by Nina Bruhns
“Somehow, I don’t think so,” he said, voice cracking. “I’ve been wrong about you, Vera. Your whole life, I’ve treated you like trash because of my own cowardly refusal to confront my feelings about—” He halted. Cleared his throat. “In any case…words can’t express how truly sorry I am.”
Wow.
Her throat tightened, almost squeezing the air from her windpipe and sending a flood of emotions cascading from her heart. Almost. But she would not let herself break down.
Nor would she fling herself into his arms and cry, “Daddy!”
Or even succumb to the shameful temptation of being as mean to him as he’d earned through his own despicable behavior over the years.
“Okay,” she managed, thoroughly shell-shocked.
He looked at her desperately. “Please,” he begged softly. “Forgive me?”
Tears stung the back of her eyelids, screaming to come out. This was so damn unfair. How could she forgive him after he’d caused her a lifetime of misery? And her mother?
How could she not?
“Sure,” she rasped out. “I’ll forgive you.” Someday. “I’ve got to go now.”
She turned, grabbed the entry door handle to escape, then turned back to Natalie, who’d been watching the entire exchange silently, with a studiously neutral look on her face. “Detective Rothchild,” Vera said, her voice barely working. “About that dinner tomorrow? I think I’ll have to send my regrets. But thanks.”
Then she stumbled out the door, gasping down deep, stinging lungfuls of hot desert air as it surrounded her body.
My God. Her whole life she’d been waiting for this very moment. And now that it had come and gone, all she wanted to do was throw up.
She thought briefly of Conner. Oh, how she wanted his arms around her! But this was one thing she had to process on her own, without his nurturing cocoon of emotional protection.
She just needed to think.
“Ms. Mancuso?” A black-haired LVMPD officer waved and approached her.
Oh, God. No more. Please!
He smiled genially. “Ms. Mancuso, Detective Rothchild sent me out to give you a ride home. She said you don’t have your car with you. Right?”
“Oh. That was thoughtful.” Vera almost sagged with relief. Now she wouldn’t have to stand here and flag down a taxi.
The officer led the way to a gray sedan parked on the street. “Sorry about the unmarked car. All the cruisers are out.”
“It’s okay. I’d just as soon not get dropped off at my building by a police car with lights flashing anyway,” she said, making a stab at a normal conversation while her insides were still shaking and churning.
He chuckled and opened the passenger door for her, his strong cologne making her nose twitch. “I hear you.”
She got in. But instead of going around to the other side, he said, “I’m afraid I’m going to have to ask you to slide over and drive, Ms. Mancuso.”
Her mind went blank. “What? Why?”
He drew his service revolver from its holster and pointed it at her head. “Because if you don’t, I’ll kill you.”
Chapter 20
“Where’s Vera?” Conner asked Natalie. He’d expected to see his lover chatting amiably with his cousin, waiting for Duncan and him to wind up their business. Of everyone in his family, he trusted Natalie not to prejudge a person based on her job, so he’d felt comfortable leaving Vera in her charge.
“She left a good while ago,” Natalie said, sitting back in her squeaky chair to regard him.
“Oh. Okay.” Disappointed, he poured himself another cup of coffee. It was his…Hell, he had no idea, he’d downed so many cups. He was wired, but at least he was awake. Duncan had kept him longer than anticipated…but he thought she’d wait for him anyway.
“There was an incident,” Natalie reported.
Conner stopped mid-sip and held his cup still. Ah, hell. “Let me guess. Her father.” He’d seen Maximillian gliding past the conference-room window, and hoped the bastard wouldn’t run into Vera. Apparently hoped in vain.
“How’d you know?”
“The man is an ass. He should be tarred and feathered.”
Natalie peered at him over her coffee cup. “The incident was not in the usual vein, from what I gathered.”
Worse? Jeez. “Remind me again why I can’t just shoot the jerk?” Conner asked her.
“Unspeakable acts in prison,” she said without missing a beat. Then cocked her head. “Though, as a notorious defense attorney with close connections to the underworld, you might be spared the worst humiliations. Except by the guards, of course.”
He chortled. “Okay, I get the drift. I’ll be good. So. What was so unusual about the incident?”
“He apologized to her. Said she’d saved important lives, exhibited ‘calm thinking and unselfish bravery,’ I think were his exact words.”
“Seriously? Max St. Giles?”
“Said he’d misjudged her.”
“Wow. That’s huge.”
“So,” Natalie said, eyeing him.
“Spit it out,” he said.
“A stripper?”
“Please. Exotic dancer.”
“Conner. Have you lost your mind?” she asked, lifting her cup to her lips.
“Possibly,” he answered just as evenly. “Nat, I love her.”
She sprayed coffee all over her desk.
He opened her top drawer and tossed her a couple of napkins. “What do I do?”
Her gaze said it all. Total, paralyzing astonishment. “Well…”
Just then her phone rang. Saved by the bell.
She grabbed it, bobbled it, recovered. “Rothchild.” After a second, her eyes seemed to focus sharply. She stopped breathing—never a good sign. Her gaze sliced to him. “One moment.” She handed him the receiver. “It’s for you.”
As soon as he took it, she jumped up and started making frantic hand movements at the officers across the room. What the—
Suddenly, his heart stalled.
“This is Conner,” he barked into the receiver.
“I have something you want, Conner,” the male voice sneered. “And you have something I want. Trade?”
Conner’s blood chilled. “What do—”
There was a muffled sound, and Vera’s desperate voice came on. “Conner? Oh, my God, Conner, it’s him, it’s—”
“Do we have a deal?”
“What is it you want?” Conner forced himself to calmly ask while his pulse pounded through his body like a kettledrum. Natalie was still moving like a blur, listening in while organizing a trace, he assumed.
“The Tears of the Quetzal,” he spat out. “You’re at the police station, and I know they have it,” he said. He, being Thomas Smythe. It had to be him.
The man’s next words confirmed it. “One hour. Bring it to the same place you were this morning. Alone. No games. Or your little stripper dies.” Then he hung up.
Conner let loose a string of violent curses.
Natalie, being the ever-practical one, swiped up the phone and punched in buttons like it was on fire. “Duncan!” she said. “Get out here. We have a situation.”
“This isn’t going to work.”
Conner loosened his death grip on the steering wheel of the McLaren and flexed his fingers, taking another hairpin turn up the gravel road to the quarry where the shoot-out had taken place earlier.
“It’ll work,” came the muffled reply from the trunk, where Duncan was curled into a Kevlar ball, probably roasting in there like a pig at a luau. “It has to.”
Tell him about it. He’d kill himself if anything happened to Vera because of this stupid, obnoxious ring.
Maybe Uncle Harold was right. Maybe it was cursed.
“Sure you can open the trunk from inside?” Conner asked for the dozenth time.
“Got the safety latch in my hand and my gun in the other, just in case.”
“Okay.” Conner took a deep breath. “Okay.”
; “Sitrep?” Duncan prodded.
“Almost there,” Conner reported. “Just around the bend.” He scanned the road and cliffs around him. “Don’t see him yet.”
“Vera?”
“No sign.” All sorts of awful images flowed through Conner’s head as he searched the mountain for any sign of anything.
He slowed to maneuver around the giant boulder, pulled up in front of the old mining hut and cut the engine. After the bustle, whistles and constant ka-ching of every venue in Vegas, the lonely mountaintop was disturbingly silent. Had it been this preternaturally quiet this morning?
He got out of the car. A dust devil twirled past. Nothing else moved.
“Smythe!” he shouted. “Thomas Smythe! I have the ring. Let Vera go!”
“Oh, I’ll let her go, all right,” came the maniacal reply.
Conner whirled toward the voice. Looked up. And his legs almost gave out from under him. “Vera!” he cried.
He could just make her out, dangling over the side of the cliff a hundred feet above them by a rope tied around her wrists. The rope had been threaded through the arm of an old, rickety piece of quarry equipment, a pulley-type affair on the top of the cliff, from which the rope pulled taut down the cliff to the front of the old hut, ending up winding around an old-fashioned hand crank and shaft. A black-haired Hispanic-looking man was holding on to the handle of the crank. For a split second Conner was confused. The man was dressed as a cop.
Then it hit him. Hell. How stupid could he get? Smythe had done it once and gotten away with it. Why not twice?
Sure enough, it was the same man he’d seen arguing with Darla in front of LVMPD. And who had attacked Vera on the street.
The bastard Thomas Smythe. Or whatever the hell his real name was. Duncan had run a check and found no one matching his description with that name. Figured.
In a flash, Conner saw that if Smythe let go of the rusty crank handle the rope would spin off like greased lightning and Vera would plunge down the cliff. To certain death.
Conner was rigid with fear. “Don’t do anything rash, Smythe,” he said as calmly as he could manage. “I told you I have the ring.”
“Show it to me!”
Moving slowly away from his car, Conner reached carefully into his pocket and brought out the jewel. He held it up for the other man to see. Even in the dimming light of the setting sun, the stone glittered and shone, flashing green and blue and purple like a sparkler on the Fourth of July. Almost like the real thing.
For several seconds, Smythe seemed hypnotized by the sight, his eyes blinded with lust and greed, a look of ecstasy coming over his whole face. Conner took the opportunity to move closer. He had to get to that crankshaft before the deranged man let it go. Which Conner was absolutely certain he would do. Darla was right. He was already over the edge.
Conner cringed. Bad analogy. Really bad.
“Hand it over!” the man yelled, letting the crank unwind a whole revolution.
Vera screamed as she plunged several feet down the cliff.
Smythe’s muscles strained to stop the movement. “Now! Or I let her go all the way!”
“All right, all right!” Conner said, taking a few steps closer. Close enough to see the gun tucked in the waistband of the man’s jeans, the whites of his crazy-wild eyes, the beads of sweat drenching his face…and the deadly intent in his glazed expression as he started to let the handle go for good.
“Nooo!” Conner shouted, and threw the ring in a high arc over Smythe’s head at the same time he made a flying leap for the crank’s handle, just as it left the other man’s hands.
He grabbed it. It whacked him in the chin going around, knocking him silly.
Vera screamed in terror.
He lunged for it again. This time it dug into his stomach, but he managed to hang on. Vera was still screaming and thrashing, making the rope pull all the harder on the handle. Conner could feel it slipping in his sweaty hands.
“Duncan!” he yelled in desperation. The plan had been for the FBI agent to chase Smythe down, shoot him or at least be able to tell the herd of Metro officers waiting below which direction he’d fled in. That wasn’t going to happen. “I need your help!” he shouted.
In a flash, the agent was there, helping to hang on to the crank. Between the two of them they got it under control, then let the rope play out slowly to let Vera down without scraping her up too badly.
“Sorry,” Conner grunted as they let out the rope. “I’m sorry I couldn’t handle this myself. Now you’ve lost him again.”
“Forget it. Vera’s life is all that matters,” Duncan said grimly. “Don’t you worry. We’ll get the bastard. And won’t he be surprised when he realizes the ring he has is the fake.”
They lowered Vera nearly to the ground, and at the last minute, Conner grabbed her. He hugged her fiercely to him, tears blurring his vision as she clung to him and let out a hiccoughed sob. She was shaking like a leaf.
Hell, so was he.
“You’re okay now, you’re okay now,” he told her over and over, as much to convince himself as her.
She was so damn brave.
And at that moment he realized. It didn’t matter what his family thought. Or the risk to his career. Or his social position.
Nothing else mattered.
She was his. And he would never, ever let her go.
Chapter 21
Conner didn’t think he’d ever be alone again with Vera.
But after waiting an endless amount of time for the trackers to find Thomas Smythe—and failing—Lex Duncan decided they may as well go home for now.
Thank God.
Vera was on the verge of emotional collapse, and Conner hadn’t had a wink of sleep in close to forty-eight hours, putting him near the limit of his endurance both physically and mentally. Lex seemed to recognize that.
“I’ll take you two home,” Natalie told him, looking more than exhausted herself after tramping up and down the steep mountains for hours. “Wouldn’t want any more fake-cop incidents.”
Vera glanced at her wide-eyed, and Conner managed a weary laugh, appreciating his cousin’s stab at black humor.
“Thanks, Nat,” he said, and turned over the McLaren’s keys to an awestruck young officer. “Scratch it and you’ll be washing my cars for the rest of your life,” he warned the kid with mock seriousness. Okay, not so mock. Conner loved his car.
Almost as much as he loved the way Vera looked at him when he climbed into the back of Natalie’s cruiser with her instead of getting in the front seat.
He just prayed they’d make it back to his place before he passed out. They did. Just barely.
“We’ll be expecting you for dinner tomorrow night,” Natalie said as a parting shot when they stumbled out onto his driveway. “Both of you.”
“Nat—”
“Don’t argue with me, boy,” she said gruffly. “I have a gun, and I know how to use it.”
He gave her a halfhearted grin and a tired wave, and she drove away. Ah, well. He could always cancel tomorrow.
He put his arm around Vera. “I’m about to fall over. How ’bout you?”
“I want to spend a week in bed.”
And he had a feeling she meant actually to sleep. He’d probably be of a different opinion tomorrow, but right now that sounded like paradise. They went straight to his bedroom, shedding clothes along the way. Five minutes later they were in bed, snuggled up together like puppies in a basket.
Small tremors still sifted through her. He wrapped his body around her in a sheltering, protective shield. So she’d know without a doubt that, if anyone wanted to get to her, they’d have to go through him first.
She sighed, and finally her tense muscles began to relax. Skin to skin, warm and smooth, primal and visceral, he soaked in the feel of her, the smell of her, the sound of her soft, even breathing. And recognized on a soul-deep level that this was something special. Something once-in-a-lifetime. He kissed her brow, and she nestled closer.
She put her lips to the curve of his neck, and whispered, “I love you, Conner Rothchild.”
He looked down at the woman in his arms, his heart filling with an unexpected burst of joy and longing, and he wondered if she was talking in her sleep again. But then she opened her eyes and smiled up at him.
“Yeah?” he said.
“Yeah,” she said.
“I’m glad,” he said, and held her close. “So very glad, Vera Mancuso. Because I love you, too.”
“We are well and truly screwed,” Conner said, flopping back in the McLaren’s bucket seat.
“Well,” Vera mused, “not the most romantic way of putting it, but I suppose you could say that.”
She thought back over the relaxing day. Without a doubt the happiest day of her life to date. They’d slept over twelve hours the night before, then slowly awoken to take advantage of their renewed energy, the glorious weather streaming in through the windows and the fact that Hildy did not put a single phone call through to his suite.
Well, until that last one. The summons, coming around midafternoon. Apparently nobody told Harold Rothchild he couldn’t speak with his nephew. Whereupon he had told Conner in no uncertain terms he was to gather his “young lady” and bring her to dinner that night. Seven o’clock promptly.
They’d gotten ready and left at five o’clock. Conner had said he wanted to make a stop on the way. Something to give him the courage he needed to face his family with her on his arm. She hoped it had worked for him. She felt wonderful.
Vera followed Conner’s gaze now as he surveyed the Rothchild driveway, brimming with Jaguars, Mercedes, Porsches and even a Lamborghini. “Looks like they’ve invited a few people over,” he said nervously.
Poor Conner. He wasn’t used to being the object of gossip or disapproval. “We can still leave,” she told him. “Do this another time.”
He glanced at her, pretending not to be scared. He was so sweet it made her heart ache with love. “Hell, no,” he said. “If Uncle Harold wants to meet my young lady he’s going to damn well meet my young lady.” His mouth tilted up. Half of it, anyway.
She was still getting used to the thought of being Conner’s anything, let alone romantically linked to him. His young lady. She glanced down at her hands. It had a certain ring to it.
