Eye of the God (17 page)

Much to Abby's chagrin, the clash of egos between Daniel Wallace and Henry Blackman had not ended at Diebold, Inc. Daniel popped into her office twice that day, trying to convince her to cancel the event. Although certain he was overreacting, she did her best to reassure him. In all the time she had known him, Daniel operated with a level of energy that could only be surmised as a coffee buzz gone terribly wrong. No other human being could work so much, sleep so little, and still manage to maintain what appeared to be perfect health. This man of few words must have used a three-week quota during his assorted visits to her office that day.

“You can't be overly cautious, Abby,” he'd retorted on her fifth attempt to reassure him.

“I agree. I'm simply suggesting that there is the possibility that we are humanly incapable of taking more precautions that we have.”

“We could always do more.”

“Such as?”

“Armed guards. Lockdown—”

“What's next? Martial law?” He shrugged. “I've never seen you this agitated.”

He folded his hands behind his back as though standing at parade rest. “I'm just trying to do my job.”

Abby leaned forward with a smile. “Do you believe that I am trying to do mine as well?”

Hesitating a moment, he finally nodded.

“At the moment my job is to organize this celebration in honor of the Hope Diamond. It needs to be the biggest
event in the history of the Smithsonian. It is by and large one of the most difficult undertakings of my career thus far. The logistics are beyond description, and the ultimate success or failure lands squarely on my shoulders. I must balance the needs of our guests, who expect to be entertained, with the need of the Smithsonian to raise ungodly amounts of money in a single night. Plus I'm responsible for the safety of the most viewed museum object in the world. I appreciate your help, Daniel. I really do. But I need you to make my job easier, not harder. We have to move forward with our plans.”

He seemed to relax a little and sat down in her guest chair, perhaps for the first time since he'd taken the job at the Smithsonian. Normally, he always stood just inside her door with hands folded behind his back. He looked so uncomfortable and out of place sitting in the chair that she felt sorry for him.

“I just don't feel good about this whole thing,” he said.

“I know, Daniel, but I'm very confident in your abilities. Our little diamond could not be in better hands.”

After Daniel left her office, Henry Blackman called, but the aging security expert's reasons for interrupting her day were far more personal. After trying to impress her with the stats on a new vault they had in production, he asked her to dinner. She almost laughed. It took her nearly fifteen minutes to get rid of him, and then she avoided his calls for the rest of day.

As Abby's mind left work and returned to her comfy position at home, a more pleasant memory rose up.

Alex. He almost kissed me last night. A peck really. But he did ask to see me again.

Abby grinned, climbed off the couch, and slid into the kitchen in her sock feet. With hands on her hips, she stood for a moment, staring at an assortment of takeout menus. Nothing sounded good. She opened the fridge, only to slam it shut a few seconds later in disgust and peruse the menus again. Unable to make up her mind, she clasped a hand over her eyes, waved her finger, and pointed randomly.

“Tofu burger. No thanks.”

Her finger landed on grilled chicken caesar salad on the second attempt. Nah. The lettuce would be soggy by the time it arrived. Best outta three.

It took six more tries before she settled on beef fajitas from a nearby Mexican restaurant. Just as she was about to pick up the phone and call in her order, the doorbell rang.

Although tempted not to answer, she changed her mind. Occasionally, the elderly Italian couple from two floors below felt sorry for her and brought up homemade spaghetti and meatballs. Of course, the home-cooked meal always came with a lecture, insisting that she needed to meet a nice man and settle down and have
molti bambini
.

One look through the peephole left her wishing she had chosen anything in her closet but the dirty sweatshirt and ugly socks. Alex stood outside her door, holding a large brown paper bag that she highly suspected contained food.

For a brief moment she considered bolting to the bedroom for a quick change, but she didn't want him to think she wasn't home. And she didn't want to tell him she needed to change for fear he would stand on the other side of the door and picture her naked, or worse, assume she was high maintenance. Instead, she cracked open the door, mortified at how she was dressed.

“Hi,” he said. His eyes twinkled.

“Hi.” She tried to hide behind the door.

“I realize it's not exactly proper to show up unannounced, but I thought you might be a little hungry and want some company. I can tell by the look on your face that you're starving, and I can see by those ghastly socks that you're most certainly spending your evening alone.”

“You don't like my socks?” Abby asked, feigning offense. She swung open the door.

“They're hideous,” he answered, bending slightly to brush her forehead with his lips.

Her stomach dipped somewhere near her knees, and she wondered if she would be able to eat a bite.

“Cute,” she retorted. “They're cute.”

“No.
You
are cute. The socks should be burned.”

Abby could not help but rise up on her tiptoes and peek into the brown paper bag.

“Spaghetti, meatballs, hot bread, and salad,” he said, finding his own way to the kitchen. “And if you're good, there may even be a little
tiramisu
somewhere in the bottom.”

“How could you have possibly known that was the very thing I wanted tonight?”

He smiled. “Just a hunch, Dr. Mitchell. I thought you might need a little warm food and some good company to wind down.”

She winced. “Do I look that strung out?”

“You look tired … and just a little tense.”

“Long day.”

“The event?”

“Ah, the event. It's just
the
defining moment of my career.”

“How's that?”

“My colleagues believe I can inspire the attendees to write obscenely large checks to the Smithsonian. Our notoriously wealthy and snobbish patrons only care that
I divert their boredom for an evening. And together they have assumed that I am the world's leading expert on the Hope Diamond. I dare not disappoint them, or I will most surely hear from both sides.”

“Well,” Alex said, searching a cabinet and pulling out two plates. “What does success look like?”

She stood for a moment, gnawing gently on her bottom lip. “That's a great question, and I can honestly say, in all my planning, I have not asked myself.”

“From what I'm hearing, you need to raise gobs of money while simultaneously putting on a show to remember. Is that right?”

“Spot on.”

“So what's the plan?”

“Live music. Dancing. Lots of bejeweled women wearing dresses that are just a little too small and revealing. Bored men sipping champagne when they'd rather have whiskey. A little caviar. An ice sculpture.” She sighed. “Basically, an event doomed to failure.”

“And you planned all of that because?” he asked, spooning heaps of steaming food on the plates.

“I'm supposed to.”

Alex looked at her with a mischievous smirk. “Do you always do what you're supposed to, Dr. Mitchell?”

She smiled. “Pretty much.”

Without giving her the opportunity to protest, Alex leaned in and kissed her. It only took her a moment to return his kiss.

He pulled away with a broad grin. “Well, you shouldn't have done that.”

“Done what?” she asked, slightly bewildered. “
You
kissed
me
.”

“True. But you returned the kiss … and quite well I might add. We simply don't know one another well enough to be kissing like that.” He carried the plates into the living room and sat on the couch.

Abby followed and sat down next to him, somewhat bewildered. “We don't?”

Alex shook his head. “Not nearly well enough. We shouldn't be kissing like that for at least another three days.”

“What should we be kissing like now?”

“Like this,” he said, tipping her chin up with a finger, and lightly brushing his lips against hers.

“I think I like the other way better.”

“You'll just have to keep me around for three more days,” he said.

“Deal.”

“Now,” Alex said, turning his attention to the food before him. “Let's eat.”

“Where did you get this?” she asked, wiping sauce from her chin with a napkin. “It's incredible.”

“A little hole in the wall near Georgetown called Bella Sera.”

“Beautiful evening.”

“What?”

“
Bella sera
means beautiful evening in Italian.”

“Don't tell me you speak Italian? It's not enough that you have your doctorate and are much smarter than I am, but now you must show me up with linguistics as well?”

Abby set her fork on her plate and raised an eyebrow. “Say what you like, Alex Weld, neither of us is fooled into thinking I'm smarter than you.”

He paused for a moment, his expression undecipherable. “I'm not the one with a
Dr.
before my name.”

“A string of letters that doesn't mean squat to most people.”

“And the Italian?”

“A few words here and there, but nothing fluent.”

Alex nodded and stuffed another forkful of spaghetti in his mouth. “May this be a
bella sera
then.”

“Hear! Hear!” she said, tapping a chunk of bread against his.

They ate in silence for a moment, sprawled casually on the couch.

After wiping out three-quarters of the food on his plate, Alex furrowed his eyebrows and turned to her. “Back to this event. What's proving to be your biggest hassle?”

“That would be security.”

“How come?”

“First, I have an overzealous ex-military head of security who feels the need to batten the hatches and not let anyone within three hundred feel of the diamond.”

“And that's a problem because the diamond is the main attraction.”

“Exactly. People want to get up close and personal. They want to touch the display case. These are women who could easily own this diamond were it not locked away in a museum.”

“They want to be enticed,” Alex said.

“Yes.”

“They want to be impressed.”

“Yes.”

His eyes flashed as though stumbling upon a clever idea. “The question is do you want them to be jealous?”

“
Jealous?
”

“Yes, jealous of the fact that they can't have that diamond no matter what they do. Jealous enough that
they will donate with no regard to the balance in their checkbook.”

She considered it for a moment. “Yes, I suppose I do.”

“Then those are the women you need to appeal to, because the truth is that the vast majority of men in that room won't care. They are being dragged there by their wives, and the only interest they have is one-upping the boys from the country club. The women will have the motivation, but the men will have the checkbook. Pit them against one another, and you'll have solved the first of your dilemmas. And you may just get yourself a raise in the process.”

Abby leaned back and regarded Alex with genuine interest. “You are brilliant.”

He grinned. “I know. Food good?”

“Yes. Very.”

“Now,” he said. “On to your second problem.”

“The event itself.”

“Yes, the event, which brings us back to the jealous little socialites.”

“Indeed.”

“They will all be dressed in designer gowns I presume?”

“To the point of vulgarity.”

“Then you need to one-up them.”

Her pasta-laden fork paused halfway to her mouth. “What?”

Alex leaned back on the couch, his plate resting precariously on his knees, and fixed his gaze on the far wall. He was about to say something, but stopped, head cocked to the side. “Did you take those pictures?”

“I did.”

“They're really good.”

“Thanks. It's a hobby.”

“Why churches?”

Abby tugged at her ponytail and dropped her gaze to the floor. “Just drawn to them I suppose.”

He gave her a sideways glance. “I didn't take you for the religious type.”

“What did you take me for?”

“For granted, apparently.”

“What was it you were saying?” she asked, not wanting the conversation to continue down this path.

He seemed to search for his lost train of thought. “They're coming to see a diamond they can't have. And you're the means by which they can get close to it.”

“I don't follow.”

“Since they won't actually be allowed to stick their hands inside the case and scoop up the diamond, they'll hang on your every word.” Alex stopped for a second and looked at her. “You will be giving a speech?” She nodded. “Good. Then use your words to entice their desire and use your appearance to make them feel like they're not the prettiest girls at the dance. They'll trip all over themselves to compensate.”

“I don't think I could pull off something like that.”

Alex looked not at her body, but deep into her eyes. “You could pull it off. Believe me.”

Abby felt heat flood her cheeks.

“I embarrassed you?”

She answered by shoving a mouthful of bread into her mouth.

“Sorry,” he said with a shrug. “But it's true.”

“Alex, we're talking about some of the wealthiest women in the country. Some of their gowns will cost more than I make in a year. And the jewels! I think I might own a pair of real diamond earrings.
Maybe
.”

He twirled his fork in the pile of spaghetti. “Jewels,” he murmured, deep in thought. He looked at her, eyes alight. “But Abby, you
do
have a jewel to beat them all.”

It took only a second for her to realize where he was heading. “You can't possibly mean—”

“Yes,” he said, nodding emphatically. “Yes.
You
should wear the Hope Diamond.”

“Not going to happen.”

Abby shook her head no, while Alex polished off the rest of his dinner.