotiations. Why would your name be on my list? Why would I involve you?”
“Because I grade the gemstones. Because I’d be the one who would have pushed to go forward with the lease, and later the sale.”
“You’re also the one who kept his name out of all the Dante literature, who kept the lowest profile of all.”
He waved that aside. “I’m sure you had ways of uncovering my identity. Granted, the pregnancy probably came as a bit of a shock. But then, why not use that, too?”
She darted toward the carrier and snatched up Stefano. “Don’t you dare bring him into this. He’s your son! He’s an innocent.”
“But his mother isn’t, is she?” He circled her. “You could have approached me at any point once you realized you were pregnant. But I didn’t find out until you were days away from giving birth. Convenient, wouldn’t you say?”
“There was nothing convenient about my pregnancy,” she snapped.
Not that he paid the least attention. “By the time I discovered your whereabouts there was no time to think. To consider. You knew I’d rush you to the altar in order to give our son the Dante name. And you were right. Our marriage was your safety net. After all, once we bought the mines and discovered it was all an elaborate con job, you and I would be married.”
“What difference would that make?” she asked tightly.
“You know damn well my family would never go after my wife. And they sure as hell wouldn’t go after the mother of my son.”
It was the last straw. Shayla gently returned Stefano to his carrier. Then she approached, got right up in her husband’s face. “I’m going to say this once and only once. I knew nothing about the mines. I’m not interested in the mines. I never have been, nor will I ever be. I don’t swindle people, as you damn well should know, or would if you took two minutes to stop and consider the situation logically. If there’s a problem, look elsewhere for the cause.”
“Even if your grandmother is responsible, how the hell could you not at least have suspected?”
“How about you?” she shot right back. “You’ve even had experience being swindled. Or haven’t you ever heard the expression, ‘fool me once’?”
He winced. “So I should have seen the swindle coming?”
“Yes. At the very least one of you clever Dantes should have suspected my grandmother was up to something and dug in to the possibility. Which, in case it has escaped your notice, is not my job.” She drilled her finger into his chest. “It’s yours.”
“She’s your grandmother!” How the hell had she managed to shift the dynamics, putting him on the defensive?
“True, but I’m not the one doing business with her.” She unplugged her finger from his chest and aimed it at the door. “I’m done discussing this. You may leave.”
“Leave?”
“That’s right. You offered me the suite and I’m taking you up on your kind offer. Now go.”
“I’m not finished with our discussion.”
“Well, I am.” She stalked to the door, yanked it open and jerked her head toward the hallway. “You can call tomorrow once you’ve had time to cool off and smarten up. Until then, I have nothing further to say to you. And FYI, you have nothing further to say to me. At least, nothing worth listening to.”
He visibly considered his options, and she watched, barely clinging to anger over tears, while he weighed the advantage of pursuing a fruitless argument versus gathering more information to damn her with. She saw his decision a second before the tears won out.
“Fine,” he announced. “I’ll leave. But when I come back, I expect answers. Real answers.”
Draco stalked past her and she slammed the door behind him. Then he stood in the plush hallway for a full minute wondering how the hell he’d come to be on the wrong side of the door, feeling as though he’d also been on the wrong side of their argument.
More than anything he wanted to bang on the door and demand she let him in. After all, it was his family’s suite. His wife. His child. His life unraveling at the seams. But until he met with Sev and heard the entire story, what would be the point?
Swearing long and bitterly, he left, telling himself he was doing the right thing. They both needed time to cool off and he wanted to get his facts straight before he confronted her again. Of course, when he returned late that afternoon it was to discover history had repeated itself. Shayla was gone.
And so was his son.
Leticia Charleston greeted her granddaughter with a smile of satisfaction and a snap of tartness. “About time you returned home where you belong. Now make my day and tell me you’ve left that despicable Dante husband of yours.”
Shayla hid her sigh by placing Stefano’s carrier on the floor beside her chair and across from the settee where her grandmother sat. Since his belly was full and his diaper pristine, he’d fallen sound asleep. Perfect, considering the upcoming conversation would take a while. A long while.
“Actually, I’m here to discuss something with you, Grandmother.”
Leticia sniffed. “I’m not sure I like the sound of that.”
“I’m sure you’re not going to like the sound of most of what we’ll be discussing,” Shayla responded smoothly. “I asked Bess to bring in tea and snacks since we’re going to be here for the next few hours.”
Leticia took immediate umbrage. “That’s rather highhanded of you, coming into my house and ordering my housekeeper around.”
“You’re right.” Shayla offered her most sunny smile. “I only get more highhanded from here.”
Leticia folded her arms across her chest and fixed her granddaughter with her most intimidating glare. Once upon a time it would have worked like a charm. But not any longer. Any one of the Dantes’ glares could easily trump it. Especially Primo’s. Though, now that Shayla considered the matter, the one Draco turned on her the previous day had been the most impressive she’d ever seen.
Bess appeared with a loaded tray and set it in front of Shayla before scuttling out again. “Tea?” Shayla offered.
Leticia’s mouth fell open at the effrontery of being offered tea as though she were a guest in her own home. After a few seconds her mouth buttoned up tight and her eyes narrowed to calculating slits. Shayla could practically see her weighing and considering, plotting and planning. “I’ll take my tea with lemon,” she ordered at long last. “One lump of sugar instead of two. I’m cutting back.”
“I can understand.” Shayla poured and served with the ease of long practice. “You wouldn’t want to risk becoming too sweet.”
There was stony silence for an endless minute before a sound escaped her grandmother, one Shayla had never heard before. A snort of laughter. Then she tipped her head back and let it rip. When she finally gathered herself again, she took one of the dainty napkins from the tray and dabbed her eyes with it. “Oh, Shayla, you are so good for me. I’ve missed you.”
“I’ve missed you, too.” And surprisingly, she had. She considered how to ask her next question. She could use delicacy and tact, but considering it was her grandmother, decided to go for broke. “Why did you do it?”
To her credit, Leticia didn’t feign ignorance. “Oh, honey, you know why.”
Shayla leaned back against her chair and sipped her tea while she contemplated her grandmother. “I have to admit, I really don’t know. I understand you being angry with the Dantes for contributing to Charlestons going under. I can even understand you blaming the Dantes immediately after Dad’s death. But that was more than a decade ago. Why swindle them now, after all this time? You must have been able to put emotion aside and look at the facts logically after so many years?”
Leticia played with the ring on her necklace, her restless movements causing the diamond to flash and burn. “It’s a long story.”
“I’m not going anywhere.”
“No, I suppose you aren’t.”
Shayla perked up. “Dad?”
“I don’t think I ever told you this about Stefan, but he was the kindest man I’ve ever known. Gentle. Generous. Easygoing.” She sighed. “Too easygoing to have successfully run Charlestons. I loved that man to pieces, but he didn’t inherit any of my steel. You, on the other hand . . .” She tilted her head to one side and gave her granddaughter a long, hard look. “I always thought you were just like him. But you aren’t, are you? You have his kind nature, but it hides my steel. I’m right, aren’t I?”
“Yes.” Shayla lowered her voice to a stage whisper. “But do me a favor. Don’t tell Draco. I don’t think he’d take it well.”
Her grandmother actually smiled, a wide, natural smile, revealing a beauty Shayla had never noticed before. “We’ll consider it our secret.” She placed her delicate porcelain cup and saucer onto the tray with a gesture of finality. “You’re going back to him, aren’t you? You and little Stefan are leaving Atlanta and returning to San Francisco.”
“Stefano.”
Leticia rolled her eyes, but her heart wasn’t in it. “He’ll always be Stefan to me.”
Shayla let it go. “And yes, to answer your question, we’re going back. Though where I live depends on any number of factors.”
Since the information Leticia had imparted was one of those factors she nodded in understanding. “What do you think your Dantes will do to me?”
Shayla answered with complete honesty. “I don’t know. We’ll find out when we get there.”
“We?” Leticia drew back in alarm. “I’m not going to San Francisco.”
Shayla fixed her grandmother with a cool, unrelenting stare, leaning on each and every crisply spoken word. “Just so you know, this is where I show some of that spine I inherited. So, yes, you are coming with me. And when you get there, you’ll have a lot of explaining to do. You’ll manage. You always do.”
“But I don’t want to.”
Ignoring the petulant retort, Shayla stood, pulled her grandmother to her feet and hugged her. To her surprise the hug was returned, long and hard and tight. “And when you get there, you’re staying. I need my family close by.”
“No, I couldn’t,” she protested. “My home—”
“Is near me and Stefano.” Shayla pulled back and grinned at her. “Besides, think of how much it’ll annoy Draco.”
Leticia hesitated, gave it some thought, then chuckled. “I do believe you just sold me on the idea.”
Chapter Ten
“What are you doing here, Sev?” Draco demanded, scrubbing sleep from his eyes.
His cousin shoved past him into the suite. “I might ask you the same question. I’ve been to the house. You weren’t there. Your wife wasn’t there. Is Stefano with you or her?”
“I don’t much care for the way you said ‘her,’” Draco growled an objection.
“Too bad. I don’t much care for the fact that your wife swindled the Dantes out of millions of dollars.”
As though from a distance Draco heard himself roar. Saw his fist fly through the air and connect with Sev’s chin. Watched his cousin crash to the floor. He swore, long and loud, angrier with himself than with Sev. “She didn’t swindle us.”
Sev jiggled his jaw in order to determine whether or not it still worked. Once he satisfied himself on that count, he said, “Well, someone sure as hell did. You gonna hit me again if I get up?”
“That depends. Are you gonna say something I’ll have to hit you for?”
Sev climbed to his feet. “Where is she, Draco?”
“Atlanta.”
And that’s all he knew. While he’d been busy hammering on the suite door late in the afternoon after their fight, Shayla had called the house and left a painfully brief message on the answering machine. “I’m in Atlanta.” Her voice had come across cool and remote, the sugar in her Southern accent tart with vinegar. “I’ll be in touch soon.”
That was it. Soon. What the hell did soon mean? Tomorrow? Next week? Next year? When she was eight and a half months pregnant with their next child? He returned to their house in Sausalito, but it took him all of a single hour to realize he couldn’t handle living in his own home. Not without Shayla. Not with her ghost and the ghost of his son haunting every damn room.
He’d ended up throwing some clothes in a duffel and moved back into the suite. Not that this place had been much better, though a good part of a fifth of Scotch had gone a long way toward easing his pain. Or it did until Sev’s arrival in the wee hours of the morning.
Draco checked his watch and saw a blurry 10:02 a.m. The hell with it. Considering the night he’d had, ten was the wee hours of the morning for him. And he sure as hell didn’t appreciate waking to someone pounding on the door, especially when it was an unwelcome echo to the pounding in his head.
“Atlanta,” Sev repeated. “Your wife flies off to Atlanta with your son right after we discover the Charleston mines are depleted and you don’t find anything odd about it?”
“Right now the Starship Enterprise could have landed in the middle of Union Square and I wouldn’t find anything odd about it,” he snarled.
“Son of a— You’re drunk!”
“Not anymore. I’d like to be drunk. Right now, I’m somewhere between hungover and unconscious. Maybe a couple more shots and I can tip the scales in the appropriate direction.”
“Screw that. You need to sober up and deal with this.”
“Yeah? Good luck making me.”
Draco barely got the words out of his mouth before Sev grabbed him by the shirtfront and wrestled him in the direction of the master suite. Maybe if he hadn’t used up what little energy reserves he had punching Sev, he’d have put up a better fight. It wasn’t until he found himself on the tile floor of the shower with icy cold water pouring down on him that he fully woke—and awoke with a roar of fury. By the time he dragged his sorry backside out of the stall and into dry clothes, Sev had a steaming cup of coffee ready to go. He shoved it into Draco’s hands. To his utter humiliation all he could do was whimper pitifully while he poured the scalding liquid down his throat.
“Some dragon you are,” Sev sneered. “You were always the most ferocious when we were kids, the toughest of us all. There wasn’t any dare you wouldn’t take. You weren’t afraid of anything, ever. Now look at you.”
“Who says I’m afraid?” he shot back, relieved to hear the power return to his voice.
“Then why aren’t you fighting for what’s yours? Why haven’t you flown out to Atlanta and taken back what belongs to you? Or have you given up?”
“Never!”
“Then, damn it, Draco, go get her.”
Draco shot his cousin a grim look. “So she can explain about the mines, or because she’s my wife?”
Sev shrugged. “Does it really matter? One way or the other this all has to be straightened out.”
As much as Draco hated conceding the fact, his cousin was right. He didn’t waste any more time. He downed another cup of coffee, along with a half-dozen aspirin, and headed home. Once there, he arranged for one of the Dante jets to be fueled and prepared for takeoff. He didn’t bother packing an overnight bag. He didn’t intend to be gone that long. Just long enough to retrieve his bride and his son, and possibly throw some water on the Wicked Witch.
All the while the question nagged him. Was his wife complicit in the swindle, or another innocent victim of her grandmother? Had she planned all along to return to Atlanta once the Dantes discovered the Charleston mines were depleted? Or was there another explanation for her vanishing act?
Unable to help himself, he stared at the detritus of his wife’s presence in his life, t
he feminine bits and pieces she’d left behind. A bottle of perfume, its familiar fragrance lingering in the air, a fragrance that twined through his senses and elicited memories of their passionate lovemaking
He ran a finger over the jeweled hair clips clustered on the dresser, clips that attempted to confine the mass of her dark hair. Clips that he’d taken great delight in removing so he could watch that glorious length rain down her shoulders and back.
He picked up a pair of heels kicked hastily in the direction of the closet and tucked them away. No doubt she hadn’t because the baby started fussing and she’d gone running to his rescue.
Draco flinched. Stefano. Dear God, how he missed his son. Missed those deep, dark brilliant eyes that were so much like his mother’s. Missed the crazy little infant giggle he gave whenever Draco tickled his round little belly. Missed the energetic kick and squeal each time he walked into Stefano’s nursery.
Snatching a deep breath, Draco started for the steps, intent on heading to the airport, when something stopped him, turned him in the direction of his son’s room. He didn’t question, just surrendered to his gut instinct.
He opened the door, wondering what had drawn him here. Everything was in place—more or less. The hamper half-full of discarded baby clothes, the closet slightly ajar, no doubt from the last time he’d pillaged the toy boxes, looking for a new treat for his son. One of the dresser drawers gaped ever so slightly. And the crib . . . He closed his eyes. The crib, so empty and silent. He gathered himself, started to turn.
And saw it.
The wall behind the crib was no longer empty. At some point during the past twenty-four hours, the mural had been completed. A huge dragon occupied most of the formerly vacant space. Draco stared in amazement. One look and he could tell the creature was meant to be him, or a dragon version of him. Fierce, hazel-gold eyes glittered a warning, one echoed by the intimidating stance and defiant expression on the dragon’s face. It said, “I protect all who dwell here.”