by Joanne Rock
Refusing to let herself get rattled over that realization and everything it meant, she tightened her grip around her gun as she peered out one of the front door’s sidelight windows. The yard remained quiet and still, with only Sergio’s car in the driveway.
Forcing herself to keep sentinel for two endless minutes as her gaze swept the grounds for any sign of movement, she crept back through the house toward where she really wanted to be—watching over Alec.
Nothing would happen to him on her watch, damn it. She’d made it through five years on the police force without letting Gena’s accident mess with her head, but now that she was protecting someone she cared about, she found it far more difficult to separate her cop instincts from her more personal fears for Alec.
Her gaze zeroed in on him as she settled into her position at the kitchen window again. He kept his attention focused on Sergio, his posture relaxed in his chair even though Vanessa could sense the tension in his shoulders, the way he bent his neck from side to side every now and again as if to relieve tension there. She admired that about him, the quiet way he took care of business.
Funny how in two days’ time she already knew so much about him, knew that he would never whine about his problems to anyone else the way Sergio was still doing even now. Alec relied on himself, employing his own means to deal with the accident of birth that made him related to a gangster. And instead of running scared from his uncle’s demands for kickbacks, he’d built a thriving business in spite of him—in spite of a partner who couldn’t wait to get his hands dirty out of pure greed.
Alec might look dark and dangerous—who was she kidding? He was dark and dangerous—but inside he hid an altruistic side that built projects like the rec center. And he was the kind of guy who wouldn’t leave her side even at great risk to his own neck. Vanessa knew cops who would have taken off the other night during the carjacking. Oh, they would have excused their exit with avowals of going to get help, but bottom line, she would have been left to her own devices to fend off doped-up hoodlums.
But Alec had stayed because he possessed an old-world nobility that wouldn’t let him leave another in danger. The same old-world nobility that made him honor-bound to declare feelings for a woman he was sleeping with.
Eyes stinging as she stared through the darkness at Alec’s face illuminated by the glow of the hurricane lamp, Vanessa realized she’d fallen in love with him. She loved that dark and dangerous streak as much as she loved the honorable man beneath, and she didn’t know why she hadn’t seen it sooner. She’d been too scared in the shower to connect with the feelings he’d roused from the moment he’d first touched her. But any man who could bring her back from her own private hell the way he had—that man was something special. Something she’d hang onto with both hands.
Wishing Sergio would leave so she could go outside and fling her arms around Alec to tell him how much he meant to her, Vanessa made a visual sweep of the backyard down to the beach. Her gaze drifted over a storage shed in back, the dark shadow of a lawn tractor covered with a tarp and a small stand of trees between Alec’s place and the next house over.
A glint in the trees halted her scan, calling her to peer into the area more carefully. The inky blackness of the rest of the yard seemed all the darker in comparison to the ring of light around Alec and Sergio.
Still, Vanessa squinted, body tensing for any possible threat. And as she stared, a shape began to take form. An arm. A leg. And the shiny glint at shoulder level that could only be—
A gun trained on Alec.
ALEC’S INSTINCTS BLARED a warning when Vanessa blasted out of the house, her 9 mm glinting in the moonlight. Only the weapon wasn’t trained on Sergio. She pointed into a copse of trees to one side of the property.
“Drop the weapon.” Her barked command combined with the mention of a gun had him scrambling out of his seat, reaching for his .357.
If Mark Vercelli or his druggy nephew lurked in those oaks, they were about to be very, very sorry. Quickening his pace, he moved toward Vanessa, only to have Sergio wrench him backward, gripping Alec’s gun hand in both of his meaty palms.
Treacherous bastard.
Had it been just the two of them, Alec would have risked the gunshot to take on the older guy. But Vanessa ran right into the range of fire as Sergio grappled for Alec’s .357.
“Don’t even think about it.” Sergio’s breath smelled like a mixture of beer and salami. “You know I’ll take her out if I have to.”
Alec went still, fury raging red-hot through his brain. He watched Vanessa pull Donata Casale out of the trees, still oblivious to Sergio’s hold on him.
“Anything happens to her, and I’m not going to care what happens to me. But I guarantee you’ll die before I do, old man.” Alec forced himself to stay still. He should have trusted Vanessa to do her job. She was a cop, for chrissake. She could handle what came her way.
Instead, his rush to protect her could cost them both their lives. And even though Alec would gladly trade his life for hers, he knew that seeing someone she cared about shot on her watch for the second time would send her back into a dark place she might never be able to recover from.
No way would he do that to her. And damn it, she did care about him, whether she knew it yet or not. He’d been hasty and stupid to push her to acknowledge as much.
Sergio chuckled softly as he kept Alec in front of him in a throat hold and walked them both closer to Donata and Vanessa. “I can’t believe you’re banging a cop. There’s no way in hell we can be related.”
Keeping silent, Alec watched Vanessa put a pair of cuffs on Donata before Vanessa glanced back up to Alec. She blinked twice, fast, but other than that, she offered no sign of any reaction. Still, he knew how much that control of hers must cost.
He vowed to find a way out of this for both of them. She wouldn’t pay the price for his bad judgment.
“What do you say, Serg?” Vanessa lowered her gun slowly, sizing up Alec’s uncle. “You want to trade my prisoner for yours?”
“I think mine is probably a little more dangerous than the cheating whore who’s taken to sneaking off with every numb-nut who shows up at the door to work on the house lately.”
Donata spit on the ground at his feet. Dark sweats and a long-sleeved T-shirt had replaced the white dressing gown she’d been wearing earlier.
“Those guys are my contacts with the federal government, you moron. I’ve been working with the feds for months and just tonight I finally got the last piece of information they need to put you away for a long time.” She glared over at Vanessa. “I was trying to make sure Sergio didn’t shoot Alec, by the way.”
“You?” Alec tried to shuffle his vision of Donata as some helpless female trapped in a relationship with a mobster. “What about all that coming on to me you did last fall? I thought you were so scared of Sergio you couldn’t stand another day.”
She shrugged, her movements clipped and efficient—not at all like the effusive way of gesturing in the role she’d apparently been playing for almost a year. “The FBI is suspicious of you, too. They wanted me to see if I could scrounge up anything to implicate you.”
Sergio’s grip on the .357 tightened. “You realize you just convinced me to kill you along with these two, don’t you?”
Alec hoped his uncle’s obvious anger would make him careless. He stared at Vanessa in the moonlight, willing her to work with him when an opportunity arose. The next time they had a chance to act, he’d damn well trust her to do her job while he took care of his.
“Sure thing, Sergio, I just couldn’t stand the idea of dying with everyone thinking I was some kind of no-brained mob mistress with nothing going for me.”
Alec noticed Vanessa give Donata’s arm a reassuring squeeze. An unlikely gesture from an undemonstrative woman whose movements were usually so economical. Efficient.
While Sergio called Donata an assortment of names, Alec half wondered if anyone had some idea in mind for breaking all of them out
of this impasse when the soft hum of a car engine moved closer.
Help?
A familiar pair of headlights rolled into the front yard with no regard for the perennial beds. The driver cut the lights, pulling up alongside the stand of trees near the beach.
It was his freaking Mercedes.
Renewed anger fired through him as Mark Vercelli stepped out of the car. Alec’s car. He couldn’t read the license in the dark, but he suspected the guy’s new gangster connections had gotten him a fresh set of plates to drive the car around semilegally.
Sergio kept the gun on Vanessa as he held Alec. “Excellent. Our ride is here. Alec, you’ll remember my associate Mark since he used to be your associate. The one you assured me would never want to do business with me.”
Remaining silent, Alec thought through his and Vanessa’s options, knowing they needed to make their break before they went anywhere in the Mercedes. They were as good as dead as soon as they left the house, and he suspected Sergio would just roll the whole car into Long Island Sound, or maybe he’d blow it up with Alec and Vanessa inside. Something to make sure he would never be tied to the “accident.”
Alec stared hard at Vanessa, praying their newfound connection, the one that he swore had touched them both deep inside, would somehow help them understand one another now. She slanted her eyes at Donata, then glanced from Sergio to Alec.
Right.
Vanessa would protect Donata. Alec would take out Sergio.
So said his gut instinct. And since he didn’t have a choice but to trust it now that Sergio was shoving them all closer to the Mercedes, Alec decided to shut off all the voices inside his head except for one.
The one that told him to go with his gut and trust the woman he loved.
VANESSA HAD SWALLOWED DOWN bile on five different occasions while Sergio held Alec by the throat. But now that she’d looked deep into Alec’s eyes, an eerie sense of calm came over her as she walked with numb feet through the sparse grass toward the waiting Mercedes.
Alec trusted her to do her job, to protect Donata and keep herself out of the way of Sergio’s firing range. He would make his move any minute, and she would damn well be ready because she would never put him through the hell she’d gone through with Gena. No one was getting shot here tonight, unless it was Mark Vercelli or Sergio Alteri.
She’d already handed Donata—whoever she was— a key to her own handcuffs. Apparently there was no love lost between her and her gangster lover, so Vanessa considered freeing Donata worth the risk.
“You like my new wheels, Messina?” Alec’s traitorous partner called as he snapped a wad of gum and waited for Sergio’s prisoners to make their way into the back seat.
Vanessa didn’t hear Alec’s answer, concentrating on picking her moment. They had to move past the patio to get to the car, and as they neared the wrought-iron table, Vanessa heaved herself and Donata to the side.
“I’ve got a gun strapped to my ankle,” Donata called as they hit the cold stone patio blocks together, another gun already sounding in the night.
Tamping down panic, Vanessa patted along the woman’s ankles, finding a Smith & Wesson .38 special strapped to her right one. Whatever the hell Donata had been up to tonight, obviously she hadn’t been taking any chances.
From the cover of a wrought-iron table they’d toppled onto themselves as they fell, Vanessa watched Alec struggle to regain control of his gun from his uncle. Mark Vercelli stood off to the side, looking unarmed and clueless as he circled the fighting men on the ground.
All the better for her.
Vanessa lined up her shot, ready to protect Alec whatever the cost, but she wasn’t going to trip him up by distracting him, either. Alec slammed the gun out of Sergio’s hand before landing a knee in his chest.
Mark dove for the gun, but Vanessa’s shot beat him to it. She fired into the sand near the .357, scaring Vercelli back about fifty feet.
“I’ve got him,” Donata assured her, slipping out of her cuffs.
With Donata already scrambling to tackle Mark, Vanessa ran toward Alec in time to see him clock his uncle with a patio chair. The wrought iron sent Sergio down for the count and put a sizable dent in the Mercedes.
In the distance, Vanessa could already hear the whirr of police sirens. Donata the federal informant restrained Alec’s real-estate partner with the same cuffs she’d been wearing a few moments ago. One day Vanessa would have to ask her about her story—find out how she’d ended up playing a mob boss’s girlfriend in exchange for incriminating secrets. But right now, all Vanessa cared about was wrapping herself around Alec.
Flinging her way into his arms, she didn’t even mind when he backed them over to pick up his gun in the sand.
“You kick ass, Vanessa Torres.” His words took away any leftover jitters she might have felt, and although she suspected she’d always be scared spitless if someone she loved came under attack, she knew now more than ever that she’d done everything she could to help Gena five years ago. It wasn’t about getting even. It was about staying alive.
Still, Alec’s words helped. Made her feel like she’d accomplished something important in her time as a detective.
“You kick plenty of your own, Alec.” She squeezed his neck tighter, her fingers brushing over the bristly ends of close-cut hair. “And I know now is a really bad time to realize I’m crazy about you, but I am.”
She could feel him smile into her hair as he held her.
“I told you so.”
“I was just scared to think about it before, but—”
“No buts.” He pulled her to his side before two police cars slammed to a halt in his yard. “I was pushing you before and I knew it.”
“You’re not mad at me?” She dug in the pocket of her jeans for her badge, knowing she needed to go to work before they could finish this conversation in private.
“Hell, Vanessa, I love it that I’m the sensitive one in this relationship.” Alec—a dark and dangerous guy with an equally wicked sense of humor—grinned as he kept his gun trained on Sergio.
Damn but she was a lucky woman.
Counting the minutes until she could tell him so, she turned to greet the East Hampton police and help them put away Alec’s enemies for a very long time.
THE SUN HAD LONG RISEN by the time the local police cleared them to leave the station. Vanessa rode back to Alec’s mini-mansion, spirit lighter than it had been in months as they drove along the waterside route in the Land Rover. The smell of the ocean, the soft warmth of a new spring day wafted through the windows with a sense of promise she hadn’t experienced in too many years.
“I can’t believe Serg is going to jail for real.” Alec’s sentiments echoed her own as they pulled into his driveway and parked out in the open. No need to hide in dark garages or subterranean lairs. Alec could now go wherever he wanted without worrying about his uncle’s connections breathing down his neck. “He’s always weaseled out of everything the cops have ever tried to stick to him.”
“No bail. No bucking this one.” She slid out of the door, not waiting for Alec to come around. She didn’t want him doing too much for the next couple of days since she hadn’t convinced him to drop by the hospital and stitch up a knife wound Sergio had managed to inflict during their scuffle.
Men.
“It’s the federal case that’s going to seal his fate.” Alec disarmed the security system and left it off, holding the front door for her. “Do you believe Donata was helping the feds all this time?”
“She must be fairly well connected for her to have been released so early this morning.” Vanessa still wondered how the woman—who swore she wasn’t an agent—had managed to get mixed up with Sergio for so long, but after a heartfelt thank you and a goodbye hug, Donata Casale had sailed out of the police station and out of their lives. Vanessa hoped it wouldn’t be for good.
“Those disks of financial data are going to help the case, too.” Alec reached into the refrigerator for a six-pack of
beer that had probably been in there for months. Not that she cared. But then, she’d never made any pretense of being an uptown chick. “So maybe your lieutenant will let you off easy for making up the bomb threat yesterday.”
“Are you kidding? He’ll be holding that one over my head for years.” Lieutenant Russell Durant had put in a call to the local cops to help speed things up for Vanessa. Although he hadn’t been happy about her being part of the phony bomb squad and having her plates run by an uptown Manhattan police precinct, at least he’d apologized for landing her hip-deep in trouble with the Alec Messina case. Apparently Russ had known about the federal investigation and hadn’t launched a full-scale NYPD effort so as not to step on toes. And since the information was on a “need to know” basis, he hadn’t given Vanessa all the details, thinking she’d simply come back to the precinct with an address where they could find their man.
But Vanessa could hardly regret meeting Alec, even if she’d had a few years scared off her life in the process.
“Isn’t it a little early for beer?” She checked her watch. “It’s 11:00 a.m.”
“It’s Heineken. I’ll have you know that’s the champagne of beers.” He scooped up a blanket from the back of a rocking chair and held open the back door. “What do you say we toast the new day on the beach before going back to bed?”
“Who knew you were hiding such a romantic side?” Vanessa brushed a kiss over his lips as she passed him. “A toast sounds perfect since I have a few things I’ve been waiting to say to you, Messina.”
“Is that right?” He draped the arm with the blanket over her, cloaking her in the warmth of cotton fleece and sexy man. A very enticing combination. “I might have a few things to say to you, too, now that I think about it.”
Little shivers traced up her spine along with his hand. Once they’d crossed a wooden bridge onto the beach, the ocean stretched out in front of them, the endless blue dotted with tiny white boats on the horizon. Seagulls circled and squealed their hungry cries, giving them a wide berth when the newcomers didn’t appear to have any food.
