The Wedding Assignment

by Cathryn Clare

  The young man shook his glossy head. “If you’re talking about Rae-Anne, I don’t think she has any plans to quit her job,” he said. “In fact—” He paused.

  “In fact what?” Wiley pounced on the hesitation.

  The bartender put down the glass he was polishing and picked up another one. “I’m not sure she has any intention of marrying the boss, either,” he said. “I heard she didn’t show up at their wedding ceremony this weekend.”

  “No fooling.” Wiley whistled. “What’s this boss of yours like, anyway? To work for, I mean?”

  “Mr. Dietrich? He’s okay.”

  “Meaning… ?” Wiley let it turn into an open question.

  The bartender shrugged. “It’s not a bad place to work. I guess it used to be kind of—” He cut himself off. “Well, that has nothing to do with working here, really.”

  “Used to be kind of what?” Wiley prompted. He’d questioned a lot of witnesses over the years, and he’d discovered that the things people wanted to leave out almost always turned out to be the most interesting.

  “Well, I’ve only worked here for a few months. But I heard that until the last couple of years the place was sort of party central, if you know what I mean. The chain’s sort of changed its direction recently. You know, more families, more business trade, not such a high-rolling crowd.”

  “Why the change?”

  The young man shrugged again. Wiley was glad he’d found a Dietrich employee willing to gossip about his boss. On the other hand, everything the bartender was saying confirmed Rae-Anne’s insistence that Rodney had reformed his high-living ways. And that left Wiley feeling more torn in two than ever.

  He’d run into plenty of conflicts in his twenty-year career in law enforcement. But even his final DEA case, with all its dangers and distractions, hadn’t pulled him apart the way he was being pulled now.

  He’d launched himself into this case certain that Rodney Dietrich was as guilty as the FBI believed him to be. But then he’d heard Rae-Anne’s side of things, and started to see Rodney through her eyes. Was it possible that she was right, that Rodney was a reformed character, that Jack and his colleagues were off track and threatening the best chance at happiness Rae-Anne had ever known?

  After the meeting with Jack and Rae-Anne’s staggering announcement that she was pregnant, Wiley had had to think hard and fast about where he stood. It hadn’t been easy, with loyalty to Jack tugging him in one direction and all his renewed feelings for Rae-Anne trying to haul him in the other.

  But he’d finally sorted it out.

  He stood just where he’d always stood. He would do everything he could to see the truth out in the open, and then he would step aside. If Rodney Dietrich was the lawbreaker Jack thought he was, then Wiley would see that it came out. If the guy turned out to be a sweetheart, Wiley would air that just as wholeheartedly.

  It wasn’t going to be easy for him no matter which way it turned out. But he couldn’t screw around with the truth, not for Jack, not even for Rae-Anne.

  So he gritted his teeth and told himself he needed to hear what this junior bartender had to tell him.

  It wasn’t much. “I guess Mr. Dietrich’s getting older, wanting to settle down,” he said. “He seems to have calmed down a lot, from what I hear.”

  Rodney Dietrich was one year younger than Wiley, but Wiley let that pass. He was more interested in this corroboration of Rae-Anne’s point of view.

  Was Rodney truly in love with Rae-Anne? Was that the reason for his seeming change of heart during the time RaeAnne had worked here? Had she inspired things in Rodney no one else had been able to?

  Hell, she’d done that in Wiley, too. The difference was that in return, Rodney could offer her all the things she’d lacked in her life. Like security. And a home. And domesticity. Wiley couldn’t guarantee her any of those things.

  The most domestic thing Wiley had done in the past ten years was to build a deck on the back of his house. And even then he was seldom home to enjoy it. Rodney Dietrich, with his five hundred acres of hill country and his comfortable family home, could answer Rae-Anne’s hopes in a way Wiley never could.

  And besides, Rodney was the father of her child. Wiley couldn’t overlook that little piece of information.

  He glared at his untouched beer. Rae-Anne had every reason to be hoping that her fiancé was innocent, and every reason to want Wiley to stay out of her way while she was trying to prove it. If Wiley had been the noble, selfsacrificing type, he’d probably have stayed out of her way, too.

  But he wasn’t.

  He was just a stubborn, skeptical man who’d only ever loved one woman in his whole life. And he couldn’t walk away from her again until he was certain she was going to be all right.

  “And where the hell is she now?”

  He hadn’t realized he’d spoken out loud until he saw the bartender’s startled look. A moment later the young man’s glance swiveled toward the entrance to the bar.

  “If you mean Rae-Anne,” he said, “she’s right here.”

  Even before midday, the light in the bar was dim. The few patrons sitting by the big plate-glass windows could enjoy a sunlit view of downtown San Antonio, but in the interior of the big open room, low lighting and dark varnished wood prevailed. In the doorway, Rae-Anne’s yellow dress was eyecatchingly bright. She seemed to be floating in the midst of the soft fabric that swirled around her legs.

  It took Wiley a moment to realize that the fabric was only swirling that way because she’d stopped so abruptly. When he took a closer look at her, it was obvious that something was very wrong.

  He knew that expression. Her face was serious, her blue eyes narrowed, her soft mouth pulled into a thoughtful frown. Rae-Anne was thinking hard, and not coming up with anything.

  Thinking about what? What had made her so serious so suddenly? Wiley was powerfully tempted to get off his bar stool and go over to meet her, but he knew it would be the wrong thing to do. Scowling, he stayed where he was, one hand wrapped around his glass.

  She hadn’t seen him yet. He watched her glance over her shoulder toward the brightly lit hallway. Whatever she saw—or didn’t see—out there seemed to convince her that the lounge was where she wanted to be, after all. He saw her shoulders settle and her chin lift slightly as she moved into the big room.

  “Hey, Rae-Anne.” The bartender’s voice seemed to startle her. It startled Wiley, too, making him realize how completely he’d been focused on Rae-Anne.

  Wake up, Cotter, he warned himself. You’re supposed to be staying on top of things here. How can you guard RaeAnne if your attention never gets beyond the look on her face and the way her dress swirls when she moves?

  He looked away from her, listening to her greet her coworker with some noncommittal answer to the comment that she was at work earlier than she’d been expected.

  “Could you find me the bar inventory sheets, Tony?” She sounded as distracted as she looked. And there was something else trembling at the edge of her words as she added, “I figured I’d do the bar order while I was here.”

  Wiley knew that sound.

  It was fear.

  He frowned as the younger bartender started toward the office behind the big central bar. What in hell had happened to scare her between the first floor and the twentieth?

  Tony remembered Wiley’s presence at the last moment. “You want to talk to that guy down at the end of the bar?” he said. “He was asking about a job.”

  Rae-Anne finally glanced in Wiley’s direction. As their eyes met, she seemed frozen to the spot, and he had a sudden sense that this was one thing too much for her, that she wanted to turn on her heel and run.

  Why?

  But just as he was about to stand up, to head off her escape if necessary, he saw her gather herself together, straightening her spine as she faced him. She wasn’t exactly greeting him with a big smile and a wave, but at least her blue eyes were flickering with that spirit he loved in her so much.

&n
bsp; “I’ll handle it,” she said slowly, and made her way to where Wiley was sitting. She lowered her voice as she reached him, demanding, “Wiley, what in hell are you doing here?”

  Her voice was still quivering. And she was keeping it low, so that Tony and the bar’s few patrons couldn’t possibly overhear her. Wiley could still see the troubled look on her face, the too-serious expression that told him something was wrong.

  She’d looked that way when he’d first picked her up in the limousine on Saturday.

  And when she’d found out about the FBI’s investigation into her fiance.

  He wanted to know what was making her look that way now.

  “You keep asking me that question,” he told her, pitching his voice so it wouldn’t be overheard.

  “And you still haven’t given me an answer I like. Why won’t you just leave me alone?”

  There it was again—that edge of panic, that hint of fear under the self-possession she was working so hard at. Wiley wished he could vault over the bar and take her in his arms, smoothing her dark red hair and reassuring her that whatever was going on, he would help her handle it.

  He couldn’t, of course. For one thing, he was trying to come off as a casual job applicant, not a long-lost lover or a caped crusader. For another, Rae-Anne didn’t want his comfort. And he couldn’t promise her the happy ending she deserved, anyway. At best, he was limited to doing what he could to make sure she stayed safe.

  “Are you all right?” He leaned forward, trying to meet her eyes again. The troubled way she was avoiding his gaze seemed to answer his question.

  And her words contradicted it. “If I say I’m fine, will you accept it and go away?”

  “Hell, no.” He leaned back. “Like your young friend said, I’m here to apply for a job.” He looked around the room, with its old-Texas wooden bar and comfortable, leather-upholstered chairs. “This is a pretty fancy joint, isn’t . it? Not much like D’Angelo’s.”

  She moved a tray of clean glasses out of her way and started sliding them into the racks above the counter. Whether it was the mention of the bar outside Austin where they’d met, or the fact that he’d watched her doing exactly this at the end of her shift so many times, Wiley felt something in his chest tighten as he followed her back-and-forth motions.

  “D’Angelo’s was a dive.” Her voice was a little steadier, as though the familiar routine of racking glasses was calming to her.

  “You didn’t think so at the time. You liked it because it was so funky.”

  “Funkiness was still a novelty for me back then. I’d had all those years in fancy embassies, remember? I thought anyplace without marble floors was just great.”

  “And now you’re back to marble floors again.”

  Pointedly, she directed his attention to the carpeted floor under his bar stool. “I’m happy to settle for wall-to-wall these days,” she said. “The clientele here is pleasant, the pay’s good, and I finally got tired of moving all the time.”

  “So you compromised.”

  “Of course I compromised. It’s what happens when you grow up, in case you hadn’t figured that out by now. Living at the extremes is just too exhausting. And those funky little joints I used to work at were pretty extreme. So you can be nostalgic for D’Angelo’s if you want to, but I’ve put those days behind me.”

  He’d known that already. And he’d never really felt nostalgic for D’Angelo’s until just now. But somehow, it was almost unbearably poignant to be sitting here at the bar while Rae-Anne finished stacking glasses and reached for a couple of limes.

  He’d been drifting from one extreme to the other, too, in those days. He’d been as alone in the world as Rae-Anne, and he’d given up any idea that he might ever be any other way.

  And then, straight out of the blue, simply because he’d stopped in for a drink one night after a bone-crackingly stressful day of pretending he was someone else, he’d found her, cutting up limes and arguing with him just exactly the way she was doing right now. In spite of the lingering look of fear in her eyes, she’d settled quickly into their old pattern of sparring over anything and everything, and it made Wiley want to stretch the moment out, enjoying the familiar give-and-take.

  I’ve put those days behind me. Wiley stifled a sigh and told himself he would do the same thing, if he was smart.

  If he could just forget the joy of discovering another human being who seemed to understand the loneliness he felt inside sometimes…

  And the longing for something more…

  And the gut-level fear he had of reaching for that something, whatever it might be…

  He pushed his beer glass away from him almost angrily. Rae-Anne had overcome her fear of reaching for her dreams. That was what she was trying to tell him, and he should be listening, not wallowing in memories that weren’t going to do anybody any good. Maybe she was right. Maybe you had to compromise if you were ever going to get what you wanted.

  He didn’t want to compromise. He wanted Rae-Anne, and he couldn’t have her. The thought made his voice rough as he said, “So how about that job I was asking about?”

  “How about it?” She looked startled. “I figured that was just an excuse to follow me down here.”

  “It was an excuse to get into the personnel department with you. Isn’t that what you’re supposed to be doing?”

  She blinked, as though she’d forgotten all about it. Then she made a quick recovery. “I can do it on my own,” she said.

  “But wouldn’t it be easier with somebody to distract the personnel director while you look through the files?”

  “How do you know we even have a personnel director? Or that I was planning to look through the files?”

  “Come on, Rae-Anne. Give me some credit here. I did my homework. I do this all the time, remember?”

  Her face set into that serious frown again. “I remember,” she said. She didn’t sound very pleased about it. She went back to slicing in silence, cutting through the limes so forcefully that Wiley got the definite impression she was trying to send him a message about something.

  “I’m not going away,” he said finally. “You might as well take me up on my offer.”

  Her blue eyes were still flickering with tightly concealed anxiety, but her voice was less wary as she answered him. He had the sense, just as he’d had in that moonlit moment when he’d kissed her last night, that she was having a hard time hanging on to her anger at him.

  “You’d be a lot easier to take if you weren’t occasionally right about things,” she muttered, splitting the final lime wedge with a particularly fierce downstroke.

  Wiley couldn’t stop the slow grin that spread across his face. “Only occasionally?” he said.

  “Don’t push it, Cotter.” She scraped the limes into a bowl and turned to call to the younger bartender that she was going to take their visitor down to the office to fill out an application form.

  “If he can sling drinks half as well as he slings baloney, he’s a natural for this job,” she added. If she heard Wiley’s quiet chuckle behind her as she led the way out of the bar, she didn’t let on.

  “Heseltine. H-e-s-e-l-”

  Rae-Anne shook her head. It was hard for her to picture Wiley Cotter under any other name, especially one like Raymond Heseltine, which was how he’d introduced himself in the hotel’s personnel department.

  He was in the outer office now, giving his particulars to Jerry, the director of personnel. Normally a casual applicant would have been given a form and told to complete it on his own. But Rae-Anne had made a fuss over the socalled Raymond Heseltine, introducing him as an excellent possibility for the next bartending job that came up, and the personnel director had taken her cue.

  Once she’d gotten over her resentment at the way Wiley had stampeded her—again—she’d realized that he was offering her the excuse she needed to go rummaging through the personnel department’s files. Without the distraction, it would have been much harder to get around Jerry in th
e office while she looked for the information she wanted.

  And she couldn’t deny that after her scare in the elevator, Wiley’s strong presence was more comforting than she would have believed possible.

  She glanced at him and saw him apparently engrossed in applying for a job. The photocopier was right next to the file cabinet she was after, and she figured she had about ten minutes to copy the pertinent files.

  “The courtesy van driver—the guy who died so conveniently—was making regular pickups of illegal cash out at Intercontinental Airport,” Jack Cotter had told her during yesterday’s meeting. “Mob runners would get in the van at the airport, ride downtown to one of Dietrich’s hotels and just ‘forget’ their briefcases on the van. Ellis Maitland, the driver, would take them inside, where the money got counted and shoved along to various bank accounts in various people’s names.”

  “Wait a minute,” Rae-Anne had said. “I noticed Ellis doing that once. He was coming in from his shift with an expensive-looking briefcase in his hand, and I asked him whether somebody had forgotten it.”

  “What did he say?” Jack had wanted to know.

  “That a client had left it, but he knew which hotel the man had gotten off at, and he was going to deliver it on his way home. He seemed very cool about it.”

  “He should have seemed cool. He’d been running the same route with the same couriers for years, ever since the mob bought into Rodney’s hotel chain and had Rodney set up the money-laundering angle as part of the payback for what he owed them.”

  “Ellis could have been doing this on his own,” Rae-Anne pointed out. “You still don’t have hard proof that Rodney is involved personally.”

  “No, we don’t,” Jack conceded. “Not yet.”

  To get the proof the FBI needed, Jack had to find out who was delivering the cash in the mob money-laundering scheme now. “It’s probably still an employee in the hotel,” Jack said.

  “A new employee,” Mack MacGuire had put in.

  “Right. If something’s working, these folks don’t usually change it. Our guess is that among the people who’ve been hired at the hotel chain since Ellis Maitland’s death there will be one who’s been planted there by the mob. What we need is a name.”