The Kiss That Counted

by Karin Kallmaker

  CJ Roshe was one long con, a history built on a lie, a house of cards. She had anticipated, every day, being found out and had told herself she was prepared for that eventuality.

  "You believed your own con," she said aloud. "You went native."

  She wanted to be CJ Roshe. She had gotten hooked on the success of making deals, of running legit cons on the world. She'd become used to the money rolling in, enough to let her tick the names off that list and keep a clean, secure roof over her head. Damn it, she even liked that Burnett admired her, and why should she care what he thought? Raisa and Devon and Cray and Alvin wanted to set her up with friends because they were completely bamboozled into thinking she might be nice. There was nothing nice about her—it was all an act to keep Cassie June Rochambeau from being found by the State of Kentucky.

  She'd known she could never tell Abby who she really was and that had always been a convenient out, an escape hatch for her feelings. She could no more tell Karita than she could Abby. Karita would be…horrified. Anyone who knew the whole story would be. Until that kiss she'd thought she could survive anything. She'd done unforgivable things and lived to try to overcome them. She didn't think she would ever recover if she caused Karita's bright eyes to lose their light.

  So she ought to run. Nothing here should make her stay. Nothing but the realization that maybe this wasn't a life she'd created to hide behind. Maybe this was the life she actually wanted.

  Her alarm went off and she silenced it quickly. She was so tired. Scared. Ashamed. Guilty. She had a busy day on her calendar—her hollow laugh echoed from the walls as she sat up in bed. CJ Roshe couldn't run away today, she had community service to complete. Given the things she'd done it would be too ironic to end up back in jail courtesy of a stop sign.

  "The numbers are on page two." Burnett flipped the portfolio open for her. "You look awful."

  "Gee, thanks." CJ kept her attention on the contract numbers as her fingers few over her calculator. "These all look good to me. Break a leg."

  "Thanks. I'm going to make it short and sweet, and when I get back, lunch is on me. After the wine and dessert last night I can afford the sandwich place across the street, if we share."

  "Get out of here." CJ couldn't help her fondness for the kid, but she knew her tone was fat because he gave her an odd look. "I'm coming down with something, maybe. I'm not used to bread pudding at midnight."

  Burnett picked up the proposal as she pushed it across her desk. "I'm serious about lunch."

  "As long as it includes coffee, lots and lots of coffee."

  She didn't have the energy to give him another thought. She listlessly assembled her own package for a potential new client, another big University of Colorado alumnus referred by Nate Summerfeld. With any luck at all this could mean a solid connection to the type of men who had skyboxes at Broncos games and very large offices and warehouse operations they might need to upgrade or relocate.

  She paused with her eyes closed. From the moment she'd sidestepped the guards during the transfer between facilities she had been single-minded in two things. First, that no one from her past ever find her. Second, that the names on the list she'd made in Fayette would all, without exception, be crossed off. Accomplishing the latter demanded the former. She should be halfway to Canada by now, not thinking about deals she could get in three years, five years.

  Her luck in Denver had run out. Part of her wanted to rail about how unfair it was to be haunted by a past that belonged to a teenager, living at risk over the three months she hadn't spent in an adult facility, all because she'd turned eighteen before her juvenile sentence had been completed. She hadn't heard from anyone in the Gathering since she'd been sentenced to Fayette but with deadly certainty she had known that there'd be a Rochambeau in the adult facility. They would have been on the lookout for her, and they'd reclaim her to the life.

  There would have probably been letters waiting from her father, who had still been sitting in Big Sandy doing his time. Mail from unfit parents to inmates in Fayette's juvie facility was withheld, but as an adult he'd have been able to get in touch with her. Mail or word-of-mouth, it didn't matter; Cassie June would never escape. No social worker had wanted to hear about her fears that after four years of focus on schoolwork, on staying out of trouble, she'd be back in the life the moment she crossed the adult prison threshold.

  It wasn't fair, but she couldn't even think those words without the memory of Aunt Bitty's response when she'd told her something was unfair. The bloody nose had underscored the message: Life isn't fair. Fairness was what their marks expected and that's why marks lost their money. If she expected to be treated fairly that made her a victim just waiting to be discovered.

  Was that the only choice? Thief or mark? It was the only choice in the Gathering, but she'd been out of that circle for twenty years. She was a fool, because apparently she had decided those rules no longer applied. Daria could make them apply, all over again.

  Coffee, she could use some coffee. She didn't budge from the chair.

  No matter how much she rubbed her eyes, the data danced on the pages, but she doggedly worked on the proposal until it was at least a decent draft. She'd hoped to put it in today's mail but maybe she'd best wait until Monday. If she was here Monday.

  She was so tired she put her head down on her desk. The next thing she knew Burnett was shaking her awake.

  "You really are sick, aren't you?"

  "No." Jitters from the sudden awakening put a quaver in her voice. In the next moment lethargy threatened to turn her bones to liquid. "I just need lunch."

  "Okay, let's go, get up, come on, get a move on."

  "There's that tone again, the one you shouldn't use with your boss." She couldn't remember if she'd eaten breakfast. "Show some respect."

  "Sorry, ma'am." He visibly gulped at the look she gave him as she slipped on her suit jacket.

  "How did your meeting go?" she asked as they made their way to the elevator bank. "Any questions you couldn't handle? Did you see the site?"

  "Yes, and Cray didn't rule it out, but he was concerned about the tenant allowance for structural."

  Tr e exited the elevator as they got on, saying over his shoulder, "I got a line on a new retailer from the paper you gave me. Thanks again."

  "Good luck with it," CJ answered automatically.

  As they discussed Burnett's next steps, they passed Gracie's, where she'd first seen Karita. A glance inside didn't reveal the object of her thoughts. Ahead, though, someone turned a corner sharply. Was that Daria? Could an accomplice be behind her?

  She kept walking though her skin was crawling. It had been this bad those first few days out of Fayette, trying to get herself out of Kentucky.

  Burnett didn't turn in at CJ's favorite deli, but instead guided her to a bare bones sandwich shop that had, he promised, fabulous brownies.

  "I'm buying," Burnett said when CJ got out her wallet at the sandwich counter.

  "Nah, I'm not like Jerry. I won't stick a rookie with the bill."

  "He didn't…" Burnett gave her a searching look. "I thought it was weird he took care of the Elway's tab without coming back to the table. But he didn't pay it, did he?"

  Damn, she thought, she was too tired to remember her lies. "It's not important. By all means, your treat for lunch."

  "Jeez, for about a year—that's a lot of brownies I owe you." Burnett handed over bills to the cashier. "When I started working in the office, a couple of people said you worked strictly alone and that you were…"

  "A bitch?"

  "No, just kind of private and standoffish. That you were great at what you did, didn't like people making mistakes, but who does?"

  "I'm not a nice person, Burnett."

  "If you say so." He all but rolled his eyes as he picked up the laden tray. With an expert twirl he carried it one-handed over his shoulder the short distance to a tiny table. "Your repast awaits, madam."

  "Where did you learn to do that?" The change in s
ubject was welcome. "Last night you remembered everyone's choice of wine and carried the glasses like a pro."

  "Who hasn't waited tables to get by? Or did you manage to escape that fate?"

  CJ gave him a wan smile. "A million years ago in college in New York—waiting tables paid the bills. I never was much good at it. A coffee shop with a priority to push the pie didn't require previous experience."

  He unwrapped his sandwich after taking a large bite of his brownie. "I was proficient at slinging drinks. It was a dance dive."

  "Ah, you were a barmaid."

  "Please." Burnett sniffed. "I was a cabana boy."

  CJ laughed, but broke off as Burnett abruptly turned a vibrant, mortified red.

  "What's wrong?"

  "I didn't mean to tell you that."

  "Why ever not? Honest work is…" Burnett looked like he wanted to drop through the floor. "Oh. Unless… Does cabana boy mean what I think it does?"

  After a stuttered beginning, Burnett managed to say, "It means a lot of nights I went home with bruises on my knees, yeah. I was sixteen and a runaway. It wasn't the kind of place that filled out employment forms and I lived on the…tips."

  CJ gave him a long, level look. "You're twenty-seven and you look very alive to me."

  His gaze stayed fixed on his untouched sandwich. "I'm alive, but I'm not proud of some of the things I did to stay alive."

  She spoke without choosing her words, just told him what she knew. She was too tired to think better of it. "You don't have to be proud of it. We don't always know at the time what the real price of a decision is, and when we're young… When we're young and there's no one to guide us, sometimes the most we can hope for is to survive long enough to know that maybe we shouldn't have done that. You can't have regrets if you're dead."

  He took a deep breath, but wouldn't look at her.

  She could say the words, and believe they truly applied to Burnett, but she'd never think them true for herself. "Did you ever hurt anybody?"

  "No, no, never. If anybody got hurt it was me."

  "So the only person you have to ask for forgiveness is yourself." And therein lies the difference, CJ thought. Forgiveness for her was not such a simple matter. Someone had gotten hurt.

  "That's easy to say, but not so easy to know." He finally looked at her. "How come you don't take your own advice?"

  Nonplussed, CJ thought that she'd completely misjudged the kid. He was, well, no kid. She tried to sound mysterious and unconcerned when she answered, "Oh, different crimes, different times."

  He was having none of it, apparently. After finally taking a bite of his own sandwich, he asked, "Did you ever hurt anyone?"

  She decided to shut him down with a dead serious stare and the unvarnished truth. "Yes. Yes I did."

  "I don't believe you."

  "Nobody would." She continued to stare at him.

  He took another bite and made a show of dabbing mustard from the corner of his mouth. "That look is freakin' scary."

  "It's meant to be."

  The puppy dog eyes flashed with amusement. "Try your brownie. If you like it I'll bring you one a week for…" His brow furrowed. "Did you tip twenty percent?"

  Impossibly, she laughed. So much for her don't-mess-with-me stare. Clearly, if it came to full on confrontation with Daria, she'd have none of her old skills. "Yes."

  "Okay, so one a week for two years, one month and two weeks."

  The laughter helped even as all her inner voices chided her for being weak. The strong and smart thing to do was to pick up her purse and walk out the door. Even smarter, she added, with an edge of hysteria, would be to take the brownie with her as well.

  She laughed again, adrift from any sense of the reality. Acting as if her house of cards were still standing, as if it were a real house and not a tissue of lies built on lies, wasn't how to complete a con. She'd been a natural, her father had said so, and here she sat, looking at Burnett and thinking if she could have had a younger brother, she'd have picked someone like him. From the other side of the potent hit of the brownie and a triple shot espresso, she found herself grateful for community service and at least one more chance to spend time with a woman who ought to be nothing to her.

  When she left the sandwich shop the afternoon seemed surreal. Was that Daria around the next corner? Her father in the shadows of the parking garage? A duly authorized representative of the great State of Kentucky walking toward her?

  It struck her then that in one of life's ironies the only place she was going to feel safe was the shelter. It was the last place in Denver someone like Daria or her cohorts would look for her.

  Chapter 10

  Having no meetings after work allowed CJ to arrive at the shelter earlier than she had the previous two Fridays. The swelter of summer had already passed and the temperatures hadn't crossed the 80-degree mark. If there was one thing she didn't like about the weather in Denver, it was how rapidly the seasons changed. Autumn in Kentucky was slower, easier.

  Emily let her in, saying, "I remembered to mail those forms you dropped off Saturday. They went out Monday."

  The door clicked shut behind her and CJ felt tension drain out of her body. "Thanks a lot. I appreciate it. What can I get started on?"

  "Laundry, what else? A new volunteer caught up a lot last night."

  CJ lost no time in moving wet towels into the dryer and getting a full load of sheets underway. She felt at loose ends as she went back to the kitchen and couldn't help but glance at the papers Emily had spread out over the table.

  "Ah, working on a grant application?"

  "Yeah. It takes forever. I've finally got copies of all the documents everybody asks for, tax returns, incorporation papers, list of staff, all that stuff. So now I'm working on the cover letter."

  "Marguerite Brownell? She's a big symphony supporter, isn't she?"

  "Yes. Old money, cattle and mining, mostly. She gave cash to a children's burn ward—an administrator who works there told me. Just gave it out of the blue after reading an article in the paper. So I'm asking for money to train volunteers on working with traumatized toddlers." Emily sounded as if she was certain she'd never see a dime for her effort, but she was going to give it a try anyway.

  "You're making a direct appeal—it's not a foundation or something like that?" CJ quickly glanced at the papers and hid her frown. She didn't know much about Marguerite Brownell, just the name. "Look, this is my last night and you can just be mad at me, what else is new. Why are you asking for so little?"

  "Increasing my chances of getting something."

  "Three thousand dollars isn't going to hit her radar."

  "That's what she gave the burn ward, for a special kind of bathing table. She'd apparently read about the need for one and decided to help out."

  "So unsolicited she offered up three thousand dollars. How much will she give if you actually ask?"

  Emily gave her an irritated look. "Have you done grant applications?"

  "Nope. I just get hardened Scrooge types to part with millions, and sometimes millions plus ten percent because the view is prettier. Do you have five minutes, and can I use your computer?"

  "Five minutes. Then you leave me alone?"

  "I'll leave you alone if you want."

  Emily heaved a sigh as she led CJ to her office. She tapped in her logon and offered her chair. CJ quickly opened the browser and directed it to Intellidome. The welcome screen popped up and she typed in her user ID and password.

  Emily gave the screen a skeptical look. "What am I looking at?"

  "This is a service my company pays for—costs an arm and a leg, but if you want to know what someone's worth, what they owe, what they spend their money on, what corporate boards they serve on, what their tax returns look like, this is the place." CJ typed in a search for Marguerite Brownell.

  "Isn't this an invasion of her privacy?"

  "Public information, just assembled for easy searching. Some people guard their privacy zealously, but so
me people don't. If we had the time we could go to the newspaper archives and discover details of her social life. We could go to the library and search through annual foundation reports to find her name." CJ pointed to one of the links. "Because she's fled for divorce and apparently her attorney forgot to ask for the right arrangements, her tax returns at that time ended up in the public flings of the proceedings. Happens a lot." She kept the irony out of her voice. "Anything that happens in a courtroom is public unless a judge says otherwise." Except proceedings involving minors, she could have added, where the default was the other way around.

  "So what does all this information do for me?"

  "Well, I'm looking at her adjusted gross income from three years ago. You are asking her to part with one-sixth of one percent of her annual income. I think you should ask for one percent, and offer her something worth her while."

  "I need money for staffing. I figured she'd be vulnerable on issues about children."

  "She has no kids—and so might be." CJ started to point out another element of the Intellidome data, but the light in the room danced with silver. She knew Karita was there, she knew it in every synapse of her body.

  "What are you guys doing?" Karita leaned in the office. door. How could anyone make a faded blue top and soft, worn jeans look like haute couture? She wasn't even trying.

  "Spy mission," CJ said. She followed the link to social affiliations.

  Emily added distantly, "For the grant application."

  "It's not a grant application." CJ scanned the list of clubs and societies that Brownell publicly supported. "It's a direct appeal. You're walking up to her on the street and asking her for twenty thousand dollars. That takes…different rules. She's not going to give it to you based on copies of your bylaws."