My Heart Stood Still by Lynn Kurland (best book club books of all time .TXT) 📕

there, there was no sense in not using the phone. The man walked around his desk and sat down, then looked up in surprise.

"Hey," he said crossly, "I came in here for some peace and quiet."

Thomas looked at the man's nameplate. He'd been thinking of him as "the snake" from the beginning; maybe it was time to start using his proper name. "Well, Mr. Anthony DiSalvio, you'll have it just as soon as I use your phone."

"Why?" DiSalvio asked with a smirk. "Calling in reinforcements?"

Thomas had developed a healthy dislike for the man over three days of meetings, and that comment only strengthened it.

"Calling home," Thomas said shortly.

"Sure you are."

"To Scotland. And don't bother billing me for it."

"We'll get it out of you one way or another." DiSalvio leaned back in his chair and shook his head. "What is it with that place, anyway? I know more people who've migrated there."

"Less stress."

"More sheep, more like," DiSalvio muttered as he shuffled papers on his desk. He looked up suddenly. "Know any MacLeods?"

Thomas paused in mid-dial. "What?"

"One of my old partners lives in England, but he's always going up to hang out in Scotland with a bunch of MacLeods. His sister married one."

"Did she?"

"The guy's name is James, I think." DiSalvio shook his head. "Crazy bunch. They all fool around with swords like some medieval fairy group. You know, those light-steps that dress up in skirts."

"Plaids."

"Whatever."

Thomas put the phone down. "James, did you say?"

"That's the guy."

"How interesting."

"Naw, it's nuts. I keep trying to get Alex—he's the guy who used to work for me, and what a barracuda! He makes your guy look like a fifth-grade girl. Anyway, I keep trying to get Alex to come back and work for me, but he says he can't handle the city anymore." DiSalvio sighed heavily. "A waste of a good mind, but I can't do anything about it. I even took him out for dinner last night, him and that Amazon he's married to. You wouldn't believe the money I offered him—or the money I spent on dinner!"

Thomas was just sure he'd heard the man wrong. "You had dinner with him last night? He's here in New York?"

"Yeah," DiSalvio said, taking a toothpick to his teeth. Apparently he was still looking for stray bits of last night's meal. "He comes over once a year just to torture me."

"I'm sure that's his main reason," Thomas said dryly.

"You don't know Alex. And you wouldn't want to know his wife." He looked almost unsettled. "She's a looker, but I wouldn't want to meet her in a dark alley. She pulled a knife on me at dinner. She's another one of those reenactment wackos, though I'd sure like to see her in a pair of tights."

Thomas had the overwhelming desire to sit down. "They couldn't still be here."

"Oh, sure. They're over at the Plaza." He smiled proudly. "Alex can afford that and plenty more. He made a crapload of money while he was here—off saps like you, of course."

"Of course," Thomas said, wishing he had his own knife to brandish. "You couldn't get me the number, could you?"

DiSalvio picked up the phone. "Marj, get me Smith's number for the dead fish in here. Yeah, I'm doing him a favor, what's it to you?" He slammed down the phone. "Damned uppity Brooklyn women. Thinks she needs to run my life."

Marj, a very ancient and far-from-uppity-looking woman, entered the room shortly thereafter and shoved the number at DiSalvio.

"Don't be late for dinner," she snapped.

DiSalvio looked at Thomas sheepishly. "My ma. She's the only secretary I can seem to hold on to."

"Astonishing."

"Yeah, I think so, too." He shoved the paper at Thomas. "Here you go. Guess you sheep-lovers need to stick together."

Thomas's desire to grind Tony DiSalvio into the dust was tempered somewhat by the phone number he had in his hand. He had the same feeling of destiny he'd had when he'd first learned of his castle coming up on the auction block.

Alex Smith knew James MacLeod. James MacLeod's hobby apparently was fighting with swords.

Was that James MacLeod the same one Iolanthe couldn't seem to come up with a death date for?

Well, there was only one way to find out.

Thomas walked back to the conference room and leaned down to talk to his attorney.

"Get us out of this with as little damage as possible," he whispered.

Jake's jaw went slack. "But I thought you wanted them crushed."

Thomas considered, then nodded. "You're right. Stick it to them. But still get us out as quickly as possible." DiSalvio had bought himself that much leniency.

"You're the boss," Jake said doubtfully.

"Yeah."

"You're also crazy."

"You're right. Gotta go. Got things to do."

"More important than this?"

"Much."

The understatement of the year. Thomas straightened and tried not to leave the room at a dead run.

 

 

Two hours later, he was sitting in a very expensive sitting room of a suite at the Plaza, looking at two people he was almost certain possessed the key to his future.

Alexander Smith was your typically good-looking GQ poster boy, but the picture was spoiled by his dry wit and easygoing manner. Thomas would have thought Tony DiSalvio had been talking about the wrong lawyer if it hadn't been for the shrewdness in Alex's eyes. His wife, Margaret, was every bit as good-looking as Tony had advertised, but Thomas was hard-pressed to believe she would pull a knife on anyone. She was poised, lovely, and gracious.

And then she opened her mouth to speak.

Her accent was English, but she sounded like she'd learned English from Chaucer. Not that Thomas was an expert or anything, but he'd been bored one semester in school, and he'd taken a poetry class to try to channel some of his energy into something creative. It had turned out to be not poetry writing, but poetry reading, and three-quarters of the semester had been spent bouncing between Beowulf and The Canterbury Tales. He'd excelled, given the gift for languages he certainly hadn't acquired except through his gene pool, and could still read the text