Deceiving Bella: Book Eleven In The Bodyguards Of L.A. County Series

by Beauman, Cate

  He gave her a friendly squeeze. “Take good care of my buddy.”

  “I will.” She drew away and walked out with him. “Bye, Joey.”

  “See ya, Bella.”

  She waved as he started toward his car, and she walked to the hotel, looking forward to telling Reed about her day and the unexpected surprise she’d found at the diner.

  ~~~~

  Reed tapped his fingers on his desk, staring at Bella’s personal information he’d accessed well over an hour ago. He wasn’t exactly sure of what he was doing; he and Joey had gone through every note and file with a fine-tooth comb, but here he sat anyway, scrutinizing each page again. Maybe he was in search of the one clue that would finally make all of this make sense—or maybe he was a fucking idiot, secretly holding out hope that Bella’s phone records, credit history, and banking transactions would paint an entirely different picture than the one he’d seen today.

  Shaking his head, he shoved his computer away. The truth had been staring him in the face all along; he just never wanted to believe it. From day one, the evidence hadn’t stacked up in his neighbor’s favor, but he’d slapped on his blinders and pretended otherwise.

  His motorcycle ride up the coast was supposed to have cleared his mind. When that didn’t work, the long session with the punching bags was supposed to have helped him sweat away the worst of the disgust and anger, but he was still as sick now as he’d been when he walked out on Lucy earlier this afternoon. Eventually, he was going to have to come to terms with the fact that Isabella Colby wasn’t who he wanted her to be. She was a criminal just like the rest of her family.

  Sighing, he picked up the photo booth pictures from the night of Julie and Chase’s wedding, studying the stunning woman standing next to him in every shot. She wasn’t real. The sweetheart with the big brown eyes was a lie. He stared at the last picture in the series of six—the one where they held each other close and grinned. Clenching his jaw, he tossed the strip facedown on the desk and looked at Lucy curled up on the posh puppy mattress he’d dragged over from Bella’s place. After his workout and shower, he’d walked next door, grabbing what Lucy would need till morning, and got the hell out of Bella’s space. He hadn’t been able to stand the classy, cozy atmosphere of her living room, let alone cover up in her sheets and smell her shampoo on the pillows for the rest of the night.

  “Fuck,” he groaned wearily, settling his face in his hands and flinching when his phone started ringing. He glanced at Bella’s amazing face filling the screen, letting it ring three times, then four, muttering another swear as he picked up. “Hello?”

  “Hey.”

  He closed his eyes as her friendly voice washed over him. “I wasn’t sure if I was going to hear from you. It’s pretty late.”

  “I know. I can’t sleep. I’m still on California time. Plus, I wanted to talk to you. How was your day?”

  She asked him that every night, but did she really care? Who the hell was this woman he shared his life with? “Good.”

  “Just good?”

  “Yeah, I took the bike out for a while, but other than that, nothing much is going on.”

  “Well, things are pretty exciting up here.”

  He thought of her sitting at the café table with her cousin. “I believe it.”

  “I ran into your friend.”

  He frowned, struggling to focus on the here and now. “My friend?”

  “Joey—”

  He rushed to his feet. “You saw Joey?”

  She laughed. “Pretty crazy, huh? We were at the same diner—the one by my hotel. He’d just gotten in from a flight and stopped off for a meal to avoid the worst of rush hour.”

  Jesus, this whole investigation was turning into a disaster. Clearly he wasn’t the only one screwing up on the job. “You guys talked?”

  “Of course we did, silly. I recognized him from that picture on your cell phone.”

  He started pacing. “What about?”

  “You, mostly. We both agreed you’re pretty amazing.”

  He rolled his eyes to the ceiling, wishing with every fiber of his being that he could get his hands around his ex-partner’s neck. “I can’t believe you saw Joey.”

  “We were both shocked. I definitely surprised him, but I’m glad I got a chance to meet him. He’s very nice. And I love that you two have some of the same mannerisms.”

  He blinked, slightly horrified by the idea. Joe was his best friend, but he couldn’t imagine how they were anything alike. “No, we don’t.”

  “Yes, you do.” She chuckled. “The arm crossing and intense stares. You two must have made quite a pair in the interrogation room—kinda scary.”

  He rubbed at the back of this neck.

  “I’m wondering if I should start calling you Mad Dog?”

  Her voice was full of fun. Last night—or even eight hours ago—he would have laughed at her teasing, but nothing about this situation was funny. “I thought I’d left that nickname behind.” Or he’d tried. Wasn’t there a saying about how the more things changed, the more they stayed the same?

  “You know what else I was thinking about?”

  He stopped in front of the window, staring blindly out the glass. “No.”

  “About how much I can’t wait for tomorrow. I want to come home, Reed. I want to see you. If I could hop on another flight right now, I think I might.”

  He clenched his jaw, pressing his forehead to the pane, pretending that her words weren’t a fucking knife to his heart. He wanted her to be the woman who cried over sick kids. He longed for her to be the woman who smiled into his eyes while they talked after making love. He needed her to be all of those things so badly, it nearly killed him to know she wasn’t—or that wasn’t all she was. “That sounds good.” He took a steeling breath, needing to play this out, knowing what he had to do. A couple of hours on the bike might not have made anything better, but as he remembered the pictures of her sliding Matty Caparelli information, the goal was crystal clear. “How was the party?”

  “Great. Luisa introduced me to so many people. She has a lot of friends and family. My head’s still spinning.” She chuckled. “We booked her full for a good three months, and if I ever have to fill out another gift card in my life…”

  “Good for her.”

  “I would officially call today a success.”

  How could she not? Help a friend, aid and abet the mob, all while fooling her ex-cop lover. “I bet. You’ll have to tell me about the people you met.”

  “Sure.”

  There was a long pause when he had nothing else to say—or nothing else he wanted to.

  “Reed, is everything okay?”

  “Yeah.”

  “You sound different—tense, maybe even a little sad.”

  He stood straight, surprised that she could read him so easily, even with hundreds of miles separating them. “I’m just tired.” He scrubbed a hand over his jaw. “Bella…”

  “Hmm?”

  “I can’t—I don’t think I’m going to be able to pick you up tomorrow.”

  “Oh.”

  He heard the disappointment in the one syllable. “Something came up with work.”

  “Okay. I’ll grab a cab or…I’ll figure something out.”

  “I’m sorry.” She had no idea how much he meant it.

  “It’s fine. Work happens. It sounds like you could use a shoulder rub after you get home, though, and I happen to be a trained professional.”

  Why was she pretending? Why couldn’t she just be a fucking viper like her father, uncle, and cousin? They didn’t mess around with pretenses. They were scum-of-the-earth sleezeballs and didn’t care who knew it. “Nah. I’ll be fine.”

  “Do you think you’ll be around for dinner? I could make us something nice. We can eat out on the deck…or in bed.”

  He whirled away from his view of her cozy backyard setup. “I don’t know.”

  “I guess we’ll play it by ear.”

  “Yeah.”


  “I should probably try to get some sleep. I miss you.”

  He flared his nostrils, because despite what he saw today and knew her to be, he missed her too. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”

  “Okay. Bye.”

  “Bye.” Hanging up, he looked at Lucy looking at him and walked away, ready for another round with the punching bags. He’d made huge mistakes ignoring the obvious. Now he had to fix them.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Reed pulled into the first spot he came across in the parking garage and glanced at the dashboard clock as he shut off the engine. Surprisingly, he was twenty minutes early when he should have been late. It wasn’t until the last second that he’d decided to grab his keys and head to LAX. For most of the morning, he’d gone back and forth, debating how he wanted to play the new game: meet Bella in a public place and ideally avoid any serious PDA or wait until later in the afternoon and catch her alone at the house. For better or worse, he’d chosen the airport. Now he was ready to get the whole thing over with.

  With time to kill, he picked up his phone, finding and selecting Joey’s number from his contact list. It had been tempting to give his former partner a call last night and rip him a new asshole. God knew he’d been angry enough, but the last few weeks had already put a strain on their friendship. Bitching out Joe for something that wasn’t entirely his fault wouldn’t have done either of them any good.

  “I was waiting to hear from you,” Joey said.

  “What the hell were you thinking?”

  “I was tailing her. I didn’t know she was gonna fuckin’ recognize me. How the fuck was I supposed to know that?”

  “Since when are you careless?”

  “Like I said, I didn’t know she had any idea who I was. I was sitting in the darkest corner in a crowded freakin’ restaurant.”

  “You followed her the entire weekend?”

  “She was here, wasn’t she?”

  He wanted to stay pissed at Joey for being the voice of reason all along—for following through with the investigation and ruining his pretty new life with the truth. But he couldn’t—not when his friend had presented him with evidence he could no longer ignore. “What did you get?”

  “Not much of anything until yesterday. Friday she and her buddy ran errands and spent their afternoon at Body Bliss, blowing up balloons and stuff, getting the place ready. Friday night they stayed in—had a little backyard barbeque and played with Luisa’s kid.”

  Reed made a sound in his throat, remembering that Bella had told him pretty much the same thing.

  “Saturday was definitely the day,” Joey continued. “Dino and Matty. There were other wise guys inside too—Carlo Lamberti, Felipio Rossi, their wives and kids. Things’ve gotta be patched up in the family. Maybe Nicoli’s coming back to Brooklyn after Alfeo gets out.”

  Reed shook his head even though the same thought had occurred to him at some point during his sleepless night. “Alfeo hates his brother. Loathes him, Joe. He sent him away for close to thirty years.”

  “Well, he doesn’t hate his niece. I didn’t see any sort of tension between Matty and Bella when they were yakking it up outside.”

  He rubbed at his jaw. “I don’t know, man. If Nicoli’s in the clear, why is he living like he’s still hiding?”

  “Beats the hell out of me.”

  “None of this makes sense.” He yanked off the seat belt still holding him in place, seething with frustration. “They’ll kill Nicoli but not his daughter?”

  “I don’t know what to tell you on that front, but I get why you got distracted—why you fell for Bella. I didn’t at first… I’m sorry about that.”

  Sighing wearily, Reed rested his head against the seat, shrugging away the worst of the pain. “It doesn’t matter.”

  “Yes, it does. She’s fucking gorgeous and she seems genuinely nice.”

  He steamed out a long breath. “I’m supposed to be able to look past that.”

  “Not with this one. A couple bats of those big brown eyes and any guy’s a goner. Can’t say I didn’t fall in love a little myself. And she’s definitely into you. Bad apple or not, that came across perfectly clear.”

  Reed pressed his forehead to the steering wheel with the agony of his problem. How the hell had he let this happen—falling for his enemy? “I know I’ve gone about this thing all wrong, but I want us to keep going with the investigation. I want to take them down.”

  Joey muttered a curse.

  “What? I thought that’s what you wanted. You sent me the pictures, right?”

  “I sent them because I want you to be careful—to see what you’re dealing with. No matter how she feels about you or how kind she comes across, she’s in this thing.”

  “Of course she is.” But he didn’t want her to be. He would give just about anything for her not to be. “Goddamn, if I could just ask her—convince her to confess.”

  “Don’t let her make you stupid.”

  “I’m not stupid.”

  “No, you’re not, but she’s still got you.”

  “No, she doesn’t.”

  “Yes, she does. I can hear it in your voice. This is eating you up.”

  “I need answers. This morning I went through some of her stuff at the house—older check registers and other things I could find along those lines, peeked in her closets and whatnot.”

  “And?”

  “And there’s nothing.” He gave an edgy pound of his fist to the center console. “Maybe we can get her to flip, and we’ll do what we can to get her a deal.”

  “Then what? You guys gonna ride off into the WITSEC sunset?”

  “No. We’re finished. She and I are over.”

  “I don’t know about this one, Reed. I don’t think this is a good idea. You’re too close. If she finds out what we’re trying to do, you’re dead.”

  He huffed out another breath, growing more impatient with himself when he couldn’t equate Bella with bodily harm. “She wouldn’t hurt me.”

  “That doesn’t mean her pops will give it a second thought. He’s an hour up the road. The fact that she’s hanging out with a cop in the first place is dicey—surprising.”

  “Ex-cop.”

  “Give me a break. Like that matters. You might be close protection now, but the stakes are higher all the way around because of who you were.”

  “Bella knows who I am—who I used to be—and it’s never made a difference.”

  “Bullshit. She doesn’t know anything. You haven’t been straight with her from the beginning.”

  And he regretted it. Even after the way everything had shaken down, he was sorry he’d never been able to give her all of the pieces. “Maybe, but I need us to finish this. Once and for all, let’s finish this.”

  “Reed—”

  “Help me, Joe.” He winced, hearing the hints of desperation in his own voice.

  Joey sighed in his ear. “You got it, boss. What’s the plan?”

  “I’m at the airport. I’m picking her up.”

  “Then what?”

  Wasn’t that the question he’d been asking himself all night? He’d spent nearly a decade lying and pretending, doing whatever needed to be done to bring a case to a close, but he didn’t know if he had it in him to pull this one off. “Hell if I know.”

  “I don’t see you getting very far without carrying on with your relationship.”

  And that was the part that was going to destroy him. Longing and hate were a dangerous mix. “Yeah.”

  “Can you handle it?”

  “Looks like I’m going to have to.”

  “Be careful.”

  “I will.” He glanced at his watch, noting that his time was just about up. “I have to go.”

  “Let me know how it goes.”

  “I’ll call you later.” Hanging up, he got out of the truck and started toward the American Airlines terminals, sliding his sunglasses on top of his head as he stepped inside. He smiled politely at a woman as their gazes met across the hall and
lowered his aviators back in place, afraid for the first time ever that he wouldn’t be able to conceal his emotions the way he’d been able to for years. Whether Bella knew it or not, nothing was the same between them anymore. In an unfortunate moment of clarity, all of that had ended. So how in the hell was he supposed to ignore what he saw yesterday and move forward with a relationship that he would have walked away from in any other situation?

  He shoved his hands in his pockets and stood back among the crowds as Bella’s plane was announced and passengers exited to the left of the security gates. He scanned dozens of travelers, eventually spotting Bella decked out in strappy sandals and a pretty pink spaghetti-strap sundress. She’d added curls to her hair and clipped it back, leaving her stunning face unframed. “Goddamn,” he muttered, rocking back on his heels. She took his breath away, like a kick to the throat—that hadn’t changed. He tracked her with his gaze while she pulled her carry-on behind her and talked on the phone, oblivious to the long stares of many men and envious women. Stepping in her direction, he opened his mouth to call her name and stopped, fisting his hands at his sides when her perfume wafted his way and he had to fight the urge to snag her by the arm and pull her against him.

  Son of a bitch, he wasn’t ready for this—not even close. If he let her see him now, he would mess everything up. And that wasn’t an option. He finally had what he and Joey had needed all along: his surefire way into the Caparelli crime family. Now that there were no doubts about Bella’s involvement, nothing else mattered anymore. Nothing else should have mattered in the first place.

  Taking a deep breath, he focused on his mission and followed her outside, keeping his distance as she helped an older woman get into the shuttle heading toward the Palisades. When the van pulled away from the curb, he hurried to his truck, catching up with the vehicle on the interstate. He tailed them in the same lane, careful to keep several car lengths behind them as they moved closer to the condos.

  Eventually Hooper’s Shuttle Service turned into their development and dropped Bella off. Reed came in the back entrance, stopping down the street as Bella let herself into her house, then came outside with Lucy, bending down numerous times to give the puppy hugs and kisses. She sat on one of the cushy deck chairs, holding her phone in her hand while Lucy wandered around in the grass.