Hold Me (11 page)

“And I got arrested. And humiliated. She took me out with her purse. The cops, they laughed, did you know that? Laughed at me.” He tamped down the anger bubbling just beneath the surface.

“I’m sorry, boss.” The big man swallowed hard, his Adam’s apple bobbing.

“I had to tell my father. Did you know that as well?” he continued as if Arlo hadn’t spoken. That had been the worst part, really. Telling Poppa. Seeing the triumph in his eyes. The glee. Knowing that inside, the old bastard was laughing at him too.

“No. Boss, I’m sorry, I’m so sorry.” Arlo struggled to get out of the chair, his breathing fast, the sweat running. “I’ll fix it. I’ll make it right. Whatever you need me to do, I’ll do it. Just give me a chance to—”

“Too late,” Frankie said, softly. He pulled a gun out of the desk drawer and fired.

Arlo jerked, gasped, his eyes going wide with shock and pain and fright. Blood blossomed on the white shirt, and he sank back in the chair. He twitched, the breath sighed out of him, and he went still.

Frankie sat, staring at the corpse that had once been Arlo, smelling the gun smoke and the blood and the urine because Arlo’s bladder had let loose. Probably shouldn’t have done it here because now there’d be a mess to clean up. But there were people to take care of that sort of thing, and he’d wanted to do it in his office. To show the other guys he still had power.

To show Poppa.

Frankie sat and stared at Arlo and thought about the woman, Katie McCabe. Thought about what he would do to her once he got a hold of her. So far the guys stationed at her apartment hadn’t seen her, but he’d leave them there. She might go back.

Still, it seemed like either she or the Fed she was with had figured out he’d be watching her place. Only to be expected, really.

Good thing he had another angle. One they didn’t know about.

One that would drown her.

“Luc?”

Katie’s soft voice jolted Luc out of some rather morose thoughts. He looked up to see her standing in the doorway of the family room, watching him. He had no idea how long he’d been sitting there, but apparently there’d been enough time for her to take a shower because her hair was damp and relatively subdued. Her eyes were a little puffy and large behind her glasses, her skin so pale that the freckles stood out like tiny dots of brown sugar scattered across her nose and cheeks.

Fuck.

“Hi.” She walked farther into the room, bent absently to pat Spot, then moved over to him, standing so close that he could smell the clean, fresh scent of her.

“Hi,” he said. “Any better?”

She nodded, absently. “What’s going to happen now?”

“Now?” He shrugged, struggling to keep his face impassive. “You stay here for now.”

“And later?”

He was quiet for a moment. “We’ll do whatever comes next.”

“I can’t live like this.”

“Yes you can, because this way you will live.”

“If you say so.”

“I do.”

She was quiet for a long time, her face turned away from him. “I can’t talk to my family again, can I?”

“No.” Luc forced himself to stay professional and unemotional. “Not only does it open us up to the possibility that calls could be traced and our location identified, but if Frankie finds out you’ve been talking to them, they’ll be in even more danger.”

Katie nodded. “Yeah. That’s what I thought.”

He watched her, feeling useless. “We’ll work it out.”

“If you say so,” she repeated.

They were both silent for a long minute.

“Do you, ah, want some breakfast?” he asked, trying to change the subject and maybe introduce at least a hint of normality.

Katie shook her head. Her curls bobbed and weaved around her face, waking up as they dried. “No thanks. I’m really not very hungry.”

He frowned. “You should—”

“I should take a walk.” She looked at him with a caricature of her regular smile. “Alone.”

It was ridiculous to be hurt by that.

“Stay close.” It came out sounding like an order.

Her smile became more natural. “Yes, sir. Actually, I was just going to explore the Museum. I’d like to see some of the other rooms.”

“Oh.” He blinked. “Okay.” He’d told Jane, his neighbor who watched Spot and also cleaned for him, not to bother with the parts of the house he didn’t use. Since that was most of it, God only knew what Katie would find. “Take Spot with you.”

Katie had turned to go, but at that she paused and looked at him. “Why?”

“So you can find your way back, of course.” He smiled. “It’s your turn to cook.”

She laughed, which was a relief. “It seems like it’s always my turn to cook. If I didn’t know better, I’d say this whole thing was just a ploy to get some free domestic help.”

“Never.” He thought he sounded very innocent.

She shook her head, called for Spot and left the room.

As she’d kind of expected, Katie got lost almost as soon as she walked out of the kitchen, but it didn’t bother her too much. First of all, she was positive that Spot could find her way back for food. And second, it was nice to get lost in the depths of the Museum, to think about something other than her own situation for a change.

Luc’s personal castle really was awe-inspiring. It seemed to go on forever—room after room filled with graceful designs cut in stone and stained glass windows, tiles and marble, antiques and tapestries. There was even a full suit of armor standing in what appeared to be an old-fashioned parlor. Wow.

Why did he keep this all closed up? Katie idly trailed her fingers over a particularly lovely cherry sideboard sitting in a massive, dusty dining room. These pieces, these rooms, should have been on display, but apparently he didn’t even know they existed. His home was obviously important to him, but it looked like he only lived in one small part of it. Why was it in trust? Why had his great aunt Isobel thought he had bad blood? Obviously way more was going on here than she understood.

It occurred to her that it was a little too quiet. She looked around for Spot, but the dog had disappeared. She must have gotten bored and wandered off while Katie had been deep in her own thoughts. Great. Some guide dog.

Katie tried to retrace her steps back to the kitchen, but as usual she must have zigged when she should have zagged, because she found herself standing in a short, unfamiliar hallway ending at a pair of large, ornately carved oak doors.

Intrigued, she went to the doors and, with a little effort, pushed them open. When she peeked inside, her jaw dropped.

A ballroom. It obviously hadn’t been used for a while because the trapped air was stale, but it was a real, live ballroom. She caught her breath and walked in, amazed and kind of charmed.

The outer wall of the room consisted of a series of windows and tall French doors opening onto a secluded, overgrown courtyard. The other three walls were floor to ceiling mirrors. Four huge crystal chandeliers hung from the ceiling, and the sunlight streaming in through the dust-covered windows bounced off the mirrors and the glass and the gleaming marble floor and refracted around until the whole space glittered like a jewel.

Katie clasped her hands in front of her and stopped in the middle of the room, forgetting she was lost, forgetting she was hunted, forgetting everything but the beautiful, shining place.

“There you are.” Luc’s deep voice interrupted her daydreams and she spun around. He limped into the room on his crutches with Spot padding softly at his side. “I got worried when Spot came back without you, so I thought we’d better come to the rescue.”

“Good idea,” she admitted, then smiled. “I’m not exactly sure how I would have gotten back.”

He returned her smile and the brackets appeared briefly around his mouth, then he looked at the mirrors and the glass. “How’d you get here, anyway?”

“I have absolutely no idea, but I sure was lucky.” Katie’s enthusiasm bubbled over. “Isn’t it wonderful?”

“Uh, if you say so. I haven’t been in this room for a while. I kind of forgot it was here.” He shrugged one shoulder in a casual male sort of way. “Doesn’t smell too bad.”

Katie made an exasperated noise. “Way to ruin the mood, Vasco.”

“Don’t you think it’s just a little bit over the top? Like a lot of the rest of the place.”

“I think it’s magical.” Katie crossed her arms over her chest and glared at him.

“Magical?” He quirked his eyebrows at her. “That’s strong, isn’t it?”

“No.” Katie shook her head firmly. “Magical.”

“Huh. Well, to each their own.” Luc gazed into the mirrors. A strange, remote expression crossed his face. “They say that my great-aunt Isobel held huge parties in this room,” he said. “All of the Broadway actors came down from New York and looked very decorative.”

“That’s just the way I pictured it.” Katie laughed. “The ladies would have worn beautiful ball gowns, and the men would all be in tuxedos—”

Luc shot her a quick grin. “Isobel was hanging around in the seventies and eighties, so it was mostly blue jeans and cocaine. I think you have the wrong century.”

“Hey buddy, this is my fantasy. I’ll picture it however I like.” She glanced at him from under her eyelashes. “Were you here?” She tried to imagine a little Luc in a tiny tuxedo, standing and watching the people dance.

A shadow flickered in Luc’s eyes. For a second she thought he might not even answer her. Spot whined.

“No,” he said finally. “No, I wasn’t here.”

Katie was dying to ask why not, but a closer look at his face made her decide to change the subject instead.

“Well, I don’t care what you say, I still think this would be the perfect place for a really classy party. The kind where they hire a string quartet instead of a bar band.”

“Have you ever been to one of those things? They’re as boring as hell.”

Katie stilled. She looked around the room again, but now the ghosts of beautiful men and women did not charm.

“Hey, you okay?”

She shook her head. “Sorry. I was just thinking. Actually I have been to a party like that. Once. A couple of years ago.”

“What happened?” He was much closer, moving quietly even on the crutches.

“Nothing.”

“I don’t think so.” Before she knew what was happening, his large, warm hand touched her jaw, then slid around to the nape of her neck. He gently raised her chin until she was looking at him, then rubbed the rough, calloused pad of his thumb over her bottom lip, softly, like a kiss. He had such beautiful eyes, she thought, staring into them, her mind dazed. They were lighter in the direct sunlight, almost amber, and surrounded by long, sooty lashes.

“Tell me,” he murmured, his hand moving to cup her cheek. She shook her head again. She didn’t want to, but found herself talking anyway.

“My foster sister, Melanie, convinced me to go. She got me the invitation. A friend of hers was taking her, and she wanted me to come along. I was so excited that I couldn’t sleep. I’d never been to a real formal ball before. It took us weeks to find the right dresses. The right shoes. We spent a lot of money.”

“Did you go alone?” He had tensed. She couldn’t figure out why he seemed to be getting upset over something he would probably find inconsequential.

“No. Well, I wasn’t supposed to. Melanie set me up on a blind date with her brother. Foster brother,” Katie amended and laughed a little. “I keep forgetting he isn’t her real brother. They met at the horrible foster home where she lived before she came to us. Anyway, she thought I would like Bruce, and she’d been trying to get him to meet me.” She looked away, flustered by the intensity she saw in Luc’s dark, dark eyes. “So I said I’d go.”

She remembered how long it had taken Melanie to talk her into it. None of her brothers had been available—or willing—to act as an escort, and Mel had insisted that it should be a real date anyway. Then Bruce had actually agreed to go with her. It had all seemed too good to be true. She’d let herself get swept up in Melanie’s enthusiasm. Stories about Bruce had fascinated her for years. She could admit now that she’d been infatuated with him. Or maybe with the idea of him. She remembered her giddy excitement, her dreams of what might start between them. Like a fairy tale.

Katie turned away from Luc and wrapped her arms around her chest, almost defensively. She really didn’t know why she was telling him all of this. He couldn’t possibly be interested. Maybe she was just talking because he seemed to be listening.

“I walked into that party in my new dress and my new shoes, and thought I was some pretty hot stuff. I felt like Cinderella that night,” she murmured. “Until the clock struck twelve.”

“He stood you up?” Luc’s normally smooth voice was deep and gravelly. Almost angry. Katie glanced at him, then away. She blushed as she remembered how humiliated she’d been when she’d finally realized Bruce wasn’t going to show.

“Yes. Yes, he did. Oh, he called Mel the next day and made some poor excuse, but we both knew he was lying.” She shrugged. “Maybe Mel pressured him too much, and he just said he’d do it in the first place out of pity.”

“Maybe he was an idiot.”

“Maybe.” Katie looked at the endless reflections in the mirrors. “Sometimes you just don’t know what’s going to happen. Bruce didn’t show up, but Tom was there.”

“Tom?”

“My ex-fiancé.”

He was quiet for another long minute. “You met him at that party?”

“I was pretty upset.” Understatement. “Tom came over and asked if I was all right. He seemed so nice and was so handsome that I thought I’d fallen in love with him at first sight. He was real, you see, not just some faceless guy. He asked me out on a date. We were together for two and a half years.” She laughed bitterly. “God.”

Luc shifted. “And did you?”

“Did I what?”

“Fall in love at first sight?”

“No.” Katie didn’t know why there were tears in her eyes, but as soon as she blinked them away, more replaced them. “No. It was just an illusion. Deep down I guess I always knew that, but I didn’t want to admit it until way, way too late.”

“The guy who stood you up was an asshole,” Luc muttered.

“Oh, it wasn’t his fault that I got mixed up with Tom,” she whispered. “It was mine. I’m the one who wanted the dream. I’m the one who built it. Bruce had a lucky escape because if he’d been there I probably would have built the dream on him instead of Tom. Stupid.”

She studied the marble-tiled floor and didn’t even hear him move until his old running shoes came into her line of vision. A gentle hand raised her chin again, turning her face up to his.

“Melanie’s brother was stupid, Katie, not you,” he said quietly.

She stared, trying to understand him. Especially since he “sure as hell didn’t want to touch her again.”

“He should have shown up, Katie,” Luc murmured. “He would have built a dream on you too.”

It was difficult to breathe. “I don’t think—”

The words died in her throat when Luc touched her hair softly, his fingers working into the curls at the side of her face. His breath was warm on her skin, and she saw that his eyes were hooded and filled with something she couldn’t name. His lips touched first one cheek, then the other. Tasting. He lingered on the damp trail of her tears, then his mouth covered hers. He kissed her sweetly, deeply, passionately. Her glasses fogged up.

When he pulled away slightly, his low laugh was just a whisper of sound. “Holy God, what the hell am I doing?”

“I don’t know.” She sounded breathless, as if she’d just run a marathon. But how could she help it when he’d just stolen all of the air in the room? “What the hell are you doing?”

His mouth, his wicked, wicked mouth, quirked. “If you have to ask, I must not be doing it right.”

“But you sure as hell don’t want to touch me again,” she reminded him. “It’s unprofessional. David called you on the carpet for it. I’m under your protection, and you take that seriously.”

He was quiet.

“And I don’t want you to touch me again either,” she continued, perhaps a little too quickly. “It didn’t mean anything and, even though it turns out that Liza isn’t an issue, it’s still a big mistake.”