Dangerous Proposition (16 page)

Becker had needed a reputable job, a position he could hold as a decoy. So Colin got him a job at one of his father’s hotels, hoping that the number of hours involved in playing the part of hotel manager would keep the bastard out of his hair. But unlike the fairy tale scenario he’d envisioned, the worst thing imaginable had happened. Becker was arrested for smuggling diamonds.

Naturally, a ton of bad publicity had followed for Westwood Industries. But if Leighton Westwood had had any idea what Mark Becker was really doing at his hotel that summer, he’d never said so. In the end, it had only widened the gap between Colin and his father that was already there.

The fact that Julia knew about Becker, and that she’d traced the prick all the way back to Lucas was highly disturbing. For Christ’s sake, the cops hadn’t even managed to do it! And Julia had worked at not one, but two of his father’s hotels, both without his knowing about it. Moreover, he had told her the truth about Lucas’s death. Not the story he and Alec had fed the press, but the
truth.
Worse still, her father had been missing for over two weeks and he hadn’t found so much as a hint regarding his whereabouts.

Other than the phone call from John Rizzo and his own brush with death, Colin knew nothing. Much as it killed him, he needed help. And he needed it from someone with a greater level of connections than his own.

The patio door opened. Footsteps sounded against the ground.

“Look who decided to join the living,” he said, turning as the door was shut behind him.

“As if I could sleep with your snoring.” Julia, wearing his bathrobe, her new pajama of choice, strutted across the balcony. “Do we have any of that Chinese food left in the fridge? I’m starving.”

“Whatever’s left in there couldn’t possibly be edible. I’ll get you something to eat on the way.”

“On the way?” She looked at him. “Where are we going?”

“It’s a surprise.”

Colin wasn’t entirely sure she bought that, especially since the next thing he asked her to do was pack. He wasn’t sure how long they’d be gone, but it would probably be at least a day. It was best that they be prepared.

Thanks to someone stealing his car, there wasn’t a lot to take with them. After a moderate amount of bickering, he loaded their things, the clothing he kept at the apartment and the items Julia had purchased on her day out, into his car. By seven thirty, there was nothing left ahead of them but road.

It was a very warm day out, and it got even warmer as they sped along the highway. They drove without saying a word, Julia fiddling with the radio, him grateful she didn’t press him to continue their conversation from last night. As they passed a sign saying that they had just entered the state of Connecticut, Julia shot him a glare.

After a half hour or so, his redheaded companion began to doze off. Noting that she was asleep, Colin glanced her way. He was envious that she had the opportunity to rest and rather wished he’d insisted on them switching off. But as he watched her, other thoughts began to creep their way into his mind.

Julia was beautiful when she slept, with her long lashes draped over her pretty blue eyes. She seemed innocent, like an angel, and he found himself wanting to reach out and touch her cheek. Shaking his head, he fixed his eyes against the road.

As he drove on, his hands clenched around the steering wheel. He was worried about Julia, and he was beginning to worry about her more than himself. He ought to be concerned about her not learning the truth—that was why he’d brought her to New York in the first place. But all he could seem to think about was how to keep her safe, and what was going to happen to her if she lost her father, the only real family she had.

The fact that she had a parent who loved her was more than he could say for himself. He didn’t want Julia to lose that. Glancing at the clock on the dashboard, he sighed. The fact that he was driving to the outskirts of Greenwich, Connecticut spoke volumes about what a sap he was becoming.

Coming off the highway, Colin slowed his speed and turned down the local street that Ian Hauser, one of his assistants, had instructed him to. At the end of the road, approaching a blanket of grass covered with cottages not fit to house a man on vacation in the Colorado Mountains, he blinked. The last he’d heard, Byron Murdock lived in a gated community. Though it had been many years since he’d seen him last, he was positive that was still the case. The address he’d been given had to be some sort of mistake.

Something must be wrong with his GPS. Or perhaps they’d driven so far from civilization that there weren’t any known roads. As they appeared to be out of cell phone range, it was very possible that he was going to have to do something he despised—ask for directions.

Indulging himself, he leaned over and pressed a kiss to Julia’s cream-white cheek. Looming above her forehead, he said, “Time to wake up, Sleeping Beauty. As much as I enjoy it when you can’t shout at me, we’re here.”

Julia fluttered her eyelids. She looked at him, giving him a wide-eyed stare that indicated she wanted to know what in the world he was doing hovering over her. Clearing his throat, Colin inched back.

“What exactly are we doing in the middle of nowhere?” Julia asked. Peering out the window, she said, “I thought this Byron guy lived in a house the size of your mansion.”

He furrowed his brow. “He does. At least I think he does. This is the address my associate gave me. I guess he got the street name wrong.”

“Only one way to find out,” Julia said. She pressed the button beside her, unfastening her seat belt.

Colin followed suit. He turned off the engine and took his keys from the ignition. Meeting Julia on the grass, he started toward the house.

Approaching a small white structure that resembled a trailer, Colin observed that the place was even smaller than his City apartment. It had a paneled exterior and only a few windows. There was no landscaping, short of a clothesline that ran from the window to the tree beside it.

As he and Julia approached the door, a girl with wispy blonde hair and bright-hazel eyes stepped from behind the house. She was carrying a rag doll that had clearly seen better days.

“Hello!” the girl said with an eager smile. “My name is Nicole. What’s yours?” She looked from Colin to Julia.

“It’s very nice to meet you, Nicole,” Julia replied, bending to the child’s eye level. “I’m Julia, and this is Colin. We were hoping we could talk to your mommy and daddy. Are they at home?”

A teenage boy with hair as blonde as the girl’s stepped through the front door. He was tall, and he was wearing a T-shirt with the insignia of a popular heavy metal band. Glaring at Colin and Julia, he shouted, “Nicole, go inside!”

The girl did as she was told, scurrying past the boy and up the porch steps. “Bye, Julia. Bye, Cowin.”

The young man shut the door behind her. Taking a step forward, he shot a death stare Julia’s and Colin’s way. “Are you here to threaten my dad again?” he demanded. “Because he’s not here.”

“Easy there, buddy,” Colin said, holding up two hands. “We’re not here to make any trouble.”

“Then maybe you should go back where you came from,” the young man spat.

Colin was just about to tell the little brat exactly what he could do with his bad attitude when the front door to the house swung open. Through it stepped a man with blond hair and green eyes. He was as tall as Colin and had once been just as built. Apparently he’d put on a bit of weight in the last decade.

“Jeremy, what’s going on?” the man asked. Looking Colin’s way, his complexion became ghost white. “I’ll be damned. Colin Westwood. Well, you’re about the last person I expected to show up on my doorstep this morning. Did the never-ending well of female bed companions finally run dry? Oh”—he shot Julia a smile—“I guess not.”

Colin snatched Julia’s hand, squeezing it so tightly he was afraid he’d cracked a bone. “I thought perhaps you’d developed some tact in your old age, Byron. Guess we’re both getting a surprise today.”

“Jeremy, go inside,” Byron said sharply.

“Dad—”

“
Now
.”

The young man strode from the front steps, shooting both Colin and Julia a glare before slamming the door to his family’s miniscule home shut.

Sporting one of her infamous smiles, Julia looked from Colin to Byron. “So, the two of you used to be friends?”

“Stay out of this, Julia,” Colin said. He released her, taking two hastened steps toward Byron.

Byron opened his arms, as though daring him to come closer. “Are you going to tell me what the hell you’re doing on my property? Or are you just going to stand there all day?”

A smile formed on Colin’s lips. “I haven’t decided yet.” Slipping his hands into his pockets, he moved about the small patch of grass that stood in front of Byron’s home. “Interesting place you’ve got here. Quite a step down from Park Avenue, I must say. What happened? Did you invest in some bad stock?”

Byron took two hastened steps forward. Colin waited until he was within arm’s length then raised his fist. He struck a hard blow to his once best friend’s face. Byron stumbled back then lunged forward, taking Colin with him to the ground.

Colin fought him, hitting him with all the rage that had been building inside of him for ten years. Working against Byron’s weak attempts to fight, he beat the son of a bitch into the dirt, feeling an enormous amount of satisfaction in doing so.

“Hey!” Julia shouted. “Colin, stop it!”

Taking advantage of his opponent’s sudden hesitation, Colin dove on top of him, hitting him square in the jaw. He was temporarily stunned as Julia dove in between them, landing herself in the middle of their brawl. He stopped swinging, dragging her to her feet. Looking her over, he checked her body for cuts and scratches. Good God, if he’d hurt her… He barely looked up as a woman with dark-blonde hair raced to Byron’s side.

“Byron,” the woman gasped, putting her hand against Byron’s bloody face. “What in the world…”

“What’s gotten into you?” Julia demanded, taking a tissue from her pocket. She held it to Colin’s cheek, wiping the blood where his skin was cut.

Colin didn’t answer. His eyes were fixed on the woman who’d come running out of the house. Staring at her porcelain skin, it was as though he was looking at a ghost. She was just as he remembered her, her long, curly tendrils, her smooth bronze complexion. As she tended to the scratches on Byron’s arms, she looked up, her dark-brown irises expanding three sizes as she did so.

“Colin?” She came slowly to her feet.

“Erica.” Colin caught his breath. Clearing his throat, he shot Byron a look. “A little piece of information you might have shared with me.”

“Oh yeah? And just why the hell should I have done that? It doesn’t seem to me I owe you a damn thing.”

Colin looked from Byron to Erica, the agony of one of the most horrific moments of his life hitting him in one tumultuous explosion. He shut his eyes as it all came back to him, the feeling of dread as he walked back to his dorm room that cold December night, his insides coming into his throat as he opened the door.

“I guess you don’t.” He started down the walkway.

Julia followed him. Meeting him in front of the car, she caught him by the shoulders. “You’re just going to walk away? This guy was your friend. What happened that was so bad it pulled the two of you apart?”

Colin didn’t answer. He just stood in place, feeling even more helpless than he had the night he realized Tucker had been abducted. It was as though he’d walked back in time and into a nightmare. And every time he tried to wake up, he only slipped that much further into the abyss.

“Believe it or not, Mary Poppins, there are some things that can’t be fixed. This is one of those things.”

“Was it about Erica?” Julia shut her mouth.

Colin raised a brow. He was rather surprised that Julia cared either way, but decided it was only natural she would suspect as much. Of course, there was more to the story than just the obvious. Byron had lost a potential six figure salary from Westwood Industries when Colin’s father hadn’t come through for him. But that wasn’t the issue at hand.

He chose his words carefully. “There was a time I called Byron my best friend. Come to think of it, he was my only friend. When your father owns half the town, people sort of expect you to follow in his footsteps. Byron understood that, because our fathers were a lot alike. I was supposed to go and work for my father after graduation. When I decided that wasn’t in the cards for me, everything changed.”

“What happened?” Julia asked.

Colin was about to answer, but something on the lawn grabbed his attention. A yellow For Sale sign—he was surprised he hadn’t noticed it earlier. He had a feeling it wasn’t there because the Murdocks were getting a bigger place in the Hamptons.

“I guess there’s more than one secret going around today.” He stared at the sign then wandered up the walkway.

Byron, who was climbing the front steps with his wife, looked back. “You didn’t get enough the first time?”

“Why didn’t you tell me your house was going into foreclosure?” Colin asked.

“It isn’t exactly something you shout from rooftops.”

“What happened?”

“Does it matter?”

“No, it doesn’t,” Colin said. “What matters is making sure you don’t lose it. Now, are you going to let us in or not?”

* * * *

Julia sat between Colin and Erica at the Murdocks’ dinner table later that evening. The kitchen was small, consisting of only a seating area, a stove, and a counter. The lack of space did make for some good claustrophobia. And it didn’t help much with the uncomfortable silence.

Swallowing a bite of pot roast, Julia glanced at the clock on the wall. No one had said a word in almost ten minutes. Though Colin and Byron had had a long conversation earlier that afternoon, and Colin had agreed to help the Murdocks with their financial problems, the awkwardness in the room was immeasurably thick.

Everyone was seated around the table—Julia and Colin, Byron and Erica, and their children, Jeremy and Nicole. And in spite of the tension in the air, Julia had decided to put her knife to better use. She’d cleared her plate twice and had two helpings of pot roast, a baked potato, and the most delicious apple pie she had ever eaten. Apparently Erica Murdock was an even better cook than Colin.