Dangerous Ladies (13 page)

Brandi nodded.

“Would you like to take notes, Miss Michaels?” Glenn looked pointedly at the blank notebook in front of her.

Everyone in here already hated her, so she told them the truth. “I have a photographic memory, Mr. Silverstein, but I will take notes when necessary to verify the details.” She smiled toothily at him.

Glenn took a long, patient breath that clearly expressed his doubt. “The FBI has videos of our client in two of those locations prior to a robbery, and most important, an audiotape of him speaking to the owner of the jewel a mere hour before the robbery took place. He’s renowned for romancing females before he allegedly steals their finest pieces—”

“Their finest pieces?” Tip gave a snort.

Brandi endeavored to keep a straight face.

“And this woman, Mrs. Vandermere, says she saw him take her eight-carat diamond necklace before he left for the night. The FBI is prosecuting on circumstantial evidence and one woman’s accusations.” Glenn swayed like a cobra preparing to strike. “They might be able to make it stick . . . if our client were poor. But he’s not. He can afford the best defense, and that’s us.”

“Of course,” Brandi said.

“He’s independently wealthy and a respected businessman.” Diana smiled with reminiscent pleasure. “The fact that he’s an Italian count doesn’t hurt, either.”

The hair on the back of Brandi’s neck stood up. She drove her pen tip into her notebook. The top page tore, but she barely noticed. Wildly she looked from one attorney to another. “What’s his name?”

“Don’t you ever read the papers?” Sanjin asked.

“His name!” Brandi rapped her knuckles on the table.

Her fierce demand took even Glenn aback. “It’s Bartolini,” he said. “Roberto Bartolini.”

“S
urely you saw Mr. Bartolini.” Mrs. Pelikan observed Brandi’s horrified expression from sharp brown eyes. “He was at Mr. McGrath’s party.”

“She left early. She’d already filed us away in her photographic memory.” Sanjin’s voice held a wealth of spite.

The door opened. Mrs. Pelikan’s secretary stepped inside and in a breathless voice announced, “He’s here.”

Before Brandi could collect her composure or lift her jaw off the floor, Roberto strode in.

He looked delicious even with his clothes on.

No wonder he hadn’t asked her last name. She’d told him where she worked. Whom she worked for.

The silky black hair she had so loved to run her fingers through had been trimmed into a businesslike cut.

He knew she’d be on his case. He knew he’d meet her again.

His dark gaze swept the room, lingered on Diana. . . .

She had to recuse herself.

Oh, God. Oh, no.
She had to recuse herself . . . and she had to tell them why.

He looked at Mrs. Pelikan. Glenn.

Brandi wanted to fall off her chair and hide under the table.

Dear God.
She was going to be fired from her first job. Her father would snort about how useless she was and how she would never pay him back for college. And . . . and maybe she wouldn’t, because she had committed the cardinal sin: She’d had an affair with a client.

Distantly she realized introductions were being performed.

“Mr. Bartolini, I think you’ve met everyone here,” Mrs. Pelikan was saying. “Glenn, Sanjin, Diana, Tip . . .”

They were standing up as their names were called.

Roberto shook hands with each one.

“I don’t think you met Brandi Michaels?” Mrs. Pelikan asked.

“Miss Michaels.” The smile he offered her was polite, admiring, and basically that of a man who was meeting an attractive woman for the first time. “How good to meet you.”

She was insulted. After their weekend together, he dared pretend he didn’t know her?

No, wait.
She was pleased, because this gave her a moment to think what she should do. Recuse herself, obviously. At Vanderbilt she’d taken Ethics and the Law. It had to be done.

Someone poked her in the back. Glenn. He glared and indicated she should stand.

She scrambled to her feet. “Mr. Bartolini, I look forward to working with you.”

She didn’t know where that had come from. She wasn’t going to work with him. She was going to recuse herself. The fact that it would be unpleasant and grossly embarrassing and the end of her career and she’d have to work at McDonald’s for the rest of her life serving Happy Meals made no difference.

Interesting that he was offering her the choice, keeping their relationship a secret. Was he ashamed of her?

No, it wasn’t that. He hadn’t known she was a lawyer at his firm until she told him. She remembered how he’d scrutinized her—as if he weren’t sure what to think.

Someone poked her in the back again.

Glenn. Everyone was seated now.

Roberto sat at the head of the table with Mrs. Pelikan, listening as she explained their defense plan.

Brandi sat, too, and tried to think what to do. Regardless of whether Roberto gave her the chance to avoid telling the truth, she had to. If their relationship ever became known, it would jeopardize his defense. But she didn’t have to blurt it out here. Not with Sanjin shooting her the evil eye. After the meeting was over, she would follow Mrs. Pelikan into her office—

Sanjin’s voice jerked her attention back to the meeting. “I say we send Brandi. She needs to meet the judges in the city, anyway, and her inexperience won’t matter, because what can go wrong with this sort of meeting?”

She glanced around. In her turmoil she’d missed something very important. “I’d be glad to do whatever needs to be done.” An innocuous statement.

“Fine,” Mrs. Pelikan said. “Tip, you and Diana see what else you can dig out of your sources at the FBI. Sanjin, the research—it’s all yours.”

Sanjin’s face fell.
That
served the little weasel right.

“Glenn, you’re with me. Brandi, you go with Mr. Bartolini to meet Judge Knight. It should be simple enough. He’s a pushover for a pretty face.” Mrs. Pelikan stood up and nodded briskly.

The whole team stood up and nodded briskly.

Brandi imitated them, but . . . she had to go with Roberto to meet a judge? How had that happened?

That’s right.
She’d been distracted by the plan for the ethical and required murder of her own career before it had even had the chance to draw breath.

Everyone seemed to be waiting for her to lead the way out, so she did, with Roberto close on her heels. The team split for their offices.

Brandi started after Mrs. Pelikan.

Roberto caught her arm. “Where are you going?”

“To tell her—”

“You can do that later. Nothing will be harmed if you go with me to a meeting with Judge Knight. You heard Mrs. Pelikan. He likes a pretty face, and he’s not disposed to like me at all, so you’ll be my protection.”

She looked down at his hand. The last time that hand had been on her, she’d been kissing him good-bye, and that kiss had ended on the floor before the fire in the hotel bedroom. She looked up at him. The last time she’d been this close, she’d buried her nose in his chest and smelled the clean, fresh scent of him as if it were an aphrodisiac.

Now she could smell the scent of him again, and she didn’t know whether to run into his arms or away.

But he seemed oblivious to her flight-or-fight reaction. He let her go and in a sensible tone asked, “Where’s your coat?”

“In my cubicle.”

“You’ll need it. It’s cold out there.”

“Ya think?” That was sarcastic. But she hadn’t insisted she go to Mrs. Pelikan. That would have been the right thing to do. Yet she was scared, and Roberto was right. Wasn’t he? It wouldn’t do any harm to go with him to charm a judge.

She let him help her on with her coat. She put on her gloves in the elevator. She didn’t look at him. Didn’t look at the people who got on with them. Didn’t even glare at the woman who did a double take and checked him out.

But she did think it would be fortunate if the elevator dropped all forty stories to the ground and ended Brandi’s cowardice and indecision—and while it was at it, finished off that slut who winked at him.

Roberto’s limousine stood illegally parked at the curb, and Newby stepped out. He doffed his hat to her and opened the door.

A witness. Newby was a witness that she and Roberto had had an affair. The concierge at Roberto’s hotel was another witness. So was anybody who’d seen her walk into the hotel. Oh, and Jerry, the bodyguard at Uncle Charles’s, had seen the car she had slid into.
Putting her hand to her face, she imagined their depositions in the case disbarring her.

“It’s okay.” Roberto took her arm and herded her toward the car. “You’re making it too complicated.”

“I don’t think I am.”

He shoved her inside the car and followed her in.

“I think it’s very clear-cut. I am just too much of a coward—”

He grabbed her shoulders and spun her to face him. “You are not a coward. Of all the things I learned about you this weekend, that is the number one truth. Please do me the favor of not disparaging yourself in such a manner again.”

She’d forgotten. During their weekend of overwhelming, completely fabulous monkey sex, she’d found herself liking Roberto. Rallying her defenses, she said, “Well. Thank you. But you’re a jewel thief, so how good a judge of character can you be?”

“First—I am not a jewel thief until a jury convicts me.”

Which, as his lawyer, she knew.

“Second, a jewel thief must be a very good judge of character.” He leaned across her.

She shrank back from his warmth, his scent, the pressure of his body against hers.

Taking her seat belt, he buckled it for her. “It’s almost more important than being able to hold myself by my fingertips on a ledge five stories over the street.”

The car started, and she stared at him in horror and fascination. “Hold yourself by your fingertips on a ledge five stories over the street? You could be killed!” She flinched at the idea of this beautiful man plummeting toward the pavement. . . .

Unbidden, a memory popped into her head . . . Roberto, unbuttoning his shirt, revealing that rippling, muscled chest . . . No
wonder
he had such a buff body. Hanging by his fingertips required conditioning, practice. . . . “No. Wait.” Remembering that, and what followed, was the last thing she should do. “You just admitted to being a jewel thief. Don’t ever say that to anyone else.
Ever.
”

“What have I done, sweet Brandi, to make you think I am foolish?” His accent was rich and full in a way she had never heard it . . . except when they made love. Then each word he murmured in her ear was opulent with the tones of Italy, and when his body moved on hers, she could forget Chicago, the cold, her furniture, her ditz of a mother, her bastard of a father, and that son of a bitch who had spent their engagement screwing another woman. This weekend had been the best of her life . . . and this Monday was the worst day
ever.

“I don’t think you’re foolish.” That was the last thing she thought about him. “I think you’re immoral. Why didn’t you tell me who you were?”

“What did you think I did for a living?”

“I don’t know. You’re an Italian count!”

His mouth twisted wryly. “
Count
doesn’t pay as well as it used to.”

“No, I suppose it doesn’t come with a salary.” What
had
she been thinking?

“You knew my name. You didn’t seem to know what I was accused of, but I saw no reason why that would matter to us.”

Oh, fine.
He was just like Alan. He was shifting the blame to her.

He continued, “Not until you were speaking to your mother and mentioned going to work for Charles McGrath did I realize we had committed a legal impropriety.”

“Oh.” He wasn’t blaming her. He wasn’t blaming either one of them. How refreshing. “Then it was too late.”

“Exactly.”

“Wait. That was Saturday morning.” She remembered the conversation with Tiffany very well, for immediately afterward he’d come to her and proposed they stay together, and she’d melted all over him like hot fudge on ice cream.

He smiled at her, his dark eyes alive with amusement, his lips quirked knowingly, and waited for her to come to the same conclusion he had.

“Okay, so the damage was done,” she admitted begrudgingly. “Couldn’t you have told me?”

“And have you call Charles McGrath and tell him you had to quit? I think not. Besides”—he leaned forward and whispered—“I wanted to sleep with you.”

He sounded just like he did when they made love.
Oh, no.
She looked down at her lap as she knit her gloved fingers together. She needed to concentrate. She could
not
jump his bones. “Look. I didn’t have the nerve to tell Mrs. Pelikan the truth right away”—her voice trembled and she steadied it—“but I won’t jeopardize this case. When we get back, I will do what’s right and recuse myself and . . . and take the consequences.”