Rarities Unlimited 04 - The Color of Death

“It’s tricky. I mean, lab gems are synthetic through and through. Everyone agrees on that. But at what point does a natural stone become so enhanced by man that you can hardly call it natural anymore?”
    “You got me.”
    “Daunting thought.” The corners of her mouth twitched upward. “Every gem association in the world has long, tedious, occasionallyshort-tempered meetings about where to draw the line between acceptable enhancement of a gem and treatments that are so extensive that they effectively make the stone not natural.”
    “Unnatural translates into less valuable?”
    “Every time.”
    “The rarity thing?”
    She nodded, swiped hair away from her face again, and said, “I’ve got a hair clip in my workroom. You need anything from the kitchen first?”
    “No thanks. There’s a great taco place only a mile from here.”
    “Pedro’s Burrito Gordo?” she asked.
    “That’s the one. Nuclear hot sauce. I had to order milk to put out the fire.”
    “I noticed.”
    Sam licked his upper lip and felt the roughness of dried milk. He rubbed at it with his hand. “Well, damn. It’s hard to have command presence with milk on my manly mug.”
    She snickered and felt the tension ease. If she had to have a cop hanging around, she’d take one with a milk mustache and a bent sense of humor. Watch it, girl, she told herself. He’s not supposed to have a sense of humor. He’s too damn appealing already.
    “So you don’t have motion sensors in your alarm system?” Sam said, looking at the status lights.
    “No. When the system was installed I had a cat. It came with the house, sort of a package deal. But no matter how the security guys tinkered to give me a pet zone, I still had too many false alarms. I got tired of paying for the call-outs, so I canceled the motion sensor.”
    Sam looked around. No sign of a pet anywhere. “What happened to the cat?”
    “Gone. She liked the neighbors better.”
    Enjoying the female sway of hips beneath butt-hugging jeans, Sam followed Kate toward her workroom. He started to tell her that she didn’t need to clip her hair in place as far as he was concerned but decided that was the kind of unprofessional remark he shouldavoid. Just like he should avoid noticing her long legs and fine ass and the citrus fragrance that floated from her skin if he stood close enough.
    And while he was at it, he should sign up for sainthood.
    “So,” he said, “except for cutting and polishing, you aren’t supposed to do anything to gemstones?”
    “That’s the ideal.” She opened the door to her workroom and started looking for her hair clip.
    “We’re talking human beings here, not saints,” Sam said dryly.
    “Ya think?” She found the clip on the first worktable with a set of dop sticks and began taming her hair. “Some treatments are so old that they’ve become acceptable. It’s the newer treatments that are a problem.”
    “Sort of a grandfather clause? If your grandfather did it, that’s okay, but you can’t do anything new?”
    She nodded, felt her thick hair come loose, and started all over again with the clip. “Actually, you can do anything you want as long as you tell the buyer what has been done, particularly if the treatments aren’t permanent or don’t need special handling to keep their glow.”
    “But if you tell the buyer,” Sam said, “he might not want to pay top dollar.”
    “Bingo. All treatments are supposed to be disclosed to the buyer, but too many mall jewelers—and some upscale ones as well—figure if the buyer doesn’t ask, the buyer doesn’t care, because everyone knows that gems are treated somewhere between being mined and being set in precious metal.”
    Sam’s left eyebrow rose. “I consider myself a fairly well-educated dude, but I don’t know squat about the difference between a treated and an untreated stone.”
    “Neither do ninety-nine percent of mall shoppers, which is why disclosure is so important.” She spoke fast, telling herself that the fact that he could raise one eyebrow wasn’t sexy and neither was the width of his shoulders. “Some gemological societies boot out memberswho sell treated stones and don’t mention it, especially if the treatments aren’t permanent.”
    “So some folks dick with the stone and make it a better-looking gem and sell it without comment.”
    She looked away from his intense sapphire-blue eyes. He’s not sexy. He’s a federal robot. Remember that. “Emeralds have been