funding good-bye.
Dammit, Adam. Thank you so much for screwing me over yet again.
“I wanted to fire you the minute I took over this job,” Phyllis continued to harangue. “But the board of directors wouldn’t allow it. Well, this time you’ve gone too far. You’re out on your keister, Cooper.”
Cassie gasped. “Ms. Lambert, please, you don’t know the whole story. Let me explain.”
“I don’t want to hear it.” Phyllis held up her palm in a talk-to-the-hand gesture.
Harrison couldn’t allow Cassie to get fired. He might regret his decision later, but he had to do something to bail her out. He had to make her beholden to him. Then she couldn’t refuse to answer when he asked her some very pointed questions concerning her involvement with his brother.
“Excuse me, Ms. Lambert.” Harrison cleared his throat and fiddled with his bow tie. He had no idea what he was going to say.
“What is it, Harrison?” Phyllis’s tone quickly changed from waspish to syrupy.
The curator had to suck up to him. Without Harrison there would be no Kiya, no star-crossed lovers exhibit. No one hundred well-heeled guests willing to shell out a thousand dollars apiece to see the show.
“Call me Dr. Standish,” he said sternly. He didn’t like brownnosers.
“Of course,” Phyllis replied. “If that’s what you’d prefer, Dr. Standish.”
“I do prefer.”
The guests had gone curiously quiet. One hundred bated breaths.
Waiting.
Quick! Astonish her with your brilliance.
Damn. He was lousy under pressure.
It turned out he didn’t have to dazzle her with bullshit. At that moment a security guard came rushing from the building. The man pushed through the crowd, panting and gesticulating wildly. “Ms. Lambert, Ms. Lambert!”
“What is it?” Phyllis snarled
“Come quickly. Kiya’s amulet. It’s been stolen!”
CHAPTER 4
T he myriad gods and goddesses filed back into the museum with a grim-faced Phyllis Lambert marching at the head of the pack. Cassie brought up the rear, anxiously nibbling her bottom lip.
Which wasn’t like her.
She never lagged behind and she rarely fretted, mainly because she didn’t like thinking about anything that bummed her out. Plus, she hated chewing off her lipstick because she indulged too lavishly at the Neiman Marcus Lancôme counter. At twenty-eight dollars a tube, she’d learned to make her lipstick last.
But she’d just been fired. She was out of a job. So long, Smithsonian. Good-bye, Maddie.
Cassie swallowed the lump in her throat and told herself she would not tear up. She wasn’t about to give Phyllis the satisfaction of making her cry.
Just ahead of her in the multitude, she spied Harrison and her heart thumped illogically. She didn’t even like the guy. Why was her pulse speeding up?
As if sensing her gaze on the back of his head, he turned and glowered at her. Apparently he wasn’t any fonder of her than she was of him, but he had stepped in and interrupted Phyllis when she’d been reading her the riot act.
The question was, Why?
She searched his face, looking for answers, but found none. The man was a master at hiding his emotions. Which in this instance was probably a good thing.
The entire group skidded to a halt in front of Kiya’s now-empty display case. Phyllis took one look, narrowed her eyes, and spun around.
“Cooper!” she bellowed.
Cassie took a deep breath, marshaled her courage, and stepped forward. How much worse could it get? She had already been canned. What else could the irritable curator do to her?
“What is it, Phyllis?” she asked, making sure her tone sounded light, casual, and untroubled as she toed off with the woman.
“Now I realize what you were up to.” Lambert shook a finger in her face. “Screaming and claiming there had been a murder in the courtyard. You were creating a distraction, luring us outside, while your accomplice shut off the electricity to deactivate the security alarms and stole the amulet.”
The