Erin was the first to bear down on her, flushed with triumphant delight. “Hey, Tam. You look great. Gorgeous dress, and Rachel is a doll in lipstick red. What a nice surprise to see you here, Mr. Janos!”
“A delight for me, too.” He bowed over Erin’s hand and gave Tam a sidelong wink before he kissed it, à la Count Dracula.
He would die for that wink, Tam silently vowed. She met Connor’s eyes, grimly amused to note that Connor was as unimpressed as she at Janos’s slick, Transylvanian gallantry. Erin seemed to be enjoying it, though, and baby Kev as well. Babies liked the guy. Go figure.
It made no sense, but she had no time to wonder about it. Everyone was crowding around to see the latest sideshow—Tam with a date, whoo-hoo—and she was trapped in a dance of embracing arms and social kisses and loud exclamations.
Rachel grabbed her thigh, protesting at being lost in a forest of legs, but before she could extricate herself, the child was swept up and almost out of her field of vision, skinny red legs waving wildly.
She spun around with a gasp. Janos was putting Rachel on his shoulders. She shrieked with delight, eyes wide, cheeks rosy.
“Put her down,” she spat at him. “Figlio di puttana.”
He blinked innocently. Rachel chortled, wrapping an arm around his forehead. “But why? She loves it.”
Tam reached up to grab her. Rachel began to wind up into her ambulance shriek. Tam sighed and let her arms drop.
“She’s not completely potty trained, you know,” she said. “She often loses it in moments of great excitement. But we’re living dangerously today. Taking big risks. No pull-up pants. Just big girl panties. Made out of thin cotton knit.”
Janos gazed back, apparently unintimidated. “Your point is?”
She shrugged. “I have fresh underwear and tights in my bag for Rachel if she pees or poops herself, but I have no spare Armani jacket for you when the inevitable happens,” she said. “Nor will I have the least sympathy for you. On the contrary. It will make my day.”
Janos’s white teeth flashed. “You are less likely to stab with a poisoned blade or tase me with a necklace while I have Rachel on my shoulders,” he said. “I am safer like this. I will risk it.”
“Be it on your head, then. Or your shoulders, and running down your back, as the case may be.” Tam noticed the fascinated audience clustered around them. “Oh, for Christ’s sake,” she snapped. “Don’t you folks all have people to kiss? Go on, fuss over the bride before she gets annoyed at me for drawing too much attention to myself! Go!”
The crowd dispersed, smirking at each other. Janos followed her as she hoisted the diaper bag over her shoulder and made her way to the ballroom where the reception was being held. He suffered Rachel’s sticky, clutching hands grabbing his ears, his nose, yanking his hair, all with calm good humor.
She spotted a table to the side that was flanked by a long bench, where bulging diaper bags already sat. She recognized them as Margot and Erin’s. High chairs were interspersed with the place settings.
She headed for it and found her name. Janos sat down on the other side of Rachel’s high chair, lifting her onto his lap and bouncing her. The kid giggled madly, delighted. So dangerous, to let oneself be charmed by so little, she thought darkly. “That’s Erin’s chair,” she informed him.
“There’s room for another person,” Janos said. “She was happy to see me with you. She’ll make space for me.”
“Her husband won’t be thrilled to have an uninvited stranger with no security clearance plant his arrogant ass right next to his wife and son,” Tam said.
“You’re my security clearance,” he said.
She passed a roll from the breadbasket to Rachel. “Do you want to live to see the dawn? You do understand the futility of following me around, don’t you, Janos? I will never do what you have asked. Never. Is that absolutely clear?”
“As crystal,” he said.
She watched sourly as Janos was a good sport about having the roll crumbled and smeared all over his Armani. God, how her jaw ached. Social events in general made her tense, and the day’s bizarre events and assorted shocking revelations had ratcheted the tension up higher, nudging her toward homicidal on her own scale. Tam had no talent for parties at the best of times. But Becca wouldn’t like an impromptu amputation with a steak knife or someone losing an eye to an escargot fork at her nuptial bash. Behave. Down, girl. Breathe.
She reached for the cabernet that sat breathing in the middle of the table and sloshed some into her glass. People were already drifting toward her table like gawkers toward a car wreck. She closed her eyes against the pulse of a stress headache.
It was going to get worse before it got better.
Chapter
12
Val fed data into the matrix as he smiled, shook hands, chatted politely. The husband of Erin glowered at him, just as Tam had foreseen, but did not oust him from the table, at least not yet. The other men all regarded him with the barely concealed suspicion he would expect of a group of seasoned security professionals. The women tried without success to hide their curiosity. Tam gazed off into space, her jaw tense. She looked deathly pale beneath her skillfully applied makeup.
She gave him an unfriendly look when he poured her another glass of wine. “Relax,” he murmured.
“Sure,” she whispered back. “When you stop fucking with my life. And speaking of fucking with lives, have you called the cops off Rosalia’s boys yet?”
He was nonplussed. “Ah…”
“Do it. This very second. Or else I will announce, in a loud voice, exactly who you are and what you want to this whole table. The aftermath won’t be pretty, I promise you that.”
“Sì, sì. One moment.” He pulled out his Palm Pilot, tapped in a quick SMS, and smiled at her. “Done. To confirm my good intentions.”
“In a pig’s eye.” She frowned, unconvinced. “Just like that?”
“Give it twenty minutes,” he advised. “Let it trickle down.”
“Not one second more,” she warned.
He sipped his wine, let his eyes smile at her from over the rim of the glass. She muttered something rude and tore her gaze away.
The younger of the bridesmaids came by, leaning over to kiss Tam and murmur to her in a language that Val was startled to realize was Ukrainian. He’d learned it by necessity in his youth, since a great deal of Novak’s business had been connected to the Ukraine.
“Sveti! Sveti!” Rachel crowed with delight, forgetting all about him, and held up her arms, launching herself into midair.
The girl caught her and hugged her, murmuring endearments and covering Rachel’s face with kisses.
“You’re from Ukraina?” he asked in that language. “Rachel, too?”
She gave him a shy smile that struck him as very sad. “Rachel and I were cellmates in prison,” was her unexpected reply. She swung the child onto her hip. “Can I take her over to play with the other kids?” she asked Tamara, in heavily accented English.
“Fine,” Tamara said. “Bring her back when they start serving something you think she might eat or whenever you want a break. Thanks, Sveti. You’re an angel.”
Sveti walked away, her head bent over the toddler’s to listen to the child’s excited babble.
He gave Tam a questioning look. “Cellmates?”
She