An Offer He Can't Refuse (41 page)

He flipped the switch for the universal lock. "Not so fast."

"Listen, Johnny. We'll talk… or not talk, later."

Teeth-gnashing wasn't making him any points. "I'll walk you to the door."

The narrow street was dark. On one side was a lot, empty of anything but sand and some clumps of scrubby brush. On the other was the western border of the spa property, delineated by a twelve-foot-high wall covered with bougainvillea to keep out prying eyes and the sounds of traffic. Not that there was any traffic to speak of. The area around them was deserted.

The back of his neck prickled as he took Téa by the hand. Swinging her purse over her shoulder, she glanced behind her as if she felt something or someone watching too. He tightened his grip on her fingers and tugged her toward the arc of light shining from a nearby street lamp.

Then movement exploded behind them.

Thudding footsteps. Téa gasped a breath as a stocky figure reached for her. Johnny yanked her against him and their assailant grabbed the strap of her purse. He pulled it from her arm and threw it aside.

With a cry, Téa broke from Johnny's grip and chased after her tumbling purse. Johnny started after her.

And plowed into a ham-sized fist.

It caught him under the eye, and sent him reeling back. "Run!" he shouted, stumbling as he regained his balance. "Téa, run!"

A hand gripped his shoulder and swung him around. Johnny flowed into the movement, then ducked his head and drove his shoulder forward.

"Whoof," the other man said. This time he was the one who stumbled back.

Johnny pressed on, still leading with his shoulder, and shoved the man back another few feet. He landed against the vine-covered wall with a thump that sent him bounding back toward Johnny.

The man's gray hair glinted in the meager light and his face was set in grim lines. He took another swing that caught Johnny under the chin. Johnny's head snapped back. He jerked it forward, ignoring the rubbery feel of his neck. That fist was coming at him again, determined to flatten him.

But with Téa in danger, there was nothing and no one more determined than Johnny. Adrenaline honing his focus, he ducked the next punch, then closed in. He shoved the guy back, then shoved him back again. The guy's shoulders smacked the bougainvillea. Without hesitation, Johnny jammed his forearm across the other man's throat.

Blows rained on his face and head. He ignored them, grunting as he applied greater pressure to the assailant's windpipe. The man lifted his knee as if to get in a kick to Johnny's groin, but he didn't have the oxygen for it. His standing leg crumpled and Johnny lifted his forearm. The other man dropped to a heap on the ground.

The thug lay there, breathing harshly. Praying like hell that Téa was safely away, Johnny backed off and nearly tripped over her.

"No more," she said to the crumpled man, her voice high and breathless. "You leave him alone. I have it. I have it right here."

"Shit," the man wheezed out, going very still. "She has a gun?"

Johnny glanced back even as he pushed her more fully behind him. "Damn it," he barked out, fear and his heartbeat ratcheting up again. "I told you to run." The only weapon she had was her purse. She held it chest-high, her hand thrust inside the opening.

The older man lifted his palms. "I'm not carrying and nobody told me either of you would be."

Carrying?
Carrying a gun
. Jesus.

"Get out your cell and call the police," Johnny ordered Téa, staring the bad guy down. "Don't move, you son of a bitch."

"Who do you work for?" Téa demanded, though she still sounded scared. She wasn't getting out her cell phone. "One of the rival families? The Dominellis? The LaScalas?"

"Cell phone," Johnny commanded again. He'd pull out his own, but he wanted his hands and his attention distraction free. His left eye was already closing and there was the salty taste of blood in his mouth.

"Or was it my grandfather?" Téa continued to talk. "Is he paying you to scare me back into the fold?"

The thug was looking at Téa like another man might eye a snake, obviously still worrying about that alleged gun she was holding on him. "I'm here for him," he said, jabbing a finger in Johnny's direction. "For Gianni Martelli or Johnny Magee or whatever he calls himself."

Johnny started, blinking his one good eye. "For me?"
For Gianni Martelli or Johnny Magee or whatever he calls himself
. The adrenaline-induced numbness was wearing off and his face was starting to pulse like a giant toothache.

"Look, look." The other man held his hands up higher and took a deep breath. "I don't want any more trouble. I'm a P.I. from Hollywood, okay? And I got two kids in braces and the daughter wants tickets to a Nelly concert for her birthday. When Fremont added a little extra to the latest assignment by asking me to rough you up for five large, I thought, what the hell?"

"
Fremont
?" Téa stepped forward.

Johnny shoved her behind him again. "Raphael Fremont? Why would he give you five thousand dollars to beat me up?"

"Because he's an overpaid, petty little prick who's obsessed with that big-jugged bimbo of his. He wanted me to mess with your face so she wouldn't think it's so pretty. He pays me to get the goods on every guy she ogles, which is why I could afford to start my kids in braces to begin with. But then Dr. Perfect Smile says it's gonna take two phases. Two phases!"

The root canal that was Johnny's head started pounding harder than the P.I.'s fists. "Get up and get the hell out of here," he said wearily. 'Tell Fremont that you did your job."

The older man didn't move. "Not until she takes the gun off me," he said, nodding toward Téa.

Johnny swung around so he could look at her with his one good eye. God, with that fierce expression on her face, he
could
believe she'd been a biter. "Let him go, Contessa."

She slowly took her hand out of her purse and lowered it to her side. "My mother's going to kick the bimbo and her boyfriend out of the spa tonight," she muttered, then raised her voice to a vicious threat. "And I don't want to see you around town ever again."

The P.I. didn't bother with further conversation. He scrambled up and limped toward his car, parked about half a block from Johnny's Jag. He must have followed them here, but Johnny had been so preoccupied with Téa that he hadn't noticed. As the sedan took off down the street, he sank onto the curb beneath the streetlight.

Téa hurried to sit beside him. "Let's go into Mom's and clean you up."

"Later."
Never
. He turned his head, tilting it to stare her down with his good eye. She looked as shaky as he felt. "Next time I tell you to run, you damn well better do it.
Capisci
?"

She didn't seem to notice his use of Italian as she brushed his hair off his forehead. Wincing, she examined his swelling face. "You must be hurting."

"You should've seen the other guy," he said dully.

"Where'd you learn to be so tenacious? He just kept whaling on you while you were holding him against the wall."

"Water polo and basketball in high school, rugby in college."

"You're a hero."

He laughed, and it hurt his lip, just as it should. "Keep on believing that for as long as you can, sweetheart."

"Well, at least now we know who's been following us, and why."

Johnny grunted.

"But frankly, I don't think Raphael got much of a private investigator for his money. At first, I thought he might be the same man who recently checked into the spa, but I've never seen him before. You, however, spotted the guy following us a while back. And then, he didn't know your real name from the name of someone who lived in your house ages ago."

"You caught that, did you?" He'd known she would. Hadn't he thought earlier this evening that she was too smart for his own good?

"Mm-hmm. He called you both Johnny Magee and Giovanni Martelli."

"Johnny Magee or
Gianni
Martelli." He wished he was the kind of man who could continue scamming her. Without the P.I.'s intrusion, he didn't know how long he would have been able to ignore the outside pressures and live in the highly-sexed and highly pleasurable present with her, but now it was definitely over, baby, over. He was Gianni Martelli as well as Johnny Magee, and the latter had been raised to treat well the ones who trusted him.

He remembered her fingers curling around his in the tiki room tonight.

Téa trusted him.

She had, anyway.

Run, Téa, run
, he whispered to himself.
Get away before this ends ugly
.

"Johnny Magee or Gianni Martelli," she repeated, her voice puzzled. "I don't understand."

He looked at her again and could see the wheels turning in that bright and beautiful head of hers, but he knew she couldn't possibly see this coming.

"That's who I am. The name on my original birth certificate, anyway. Gianni Martelli. Giovanni was my father."

"Frankie and Johnny"

Lena Home

More Than You Know
(1946)

Téa stared at the stranger she'd been sleeping with
. Minutes ago, she'd thought someone was out to hurt her to get the Loanshark book, but this—this was so much worse. "Giovanni Martelli is your
father
!"

"Yeah." He lifted his hip to pull a handkerchief from his back pocket and then daubed it against a cut on his lower lip. "But my parents were divorced when I was a baby. I went by Magee after Phineas married my mom."

She still didn't understand. "Why did you move to Palm Springs? Why would you move to
that
house?"

Johnny, no
Gianni
, looked down at the handkerchief in his hands, then back at her. One eye was nearly swollen shut, the other was its usual unreadable blue. "I have questions about my father too, Téa. His murder has gone unsolved for sixteen years."

She recoiled as she started to make sense of what he'd re-vealed. Though Giovanni Martelli's murderer had never been caught, the common belief was that he'd been killed in retaliation for the hit on her father—killed in retaliation by someone associated with the Carusos.