by Tawny Weber
Three days of second-guessing every word, of lecturing herself five ways from Sunday over making a major mistake. She’d searched her soul and spent endless hours trying to decide if she was making a mistake.
“So you think I’m doing the right thing?”
Robin sighed, then, looking so much like her brother that Marni hunched her shoulders like she did when her father lectured, the older woman folded her hands in her lap.
“I think the right thing is a subjective question. You have to live with the results, girly. You’re the one taking a huge step and quite possibly shifting your entire career.” She unfolded her fingers to tap the pages again. “If this has the impact I think it will, you’re going to see some huge career opportunities open. It’s smart to be sure you want to accept those opportunities, and their repercussions, before you submit this.”
As if her aunt had just pierced a balloon, the words sucked all the energy out of Marni in a shockingly fast swoosh. She dropped to the bench and wrapped the fingers of her left hand around the fingers of the right, trying to figure out what to do. She switched hands, staring at her manicure but not seeing the chipped pink polish.
“If I write this profile instead of the Burns article, I’m taking my career in a completely different direction. I love writing biographies, but they will never get the same kind of attention hard-hitting stories would.” Marni pushed one hand through her hair, her fingers snagging on the snarls. “Am I doing it because I think it’s the right thing? Or because of Hunter?”
“Only you can decide that. Life is made up of choices. And choosing is tough. Anyone who tells you different is lying, girly.” Robin sighed and gave a jerk of one shoulder. “As for right or wrong, I don’t know. I really don’t. I’ve never met anyone who I cared about as much as my career. I’ve never had a lover I could imagine lasting as long as my career. I’ve never met a man who made me feel as special as being a reporter does.”
Well, there ya go. As much as Marni had enjoyed weaving a fantasy around the idea of happy-ever-after with Hunter, she knew, really, that it was just that...a fantasy.
And just because she was feeling an overwhelming deep emotional onslaught that she wanted to call love, that didn’t mean it really was. Nor that it would last. Nor, her gut clenched, did it mean that Hunter had any reciprocal interest.
Given how they’d left things—or rather, how he’d left things when he’d stormed out—she’d be tiptoeing along the edge of insanity to think there was something solid between them. Something strong enough to build the hopes of a future on.
Marni chewed on her thumbnail, the tiny flakes of polish leaving a nasty taste in her mouth. Giving up her career ambitions, making a serious one-eighty in her goals for the remote, so-slim-it-was-barely-existent possibility of a future between her and Hunter?
She’d have to be insane to do that.
Her fingers tightened around each other so hard, her wrists were numb.
Wouldn’t she?
“I guess depending on a career is a lot smarter than banking on a relationship,” she finally said, her words hoarse and painful. She cleared her throat, then met her aunt’s gaze with her brightest, fakest smile. “Which is what I’ve always said. Always believed. That just confirms it.”
As if she’d seen something painful in that smile, Robin grimaced. Then she sighed and lifted both palms to the heavens, as if asking for guidance.
“Look,” she said, her words halting, as though she had to search for and weigh each one, “I’m not saying that’s the right choice. It’s the choice I made. But I made it based on the options in front of me. If I had a man who made my toes curl, who made me think and made me laugh? That’d be harder to resist. If he was a guy who understood me. Deep down, totally got me... I’ve never had that, Marni. But if I had, well, that’d be a hard choice to make.”
With each word, Robin leaned closer, looked older.
Marni shoved her hand through her hair, trying to process all of that.
It was like laboring for years, pushing and climbing to get to the top of a mountain. Then breathlessly, painfully reaching the top, only to have the grand guru of all that was bright and shiny offer a shrug and a dismissive Nah, it’s not all it’s cracked up to be. She was torn between sympathy, pity and horrified tears.
“I told you once, I’ve told you a bunch of times, girly. You have to make your decisions based on your baggage. And sometimes that baggage looks pretty damned awesome in the beginning, but loses its appeal after living with it a few years. Or a few months.” Her aunt waved a hand at the statues standing in stark relief against her bloodred walls, as if they were the perfect example.
Marni grimaced. She wasn’t so sure of equating Hunter with baggage or butt-ugly artwork, but she was sure he qualified as pretty damned awesome.
The risk was huge.
This wasn’t a choice she could backtrack on. Whatever she did, regardless of the results, she was stuck with it.
“I want him,” she murmured, finally looking up to meet her aunt’s patient gaze. “Even if this doesn’t work out, even if I’m making the wrong choice for my career, I still want Hunter.”
Robin bit her lip, as if she was bursting to say something. But she settled on a nod.
“What?” Marni prodded. “Please? I came to you for advice, I’d really like to hear your honest thoughts.”
“You don’t know me that well, girly. And despite the fact we share blood and looks, I don’t know you.” Robin got to her feet. Now it was she who was pacing from ugly statue to ugly statue. Marni dropped her eyes back to her nails, preferring to see her mangled manicure to those monstrosities.
“Look, I hate giving advice. I’m a selfish woman. I live my life for me, for my goals. I’ve dedicated myself to my career on purpose. Not because I don’t think a woman can’t have it all. To hell with that kind of thinking. Women can have anything and everything they want, if they work their asses off.”
Marni agreed, but didn’t want to set Robin off on another rant about gender equality. So she settled for a silent nod.
“I chose to go it alone because that’s who I am,” Robin finally said. She dropped back onto the bench, making it safe for Marni to look at her again. “I am ambitious, selfish and lazy. I’m also terrified of failure.”
Marni shook her head.
“Ambitious and selfish to make those ambitions a reality, maybe. But I don’t buy the rest.”
“Like I said, we don’t really know each other yet.”
Marni’s lips twitched, and she gave a gracious nod, acknowledging the point.
“You’ve got a lot of me in you, girly. You’re ambitious, too. Clever with words and you have an eye for seeing the story within the story. An eye that’ll take an average piece to excellence.”
“Do you think I’d be making the wrong decision?”
“Doesn’t matter what I think. The question is can you live with making that particular decision?”
“As long as Hunter can, I can,” she decided.
“And if he doesn’t?”
Marni lifted her chin, pressing her lips tight together to keep them from trembling.
“I’ll just have to convince him, then, won’t I?”
“You think it’s gonna be easy to convince a guy like that to accept you doing this to him?” Robin asked, waving the pages of Marni’s story in the air.
“Nothing about him is easy. But I’ll make it work,” she vowed.
Because she wasn’t taking no for an answer. She’d do whatever it took, use whatever tools were necessary to convince Hunter to forgive her. To give them a chance.
If he wouldn’t listen to reason, she’d fall back on the one thing she knew he couldn’t resist.
She’d strip naked and offer to show him her pole dancing skills.
13
IT’D BEEN A LOT OF YEARS since he’d been stupid enough to inflict a hangover on himself. The hotel room curtains still shut against the painful morning sunlight, Hu
nter squinted at the mirror as he knotted his tie.
He wasn’t due in court until afternoon, but sitting here in the hotel room would just drive him crazy. He had other cases he could be working, could drop in the San Francisco offices and see a few old faces. He didn’t want to socialize, though. He just wanted mental distractions to keep him from obsessing over Marni and the long list of what-ifs.
As if hearing his thoughts, someone pounded on the door.
Hunter clenched his teeth, the sound echoing hollowly in his head.
Murray? He was supposed to be heading back to Washington, having deemed the Burns case a failure since the lawyers hadn’t hit it out of the park yet.
Caleb? He was probably already cuddled up with his sweet wife, having decided to drive home the previous night instead of waiting until morning.
Didn’t matter who it was, Hunter didn’t feel like talking to anyone.
He yanked open the door, ready to tell whoever it was to get lost.
Marni stared back at him, her big blue eyes assessing.
He had to work to keep his glare in place.
“I’m here to talk to you.” She ducked under his arm and stepped into the room. When she’d reached the desk by the window, she set a leather messenger bag on the chair and faced him.
Damn, she looked good.
Her hair fell in a sweep of blond over one side of her face, a sexy reminder of the forties era the train trip had embraced. But her outfit was totally up-to-date. A blessedly short black skirt and matching tights, boots that ended at her ankles, and a flirty lace blouse in bubblegum-pink.
Her face was serene, her smile a friendly curve of those lush lips. He didn’t see a hint of worry in her big blue eyes.
But her fingers were tangled together, twining and untwining, as if she was strangling them.
“What’d you want to talk about? I’m not giving you information on the Burns case,” he said, putting the snarky words between them. More because he didn’t think he could handle it if that was the only reason she was there, rather than because he wanted to be mean.
Marni’s easy smile slipped for a second, hurt flashing in her eyes. Hunter cringed. Could he be a bigger jerk? Before he could apologize, though, she reached for the bag she’d set on the chair, unbuckled the flap and pulled out a file.
Holding it out toward him, she said, “I’d hoped to talk about something else first, but if you want to get the issues about the story and Burns out of the way first, here.”
He wanted to toss the papers aside. He wanted to grab her close, press her body against his and take her mouth in a God-it’s-been-too-long kiss. He wanted to demand she tell him what that something else was she’d prefer to talk about, because it sounded like something he was going to much rather hear than anything to do with their respective jobs.
Instead, calling himself a wimp for the first time in his adult life, Hunter took the folder from her.
He didn’t open it, though. He just kept staring at her.
She was gorgeous.
Sexy, sweet and so damned appealing.
He thought of Caleb’s words the night before.
You’re in love enough to ask the questions, you’re in love enough to find a way to live with the answers.
Was he in love enough?
He’d lain awake most of the night, his head swimming in Scotch, asking that question over and over again. He hadn’t come up with an answer, though. He’d never been in love. What did he know about those deeper emotions? And how could he know it was real, that it’d last?
Now, looking at Marni, the questions all fell away.
The worries, too.
He loved her. It was that simple.
And, he glanced at the file in his hands, that complicated.
“Go ahead,” she insisted. “Look at it.”
“What’s this?” He riffled through the papers, his frown sinking deeper with each paragraph. By the time he’d reached the last one, his frown was fierce and furious. “Where’d you get this?”
Marni wet her lips, looking nervous for just a second before squaring her shoulders. She stepped forward and reached for the pages. Hunter almost didn’t let them go, but figured he was between her and the door, so he’d have plenty of chance to tackle her to retrieve them if necessary. She didn’t take them away, though. Instead, she shuffled through until she reached a particular one, then handed the stack back.
“In putting together the story about Beverly Burns, I talked to a lot of people. This guy here, he was her current lover until her disappearance. He doesn’t know what’s going on, of course. Figures she dumped him, so his ego is whining. He spilled all kinds of stuff, including that bank safety-deposit box he said she put files in under his name.”
Hunter could only stare. Not at the name of their breakthrough on this case. But at Marni. She’d pulled off what he and a slew of trained FBI agents couldn’t. She’d got what was very likely the final nail to pound into the coffin of a major crime boss.
“You checked the safe-deposit box yourself?”
Marni hesitated, then shrugged.
“I should have. That’d be the right thing to do, of course. But I didn’t want to leave California.” Didn’t want to leave him, her expression said. Marni wrinkled her nose in a self-deprecating way, as if she knew she’d said more than she should, but wasn’t going to take it back.
“So you sent some stranger to poke through vital information?” He’d heard a lot in his years with the FBI. You’d think he’d be immune. But sometimes he still wanted to drop his face into his hands and groan.
“Not a stranger, no. I sent my cousin.”
Hunter gave in to frustration, rubbing at his forehead as if he could ease the aching throb between his eyes. She’d had her cousin do it.
“Marni, you know this is a federal investigation, right? The stakes are sky-high and you let a stranger, someone without any clearance at all, poke through the information? I know that might be okay for a story, but it’s putting this case at major risk.”
She nodded, looking totally unabashed at his words. Instead, she just looked calm. What the hell? He knew she cared about doing the right thing. She wouldn’t be bringing him this otherwise. Did she not get the importance of confidentiality and timing in a case like this?
“Did I mention that my cousin goes by the name Sister Maria-Louisa with the Sisters of Charity?”
“Your cousin is a nun?”
Hunter cringed just a little, suddenly very aware of all the things he and Marni had done with, to and on top of each other. Was there some rule against that?
She didn’t seem very intimidated, since she laughed with delight, clearly reading his discomfort.
“She is. And according to my mother, she still follows the family marriage dictate, as she’s a bride of God.” Marni pulled a face, then shook her head as if she were trying to shake off her irritation at that fact. “Maria-Louisa is also great at persuading gigolo wannabes to show her the contents of their safe-deposit boxes. She didn’t read anything there herself, she just took pictures with her cell phone and sent them to me.”
Hunter stared. Maybe it was the hangover. Or the fact that Marni was right here in front of him, close enough to pull close so he could bury his face in her hair. But his brain just couldn’t wrap itself around what she was saying.
“Your cousin, the nun, has a cell phone? And she convinced a hood rat like Giuseppe Laredo to let her take photos of the goods he was hiding for his girlfriend, the wife of a known mobster?” He shook his head. “Seriously?”
“Well, yeah. Who better?” Marni shrugged, pulling another folder out of her magic messenger bag and handing it to him. He flipped the cover and saw a stack of eight-by-ten photos. “She’s the queen of that spiritual guilt thing, but so sweet about it that you end up feeling guilty for being guilty, you know? She promised Giuseppe she wouldn’t let the information become public, though. That’s why I made you promise you wouldn’t use it as evidence.”<
br />
For the first time, she looked anxious.
“You won’t, right? I mean, you’ll keep my word?” Marni grimaced, then shoved her hand through her hair. “I know that’s not fair, but, well, she’s a nun. I can’t lie to her, even after the fact.”
Hunter stared at the photos.
Triumph surged. His grin was both excited and just a little vicious. They’d nail that son of a bitch to the wall with this. Listed right there on that photographed-by-a-nun page were the hit orders, the details of the deaths the prosecution wanted to bust Burns on. He didn’t need to use these photos as evidence. With these names, he’d have the hit men, their girlfriends, hell, their mothers, all rounded up within an hour. It wouldn’t take long before someone flipped on Burns. That’s all he needed, one flip, and he had the guy solid on murder charges.
His hand was halfway to his pocket to grab his own cell phone when his gaze landed on the photo’s date stamp.
“You had this when you came to the trial. When I—” screwed you against the hotel room wall sounded so tacky “—surprised you in your hotel room.”
From the wash of pink coloring her cheeks, Marni got the subtext without a problem. She shrugged, then shook her head.
“Maria-Louisa went to the bank that same day and took the photos, yes. But I didn’t receive them until the next morning.”
After he’d guilted her over the danger to Beverly Burns.
“You said you’re still writing the story?”
“I sent my story in yesterday,” she confirmed, her smile a little shaky. Not out of nerves over his reaction, but with excitement.
He set the file aside, needing to have nothing between them for this next question.
“But you said you promised her the information wouldn’t be made public. How can you do that and write the big-hitting story that’s going to make your career soar?”
She took a deep breath, puffed it back out, then offered a cute shrug.
“I pivoted on my story,” she confessed.
Pivoted.
For him? Because he’d guilted her into it? Because she didn’t want to put a questionably innocent woman in danger? Why?
