Texas Proud and Circle of Gold

by Diana Palmer

  “I try to,” Paul said. “I mean, I’m happier than I ever dreamed I could be, with Sari. But there are times when I think of my little girl...” He broke off.

  “We all have bad memories, Paulie,” Mikey said. “Mine aren’t as bad as yours. I’m sorry for what happened to you. But the guy paid for it,” he added coldly.

  Paul glanced at him. “Yeah, one of the marshals in Jersey said he thought you might have had something to do with that.”

  Mikey just pursed his lips. “Who, me? I go out of my way to be nice to people.”

  “Yeah, but you know people who don’t.”

  Mikey chuckled. “Lots of them.”

  “Have you told her?” he asked, his head jerking toward the door.

  Mikey knew who he meant. He leaned back against the pillows. “I don’t know how. At first, I didn’t think there was a reason I needed to tell her. Now, I’m scared of what she’ll think of me.”

  “She’s a sweet woman.”

  “Sweet, and innocent. She doesn’t see wickedness. She always looks for the best in people. Even in me. I’m not what she thinks I am. But how do I tell her what my life has been like? How do I do that, and keep her?”

  “You underestimate how she feels about you, Mikey,” Paul said. “You don’t love or hate people for their actions mostly. You care about them because of what they are, deep inside. Bernie knows you aren’t as bad as you think you are.”

  “I hope you’re right. It hasn’t been a long time, but if I lose her, it will be like having an arm torn off, you know?”

  “I do know. That’s how I feel about Sari.”

  “She’s a winner.”

  He smiled. “I agree. Hey, if you’re not better Saturday, you can bring Bernie over for lunch Sunday, you’ll be welcome. You can take her walking around the property, maybe even catch that movie you went to see at the drive-in. It wasn’t a new one, because it’s on pay-per-view now.”

  “That sounds nice,” Mikey replied. “I hope this stupid headache goes away before then,” he added. “They usually last two or three days.”

  “I remember. You take your meds. Maybe they’ll cut this one short.”

  “I hope so. Thanks for the cousinly visit,” he added. “Anything more from Carrera?”

  Paul shook his head. “He’s got Tony in a safe place, he says, and not to worry.”

  “I’m in a safer place,” Mikey chuckled. “Little bitty town in the middle of nowhere, with half the retired mercs in the country. Lucky me.”

  Paul grinned. “I’ll second that. Ask Bernie over Sunday.”

  “I will. Thanks.”

  “No problem. See you later.”

  “Yeah.”

  * * *

  Bernie was delighted with the invitation. It did take Mikey a few days to get over the headache, but he was fine Sunday afternoon. “Are you sure they don’t mind?” she asked.

  “They wouldn’t invite you if they minded, honey,” he told her as they sped toward Paul and Sari’s house. “You warm enough?”

  “I’m fine,” she said, huddling down in her warm berber coat. “It’s chilly tonight.”

  “Imagine that, chilly in south Texas,” he teased. “Now if you want to see chilly, you have to come to Jersey. We know about cold weather.”

  “I guess you get a lot of snow.”

  “We used to get more, when Paulie and I were kids. We had some great snowball battles in the neighborhood. These older boys would lie in wait for us and pelt us with frozen snowballs every chance they got. So Paulie and I got some ice cubes and put them inside our snowballs. Ouch! The bullies ran for their lives.”

  She laughed. “I’ll bet they did.”

  “Our grandmother was so fierce that they were more afraid of her than even the big boss in the neighborhood,” he recalled with a smile. “I told you about her hitting him with a salami. Chased him all the way out the front door with it, and his people didn’t dare laugh. It taught him a whole new respect for women.”

  She laughed softly. “I wish I could have met your grandmother.”

  “Me, too, honey. She’d have loved you.” His hand reached for hers and held it tight. “She had no time for modern women with modern ideas.”

  She sighed. “Me, neither. I’m a throwback to another generation, I guess. My dad pretty much raised me after we came back here.” Her heart felt like lead in her chest. She hated remembering why they’d come to Jacobsville.

  “What’s wrong?” he asked, sensitive to her mood.

  She grimaced. “Things I can’t talk about. Bad things.”

  “Honey, I could write you a book on bad things,” he commented. He drew in a breath. “One of these days we have to have a long talk about my past, and it isn’t going to be nice.”

  “It won’t matter,” she said quietly. “The person you were isn’t the man you are today.”

  “That’s not as true as I wish it was,” he replied.

  “I can’t believe you’d do anything terrible.”

  But he had. Really terrible things. They hadn’t bothered him much until now. This sweet, kind woman beside him didn’t have any idea about what sort of evil lived in his real world, the world she’d never seen.

  “Listen, you read books?” he asked.

  “Oh, yes. It’s how I get through bad nights, when the pain overpowers the medicines I take for it.”

  “There’s this book—I’ll give you the title. It’s about a man who paints houses.”

  “A painter?” she asked.

  His fingers contracted. “It’s a different sort of painting. If you read the book, you’ll begin to get some idea of the sort of world I live in.” His face tautened. “It’s a hard life. Dog eat dog, and I mean that literally. The man I work for is hiding out from a man even worse than he is. What I know, what I’ve seen, can clear him. The feds just have to keep me alive long enough until the trial comes up.” He turned and glanced at her. “It’s a business. Like regular business, in a way. It’s just that somebody wants what you have and thinks up ways to get it, most of them illegal and deadly.”

  She frowned. “I don’t understand.”

  “How could you? Raised in a tiny little town, surrounded by law-abiding citizens, most of whom love you.” His face hardened. “In my whole damned life, my grandmother was the only person who really loved me.”

  Her heart almost stopped. She loved him. And she’d only just realized it. She was faintly disconcerted by a revelation that should have occurred to her much sooner. “There’s your cousin Paul,” she said after a minute.

  “Yeah, Paulie. We’re fond of each other. He’d do anything he could to help me. In fact, he already is. But that’s not the same way I felt about my grandmother.”

  “I don’t remember mine very well,” she said tightly.

  He glanced at her. “Bad memories?”

  She swallowed. “They don’t get much worse.”

  His fingers linked into hers. “Can you tell me about it?”

  She hesitated. He was insinuating that his life had been a little outside the law. Perhaps he might understand better than most men what it had been like for her, for her family.

  “I want to,” she said. “Can it wait until later?”

  He laughed. “It can wait.” He was flattered that she wanted to trust him with something that was obviously a secret, something she kept hidden. It was an indication of feelings she was beginning to have for him. He was beginning to have the same sort for her. If she had something traumatic in her past, it might help her relate to his own life.

  Then he stopped and considered what he’d be letting her in for, after the trial, when he went back to Jersey, back to the old life. He’d pledged his loyalty, his life, to the crime family he belonged to. Betraying that code, that omertà, would get him killed. Not that he had any plans to turn his
people in to the feds. In fact, even Tony was working with the feds right now, to ward off the takeover by Cotillo. But that was a temporary truce. Nobody in Tony’s employ was going to rat out anybody to the feds, least of all Mikey. That would get you killed quick.

  On the other hand, if he wanted a life with the sweet woman at his side, and he was beginning to, how could he drag her into the shadows with him?

  It would be her choice in the end. But she was sheltered and disabled. Not that his people would be bad to her, oh, no. Even the women would welcome her like a relative. His underlings would treat her like royalty. So it wouldn’t be bad from that standpoint. But the rackets Tony and Mikey were mixed up in were illegal. They specialized in online gambling, in numbers running, in casinos in Vegas. One of Mikey’s properties was a casino, in fact. He’d told Bernie that it was a hotel. It was a hotel, but it wasn’t in Jersey. It was in Las Vegas, and big-name entertainers came regularly to appear there. He ran it like a legal business, but he did do things off the books that could land him in jail. Bernie was such a gentle, trusting soul. She liked the country, the outdoors, little animals. Mikey liked bright lights and casinos. It was going to be a difficult adjustment, if she was even willing to make it.

  “You’re brooding,” she accused, watching the expressions cross his handsome face.

  He laughed self-consciously. “I’m brooding.” He turned his head for a minute and caught her eyes. “Sorry. I have things on my mind.” He made a face. “Paulie said they’ve got somebody close to me.”

  “They?”

  “The guy who’s after Tony and me,” he explained. He chuckled. “I told him it was probably Mrs. Brown. You can tell she’s just the kind of person who would set a man up,” he added with a grin.

  She burst out laughing. “Oh, that’s wicked.”

  “I’m a wicked man, honey,” he said, and he wasn’t kidding.

  She frowned. “He doesn’t have any idea who it is?” she added.

  “Not yet. He’s checking people out.”

  “I’d check out that Jessie person in my office,” she muttered. “She’s one of the most horrible people I’ve ever known. She’s always cutting at the other women in the office. Poor Glory has high blood pressure. It can be dangerous, you know, and she has a small child. Jessie makes all sorts of unpleasant remarks to her about the medicines she takes, even about the way she dresses.”

  “Your boss should get that woman out of the office,” he commented.

  “He’d like to, but he’s the DA. He has to have a legitimate reason to let her go or she could take him to court. He’d like her to leave, too. She messes up appointments all the time, another reason Glory’s so stressed.”

  His fingers stroked hers. “We all have our crosses, don’t we, kid?”

  She nodded. “Nobody gets through life without a few traumas.” She sighed. “It’s really sad, you know. She’s so beautiful. How can a person who looks like that be such a pain to be around?”

  “You never know what sort of background people come from,” he said simply. “A lot of times, kids turn out bad because of the way they were raised. You know, I only saw my dad a few times in my whole life. My mother died of a heart attack when she was just in her twenties, not too long after she had me. Her mother, my grandmother, took me in. Paulie’s mom bit the dust about the same time, so he ended up with our grandmother, too.” He grimaced. “Paulie’s dad was even worse than mine. He took some licks when the old man was home. Fortunately, it wasn’t often.”

  “Did your fathers work in some sort of away job, like construction?” she asked innocently.

  “They worked for the big bosses. They went where they were told, and did what they were told.” He smiled sadly. “That’s the life, kid. You pledge to obey and you do it. There’s a code of honor. We call it omertà. It means you pledge your loyalty to a don and you never forget it. You sell out your colleagues, you meet with a quick and sad end.”

  Her heart jumped. “But you’re going to testify against a man who’s a, what did you call him, a don?”

  His fingers contracted comfortingly around hers. “That’s a different thing,” he said. “This guy Cotillo is trying to muscle in on territory that doesn’t belong to him. The other families are as much against him as Tony’s is.”

  She frowned. “Tony’s your family? Is he a relation?”

  He chuckled. “Tony’s a character,” he said. “No, we’re not related, but we’d die for each other. So in that sense, yeah, I guess you could say he’s family. The feds are protecting him. Me, too. What we know can put Cotillo away for a very long time. The families are working toward that end, even making a temporary truce with the feds to keep them from prying too closely into our business.”

  She blinked. “You talk about federal people as if they’re the enemy,” she said. “But your cousin works for a federal agency.”

  “It’s just a figure of speech, honey,” he said, backtracking. “We’re all grateful for their help. Nobody wants a guy like Cotillo in charge in Jersey. He’s a weasel. First chance he got, he’d start lining up other families for elimination. They know that. So the feds are sort of the lesser of the two evils.”

  “I see.”

  “You don’t, but you will,” he promised. He sighed. “I just hope it isn’t all going to be too much for you, Bernie. You’ve lived a sheltered life.”

  “Actually, I haven’t. Not so much.”

  “Oh?”

  “Well, I haven’t lived in a commune or had lovers, or anything like that. But I’m anything but sheltered. I’ll tell you,” she added. “I promise.”

  He smiled. “I’ll tell you, too.”

  “That’s a deal.”

  Chapter Eight

  They were heading down the long driveway to Graylings when his fingers contracted around hers. “No secrets from now on,” he said. “I’ll tell you about my life today and you can tell me about yours.”

  “It might matter...” she said worriedly.

  “It won’t.” He sounded very positive. “Nothing you tell me will change anything.” One side of his sensuous mouth pulled down. “On the other hand, what I have to tell you, well, that may change a lot of things,” he added heavily, and he was regretting things in his past that might drive her out of his life. It was a terrible thought. She was already part of him.

  “Whatever sort of trouble you’re in, I’ll stand by you,” she said.

  He wanted to pull her over into his lap and kiss the breath out of her for saying that, but he had to restrain himself. His fingers worked sensuously into hers, caressing them. “I never thought I’d get mixed up with a girl from a little town in Texas,” he said, chuckling. “I feel just like Carrera must have.”

  “Carrera?” she asked. “Oh, yes, Delia’s husband.” She smiled. “Delia had a bad time of it. Her mother turned out to be a woman she’d always thought of as her sister, and her father turned out to be her mother’s husband. She saved Mr. Carrera’s life in the Bahamas, but she lost her baby. She came home and she was so miserable. It hurt me to see her when I had to go to the dry cleaner’s.” She sighed. “But then Mr. Carrera showed up with some sort of quilt he’d made for her, and the next thing we knew, they were getting married.”

  “Yeah, he quilts,” he said with a soft laugh. “The guy looks like a wise guy. He’s big and rough and he intimidates most people. The quilting habit gave him a lot of heat until he started throwing punches. Now nobody laughs at it. He wins international competitions with his designs, too.”

  She nodded. “They have one of his quilts in our library, on permanent display. It’s a Bow Tie quilt. They say he has one just like it in a casino he owns. Gosh, imagine owning a casino! Those are the richest, flashiest places on earth!”

  He hadn’t told her that his hotel in Vegas was also a casino. “You ever been in one?” he asked.

  “Wh
en I was small, my parents took me to the Bahamas on a cruise one year, on summer vacation. I wasn’t allowed inside, but they drove me by one over on Paradise Island. It was fascinating to me, even as a child.”

  His fingers contracted. “Suppose I told you that the hotel I own is actually a casino,” he said slowly, “and it’s in Las Vegas?”

  Her eyes widened. “You own a casino in Las Vegas?” she exclaimed. “Wow!”

  He laughed, surprised at her easy acceptance. “I run it legit, too,” he added. “No fixes, no hidden switches, no cheating. Drives the feds nuts, because they can’t find anything to pin on me there.”

  “The feds?” she asked.

  He drew in a breath. “I told you, I’m a bad man.” He felt guilty about it, dirty. His fingers caressed hers as they neared Graylings, the huge mansion where his cousin lived with the heir to the Grayling racehorse stables.

  Her fingers curled trustingly around his. “And I told you that the past doesn’t matter,” she said stubbornly. Her heart was running wild. “Not at all. I don’t care how bad you’ve been.”

  His own heart stopped and then ran away. His teeth clenched. “I don’t even think you’re real, Bernie,” he whispered. “I think I dreamed you.”

  She flushed and smiled. “Thanks.”

  He glanced in the rearview mirror. “What I’d give for just five minutes alone with you right now,” he said tautly. “Fat chance,” he added as he noticed the sedan tailing casually behind them.

  She felt all aglow inside. She wanted that, too. Maybe they could find a quiet place to be alone, even for just a few minutes. She wanted to kiss him until her mouth hurt.

  He pulled into the long driveway and up to the house, which was all aglow with light. It was a huge two-story mansion with exquisite woodwork and a long, wide porch. The front door opened as Mikey helped her out of the car, retaining her hand in his as they approached the house.

  “Paisano,” Paul greeted him in Italian.

  “Salve! Come stai?” Mikey replied, and let go of Bernie’s hand long enough to hug his cousin.