Nobody's Angel Read Free Page B

senses.
    She saw the mockery in the depths of those dark eyes. “I have nothing of Tony's, wanted nothing. The court kept his papers.”
    “Not the ones I want.” Adrian studied her, studied the pale skin with only the merest of cosmetics to dress it, the gray eyes staring at him with widened fear and bone-deep wariness. He contemplated the best method of pushing her buttons until he got what he needed without resorting to violence.
    She wasn't what he expected. She was taller than he'd thought, and wore her hair loose like a girl's, straight and slightly turned under where it brushed her shoulders. She had skin as smooth and translucent as the fabulous porcelain she protected in her glass cases. Porcelain should be touched to be admired. He wanted to stroke her in the same way he'd stroke that clair-de-lune piece behind her. Both were magnificent.
    He jerked his mind back from the impossible. She hadn't responded to him, but she couldn't have lived with a lawyer like Tony without learning the lesson of keeping silent. He hadn't expected her to be cooperative. He hadn't expected her to be this fragile either. She looked as if she'd fracture at the slightest touch. He had the pieces of enough shattered lives in his hands.
    “You sent Headley the pages copied from the bankbook and the canceled checks,” he reminded her. “You have to know where the rest of them are.”
    “If I'd known that, I would have turned them over to the court and watched Tony fry in hell.” Her dry tone matched his own, with an undercurrent of bitterness.
    “You
had
them,” he insisted, “or you couldn't have copied them to send to a reporter. Tony's dead now. You don't need to protect him or anyone else. I just want to clear what remains of my name, and try to turn my life around.”
    She gifted him with a look of scorn that should have scorched the shirt off his back. “You think those books will
clear
your name? I was there. You filed the wills. You filed the trusts. It was your name on the documents, on the bank accounts, on the fax transfers. I'll admit, I never believed Tony was innocent, but he was smart enough not to get caught.”
    “Except by his wife. Where did you find those papers?” he demanded. He was too angry to argue her accusations. He'd argued them four years ago, without success, because he'd done every damned thing she'd just accused him of. What he couldn't prove, however, was his arrogant ignorance.
    Unbelievably, in the face of his fury, the delicate figurine of a woman on the other side of the counter relaxed and smiled enigmatically. Taking a seat on the high stool of her work counter, she pulled out a stack of invoices. “I found them in the same place I found the canceled checks written to Tony's girlfriend. At the time, I was more interested in Sandra than the accounting records. The records were just icing on the cake when Headley figured out what they meant.”
    He didn't believe this. Couldn't. She had to be lying, just as she'd lied at the trial. “Who are you protecting?” he growled irritably, trying to regain his cool but not succeeding. The ice queen he remembered from the courtroom was rapidly replacing the open child he'd encountered when he entered the shop minutes ago.
    “I'm not protecting anyone,” she replied with much more composure than he possessed right now. “All I had were those copies stuffed in his wall safe. Knowing Tony, I'd say he kept them as a kind of insurance against anything you might pull, or a means of getting rid of you should you become inconvenient. I just played his card a little earlier than he anticipated.”
    No, this couldn't be happening. For four years he'd built an airtight case based on the evidence he knew those records would produce. He'd figured out the whole rotten scheme, made lists of every client Tony had robbed, obtained all the transcripts, all the copies, written dozens of letters of inquiry. All he needed was the hard evidence linking Tony to the