Matt’s thoughts were so panicked, she figured everyone in the house could hear them, but a little abracadabra always impressed. “I see awill. You’ve seen it too, Matthew, haven’t you? Lucia’s will?”
“I witnessed it, didn’t I? I didn’t get a shilling off her!” He appeared to be debating escaping through Jax.
“And neither did Vincent, since he was only her stepdad,” Pris crowed happily. She gestured at Jax and the audience gathering behind him. “That’swhat has Vincent furious. Lucia left everything to her children! He needed Lucia alive so they could keep using her farm, stealing her gold.”
Pris heard the clump of Dante’s cane before his broad shoulders appeared behind the crowd. She’d wanted to drag a confession out of the boutique owner, but Matthew wasn’t cooperating. It was time to stand aside and let Dante do his thing. Towering over Jax by nearly a head, her noble Indiana Jones wore a form-fitting Italian jacket and an open-necked white shirt instead of the movie explorer’s khaki. The fury on his normally equable features would send any sensible creature fleeing.
Matthew lacked sense. Surrounded by an angry mob, he still admitted nothing.
“You killed Lucia,” Dante stated ominously. “And then the three of you left her body in that well so you could pretendshe still owned the farm?” Fury overcame his normal composure.
“It’s not as if babies could run it!” Matthew protested.
Motive for kidnapping, with a capital M. Pris hoped Evie’s security cameras had microphones, but they had plenty of witnesses. Behind Dante, Jax was already holding up his cell.
“Until the twins came of age, Leo would still run the farm. You could have kept walking all over him,” Dante shouted. “But you left their motherin a well! Did you know she was dead? Did you even attempt to find help?” Fury formed cracks in his rock solid mental façade. Like an Italian volcano, he’d emit steam soon.
Pris didn’t do reassurance well and had no idea how to calm him as Evie did Jax. When Dante pushed past Jax to get at Matt, she caught his arm to remind him that others were present. A man who swung pickaxes for a living had a lot of muscle.
Firmly shutting her out from his enraged thoughts, Dante covered her hand and squeezed. To her relief, he set aside the temptation of the sword cane and used Pris for support.
“Lucia wasdead,” Matthew said grimly. “Skull crushed, neck broken, dead. It was an accident. She’d just showed us the crap she’d carted up for you to look at. We needed cash, but she refused to even sell the gold until you could see it. But she fell and ruined everything!”
“Kinda ruined it for Lucia anyway,” Pris acknowledged dryly. “But it wasn’t just a fall. Youhither when she refused to sell the artifacts,” she added, seeing the scene clearly.
Dante’s grip nearly crushed her bones, but he didn’t reach out and strangle the selfish twit standing on the edge of the stairs. One good push...Pris resisted.
A silent police car rolled to the curb behind the massive gardenia bush by the sidewalk.
“Who did Lucia appoint as executor of her estate?” Jax asked.
Leave it to the lawyer to strip the question to its legal bones.
From Matthew’s angry glance at Dante, the answer was plain—Lucia had left the farm to her children and named their father as executor.
Glamorpuss finally whirled around to start down the stairs. The sight of two policemen walking toward him caused him to reach for his pocket.
Reuben and Roark placed themselves in his path. Abandoning his grip on Pris, Dante grabbed both Matt’s arms behind his back before he could produce a weapon. His victim screamed as he yanked harder.
“He just confessed to manslaughter, at the very least,” he shouted in his plummy accent at the approaching officers. “Plus theft and interfering with human remains or whatever one calls abandoning a body. He also has an illegal passport, so skipping bail might be added.”
A policeman patted Matt down and removed a pistol from his pocket. “We could add threatening a police officer and illegal carry. I think that’s enough to hold him for a while.”
As Matthew was handcuffed and led away, Pris melted against her hero. “The twins?”
Once more using her shoulders for support, Dante lifted his chin to indicate upwards. “Evie has them in the attic with Loretta. They’ve closed the portcullis, and I think they’re planning on piling boiling oil on the gate. They have an entire pumpkin pie and the soup spoons.”
“Dessert first, of course. We should all do dessert first. Apple or pumpkin? Or maybe some spice cake with brandy sauce and whipped cream to start?”
The others poured back into the house at her suggestion. Pris couldn’t move from Dante’s arms. The pressure inside them verged on explosive. He cursed, whether mentally or not she was incapable of telling as his arms tightened around her.
His kiss, when it came, was richer and deeper and more passionate than she had ever dared dream. They were both panting when they came up for air as the shouts inside the house increased. If she didn’t get back in there to serve dessert soon...
“I need you,” Dante whispered urgently. “If you don’t return with me, I swear, I will move in here and never leave again.”
“Reuben won’t like it if you try to excavate bones beneath his man cave,” she whispered back, leading him into the house while dodging an aunt, and dragging him into the library. She shut the door and leaned against it.
“A villaanda farm,” he muttered. “I can’t do it. I know nothing of farming. I’m an archeologist! A teacher!”
