“Damn it, do you consider all this marriage talk to be a joke?” she demanded.
His smile faded and his expression grew serious. “No, I do not,” he said.
“What kind of future would you be offering me? The Dragon Elders are just waiting for you to screw up. Your family has a terrible reputation, and you really screwed up with the Dragonsblood. Everyone is watching you now. If you got caught stealing again, a judge would be likely to throw the book at you. Do you have any idea what that would be like for your children?”
“Yes. I’m aware,” he said quietly.
“So can you understand why I wouldn’t want to have children with someone who might put them through that?” she asked.
There was a moment of silence that stretched out.
“Yes, I do understand,” he said finally. “And that’s fair. You’ve seen that we operate a highly successful jewelry store. Nobody in my family has been arrested in a very long time. My father’s probation is almost finished. I’m not saying one way or another whether the Kingsleys deserved their reputation in the past, but I can assure you that now we are on the straight and narrow.”
“Then why did you steal the Dragonsblood?” she said irritably.
He shrugged. “Who says I did?”
I do.
Because suddenly she felt it, moving somewhere just underneath her. Or specifically, she felt a ruby with massive power moving beneath her. She shivered. The rumors were true; it was a supremely powerful gem, and it should not be in the wrong hands.
She could feel hard, angry vibrations flowing from the gem. She turned away from Gabriel and closed her eyes, concentrating, trying to communicate with it. Oddly, she couldn’t – she was blocked. Somebody else was in control of the ruby right now, which meant that she couldn’t probe it and discover what its abilities were.
“Are you all right? You’re turning white as a sheet.” Gabriel’s voice sounded from far away as she struggled to wrest back control of the ruby and failed.
Then she felt a thud that was so hard the stone of the castle vibrated. It came from the south tower.
“What was that?” she asked, and he looked alarmed.
“Come with me, now,” he said, his voice turned harsh.
He rushed her over to the elevator and they climbed in. They went down to the bottom, and then he ushered her out but remained in the elevator. “There’s something I need to see to,” he said, and the elevator door shut in her face.
* * * * *
“So you’re sure it was the ruby,” Teresa said eagerly to Kelly later that day. The two of them were strolling behind the castle.
“Yes, it was weird. One minute it wasn’t there, the next minute it was. Somebody must have been moving it, and they got close enough for me to feel it.” Kelly folded her arms across her chest and frowned. “Of course, Gabriel was with me at the time, so I know it wasn’t him.”
A calculating look crossed Teresa’s face. “You’re certified as a gem empath. That might be enough to get a court order to search for it.”
Kelly had considered that, but she hadn’t contacted the authorities yet.
Was she reluctant because she didn’t want Gabriel to be arrested? Was she abandoning all pretense of acting like a professional? Well, whatever her feelings for the charming dragon shifter were, that wasn’t the only reason she wasn’t turning him in.
“I’m afraid it’s too soon,” she said. “First of all, I can’t be one hundred percent certain that it was the Dragonsblood. It was a ruby, and it was extremely powerful. That’s all I could say for sure right now.”
“Obviously it was the Dragonsblood,” Teresa said, waving her hand impatiently as if shooing away Kelly’s objections.
“Probably. But the only way we’d know that for sure would be if we recovered the gem and had it examined in our laboratory,” Kelly said. In order to be insured, the gem had a tiny identifying number laser-etched into it, invisible to the naked eye, and it had also been mapped using a laser and X-rays.
“We can’t identify the ruby if we don’t recover it.”
Kelly shook her head. “I don’t know where it is right now. It could be anywhere in the castle. If we reported it to the authorities and they decided to issue a search warrant, I doubt they’d ever find it. Then it would be even harder – maybe impossible – ever to get a warrant again. And the Kingsleys’ lawyers would be all over us.”
“And you wouldn’t be able to marry Gabriel,” Teresa said nastily.
Kelly rolled her eyes. “Yes, Teresa, that’s been my secret plan all along. I came here to the valley and disguised myself as the Fair Maiden so I could marry Gabriel. Am I an evil mastermind or what?” But Teresa was already walking away.
