The Thrill of It All

by Christie Ridgway

  Can the clinging vine act. Put your own two feet on the floor. Peter had said that, too. Did he think she was making some progress now?

  “You could pick up some more hours at the Bivy, Ash.” Steam rose off the surface of his coffee and he blew on it. “Heck, you can have some of mine if you want to tend bar.”

  Her stomach clenched. At the same time that he’d told Peter about the engagement, Magee had also told him about taking the job in L.A. “We won’t be in town much longer, remember? Anna P. and I are moving soon.”

  Peter looked away. “That’s right. You don’t have anything to worry about, then. Magee will take care of the money you owe, just like he’ll take care of you and Anna P.”

  “I’ll be paying my own debts,” she protested.

  “Sure you will.”

  His agreement was so instant it sounded like an insult. It was an insult. She glared at him, outrage coming out of nowhere. Well, maybe he was right, maybe she would let Magee help her out of this jam, too.

  Peter might not think so, but she needed to be taken care of! Her gaze flicked to the mess of bills on the table. Wasn’t that obvious?

  She looked back at Peter. He was studying her with those deep, beautiful brown eyes of his, making her feel…weak.

  No, not weak.

  Helpless. Helpless against him.

  Which made her angry again. “That’s not me,” she said from between her teeth. “Who you think I am is not me.”

  He didn’t pretend to misunderstand, he just continued looking at her. You were fine then, Ash, and good at taking care of yourself, your job, your home, Anna P.

  “I’m not that person!”

  Desperate to get away from all he wasn’t saying, she jumped to her feet. Escape was a quick scoot between his chair and the coffee table. She didn’t know exactly how it happened, except that she’d never been graceful under pressure, but as she moved by him her hip jostled his elbow.

  His gasp froze her in place.

  She whirled. His full mug of hot coffee had spilled down his right leg, leaving a dark stain from thigh to calf. “You’re burned!”

  He was plucking at the wet denim, his face grim. “I don’t know. Since I can’t feel it, I’ve got to get these off. Check the damage.”

  Damage? Her stomach folded in on itself. “Tell me what to do.”

  “Ash—”

  “Tell me what to do!” But she didn’t wait for further instruction. Mothers knew how to undress people. Shoes, then pants. She dropped to her knees and went to work on his running shoes, flipping both off. He was fumbling with the buttons on his fly when she rose, so she brushed his fingers away and took care of them herself.

  “Wrap your fingers around the arms of your chair,” she ordered. “Now push up.” It was how he got in and out of the wheelchair, she’d seen him do it.

  As he lifted, she yanked down the jeans. They only moved to the back of his knees, stuck between the seat and his lifeless legs. Ignoring the frightened whump whump whump of her heart, she knelt again, lifting one heavy leg at the ankle and then the other so she could strip the pants completely away.

  He fell back into the seat. “It doesn’t look too bad.”

  His thigh had gotten the worst of it. Below a pair of wildly printed boxers and beneath golden hairs, the skin was a definite pink. “Cold compress, then 911.”

  He shook his head. “Just the compress.”

  “Peter—”

  “I hate hospitals, Ash. Please, honey, just the compress.”

  Honey. He’d done it again, made her feel helpless again, turning her heart into runny, warm honey. She bit her lip, noticing how pale his face had turned and that he was looking anywhere but at her.

  “No 911 if you lie down.” She looked at the short couch, then back at his long body. “In my bedroom. Can you get yourself on the bed while I make compresses?”

  Instead of answering, he wheeled himself toward the hallway.

  She ran to the kitchen and filled a big bowl with ice and covered it with water. Then she dumped some kitchen towels inside the bowl and rushed it back to her room, where she saw Peter in the process of muscling himself from wheelchair to mattress. “I’m—”

  Her voice must have startled him. His head jerked and his body twitched toward her, sabotaging the transfer process. With a heavy thump, he fell to the ground between the chair and her bed.

  Her heart leaped into her throat, her body leaped toward his.

  “Shit!” He was flat on his back on the ground, his eyes squeezed shut. “Shit, shit, shit, shit, shit.”

  Some instinct told her he hadn’t done more damage. “Obviously you didn’t bite your tongue,” she murmured, coming to stand over him. “Compress first or bed first?”

  “First I want the ground to swallow me up,” he muttered.

  Ashley stilled. Oh. Oh, Peter. His cheeks had reddened again.

  He didn’t want her to see him like this, just as he hadn’t wanted her to see him sickened by the sight of his own blood. He didn’t want to appear weak and helpless in front of her.

  Weak and helpless! In this, she realized, in this they were equals.

  Inside her chest, her runny-honey heart swirled, then spread, starting to fill all the scared, empty places that the casino and her slot machine had merely helped her ignore. Equals, she thought again, and the idea filled her with strength.

  “Compress,” she decided, and dropped to her knees. She squeezed out one of the towels and placed it over his pinkened thigh. Then she set another on his shin.

  He yelped both times.

  She shook her head at him. “Don’t be such a baby. You’re paralyzed, remember? You can’t feel that.”

  “Phantom pains.”

  “Oh.” Her sympathy caught, she shifted closer to his face and brushed his golden hair off his forehead. “I’m sorry I hurt you.”

  His hair slid against her palm, silky and warm.

  He reached up and caught her hand. “Go away, Ash.”

  She blinked. “What?”

  “Go away. I don’t need you here.”

  Foolish man. “If I go, I call an ambulance.”

  He turned his head. “Fine.”

  Alarm tightened her stomach. She kneed back along the carpet to lift the edge of one dripping compress. The skin beneath looked better already. ASAP, she promised herself, she was going to take some advanced first-aid courses. Maybe there was even something specifically geared for those who…who loved paraplegics.

  “Go away, Ash.”

  He was starting to annoy her. “Not until we get you on the bed.”

  “No!”

  His instant denial was certainly interesting. She stared at him. “What’s the matter?”

  “We are not getting me on the bed. Fuck it, Ash, I’m not helpless.”

  There was that magic word again. She’d never grow tired of hearing him say it, she decided. With a little sigh, she smoothed back his hair. He caught her fingers once more. So she reached out with her free hand, and then he grabbed it with his free one. Their gazes locked as they struggled for supremacy.

  “I’m stronger than you,” he said.

  “We’ll see about that.” Neither of them relaxed a muscle.

  “C’mon, Ash,” he finally said, trying to cajole her. “This is silly, don’t you think?”

  She narrowed her eyes. “Silly is you still lying on the carpet because you won’t accept my help. Silly is you being afraid to look like half a man in my eyes.”

  His mouth—full, kissable, and oh, she wanted to—twisted. “Leave me with some dignity. Please.”

  “Why should I? You’ve never hesitated to point out my failings.” Though he’d reminded her of her strengths as well.

  You were fine then, Ash, and good at taking care of yourself, your job, your home, Anna P.

  “What do you want?” he asked in a weary voice, closing his eyes.

  Oh, my love. So little and yet so much.

  “I want to put my own t
wo feet on the floor, Peter. I want to put them on the floor and stand the fuck up.”

  That got him looking at her.

  She smiled at him, at the love that had waited for her, and then ended up with the better her for his patience and for his pride. “And then I want to use my strength to help you stand up with me.”

  He rose on his elbows, staring at her.

  “Let me help you, Peter. Let me sometimes be your strength, like I know you will sometimes—but only sometimes—be mine. Let me be your weakness, as you are mine. Let me make you helpless, as you make me.”

  She reached out to brush his cheek with her fingertips. “Let me love you, Peter.”

  Seventeen

  A slender man in another pale-colored suit—this one Armani—met Felicity at the front door of the Caruso manse. Without saying a word, he beckoned to her, then slithered over elegant marble floors that seeped cold through the soles of her shoes. The combination of creepy butler-type and chilly house sent a shiver down her back, but she didn’t allow an outward show of it. One of the first things she’d noticed upon entering the foyer was a tiny red light and the unmistakable lens of a security camera mounted in a high corner.

  There was likely a network of them. But she was good at playing to an audience.

  The Caruso mansion wasn’t arranged in the usual sprawl of many desert estates. It was built square and gray, like a fortress, with more tones of gray in the polished stone floors. The Medici Palace, she thought, not Mediterranean warmth.

  The silent man passed a massive table with thick, curving legs. On its surface sat a towering Chinese porcelain vase filled with tall stalks of bird-of-paradise. From their lofty height, the orange and blue flowers looked down their sharp beaks at Felicity, like ornamental yet hungry vultures. Everything about the place was designed to intimidate, she decided.

  When she’d visited for school events as a girl, the gaggle of excited students and flustered nuns she’d been with had masked that quality—or she’d been too naive to pick up on it.

  But she was a woman now, a businesswoman, and intimidation wasn’t going to work on her this time, either. She had a deal with the Carusos that she expected them to stick to.

  At a door leading out to a courtyard, Pale Suit paused. He turned his dark, reptilian gaze onto her for several long seconds.

  Despite her resolve, Felicity’s stomach quivered. Didn’t this guy ever blink? It’s a ploy, she told herself, a ploy to put me on edge. Still, her stomach made that sick quiver again.

  He reached beneath his lapel to his inside jacket pocket.

  For a gun? A stiletto? What did the desert Mafia do you in with—cactus spines? Her imagination careening, she focused on that hidden hand and tensed to flee.

  Pale Suit pulled out a small leatherbound notepad. She saw the glint of a slim gold pen. “Miss,” the man said, his voice as underworld-dark as his demeanor, hair, and eyes.

  Felicity swallowed, trying to rein in her wild imagination. Would he ask for the name and number of her next-of-kin? Did a Mafia business meeting require a blood oath beforehand?

  He still didn’t blink. “My mother…”

  A nervous giggle bubbled in her throat. The guy had a mother? He looked as if he’d hatched out of an egg.

  “Could I have your autograph for my mother?”

  An autograph. The giggle popped out, making her sound like the nervous twit she’d promised herself not to be. Blame Magee and his talk of cement high heels and mob murders. Blame herself for listening to it.

  With a smile, she reached for Pale Suit’s pad and pen. Writing “For Nadia” at his direction and then her name gave Felicity time to quiet the last of her jangling nerves. There was nothing to be frightened of. Mr. Cosimo Caruso was her former schoolmates’ grandfather. The Caruso family ran a successful, legitimate business.

  The loan-sharking and kidnapping were just side ventures.

  Another shiver rolled down her back.

  But as she was led into the courtyard and saw a well-dressed older gentleman rise to his feet, her anxiety eased again. In silver slacks that matched his abundant head of hair, a white silk shirt, and a soft blue ascot, Mr. Caruso appeared elegant, not intimidating.

  Like European royalty, not California Mafia.

  “Buon giorno, buon giorno,” he said. “Come, please sit down.” He beckoned her to join him at a luxurious patio set shaded by a large umbrella.

  Before taking a seat, Felicity held out her hand to him. It was a business meeting, after all. “Mr. Caruso, thank you for seeing me.”

  He glanced down at her outstretched fingers, hesitating. Then, with a rueful expression, his palm met hers for a firm but gentle shake. “Still I don’t get used to this shaking of hands with pretty young women. Pretty young women are for kissing, even to old men like me.”

  The bit of innocuous flirtation was as graceful and elegant as the man himself. She laughed, as she was expected to, and let him lower her to the cushioned seat. This Old World septuagenarian was the head of a notorious crime family? It didn’t seem likely, but she had to hope that at least he could help her find out about Ben.

  “Now, what can I offer you?” he asked as he settled into his own chair, with Pale Suit hovering behind him. “I seem to remember that you schoolgirls always liked lemonade.”

  She smiled. “That would be lovely, thank you. But I’m surprised you remember that I went to OLPP with your granddaughters.”

  Mr. Caruso crossed one leg over another as Pale Suit slid away—to get the lemonade, she supposed. “When I took the call about your proposition the other day, it came to my mind.”

  Her tingling shiver returned. So the man at the Caruso company offices had phoned Mr. Caruso.

  Which must mean the family was in the loan-sharking business and Mr. Caruso knew all about it.

  The realization apparently showed on her face, because Mr. Caruso smiled. “All sorts of people have a quick need for cash from time to time. You’d be surprised. They’re called no-collateral hard loans. There’s nothing wrong with them.”

  She noticed, though, he didn’t say there was nothing illegal about them, either. As Pale Suit approached with a tray and two tall glasses of lemonade, she looked Mr. Caruso straight in the eye. “What about kidnapping? Do you see anything wrong with that?”

  He stilled and his eyes narrowed under their silver brows. “Explain, per favore.”

  Pale Suit must have caught on to the mood change, because he hurried over as Felicity outlined the call she’d taken at Aunt Vi’s. “The man I spoke with said he would hold Ben until we paid off the loan. I told him it was taken care of, that I had made arrangements, but he just repeated his demands.”

  Mr. Caruso shot a look at Pale Suit, who strode off. “Give us a moment,” the older man said, turning charming and affable again. “I’m sure we can straighten this out for you.”

  Just as if he were doing her a favor, Felicity thought, flabbergasted. She reached for her lemonade and took a sip, giving the reality of the situation some time to sink in. The Mafia had stepped out of Martin Scorcese and Robert DeNiro movies, stepped out of New York and into Palm Springs, and she…she believed it.

  An old desert legend came to mind. The rumor was that Al Capone had escaped the metaphorical heat of Chicago for the physical heat of the Palm Springs area. There was a house, somewhere she couldn’t quite recall, where he’d lived for a time. It had been at…at…Two Bunch Palms.

  “Bah!” Mr. Caruso was looking at her, obviously amused. “Capone was never there.”

  In horror, she realized she’d spoken the name of the place aloud. “Oh. Well…I…”

  Lucky for her, Pale Suit returned and bent to whisper in Mr. Caruso’s ear. Felicity’s hand tightened on her glass. When the butler-type straightened, Mr. Caruso was quiet for a moment, then he looked over at her.

  “I’m afraid there’s been a mix-up. Piccolo—a small one,” he said pinching his thumb and forefinger together. “Some of my associates a
re young and they go off without thinking, without checking with those older and wiser first.”

  “But you’ve straightened it out?”

  His hand lifted, made a little wave. “We will.”

  Will? Felicity cleared her throat. “When?”

  He lifted his shoulders and hands in a very Italian shrug. “A few days, no more. We first must find these hotheads. But on my honor, no harm will come to your cousin.”

  A few days? In less than that she was supposed to be in L.A., putting her past—old and recent—behind her. “But the Caruso products are slated to be previewed on GetTV tomorrow.”

  He gave another of those elegant shrugs. “What can one do?”

  Felicity took a deep breath. “One can say goodbye to a very lucrative deal with the company I work for.”

  Mr. Caruso’s eyebrows rose. “Sì?” His voice was quiet, his pose relaxed, but his eyes had gone cold and watchful. She was looking at the Godfather now, Felicity thought, her pulse ticking loudly in her ears, and not the grandfather.

  And the Godfather intimidated the heck out of her. But she refused to let him see it, and she pressed her knees together, hard, so they wouldn’t rattle. “No Ben, no deal.”

  “An ultimatum?”

  The oh-so-casual inquiry made her palms sweat. She could back off, back away, run for her life to Magee and then race to the sheriff.

  It had been her first thought when she’d hung up the phone. But the Charms had to live in the area and live with any trouble she got them into with the Carusos. Going to the sheriff could mean legal complications for Ben. And then there was the small problem of evidence. If she contacted the authorities, what would she have for them? It would be the word of the Charms versus the word of the Carusos.

  A notorious family of ne’er-do-wells versus a successful, philanthropic family who brought jobs to the desert.

  So she tried sending off her own scary vibes as she looked straight into the Godfather’s eyes. “Ben has to be back with his mother, my aunt, by air time tomorrow, or our deal is off.”