The Perfect Gift Read online

  Seven months since she’d lost her father. Silly to feel a sharp pang, she told herself. Silly to care so much.

  Carefully she set the completed choker in her steel display case underneath a row of faceted white Siberian diamonds that winked with cold, almost unnatural perfection. They were not Maggie’s favorite stones, but her father had loved their clarity. Despite her financial straits, she refused to sell them, keeping them as a link to the father she had always loved but had never come close to understanding. Daniel Kincade had been a master at his craft with an artistic vision that was legendary. No client ever walked away unsatisfied with his work.

  And Maggie still missed him as much as if he’d been gone only a few hours.

  She touched one of the diamonds, remembering how he’d taught her to shape a bezel or polish a newly cut gem. She had listened in rapt silence, absorbing every word, and now that classical training was part of the foundation that allowed her absolute control over an array of difficult, costly materials. No one else had had Daniel Kincade’s ability to identify obscure stones and coax fire out of their unpolished surfaces. With unerring genius and a flare for the dramatic, he had made his reputation on three continents. After twenty years of designing, he had earned the right to name his price and choose his clients among the world’s richest and most knowledgeable collectors.

  Until the day he hadn’t come back.

  Seven months, Maggie thought. Seven months of wondering if Daniel Kincade was truly dead. Seven months of wondering if he could possibly have committed the robbery the police claimed he had.

  Maggie sighed. Her shoulder ached, but her heart ached far worse.

  When did the pain finally ebb? When would she stop expecting him to shove open the door, his arms weighted down with gifts from a dozen far-flung countries?

  She pushed back the curtain and stared out at the late afternoon traffic. The facts weren’t much help. Not much of her famer’s body had been found after the small plane he was riding in went down over the jungles of Northern Sumatra. Among the tangle of bones, torn metal, and seared bits of clothing, the searchers had turned up three teeth that matched his dental records. They’d turned up his passport, too. The embassy had sent it back to her, blackened by flames and sheared almost in two. Then they had closed the case, officially declaring him dead.

  Intellectually, Maggie agreed with them. But the heart, a daughter’s grieving heart, was a different matter entirely. She’d never quite accepted the reality that he was dead.

  Had he lost consciousness before the fire took hold, or had he suffered the agonizing knowledge of his death, watching the ground slam toward him?

  Seven months.

  Something struck her window. Maggie spun around, arms tensed as a rain of gravel hammered at the glass. Forget it, she told herself sharply. This was the city that never slept. She was just experiencing her normal jitters after five days of work on a demanding design.

  She shoved back a strand of cinammon-colored hair and swept her snub-nosed pliers and wire cutters back into their neat drawers as the floor shook.

  A few seconds later she felt another tremor, courtesy of a blasting cap set by the workmen demolishing the town house next to her loft building. She barely managed to grab a pair of pink pearls as they careened across her worktable from the force of a third impact. With luck, the building would be razed before she lost her sanity along with her remaining stock of gems.

  Silence fell, thick and blessed. Then a board creaked outside in the hall just beyond her door.

  Maggie spun tensely, her heart racing. Probably another TV cameraman or a tabloid reporter trying to sniff out news of her father. Jewel thieves made for good audience demographics, she had learned. She was lunging for her heaviest metal shears when the door snapped open.

  “Relax, Mag. Drop the shears and I promise not to skewer you with a chopstick.”

  “Chessa?”

  “A good thing you gave me a key.” Laughter sailed out of the shadows. “Hey, I said I’d be right over. It’s not Indiana Jones, but who else is going to take care of you when you forget to eat?”

  Slender and vibrant, Chessa Kincade sailed through the room like a whirlwind, immaculate in black velvet and a tapestry vest that looked two centuries old—and was actually even older. Fashion had been in her blood ever since she had sewed her first French seam at the age of six. She was still sewing perfect seams, though now she worked in crepe and duppioni silk instead of worn muslin.

  “God, you look a wreck.” Chessa frowned at her cousin. “Don’t you ever sleep?”

  “I had a silver design class last night. The students wanted to try etching and we ran over.”

  “How long over?”

  “About four hours, but you should have seen what they made. They’re showing real promise, Chessa, and their energy is astounding.”

  “It’s the teacher I worry about, not the students. Crazy woman.” Chessa gracefully pushed back one full sleeve and slung down two large bags, still managing to look elegant in her exquisitely fitted linen poet’s shirt and soft black velvet jeans. She moved like a model—which she had been until her love of restoring medieval tapestries had branched out into a line of fine period lingerie, which she wore at every possible opportunity, fully aware that no one modeled her clothing as well as she did.

  Small wonder Maggie felt like a frump whenever they were together.

  Maggie’s fashion sense was limited to gems and precious metals. She didn’t even own a slip. Jeans were her fashion staple, since she could never find anything off the rack to suit her gangly frame.

  “First we eat.” Chessa dropped a monstrous leather satchel onto the room’s only chair, then turned imperiously. In seconds she had Maggie’s worktable covered with boxes of obscure vegetables and handmade sauces with exotic, smoky smells.

  “But my silver—”

  “Forget your silver. Eat.”

  Chessa shoved a pair of chopsticks into her hand, and Maggie knew better than to argue. Her cousin was a virago with the face of a Botticelli angel. Besides, the food smelled wonderful. She sniffed, trying to identify the mix of spices. “Hunanese?”

  Chessa sighed. “Thai. If you’d pay the slightest attention, you’d know I gave up Hunanese food months ago. Too many additives. Have some tea.”

  Maggie sniffed suspiciously at the dusky brew. “I hope this isn’t more of that milk thistle poison you brought last time.”

  “That poison, as you term it, clears out your liver like nothing else on this planet.”

  “I think I’ll stay toxic,” Maggie muttered.

  “Not if I can help it. Try some of this.”

  Maggie sipped carefully. “What’s in it?”

  “Gingko leaves, ginseng, and roasted barley. Great for mental acuity.” Chessa’s lips curved. “Even better for your love life.”

  What love life? Maggie thought. These days she was running on energy and blind obsession. All she had was her teaching, her design work, and an unending stream of visions that pulled her from sleep with dreams of inlaid amber and platinum-wrapped jade.

  But not for much longer. Without professional backing there would be no more stones and no more sheets of precious metal. What Maggie needed was a patron with deep pockets and permanent gallery space to showcase her line, first in New York, and then across the country. After that, she dreamed of setting up a small craft school where rigorous classical techniques would be combined with cutting-edge design concepts.

  More dreams.

  Chessa’s eyes were dark with concern. “How long since you ate a complete meal? By mat, I mean something more than tea and a handful of nuts.”

  Maggie frowned. “Yesterday morning. Or maybe last night. I don’t remember.”

  “You’re a disgrace to the Kincade name. People will think that we starve you.”

  Maggie started to protest, caught between humor and exasperation. Then she saw the look on her cousin’s face.

  Chessa was standing very sti
ll, staring at her in the single pool of light from the work lamp. “Oh, Mag, I forgot. It’s his anniversary, isn’t it? October 12, seven months to the day that your father disappeared.”

  Maggie felt something press at her eyes. “It doesn’t matter. He’s gone, and I’m an idiot to keep hoping otherwise.” She swallowed, wondering why the cold, hard facts made no difference. If only she’d had a chance to say good-bye, the way she had during her mother’s lingering bout with cancer. Maybe if Maggie had told her father how much he’d mattered to her, the pain wouldn’t be so sharp now.

  Chessa slid her arms around Maggie’s stiff shoulders. “Of course it’s not stupid. He was your father. It’s perfectly right that you should remember him and grieve in your way. Forget what I said, Mag. I’m being a complete idiot, as usual.”

  Maggie’s hands clenched and unclenched. She didn’t want to remember, but she did. “It’s the uncertainty, I think. I was too late to talk to him at the gate, and there was only time to see him wave. I never dreamed that he wouldn’t come back. Even now when I hear a sound in the hall, I expect him to bang open the door, unannounced, the way he always liked to arrive.” She tried to swallow the low whimper, the long ache of loneliness and loss.

  “He shouldn’t have rushed off,” Chessa said fiercely. “I know you don’t want to hear it, but he left you in the lurch.” Her hands tightened. “He was good at that.”

  “No more arguments, Chessa. Not today.”

  Chessa scanned her face. “There’s something else, isn’t there?”

  Maggie shoved her fists into her pockets, frowning.

  “You can’t possibly hope to lie to me, Mag. Let’s have it. All of it.”

  “It’s bills.” Maggie drew a raw breath. “Bills and bills and bills. Thousands of dollars that my father owed. I don’t know how I’m going to pay them off.” She sank into the rickety steel chair and stared blindly out the window while rush hour traffic screamed along Houston Street.

  “How bad is it?”

  “He owed money to two auction houses in Paris and a diamond wholesaler in California. I’ve already had three calls this morning from a customs broker at the airport who says he hasn’t been paid for almost a year and he’s going to send men after me. Unpleasant men with accents. I feel like an extra in a bad John Travolta movie.” Maggie tried to smile and failed completely. “Then there are the reporters. They’ve been staking out the building, following me home and ringing the bell at all hours of the night. They won’t give up on a chance at a story about the notorious jeweler turned cold-blooded thief—at least that’s their slant on things. But I can manage the reporters. It’s the bills I’m worried about. I don’t have that kind of money.”

  “There’s only one thing to do.” Chessa tapped a manicured nail against her jaw and smiled slowly. “You pay them.”

  “How? I’m barely getting by, considering the bleedingly high cost of materials.”

  At that moment the buzzer rang shrilly. Maggie peered through the peephole and frowned, her body stiff with tension.

  “Ms. Kincade? Margaret Kincade?”

  Maggie didn’t move. “Why?”

  “I have a delivery of roses here. Invoice says they’re for a Margaret Kincade.”

  “Roses?” Chessa hissed. “Open the door.”

  “I didn’t order any flowers,” Maggie said tightly.

  “Must be a gift,” the man outside said. “Look, lady, I’m just making the delivery here, and I need a signature to—”

  “Go away,” Maggie said. “Ms. Kincade’s not here and we both know that you’re not from any florist shop. And you’re not going to get any more pictures—not today or any other day. Not after the lies that you people keep printing.” Her voice was harsh with anger and pain.

  “Come on, open up, Ms. Kincade. Just for a few questions. We want to know why your father disappeared—and what happened to those stolen gems.”

  “Go away.”

  Maggie closed her eyes and sank back against the wall. There had already been two reporters at her buzzer that morning. One had assured her he had dry cleaning to deliver, and the other swore he was collecting for UNICEF. Would they ever leave her alone?

  A string of curses drifted past the heavy metal door frame, and she straightened her shoulders. “If one more reporter tries that, I’m going to use my blowtorch on his face.”

  “Great idea. It will make a lovely human interest piece for the front page. Jeweler rearranges reporter’s cheekss” Chessa said calmly.

  “Don’t you ever get upset?”

  “Life’s too short to get upset.”

  “I hate it,” Maggie muttered. “They follow me, they phone me, they harass me.”

  “Face it, love, you’re news. Big news. That makes you a prime target. You have to admit that the publicity has brought us a herd of new customers.”

  “To gawk. To gossip. Not to buy.”

  “They will. We’ve got exceptional merchandise, and they won’t find it anywhere else in New York. They’ll come back,” Chessa said confidently. “And then they’ll buy, trust me.”

  “It might be too late. I won’t have any more designs, not with my inventory liquidated to pay bills.”

  Chessa frowned. “There has to be a way.”

  “You think I should sell my body on Ninth Avenue? I doubt I’d have any takers.”

  “You’ve got those boxes in the safe deposit. You told me your father had been putting away some special stones as his personal stock for future designs. They’ll help you pay his bills.”

  “By selling his inventory?” Maggie pushed to her feet and paced the room with sudden, raw energy. “I couldn’t. They were his favorite gems, the most beautiful stones he’d saved from years of searching. I can’t—”

  “You can.” Chessa gripped her arm and pulled her to a halt. “You must. He’s gone, love. All he’s left you is a mountain of debts. Selling his private collection of stones is your only way out.”

  Maggie opened her mouth to protest, then closed it again. Chessa was right, she realized numbly. At the moment, her father’s unsold inventory was her only marketable asset. It would have to go. All of it.

  She rubbed a hand along her neck, wincing as she brushed a hard knot of muscles. “I took a piece to Michaelson today. You know how he is, all oily politeness and eyes like a predator.”

  “What did he say?”

  “’Lovely.’ ‘Flawless.’ Then the snake offered me a pittance. I would have laughed if I hadn’t been so insulted.”

  Chessa’s eyes took on an edge of cold determination. “He scented blood. It happens all the time. What you need is drama, excitement. Presentation is everything in business, as I’ve been forever trying to tell you.”

  “I don’t do drama. That’s your department.”

  “You do now. Mystery and elegance, too. You’ll soon have Michaelson and everyone else eating out of your hand. You’ve got the stones.” She draped a cut velvet scarf over Maggie’s shoulders, nodding slowly. “And I’ve got the perfect plan.”

  The next morning at eleven, three black limousines blocked the curb outside Chessa’s fashionable shop on Broome Street. Inside, sunlight filtered over antique carpets and polished wood shelves that resembled the private rooms of a very fine English country house.

  But this country house had satin camisoles and lace peignoirs draped over the heirloom chairs. Potted dwarf palms cleverly focused the eye on a hanging display of handmade lace dressing gowns that would caress a woman’s skin and leave a man in a state of acute discomfort.

  Nearby, a pair of Chessa’s sensuous camisoles framed a mahogany desk with the jewelry that had earned Maggie a fervent following.

  But none of the three men pacing in the elegant room was looking for lingerie. They glanced up irritably as Chessa sailed in, elegant in a crimson velvet sheath and strappy velvet high-heels.

  Maggie blinked as she recognized three of New York’s most prominent jewelers in the same room. All wore Armani, and t
heir watches alone could have paid the shop’s rent for about a decade.

  The closest man raised a manicured hand. The Rolex on his wrist flashed imperiously. “We’ve been waiting for a half hour. Why did you call us?”

  “Because, gentlemen, you are about to receive the offer of this or any other lifetime.” Chessa moved past them with all the grace of the fashion runways she had dominated for ten years. She knew how to command attention and she did it now, pulling them after her into the curtained area reserved for important customers.

  “What offer? My wife has all the lingerie she needs, Ms. Kincade. And I’m not in the market for jewelry,” he said flatly. “I buy in volume and all my sources are abroad.”

  “You must be James Michaelson. I know your shop on Sixty-first Street.” Chessa eyed the two other men. “Mr. Antonio. Mr. Dussaint. You both design from scratch, I believe. But to do that you need quality materials. Unusual stones like tanzanite, Siberian diamonds. South Sea black pearls.”

  The Belgian, Dussaint, frowned. “You have such sources?”

  Maggie listened from behind the curtain, her hands clenched. They might not go for this. On the other hand, she knew exactly how persuasive Chessa could be. And if Chessa could convince the three men to stay long enough to see what Maggie had to show them…

  Chessa swirled in a blur of crimson. “By that you mean gems. Possibly a set of matched rubies formerly the property of a European royal family. Or maybe even some chatoyant sapphires.”

  The Belgian stroked his Hermes tie and leaned forward. “Show us.”

  “Patience, gentlemen. Patience.” With an easy elegance, Chessa gestured them to the three chairs arranged at the far wall, then drew a bottle from a silver server. “Taittinger for each of you.” She filled three crystal goblets in turn, making the most of every second of expectation. “A little something to set the mood.”

  Beyond the curtain Maggie stood in an agony of uncertainty, expecting them to march out at any second.