Golden Lies - Barbara Freethy [23]
"Good friend of yours?" Riley asked as Jerry left.
"Yes, he is, as a matter of fact."
"I'm surprised. I didn't figure you for a Fast Willy's kind of girl."
"I don't think you know me well enough to make any assumptions about me. Not that that will stop you. Stereotyping is hardly confined to the rich, is it?"
"At least you admit you're rich."
"It's hardly a secret that my family is wealthy, but believe it or not, I'm nowhere near as rich as they are."
"Maybe not now, but I'll bet there are some hefty inheritances in your future."
"Not that it's any of your business."
"Until you return my grandmother's missing dragon, everything about you is my business."
"It's not exactly missing. It's just unaccounted for at the moment."
"Splitting hairs, don't you think? Why did your father take the dragon out of the store, anyway? I thought you had state-of-the-art testing equipment on the premises. Isn't that what your brochure says?"
"You've read our brochure?"
"I've read a great deal about your company in the past twenty-four hours."
"Then you shouldn't be worried."
"Maybe I wouldn't be—if you weren't worried. But you are, aren't you, Miss Hathaway? This isn't standard operating procedure. This isn't the way things normally go down." She glanced away from him, guiltily he thought. "I can't help wondering what's coming next."
"Nothing is coming next. You just need to be patient."
"I'm not a patient man."
"I can see that." She paused. "Do you actually want to play pool?" She waved her hand toward the table.
"Do you really know how to play, or did the red-haired guy give you a break?"
"Jerry give me a break? Not in this lifetime. And, yes, I do know how to play pool. Although at our house we refer to the game as billiards." An impulsive smile broke across her face as she said the word. "Or, as Jerry calls it, billiards." She added a British accent and a laugh that broke the tension between them. "My grandfather always refers to it as that."
God, she was beautiful all loosened up again, her long blond hair falling out of its ponytail, her slender body encased in tight-fitting sweats, a pair of running shoes on her feet. Looking like this, he could almost forget she was the princess of San Francisco and way out of his league. He could almost forget that this was business.
She cleared her throat. "You're staring." She tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. "I look a mess. My mother would have a fit if she knew I was out in public looking like this."
"I like it."
"You do?" she asked, amazement in her voice. "It's not at all appropriate."
"Who cares about appropriate?"
"I always have to be careful what I wear, because with my luck some photographer desperate for a photo to fill tomorrow's empty slot will snap me in my sweats and suggest that maybe Hathaway's is losing money, and the incident will be blown completely out of proportion."
"Gone a few rounds with the press, have you?"
"More than a few."
"Well, there's no paparazzi here. And I don't have a camera. Although I wish I did, because you don't look anything like the woman I saw earlier today. In fact, since you've been in this room, you've undergone several transformations. You remind me of a lizard I used to have as a kid."
"A lizard? I remind you of a lizard? That's quite a compliment."
He laughed at her look of outrage. "A chameleon. The kind of lizard that changes colors to fit its environment. That's what you do. And it was a compliment. I don't know many women who can be comfortable in the back room of Fast Willy's and the next day go to work in the executive offices of Hathaway's."
She frowned at him. "I still think you could do better than lizard if you're looking to give a compliment. It's no wonder why you had nothing better to do tonight than follow me around. That's what you've been doing, isn't it? I should call the cops."
"I don't think you want to call the police, not with my grandmother's dragon missing."
"I told you before—"
"I know what you told me before. But my instincts tell me something else