For the Love of Family by Kathleen O'Brien

Author:Kathleen O'Brien [O'Brien, Kathleen]
Format: epub
Publisher: Harlequin
Published: 2009-03-18T04:00:00+00:00

TWO HOURS LATER, LONG after Todd and Matt had left, with the rest of the Malones following almost immediately after, Belle was dancing. Her partner was Brian Drayson, an old friend from the Chronicle, a business reporter who was clearly hoping she’d spill some dirt on Diamante.

She knew what he wanted, of course. In his shoes, she would have done the same thing. Diamante had a squeaky-clean reputation, something that always made business reporters suspicious.

Belle had researched the company thoroughly herself, equally suspicious, before she reported for her first day, and she knew the folklore surrounding it. Colm and Angelina Malone, the son of an Irish immigrant and the daughter of an Italian physician, had married young and lived poor while Colm attended business school. Angelina baked cookies for extra income, but her specialty was pizza.

When Colm graduated, he worked for another restaurant chain for years before he decided he wanted his kitchen. So he’d opened Diamante Pizza. They worked side by side for twenty years, Angelina in the kitchen and Colm managing the money, refusing to expand, refusing to let greed separate them.

Finally, when their son grew up, married and started having boys of his own, Colm agreed to branch out, opening the franchises that delivered the now-famous Diamante pizza. Then tragedy struck. The son and his wife had died in an accident nearly fifteen years ago, leaving all three boys in the care of Colm and Angelina.

And now one of those grandsons, the middle one, Matt, had picked up the torch. He would carry on the family tradition, and even expand it.

It sounded too ideal to be true. That’s what set Brian’s investigative reporter antennae quivering.

But Belle didn’t mind being used a little. She loved to dance, and Brian was much better at that than he was at extracting information. Besides, she was using him, too. She was letting him brag about his investigatory acumen, all the while filing away ideas that would help as she looked into the secrets of Todd Kirkland and the Diamante Drivers Fund.

He’d just mentioned an interesting Web site that tracked certain public documents, and she was repeating the URL in her head, committing it to memory, when she looked up and saw…

It couldn’t be! He had left hours ago….

But it was. Matt Malone stood in the doorway of the ballroom, talking affably to a young man with a huge nose and a cartoon cowlick. Belle’s mind raced, but went nowhere. She stared at her boss with the helpless fatalism of a deer about to be felled by a semi, which meant she saw exactly what happened to his expression when he noticed her.

The chill of it reached all the way across the ballroom and made her shiver. Her feet slowed, then stopped.

Brian leaned back to get a look at her. “What’s wrong?”

“I’m sorry,” she said, giving him an apologetic touch on the forearm. “I need to talk to my boss for a minute.”

Brian glanced over and saw Matt. “Oh, excellent. I thought he was gone.

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