Covert Cowboy

by Harper Allen

  The words ran through her head. She opened her mouth to say them out loud but they wouldn’t come.

  Although the meeting with her father today had been shattering, the brief exchange she’d had with Con in the Langworthy mansion drawing room before Samuel had walked in on them had left her feeling just as hopeless. She hadn’t gone looking for a man like Con Ducharme, and before she’d met him she would have said a sexy, green-eyed gambler wasn’t her type at all. But last night had changed everything—or at least it had changed her.

  She’d faced her own personal truth. She’d admitted to herself that she’d fallen in love with him. And if that wasn’t the stupidest thing she’d ever done in her life, Marilyn acknowledged, it came pretty close…and not just because she was sure he’d lied to her. After all, she’d been far less than honest with him. What made wanting Con Ducharme so insane was that she knew he didn’t want her.

  Or not enough, anyway. He wanted Helio DeMarco more.

  “Father should have trusted me with the truth,” she said distantly. “Maybe he was afraid to, maybe he was ashamed, but he shouldn’t have kept secrets from me. I’m a mother-to-be. The decisions I make affect the baby I’m carrying, and his lies could have been disastrous for my child.”

  “And if he felt it wasn’t his secret to tell, cher’?” Con’s gaze was unreadable. “Your half sister’s involved here, too. It’s her son who’s missing.”

  He wasn’t talking about Holly any more than she’d been speaking of her father, Marilyn thought. They were both talking about Con himself, and this was the first time he’d come close to even an oblique admission that he was keeping anything back in his dealings with her. She held his gaze.

  “Yes, Holly’s son is missing. Helio’s probably behind Sky’s abduction, Tony Corso was somehow involved, and my father knows more than he’s willing to admit. Holly’s keeping a secret, too—the secret of Sky’s father’s identity. And you arrived on the scene three and a half months ago with some trumped-up story about wanting to locate Tony for a fraud he committed in Louisiana, although when you returned to Denver that story had changed.” She shook her head. “The difference between Holly and my father and you is that the safety of my child doesn’t depend on Samuel or my half sister. You’re the one I have to trust. I don’t think I can.”

  She got to her feet, her heart thumping in her chest. “It strikes me that the Colorado authorities wouldn’t cooperate as fully as you say they have with a renegade detective working on his own time. You’re not with the New Orleans Police at all, are you, Con?”

  He raked an indecisive hand through midnight-black hair and exhaled audibly, the glance he slanted at her no more than a sliver of green through dense lashes. He let his hand drop.

  “Merde.” His tone was soft with regret. His shoulders lifted slightly. “Great-Uncle Eustache must be turning over in his grave right about now, but if being a Creole gentleman means I have to keep lying to you I guess I’m going to have to pass. You right, heart. I’ve been palming cards left, right and center with you, hoping you wouldn’t find out. I’m New Awlins, through and through, but I’m not New Awlins P.D., though the boys in blue back me up when I’m working undercover.”

  “Working undercover?”

  Marilyn’s throat felt as if it had completely closed up. Her lips were frozen. There was a hot, burning sensation behind her eyes.

  She’d known he was lying to her. Knowing was a world away from having him confirm it to her face.

  “For the U.S. Marshalls.” He took a step toward her. “But this isn’t their case. I’m on loan to an outfit called—”

  “Come any closer and I’ll rake that handsome face of yours, Ducharme. Right from the start you played me for a fool, and I fell for it! You even made love to me while you were lying. Is that what you mean by undercover work, Con?”

  She caught her bottom lip between her teeth. “I’m still being a fool, aren’t I? That’s probably not even your name.” Something flickered behind his gaze and her wrath turned suddenly to dull sickness. “Tell me you lied about that, too, and I swear this is the last time you’ll ever set eyes on me.”

  Thick lashes swept briefly down over those emerald-gold eyes. His mouth tightened to a line. “The name’s real. The history’s real. The only thing I wasn’t straight with you on was the Colorado Confidential connection, Marilyn. And if it gets out that I’ve come clean with you on that, I’ll be yanked off this case faster than I could shuffle a deck of cards.”

  This time when he came closer she made no move to stop him, but her posture remained tensely rigid. “Colorado Confidential?” Her tone dripped sarcasm. “Wait, don’t tell me—a secret crime-fighting organization operating out of a remote base deep in the Sangre de Cristo Mountains, right? You all get decoder rings and you’re chosen for your special powers. For God’s sake, Con, can’t you come up with something better than that?”

  “That was pretty much my first reaction, cher’.”

  He rubbed his jaw, and in the gesture there was such defeat that for a moment she felt herself softening. She gathered her outrage around her again.

  “And your second reaction?”

  He lifted his head. His gaze met hers with no subterfuge at all. “My second reaction was that I’d been handed the best damn chance I was ever going to get to bring Helio DeMarco down. It was Christmas and Mardi Gras and my birthday all rolled into one, sugar.”

  He’d just given her the plain, unvarnished truth, Marilyn told herself hollowly. His hatred rang true, his determination rang true and the black, implacable satisfaction in his voice could only have come from the darkest corner of his soul. This was the real Con Ducharme.

  She was afraid of this man.

  “Don’t look at me like that, honey.” Now there was no space at all between them. Slowly he brought his hand to her chin and tipped it upward, his thumb sliding to the corner of her mouth. “I’m the gator-killer, not the gator. Someone’s got to take that bastard out, and I won’t apologize for the fact that the job fell on me.”

  “You don’t have to apologize,” she said unevenly. “But you’re talking about killing a man, Con. That should be something you face with regret, not with—”

  She stopped. His thumb stroked upward.

  “Not with what, heart?”

  “Not with—with joy,” she whispered.

  Unhurriedly he slid his other hand from her shoulder and past the beating pulse at the side of her throat. Both hands now framed her face, both thumbs stroked the corners of her parted mouth. His expression unreadable, he bent his head until his lips were just touching hers.

  “Don’t tell me how to do my job, cher’,” he murmured hoarsely. His breath stirred a stray strand of hair on her cheek. “Don’t ever do that, okay? I told you he killed a friend of mine. Did I tell you how?”

  “No, you—”

  Those two words were all she got out before his mouth came down on hers.

  Chapter Ten

  His kiss was open-mouthed and almost burningly hot, but even as a flinch ran through her his palms drew her face closer. His tongue licked hers with slow, languid strokes, as if he was coaxing her to give in to the dark heat she could feel soaking through her thighs, her breasts, the suddenly damp roots of her hair. Abruptly he withdrew—just enough, Marilyn realized with a sudden little shock, so that his teeth could close lightly on her bottom lip.

  Her eyes flew open. His were still veiled behind spiky black lashes. Only a gleam of barely focused green showed.

  “Roland Charpentier and me, cher’, we were the terrors of New Awlins’ bad old lower Ninth Ward when we were kids,” he breathed, his teeth still holding her lip and his drawl soft against her mouth. “Crazy, crazy…oh, man, were we crazy.”

  He sounded drunk. She knew he wasn’t, Marilyn told herself faintly. But his voice was hypnotically low, dangerously slurred.

  Without warning, the heat she’d been feeling cascaded over her in a shower. Her knees buckled weakly. Not mi
ssing a beat, Con ran a hand down the thin chiffon of her top, skimming her nipples as he did. His hand continued downward, as if she were a spooked mare who needed gentling, and snugged tightly under the curve of her derriere, hoisting her up.

  “We both joined the Marshalls’ service. We worked the occasional case together, even though I normally didn’t have a partner. And one day Helio DeMarco surfaced in our Big Easy swamp of felons and criminals. Give it to me again, honey.”

  He was a bad man, Marilyn thought dizzily as he released her lip and flicked his tongue against it and past it. He was bad and outrageous and sinfully sexy, and even if he’d waited for her consent she wouldn’t have had the strength to resist him. Through the clinging jersey of the low-riding drawstring pants she was wearing she felt his hand spread wide to scoop her bottom. His kiss went even deeper than before, and this time when he lifted his head his gaze was wide and glazed.

  “You got this Creole boy wrapped around your little finger, you know that, cher’?” he said huskily. “Took one look at you and fell to my knees, f’sure. Never got up. The Marshalls run the witness protection program. Rollie and me tucked away a mob accountant who’d spilled his guts to a grand jury, but a year later DeMarco’s people found the accountant and used him for mudbug bait. I was on another case by then so Roland went after DeMarco by himself. Made things hot for him, too—so hot that the bastard sent word he was willing to turn himself in, maybe shave some time off the hundred-and-fifty-year sentence he was probably going to get. You like kissing me?”

  She couldn’t keep up with him. One moment he was relating a story she knew couldn’t have anything but a doomed ending, and in the next breath his tone was edgily erotic. She shook her head helplessly, and then changed the movement to a nod.

  “I do.” Her voice sounded rusty and unused. “But I don’t think I should. Not like this, Con. Not while you’re telling me this.”

  “I like kissing you, too.” If he’d heard the second half of her reply he gave no sign. “That’s partly because I’ve got such a thing about your mouth, honey. You know, you don’t have to wait for me to take the first step every—”

  Her hands had been against his chest. Even as she slid them quickly up his shirtfront to twine her arms around his neck she wasn’t sure she had the nerve to go further. She rose on her tiptoes and pulled his head down to hers. She felt an unmistakable hardness pressing against her, heard him exhale sharply, saw those sooty lashes fall against the faint ridge of color on his cheekbones.

  She wanted to take the darkness away, Marilyn thought dazedly, her tongue circling his and her arms tightening around his neck. Was that what this was all about—did he want to blot it out, too? It seemed he was veering back and forth between desire and obsession, the past and the here and now, and the words she’d thrown at him earlier today came back to her.

  “I’m beginning to wonder if that other personality isn’t starting to spill over into the real you…”

  “Roland wanted him too badly.” Con moved his mouth from hers. “That’s the only reason I can think of for him agreeing to DeMarco’s terms on the take-in—no backup, no one else informed, just the two of them alone in Charpentier’s office. DeMarco had a typed statement already prepared, apparently. The way we reconstructed what happened, he let Roland read it over and then he took it back and signed it with his own inkpen.”

  Amazingly, he gave her a rueful smile. “Sorry, cher’, that’s pure New Awlins. Pen, ballpoint pen, whatever you all call it in these parts. This thing.”

  In his free hand was a silver pen. She hadn’t seen him extract it from his vest pocket but seemingly that was where he kept it, Marilyn realized as he slipped it away again.

  “Then he handed Roland that expensive silver pen so the statement could be countersigned. Even then DeMarco liked the possibilities of biological weapons and nerve gas.” Con shrugged. “The thing was rigged to release a vapor the second time it was used—a vapor that would bring death within ninety seconds of it being inhaled. All DeMarco had to do was hold his breath and watch Roland take his last one. Then he walked out and sank back into the swamp again.”

  “Who found Roland’s body?” She knew, Marilyn thought. She just needed to hear him tell her what she was up against.

  “I did.” Con brushed his lips against hers, his tone faraway. “I did, heart. You understand now why it’ll be pure pleasure for me to carry out this assignment for Colorado Confidential?”

  He wasn’t asking her a question. Even if he had been he didn’t give her a chance to answer. His mouth trailed along the side of her jaw to her earlobe, and then moved down the vulnerable line of her neck. As if a feather was stroking upward from the flare of her hips, slow heat prickled along the skin on her back and convulsively she arched her body toward his.

  She’d asked him to lay his cards on the table, and at long last he had. He couldn’t help it that she didn’t like what he’d showed her any more than he could change the way he played the game out, so if she wanted to win this there was only one thing to do.

  She was the wild card. She had to deal herself in.

  Deliberately she discarded the last of her resistance, and as if he sensed her infinitesimal shift Con slanted a dark emerald gaze at her.

  “You want this, cher’?” he murmured lazily.

  Instant heat suffused her. She swayed, he steadied her, she managed to nod her head. “I want it, Con. I—I want you now.”

  A slow smile lifted the corner of his mouth, and to her consternation he shook his head. The next moment he’d straightened, putting her slightly away from him. Where his hands gripped her shoulders was the only part of her that didn’t feel suddenly chilled, Marilyn thought in confusion as his eyes widened guilelessly at her.

  “See, that’s the difference between New Awlins and the rest of the world,” he said softly. “I want you too, sugar. I want you so bad I can already taste you…and that’s part of what makes it so damn good, so let’s take it slow. Now tell me again—do you think you might want this the sweet and lazy Big Easy way? ’Cause if you do, this Creole’s your man.”

  This was the Con Ducharme she’d fallen for, Marilyn told herself breathlessly—the sexy, laid-back gambler with the wry grin and the teasing drawl. Right now he might never have heard of a man called Helio DeMarco, might never have stood over the body of a dead friend swearing to take an eye for an eye, a life for a life, no matter what the price to his soul.

  She wanted this Con Ducharme to stay.

  “Would the Big Easy way include those strawberries you picked up at the grocery store with me this afternoon being dipped in melted chocolate?” she asked, hoping the nervous quaver in her voice was only audible to herself. “And then would it include being hand-fed those strawberries by you?”

  She knew her face had flooded with color. She wasn’t very good at this, Marilyn thought in embarrassment. She just didn’t have a light and playful touch when it came to this kind of thing.

  This kind of thing? she thought a heartbeat later. God, was she so Beacon Hill that even in her own mind she avoided coming right out and using the word? Sex, she told herself firmly as she forced herself to meet Con’s eyes. The word was sex. The man was pure sex. She and he were going to have—

  “Dessert first?” There was a spark of wicked humor in his gaze. “Aw, shug, you bin holdin’ out on me, f’true. You sure you don’t have a little New Awlins blood in you somewhere? ’Cause strawberries and chocolate, cher’, that just don’t sound too Boston to me.”

  Marilyn giggled. An instant later she clapped her hand to her mouth in shock. Con gave her a quizzical glance.

  “You look like a little girl who just said a bad word she wasn’t supposed to know, heart,” he noted laconically. “What’s the matter, bay-bay?”

  Behind her fingers a second gurgle rose up at his drawled tongue-in-cheek endearment, and she took her hand away. “I don’t giggle,” she said helplessly. “I don’t know how to play games, I don’t flirt, I
don’t act this way. What’s happening to me?”

  His quick laugh held startled amusement. “Hell, you’re just havin’ fun, sweetheart. That never happen to you before?”

  He pulled her to him, and before she knew what he intended his hands slid down to cup her jersey-clad rear. “You were just as gorgeous, but you didn’t have a rump this sweet when I first met you. Keep this after the baby comes, Mar’lyn, honey, would you? You might not fit into those designer suits you wore before, but this is going to look like poetry in motion in a tight black skirt and those sexy heels you go for. Got a double boiler?”

  She gurgled again, and this time she didn’t try to hold back the sound. “If that’s not one of those New Orleans phrases you keep throwing at me you’d better let me know right away, because you wouldn’t believe how I’m translating it.”

  Maybe she was getting the hang of this flirting business, she thought as he grinned. His palms tightened momentarily on her behind, and then he released her.

  “Boiler as in for melting chocolate, not booty as in melting a poor defenseless male,” he said reprovingly. “Walk ahead of me into the kitchen, honey, just to drive me crazy a little.”

  Grandmother Van Buren would definitely not approve, Marilyn told herself twenty minutes later as she lit the final wick on an outsize pillar candle and placed it on the living-room floor’s polished cherrywood planks just beyond the fluffy flotaki rug that anchored the seating area. Its triple flames joined the rest of the haphazard grouping of candles she’d gathered from all corners of the apartment and arranged in a wavering line around the rug, and kneeling back on her haunches, she surveyed the scene. On the Moroccan leather hassock sat a glass bowl of melted chocolate. Beside it was a second bowl, this one brimming with ruby-toned, out-of-season strawberries. She only had to glance over her shoulder toward the open kitchen area to see Con, a dish towel slung with panache over his shoulder, checking the burners of the stove before joining her.