Robert Asprin's Dragons Run (16 page)

“I know.” Her lips brushed against his ear and bit gently. “And another girl, too, I understand. So you’re polyamorous. So am I. I’m sure Fox Lisa won’t mind since she’s already sharing you, and it’s me.”

“I mind!”

Penny smiled lazily. “You like to be the one in charge? I like that. I’ll try anything you want me to.” She snuggled up. Her fingers felt along his belt for the buckle. “I wasn’t happy when you took off yesterday. I wanted to explain.”

“I think I understood what I saw,” Griffen said. He removed her hand from his waistband. She shifted her grip.

“You’re taking the moral high ground with me?” Penny asked, laughing. “How pointless! And how hypocritical, Mr. Gambling Tycoon. Your uncle told you to take good care of me.”

“This is not what he meant.”

“How do you know what he meant? Can’t you just let go and be someone else tonight? Look around you. No one is who they seem. Even Beth is being bad for tonight. This is the greatest city in the world because you can be whoever you really want to, and no one minds. In fact, they encourage it. You really should try it, you know.” She gave him a wicked smile. “You’d probably like it. I’m told I’m very good.”

“Thanks, but I’d rather not. I really care for Fox Lisa.”

The blue eyes turned flint gray.

“You know what happens if you don’t do what I say,” Penny whispered.

“Go ahead,” Griffen said. “I’m tired of your threatening me. Report me. I’ll be an item on the evening news, something out of your law-and-order campaign, then everyone will forget about it. This is New Orleans.”

“Not if I report Fox Lisa, too,” Penny said.

Griffen was horrified. “For what?”

“I think they call it aiding and abetting,” Penny said. Her eyes never left his. A tiny smile played along her lips. Griffen almost trembled with anger. Smoke drifted from his nostrils.

“You’d do that to her? She admires you. She looks up to you!”

“Cute, isn’t it? But she’s a child, and I’m a woman. A fellow dragon. Your equal. Come on. Let’s go back to your place. Fox Lisa never has to know.”

“
How
much?” Griffen demanded in outrage, raising his voice above the music. Penny’s eyes widened in surprise.

“What?” she asked.

Hastily, Griffen shoved her away and stood up.

“Forget it! I don’t pay for sex!” He sidled out of the row and all but ran toward the stairs. He had to get out of there.

Murmurs followed him, and Griffen was afraid Penny would, too. His fellow music lovers would think they just saw a local “businesswoman” stating her price and overestimating what she was worth to her john. Surprise should keep her in place long enough for him to get away.

Griffen thumped down the stairs and out into the street. Jerome had warned him that dragon females were “kind of wild.” Griffen realized he’d had no idea what that meant until that very moment. Penny really had no limits on going after what she wanted. She was willing to sacrifice anyone and anything to get her way. She was dangerous.

He thought of going back to the Irish pub, to sit among friends, but he needed to work through his outrage in private. He had to stop associating with Penny, and he needed to extract Fox Lisa from her clutches. Who knew what Penny would do to her if she wanted revenge against Griffen for rejecting her?

It was time to call Malcolm and change the terms of their agreement.

Val
hung on to the phone receiver, counting the rings. Six. Seven. Eight. Gris-gris had to answer sometime. She had tried every day, two or three times, as often as Henry would let her. This time she was determined not to let up until she got through. She drummed her fingers on the sitting-room table. It went to voice mail. She hung up and tried again. Five. Six. Click!

“Hello?” Val said.

“Hello?”

“Gris-gris?”

“No.”

“Isn’t this his phone? Who is this? Is he all right?”

“Oh, yeah, he all right,” the voice said. It sounded faintly familiar. “Dis Jean-Claude. Gris-gris cain’t ansa right now. He busy.”

Val ran through the faces she knew of Gris-gris’s employees and friends. She couldn’t place Jean-Claude, but that didn’t mean anything. Her boyfriend knew a lot of people. She would have left a message at his home, but like many people in the Quarter, he had no landline, only a cell phone.

“Well, can you take a message?” Val asked.

“Uh, mebbe. Lemme see if I can find somethin’ t’ write on.”

Suddenly, the connection clicked off. Val found herself listening to dead air. No wonder she hadn’t been able to reach Gris-gris! It sounded like someone had stolen his phone, maybe while he was still in the hospital. The nurses there assured her he was fine when he had been discharged. There was no other reason why she hadn’t been able to get a call through.

Gris-gris wasn’t the only one she hadn’t been able to reach. Griffen had never returned any of her messages. She couldn’t get through to Mai. Her uncle Malcolm wasn’t home. Why couldn’t she reach anyone in New Orleans? Had the whole city moved while she was gone?

A tiny foot kicked her in the midsection. Val patted her belly.

“Nice to know someone is still with me,” she said. “What do you think? Where is your uncle?” Was Griffen mad at her because she had taken off without letting him know? She’d left him detailed messages often since then. How immature to give her the silent treatment. It wasn’t as if they spent every moment together when she was in town. In fact, the two of them had been closer the last year than they had since they were small children. She doubted Griffen would stay mad for long. He had already begun to sound like an overprotective uncle. She wouldn’t be surprised if he was already filling up her apartment with baby toys.

The doctor had been by for a second monthly prenatal checkup. He had given Val high marks for taking care of herself. Her midsection had expanded somewhat, though the rest of her figure remained largely the same. She ran around the estate every morning, about half her normal distance because the baby’s weight threw her off, but she made up the difference by doing lengths in the pool. She took vitamins. She watched her waistline though the food was great. Everyone was really nice. She had little to complain about other than feeling isolated.

“Too bad you’re not much of a conversationalist,” Val said.

“Try me.”

Val jumped out of her chair. Henry had glided in without making a sound. He stood there, his lips pursed, hands folded against the waist of his dark blue jacket.

“Don’t do that!” she said. Her heart slowed to its normal pace. He waved a dismissive hand. As usual, he was impeccably dressed. His velvet blazer and soft, faille trousers made Val feel as though she had slept in a pigpen and woke up during a cotillion. Henry waved an impatient hand.

“Sorry, but you’re late for our meeting. We need to get this accounting done.” He brandished a ledger at her. She groaned. “You said you were an economics major.”

“Second year!” she said. “We had only learned basic accounting and theory. I’ve never worked on a sophisticated budget before.”

“It’s just balancing numbers,” Henry said. He eyed the small table. “Do you want to work on it here?”

Reluctantly, Val put the phone down. “All right. Let’s do it.”

“Good.” Henry opened the book and shoved it in front of her. “We were going over the first-quarter input and output.”

“Why doesn’t Melinda have this on a computer?” Val said. “There are some really good spreadsheet programs.”

“She does. But computers are vulnerable. Having a set of physical books is a backup that makes sense.”

“Well, why aren’t we doing this on the computer and entering it into the book by hand later?”

“Somatic memory,” Henry said. “If you handle something, you will remember where it is. On a computer, everything is just pixels. You’ll have a relationship with the keyboard, not the data. If you would really like, you can do the data input yourself later.”

“No, thanks,” Val said. She glanced at the intricate brass clock on the green marble console table near the wall. “Mike is picking me up for dinner. I want to have time to change.”

“Then let’s get on with it,” Henry said. He opened the book and pushed it toward her.

“You talk about body memory,” Val said, “but all this is still theoretical to me. What is this for?”

“One of Melinda’s businesses. We thought we would start you off small.”

“What does it do?” Val asked, suddenly curious. At the top of the first page, P
REP
P
RO
was stamped in gold.

“Machine-embroidered patches and clothing. Universities are its biggest market.”

“Cool! Have I ever seen any?”

Henry turned to the back of the book, where she saw a three-column printout of three-digit numbers, names, and telephone numbers. “This is the customer list. And, yes,” he added, as if bored with the subject already, “they are also already on computer.”

Val ran down the list. She found her college, Griffen’s college, and many other familiar universities, as well as some entries that sounded more like retail businesses.

“Okay,” she said, flipping back to page one. She was dismayed by the endless columns of figures, but she refused to allow him to see how nervous she was. “What are we doing?”

“We’re going over the expenses versus profit. Materials, salaries, office expenses, shipping, volume discounts, and so on.” Henry produced a large calculator and a scratch pad from his pocket. Val was always amazed how much stuff he managed to carry without ruining the lines of his clothing. She couldn’t hide a credit card without having the outline show. “What I want you to do is to familiarize yourself with the raw materials and the products they go into.”

With the image of a real business in her mind, Val began comparing figures in the ledger. Beside the numbers were names, cryptic abbreviations, and notations, like “17.5 h” or “300 spls.” After seeing them noted on page after page, she came to recognize the names of the seventeen employees. Pretty soon she noticed the discrepancy between the amount they were being paid.

“What’s wrong with R. Stiller?” she asked.

“Hmm?”

“Well, he has the same salary as about five of the others for a while, but during these pay periods, his income varies a lot.”

“Absenteeism,” Henry said. “They earn hourly wages.”

“Uh-huh.” Val worked in silence for a while longer. “You know, there are five suppliers of thread. Mercer and Boyes have the same note next to them sometimes.” She pointed to entries that read “50 no. 17 black,” on two different pages. Henry was right: Handling something physical made it easy to recall where things were.

“Good!” Henry said. “PrepPro buys standard stock from both of them.”

“Is there a volume discount? Would it make sense to get a quote for all that we need of one color?”

“It might. It could take a little negotiation.”

“Is fifty spools at a time a big order? Find out what their price breaks are?” Val said.

“I can put you on the phone to them tomorrow,” Henry said.

“Me?”

Henry offered a bland smile in the face of her outrage.

“Why not?” Henry asked, then clicked his tongue. “Look at the time! You had better go get ready. Marcella laid out that red suit you like. You might need a wrap. It’s going down to fifty tonight.”

Val stood up gently. The baby had gone to sleep again. She pictured it curled up with a tiny fist in its mouth. “Thanks, Henry.”

•   •   •

Roxanne
helped Val into her dress. Val sat before the mirror, feeling as if it weren’t completely her body, as the petite beautician combed her long blond hair, then applied makeup. They had had just enough time to pull Val together when Marcella leaned in the door.

“Mr. Burns is here,” the housekeeper said. If she had been less dignified, she might have winked.

“Thanks, Marcella,” Val said. She looked at herself in the mirror. The red suit—rose-colored, really—had a tailored, knee-length skirt under a light jacket that was pleated slightly at the sides to allow for her expanding belly. A gleaming, round pearl the size of a gumball, set in a smooth ring brooch of gold, was pinned to the left lapel. Val had picked the piece from the jewelry box that sat on her vanity table. Henry had assured her that she was entitled to borrow any piece that she liked. Melinda would be pleased if she enjoyed them. The purse, instead of being matchy-matchy, was gold leather. Her shoes were rosewood leather with a slanted gold stripe running over the instep. The label inside identified them as Stuart Weitzman. Probably five hundred bucks. She had never owned a pair of shoes that cost more than thirty.

Fairy princess again,
she thought.
It’s not really real. Enjoy it while it lasts.

“How do I look?” she asked Roxanne.

The little woman looked up at her shyly. “Very pretty.”

Val gave her a one-armed hug.

“You did a great job. I’d better run.”

•   •   •

“. . .
I
guess I never thought about all the items you need to organize to run a business,” Val concluded. She realized she had been babbling, who knew for how long? Mike Burns smiled at her. She blushed. “Sorry to run on like that.”

“You sound like you grasped everything admirably,” he said. “That’s great.” Val made a face. Mike looked apologetic. “Sorry. That sounded patronizing. I didn’t mean it to. I know people who have gained and lost millions who never picked up on what you learned just going over a set of books. You could be a tycoon in five years with your acumen. That’s an honest compliment.”

Val toyed with her iced-tea glass. The maitre d’ had noticed her figure when she walked into the restaurant beside Mike. Instead of bringing them the wine list, he offered them tea or fresh-squeezed lemonade. Val saw the glance that Mike sent toward the mahogany bar that ran along one side of the dining room. He would probably have liked to have an alcoholic drink, but he insisted on having tea, too.

“Boy, I can’t pretend any longer that I’m not showing,” Val said, as the busboy in bow tie and vest came over to top up her glass. The young man, probably about her age, smiled at her with a kind of avuncular approval she was beginning to see on a lot of faces.

“You are one of the most attractive pregnant women I have ever seen,” Mike assured her. “Well, tell me. If you were going to open a business of your own, what would it be?”

Val dropped a couple of brown-sugar cubes into the tea and stirred it until they dissolved. The restaurant was dimly lit but not too dark. White linen tablecloths shimmered, and tiny candles in miniature hurricane lanterns on each table picked glints off the paper-thin glasses. The other diners were firelit faces with shadowy bodies. Red roses in low bowls bloomed in the middle of each table. Val inhaled the scent with pleasure.

“I never really thought about it,” she said. “If I ran a business, I’d want it to be one where the employees enjoyed what they did, not just earned a paycheck.”

“Not really an easy combination,” Mike said. “The high-earning jobs are usually high-pressure and cutthroat.”

“I know. Maybe a bookstore? I love the ones in the French Quarter. Everyone who works there seems to love it.”

“Not much potential for high revenues,” Mike said firmly. “Ask the proprietor sometime what kind of a profit he makes.”

“I guess I’d have to think about it,” Val said. “Most of the places that I like going into are fun for me, not the people who work there.”

“True. Like a restaurant.”

“Or a bar. I like my job, but it’s a lot of hurry-up-and-wait. Some people don’t tip, and some of the ones who do think they’ve bought me along with their drinks.”

Mike smiled. “Ever have to throw a customer out?”

Val smiled back. “Not twice.”

The waiter appeared at their side. Mike insisted that she choose for both of them. That surprised Val, but pleasantly. She combed her memory for what he had enjoyed at the fund-raising dinner and at the jazz club on their first date. The music had been so overwhelmingly good that she had concentrated on that, not her companion. She was determined not to make that mistake again. He had eaten red meat without complaint. Rack of lamb was listed as a special. That sounded good to her, too. The waiter listened approvingly and departed on silent feet.

“How’d you know I love lamb?” Mike asked.

“I guessed,” Val admitted.

“Good guess. So, I know New Orleans is full of good restaurants. Where do you eat when you have the chance?”

The food in the restaurant was as good as the ambience. Val savored each bite, but she enjoyed Mike’s company even more. He drew her out about her family, her favorite music, dreams, and aspirations. He listened closely to her, his deep blue eyes fixed on hers. Val was flattered that such a handsome and accomplished man would be interested in her. He didn’t push her to be alone with him or make improper suggestions. Val thought it might have been nice if he had. She missed Gris-gris. It had been over a month since she had been with a man. Her uterus might be occupied, but the rest of her body wasn’t. His hand, strong but gentle under her forearm as he helped her out of her chair, set her nerves wondering what it would feel like on other parts of her skin.

She wondered what he would say if she told him what she was thinking.