Moonshine For Three (2 page)

"What do you want me to do, Rob?" I'm trying not to sound angry or scared, but I'll admit I'm a bit of both. "You want me to tell the chief I gotta back out ‘cause me and you've been involved with each other before? I'd lose my badge."

"So you're gonna sell me out instead?"

"Damn it, Robbie." I grind my teeth. "I came here to see if it was true, and then talk to you. See if we can work something out."

"Like what?"

"Like you lay low for a while," I say. "While I get the dogs off your scent."

Robert laughs. "Lay low? I got a fleet to run, Paul. There ain't a way I can lay low without losing my shirt here."

Before I can say anything, the hatch opens again. Glass clinks behind me. Footsteps. Clothes whispering with movement. I'm not sure what—

Bang!

I jump an instant before I realize it wasn't the gun. I look back as Alice locks the hatch she just slammed behind us.

"You check him for any pieces?" she asks.

"He took off his shoulder holster," Robert replies. "Check him for any others."

Glass clinks again, this time on the floor, and a moment later, high-heeled footsteps start toward me.

I roll my eyes. "Right ankle. It's the only other piece I've got."

She kneels beside me and yanks up the leg of my trousers. Then she pulls off my holster.

"Turn around," Robert says.

I do an about-face as Alice drops my second weapon on top of my first by Robert's feet.

"What now?" She folds her gloved arms beneath her half-exposed breasts. "What's his deal, Robbie?"

"His deal is he's a damned cop, now."

She eyes me. "A cop? Since when? I thought you said he was a—"

"He's a cop, now," Robert says through his teeth.

"What's a cop think he's gonna do all the way out here?" She looks at me and gives an ugly little snort. "Even a fed can't arrest nobody out here."

"I'm not here to—"

"We ought to tie him." Robert narrows his eyes at me. "First chance he gets, this one'll slip out of here or knock one of us cold."

"Good idea." She reaches for the door. "You stay with him, and I'll go find something to wrap him up with."

"There's some extra line in the boiler room." Robert keeps the barrel pointed straight at me and throws a sharp nod toward the hatch. "Go get as much as you can carry."

"I know, I know." She rolls her eyes, then opens the hatch and disappears through it.

The hatch bangs shut. Me and Robert are alone again. Just us and a gun.

"Got yourself a pretty girlfriend now, don't you?" Bitterness sharpens the edges of every word. "Even does all your little chores for you."

"Better than leaving her in here with you." He clenches his jaw and looks toward the hatch, the gun in his hand unmoving. "And Alice ain't my girlfriend."

I laugh. "She know that?"

Robert turns, his eyes narrow and cold. He brings up his left hand, and the glint of gold startles me like a muzzle flash just before he says, "She's my
wife
."

The words kick me in the gut. I can't even breathe.

"Your wife?" I whisper. "
You
of all people got
married?
"

The gun wobbles slightly. "People change, Paul."

"So you're a wanted crook," I say with a smirk, "but you're a family man, too?"

His glare sets my teeth on edge. I don't give a damn how respectable he thinks is. Married? Him?

But it does make sense. I should've known when she asked about me. If I was
that
Paul. Robert's no idiot, and he wouldn't have told some passing broad about a thing like that. He may be a crook, but Robert Parker's never been the kind of man who'd kill a woman to keep her quiet, so he wouldn't leak it to anyone he didn't trust to take it to the grave.

He doesn't say a word and neither do I. Don't know what he's thinking, but all I'm thinking is how I can get out of this situation. And what Alice did to turn Robert into a marrying man. What'd she give him that no one else did?

"
You know I ain't the kind to stick around long,
" was the last thing he ever said to me before tonight.

Yeah? What's changed, Robbie?

She comes back a few minutes later with ropes coiled on her slender arm.

Robert takes the ropes from her and holds out his gun, butt first. "Keep an eye on him. He moves, you know what to do."

"Got it." Alice points the pistol at me. She ain't one of those delicate broads who can't handle a gun, I can tell. The way she's holding it with two hands and keeping her feet apart and shoulders set, this is one girl who knows what kind of noise a gun can make. She ain't afraid of it, and she ain't afraid of me.

Robert slams the chair down against the bulkhead along one side of the cramped room. "Sit."

I don't move.

"He told you to sit," Alice says.

I sit. Robert ties my hands behind my back. Then he coils the rope around my ankle and the leg of the chair. My other foot is still free, and I've got visions of connecting it with his jaw, but that wife of his will have my brains splattered on the bulkhead if I do.

"Now. Paul." Robert stands, dusting off his hands on his expensive trousers. "How's about you tell the lady and me the real reason you're on our boat?"

"I ain't talking," I say with my jaw tight. "You keep me down here all night like an animal, your boat will be crawling with men looking for me tomorrow morning."

He laughs dryly. "Cops can't do a thing out here. You know that."

"Not legally." I glare up at him. "But if one of their own is missing, I'd like to see you, or the law, keep them from finding me."

His laughter stops. Eyes narrow, he says, "Then talk, and I'll decide if you can go."

"Not while you've got me tied. I came here to talk as men, not as your damned prisoner."

"All right, then." Robert shrugs. He takes the gun from Alice with a murmured, "Thank you, darling," and points it at me. "Let the men come, and if they find you, it'll be with a cinder block tied to your feet and seawater in your gullet."

I stare him down and he stares right back at me. No one's moving. No one's speaking. My guns are at Robert and Alice's feet. He's got a pistol pointed at me. My hands and ankles are bound.

And Alice is standing behind him, arms folded beneath her ample, barely-covered chest, eyes flicking back and forth between her husband and me. Something's going on in that head of hers, but I haven't got a clue what it might be.

Then she says, "He really is
that
Paul, ain't he?"

Robert bristles. His eyes slide toward her, then me, then away from us both. He says nothing.

Alice grins. She looks at me, and her first step in my direction makes my heart skip. Another step, and I gulp. She's going to get us both killed. I'm tied up in a room with a man who's got a gun and a jealous side the size of California, and his wife's coming at me like a gambler to a table.

"You know, Robbie," she says. "I can see why you've never forgotten him."

Robert stands straighter. The corner of his mouth twitches. "What are you talking about?"

She flashes a coquettish smile and inches closer to me. As she slides her arm around my shoulders, she says, "I always wondered how a lady killer like you ever went near a man." She raises my chin with a single gloved finger and makes me look straight into her kohl-lined eyes. "Now I know, don't I?"

"Get away from him, Alice," Robert growls.

"Robbie." She's looking at me but talking to him. "He's not gonna hurt me. He's all tied up, you see?"

"Alice…"

"Oh, lighten up," she says, and there's an edge to the singsong tone of her voice. "After everything you told me about him, I'm curious, that's all."

Before Robert can tell her not to, and before I can suggest she not screw around when the man's got a gun in his hand, Alice eases herself onto my lap. She moves in close, too, pressing against me so there's no keeping myself from reacting to her. My heart's going fast, because if Robert sees the effect his wife has on me…

"You like women, Paul Hanson?" She wiggles a little, because she knows damn well I do, and runs a fingertip along my jaw. "Or you just have eyes for big, strapping men like Robert?"

"Alice," he growls.

I clench my teeth, trying to keep them from chattering. I don't know what to say. Haven't got the foggiest idea what'll rein her back without setting him off.

She grins. "You as good a kisser as Robbie says you are?"

"
Alice.
" Robert's getting dangerous. "Stop this now."

She turns her head at him. "Come on, Robbie." She grins again, but her voice ain't all fun and jokes this time. "Everything you've told me about him, I want to see if it's true."

He sets his jaw and looks away. "It's all true. Of course it is."

"Is it?" She looks at me again, and the tip of her tongue runs along her lower lip. Then she wriggles in my lap, grinding her rear end against me. Her grin gets even bigger. "Well, I can tell at least
one
thing is true."

"Alice, for God's sake…"

She kisses me. Not just a little peck or nothing like that. She kisses me like her husband ain't standing right there, or she ain't even married at all. I tell my lips not to move, but there's no just sitting there and taking a kiss like that, just like there's no stopping my cock from pressing against her rear. Much more of this, there won't be any stopping—

"Alice." Robert's voice sends a chill through me. When she breaks the kiss and looks at him, he says, "Get.
Up
."

She glares back at him. "I don't know what you're so sore about," she says, and he has to notice how out of breath she is. "You kissed him. Why can't I?"

"Just get up." He ain't snarling now. Still dangerous, still volatile, but there's something else in his voice.

"Oh,
Robbie
." Alice huffs, then finally stands. "I don't get what the problem is."

He puts a protective hand on her waist and glares past her at me. I think he's glaring.

Maybe?

No, I know that look.

He's angry, but that's not all.

Robert pulls Alice closer to him and leans down like he's going to kiss her neck, but he pauses. Closes his eyes. Takes in a long breath of her, and I squirm in my chair because I know what she smells like now.

"Damn you, Robbie." Alice wrenches away. "You always said I'd have liked him. I was just seeing if you were right."

"I know." There's nothing in his tone to tell me one way or another what he's thinking. He reaches for her again, and quietly says, "That's… that's an expensive dress." His hand moves to her back. "Sitting on him like that, you're… you're going to wrinkle it."

Alice's lips part. My spine straightens.

Robert doesn't look at either of us. He just watches his hand drift downward, and as it does, her dress loosens. First over her shoulders, then around her middle.

He tugs it gently and lets it slip off, and my heart's going mad as the red dress lands around her feet.

I hold my breath. Robbie will probably shoot me, but I give myself a look anyway. Slender, white legs under black stockings that stop partway up her thighs. An auburn triangle of thin hair between her legs. A smoothly curving waist sculpted just right for a man to grab on and hold on. Beautiful breasts barely restrained by a black brassiere.

And Robbie's fingers drifting from between her breasts to her stomach, sending a shiver right through me because it's been too long since he's touched me that way.

She slides a gloved hand over his and draws it up to her mouth. Eyes locked right on me, right on mine, she sucks one finger into her mouth. Then two. Her rouged cheeks hollow, and Robert pulls in a breath through his teeth.

"Alice…" He's not stopping her this time. Not telling her to quit, or reminding her I'm here. It's like he's just saying her name because he wants to taste it.

My mouth waters. Her kiss is still tingling on my lips, and without thinking about it, I run my tongue across my lower lip.

Robert sees it. His eyes flick toward my mouth, my eyes, my mouth again.

Something in his expression changes. He tugs his hand free from Alice's grasp. Disappointment thins her lips as fear sends my heartbeat ever upward, but then he nudges her toward me.

"Sit on his lap again." That growl is deep and low, a sound I remember from countless nights years ago. "But face me this time."

She looks over her shoulder. I can't see her face, but I can imagine the question in her eyes. He smiles, nods toward me, and I swear he winks at her.

Alice steps out of her fallen dress and does as she's told, high heels echoing off the tight confines of this tiny room. I'm out of breath before she even comes to rest on me, and once she's on my lap, on my painfully hard cock, I'm out of my mind. She leans back against me. Her scent—sweet perfume mixed with faint remnants of tobacco—makes the room shift even harder than the waves outside.