unplugging a lamp and carting it over to double the lighting. Fumbling with the key to his case, Stan produced a small, collapsible ultraviolet light. A microscope appeared from nowhere.
Kay sat on the edge of the bed, not wanting to get in anyone’s way. Lascivious ideas obviously had no future here. The two men were rattling off terms like “cabochons” and “crystallized fossils” and “floaters,” and suddenly nobody was smiling. Stan’s face closed up tighter than a vain woman’s girdle. “I’ve got the best stuff you’ve ever seen,” he told Mitch gruffly. “But I never told you it’d be cheap.”
“I knew you didn’t come all this way to sell tiddlywinks.” Mitch took the desk chair and removed a small cylindrical magnifying glass from his jacket pocket, fitting it to his eye. “Kay?”
She sidled up behind him, still worried about being in the way. The bag came out of the zippered inside pocket of Stan’s case, and when he carefully emptied its contents onto the white velvet cloth, she no longer had time to worry about being in the way because she was too busy having heart failure.
Mitch started talking in low quiet tones, his words obviously meant just for her. “None of that jargon you heard during dinner could have made any sense to you, but now you’ll see what we were talking about, sweet. Opals are valued in terms of their fire-that is, the brilliance of the stone. A ‘potch’ is an opal too bland in color to be worth anything. A feather is a crack in the stone, a flaw. Cabochon is the facetless cut you use on stones when you want a smooth convex surface. Diamonds are never cut that way. Opals almost always…”
Kay certainly hoped Mitch wasn’t expecting her to hear a word he was saying.
There was only a handful of “stones” spread out on the table. Seven in all. Two of the opals were as big as a baby’s fist and had a milky, translucent background. The others were black opals, and prisms of color burst from their base of dark smoke.
The whole table seemed aglow. Rainbow crystals danced under the special light; the stone Mitch picked up to show her radiated a mesmerizing vibrancy from its center, as if light and brilliance were darting around within it.
Stan said something. Mitch didn’t answer him; he was staring at Kay, studying her response to the jewels with the most enigmatic expression. His features were statue-still, watchful. Worried?
Completely bemused, Kay opened her mouth to say something, but instantly forgot it. Shock was setting in, and for the next hour total silence reigned in the room. A fortune was clearly displayed on the white velvet cloth. Mitch appeared used to evaluating fortunes. And he turned to Stan only once, to hand him a stone.
Stan abruptly flushed. “I saw the flaw,” he said gruffly. “The stone will be good, though, if it’s cut right. You know that as well as I do.”
Mitch said absolutely nothing, but Kay could have made Popsicles in the coolness of his stare. Was this her big, gentle man, with his so-well-hidden shy side? The one who defined tenderness every time he touched her? She had expected to get to know him better tonight; instead, he was now more a mystery to her than ever.
Chapter Eight
By ten thirty, Stan was aboard his plane, his bag five stones lighter. Walking a half step ahead of Mitch, her arms wrapped around her chest against the freezing cold, Kay stared straight ahead as they made their way through the silent parking lot to Mitch’s car.
She hadn’t said a word since Stan had left, and didn’t intend to.
“Hemerling shows up about twice a year,” Mitch said from behind her, breaking the silence. “I don’t want you to think he’s typical of my business associates, Kay. Australian opals are the best, and if he’s half crook, he’s also one of the best stone peddlers around.”
Still she said nothing, waiting while he opened the car door so she could slide inside. Moments later, he stuck the key in the ignition, started the engine and sent her a sidelong glance. “You’re emitting a few frigid vibrations, honey,” he remarked.
“You’re one smart man,” Kay acknowledged.
Mitch paused, giving her an inscrutable look. “You’re not impressed with my line of work?”
“I wouldn’t care if you were a ditch digger,” she said, flatly.
He glanced at Kay, and when she still said nothing, he kept on talking. “The opal’s acquired a bad name in the last few centuries, but for thousands of years people believed it increased the powers of the mind. No other ‘lucky stone’ has more powers than the black opal-or so the stories say. Probably more men have been killed for that luck than for any of the more famous diamonds.
She jammed her hands in her pockets, staring straight ahead.
“Talk to me,” he said quietly.
“Did you think I would care? About what you did?” she asked in a low voice. “Is that why you didn’t tell me ahead of time about your work?”
A perplexed frown creased his forehead. “It wasn’t anything like that. Hemerling’s such a character that I thought you would enjoy him…”
“I did. And you can get off it, Mitch. You and I just aren’t going to play games with each other. Collecting stones, was it? Why didn’t you simply tell me what you did for a living?”
His right eyebrow arched. “Kay, that’s not what…” He hesitated, and then continued in flat tones, “Honey, if you want to know what I do, I deal-in garnets and opals, and occasionally other stones. I don’t work with jewelry- my interest is in investment, and since the recession, investing in precious and semiprecious stones has become an increasingly viable enterprise. It started as a…quiet hobby, but it became a way to earn a decent living. Also, six months ago, I took an additional job with the university.”
“Doing…?”
“Working to protect the mineral resources we have in this state. Opals, for instance, are often found in the same area as gold and silver, yet the mining process destroys the more fragile opal…”
Very gradually, the words stopped rushing out in a flood and started to flow in an endless stream. Kay’s lips curved in a secret smile. He cared, very much, about his work. He was clearly an expert in his field; he clearly loved what he did; and she loved watching him when that wall of reserve was down.
“I’m talking too much,” he said abruptly, as if stunned at the thought.
She chuckled. “No, you’re not, you foolish man. I could listen to you all night-though I have yet to understand why you didn’t tell me all this before.”
“It was hardly a secret,” he said wryly. “The subject just never came up before.”
Kay shook her head, and Mitch shot her a glance laced with both exasperation and humor before his jaw clamped shut for a minute. How could he explain that he was carefully trying to feel his way into a kind of relationship he’d never had before, that her respect mattered to him, that exposing each new layer of his life to her left him with a raw feeling of vulnerability that he had a hard time coping with?
Finally, he admitted roughly, “Maybe I deliberately didn’t talk about it. The people in your life do
“Weird?” she supplied smoothly.
He cast her a quick look before turning his eyes to the road. After a time, he mumbled, “Why is it that I find you so comforting to have around?”
She laughed, and then so did he. In less than an hour, he pulled up to her house, but she shook her head when he reached for the key. “We’re heading for your house, not mine,” she informed him. “And don’t get any happy ideas that you’re about to be vamped. I just want to see your place-before you spring any more surprises on me.”
