From the Heart

through his hands. “Jessica—”
    “Just go, Michael. When you run, you have to run fast.”
    She listened for the click of the doors before she opened the padded bag. A cold, sparkling stream of diamonds fell into her palm. “So this is what my life’s worth,” she murmured. Carefully, she replaced them, then stared at the remains of the Queen Anne desk. “All for a whim,” she whispered. If she hadn’t had that impulse to bring the desk home then . . .
    With a fierce shake of her head, Jessica broke off the thought. There were no if’s. She needed to see Slade, but she needed a moment to herself first. On a sigh, she sank into a chair, letting the bag of diamonds fall into her lap.
     
    “I guess Jessica told you about this morning.” As the coffee heated on the stove, David reached for cups.
    Slade lifted a brow. What was this, he wondered. “Shouldn’t she have?” he countered.
    “Look, I don’t have anything against you—I don’t even know you.” David turned, tossing back the hair that fell over his brow. “But Jessie’s important to me. When I saw her come out of your room this morning, I didn’t like it.” He measured the man across the room and knew he was outmatched. “I still don’t like it.”
    Slade watched the eyes behind the lenses. So this was her private disagreement. Jessica had the loyalty she expectedhere, he mused. “I’d say you don’t have to like it,” Slade said slowly, “but Jess wouldn’t feel that way.”
    Uncomfortable under the direct stare, David shifted a bit. “I don’t want her to get hurt.”
    “Neither do I.”
    David frowned. Something about the way Slade said it made him believe it. “She’s a soft touch.”
    Temper leaped into the gray eyes so quickly, David nearly backed away. When Slade spoke, the words were soft and deadly controlled. “I’m not interested in her money.”
    “Okay. Sorry.” Relaxing a bit, David shrugged. “It’s just that she’s gotten stung before. She trusts everybody. She’s really smart, you know—for a scatterbrain who forgets what she’s doing because she’s doing twenty things at once. But with people, Jessica wears blinders.” The coffee began to boil over behind him. David spun around and turned off the burner. “Look, forget I said anything. She told me this morning it was none of my business, and it isn’t. Except that . . . well, I love her, you know,” he mumbled. “How’s she feeling?”
    “She’ll be better soon.”
    “Boy, I hope so,” he said fervently as he brought the coffee to the table. “I wouldn’t want her to hear me say it, but I could use her at the shop. Between getting the new stock checked in and Michael’s moodiness . . .” David grimaced and dumped milk into his coffee.
    “Michael?” Slade prompted casually.
    “Yeah, well, I guess everybody’s entitled to a few temper tantrums. Michael just never seems to have a temper at all.” He flashed Slade a grin. “Jessica would call it breeding.”
    “Maybe he has something on his mind.”
    David moved his shoulders absently before he drank. “Still, I haven’t seen him this unraveled since the mix-up on the Chippendale cabinet last year.”
    “Oh?” Some wells, Slade mused, took no priming at all.
    “It was my fault,” David went on, “but I didn’t know he’d bought it for a specific customer. We do that sometimes, but he always lets Jessie or me know. It was a beauty,” David remembered. “Dark kingwood, great marquetry decoration. Mrs. Leeman bought it the minute it was uncarted. She wasstanding in the shop when the shipment came in, took one look, and wrote out a check. Michael got back from Europe the day we were packing it for delivery and had a fit. He said it had already been sold, that he’d had a cash advance.” David took a quick sip of his coffee, discovered it was bitter, and drank again resignedly.
    “The paperwork had been mislaid, I guess,” he went on. “That was odd because Jessie’s a fiend for keeping the invoices in order. Mrs. Leeman wasn’t too pleased about the mix-up either,” he recalled with a grin. “Jessie sold her a side table at cost to soothe her feathers.”
    “Who bought it?” Slade demanded.
    “What, the cabinet?” David adjusted his glasses. “Lord, I don’t know. I don’t think Michael ever told me, and with the mood he was in, I didn’t like to ask.”
    “You have the receipt?”
    “Yeah, sure.” Puzzled, David focused on him again. “At