After what she’d witnessed at the accident scene, she bet a million bucks some of the things he did were illegal. Look at his sleek, expensive car. Where did an immigrant come up with that kind of money working for a florist?
“How is your friend with the injured hand?”
“He will be fine. What about your young mothers-to-be? One looked very far along. She did not go into premature labor, did she?”
There went that “r” again. “No, thank goodness.”
“I think maybe you were the one who suffered the most. When I heard you explain to the officer what happened, I decided you must be an excellent driver to have missed my door. Otherwise I could have been killed. That is why I brought you these flowers. Thank you for saving my life.”
What?
Only a man as unique as Anatoly could have come up with an excuse that original.
“If you will permit me, I will be happy to escort you where you need to go until your car is repaired.”
Gaby blinked. “But you don’t have a car!”
“You are referring to the Audi which belongs to a company I work for. But I have other transportation. Since all three of the cars had to be towed, it is only natural that I offer you my services.”
“I appreciate it, Anatoly, but these beautiful roses are enough.”
“It is no problem. I have just started my vacation at the place where I do accounting. My other job is part-time doing deliveries, which leaves me free for you.”
He had to be between women at the moment. But knowing how he operated, it wouldn’t be for long. If Gaby turned him down tonight, he’d become involved with another woman by no later than tomorrow night.
When she didn’t say anything, a concerned look broke out on his face. “You have work tomorrow?”
“Yes.”
He gave an elegant shrug of his broad shoulders, diverting her attention. “Then I will drive you.”
From past experience she’d learned that the best way to get rid of someone so eager was to agree with him, otherwise he would pester her to death.
“Fine. I’ll be leaving my apartment at seven in the morning.” Naturally she would be gone by the time he arrived, and that would be the end of it.
She expected to see a satisfied gleam in his eyes. Instead, she glimpsed something she couldn’t decipher. It sent an odd shiver down her spine.
“I will be here on time.”
She put her key in the lock. “If something happens and you can’t come after all, I’ll make other arrangements.” Famous last words after the bus breakdown this afternoon.
As she pushed the door open and moved into the apartment, she heard him ask, “Do you speak to all men like that, or only to me?”
In her experience she found that Russian men took themselves a little too seriously. Exasperated because she knew he was purposely exposing his hurt feelings so she would continue to talk to him, Gaby turned to shut the door. Before it closed on him she said, “Good night, Anatoly.”
There was no doubt she’d left an unhappy man standing out in the hall, but he would have to live with his disappointment, just as she would. Because for a minute there, she’d actually been tempted to invite him in.
She locked the door and put on the chain.
To think that only yesterday Gaby had assumed she was one of those widows who would never get that “old feeling” again.
Her eyes feasted on his gift. The roses were gorgeous. So was he….
But she couldn’t help thinking about the other work he did—the accounting job that allowed him to drive a new Audi and had given him two weeks’ vacation.
In her mind’s eye she could still see his foreign passengers dispersing from the accident scene as fast as possible. Everything about it set off alarm bells.
Since obtaining her law degree, she’d worked with Russian immigrants in New York and San Diego, though not so much in Florida. For the most part the newcomers were Evangelical Christians who’d flocked to the U.S. to escape religious persecution. Many were outcasts in their homeland, lacking education.
She’d dealt with welders, construction workers, even miners who were looking for the same kind of work here. Gaby found them to be wonderful people, anxious to raise good families and succeed.
Since most of them accepted the black market as a way of life in the former Soviet Union, they had a hard time understanding that the situation was quite different in the U.S.
Unfortunately there was a small percentage who worked on the wrong side of the law. They were members of the so-called Russian mafia, an ever growing cancer perpetrating all types of crime, including organized car theft and staged accidents. Those “accidents” were bilking American insurance companies of millions of dollars and creating havoc up and down the West Coast.
In a recent seminar with other immigration lawyers, she’d learned that besides San Diego, Vancouver and Portland were experiencing a wave of mafia-related car accidents, some ending in violence and death. Gaby had taken notes on several dozen actual police reports. In many cases the latest high-priced model cars were involved. Like a new black Audi, for instance.
The police wanted to hear from any immigration attorney who, after screening a would-be client, suspected he or she might be involved in those kinds of activities.
Gaby wagered that the people who owned the car Anatoly was driving didn’t file earnings with the IRS. She had the strongest suspicion the handsome immigrant on fourteen days’ leave from his “other job” was part of a mafia car ring clear up to the tips of his ears.
She didn’t want to think it, let alone believe it, but the possibility was there. Troubled by her thoughts, she buried her face in the roses to breathe in their delicious fragrance. Suddenly the urgency to shower and eat was superseded by the need to put them in water.
On her way to the kitchen, she tossed her purse and mail on the overstuffed chair. Without a vase she might have to fill the sink and leave the roses there overnight. A quick search of the cupboards didn’t turn up any kind of container. The saucepan was too shallow.
Removing the florist tissue from around the stems, she turned to fling it in the wastebasket and saw the orange-juice carton. Glad she hadn’t done the weekly cleaning yet, she rinsed it out and filled it with water.
In a minute the roses graced the table. She covered the carton with the tissue and held it all together with the ribbon. A splash of brilliant color had transformed the apartment.
To get a little air moving, she turned on the fan in the bedroom, then took a quick shower. Afterward she went to the kitchen to fix a meal. She was low on groceries and would have to do some shopping tomorrow.
Assessing what was there, she made herself a peanut-butter sandwich and scrambled a couple of eggs. Taking everything into the living room with a bottle of beer, she settled down in the chair to relax and enjoy her magazines.
As she flipped through them, the scent from the flowers was almost overpowering. Anatoly had gotten his way. A part of him had made it inside her door. Damn, damn, damn.
To her chagrin, no article held her interest for long. She kept turning the pages and ended up comparing the men in the various ads and photographs to the attractive Russian.
When it became clear there was no contest, she threw down the magazines in disgust and opened the newspaper to the classifieds.
CHAPTER THREE
THE LOUD NOISE came as a surprise. Max removed the earphones for a moment. She’d either dropped or thrown something close to the lamp where he’d planted the bugging device.
From inside the delivery van parked around the corner, he’d been listening to anything he could hear coming from her apartment. So far he’d learned nothing. If she had a cell phone, she hadn’t made a call or received one. There’d been no visitors.
He put the earphones back on and waited another twenty minutes. There was the occasional rustle of paper, then silence. Convinced she’d gone to bed, he headed back to City Heights. On the way he phoned Gi
deon.
“Did Crandall fill you in?”
“Yup. On everything.”
“What did you find on her?”
“She obtained a California driver’s license a month ago. She’s clean except for one parking ticket she received at Chicano Park. It looks like an expired meter.”
“I saw it in her mail.”
“Anything helpful there?”
“She has a subscription to AGO.”
“That’s interesting. So’s this. She held a former driver’s license from Florida. Miami Beach, to be precise. No violations. By tomorrow I’ll know a lot more so you can make a judgment call.”
His jaw hardened. “We’ve got enough now, and it’s not looking good.”
“What do you mean?”
“If she was living in Miami, I’m more suspicious of her than ever. She hasn’t been in San Diego long. That would explain why she hasn’t tried to wipe me out before now. Kind of puts ‘license to kill’ in a new light, doesn’t it?” Max said on an ironic note.
“What are you talking about?”
“Gideon, she has to be a mafia plant.” Without wasting words, he explained exactly what he’d found stashed inside the newspaper. “She had notes on a couple of the accidents I helped stage last month.”
“Good grief!”
“That’s not all. I found a Barrio Gents pennant on her closet door.”
After a pregnant pause, “Come on…” Gideon had been raised on stickball as well.
“That’s what I said when I saw it,” Max muttered.
“You want to know something else? She keeps Dreher’s Italian beer in her fridge. What are the chances of that happening?” The two of them had always gone for Dreher’s back in New York.
While he let his friend digest that he said, “I swear she’s been sent to get involved with me. You know, pretend to like the things I like, make me fall in love with her until she learns all my secrets or catches me out in a mistake. Whatever comes first.”
“Who would have believed it?’ Gideon whispered.
“Did I tell you she phoned where I work to see if my friends and I were all right? She even went so far as to say she would write notes of apology to them. Just now she agreed to let me drive her to work in the morning. The woman didn’t even try to give me a hard time.”
“You’re right, Max. Things are moving too fast.”
“Before I searched her apartment, I was willing to give her the benefit of the doubt. Then I got Karin’s phone call telling me Ms. Peris had phoned. Coupled with everything I found in her apartment, it’s all gone beyond the realm of coincidence.”
“It sounds like it. Max, I’m calling an emergency meeting of the guys as soon as we hang up. Don’t do anything until I get back to you.”
Max groaned. All the groundwork, all the elaborate preparations jeopardized because of a leak that had to have originated in New York.
His infiltration of the Brighton Beach mob over a three-year period had resulted in the FBI making an unprecedented amount of arrests. That was why he’d been sent to San Diego. They were hoping for the same success here.
“Someone at the top wants me free to spend my time with Ms. Peris. They must have ordered Nikolai to give me two weeks off. He probably doesn’t have a clue what’s really going on, but it’s all beginning to make sense.”
“Hold on, Max. Karl’s on the other line. I want him to know what you’ve just told me. Where are you headed now?”
“To my apartment.”
Though it was only a half mile from the florist shop, Karin insisted Max keep the van overnight when he had to deliver late the day before.
She’d urged him to forget his fiancée back in Russia who’d been separated from him for too long. “Marry some nice California girl and settle down.”
The way Karin looked at things, he needed transportation in order to court. Since he didn’t have a car, she would help. It wasn’t normal for a fine thirty-six-year-old man like himself to be alone.
Bless her heart, she had no idea Max’s Russian fiancée was pure fiction. Furthermore, he’d tried marriage to a nice college girl from Vermont when he’d been a rookie on the NYPD.
It was a case of opposites attracting. But after the honeymoon was over, so was their marriage. From that point on she’d made it clear she had a healthy contempt for their lifestyle, the way he earned his living. She asked him to get out of police work altogether.
Her resentment of his buddies, Gideon in particular, drove a bitter wedge between them. When the fire got too hot and he needed her most, she divorced him and went back home. The last he’d heard, she’d married a well-to-do surgeon from Montpelier and they had two children. But that was ancient history.
“Max? Karl’s putting a twenty-four-hour backup on you starting now. As soon as I ring off, we’re having a meeting. Expect to hear from me within a couple of hours. And, Max, I don’t care if our own boys are keeping an eye on you. You watch your back.”
The tension in Gideon’s voice said it all.
GABY CHECKED her watch. Twenty after six. She finished her last mouthful of corn flakes and put the dish in the sink. One more trip to the bathroom to brush her teeth and apply lipstick. Now she was ready.
Three different outfits completed her working wardrobe. Today it was the matching khaki skirt and jacket with the white linen top. The important thing was to leave the apartment before the Russian showed up. If he planned to show up at all.
But when she saw Anatoly in another tight T-shirt, lounging against the wall at the top of the stairs with his strong arms folded across that rock-hard chest, she knew she’d been lying to herself. Part of her had wondered if he might come early.
He straightened. “Good morning, Gabriella.”
That was unfair.
Except for her family, no one had ever called her by her full name before. No one had ever made her name sound as if it was something delicious. But then, she wasn’t in the habit of being on a first-name basis with her clients.
That was the problem. He wasn’t a client. She didn’t know what he was….
“Good morning, Anatoly.”
His gaze didn’t miss a detail. “You look very beautiful.”
So do you, she almost said. Unlike her late husband, Paul, this man didn’t have a shy, restrained bone in his body.
“Thank you for the compliment.”
“You are welcome. Not all women glow this early in the day.”
You would know if anyone would.
“My father always said it was the sleep before midnight that counted.”
He kept abreast of her as they went down the stairs. His arm and leg brushed against hers several times, increasing her awareness of him. Anatoly had no shame.
“I was thinking that perhaps you have a lover who makes you so alive. Already I am jealous.” He opened the door for her, then followed her outside where an overcast sky greeted them.
Before she’d recovered from that outrageous comment, he informed her his van was around the corner. The next thing she knew he’d cupped her elbow to guide her along the pavement.
Talk about a total takeover. The man was like an F-5 tornado, consuming everything in its path.
She wasn’t too pleased to hear he had a van. Some immigrants lived in them until they could afford low-cost housing. That meant all the comforts of home, including a bed.
What was she doing allowing him to sweep her toward his handy trysting spot? From experience she’d learned that some foreign men invade the imaginary circle of space a person draws around herself to feel comfortable. It was a cultural thing, but they didn’t realize it produced a claustrophobic effect in her. But this was ridiculous!
Just ahead she saw a bunch of people at the corner waiting for the bus. Several of them were her neighbors. As soon as they saw her with Anatoly, they smiled knowing smiles and waved. Mr. Arnold and his wife were among the crowd. They beamed at her. Great. That was all she needed.
“Is the van fa
r?” They’d turned up the block.
“Ah. You must be in pain. I wondered if you hurt your foot in the accident yesterday.”
“I’m not in pain,” she snapped.
“Do not worry. We have arrived.”
Gaby blinked as he opened the front passenger door of a white van with the words Every Bloomin’ Thing written on the side panel.
“Are you supposed to use this when you’re not at work?”
“But I am. My job is to deliver flowers.”
“But you’re not delivering them right now.”
Flashing her a beguiling smile, he said, “My employer gave me express permission to come for you.”
He helped her inside and shut the door before going around to the driver’s side. She fastened her seat belt, chastising herself once more for calling him at work in the first place.
He revved the engine. “Where is your work, Gabriella?”
“Drive to Fifth Avenue in East Village. Are you familiar with the location?”
“I could not have this job if I did not know San Diego like the inside of my pocket.” They pulled away from the curb and took off.
“That’s an idiom I haven’t heard before.”
“The Frenchwoman who lives at my apartment house taught it to me.”
Gaby could imagine….
“I think it makes more sense than the English version,” he continued. “A pocket reveals many things you do not see on the back of the hand.”
His mind—she couldn’t keep up with it.
“Your English is outstanding.”
He flashed her an oblique glance. “I will believe you when I have mastered it, not before.”
“I have news for you, Anatoly. No one ever masters a language. Not even their own.”
A strong hand reached out to clasp hers. “That is what I think, too. We are even more compatible than I first suspected.” Before she could wriggle out of his grasp, he let her hand go again to make a right turn.
Gaby flexed her ringless fingers. At Easter Uncle Frank had urged her to put her wedding band away. It was time, he’d said with a loving hug. After her return to San Diego, she’d done his bidding and nothing dramatic had happened, lessening her guilt.
Accidentally Yours Page 4
