by Susan Sey
Liz shoved aside the mental image that popped into her head at the words into bed with the FBI. “But it does. Looks like, anyway. So is there anything you can tell me—about Villanueva, about Patrick’s relationship with him, about the night Patrick ditched him to save you—that might explain what the hell’s going on here?”
Liz leaned forward, desperate for Mara to give her something, anything that would put her feet on a path. She’d spent the day poring over case files, everything connected to Villanueva, everything connected to Patrick. She’d read until her eyes had begged for mercy, then she’d read for another hour. She had to close this case. It was the only way to get Patrick the hell out of Grief Creek before she did something stupid. Like sleep with him. Or, worse, fall utterly and irretrievably in love. Because, God help her, she might do either at any moment.
“I don’t know,” Mara said with a helpless shrug. “We were doing what we’d been trained to do from the cradle that night. Stealing. Patrick was pulling something with Villanueva, and from what I’d managed to overhear, it was something complicated, but I’d never met the guy. I was very minor league in comparison. Still taking my marching orders from Daddy.” She smiled crookedly and looked so much like Patrick that Liz had to avert her eyes. “Unlike my brother, who doesn’t take orders from anybody.”
“Not even from your father?”
“Not for years,” Mara said. “He was flying solo by then but stuck close to the family. Mostly to keep tabs on me, which I don’t mind telling you burned my toast when I was a kid. Saved my ass, though, didn’t he?”
Liz smiled at that. “I hadn’t had you in custody more than twenty minutes when he came waltzing through my door like he owned the place and started offering me terms.”
“Yeah, I’ve been thinking about that,” Mara said, a frown puckering her brow. “Can I ask you something? Something that might be protected under those terms?”
Liz shrugged. “I’ll tell you what I can.”
Mara leaned her elbows on the desk and gave Liz a very direct look. “Was it Patrick who turned me in that night?”
Liz blinked, fascinated. “What? Why on earth would he do that?”
Mara returned her attention to the arch of her foot, rubbed thoughtfully. “I wasn’t what you’d call a natural-born thief. Oh, I have my skills, but Patrick was just gifted, you know? Every time I would master something really impressive, Patrick would effortlessly top me and there was no standing ovation from Daddy. It pissed me off like you wouldn’t believe, but I’ve wondered over the years if he did it on purpose. If he was trying to save me from a life he knew I wasn’t suited to. He certainly kept our dad from looking to me for his legacy.”
She gave Liz a self-deprecating smile and said, “And the funny thing was that Patrick never even wanted to take over the family business, such as it was. That would have been me. I’d have done anything to be the heir apparent, to have my father look at me the way he looked at Patrick.” Her lips twisted bitterly. “Even go to jail, I suppose.”
Liz’s stomach rolled and she braced against her own memories of being just such a child. A child so desperate for security that she’d have debased herself in any conceivable way to win the love of a sick and selfish parent. Liz pushed back against the past though it howled for release. She’d banished that girl years ago and didn’t dare speak of her now. But she wondered.
Who would Liz be now if somebody hadn’t rescued her? Who might she be if her father had had a lifetime rather than just ten years to work on her? There’d been no rescue for either Mara or Patrick, and yet they had both managed to find their way to a decent, respectable life. Not without scars, not without detours, but they’d managed. Would Liz have had the courage or the strength to do the same? From this new vantage point, the O’Connor children seemed exorbitantly valiant, and Liz’s easy condemnation of them, simplistic and naïve.
Mara didn’t seem to notice or be offended by Liz’s silence, just continued talking almost to herself. “Patrick can be ruthless when it suits him, and he’s willing to deal with the consequences.”
“I’ve noticed,” Liz murmured, her throat raw from the words she kept trapped there.
“It wouldn’t surprise me if he turned me in himself. I was going to get myself arrested at some point, that much was inevitable given the limitations of my talent. Not much room in the game for a mediocre jewel thief. I can totally see him orchestrating my arrest himself if he thought he had the right cards to keep me out of jail. He had to inform for the FBI for a couple years to pay for my sins, but he got me out of the life, free and clear.”
Liz frowned, considered this. “We don’t know who turned you in,” she said finally. “It was an anonymous tip.”
Mara shook her head, smiled fondly. “I’ll have to ask him about it someday.”
Liz would like to know the answer to that herself. She’d always given Patrick credit—reluctantly but sincerely—for strength of character. He’d been, what, all of twenty-four years old and at the pinnacle of his dubious profession when he’d faced an unthinkable choice. Either turn his back on his newly arrested sister, or screw his partner by abandoning him midheist. Liz knew the time line of that night better than she knew her own face. Patrick hadn’t hesitated. He’d chosen Mara, had given up both himself and Villanueva in exchange for her freedom.
Villanueva had evaded arrest, but Patrick had paid. Not with jail time, though. He’d simply been forced to reform himself and to inform on his former colleagues, thereby making himself persona non grata in the world where he used to be crown prince. And he’d taken it all with that fatalistic acceptance Liz had come to expect from him.
But this thread Mara had tugged loose was one Liz hadn’t previously considered. One she didn’t really want to consider. Was it possible that Patrick had not only accepted an inevitable fall from grace, but had actually instigated it? Sacrificed everything he’d earned to protect somebody he loved?
She squirmed, uncomfortable with this new idea that Patrick not only had a bit of moral fiber, but that it might be tougher than her own.
“Do you really think he’d do that?” she asked, a little desperately. “I mean, for God’s sake, he had everything your parents taught him to want. Do you really think he’d just give it up on the off chance that it might buy you a second chance you didn’t even know you wanted yet?”
Mara tipped her head. “Might have.”
“Did somebody appoint him savior of the world when we weren’t looking?”
Mara laughed. “He seems to think so. He has some pretty wild ideas about fate and justice. I think that’s why you appeal to him so much. You’re like the other side of his coin, the photo negative that balances him out.”
Liz blinked. “Excuse me?”
“He thinks there’s something in him, something sinister and wrong but predetermined. As if it were the universe and not our father that made him a criminal. Which means that the things normal people take for granted—a nice neighborhood where you don’t have to lock your doors at night, police to stand between you and the bad guys, a wife, a few kids—are beyond his reach.”
She paused to smile at Liz’s skeptical expression. “He was a damn good criminal, and he’s comfortable with that identity. But he doesn’t know how good a man he is, or could be. And he’s afraid to even try, because if he fails, it’ll just mean he was right about himself all along.”
Liz rolled her eyes and dug deep for a flip tone. “Oh, please. He’d be the damn president by now if he felt like it. If he hasn’t embraced the suburban life, it isn’t because he’s afraid to try. The man’s not afraid of anything.”
“He’s afraid of showing you his heart,” Mara said gently. “He’s not invulnerable, just scared. You’re his ideal, Liz. And look where he’s been, what he’s done. Can you blame him for thinking you’re out of his reach?”
Liz shook her head, instinctively denying. She didn’t want this new conception of Patrick in her head. The old Patrick had been
dangerous enough, and now this? She refused to think of him this way. Cast out and stoic, longing for the acceptance of a society that both reviled and revered him, aching for the love of a woman who upheld that society with everything in her.
Mara smiled. “You’re in love with him, aren’t you?”
Not yet, she wasn’t. And if she had her way, she never would be. But all she said was, “That would be a remarkably bad decision.”
“No risk, no reward.”
Liz glared. “Life isn’t a poker game.”
Mara shrugged serenely. “A game of chance, then. You play the odds every day in your line of work, Liz. Love’s just another decision you have to make with imperfect information. So what’s it going to be? Bet or fold?”
Liz had her mouth open to retort, but a smooth male voice interrupted. “God, I love it when she talks gambling.” Liz jumped like a cat and spun to find Mara’s husband Jonas leaning against the doorway, six-plus feet of muscle, cheekbones and sun-bronzed skin. Liz wondered if all the men in Mara’s life moved like shadows and looked like movie stars. “Say something else, babe. I’ve missed hearing your voice.”
Mara leapt up on an inarticulate cry of joy and launched herself into Jonas’s arms. He was laughing when he caught her, was still laughing when she speared her fingers into all that inky black hair and fused her mouth to his. Liz looked away. There was too much in that kiss for her to watch. It was all need and passion, an aching stretch of loneliness abruptly broken by the recognition of the heart’s other half.
It was too intimate, she told herself. None of her business. And she tried like hell to squash the sharp thrust of envy that raced through her when Jonas reached up to cradle the curve of his wife’s cheek in his big, work-roughened hand. Patrick had done just the same thing to her, not forty-eight hours before. Kissed her with that same sort of passionate recognition, laced it with that sweet little gesture of honest affection.
She shoved the thought back. She wouldn’t love him. Couldn’t. He wasn’t safe, and no amount of risk could make him so.
“I’ll just, um, see myself out,” Liz murmured, slipping past them through the doorway. She doubted they even heard her, let alone noticed her exit. But Mara called after her.
“Liz.”
She turned to find Mara still wrapped loosely in her husband’s arms. “Think about what I said, will you?”
“You, too. You come up with anything, call me.” Liz pushed back through the swinging doors to the normal world with an overwhelming sense of relief. Out here, chaos didn’t rule, risk wasn’t the norm and husbands and wives didn’t expect or even want what she’d just seen between Mara and Jonas.
She wished like hell she didn’t want it herself.
She buzzed down the car windows on the drive home. The sky was soft and purple, just fading into twilight, the breeze heavy with the promise of summer. She angled into her driveway, then braked abruptly when she saw Patrick’s sporty little bullet of a car parked there in front of her garage.
She gave herself a moment. Pressed her thumbs into her eyebrows, tried to head off the mounting pressure there. God, all she wanted to do was curl up somewhere safe and regroup. She felt raw, assaulted and too damn tired to shore herself up for another round with Patrick. She wanted her couch, some mindless TV and an enormous quantity of premium ice cream, and what did she get instead?
A Hollywood playboy and reformed jewel thief standing in her open doorway, uninvited, unwelcome and glowering like she’d stood him up for the prom.
She shoved out of the car and mounted the steps, didn’t stop until she was toe to toe with him. He didn’t budge. She glared into those crystalline eyes, found them snapping with temper. Well, good for him. She’d been rolling in guilt and fear and lust for days, and she was good and ready to let it all morph into a raging tantrum.
“What are you doing at my house, Patrick?” she snapped, stalking past him through the open door into her foyer. She turned on her heel, planted both hands on his chest and gave him a good, solid shove that knocked him back a step. Not quite far enough to slam the door in his pretty face, but it was a start. “More to the point, what are you doing in my house? I believe I set the alarm system before I left, and I’ve got to say, it used to be relatively effective before you came to town.”
He didn’t flinch, though she must have been radiating rage like the desert radiated heat. He just stepped right back into her face. “This alarm system hasn’t been effective since 1986, Liz. I’ve bypassed it six ways from Sunday in the last two hours, and I haven’t even broken a sweat yet.”
“Are you trying to get arrested?” Liz asked, incredulous. “Or is this one of those high-adrenaline hobbies? Regular old breaking and entering just doesn’t have enough kick, so you’ve moved up to cop houses?”
He took another step toward her, his hands flexing as if it were willpower alone that kept him from seizing her. She didn’t back up, and it brought him close enough that she could smell him, feel the heat and temper rising off him, mingling with her own. “You work with violent criminals every day, Liz,” he said, spacing the words carefully, evenly. She could see that it cost him an effort. “You had a break-in not two days ago, and yet you continue to walk around as if that badge of yours is a bulletproof vest. Leaving yourself this deliberately vulnerable goes beyond stupidity and into willful ignorance. If I didn’t know better, I’d think you were trying to make me insane on purpose.”
She stared at him. “I’ve been working sixteen hour shifts trying to nail a counterfeiter who makes contact only via your cell phone, and even then it’s only to set up fake meetings and give himself grandiose nicknames. I’ve got about a dozen other cases screaming for my attention, but then some joker starts systematically breaking into and searching all the houses you’ve set foot in since you got to town. You’re no help—I’m bringing in that stupid DJ whether you like it or not, by the way—and now I come home to find that you’ve been breaking into my house all afternoon?” She gave him another shot to the shoulder. “And I’m making you insane? How do you figure that?”
He took her chin in one hard hand, forced her gaze to his and held it. “I don’t know what’s going on here, Liz. Not yet. There are any number of dangerous people out there who’d love to take a shot at me. Who deserve the shot if they can line one up.” He shrugged. “I can handle myself, but—”
“But nothing,” Liz snapped. “I can handle myself, too. You think there aren’t a shitload of dangerous people gunning for me, too? I’m not going to live in a goddamn fortress because I put a bunch of skeevy sociopaths in jail.”
He closed his eyes, as if pained. “I know that. I don’t like it, but I know it. I accept it. You kick ass for a living. Good for you. But you’re not doing it on my account.”
She frowned. “What do you mean?”
“This one’s on me. You’re not a target because of the badge. You’re a target because you’re important to me, and I wasn’t careful enough to hide it. I should have protected you better.” He shoved his hands into his pockets and watched her. “I don’t know what’s going on,” he said again. “Not yet. But I will. And I’ll figure it out a hell of a lot faster if I’m not worried half out of my head about you.”
She stared at him, her anger draining abruptly away with a simple realization. “You spent two hours breaking into my house just to test my security system?” she asked slowly. He was—in his own screwy, illegal way—protecting her.
“Yes.” He glowered at her. “And I’m here to tell you, it didn’t make me feel any better.”
“Oh Christ,” she said, and felt it happen. The slow, ill-advised tumble of her heart as it slid right into love. She tipped her head and took him in, the grease beneath his manicured nails, the streak of dust across his white T-shirt, the dirty jeans that had seen better days. She’d never seen him like this before. Angry, disheveled, direct. And under it all, fiercely protective. Somebody had threatened her, and he had placed himself as directly as p
ossible between her and a threat he couldn’t see.
Or wouldn’t admit to seeing, a voice whispered in her head.
But she ignored it. It was done. She’d done the inevitable, the ridiculous, the impossible. She’d fallen in love with Patrick O’Connor. Reformed criminal, ex-poker king, FBI weasel and erstwhile crime novelist.
This was an utter disaster.
But Liz was nothing if not pragmatic. Love didn’t last. Everybody knew it. If she was in love—and she was too scrupulously honest to even think about denying it—the only smart thing to do was embrace it. Accept it. Accelerate it toward the inevitable messy end. And in Liz’s experience, nothing propelled a romance toward a crash-landing faster than sex.
She’d have to sleep with him.
Soon.
Like, now.
Chapter 15
PATRICK FROWNED and took his first step backward since Liz had stepped out of her car. Those bluebell eyes of hers had gone all calculating, and he had to squash the heady little zip of adrenaline that look always sent racing through his veins. God, he loved a woman with a plan. Liz’s plans had never gone well for him, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t appreciate a woman with guileless eyes, a china-doll face and a crafty, devious mind.
“What now?” he asked warily.
She blinked, as if she’d just realized he was standing in her doorway, as if they hadn’t spent the last ten minutes toe to toe, hissing at each other. Then a smile curved her lips, a smile so packed with carnal promise that his mouth went dry. “Come inside, Patrick.”
He obeyed, his brain in high-analysis mode while his body was just hopeful. He fell back on the habits of a lifetime and slouched easily against the foyer wall. Act like you know what you’re doing, like you have every right in the world to be exactly where you are, and people believed you. His ability to exude superiority had bought him considerable time in many a sticky situation over the years, and he was counting on it now. Because Liz had a new angle here, something he couldn’t quite figure out.
