by Anne Stuart
Her brothers, either, for that matter. Despite the fact that her father and all four of her brothers were cops and used to the foulest language this side of the gutter, they still didn't like to hear their sweet little Helen come out with anything as blasphemous as a "damnation." And Helen prided herself on coming out with words that were a great deal more colorful. She'd learned a lot in the three years she'd worked in the Prosecutor's Office.
Who in heaven's name could be ringing her doorbell at half-past six in the morning? For a moment panic swept through her, as every conceivable family disaster raced through her mind, and it took all her formidable common sense to realize that the telephone would be the obvious medium of communication. If disaster had struck the far-flung Emersons she would have heard about it by now.
She took another hurried gulp of her third cup of coffee, yanked at the recalcitrant zipper of her calf-length skirt and hobbled toward the door, wearing one high-heeled shoe, the other still in her hand. She had three chains and a bar in place, and she peered through the peephole. "Who is it?" she demanded nervously.
She couldn't see much of him, since the peephole was scratched, filthy and ancient. He was tall, and dark, and for all she knew he could be a serial killer.
"My name's Rafferty. You Ms. Emerson?"
She didn't like the faintly mocking emphasis on the word "Ms." She didn't like his voice, rough and smooth at the same time, with a trace of an East Coast accent. "I'm Emerson," she said flatly, yanking on the other shoe and making no effort to open the door. "What do you want?"
"I'd like to talk to you about Billy Moretti."
Great, she thought, leaning against the door. That was all she needed on this rotten, dismal morning. "I'll be in my office at nine o'clock," she said flatly. "See me there."
"Can't do it," his voice drifted back through the heavy door. "I'm only in town for forty-eight hours and I've got a lot of business to accomplish. I tell you what, Ms. Emerson. It's not even seven in the morning—you don't have to be at work for another couple of hours. Let me buy you breakfast, hear me out and then I'll go away."
"And if I say no?" She heard her own words with a start of shock. What in the world did she mean, if she said no? Of course she was going to say no. She wasn't going anywhere with the friend of a man she was going to prosecute.
"Then I'll just stay here until you change your mind." He sounded eminently reasonable and completely implacable.
"The police are only a phone call away, Mr. Rafferty. I won't be harassed."
"Lady—" his voice was long-suffering "—trust me, I have no interest in harassing you. I just want to see if we can do a deal about Billy."
She found herself considering it for a moment. The Moretti case had been preying on her mind for days now. If she could just deal with it then Friday the thirteenth would become a lot more pleasant.
"Do you work with Abramowitz?"
"Of course," the voice replied immediately.
That decided her. If Billy's lawyer was gung ho enough to find out where she lived and come over at the crack of dawn, then the least she could do was meet him for breakfast to discuss the case. After all, they were both professionals. It was silly to be formal about it.
"Hold on a moment," she said, fiddling with the locks, her hands clumsy. By the time she got the last one opened and pulled the security bar away she was beginning to regret her hastiness in accepting him, but by then the door was ajar and it was too late. At least she kept the chain in place as she peered through the four-inch space at the man waiting in the hallway.
He stood there patiently enough, and his very stillness was slightly unnerving. He was a tall man, leanly built, and the suit and overcoat he was wearing were nondescript, ageless. His hair was dark, short, combed back from a widow's peak over dark, challenging eyes. She looked into those eyes, into those still, fathomless eyes, and she felt a chill run through her. Followed by a rush of heat.
"You don't look like the type Abramowitz usually hires," she said foolishly. Certainly not the sort to defend the Billy Morettis of this world. He was too handsome, with his wide, sensual mouth, his narrow, clever face, his cool, self-contained grace.
He smiled then, and she should have been relieved. It was a charming smile, literally, designed to charm wary females. Helen could feel the tug, and she fought it.
"Looks can be deceiving," he said, his dark eyes running down the narrow length of the door opening. "Are you going to let me buy you breakfast?"
She should slam the door in his face. She could always give Jenkins the Moretti case, as he'd wanted, but Jenkins was a pig and a bully, very hard core and out to make a point, and extenuating circumstances weren't going to matter to him in the slightest.
She stared for one long moment at the man who called himself Rafferty, and then nodded, deciding. She was a smart woman, a careful woman. But she was also a woman who learned to go by her instincts. And her instincts told her to trust this man.
She slid the chain off and opened the door. "Come in," she said, stepping back. "I'll be with you in a minute."
It wasn't until she was halfway across the room, scooping papers into her briefcase, that she realized how very odd her behavior was. She didn't like to let people, particularly co-workers, into her apartment. For one thing, she was completely disorganized and a borderline slob. For another, yuppies didn't tend to appreciate the 1920s' decor she was striving for. She glanced back at Rafferty, trying to hide her nerves, and then stopped still.
He was standing in the middle of her apartment, a tall, dark stranger who should have been an interloper, and he was staring around him with an air of wonder, and oddly enough, recognition.
"Have you been in this apartment before?" she found herself asking.
His dark eyes met hers, and he smiled, that easy, surface smile. "No," he said.
She didn't believe him. And then she laughed aloud at her own absurdity. "Of course you haven't," she said. "This building was home to a strange old lady and her cats for the last sixty-some years."
"What happened to her?"
"The old lady?" Helen said, pulling on her down coat. "She died, I'm afraid. She was quite a character—legend had it she was an old gun moll from Al Capone's day. I could believe it."
"You knew her?"
Helen shrugged. "I met her through my job. She was mugged. I was the prosecuting attorney for the snake who knocked her down. I think she decided to adopt me." She smiled at the memory. "She was a great old lady."
"What was her name?"
"Her name? It wouldn't mean anything to you—I don't think she'd left this street in the last three decades before she went to the hospital."
"If she really was a gun moll I might have heard of her. I've always been interested in the gangland days in Chicago."
"You and half the city," Helen said. "Her name was Jane Maxwell."
"Never heard of her."
"I believe she went by the name of Crystal Latour. Hard to imagine anyone that old being called Crystal, but that's what she told me."
"Crystal Latour," Rafferty said in an odd voice. "Yeah, it's hard to believe."
She grabbed her briefcase and headed for the door, ignoring her coffee, the newspapers littering the old sofa, the half-eaten bagel on the scarred dining-room table. "Are you ready?"
He seemed to rouse himself from a kind of trance. "Sure thing. I was just wondering how you ended up here."
He was sharp, she had to admit it. He'd honed in on the most uncomfortable facet of this wonderful old place within minutes. She'd hate to meet a man with those kinds of instincts in court "She left it to me, Mr. Rafferty. The entire building." .
"Did she, now? You must have done a hell of a job prosecuting that mugger."
She paused by the door, eyeing him frostily. "I did the same job I do for everyone, Mr. Rafferty. I prosecute criminals."
"Punish the bad guys," he said in an unreadable tone of voice. "Make them pay their debt to society."
"
I'm not usually into vengeance, though I must admit I've had my moments. I'm more interested in keeping little old ladies like Crystal safe."
He smiled wryly, but that smile didn't reach his dark, still eyes. "And I'm sure you do a terrific job." He glanced around the spacious, untidy room, and it took her a moment to control her irritation. It wasn't her fault that Crystal had left her the building. And it wasn't as if it were any great legacy—the place was in deplorable shape and at least three contractors had told her she'd be better off tearing it down and starting anew.
She couldn't bring herself to do it. She loved the lines of the building, the gracefulness of the past, even buried under adhesive wall covering and linoleum
flooring. She was fixing it up bit by bit, as she could afford to, starting with her own first-floor apartment, planning eventually to renovate the upper floors and turn them into rental units. It seemed eminently practical to her. Her brothers told her she was dreaming.
“I thought you came by to discuss the Moretti case, not my domestic arrangements," she said in a deceptively cool voice.
"I did. You know a good place to eat?"
"Not in this neighborhood. Why don't we eat near my office? That way we can clear things up if we come to an agreement. We'll take my car."
"Yes, ma'am," he said.
She cast another suspicious glance at him, wondering if he were mocking her. He was making her feel strange, prim and proper and schoolmarmish. The longer she was with him, the more she wanted to tug her hem down, wrap her coat around her. He made her uneasy.
"Then let's go," she said brightly. "I've got a lot of work ahead of me." She waited pointedly by the door for him to precede her, and he did after a minute.
"Nice place you got here," he said in that raspy, disturbing voice. He paused in the doorway to look down at her, and he was too close to her. She looked up into his eyes, and noticed that they weren't as dark as she'd first thought. Deep brown, they were lit with tiny flecks of gold, warming their chilly depths. They were eyes one could fall into, eyes that could hypnotize and enchant. Eyes that could seduce.
And then he moved past her, without touching her, heading down the short flight of stairs to the front door. She watched him go, for a moment tempted to run back into her apartment and lock the door behind her. He made her uneasy in ways she couldn't even begin to comprehend.
But if she started running away from shadows her life would quickly deteriorate into disaster. She glanced into her apartment for a moment, imagining how he viewed it. And then she closed the door, following Rafferty out into the early-morning chill.
*
Crystal Latour, Rafferty thought as he slid into the restaurant booth across from Helen Emerson. They'd made it to the center of town in one of those tiny little Japanese cars, half the size of the Packard he used to drive, and his long legs had been squashed. Even that discomfort couldn't distract him from the disturbing memory of Crystal Latour.
He'd been to 1322 Elm Street, all right. Only once, on February 13, 1929. He'd spent the night in Crystal Latour's bed, and the next morning he'd been dead.
He glanced over at the woman. She'd been a surprise, all right. He'd gotten marginally used to modern women, to their cool, self-assured beauty, their independence, their invulnerability. The woman who'd driven her tiny little car with a singular lack of nerve was a throwback.
She was far from invulnerable. All you had to do was look into her huge brown eyes and you could see just about everything that went on in her mind. Her hair was long, a rich shade of reddish brown, her mouth was wide and generous. A good mouth for kissing.
Not that he wanted to kiss her. She was a little too skinny for his tastes, and she dressed like a man. She was doubtless some wild-eyed man-hater, with her lack of makeup and her wire-rimmed glasses that looked like something his accountant would have worn. She probably only slept with women.
Except he didn't think so. He wasn't imagining that strange little tug of attraction that was damnably mutual. He didn't want to get involved with Ms. Helen Emerson. He didn't have time to get involved with someone like her during his forty-eight-hour stay.
He needed someone cheerful and easy, someone to lie down with him and laugh with him and give him comfort and release. He didn't want commitment or complications or even friendship, and with a woman like Helen Emerson you were bound to provide all three before you even got to touch her breasts. She probably didn't even have any worth touching.
But damn, he wanted to find out.
"Have you been working for Abramowitz long?" she asked, glancing at him over the menu with disapproval as he lit a cigarette.
"Not long," he said, wondering who the hell Abramowitz was.
"You don't look like a lawyer," she said.
"You do," he replied with less charm than he usually used. He didn't want to charm her. Because for some irrational reason he didn't want to lie to her any more than he absolutely had to.
His reply had been a mistake. She smiled at his subtle barb, her eyes crinkling, her wide mouth curving upward. "I do my best," she replied. "So what are we going to do about Billy Moretti? He's looking at hard time—probably eight to ten years in Joliet, and I can get a conviction."
He gave his order to the saintly waitress who poured him his first cup of coffee in a year and then leaned back, watching Helen. "Then why am I here?" he asked, taking a deep drink of the coffee and wishing to hell he could have a cigarette.
"Maybe because I'm curious," she said. "You don't look like the kind of sleazes Abramowitz usually hires. And maybe I'm not convinced Billy Moretti deserves to go to prison for that long. Maybe he just made a mistake."
"You want to define his mistake for me?"
"Don't you know?"
"I'd rather hear your opinion," he said coolly.
She was too damned easy to manipulate. She shrugged, agreeably enough. "He was on probation. He has a juvenile record as long as his arm—nothing terribly nasty, but the cumulative effect is impressive. He knew he had to be very careful, and yet he was caught with firearms, caught in the company of a notorious criminal, caught in the commission of a felony."
"What felony?"
She looked annoyed as she added too much sugar to her coffee. "You know as well as I do. He was the driver during the Carnahan robbery. A lot of jewelry was stolen from that store, Mr. Rafferty, and the insurance company is out for blood."
"And what's his story?"
"That he didn't do it. That he just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. Hard to believe when he'd been arrested twice in his youth with the man who masterminded that robbery and half a dozen others."
Rafferty stubbed out his cigarette. "So why don't you want to throw the book at him, counselor? Why are you willing to deal with me?"
If he'd hoped to intimidate her he'd failed. She simply shook her head. "I don't know. It's a sixth sense you sometimes develop in this business, when you know someone's managed to turn his life around. I thought that was the case with Billy. I still think that's the case with Billy, but I have no proof and he won't talk. Unless I have a reason to look the other way, I'm going to have to throw the book at him."
"You want a reason?" Rafferty said, draining his coffee and thinking fast.
"I want a reason."
"Who's the man who masterminded the robbery?" It was a blind shot, but it worked. She leaned back, thunderstruck, and it took all his effort to keep his face blank, unreadable.
"Of course," she said. "Why didn't I think of that? He's one of the most dangerous men I've ever met. If he decided he wanted Billy to help on the Carnahan robbery then it would be a simple enough matter to make him do it. Threaten his wife, for one thing."
"And his wife is very pregnant," Rafferty pointed out.
"Is she? It makes sense, then. I just need Billy to admit it. We need everything we can get if we're going to stand a chance in hell in catching Morris." She leaned forward, and in her intent gaze she forgot to protect herself.
Forgot he was dangerous. “Will he testify?"
"If I have to break his neck," Rafferty said grimly. "When can I see him?"
"We'll head on over after breakfast." She looked at him curiously. "Unless you aren't hungry?"
The waitress arrived at that moment, setting a plate of fried eggs, sausage, bacon, hash browns and steak in front of him. The whole thing was swimming in grease, and he heaved a sigh of anticipatory pleasure. "I'm hungry," he growled.
Helen looked down at her own meager order of toast. "Do you eat that much cholesterol every morning?"
"Every morning I get the chance."
"You'll die young," she said primly.
He leaned back, surveying her from beneath hooded eyes. "You're right," he said. And he began to eat.
Find One More Valentine on Amazon.
And don’t miss the rest of Anne Stuart’s Greatest Hits:
Cinderman
The Soldier, The Nun and The Baby
Blue Sage
Night of the Phantom
One More Valentine
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About Anne Stuart
* * *
Anne Stuart is a grandmaster of the genre, winner of Romance Writers of America's prestigious Lifetime Achievement Award, survivor of more than thirty-five years in the romance business, and still just keeps getting better.
Her first novel was Barrett's Hill, a gothic romance published by Ballantine in 1974 when Anne had just turned 25. Since then she's written more gothics, regencies, romantic suspense, romantic adventure, series romance, suspense, historical romance, paranormal and mainstream contemporary romance for publishers such as Doubleday, Harlequin, Silhouette, Avon, Zebra, St. Martins Press, Berkley, Dell, Pocket Books and Fawcett.
She’s won numerous awards, appeared on most bestseller lists, and speaks all over the country. Her general outrageousness has gotten her on Entertainment Tonight, as well as in Vogue, People, USA Today, Women’s Day and countless other national newspapers and magazines.
