“She did.” Unable to help herself, Constance lightly ran her fingertip along her mother’s image. Time didn’t help. She still missed her like crazy. “She’s gone now.”
That’s right, he remembered. She’d said as much to him on the phone. He felt a tiny pinprick of guilt for thinking it was a ploy to get him to lower his guard. The woman at his desk looked genuinely sad as she spoke about her mother.
Uncomfortable in the face of her sorrow, James cleared his throat. “I’m sorry.”
Constance inclined her head. “Everyone who ever knew her was sorry.” And that had added up to a great many people. Her mother had friends everywhere. It made Constance proud.
She roused herself before the sorrow could pull her under. “And they were furious when her things were stolen.” Uncle Bob had put men on it immediately. Everything was recovered within twenty-four hours—except for the cameo. It was almost as if the cameo needed to be set free for a time. There were too many strange things in the world for her to laugh away the thought when it had occurred to her. But she was glad to have the piece back. “There was a robbery at the house the day of the funeral,” she explained.
He didn’t believe in coincidence. Someone had to have known the house would be empty because of the funeral. “Inside job.”
He looked like a man who didn’t trust anyone and she wondered what had made him that way. Something drastic, she felt, her heart going out to him. He also looked like a man who would resent any charitable feelings sent his way.
“Not technically,” she responded. “Turned out to be the cousin of one of the people working in the funeral parlor. He knew what time the funeral was taking place and broke in. The police apprehended him a day after the robbery.”
“Fast.” She heard a touch of admiration in his voice. “Was he that sloppy?”
“The police were that good,” she countered. He couldn’t help wondering if she was pandering to him. “He gave everything up, including his cousin. But he didn’t have the cameo. Said he didn’t know what we were talking about.”
He raised his eyebrow quizzically. “We?”
She flashed another smile, sending another salvo to his gut. “Sorry, I tend to lump myself in with the good guys,” she continued, moving forward on the chair. Moving closer toward him, he noted. “Anyway, it’s been missing for over a year and I didn’t think I was ever going to get it back.” She placed her hand over his, catching him completely off guard. As did the warm feeling that traveled through him, marking a path from her hand through what felt like every part of his body. “I don’t know how to thank you.”
Her eyes were blue. Wedgwood-blue. So blue that if he looked into them long enough, he couldn’t breathe right. That’s what he got for not eating lunch during his break, James upbraided himself.
“There’s no need,” he told her gruffly.
The man was incredibly modest. But then, she’d sensed that when she’d placed her hand on his. He was a man who preferred the shadow to the light. Preferred going his own way, unimpeded.
“Oh, but there is,” she told him softly. Firmly. “That cameo has a great deal of sentimental value for me. My mother wore it when she met my father.” She smiled. “As a matter of fact, that’s in keeping with the legend.”
His brow had knitted together in a single furrowed line. “Legend?”
“That the first time a woman puts on the cameo, she will meet her own true love within twenty-four hours.”
Well, that was a load of garbage if he’d ever heard it. But the way she said it, the words sounded like gospel. She looked too intelligent to buy into something like that. And yet…
Not his business.
“That’s bunk,” he heard himself saying.
That he’d even use a word like bunk seemed out of character to him. He wondered if his sleepless nights were finally taking their toll. For the last month or so, he’d averaged less than five hours a night. Part of the problem was that he hadn’t been able to shake the feeling that he was waiting for something to happen.
What, he had no idea.
She smiled at him. “Yes, I know. But the cameo still has a lot of sentimental value for me.”
There didn’t seem to be enough air in the cubicle. His head felt a little fuzzy. The sooner he gave her what she was here for, the sooner she’d leave. And the more air there’d be for him. “All right, then I guess a reunion is in order.”
James took a key out of his pocket and unlocked his middle drawer. The cameo moved slightly as he did so, coming to rest against the center. He realized that the blue background was exactly the same shade as the woman’s eyes. Come to think of it, they were the same color as the eyes of the older woman who’d discovered the thing in the first place.
He didn’t like coincidences when he couldn’t explain them.
He dropped the cameo into her hand, avoiding touching her skin. He didn’t know why, but he just figured it was less complicated that way.
About to say something along the lines of “that being that,” he found himself watching her eyes in fascination as they welled up. Damn, he hated tears. He hadn’t a clue what to do when a woman cried, only that he was supposed to do something.
With a barely suppressed sigh, James looked around his desk for a box of tissues, knowing ahead of time that he wouldn’t find anything.
She used the back of her hand to brush away the telltale marks. A smile returned to her lips and any tears that might have subsequently fallen held their positions.
The cameo felt warm in her hand, like something alive, connecting her to her heritage. “I didn’t think I was ever going to be able to put this on.”
“You’ve never worn it?” Thanks to Santini’s never-ending stories about his three girls, he was vaguely aware that daughters played dress-up with their mother’s jewelry. That she hadn’t seemed rather odd, given her feelings about the cameo.
Constance shook her head. “Mother was adamant about the legend. She firmly believed in it. I got engaged to Josh before she could pass the cameo on to me.” She smiled as the memory came back to her. “She told me the cameo would be there waiting for me if I discovered I needed it.” It was her mother’s way of saying that she didn’t completely approve of the match. But then, her mother wouldn’t have approved of anyone that the cameo wasn’t responsible for “choosing.” Her mother had been very, very superstitious.
James glanced down at her left hand. He told himself that it was just an “occupational habit,” taking in as much about a person as he could, to be used later. Except that in this case, there wasn’t going to be a “later.”
Her hand was bare.
She noticed him looking at her hand. Constance curled her fingers under her palm. “It didn’t work out,” she told him quietly.
Looking up at her, he shrugged dismissively. “None of my business.”
An enigmatic expression played along her lips. “Wish he had felt that way. Unfortunately, he felt that everything about me was his business, especially my mother’s money.”
She saw the look of curiosity enter his eyes. She wondered if he was aware of it. There was no question in her mind that he was trying very hard to maintain distance between them. Asking questions, verbally or otherwise, decreased that distance.
“Josh was my mother’s financial adviser,” she explained, “and I discovered right after the funeral that he’d been playing fast and loose with my mother’s money.” Which explained the bad feeling about him that had been steadily making itself more known to her, she added silently. “Marrying me would have given him a better claim to it.” Her tone