Undercover Encounter
Page 21
He fell silent, and she tried to interpret what he had been telling her.
“What are you saying exactly?” she asked. “Are you explaining to me why you’re going to walk out of my life again?”
He answered with a low curse. “No! That’s not why I brought you here. To my home. My refuge, if that’s what you want to call it.”
“Then what?”
“I’m trying to make you understand why a boy who grew up being carted from pillar to post might think he’d make a mess of any marriage he got into. I’m trying to give you some insight into why I walked out on the most satisfying relationship I ever had. I know we had something good, but I was afraid to trust it.”
The large lump that had formed in her windpipe made it hard to swallow or speak. But she managed to say, “And now?”
Again he ran a hand through his hair. “Now I’m asking you to take me back.”
She wanted to shoot out of the chair and wrap her arms around him. But she stayed where she was, because she still wasn’t sure that embracing him was the right thing to do. “Why?”
“Because I love you,” he said in a strangled voice.
“Did I hear that right?” she asked.
“I hope so. I said I love you. It’s hard to say. After the way I turned into a basket case this afternoon.”
“Oh, Alex.” Unable to hold back, she surged out of the chair then and into his arms, clinging to him for dear life. “This afternoon gave me a chance to do something for you. And I got something out of it, too.”
“I hope so.”
“One afternoon with you under the influence of Category Five doesn’t change anything.”
He was listening intently, so she decided to go for broke. “The real issue is that you hurt me—so much—when you walked away from us.”
To her astonishment, he nodded in agreement. “I know. Back then I told myself it was for the best. It was better to cut you off clean, than open us both up to a lifetime hurt. Now I know I was protecting myself. I wanted—needed—you in my life, but I was afraid to trust the feelings.” He stopped and gulped. “Still, you were right, I kept tabs on you. I knew what you were doing. I knew you’d entered the police academy. I even found out your grades. You were right up there at the top of your class, and I was so proud of you.”
She might have resented that, but she understood his motives now.
“I know I broke your heart two years ago,” he whispered. “I hope I get a chance to mend it. I hope we’ve already started that process.”
She felt tears film her eyes. “Why didn’t you say something?”
“Where? When? You were living in a whorehouse. It didn’t exactly seem like the right setting. Then, this afternoon, you saw me at my absolute worst.”
“That wasn’t your worst. That was Category Five,” she reassured him again.
“Whatever. It made me feel like a jerk. I thought I could never face you again. But then I knew I had to, if I was going to get what I want.”
“Which is?”
“You. For my wife.”
“Your wife!” she exclaimed.
“I—I can’t promise I’ll ever be ready for a family. I think I have to work up to the concept.”
“Oh, Alex, I’ve been in love with you all this time. And I thought I’d never get close to you again. We’ll work it out together. I’ll show you how warm and giving a relationship can be. And when you meet my parents, you’ll understand the good foundation they gave me. I hope my family can give you all the stability you missed growing up. We never had a lot of money. But we always had a lot of love.”
He hugged her more tightly. “I want to meet them. But not now. Now I’ve got to make love to you. Only this time, I’ll be in my right mind, and I can do it properly.”
She wanted that, too, and started to let him lead her inside—then stopped. “I don’t want to mess things up right at the beginning, but there’s something else we need to talk about,” she said in a hesitant voice.
“What?” he asked, suddenly guarded, and she realized he was afraid to take happiness for granted. But she had to find out something important before they went any further.
“My job. You did your best to intimidate me—to get me to drop the undercover assignment. Are you going to do that again?”
“I have to be honest. I thought LeBarron gave you a pretty tough gig—for a rookie cop.”
“Yes. But I handled it.”
“I know. More than handled it. You were brilliant. I didn’t think even an experienced policewoman could pull it off—but you did it.”
“Thank you for telling me that.”
“Well, it was another thing I couldn’t mention until you were out of the situation. I didn’t want you to start relaxing. I knew that each day in there was going to bring its own challenges.”
She nodded, knowing that he had played it the right way—after that ridiculous training session.
“Can we stop talking now and start getting physical?” he asked, his hands stroking up and down her back as he bent his head to nuzzle her ear. When he began to worry her earlobe with his teeth, she forgot momentarily what they’d been talking about.
“Come in and see my house. I think I was fixing it up for you.”
“You’re kidding!”
“Well, I couldn’t admit that to myself. But I haven’t brought any other women here. Only you.”
“Oh, Alex,” she breathed, clasping his hand as he led her into the house.
When she stopped again, he looked at her questioningly. “One more thing. When we go see my parents, don’t tell them the details of my assignment. Okay?”
“Are you handing me blackmail material?”
“It sounds like it.”
“Okay, we have a deal.”
He clasped her hand and led her through the darkened living room, into his bedroom and into the new life they would make together.
Epilogue
It was three days after the meltdown at the McDonough Club that Conrad Burke convened a meeting of the New Orleans Confidential agents to discuss the ongoing drug investigation.
Alex made a point of being on time because the other agents all knew that Gillian had moved in with him, and he wanted to prove that he was wide-awake and ready for work—even if he had been up half the night making love with her.
“I’ve got good news and bad news,” Conrad said when they were all assembled in the conference room. His face took on a grieving look. “The bad news first. Wiley Longbottom is in a coma. His family has arrived in New Orleans to be with him.”
There were murmurs of anger and sympathy around the table.
“It looks bad. But the doctors haven’t given up on him,” Conrad continued.
There was more bad news, of course. Lily Harrison hadn’t surfaced. But nobody was tactless enough to mention that in front of her father who sat grim-faced a few seats down the table from Alex.
Conrad was speaking again. “And when Wiley wakes up, I want to be able to tell him that we’ve stopped the distribution of Category Five in New Orleans. We’ve already made significant progress,” he went on.
“Up until now, Jerome Senegal has been able to operate as a legitimate businessman. But we finally have proof that links him to the Cajun mob—which has been actively controlling local businesses, banks, insurance companies, and the like.”
“But we shut down his drug distribution center at the McDonough Club,” Rich put in.
Conrad nodded. “Yes, thanks to you, Alex McMullin, and Gillian Seymour, who pulled off a very difficult undercover operation.”
All eyes turned to Alex, who couldn’t help flushing. “It was Gillian who had the difficult role to play,” he said. “I’m very proud of her.”
Rich caught his eye and gave a flicker of a smile. They both knew that Alex had lived on a knife edge of tension during the whole operation. He’d been deathly afraid that something bad would happen to her. But it had worked out all right.
�
�We’re still looking for Maurice Gaspard, the chief pimp, of course,” Conrad went on. “But when he surfaces, we’ll catch him. In a related matter, police are looking for a gunman who killed the madam and the bartender. It was most likely a mob-related hit to cover their tracks because operations were failing at the McDonough Club. Meanwhile, I want to attack the mob from a different angle—and bring them down once and for all.”
He looked at Seth Lewis, who was seated across the table from Alex.
“Seth is going to be the key player in this operation. He’s going to be posing as a fantastically rich businessman. And his assignment will be to seduce a megarich mob widow named Adrienne DeBlanc, who could be instrumental in cracking this case.”
There was laughter around the table, and Alex was glad that the center of the investigation had shifted away from himself.
“Sounds like a hard job, playing a rich man and playing with a rich widow,” Mason said, the dumb comment about par for the course with him.
Seth shifted in his seat. “Harder than you think, for a guy who grew up in the Ninth Ward,” he said, naming one of the poorer sections of New Orleans.
“Enjoy it while you can,” Rich advised. “And be careful. It sounds like a plush assignment, but playing footsie with the mob is no joke. Guys who cross them end up like Sid Laurent.”
They had also dug into Laurent’s background and found the mob had planted him in the D.A.’s office.
“I know the dangers,” Seth said, bringing Alex’s mind back to the new phase of the operation.
He was thinking it couldn’t really be true. Nobody ever really understood the danger of an undercover assignment, until they were in the thick of it.
Gillian had admitted that to him. Admitted how much she’d counted on his being in the van watching over her while she was working at the McDonough Club. He’d felt the same way. He’d needed to guard her. But more than that, when it had come to the crunch, she’d been there for him.
He was lucky to have her with him now—for the rest of his life, he vowed.
He looked around the table at the members of the New Orleans Confidential. When he’d come to work here, he’d envied Conrad his wife and family. Now he thought about the other single men, hoping each of them would end up as happy as he was.
Special thanks and acknowledgment are given to Rebecca York for her contribution to the NEW ORLEANS CONFIDENTIAL series.
ISBN: 978-1-4592-3228-0
UNDERCOVER ENCOUNTER
Copyright © 2004 by Harlequin Books S.A.
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* 43 Light Street
† Peregrine Connection
** 43 Light Street: Mine To Keep
Table of Contents
Letter to Reader
About the Author
Books by Rebecca York
Cast of Characters
Contents
Prologue
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Epilogue
Copyright