Golden Lies - Barbara Freethy [17]
"I can't conjure it up out of thin air."
"Why don't you have someone bring it up here? Isn't it in one of the vaults or a clean room of some sort?" He didn't like the way she avoided his gaze. "Isn't it?"
"The dragon doesn't appear to be in the lab. My father must have already retrieved it."
"And where is he?"
"I'm not exactly sure."
"Are you saying your father took the dragon out of the store? I don't believe we gave him permission to do that."
"I don't believe I said that he left the store. I just haven't been able to track him down."
"What the hell are you up to?"
"Look. I appreciate the fact that you're angry, but there's nothing going on here. I can assure you of that. Hathaway's has never lost a piece of art, and we're not starting with yours. I'm truly sorry for the inconvenience."
"Inconvenience, my ass!"
"Riley, I don't like it when you swear," Nan chided. "Now stop yelling at Miss Hathaway. There's nothing she can do about the delay. I'm sure Mr. Hathaway will have a reasonable explanation when he returns."
"I'm sure he will," Paige said.
The door behind them opened. Riley turned, expecting to see David, not another nervous young woman.
"I'm sorry for interrupting you, Miss Hathaway," she said.
"It's all right, Monica. Did you find my father?"
"That's the thing. He doesn't seem to be in the store." She paused, darting a worried look at Riley. "And the dragon isn't here, either."
Chapter Four
Victoria Hathaway sat down in front of the mirror on her dressing room table and began to brush her hair. It was a pre-bedtime ritual that she'd followed every night since she was a little girl, living in a small two-bedroom apartment with her drunk of a mother and her two older sisters. Her mother had used one bedroom, her sisters the other. She'd had the couch, the bumpy, lumpy, bright red couch that her mother thought was so pretty.
Her surroundings now were quite different. Her elegant four-poster bed could be seen through the gold-edged mirror that David had bought her for their fifth wedding anniversary. As she pulled the brush through her smooth blond hair, she remembered a time when David had actually brushed her hair. She could almost see his reflection now in the glass, his dark hair rumpled, his brown eyes warm and caring.
It was foolish to turn her head, to see nothing but blank air. She knew he wasn't there. She couldn't remember the last time he'd been in her bedroom. David had moved out a few years earlier, because he was a night owl and she was an early bird, because he liked to read in bed, and she liked to get up early and do her hundred sit-ups in the privacy of her own room. God forbid anyone should know how hard she worked to keep her size-six figure. But those were only the reasons he said out loud, not the real reasons, not the ones that had isolated them in their own very private and personal hells for too many years to count.
She glanced back at the mirror and sighed. She could keep her body lean and trim, but not even the most expensive creams in the world or BOTOX treatments were managing to keep the wrinkles at bay. Already she could see the tiny lines around her eyes and lips. She could cover them in the daytime, but with her makeup removed, they were clearly visible. Perhaps some women would have turned away, but she forced herself to look, to examine, to be critical. It was the only way she knew to be.
When she was a young girl, she had made herself look at her life, her family, the way they lived and the manner in which they behaved. She remembered cutting out pictures from magazines of big houses and fancy restaurants. She'd made a list of how to get what she wanted, and she had followed that list to the letter. She'd gotten an education when many of her friends had dropped out, taken ugly, messy jobs in order to make enough money to go to college, always keeping her eye on the prize. Putting herself in a position to