LITMIR.BIZ

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most prestigious family businesses in the East. Westlake Jewelers.

      When Cade stepped back into the outer office, his ears were still ringing and his nerves were shot. Those were the usual results of a conversation with his sister. But since he’d wangled what he wanted, he tried to take things in stride.

      The shock of walking into a clean, ordered room and seeing Bailey efficiently rattling the keyboard on the computer went a long way toward brightening his mood.

      “You’re a goddess.” He grabbed her hand, kissed it lavishly. “A worker of miracles.”

      “This place was filthy. Disgusting.”

      “Yeah, it probably was.”

      Her brows lowered. “There was food molding in the file cabinets.”

      “I don’t doubt it. You know how to work a computer.”

      She frowned at the screen. “Apparently. It was like making the coffee this morning. No thought.”

      “If you know how to work it, you know how to turn it off. Let’s go downtown. I’ll buy you an ice cream cone.”

      “I’ve just gotten started.”

      “It can wait.” He reached down to flick the switch, and she slapped his hand away.

      “No. I haven’t saved it.” Muttering under her breath, she hit a series of keys with such panache, his heart swelled in admiration. “I’ll need several more hours to put things in order around here.”

      “We’ll come back. We’ve got a couple hours to kick around, then we’ve got some serious work to do.”

      “What kind of work?” she demanded as he hauled her to her feet.

      “I’ve got you access to a refractometer.” He pulled her out the door. “What kind of ice cream do you want?”

      Chapter 5

      “Your brother-in-law owns Westlake Jewelers?”

      “Not personally. It’s a family thing.”

      “A family thing.” Bailey’s head was still spinning. Somehow she’d gone from cleaning molded sandwiches out of filing cabinets to eating strawberry ice cream on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial. That was confusing enough, but the way Cade had whipped through traffic, zipping around circles and through yellow lights, had left her dizzy and disoriented.

      “Yep.” He attacked his two scoops of rocky road. Since she’d stated no preference, he’d gotten her strawberry. He considered it a girl flavor. “They have branches all over the country, but the flagship store’s here. Muffy met Ronald at a charity tennis tournament when she beaned him with a lob. Very romantic.”

      “I see.” Or she was trying to. “And he agreed to let us use the equipment?”

      “Muffy agreed. Ronald goes along with whatever Muffy wants.”

      Bailey licked her dripping cone, watched the tourists—the families, the children—clamber up and down the steps. “I thought she was angry with you.”

      “I talked her out of it. Well, I bribed her. Camilla also takes ballet. There’s a recital next month. So I’ll go watch Camilla twirl around in a tutu, which, believe me, is not a pretty sight.”

      Bailey choked back a chuckle. “You’re so mean.”

      “Hey, I’ve seen Camilla in a tutu, you haven’t. Take my word, I’m being generous.” He liked seeing her smile, just strolling along with him eating strawberry ice cream and smiling. “Then there’s Chip. That’s Muffy’s other mutant. He plays the piccolo.”

      “I’m sure you’re making this up.”

      “I couldn’t make it up, my imagination has limits. In a couple of weeks I have to sit front and center and listen to Chip and his piccolo at a band concert.” He shuddered. “I’m buying earplugs. Let’s sit down.”

      They settled on the smooth steps beneath the wise and melancholy president. There was a faint breeze that helped stir the close summer air. But it could do little about the moist heat that bounced, hard as damp bricks, up from the sidewalks. Bailey could see waves of it shimmer, like desert mirages, in the air.

      There was something oddly familiar about all of it, the crowds of people passing, pushing strollers, clicking cameras, the mix of voices and accents, the smells of sweat, humanity and exhaust, flowers blooming in their plots, vendors hawking their wares.

      “I must have been here before,” she murmured. “But it’s just out of sync. Like someone else’s dream.”

      “It’s going to come back to you.” He tucked a stray strand of hair behind her ear. “Pieces already are. You know how to make coffee, use a computer, and you can organize an office.”

      “Maybe I’m a secretary.”

      He didn’t think so. The way she rattled off information on diamonds the evening before had given him a different idea. But he wanted to weigh it awhile before sharing it. “If you are, I’ll double your salary if you work for me.” Keeping it light, he rose and offered her a hand. “We’ve got some shopping to do.”

      “We do?”

      “You need reading glasses. Let’s hit the stores.”

      It was another experience, the sprawling shopping center packed with people looking for bargains. The holiday sale was in full swing. Despite the heat, winter coats were displayed and discounted twenty percent, and fall fashions crowded out the picked over remains of summer wear.

      Cade deposited her at a store that promised glasses within an hour and filled out the necessary forms himself while she browsed the walls of frames available.

      There was a quick, warm glow that spread inside him when he listed her name as Bailey Parris and wrote his own address. It looked right to him, felt right. And when she was led into the back for the exam—free with the purchase of frames—he gave her a kiss on the cheek.

      In less than two hours, she was back in his car, examining her pretty little wire-framed glasses, and the contents of a loaded shopping bag.

      “How did you have time to buy all of this?” With a purely feminine flutter, she smoothed a hand over the smooth leather of a bone shoulder-strap envelope bag.

      “It’s all a matter of stategy and planning, knowing what you want and not being distracted.”

      Bailey peeked in a bag from a lingerie store and saw rich black silk. Gingerly she pulled the material out. There wasn’t a great deal of it, she mused.

      “You’ve got to sleep in something,” Cade told her. “It was on sale. They were practically giving it away.”

      She might not have known who she was, but she was pretty sure she knew sleepwear from seduce-me wear. She tucked the silk back in the bag. Digging deeper, she discovered a bag of crystals. “Oh, they’re lovely.”

      “They had one of those nature stores. So I picked up some rocks.” He braked at a stop sign and shifted so that he could watch her. “Picked out a few that appealed to me. The smooth ones are… What do you call it?”

      “Tumbling stones,” she murmured, stroking them gently with a fingertip. “Carnelian, citrine, sodalite, jasper.” Flushed with pleasure, she unwrapped tissue. “Tourmaline, watermelon tourmaline—see the pinks and the greens?—and this is a lovely column of fluorite. It’s one of my favorites. I…” She trailed off, pressed a hand to her temple.

      He reached in himself, took out a stone at random. “What’s this?”

      “Alexandrite. It’s a chrysoberyl, a transparent stone. Its color changes with the light. See it’s blue-green now, in daylight, but in incandescent light it would be mauve or violet.” She swallowed hard because the knowledge was there, just there in her mind.

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