Diamond Fire (Hidden Legacy #3.5)- Ilona Andrews Page 0,6
give everyone time to rearrange their schedules.” Arrosa turned back to me and smiled, all warmth and sunshine again. “I’m so excited! My dear, the dress, the hair, the flowers. You have so many wonderful decisions to make.”
Chapter 1
Two months and two weeks later
Catalina
I fought my way through the hallway of Mountain Rose house trying to dodge the children. Everything I ever read about my future brother-in-law on Herald suggested that Connor Rogan was a loner with no immediate family besides his mother and his cousin, Kelly Waller, who didn’t count.
Herald lied.
The gaggle of children was coming right for me.
I clutched my tablet to my chest and braced myself.
They ran around me in circles, giggling, and dashed down the hallway, leaving a little girl holding a stuffed unicorn in their wake. I let out a breath.
Rogan had oodles of relatives, scattered all over the Mediterranean, and all of them descended on his mother’s house to attend the wedding. I liked kids, but there were somewhere between twenty and thirty children under the age of twelve on the premises and they traveled in packs. The last time I ran across this gang of preteens, they knocked the tablet out of my hands. Nothing could happen to the tablet. All of the wedding files were on there.
The little girl and I looked at each other. She was probably five and supercute, with brown hair and big dark eyes. She wore a pretty lavender dress decorated with tiny silk flowers. If Mom had put me into that dress when I was her age, it would be covered with mud and engine grease in about five minutes. When I was five, I either played outside or in Grandma Frida’s garage, while she repaired tanks and field artillery.
“Hi,” I said. “I’m Catalina.”
“Mia Rosa García Ramírez Arroyo del Monte.”
I had seen her before, I realized. She always seemed to follow Mrs. Rogan around. She trailed her to the porch, to the study, to the media room. She even wanted to sit next to her in the dining room.
Mia Rosa thrust her unicorn up. It was almost as big as she was and decorated with blue and silver plastic jewels the size of grapes and way too many sparkles.
“This is Sapphire.”
“She is very pretty.”
“She lives in the midnight clouds and her horn glows with moonlight.”
Of course. Jewel Legends. It was a popular kid cartoon with mythical animals. I was too old for it, but Arabella, my younger sister, caught the very beginning of it. Everything had to be Jewel Legends for a while: notebooks, backpacks, phone cases . . . And then she went to high school and that was the end of that.
“I want a sparkly gun,” Mia Rosa announced in a slightly accented voice.
“Um, what?”
“There is a gun that lets you put more sparklies.”
“You want a bedazzler?”
Mia Rosa nodded several times. “Yes. My mommy said you were the go girl and I should ask you.”
Go girl. I hid a sigh. “I’ll see what I can do. What is your mommy’s name, so I know where to deliver the bedazzler?”
“Teresa Rosa Arroyo Roberto del Monte. Thank you. But don’t give it to mommy. Give it to me.”
Awww . She said thank you. “You’re welcome.”
She curtsied and ran after the kids, dragging her unicorn.
My phone chimed. I glanced at the text message. Arabella has written, “Where are you??? Get here!!!” and added a gif of a crying baby with photoshopped rivers of tears. I took off at a near run.
It all started with Nevada firing the wedding planner. The first wedding planner.
Usually my older sister was a perfectly reasonable person. Well, as reasonable as someone can be when she is a human lie detector. However, two weeks ago Simon Nightingale disappeared, and House Nightingale hired us to find him. Just three months ago our family registered as a House, and our small PI firm went from Baylor Investigative Agency to House Baylor Investigative Agency. The Nightingale case was our first investigation. The entire Houston elite was watching us, and it drove Nevada a little nuts. A lot nuts. She was pretty much a nutcase.
The first wedding planner was fired because she argued with Nevada. My sister would explain the way she wanted things done and the planner would tell why they couldn’t do it that way. Most of the time “couldn’t” meant “we won’t do it because it’s a Prime wedding and it’s not the way things are done.” Finally, the planner explained to Nevada that it