Key West (22 page)

Aiden continued to walk ahead of Sonnie and Chris. She was too aware of her left leg, of how much thinner it was than the right—and too aware of how she was being manipulated by a forceful man she’d been the one to pursue until he decided to be caught.

The street was all but deserted. To the right the ocean was visible, and a purplish haze hung on the horizon. A desolate atmosphere had slithered in to fill the landscape. Only here had Sonnie ever felt the presence of disaster borne on gardenia-scented air.

“Storm coming,” Aiden called back to them. “Think we’re going to get that hurricane?”

“Could be,” Chris shouted. “You’ll knοw it if we do.” She’d been too preoccupied to follow the weather forecast as closely as people usually did down there.

“You and I need time alone,” he said to her. “You’ve been through a lot, but trying to turn me off now doesn’t make a whole lot of sense. You need me more, not less.”

“No. No, you’re wrong. I’ve been thinking for hours. I’m not sure what I ought to do, but it’s going to be different from what I’ve been doing.”

“You’ve decided you don’t want to know what really happened when you crashed?”

“I crashed. That’s it. Time to accept it.”

“I see. So what does that mean?”

“Just what I’ve said. I’ve done enough damage already. And I’ve been warned about it. Sometimes you have to accept that you’re not going to win and move on.”

“Run away, you mean?”

She tried unsuccessfully to pull her arm from his hand. “You ought to knοw about running away,” she told him. “You’ve already admitted that’s what you’re doing.”

He didn’t even flinch, but the last thing she expected was his light kiss on her lips. She caught at his shirt to steady herself. The kiss stopped as quickly as it started, but they didn’t step away from each other.

He crossed his arms around her and studied her face. “You’re right,” he said. “Mostly. I was running away—past tense. You stopped me, and I’m not going to run anymore. Not as long as I’ve got something to stay put for.”

“You can’t make me responsible for your actions.”

“Can’t I?” he asked, bending tο kiss her again. This time for much longer. The thought came and almost instantly left that she was a married woman standing on a public street and kissing a man who wasn’t her husband. His hands were in her hair, caressing her neck, the sides of her face. And she leaned on him, and wished they were somewhere private, somewhere that would allow them to go wherever the moment took them.

They paused for breath and Sonnie rested her face against his chest.

“Are you ready to tell me everything now?” he asked. For an instant she felt disoriented. “I’ve told you.”

“No, you haven’t. You’ve barely begun. I want to know about your husband—all about him. What happened the last time you were together? Why was he away so much when you were pregnant? He wasn’t even playing most of the time.”

“Don’t,” she said. “Please don’t.”

“Too late. You came here because you don’t believe what you’ve been told to believe. There have to be reasons for that, and you surely haven’t shared much about them with me. Vague comments, but not much more.”

“I know I more or less begged you to help me.” His fingers on her mouth distracted her. “I know I did. But I shouldn’t have. It’s too dangerous. If I don’t give this up I really believe someone will get hurt. Someone else.”

“Nothing doing.”

She frowned at him.

“You’re trying to get rid of me. I’m not going. You’ll have to get a restraining order to stop me from following you around. You prepared to do that?”

He was making this too hard. She’d. . .She was never going to forget him, but she owed it to him to cut loose now. “I’ll do it if I have to.”

“No, you won’t.”

A hint of sunlight played over the hair and skin at the open neck of his shirt. Sonnie watched skin move over bone and touched it before she could stop herself.

“No, you won’t,” he repeated.

“No, I won’t,” she agreed. “But I’ll find a way to keep you safe. Being around me isn’t safe. Where’s Aiden?” She turned her head.

“He’s playing with the Harley.” Chris said. “It’s not his thing. Look behind you. See that pink monstrosity?”

“The pink Mustang? Isn’t it beautiful?”

Chris groaned. “Not you, too. It belongs to Aiden. Do
not
encourage him to talk about it.” He picked up her locket and turned it over. He snapped it open and said, “Who’s Jacqueline?”

She couldn’t explain, or even tell him he had no right to pry.

He looked more closely and said, “Ah. You had a little girl, too.”

“Too?” Despite the heat she turned cold. “You had a little girl, Chris?”

He laughed. “No such luck. Slip of the tongue. I was thinking about something else. But this was your baby, wasn’t it?”

“Yes.” Sometimes it was easier to be straightforward. “I like thinking about her. This makes me feel I’m still carrying her with me.”

“This isn’t the time or the place, but I...You’re very important to me. You know what l almost said then, but I’m not ready to say it, and you’re not ready to hear it. You may never be. But you asked me to stand with you in whatever comes and I agreed. We didn’t sign any contracts, but we might as well have. D’you understand?”

She nodded. “But I’m going to make you see that it was a bad idea from the beginning.”

“Good luck. Even you aren’t that persuasive. Let’s move before we manage to draw another crowd. The intrepid few will be on their way to Mallory Square shortly. Not that there’s going to be much of a sunset.”

Sonnie wasn’t sure what to do next. “Ι’m probably going back to Denver.”

“I don’t think so.” Chris held her hand and they strolled back toward the Bariyan Inn. “Have the police told you when you’ll be free to start putting the house back together?”

“They said within a few days. What do you think Edward was doing in that room? In a sleeping bag?”

He didn’t want to scare her, but neither could he pull punches anymore. “I think he was waiting for you. Ena said he’d mentioned liking you and how kind you were to him. Maybe not too many people were kind to Edward and he wanted to spend time with you.”

She shuddered. “He waved to me and I waved back. That was it. I never met him. Was he planning to attack me in the night?”

“I was never in his head, kid. I’m sure the cops are doing their stuff and finding out as much about his background as they can. That’ll give us a
clearer vision of what kind of guy he was.”

They reached the motel and approached Aiden, who sat on Chris’s bike again. He saluted. “I’ll stick around the Laundromat and bring back Sοnnie’s things, if you like.”

“Good man,” Chris said. “You comfortable at my place?”

“Cushy,” Aiden told him.

“Good. Bring the laundry to Roy and Bo’s then. Sonnie can’t go back to her place until it’s secure anyway.”

Sonnie felt herself being drawn into a web that was only partly of her own making. “I should probably go to the club,” she said. “This place is nice, but Billy and Romano will make my life a misery if I don’t make an attempt to smooth things over. I will have to stay long enough to deal with the house; otherwise I’d head back to Denver right now.” She tried to avoid Chris’s eyes. When she gave up, what she saw shouldn’t please her so much. He didn’t want her tο leave him. Vey soon she’d have to find a way to remind him that she wasn’t free, and she’d have to make him not want her.

For the first time in her life, she’d found a man she responded to as a mature woman, both a thinking and a sexual woman, and she had no right to him.

“If you want to go to the club later, okay. But would you come back with me first? To put Roy’s mind at ease? And so we can talk? Please? Alone and for as long as it takes?”

So that he cοuld wear her down and wipe out her resolve to break away from him? She wasn’t strong enough to refuse. “Okay. But I can’t stay.”

“l’ve got to take my car to Roy and Bo’s,” Aiden said.

She glanced at him. Just as she’d already noted, he was built like an athlete. But his slender face with its high cheekbones and sensitive mouth had an irresistibly intense quality. Relaxed on his thighs, his long-fingered hands bore scars on their backs, but they were hands that invited touch, and would probably invoke a longing to be touched in many women. He had to be in his mid-thirties. Another man who shouldn’t still be alone.

Chris gave Sonnie one of the two helmets that hung on the bike. “You’ve probably got time to do that other thing we talked about and still be back in time to get the laundry,” he said to Aiden. “What d’you think?”

“Wally Loder’s on the case.”

“Efficient man, Wally,” Chris said. “See you later, then.” He mounted the bike and waited for Sonnie to settle herself awkwardly behind him.

Aiden Flynn was already walking away.

“Who’s Wally Loder?” Sonnie shouted from inside the hated helmet.

“Keep your voice down,” Chris bid her mildly. He half turned on the bike and leaned into her. “For reasons we’ll explain when the time’s right, Aiden is sometimes Wally Loder. And he needs to be while he’s down here—at least in some instances. Our job is to keep that straight.”

“Being here is dangerous for him?”

Chris raised his eyebrows. “He’s used to danger. Aiden does what has to be done. I wasn’t happy to see him, but I’m getting used to the idea of having him with me. You’ll get used to him, too.”

“We won’t spend enough time together for that to happen.” He settled a hand on her thigh. “Kiss me, Sonnie.”

She parted her lips, and he wasn’t sure if she’d do as he asked, or cry. She bent forward and kissed his jaw. He had to plant his feet more firmly on the ground on either side of the bike.

When he could speak again, he said, “l’d like to take you riding across the country with me. Leave everything behind. One day we’ll do that.”

She let her head fall back, and he figured she was making sure any tears went back where they came from.

He put a knuckle under her chin and took her bottom lip gently between his teeth. The way she sucked in a breath made him feel more than good.

“Mmm,” he murmured. “I’m only saying this once for now, but I’m surely thinking that loving you would be easy.”

Sixteen

Romano let Billy into his room. He checked the corridor before closing the door and turning to face her. “What are you doing here? I told you not to come again.”

“And I told you not to tell me what to do. We’re in this up to our necks. Both of us. That means you don’t get to hand out orders.”

As long as he’d known Billy, since she was a self-destructive kid on the tour, she’d been impossible to control. The best approach was the placating approach. “If it got out that you and I have something going, it could cost us everything.”

She gathered her hair into a bundle on top of her head and secured it with a band she took from one wrist.

“Billy,” Romano said, clinging to patience. “We can’t look as if we’re involved with each other. Do you understand that one slip could ruin all I’ve worked for?”

“You haven’t worked alone, but I understand.”

“Good. I’ll call you.”

“She’s in some motel or hotel,” Billy said, swaggering in a neon, orange string bikini. “Banyan something. We’ve got to bring her here where we can keep an eye on her. And the sooner she’s back in Denver, the better. We must have my father’s cooperation. He’s got to be convinced she’s a danger to herself, and needs care she can’t get at home.”

He agreed, but he wasn’t about to let Billy think he respected her opinions. “My first priority is to find out exactly why that man was in her house. He doesn’t fit.”

“Of course he doesn’t. He was a coincidence, that’s all. And he’s brought a lot of attention that could mess things up for us if we’re not careful.”

He laughed shortly. “Don’t be hysterical. I won’t allow any interference.”

She stretched out on his bed and stacked her hands behind her head. The effect she achieved was no accident. “Cory Bledsoe’s sniffing around. He thinks he should teach me how to play golf. And he’s making noises about my helping you coach.”

“What the fuck does that mean?”

Billy smiled at the ceiling and settled her bikini-clad curves more comfortably. “He’d like to keep me company, of course. But he could also be curious about what brings both of us down here like this. He’s probably right in thinking I’d be an asset, and he just likes opportunities to look at me.”

Romano seethed. The vain bitch thought every man was drooling over her. “He knows Sonnie’s here. He also knows the story about how very close our combined families are. How we look after our own. Unless we make a stupid mistake and disillusion him, Bledsoe won’t have any reason to think anything different.”

She hummed.

“Right?” he said.

“It’s possible Cory’s a little smarter than you think. There’s talk. The big, strong Harley rider isn’t a man who doesn’t get noticed. Cory wonders if there’s something going on that’s making us nervous. Like Sonnie wanting to forget she’s got a husband—or may have a husband.”

“Shut
up,
”
he told her, and his hands itched with his desire to take hold of her. “The next time you suggest my brother may be dead, I’ll make you wish you hadn’t.”

“So masterful,” she said, winding her body from side to side. She kicked off her sandals and ran the sole of one foot up and down the opposite calf.

“Υou are such a willful child,” he told her, but it was impossible not to look at her nipples through the open mesh of her bikini top. “Will you never grow up and stop using yourself like a whore to get what you want?”

She jackknifed to sit up. “I don’t have to take that from you. If looking at me disgusts you, don’t look. Let’s hurry up here. I’ve got a date.”

“With whom?”

“That’s my affair.”

“Are you telling me Bledsoe’s been asking questions about Sonnie? About you or me?”

She wouldn’t look at him. “That’s what I’m telling you,” she said.

Alienating her could be very dangerous. “I’m sorry I’m edgy. It’s all coming down to this, Billy. What happens here and now in Key West. Sonnie’s forced our hand.”