“I’ll do it.”
“Excellent.Begin at once.What can you tell me about them?”
Hm.What would it hurt to let slip a little something?To gauge his reaction.“There is some information I can share with you—I ran into my mother yesterday.She told me that one of the Grant daughters was abducted.”
Stone flinched, just one corner of his lips in an otherwise hard jaw.“And?”
“I’m not sure what happened to her.I wasn’t particularly interested.”
“Become interested.I want to know more about the missing daughter.Now leave.And until I get what I want from you, you remain in this forge, useless.”
“Understood.”
Apollo left, not just the office but the forge, the museum.God, he hated that man, but Apollo wanted what he offered, no use denying it.No use delaying it.
It didn’t take long to reach Temple Grant’s Bloomsbury terrace, and Apollo slammed his fist on the door until it popped open.
He brushed the rather cheerful-looking butler aside as he entered.“I come bearing news.Your master is going to want to see me.”He clapped the disgruntled butler on the shoulder.“Now where is he?”
The man’s rounded cheeks rushed red as his brows flew together like jousters down a track.“Who may I say is calling?”
“Family.”Apollo ambled down the hall, hands in pockets.
There were voices from all directions—behind him the butler trying to wrangle him back onto the street, and from behind the door to his left the low voices of two people in serious conversation.Ah.He’d found them.
He swept the door open without knocking.
And thanked God or Zeus or Vulcan or whoever that his cousin and her husband were not bare arsed and going at it.
This was almost worse.Diana sat in a small, elegant, upholstered chair, her dark hair sweeping up and her crisp new gown sweeping down, and her husband knelt before her.He held her hands, and her eyes were actually glittering with pretty tears, and when they both startled and looked his way, she bounced upward and his arms went about her protectively, and?—
Apollo gagged.“Good God, are you two always so repellently enamored?”
“I do not have the patience for your foolishness right now,” Temple said, his mouth a thin, grim line, his gray eyes hard as steel.“We’re in the middle of a family emergency.What are you doing here, Chester?”
A family emergency.They still did not know where Sybil was, then.They wanted the princess.Stone wanted her, too.But who would pay the highest for information about her?
“You still do not know where Miss Grant is, the—ack!”
Temple’s hand squeezed around Apollo’s throat as he slammed Apollo against the wall.“What have you done with her?”
Apollo clawed at Temple’s forearms.Good lord, why were they bigger than most men’s biceps?“Saved her!”he choked out.“I bloody well saved her!”
“Temple!Release him!”Diana tugged at her husband’s arm, too.“You know she’s well.The letter, remember?Theletter.”She rushed across the room and returned with a bit of unfolded paper, waved it in her husband’s face.
Temple moved his jaw side to side and loosened the hand at Apollo’s throat.
“Loosen all the way now,” Apollo said, “like a good dog-elp?—”
The hand tightened again.
Diana sighed.
Temple freed Apollo and crossed his arms over his chest.“What do you mean you saved Sybil?”
Rubbing his throat, Apollo asked, “Can I see the letter?”Diana handed it over and Apollo rolled his eyes as he read.Princess had said she was well and good but had failed to saywhereshe was well and good at.He handed the paper back to his cousin.“I can tell you where she is.I took her there last night aftersavingher.”
“Oh?”Temple clearly did not believe him.“If you saved her, why didn’t you bring her here?”
