by Beth Ciotta
“Maybe it’s because the instructor was a brilliant lead, more confident, more skilled than her assigned partner.”
I didn’t want to see the logic in that. I knew how dancing worked, but my gut told me dance dude was a hustler—and I’m not talking the seventies disco-dancing kind.
“It’s like making love,” Arch said. “In the hands of a master, even a nervous bird can soar.”
I wasn’t sure when, how or why we’d gotten off track, but I was relatively certain neither one of us was thinking of my mom. “Are you referring to the first time we…you know…did it?”
“I am.”
I crossed my arms over my chest, set my chin. Never mind that I had indeed been nervous and had, at his masterful touch, soared. “We did not make love.”
“No?”
“No. We boinked like bunnies. Well, not bunnies, because it wasn’t cute. It was—”
“Passionate? Erotic? The earth quaked? Stars shattered?”
“We had great sex. We did not make love.”
He considered, nodded. “You’re right. We haven’t made love.”
An unspoken yet hung in the air.
I blew my bangs off my damp forehead, certain the backs of my knees were sweating. Panic bubbled in my chest. I’d been diligent about maintaining emotional distance whenever we…boinked. Never in bed…well, not never, but never in missionary style while in bed. Resisting eye contact had been vital. The L word was never uttered, not once, on either side, no matter the intensity of the moment. If we made love, I’d fall in love. The realist in me knew I was already teetering on the edge. The realist also knew the danger should I jump.
“Yes, well,” I said, scrambling to make my way down the tree, “that’s history, because we’re history. The romantic us, anyway.”
“Just friends,” Arch said with a damnable smile in his voice.
“I’m serious,” I said as I lowered myself to the ground. Granted, I wasn’t having an easy time with the transition, but it was absolutely for the best. “No hanky-panky.”
“Except for business purposes.”
“When we’re on, you mean. Spinning the European nobility/drama queen romance.” I fluttered a hand. “No problem.” Although it would have been a heck of lot easier if I was, like on the cruise, playing someone other than me.
I dried my sweaty palms on my jeans and caught a glimpse of someone exiting the back door with a stuffed garbage bag. I’d know that broomstick-up-the-butt posture and abnormally jet-black mane anywhere. Monica Rhodes. The director of the Greenville Civic Theater. The woman I’d lied to about not being able to attend the benefit because of a prior engagement. The woman I’d neglected to call or e-mail regarding that donation, even after packing my bags for home.
Oops.
Arch touched down beside me just as she looked our way. I grabbed two fistfuls of his shirt and yanked him against me. “Kiss me.”
“But—”
Hard for him to argue with my tongue down his throat. Not that he seemed averse to kissing once I got the action started. Ooh, no. I think I maintained control for half a second, then he took over and—yeah, baby, yeah—kissed me stupid. Crushed between a hard trunk and a hard man. Life is good.
In idiot mode, I contemplated tackling him for a roll in the grass. His fingers skimmed beneath my T-shirt, igniting, of all things, sanity. “Public. Hometown,” I rasped after breaking the kiss.
“You started it,” he said in a husky voice.
“Yes, well, I needed to do something to keep Monica from seeing my face.”
“Who?”
I peeked around his shoulder to make sure she was gone. She was. “I’ll explain later. We should go. Mom already left, although I don’t know with whom or where they went. Maybe if we cruised town…”
“Ravishing me doesn’t strike me as discreet, yeah?”
“Are you still on that?” I nudged him to move aside. When he didn’t budge, I huffed a breath. “It was perfectly rational. You want this town to believe we’re an item, right? Besides, kids make out here all the time. See?” I wiggled around to point out the carvings in the oak’s ancient trunk. “Countless initials. Inscriptions. Kirk loves Kelly. J&T Forever. You know how I named my suitcase Big Red? This tree is known throughout Greenville as Big Love.”
One hand on the trunk, he leaned in, crowding me, studying the carvings. “Where are your initials, Sunshine?”
I flushed. “No initials.”
“That’s right,” he said with a smile. “You’re a good girl. Good girls don’t snog under trees.”
“Was a good girl.” I’d live down that label or die. Good girls finished last. “And even then I was human. Of course I snogged under this tree.” I scraped my teeth over my lower lip, feeling all kinds of uncomfortable. “It’s just that none of my high-school boyfriends—” all two of them “—ever felt that way about me. Like I was their Big Love.”
“Huh.”
“We really should go.” Here I was, a forty-one-year-old woman, talking about high-school nonsense. The hell of it was, Arch made me feel like a moony-eyed teen. Young at heart and full of hope. I swung away, picked up my dad’s binoculars and stuffed them in my backpack. “Where’s the car?”
“This way.” He slipped on his shoes and jacket and guided me across the manicured lawn. “Where next? Your da’s pub?”
“No. Daddy’s sharp. I don’t want to face him until I know what cards you have up your sleeve, Ace. I want to know why you’re pretending to be a Scottish baron, of all things. I understand that you don’t want to confess to being a con artist—”
“Former con artist.”
“—or a member of a covert agency, but couldn’t you have been a shoe salesman or a blackjack dealer or an oil jockey, for goodness’ sake?”
“Had my reasons, yeah?”
“And I want to know them in detail, including what happened between you and Beckett after you left Mom’s house. Where is he? What’s the plan? How are you going to help the senator and me?”
“Okay.” He steered me to a sleek Mercedes, opened the passenger door.
“Seriously? You’re going to confide in me?” I was stunned. The last case we’d worked, he’d kept me in the dark for days. This suggested he trusted me or at least believed I could handle whatever he’d cooked up.
“We need to talk somewhere private. Where’d you used to go when you wanted to be alone?”
I jerked a thumb over my shoulder. “That tree.”
He grunted. “Anywhere else?”
Probably wasn’t smart to take him there, given the mushy feelings he inspired. On the other hand, I couldn’t resist. I snagged the keys from his hand. “I’ll drive.”
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
AS DAYS WENT, IT WAS a gorgeous one. Come summer, the humidity would be unbearable—leastwise for wimps like me who don’t like the sweltering, sticky heat. I could imagine the weatherman touting today as spring, glorious spring. The temperature hovered in the midsixties. Plenty of sunshine. A soft breeze carried the fragrance of budding flowers and fertile fields.
Climbing out of the car, I noted the picturesque landscape and remembered instantly why I used to come here to ponder, sometimes to pout, but mostly to dream. There was something magical about Little Turtle Rock.
“Fantastic,” Arch noted as we picked our way through bushes and trees to the river’s edge.
The historical society had invested in stone benches sporadically placed along the bank. There were also a few picnic tables, although few came here to eat. If people came here at all during the day it was to gander at the locally famous rock formation across the river or to wade in the cool waters while breaking from a nature hike through the woods. It was mostly a hangout for teenagers, who parked on the opposing higher bank at night. You can guess why.
I plopped down on a shaded stone bench. Arch settled beside me, looking around before saying, “Private indeed.”
“Most of the time.” I pointed across the na
rrow, shallow river. “See that rock?”
“I see a lengthy wall of rock.”
“Home in on the part directly across from us. It’s like one of those puzzles where you have to stare and then it comes into focus.”
“What am I looking for?”
“A man’s face.”
I watched him while he stared at the rock. Having Arch in my hometown, climbing my favorite tree, sitting in my special place, felt weird and wonderful and totally screwed with my efforts to retain emotional distance. The connection I feared he’d so easily severed still sparked between us. It wasn’t just the atomic kisses—although they blew me away—it was the indefinable chemistry of kindred souls. Sure, the term was overused and romanticized, but I swear, it applied and it was scary as hell. But according to the list in my diary, he wasn’t the smartest pick for a life partner.
“Ah,” he said, derailing my thoughts. “I see it now. Nose, eyes, ears. Damn, he’s got a high forehead, yeah?”
I smiled. “This place is named after that formation, Little Turtle Rock.”
He squinted harder. “I dinnae see a turtle.”
I laughed. “There is no turtle. That’s his name. Little Turtle. He was a famous Miami Indian chief. His given name was Michikinikwca, but that’s a mouthful for us white folk. Easier to refer to him by the meaning of the name.” I scrunched my brow. “This is boring.”
“Not at all.”
Relieved—because I truly did adore the legend—I went on. “His father, also a chief, was Miami. His mother was Mahican. So he wasn’t exactly pure in the eyes of his people. He was a bit of an outcast, a black sheep, but he achieved great things regardless. He stood up for the oppressed and, when the time was right, championed peace. He was an optimist, I think, a dreamer. And determined.”
“As a young girl, you related.”
My heart swelled at his sensitivity. “Yeah. I did.”
I caught him looking at me and suppressed an erotic tingle. “Anyway, there’s this legend that when he died and crossed over, the stars rained down and carved his face in that wall of rock. There’s probably a rational explanation. Natural erosion. Late-1800s pranksters. There’s a sucker born every minute, right? But I believed. I still do,” I realized aloud, the air humming with wonder and optimism. “Guess that makes me a sap, huh?”
“No,” Arch said, voice low. “It makes you special.”
I didn’t dare look at him. Eye contact at this particular moment could be hazardous to my health. Surely I’d jump him, knocking us both from the bench into a patch of poison ivy or into the chilly river. I gripped the bench and hardened my will.
“Evie.”
“Yes?”
“Aboot your ma….”
A little out of left field but safe ground. “Yes?”
“I’m not convinced she’s being hustled. But if she is, we’ll handle it.”
“Without embarrassing her or my dad?”
“Goes unsaid.”
Tears stung my eyes. “I really appreciate this.”
He reached over and laid his hand on top of mine, squeezed. “The baron ploy works twofold,” he said, gazing at the river. “Most would assume those with a title must be rich, yeah? If there’s an operator in town, chances are he’ll sniff around you in an effort to get to me—or rather, my cash. Or he may try to ascertain my weakness through your ma. If you can get her to confide in you, we willnae have to wait for him to come after us. We’ll take the initiative. Although, as I said, we could be pissing in the wind. Your ma could have cashed in those bonds for something innocent, yeah?”
“Maybe.”
“Dinnae suppose you could ask her ootright.”
“No. My brother told me on the sly. She threatened to never speak to him again if he told my dad, so I’m guessing that includes telling me. Even though Christopher and I aren’t close, I’d hate to cause a rift. Plus, I’m pretty sure if I asked her, she’d tell me what she told him, which was to essentially buzz off.”
“Things have been tense between you and your ma since your parents’ split?”
“Things have been tense between us since forever.” I swallowed, shifted. “I proved a disappointment early on.”
He stroked his thumb over my knuckles. “I’m sure that’s not true.”
Unfortunately, it was. “I’m too liberal, too free-spirited, too much of a dreamer. Too…everything she’s not. All through my youth she reasoned with me, lectured me, threatened me, tried to mold me into who she thought I should be—a responsible, motivated career woman. Her goal was to send me to college. My goal was to follow my heart. She washed her hands of me the day I told her I was going on the road with a band. We talk, but we don’t. Not about anything meaningful. Although that’s pretty much the norm for the Parishes. Noncommunicative. Emotionally repressed. Yep. That’s us.”
“That’s not you.”
“Well, not lately, no. But for most of my life I followed my parents’ lead. Squash down your feelings. Keep it inside. Don’t air your dirty laundry, and all that jazz. That’s what my diary’s for.” I realized suddenly that I’d never expressed my angst over my rocky relationship with my mom out loud. Yet I’d just sliced open my heart for Arch.
Making eye contact was stupid. The tenderness shining in those gray-green orbs liquefied my bones.
Dangerously close to an intimate moment, I slipped his grasp and walked to the river’s edge. When I was certain my knees wouldn’t buckle or my voice wouldn’t crack, I glanced over my shoulder. “You said the baron hoax would work twofold. How?”
“What do you know about the senator?”
“Only that his wife’s a gambling addict and he wants Chameleon to win back her losses.”
He joined me and we walked slowly along the bank. “Mrs. Clark swears she was cheated.”
Clark. Cripes. Not a state senator, then, but a U.S. senator. I blew out a breath. “How’s that possible? Casinos employ security guards to patrol the floor and a surveillance department to operate CCTV cameras. Looking for cheaters is three-quarters of their job. If she’s hooked on slots, then she’s just—to be nice about it—unlucky, because the odds are plain against you.”
“Casinos get taken all the time, love. Card mechanics, hand muckers, systems players, collusion. A hustler at the top of his game can pocket thousands, sometimes tens of thousands of dollars, before being barred for suspicion of cheating.”
Again I felt like a wide-eyed rube, a grifter’s prime mark. I’d been performing in casinos for twenty years. Granted, I didn’t spend much time on the floor. I’d rather invest in a sure thing, like new clothes or cosmetics, rather than dropping money in the slots on the off chance I’d win a jackpot. But how could I be so naive?
“Casinos try to keep those kinds of losses quiet for obvious reasons,” he said as if reading my thoughts. “In this instance, I believe the mark was roped at a riverboat casino this side of Chicago, and the actual fleecing took place in a private poker game.”
“The riverboat in Hammond?” I stopped in my tracks, shook my head. “What are the chances? Seriously. Two crises in my home state. At the same time. Both involving Chameleon.”
“Fate does at times deal a boggling hand, yeah?”
“I’ll say. This thing with my mom—it’s huge to me, to my family. But this thing with Senator Clark…” I whistled. “He has his eyes on the presidency, you know.”
“I’ve heard.”
“He’s wealthy.”
“Aye.”
“And powerful.”
“Absolutely.”
“And Beckett chose to help me over him?”
Pregnant pause. “Beckett’s not thinking clearly just now, yeah?”
“Why? What’s wrong?” I thought about the man’s insomnia. Wondered what kept him glued like a zombie to Nick at Nite. Loneliness? Depression? Finances?
“Bit of a career crisis.”
I snorted. “I know all about that.” One more thing I had in common with the agent,
aside from a retro-sitcom addiction. I thought about all of the kindnesses he’d shown me. I tried not to think about the unsettling snap. I reached out and gripped the lapels of Arch’s jacket. “We have to convince Beckett to help Senator Clark. I hate to side with Gina, but she’s right. If he turns his back on this case, he can kiss his career goodbye. We can’t let that happen. His work is too important.”
He looked away for a second, then nodded. “Gina and Tabasco are here. They’re at the Appleseed B and B, fielding information sent over by the Kid. Beckett drove out to interview Mrs. Clark.”
“I want to help.”
“Why?”
It wasn’t the question that threw me as much as the tone. I released him and shrugged. “Because he’s nice.”
“Nice.”
“I like him.”
“You barely know him.”
“I barely know you and I…”
“What?”
My heart hammered in my ears, drowning out the word that almost escaped my lips. Holy cripes. I didn’t want it and he wouldn’t welcome it, so why give in to it? “Like you. I like you.” I focused on Little Turtle, who seemed to be frowning now as if offended by my forked tongue. Gads.
“Just friends,” Arch said.
“Exactly,” I said, realizing I was scratching my neck, avoiding eye contact, blushing. He had once told me I was easy to read. Your body language betrays your feelings. I needed to work on my poker face—my poker body, for crying out loud. Only I couldn’t lock down just now, this was too flipping huge, so I pivoted and marched into the woods, toward the car. “We should go.”
“Friends who shag,” he said, coming up on my heels.
“We’re not shagging anymore.”
“Not officially, but professionally…”
I tripped on an exposed root. Arch nabbed me by the waist before I took a header. Breathless, I turned in his arms. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
