Erin was parked in the garage and getting little Kev out of his car seat when Tam opened the door. Kev was almost as big as Rachel was, even though he was two years younger, the snorting little piglet. Tam tried not to hold that against him. It was difficult sometimes.
Tam ran an appraising eye over Erin as she hoisted the chubby kid onto her hip. The other woman was finally slimming down from her baby weight, though she was still very soft and squeezable. Tam suspected that Connor liked his wife just that way. Whatever. To each his own.
“And to what do I owe the honor of this visit?” There was no way to modulate the bitchy edge in her voice, so she didn’t try.
Erin ignored her completely, saving her smiles for Rachel. “And how is this pretty little sweetheart today?” she crooned. She bent forward and gave Rachel a kiss on the back of her tousled, black-curled head. Rachel clutched tighter, buried her face in Tam’s neck, fingers digging in like little kitten claws.
Progress. Four months ago, that brief kiss would have sent Rachel into screaming convulsions of fear. She was mellowing. Her little body was tense, but not trembling much. As Tam reset the alarms, Rachel even lifted big dark eyes a little to peek out at the baby on Erin’s lap. Little Kev returned her regard with grave, oddly adult curiosity.
“You’re not quite so thin this time.” Erin’s voice was full of motherly approval. “That’s really great. You look better already. Much.”
Tam suppressed a sharp reply. Her appetite was as crappy as ever, but Rachel had this annoying new mealtime game without which she would not eat, called you-take-a-bite-and-then-I-take-a-bite. So, by brutal necessity, a certain quantity of butterfly pasta, banana slices, crackers, fish sticks, Cream of Wheat, yogurt, and turkey burger patties were introducing their fat and calories into her system.
She supposed it wasn’t so terrible. She’d been looking pretty damn haggard, not that she cared much. Rachel didn’t give a damn what her new mother looked like. Beauty had just been another weapon in Tam’s arsenal, but it was not one she cared to ever use again. It was only useful to attract and maniuplate men, and she’d aggressively phased that necessity out of her life. After that last revenge stint with Kurt Novak and Georg, she was so, so done with that groping, sweaty drama. She swallowed down a greasy clutch of nausea at the mere thought of it.
Rachel consented to being put down on the kitchen floor, where Rosalia was laying out coffee things and a plate of shortbread cookies. Cookies, for God’s sake. While Tam wasn’t looking, her house had morphed into a cozy, fluff-lined nest. That was what came of letting other people into it. Tam watched with something akin to horrified fascination as Erin dove face first into those lethal cookies. Look at the girl go. Cellulite city. No fear, no shame. It boggled the mind.
“Stop looking at me like that,” Erin said, reaching for her second cookie. “You make me feel like a captured space alien whose feeding habits are being studied by scientists. If you don’t approve of amazing homemade shortbread cookies, why serve them?”
“I didn’t,” Tam said, casting a speaking glance toward Rosalia. “She did. Can you see me baking cookies? I don’t do cookies. I’m not even on speaking terms with cookies.”
“True enough. I can see you cooking up deadly poisons to dip hairpins into, but not pastry,” Erin admitted as she unrepentantly poured a heart-clogging quantity of half-and-half into her coffee.
Tam winced. “Jesus, Erin. Watch it with that stuff.”
“Don’t be afraid for me,” Erin soothed. “Nursing makes you fearless. The cookies are fabulous, Rosalia. Can I have the recipe?”
Rosalia smiled her thanks and nodded as she herded the little kids into the adjoining room. Tam abruptly missed the noise and distraction. The sudden silence and Erin’s sharp, amber brown eyes made her twitch. After an endless string of stress nightmares and largely sleepless nights, she was too raw and rattled and frustrated right now to keep her shields properly up. She hated that.
“Are things going any better?” Erin asked gently.
Irritation made Tam lash into attack mode. “Is what going better?” she snapped. “What the hell are you referring to?”
Erin shrugged. “In general. Your health. Your sleep, your appetite, your daughter. Since you won’t tell me any specifics, I have to ask general questions.”
“You don’t have to ask questions at all. Where is it written?”
“I ask you because I care,” Erin said, quietly stubborn.
Being shamed into feeling like a spoiled, sulky bitch did not do any favors to her mood. Tam felt her irritation ratchet up a couple notches. “I didn’t ask you to care,” she said.
Erin gave her a reproving look. “Cope,” she said dryly. “I know you may find this hard to believe, but I actually came here today for a reason other than just to torment you and waste your time.”
“Oh. Astonishing,” Tam muttered.
Erin was silent for a long moment, her mouth pressed into a thin line. Tam could actually hear her, in the ether, counting to ten and praying for patience. It gave her a pang of mingled guilt and satisfaction. She’d pierced the protective layer of Zen-like, cow-hormone-induced calm. Zing, she’d scored a point. Tam tried hard to enjoy it.
Erin let out a long, slow breath that she had surely learned in a mellow new-age yoga class. In with the good vibes, out with the bad. “It’s about this really weird thing that happened to me at work yesterday. It might be a business opportunity for you,” she said.
Tam blinked. That was, in fact, utterly unexpected. “Huh?”
“At the museum. I did a consultation for this guy. He came all the way from Rome. He wanted an expert opinion on a replica of a piece of Celtic-themed jewelry he’d found. He’s trying to locate the designer, and he had a lead that she was in this area. So he opens up the case, and I look in, and I just about drop my teeth. It was one of your designs.”
Tam felt a cold, unpleasant chill spreading from the pit of her belly outward through her limbs. “Which one?”
“One of the torques. The one you named for me. The Erin.”
Tam drummed her fingers and stared down into her cup of black coffee. The Erin. A piece she’d done to help exorcise the demon of Kurt Novak, not that it had helped much. “Describe it,” she snapped.
Erin looked puzzled. “I just did. It’s part of the series of—”
“No two pieces are alike,” Tam said. “Tell me which stones were in it, the number, the color scheme, the number of gold threads in the braid, the size of the finial. Rubies or garnets? Amythyst or sapphire?”
“Oh.” Erin thought for a moment. “It was similar to the original,” she offered. “But the stones were cabochon rubies, I think. Not garnets.”
“Gotcha.” Tam filed that into her database, made a mental note to call the broker in Marseilles who had handled that particular sale, and went back to drumming her fingers, silently processing data.
She was alarmed. And unnerved. Someone who had been able to connect Erin to the creator of Deadly Beauty had access to information that could only spell trouble for all of them. She had passports and multiple alternate identities set up for herself and Rachel, and various emergency bolt-holes already prepared in remote parts of the globe, but those identities weren’t as ripe or well constructed as her current one. And a woman with a child was more visible, more memorable.
More vulnerable.
Besides. She liked this home. Rachel liked it, too. And