by Beth Ciotta
She ignored the question. “Do you know who her father is?”
“Of course. I try my best to maintain a discreet distance, but it isn’t always easy. I love Angela, and she loves her father.”
The elevator doors opened, and they immediately fell into silence as they walked down the hall. Two doors down from his apartment her heel caught in the plush carpet, slipped sideways, and she wrenched her ankle. “Ow.”
Rivelli caught her by her forearm, otherwise she would have fallen. “Are you okay?”
She took a step, winced, and stumbled. “No.” Her ankle throbbed. “I think it’s twisted. Darn.” Of all days to wear heels. “I’m so sorry.”
“Don’t apologize.” He put his arm around her shoulder. “Lean into me. We’ll get you inside and put some ice on it.”
She felt like an idiot as she hobbled forward, her arm clutched around Anthony Rivelli’s waist. White-hot pain lanced through her ankle with every step. A cry slipped out as she tried to shift her weight.
He unlocked the door, punched his code in the keypad, and swept her into his arms and into the living room.
There was nothing intimate about his touch. She didn’t feel awkward or at risk being disabled and alone with him in his apartment. No sexual awareness at all. Maybe he was gay, not that it mattered. Except, if that were the case, it didn’t bode well for his union with Angela. They would both be settling, and Afia knew from experience that a union born out of anything less than one hundred percent pulse-pounding, soul-searing, passionate love was a sad, pitiful crime.
Placing her on the couch, Rivelli bent down on one knee, took off her shoe, and ran his hands over her bare foot and ankle, examining the swelling. “About Angela,” he said.
She bit her lower lip to keep from crying out as he prodded her injury, breathing deep to stem the tears. That’s when she smelled the perfume. Opium.
“I really don’t want her to know about this,” he continued, even though Afia was squeezing his shoulder in a bid for attention.
“Sorry. Secret’s out.” Angela Falcone-Brannigan weaved into the living room, a glass of liquor in one hand, and her purse in the other. She slammed the drink on an end table. “I knew she’d be young! I just knew it!”
Afia started, her gaze trained on that purse, her heart ramming against her ribs.
Rivelli released her foot and slowly stood. “Honey, it’s not what you think.”
“Don’t you ‘honey’ me.” Angela’s bloodshot eyes brimmed with tears. “How could you be so stupid, Tony? Do you have any idea what Daddy will do to you if he finds out you cheated on me?”
“I didn’t cheat.” His face twisted with desperation. “I’ve been telling you that for weeks. I didn’t … we didn’t …” He gestured to Afia. “She twisted her ankle, for chrissake.”
“Oh, spare me! That’s almost as lame as the lipstick excuse.” She stumbled back a step, her long, wavy blond hair flopping over one side of her contorted face. “I know you.” She waggled her purse at Afia. “You’re that snooty slut who made me break my mirror. You jinxed me, stole my man. But that’s nothing compared to what I’m going to do to you.” She glared long and hard, envy sparking in her gaze. Envy … Envy …
The evil eye.
For a moment Afia was paralyzed. Her mouth went dry, and her stomach heaved as one of her greatest fears disoriented her with the ferocity of a cyclone. She could feel her life’s juices being sucked out of her, her dreams of bearing children evaporating as the other woman cursed her with a wicked, white-hot glare.
Angela pulled a little silver revolver out of her purse, and the buzzing in Afia’s ears grew to a deafening roar.
Rivelli held out his hand as he inched closer. “Give me the gun, honey.”
Out of the corner of her eye, Afia saw Jake moving carefully into the room, and her heart shattered into a million pieces as her jinxed past hit her with a full force body slam. No!
Matching Angela’s hateful glare she forced herself to her feet, intending to command the woman’s attention. Her ankle gave out and she pitched forward, just as Jake and Rivelli sprang forth and the gun went off.
This was a warped-ass version of hell. Joni stood on his right bitching to Carson about how love had struck her brother careless. Gallow and Jean-Pierre stood to his left admiring and discussing his six-pack abs. The foursome had been going on like this for a good five minutes, and Jake had had his fill. Where was Afia?
A nurse had whisked her into another room to examine her swollen ankle, but they should have been done by now. He wanted to see her, to touch her, and to know that she was healthy and calm. With all of the chaos he still didn’t fully understand what she’d been doing in Rivelli’s apartment in the first place. When he’d walked in on the volatile scene, he’d had to shut down emotionally and focus solely on Angela and the weapon. His stomach still lurched at the thought of Afia being on the losing end of that gun.
“And another thing,” Joni said, wagging her finger at him.
He rolled his eyes, blocked out her nagging, and tested his bandaged shoulder. Sore but mobile. The bullet had just grazed. He turned pleading eyes on his brother-in-law. “Will you please take her home?”
Carson put his arm around Joni and tugged her toward the examining room door. “Come on, sweetheart. You heard the doctor. He’ll live.”
“Amazingly. He’s lucky that bullet didn’t go through his heart! A few inches south and …”
Carson frowned at Jake as he urged his wife into the hall. “You realize I’ll be hearing about this all night.”
Jake just waved. “I’ll call you tomorrow.” Joni was right. He’d been damned lucky. Lucky the bullet had hit him and not Afia. His breath had stalled in his lungs when she’d stood up to divert Angela’s attention. Brave, but stupid, and as soon as he gave her a thorough kiss, he’d give her hell.
He smirked at Gallow and Jean-Pierre. “Don’t you two have somewhere to go? Other abs to ogle?”
“We could go to the club,” Jean-Pierre said, shooting a hopeful look at his partner.
“I could definitely use a drink,” Gallow said. He rapped the slighter man on the shoulder. “You go ahead. I’ll meet you there.”
The Frenchman sashayed out, Gallow stabbed his hand nervously through his hair, and Jake lost his grip on his patience. “Where the hell’s Afia? You said her ankle wasn’t busted, just sprained. Are they still wrapping it?”
Gallow rubbed the back of his neck. “We have a problem.”
Jake’s stomach dropped.
“Giselle’s here.”
“What the fu—”
“She flew back early, tracked down Afia on her cell and, well, she’s here, and it’s not good.”
Jake tried to slide off of the examining table, but Gallow-the-caretaker frowned and pressed strong hands to his thighs, anchoring him to his spot. As if he were going to pass out from a damned flesh wound. “Where’s Harmon?”
“He’s still down at the police station fielding questions from reporters. They’re booking the Brannigan woman for assault.” Rudy grunted. “Freaking assault. They should nail that crazy bitch for attempted murder.”
“They might try. It depends on if the prosecuting attorney can make the case.” Familiar with the complicated state statutes, Jake could well imagine the upcoming trial. “No doubt her lawyer’s banking on the heat of passion angle. Also, the fact that she was drunk complicates matters.” With her daddy’s connections he wouldn’t be surprised if Angela got off with a minimum sentence.
“Yeah, well, Harmon’s trying his best to downplay Afia’s role.” Rudy sighed. “Apparently it’s a media circus.”
“I’ll bet.” A shooting involving a mob boss’s daughter and a casino executive. Talk about a scandal. Even worse, if Rivelli’s secret hit the newspapers Afia would never forgive him. Although with Giselle here that was probably the least of his worries. He shooed Gallow back, hopped off the table and winced.
“The doctor asked you to
stay here until he returned.”
“Screw that. Which room is Afia in?”
Shaking his head, the big man followed him into the bustling hall. “Three doors down on the left.”
Heart pounding, Jake blew over the appropriate threshold ready to do battle with Giselle, but the only person in the room was Afia. Dressed in her sleeveless, baby-pink dress, her ankle wrapped with a thick bandage, she sat on the edge of the stark examining table looking small, fragile, and shell-shocked.
She met his gaze, and the room instantly buzzed with unspoken hostility.
Temples pulsing, he paused two feet away, unsure as to what her mother had told her. He ached to rush forward and pull her into his arms, but the aloof look in her eye told him to keep his distance. “Where’s Giselle?”
“Downstairs, signing my discharge papers.”
He worked his jaw. “Why? Is she taking you home with her?”
She didn’t answer, just stared at him with those cool, cool eyes.
“How’s your ankle?”
“It’s just a sprain.” She swiped a hunk of hair off her pale face and nodded toward his bandaged shoulder. “You could have been killed.”
“It’s nothing. A flesh wound.” Her chilly demeanor sent shivers down his spine. He could feel her pulling away. Had Giselle made things even worse by getting her worked up with that jinxed shit? “You know you had nothing to do with this, right? Not in a superstitious way.”
She scraped her teeth nervously over her lower lip. “I’m doing my best to believe that.”
“You didn’t know I was going to be there. Hell, I didn’t know until ten minutes before. It was crazy coincidence, that’s all.”
She nodded.
Frustrated, he raked his good hand though his hair. “Can I come over there?”
“I’d rather you didn’t.”
Goddammit. Years of dealing with emotional, distraught women hadn’t prepared him for this heartbreaking moment. Dredging up any sort of professional distance proved impossible. Because this was personal, and because he was the one who’d inflicted the pain. In this moment he was every bastard he’d ever cursed.
“I should have listened to you when you wanted us to investigate Angela,” he said lamely, looking for a way to warm her up. He’d been stunned and angry with himself when Afia had told him the woman was a Falcone. He’d been suckered by a flimsy my-man-done-me-wrong song and a river of crocodile tears. “I should have conducted a background search. I should have trusted your instincts. They’ve been dead on all along.”
“I disagree. I didn’t suspect a thing where you were concerned.” She started to stroke her wrist, the imaginary charms, and stopped herself. “The other night, you said you’d done some work for my godfather.” She met his gaze—direct, steady, cool. “Was I one of those jobs?”
His heart pounded. Christ, how was he going to make this right? Tell her the truth. “It started out that way, yes.”
“You manipulated me.”
“Afia—”
“I thought you believed in me.”
Her voice cracked and so did his heart. “I do believe in you.”
“You claimed to be my friend.”
“I am your friend. I will always be your friend.” The next words scraped his throat raw. “No matter what.”
She dropped her chin and shook her head. Her long hair tumbled forward, making Jake ache to smooth it from her troubled face. “You said friends don’t steer friends wrong, yet you sure took me for a bum ride,” she croaked. “Harmon paid you to look after me, to … to keep me out of trouble for two weeks.”
“I gave the money back.” He inched closer. “Quit the assignment days ago.”
“I was an assignment?” Her head snapped up, eyes overflowing. “Were you going to fire me at the end of next week, send me home to my mother? Was I a burden? An amusement? A fun lay while it lasted?”
His throat constricted. “How can you even ask me that, Afia?”
“How can I not?” A jerky swipe of the hand smeared tears and mascara across her cheeks. “How can I believe that anything we had was real?”
“Don’t doubt us, baby.” Close enough to touch her now, he cupped her face and dropped his mouth to hers. The kiss begged forgiveness with all the love in his heart. Easing back he gazed earnestly into her eyes. “This is as real as it gets.”
She pushed him away. “I won’t be coming back to your house tonight,” she said with an icy politeness that set his teeth on edge.
He swallowed hard and backed toward the door, feeling as though he’d been dismissed, knowing he should go or risk making the situation worse. “Will you be coming back home at all?”
A piece of his world fell away with her whispered reply. “I don’t know.”
Chapter Twenty-Two
Taking control was one of the hardest things Afia had ever done in her life. Taking control meant having to push away the man she loved. It meant having to stand on her own two feet. No well-meaning guardians. No good luck talismans. Just herself and an army of positive affirmations.
When the odds are against you, trust your heart and seize the day.
Her heart told her that Jake’s love was sincere. He was an honest, caring man who’d gotten tripped up by another well-meaning man, Harmon. “Everything happens for a reason, baby. Sometimes you have to forgive the process, knowing that the outcome is for the best.” He’d been telling her that, though they’d met under unfortunate circumstances, they’d ultimately fallen in love. “This is as real as it gets.” But that didn’t change the fact that he and Harmon had manipulated her. Even Rudy had felt the need to maneuver life so that it didn’t smack her in the face.
What they didn’t understand is that she’d been surviving hard knocks since the day she was born, and she was ready to battle and conquer life’s demons. She had to be happy on her own before she could be happy within a relationship.
So she’d let Jake walk out the door. She’d absorbed the hurt in order to draw strength.
In contrast, breaking off with her mother had been surprisingly easy. When Giselle had first stormed into her hospital room, Afia had allowed herself the brief illusion that she’d cut her honeymoon short because she was concerned about her daughter’s well-being. But then Giselle had launched into a tirade about Glick and the missing fortune, and the truth had blasted Afia with the force of a ruinous hurricane. Her mother was a shallow, abusive, superstitious woman who wreaked havoc on her life. There was no making sense of her, and Afia no longer wanted to try. When Giselle had started to expound on the consequences of being born on Friday the thirteenth, Afia had simply tuned her out.
Power had surged through her veins when she’d asked her mother and her new, obnoxiously pompous husband to drop her at a hotel. “We make our own luck,” she’d said as she’d hobbled out of the car on sheer will and crutches. “It’s all in the mind, Mother. Positive thought over negative. I am currently removing all negative aspects from my life, and that includes you.”
In the coming days, Afia focused on herself. She rented a small apartment and spent hours reading self-help books that Rudy had been more than happy to lend her. She adopted a kitten, enlisted in a driving school, and devoted more and more time to the daycare center. At night she dreamed of Jake and took solace in knowing, that someday, when the time was right, they’d be together.
She healed. She grew. She lived. And the weeks flew by …
Every hour seemed like a day. Every day like a week. Letting go was the hardest thing Jake had ever done in his life.
The bitch of it was in knowing that Afia didn’t need him. She wasn’t jinxed. She wasn’t inept. She was a strong, intelligent woman, and she was doing just fine on her own.
They’d spoken on the phone. She’d called him the day after they’d parted at the hospital to resign from her job. “You were right,” she’d said. “I don’t have what it takes to be a private investigator.” At first, he feared that she doubted her ability to l
earn the more specific ins and outs, but then he realized that what she lacked was the much-needed emotional distance that got him through most of his cases. She wasn’t willing to become a detached cynic, and he loved her all the more for it.
Subsequent phone discussions had been like pouring alcohol on a gaping wound, but he’d endured because he was her friend. It hurt like hell because he wanted to be so much more, but he’d take what he could get. Afia was a uniquely special person, and he was blessed to have her in his life at all.
He knew through Gallow that she’d given half of her fortune away to charity while investing the rest for her future. She was tooling around in a compact car and working thirty hours a week at The Sea Serpent. Her drag show benefit had been a huge success. He’d attended, and his heart had pounded like a sonuvabitch as he’d hugged her and congratulated her at the after-show party. Resisting the urge to kiss her, to beg her to come home with him had been the limit of his endurance.
That had been two weeks ago, and he hadn’t seen or talked to her since. He goddamned couldn’t bear it.
He stared across the room at the landscape painting hanging on his office wall. The painting he and Afia had bid on and won. For a while he’d been able to draw comfort from the artist’s colorful vision—a majestic sunrise casting warmth and rays of a promising new day over fertile farmland. A new day. A new beginning. But lately, the painting only conjured loneliness and pain.
Aside from Angela Falcone-Brannigan, who awaited trial and assured jail time, Jake seemed to be the only one suffering from the initial lie that had brought them all together. Afia had forgiven Harmon and Rudy. Rudy and Jean-Pierre were happily “attached.” Afia was happily single. Giselle, the bitch, was free and clear of her “jinxed” daughter. Even Anthony Rivelli had attained a semi-happy ending. He’d escaped marriage to a violently jealous woman with his job and secret in tact. Jake and Afia had promised to forget about Iva Dream, and most everyone had skipped merrily into the sunset.
Zippety-freaking-do-dah.
