“There it is,” Mary squealed, spying the paper on the floor.
Stephanie had only a partial view of the woman as she bent down to pick it up. Her ample bosom almost brushed against the floor.
“Are you sure we don’t have time for a quickie before we head to the Eureka?” she offered with a purr.
Stephanie tried to keep from gagging on the woman’s perfume, which was applied with such excess it permeated the air all around her.
“It is safe to say, my dear, that our relationship is over. When Roman arrives to pick up his share of the money, I intend to deliver you into his competent hands as well. Seeing how he’s under the assumption you and he are an exclusive item, it would be in both of our interests to keep our private affairs—er—private from him. See if you can’t convince Roman to get out of Vegas as quickly as possible. Once our young couple arrive at the nursery and discover there is no infant awaiting them, there’s no telling what they might do.”
“It’s your loss,” Mary sniffed, clearly more perturbed by his rejection than scared of the consequences.
“Trust me. We’d best not be late for our appointment. Our client doesn’t strike me as the kind of man used to waiting on anybody. We’d better get going.”
Stephanie’s muscles were cramping, but she didn’t dare move, and only chanced tiny sips of air. Had she ever envisioned herself crouching under a desk hiding from the kind of people who relished the idea of slitting a young woman’s throat, she doubted she would have ever accepted this mission when Alex first broached the subject. She had a clear view of two sets of feet as they turned and headed toward the door. The fact that Larry’s shoes could use a good polish was indicative of the pinch Natalie’s stunt had put on their operation. From the conversation she had just overheard, Stephanie suspected that while Larry was ready to get out while he could, Roman Birkenfeld was intent on revenge. Indeed, Alex’s fears were not at all unfounded. As Birkenfeld was on the loose, Natalie was in danger.
From her odd vantage point, Stephanie could see the door open. She almost wept at the sight. As it clicked shut, she began to shake uncontrollably at the realization that she was safe.
It was at that exact moment that the cell phone in her purse went off.
Something was terribly wrong. Long before his watch confirmed the fact, premonition settled into Alex’s bones and made him anxious. The fact that Stephanie didn’t answer her cell phone was enough to propel him out of his seat. Pacing the length of the restaurant, he looked as dangerous as a caged bear. One whose bite was far worse than his growl.
“Where are they?” he snarled to no one in particular.
If Larry and his nurse didn’t show up in exactly one minute, Alex was going to have to choose between salvaging this mission or going back for Stephanie. He was out the door well before that minute was up.
Chosen for this assignment by his peers because of his ability to remain calm under duress, Alex blanched when he saw Larry’s Lexus parked in front of the adoption service. It hadn’t taken him long to get there from the hotel, which he had expressly based on its proximity to the agency itself. He hit the front door of the brick building running. That it wasn’t locked only intensified his apprehension as he made his way down a dark hallway to where he had last left Stephanie.
The sight of her gagged and bound to a chair caused him to go nearly blind with rage. Her microphone dangled loose from a shirt that had been ripped at the collar. It hung open revealing more than Alex wanted anyone else in the world to see of the woman he loved. Her eyes widened when she saw him. Never before had reason and restraint abandoned him at the same time. It was a frightening thing to behold. It took all his strength to restrain himself from rushing in and freeing her without stopping to assess the situation.
“What should we do with her now?” asked the blonde leaning her weight against Larry’s desk. Her shrill voice drew blood-red nails over Alex’s exposed nerves.
“How should I know?”
Pressing himself against the wall, Alex inched forward. So embedded was his FBI training into every fiber of his being that he didn’t even have to think about his next move.
“Let’s just find Roman. He’ll know what to do. He’ll probably be thrilled to have a hostage drop right into his lap.”
Larry’s voice rose with his sense of growing panic. “This is getting way out of hand. I never agreed to participate in kidnapping.”
Mary’s laughter mocked him. “Do you think it’s the stork that’s been dropping those babies off on your front door?”
“Shut up!”
Counting on their tension to provide a one-second cover, Alex burst into the room with his gun drawn. The woman’s shriek pierced the air. Larry swore and stepped behind Stephanie. She was in no position to do anything but try to communicate with her eyes to Alex that she was more frightened than hurt. The swelling across her cheek where Larry had slapped her left a mark but didn’t look as if it had caused any serious damage.
Larry’s sense of self-preservation kicked in as his hands encircled Stephanie’s slender neck.
“Throw down your gun, and I won’t be tempted to snap your pretty little wife’s neck in two,” he snarled.
“Move away from her, and I won’t kill you,” Alex countered.
The blood drained from Larry’s face.
“It’s over,” Alex told him. “If you cooperate with the police, you might actually stand a chance of getting some leniency in the courts. A smart lawyer like you shouldn’t have any trouble turning state’s evidence into a reduced sentence. We really want Birkenfeld, not you—or you.”
Alex pointed his gun at the blonde. “The two of you are in serious trouble, but nothing worth dying for. Why don’t you tell your friend here to give it up. Tell him it’s over.”
Not one to be moved by reason, the woman screamed, “Kill her while you’ve got the chance!”
Larry’s hands slipped from Stephanie’s neck to the edge of her chair. Wrenching it sideways, he tipped it over and made a dash for the back door. The sharp edge of the desk caught Stephanie on the side of the head just before everything went black.
Mary ran in the opposite direction. The sound of a police siren outside did not dissuade Alex from his pursuit of Larry. When Stephanie failed to answer her phone, he had dialed 911. He suspected this so-called nurse would be collecting her first-class ride to the police station shortly.
Alex concerned himself with not letting Larry escape. He had no doubt that the lawyer would roll over on his own mother if it meant reducing any time he spent in the big house. For the first time in his life, Alex was out for revenge. The handprint on Stephanie’s face stirred a sense of vengeance in him that he had hitherto never known.
Alex leaped over the desk and gave chase. In less than a dozen steps, he caught up to the frantic attorney grappling with a doorknob. Cornered, he turned and threw a wild punch. Alex deflected it with a martial arts move that shattered the lawyer’s glass chin with the heel of his left foot. The focused strength of that single catlike movement took Larry completely by surprise. His head snapped backward as he hit the wall, and he began a slow slide to the floor.
It was over almost before it started.
Stephanie came to in Alex’s arms. He was looking at her with such concern reflected in his eyes that she almost thought she was dreaming. Her head hurt something fierce, and it took her a while to realize that the blood trickling down his arm was hers.
“Before you even think about passing out again, I have something important to ask you,” Alex told her.
“The disk is in my purse,” she mumbled, jumping to an assumption that made her head throb all the more. “Wherever that is.”
Slowly she became aware of police officers milling around and an EMT anxiously peering over Alex’s shoulder.
“Forget the damn disk. It’s you I’m worried about.”
The frustration in his voice was off set by the tender way he cradled her against his body. The so
und of his heart beating calmed her. Stephanie wished she could stay there forever and foreswear the stretcher they were bringing into the room for her.
“If I die now, I die a happy woman,” she told him honestly.
Alex captured her hand in his as she reached up to sweep his hair away from his forehead. She was relieved to see nary a scratch upon that handsome face.
“Don’t talk like that. You’re not going to die,” he said with such intensity that one could imagine him wrestling with the Angel of Death to keep him away from her.
“You can continue this touching scene on the way to the hospital,” the EMT interjected.
“One more minute,” Alex snapped, giving the burly fellow a warning glance that would have stopped an army in its tracks.
“The question I want to ask you is…”
He paused to look so deeply into her eyes that Stephanie suspected he could see her soul’s reflection shimmering there.
“Will you marry me?”
Stephanie felt herself grow so light-headed she was afraid she really would die before she could answer him. She wondered if she was delirious. Weakly she lifted her hand and directed his attention to the ring on her finger.
“Only if it’s for real this time.”
Alex managed to get in one good kiss before the EMT muscled him out of the way and loaded his fiancée into the waiting ambulance.
Epilogue
Green-velvet curtains closed on a sold-out show. Applause echoed in the Royal High School Theater, and a few people were actually moved to dig tissues and handkerchiefs out of their pockets. Granted most were parents and relatives of members of the cast. Still in all, the student actors did a wonderful job portraying their characters. At least, as Stephanie was likely to point out, they all knew their lines, where they were supposed to be onstage at any given moment, and spoke loudly enough that they could be heard in the back of the theater. While not yet ready for Broadway, it was the most memorable Shakespearean production any of the audience could remember performed upon that venerable, if not rickety, old stage.
As the curtain opened one last time to reveal the cast joined hand in hand, the audience rose to its feet and rendered a standing ovation. Risen from the dead, Romeo and Juliet shared a deep bow together. A diminutive diamond on Launa Beth’s hand sparkled beneath the stage lights. It came as no surprise to anyone who knew them well that Launa had accepted Junior Weaver’s proposal just before the curtain opened on tonight’s show, and that they would go on to college together in the fall as man and wife.
As Shakespeare himself well knew, love wears many masks. The one Launa wore during the rehearsals preceding tonight’s performance covered her true feelings for the one boy who could make her heart soar. Both Stephanie and Alex could relate. They came home to Royal minus the masks they had worn for years to protect their true identities from the outside world. A few short weeks ago, they had believed love to be little more than some letters cleverly arranged on page by a playwright hoping to sell tickets to his production. The idea of lovers actually willing to sacrifice their lives for one another was moving only in the abstract. Today, as Stephanie accepted a bouquet of roses from her grateful cast, she stepped upon the stage a new woman. The change in Royal’s librarian was so dramatic that several people in the audience could be heard asking if the exquisite creature taking a bow was in fact the same Miss Firth that they only thought they knew.
Indeed, it was not.
That woman had exchanged her name and life with a deliriously happy Mrs. Alexander Kent. The wedding performed in Las Vegas before they returned home to Royal was legally binding and as real as the stunning ring on Stephanie’s finger. Alex promised to follow up that civil ceremony performed by a justice of the peace with as extravagant a church wedding as his new bride wanted. She asked only for family and friends to join them in a simple ceremony to celebrate the beginning of their new life together.
An overly animated matron whose son played the part of Mercutio jabbed the fellow theatergoer in the seat next to her. “It’s impossible to believe that’s the same woman who catalogs books in the library.”
“She is most beautiful,” the man agreed, ignoring both the woman’s sharp elbow to his ribs and her pointed jab.
Alex’s old friend Sheikh Darin ibn Shakir looked out of place amid Royal’s usual patrons of the arts. At six foot two the man gave off mysterious vibes that drew women’s attention from every corner of the room. His dark hair was pulled back into a ponytail fastened with a leather thong, a single gold loop earring glistened against his dark complexion, and his goatee was neatly trimmed. Though he would have looked at home in traditional Middle Eastern clothing, tonight he was dressed all in black.
He seemed unaware of the interested glances he generated among the women in the crowd. He was here on business—unfinished business. He had every intention of pumping his good friend Alex for even the smallest detail that could help him track down Birkenfeld and put the doctor behind bars for life. He planned to be in Vegas before morning.
A tearful director gestured for her husband to join her onstage. He did so reluctantly. As the final curtain closed, Stephanie was seen whispering in Alex’s ear.
“Now that this production is behind us, I’d like to get started on a new one right away.”
Alex looked perplexed.
“I thought you’d decided to turn in your notice at the end of the term.”
Stephanie gave him an enigmatic smile and drew his hand to her stomach.
“I was thinking more along the lines of producing a baby of our own. Or maybe a whole passel to fill up that new house you bought me for a wedding present.”
Alex’s eyes snapped to hers, then widened in pleasure. Taking her in his arms, he whispered in her ear, “I’ve heard you’re a demanding director. I suppose there will be lots of late-night rehearsals.”
Recognizing that heavy-lidded look as lust, Stephanie responded in kind.
“We’d both have to agree to a grueling schedule,” she agreed.
Though her voice was teasing, her brown eyes were as sincere as her desire to have his babies. The love she felt for her husband redoubled every day and could not be contained in a heart already so full that it flowed over. She looked at the man who had made all her once seemingly impossible dreams come true and tried to gauge how he felt about becoming a father. Stephanie had always wanted children, but without a husband, the idea seemed highly impractical. She hoped Alex’s difficult childhood would not make him averse to starting a family of his own.
Alex’s lips twitched in amusement.
“So where do I sign up?” he asked. “I would very much like to commit my considerable talents to such a production—on one condition.”
Stephanie feigned an exaggerated sigh.
“And just what kind of prima donna demands is the star of my show making now?”
“Just that this production have a happy ending. No more tragedies—or near tragedies for this family.”
Stephanie couldn’t have agreed more. Having witnessed enough heartbreak to last her a lifetime, she was ready for the happily-ever-after that she’d been seeking for years in books and on the stage. While life might not tie up every loose end as the great bard did so masterfully, she was living proof that love truly can conquer all. And while it was also true that Dr. Birkenfeld was as of yet unaccounted for, with his accomplices Mary Campbell and Larry Sutter singing to the authorities like gilded canaries, Stephanie felt certain it wouldn’t be long before the “good doctor” was behind bars as well. Alex’s assurances that his Cattleman colleague Darin was on the case and would be headed for Vegas in the morning allowed them to plan an extended honeymoon free from worries of espionage, intrigue and danger.
For just as Launa and Junior would have to wait until after graduation to announce their engagement, Dr. Birkenfeld’s time would surely come. As Alex enveloped his wife in a passionate embrace and kissed her soundly to the applause of the assembled cast, S
tephanie reveled in the knowledge that their happy ending was but a new and wonderful beginning of a script they would write together.
Special thanks and acknowledgment are given to Cathleen Galitz for her contribution to the TEXAS CATTLEMAN’S CLUB series.
ISBN: 978-1-4268-8304-0
PRETENDING WITH THE PLAYBOY
Copyright © 2004 by Harlequin Books S.A.
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