Midnight in Ruby Bayou Read Free

up one of the thirteen segments of the Montegeau necklace. Although barely polished, the arc of gold was both elegant and seemingly casual, almost randomly curved.
    The curve was neither casual nor random, but the result of a design process that was as exacting as it was rewarding. That was why Faith’s fingers and back ached, yet she wanted to smile in spite of the early winter darkness. Even with all the pressure of an impossibly short deadline—barely two weeks for a process that should have taken three months—the necklace was coming together beautifully. Her old friend Mel would have a unique, extraordinary piece of jewelry to wear when she married Jeff Montegeau on Valentine’s Day.
    And Faith would have a showstopper for the Savannah jewelry exposition the weekend before the wedding. She very much wanted that. Though the expo only lasted a few days, it was one of the most important modern jewelry shows in the nation. She needed to make a stir. The Montegeau necklace would certainly do that.
    At least it would if she found a way to insure the necklace between now and four days from now, when she flew to Savannah. Her other pieces were insured, because she had had plenty of time to plan for the expo. There just hadn’t been time to leave the rubies with a qualified appraiser and still create a necklace.
    Frowning over the insurance problem, she picked up the segment of gold and bent over the buffer again. Beyond the windows of her shop/studio, ice-tipped rain swirled across Pioneer Square on the wind. The streetlights sent out glistening circles that did little to brighten the winter evening.
    Eventually the rattle of sleet on the windows increased until she could hear it above the whirring of the buffing wheel. With a guilty start she straightened and looked at her watch. Almost five-thirty. She was supposed to be at the Donovan condo with three of her five siblings, planning a surprise party for their parents’ fortieth anniversary. Or trying to plan one. Archer and his wife, Hannah, Kyle and his wife, Lianne, and Honor and her husband, Jake, had been at it for several days already, but they hadn’t even been able to agree on a site.
    Of course, they all enjoyed the noise and laughter of family dinners at the Donovan condo, where every Donovan had a full-time or part-time residence. Keeping track of Donovan International’s global enterprises meant that someone in the family was gone most of the time. At the moment, her twin brothers, Justin and Lawe, were in Africa, Hannah and Archer had just gotten back from a pearl auction in Tokyo, and Jake and Honor lived outside of Seattle.
    The fun of having most of the family under one roof might have had something to do with the fact that this was the third dinnertime “summit meeting” in a row.
    And here she was, still wearing old jeans and covered with fine, mud-brown grit when she should have been cleaned up and helping to fix dinner for seven. Ten if you counted the babies.
    She would get stuck with the dishes for sure.
    With a sigh, she yanked off her dust mask and goggles. Her short blond hair stuck up every which way. Running gritty fingers through it probably didn’t help, but the nearest comb was waiting for her in her suite at the condo. The nearest bath, too. Personally, she thought the tripoli streaks on her jeans, forearms, and hands added an interesting, finger-painted effect to her entire lack of ensemble, but she knew Kyle would tease her mercilessly about reviving the Seattle Grunge look.
    Well, tonight her siblings would just have to take her as she was, dusted by polishing grit and hollow-eyed from too many late nights at work. If she hadn’t gambled and begun casting the thirteen segments of the necklace without final approval of the sketch, she never would have made the deadline. But luckily the patriarch, Davis Montegeau, had approved the sketch without any changes.
    Thank God. Davis was an indulgent future