Page 59 of Lawbreaker

Ben let them out at the entrance and went to park the car. The two women found a path through the guests, and there were many, to find Tony at the buffet table.

“And I thought you said you never fed people during these shows,” Stasia teased him.

Tony was wearing a tux with a red handkerchief in his breast pocket. Under it, his shirt was carelessly unbuttoned, with no tie, showing a glimpse of the thick black hair on his broad chest.

“I think what I said,” Tony replied with amusement as he hugged her gently, “is that I never fed people to lions. And I said it because you were eating half the table all by yourself.”

“I’m a growing girl,” she teased, indicating the swelling of her stomach that accommodated the baby growing there.

“Boy or girl?” he asked.

She lifted her chin. “Surprise,” she countered and then grinned. “We don’t even know ourselves. We like the mystery.”

He just shook his head. “To each his own,” he replied, his eyes approving of the simple sheath dress she was wearing. “You look nice,” he said softly, pointedly ignoring Odalie in her couture finery.

“Thanks,” Stasia said reluctantly.

There was a small band playing bluesy tunes and a few couples were on what passed for the dance floor, the room temporarily empty and waiting for a new exhibit. “Nice band,” Stasia remarked.

“Yeah. One of them is a cousin of Connie.” He said that deliberately, with a glare in Odalie’s direction.

“Connie must have a lot of cousins,” Odalie said. “But her brother is really cute.”

“You don’t need to get mixed up with Angel,” he said curtly.

Odalie was getting odd messages in her head. “You told them not to take me to the show,” she said suddenly.

His face tautened. “Yeah. So what?”

She started to shoot back, but Stasia got in the way. “Where is Maddie Brannt’s exhibit?” she asked Tony. “I’d really like to see that.”

“So would I,” Odalie added.

“Follow me.” He started walking, then paused long enough to grab a glass of champagne off the tray of a server. He offered some to the women, but Stasia didn’t dare drink, and Odalie couldn’t handle liquor.

“Shades of prohibition,” Tony chuckled, shaking his head as they moved along.

“I can get drunk off the fumes of alcohol,” Odalie remarked. “So I don’t drink.”

“And I’m pregnant, so I can’t drink alcohol,” Stasia added. “The baby wouldn’t like it. He’d tell me so with a kick that a football player would envy,” she said, rubbing her stomach and laughing.

He laughed. “That’s a good omen,” he teased.

It was, but Stasia didn’t say it out loud.

Tony stopped at a cabinet in the front window of the gallery. And there, in all her glory, was the redheaded fairy that Maddie Brannt had done for Tony. It didn’t look like any of the women he knew, which was the only reason it hadn’t joined his private collection.

“I remember that one,” Odalie remarked, smiling. “It was in one of the books I gave Maddie. I have a copy, too.”

“The artist did a great job,” Tony said. “But a statuette is perfect in every way so that you see the person, or the fairy, in all the angles.”

“Yes, you do,” Stasia agreed. “Maddie is incredibly gifted.”

“So are you,” Odalie said with real warmth. “Your paintings capture everything.”

“They do, but the woman who painted that portrait of Tony over his mantel at home, she was fantastic.”

“My adopted daughter in Jacobsville did that one,” Tony said. “It was true to life, and she’d never seen me. She did it from photos and really good insight.”

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