Hooper, Kay - [Hagen 09] Read Free Page A

us out down in
Florida a few weeks ago?"
    "The one we never saw?" she asked.
    "That's the man."
    "He's here?"
    "Close. And he ... um, knows a bit about
counterfeit plates and the like."
    "You know, I always suspected you wore more than
one hat, pal."
    "Who, me?"
    She didn't push it. "Just tell me this friend of
yours is a good backup, that's all."
    "Rock solid."
    Raven sighed, then shrugged. "I don't like it, but
there's nothing I can do at the moment. We've had two near-leaks
since Josh and the guys vanished from the public eye. If anyone finds
out the head of Long Enterprises has disappeared, then a number
of stocks are going to go into tallspins. I have to get back and hold
down the fort."
    "You could be a drawback here anyway," Dane
reminded her. "If Kelly is behind the attempt to get to
Josh, and if he finds out who you are, our hand's tipped for sure."
    She nodded reluctantly. "I know, I know. And you're
the best man for this Job."
    "Thank you." Dane was obviously moved.
    "Unless," she added gently, "you get
distracted by stray blondes with stolen bracelets."
    "I'm a professional," he protested in a
wounded tone.
    Raven's violet eyes gleamed. "Yes, I know."
Then, as she began turning away, she added with amusement, "It's
just that I've always wondered what, exactly, your profession is."
    Dane whistled "Waltzing Matilda" under his
breath and didn't respond. Not that Raven expected a response of a
different sort. If she'd learned anything in her years as a federal
agent. It was not to ask too many questions.
    It was often safer not to know.
    * * *
    "Jennifer!" The accent was still thick after
nearly thirty years on this side of the Atlantic, but tended to pass
almost unnoticed in Louisiana, where both French and Spanish
Influence had been felt so heavily. But anyone who spent more than
ten minutes with Francesca Maria Modesta Lorenzo Chantry realized she
was Italian to her bones.
    She was a tall woman, still beautiful in her fifties,
with coal black hair and flashing black eyes, a husky voice that
could switch from madonna to shrew in an Instant, and a voluptuous
figure that never failed to turn heads. And she embodied every
volatile trait attributed to her hot-blooded ancestors.
    Jennifer had often wondered if her mother did that
deliberately, but since her own cool blond surface concealed a
number of volatile traits she could only have inherited from
Francesca, she had eventually recognized the truth. The
mercurial temperament was perfectly real; it was just that
Francesca enjoyed a dramatic nature to boot.
    "Jennifer, the bracelet?"
    Moving into the tiny living room of their small house
about two miles from the plantation, Jennifer collapsed into a
somewhat shabby chair and hauled her skirt up. Unfastening the
bracelet from her garter, she said sternly, "Mother, you've got to stop doing things like this!"
    Ignoring the command, Francesca watched curiously. "Why
did you put it there?"
    "Because it was the only way I could think of to
get it safely out of the house." It was impossible to tell her
mother the truth, Jennifer reflected.
    Her mother laughed infectiously. "So smart, my
baby! Oh, my bracelet, my bracelet!"
    Jennifer handed it over, sighing. Useless to try to
persuade her mother that what she had done was wrong –
especially since it was perfectly understandable. Taking one's
own belongings back, Francesca would declare, was not stealing. And
Jennifer knew her own arguments would lack force for the very reason
that she was half Italian herself, and she understood.
    Francesca clasped the diamond bracelet around her slim
wrist and held it out admiringly. Then, in one of her lightning
changes of mood, her sparkling eyes filled with tears. "Your
father gave this to me as a betrothal present, my baby. He put it on
me with his own hands. That horrible man has no right to It, no right
at all! He must be punished, Jennifer!"
    "I know. Mother." She brooded about that,
forgetting, for the moment, the events of tonight.