Hustled To The Altar

by Dani Collins

  As she walked around the grounds of the hotel, the scent of lilacs and freshly turned earth soothed some of her tension while she repeatedly hit her speed dial, ended the call after a handful of rings and watched the LCD flash a graphic of her dying battery.

  The walking wasn’t necessary. She could have stood beside the van and done this, but Spencer was stubbornly tailing her. At least the constant motion of bringing the telephone to her ear kept him from speaking to her.

  Oh, how she wanted to blame him for her situation. It would be so sweet to point a finger and absolve herself of responsibility, but taking the licks for her own poor decisions was a principle close to her heart. It was one of the reasons she had gone after Con so aggressively with the Prince of Play story. He had appeared to be shirking his part in the making of the phantom baby, and she had nothing but contempt for anyone who refused to take responsibility for his actions. People like her daddy, for instance.

  So, even though Spencer had tempted her with the teaser email for this story, she recognized that she had chosen to come to Deception. And when Ike had urged her back to Billings, she had ignored him, so she had no one to blame but herself for the fix she was in.

  She would like to think Murphy had no one to blame but himself, too, but he was a bit like a toddler in his grasp of natural consequences.

  She realized she was going to walk in front of a photographer giving orders in German to a group of tourists, who all promptly smiled. She halted.

  Spencer bumped into her from behind. “Sorry,” he muttered.

  She felt a shiver race down her spine, defensively thumbed the button on her cell and this time got Murph.

  “What?” Murphy said in a strained whisper.

  “It’s me. Why aren’t you answering?”

  “I’m busy.” He hung up.

  She dialed again. “If you’re smoking weed—”

  Murphy groaned. “I’m filming. It’s good. I’ll call you back.” He ended the call.

  The battery graphic threatened. She dialed anyway.

  “I’ve got it on vibrate and you’re giving me a hard-on,” he said.

  “You’re a filthy dog. Call me at the hotel. My phone is about to—” It gave a last beep and cut out.

  Dropping the telephone into her bag, she folded her arms and drummed her fingers. Damn.

  “Where is he?” Spencer asked.

  “I don’t know. He’s going to call me in the hotel room.” She dared him with a glare to follow her.

  He did, indicating with a nod that she should lead the way through the throng on the patio of the hotel restaurant, through the overflowing seating area inside and down the noisy hall to the nearest elevator, where they had to wait for two cars.

  When they entered the room, Spencer pulled out his cell and noticed he’d missed a call, but the number was blocked. He went to the telephone and called Con’s suite. There wasn’t an answer, so he left a message with his room number and hung up.

  Laila plugged in her phone, flopped onto one of the sofas and, when Spencer had hung up, stared at the silent landline.

  “Are you hungry?” he asked.

  “I don’t want to tie up the phone ordering room service and, judging from the zoo downstairs, we wouldn’t see it for an hour anyway. I’ll be gone by then.”

  Spencer dug a picnic out of the bar fridge and set it on the coffee table.

  Secretly, she was impressed. She had never been able to justify so much as a mineral water from the little fridge, never mind the couple of hundred bucks it would cost for all the goodies he blithely broke open.

  When he turned his back, she snuck a cracker, feeling like the street rat she’d been when she had hidden supper buns under her pillow, the first night she’d been at his parents’ farm.

  Spencer emptied two short cans of diet cola into a tumbler and settled onto the opposite sofa, scooping a handful of nuts on his way.

  “Help yourself,” he invited her.

  “Can you afford this?” she asked, spreading soft cheese onto a fresh cracker.

  “Yes.”

  “So why aren’t you topping up your cola with one of those cute little bottles of rum?”

  “Do you want a drink?” He made as if to rise.

  “No. I just wondered why you weren’t having one.”

  “I never know when Con’s going to want to fly, so I rarely drink alcohol.” He relaxed again.

  “Do you find that awkward? Always being on call to his whims?”

  “Is this an interview?”

  “No. I’m off the story, remember?” Miffed, she rose to fetch a bottle of water, then sat down again.

  Her shoulder blades tingled and she felt the subtle excitement that had been plaguing her all day. Murphy was getting something good. He’d said so.

  But they wouldn’t get the chance to use it.

  She shot a dark glare at Spencer.

  “You’re really quitting?” he asked.

  “Yes.”

  He took a long pull of cola.

  “Why did you send me all those leads?” she asked.

  “Your confidence took a hit after the Prince of Play story.”

  “You felt sorry for me and wanted to be a do-gooder.” She was nothing without voice control but didn’t manage it this time.

  “I didn’t want you to give up when you’d come so far.”

  She took a sharp breath. Yes, dammit, she had come a long way and she was desperate for someone to notice. She had wanted him to notice from the minute she had recognized him as he had climbed from his helicopter.

  “I’m continually amazed by what you do with the little I give you. You’re good, Laila.”

  “If you were genuinely impressed, you wouldn’t have tried to yank me off this story after dropping it in my lap.”

  “I wanted to help Con’s Gran by exposing the criminal who had stolen her money. Then I realized Con was going after the same guy.”

  “So?” she prompted.

  “I wanted to spare you a confrontation with him.”

  “I’m a big girl. I can take care of myself.”

  The look he gave her made her shift with discomfort, as if he saw the terrified little girl lurking inside her.

  “So Felix scammed Con’s grandmother?” she asked, reaching for confidence along with her bag. Digging out her pen and notebook, she glanced at him expectantly.

  “Yeah.” He smiled. “There’s a lady you should meet.”

  “Would she talk to me?”

  “She would talk to you, listen to you, give you her last nickel and tie your shoelaces if she thought you needed it.”

  “I mean, would she talk to me?”

  “She doesn’t hold grudges. She’s an amazing lady. Doesn’t deserve to be robbed.”

  “Where did she meet Felix?”

  “Here. Not this hotel. You’ll have to ask Renny which one. They were here last weekend.”

  “Renny and Con were here with his grandmother?”

  “Just Renny. She’s Mona’s nurse, kind of. Companion, I guess. And Jacob.”

  “Who’s he?”

  “Renny’s fiancé.”

  “I thought you said she and Con are an item.”

  “I’m sketchy on those details. She’s supposed to marry Jacob tomorrow, but I know how gutted Con’s been since they broke up and—never mind. That’s not for the record.”

  Laila lifted her pen from the paper, wondering how the items had materialized in her hands. Setting them aside, she looked at the phone again and said, “Come on, Murph.”

  “Why doesn’t your producer want you here?”

  “He’s a control freak.” She laughed without humor. “I don’t know. He flies off the handle every time I go after something he hasn’t personally assigned me.”

  “He threatened to fire you unless you went back to Billings right away?”

  “And Murphy. Come on, buddy,” she muttered at the silent phone.

  “What was he doing?”

  �
��Murphy? Filming.”

  “Filming what?”

  She shrugged. “He said it was good.”

  “Then why are you giving up?”

  “Because I don’t want to be the reason Murphy loses his job.”

  “Would it be hard for him to find something else?”

  “Oh, hell, no. Anyone would hire him.”

  “And you—”

  “—would like to keep working, too.”

  “In Billings?”

  “In television.”

  Spencer shifted to sit on the edge of the sofa. “You think it would be hard for you to find something else?”

  “Maybe.” She took a swig of her mineral water, couldn’t meet his eyes.

  “Laila.” He rubbed the back of his neck. “This doesn’t make me look very good, but . . . one of the reasons I tried to stop you was because I was worried about my job. I’m still worried. Con—well, I don’t know that he needs a personal pilot anymore and this . . . situation could be the excuse he needs to fire me. If he does, I’ll be sick about it. I love working for him. But I can fly for anyone. He can’t take away my license or my ability to fly. I’m a pilot. Those skills are mine.”

  She ran her thumbnail down one of the pocket seams on her cargo pants. “But you don’t have a smear on your reputation like I do.”

  “What I’ve been doing, passing you leads, well, a lot of them came from Con’s circle. Looked at in a certain light, it could be viewed as a breach of trust.”

  “Please. It’s little more than repeating gossip, and none of it reflects on Con or his grandmother. Contacting me in secret isn’t going to hold you back.”

  “It could if Con never let me forget it.”

  She considered that, feeling as though the hotel tilted—the whole world, even. Everything she had believed shifted a few inches and she saw it all from a different angle.

  “You think Ike’s been holding me back on purpose, not letting me forget I’d made a mistake with the Prince of Play so I’d be too scared to move on. He could keep me working for him.”

  “An hour ago you were ready to quit and find something new. What’s different?”

  “I was hoping to have a job to go to before I quit the one I’ve got.”

  “Is money a problem?”

  It could be, after a month or two. She earned a livable wage. Just. On the other hand, having grown up in poverty, she had taken precautions against ever being so poor again. After the Prince of Play story had left her wondering if she’d have a job, she had reduced her debt and built a buffer against emergencies.

  “It’d be a huge risk. I have an appointment tomorrow, but there’s no guarantee I’ll get the job with Open Letter. I definitely won’t without a decent tape to show them.”

  He shrugged. “Someone would hire you. Someone will want this story enough to put you on their payroll.”

  A breathless excitement combined with nervous dread inside her. “You’re telling me to do the story?”

  A brief hesitation, then a firm nod. “Yes.”

  She sat up, started to rise off the sofa, hesitated and remained sitting, facing Spencer. “Why?”

  “Because I know you’ll do a good job.”

  “You think?”

  “Absolutely.”

  Her throat stung with the sweetness of having him believe in her. She smiled at him, warm from the soles of her feet, lit with an optimism she hadn’t felt in years.

  He grinned back, one of those crooked, self-conscious, gorgeous smiles that had made her heart thump from day one.

  She laughed, started to stand again, then impulsively shot forward to bracket Spencer’s face with her hands and kiss him loudly on the lips.

  He jerked as though jolted by the same flash of electric delight she felt.

  She pulled back a bit but couldn’t draw away completely because his hands were on her shoulders—gentle, but keeping her close. With a tiny pressure, he urged her to kiss him again, not insisting, only suggesting.

  Bracing her hands on his shoulders, she leaned toward him, felt his hands slide behind her back and felt herself drifting onto him as he slowly fell backward to slouch on the sofa.

  It took forever before she finally touched her lips to his. When she did, the pleasure made her shut her eyes. He had full, soft, warm lips and they opened around hers, drawing her in without demand, letting her bury herself in his taste, seeming to capture her in the sweetest, most delicious prison.

  He’d been a good kisser at fifteen. Now he was incredible. The enfolding sensation began with her lips, but his arms curved around her and his hands drifted over her, pulling her into his lap, making space for her legs between his own so his solid warmth surrounded her.

  She let out her breath as she settled into bliss.

  4:45 p.m.

  Following the directions Renny had received in Felix’s message, Con turned off Main Street and made another quick, tight corner into a parallel alley below it. The squalid parking lot was in a hollow surrounded by graffiti-marked retaining walls and two-story buildings that had been cut into the hillside. High-end retailers occupied the upper floors fronting Main Street while the bottom floors housed less glamorous shops: a used clothing outlet, a discount photocopying service and a plain-looking door that read:

  Serenity Spa

  Open 24 Hours

  Employee Entrance

  Con braked and killed the engine, cutting off John Fogarty claiming I’m ready to play.

  Next to his car, a splintered pallet gave off the stench of stale urine, and Con had to step over a puddle of oil as he climbed from the car and walked around to hold the door for Renny.

  “Looks just like the boardroom in my old office.”

  “Yeah, Felix has a flair for location when it comes to business meetings. I guess we missed him. So much for stalling him long enough to get the police involved.”

  “So much for talking him into bringing his money to our meeting.”

  “Why do you want to do that?”

  Before he could answer, the door to the spa opened and Felix stumbled out, almost as if pushed. Con saw a couple of shadows through the reflection on the glass, one a hulk twice as big as the other. Tyrone and his brother-in-law? Damn. Moving closer to Renny, he cradled her elbow and stood facing the door.

  With a nervous laugh, Felix straightened his rumpled vest and greeted Renny like she was a favorite niece. “So glad you made it. I wasn’t sure, when I left the message.”

  “Oh, Felix, I thought we’d missed you and I did not want to miss out on that coverage.” Renny took on her cocktail party persona. “This is my friend I was telling you about, Conroy Burke. Founder of Performance Games.”

  “I understand you were looking for Renny at my apartment,” Felix said, his handshake like wilted asparagus, his temples shiny with sweat.

  Renny shot Con a look of alarm. Con held the eye contact, hoping she was telepathic enough to figure out he needed a cover story for that one.

  “You didn’t follow me this morning! Oh, Con! He’s been so possessive since the impotence,” she lowered her tone to confide, shaking her head with exasperation.

  Con didn’t have to fake a pained expression; it happened before he could collect himself. He was busy trying to act like a hotshot businessman and wasn’t prepared to be the brunt of a limp dick joke again.

  “But it’s just the stress of moving hundreds of thousands of dollars on a daily basis,” Renny said, waving a dismissing hand. “He’ll perk right up after we relax for a few days. So, the thing is, I haven’t liquidated the jewelry yet, so if you could come by around eight—”

  “I’m not going to relax until I get backers for my new game,” Con said, squeezing Renny’s elbow. He wanted Felix to bring his money to the suite.

  “Darling, don’t make me choose between you and Felix. I need health insurance, so that’s where I’m going to invest my money.”

  “Cookie—”

  “I know, I know. I’ll be rich enough to
build my own hospital if I put my money in your new game. Con’s been paying my bills so far, and it’s a fallback position if you can’t help me, but—”

  “I can help you,” Felix hurried to assure her, before he cleared his throat and looked to Con. “Am I to understand you have a business opportunity?”

  “Oh, good heavens, Felix, think long and hard before you consider it. Con has had some brilliant successes, but you’ve never heard of Ira’s Eyes, have you? Or Cotton Balloons? Con, you wouldn’t take his money, would you? Oh, for heaven’s sake! I wanted to go up the gondola and now you’re going to talk business. The banks are closing. Felix can’t get a certified check this late. You don’t have cash, do you, Felix?”

  “Actually . . . .” He glanced toward the spa.

  “Con has this thing for cash, ever since he won a tournament of Political Payoff—that’s one of his bestsellers. Let me tell you, if Con went into politics, he’d be filthy rich, wouldn’t you, Con?”

  “I already am.”

  “So you are. You know, that jeweler told me he’d give me thirteen thousand, Felix. Is that going to be enough?”

  Felix’s lips parted as he tried to keep up with her. “Yes, perfect. You’ll be well covered.”

  “See, Con? Perfect for the coverage I need.” She turned back to Felix. “He told me thirteen wouldn’t go very far with his new game. He’s looking for an investment more like eighty.”

  “I said I’d settle for fifty.”

  “I don’t have that much jewelry.” She giggled and leaned into Con’s shoulder. “Besides, who has that kind of money lying around? Other than you, of course.” She tilted her face up to him, kitten-cute.

  Renny was so fun to watch, tripping all of Felix’s switches, overplaying her hand, making up game titles that sounded half-intriguing and generally acting very convincing in her sweet, bubble-headed way.

  “Well, off to dinner on the glacier. Join us, Felix?”

  “I can’t. I have business commitments.”

  “Just like Con. You know, Con, you’d be better off giving your money to Felix. You’re at an age when you ought to start thinking about your prostate.”

  He held off telling her she could kiss his prostate and said, “I’ll consider it.”