Sherryl Woods - The Calamity Janes - Gina and Emma

“But—”

He held up his hand. “Don’t even try to defend him, Gina. The man is a con artist.”

“And you think I am, as well,” she concluded.

“The jury’s still out on that, but at the very least you demonstrated lousy judgment in choosing your business partner. Whose idea was it for the two of you to go into business together, anyway? Yours or Rinaldi’s?”

“I’m not going to answer that,” she said. “Frankly, you should know better than to ask.”

“We’re just chatting,” he said blandly. “Getting acquainted.”

“We’re already acquainted. I think getting to know each other any better would be a risky business.”

“You could be right about that,” he agreed with apparent regret.

Before they could continue, several of Gina’s friends showed up. Radiating indignation, they stood beside the table glaring at Rafe. They might not understand what was going on between Gina and him, but obviously they were prepared to leap to her defense.

“What is he doing here?” Emma demanded. “Is he harassing you again?”

“No. He was here all alone. Since I was killing time waiting for you guys, I took pity on him and invited him to join me,” Gina admitted.

“Why?” Emma said. She gave Gina an apologetic look. “I bugged Lauren till she told me about the deposition. Sorry. He’s not trying to question you without counsel present, is he?”

Rafe chuckled. “I wouldn’t dream of it.”

Emma drew herself up. “I should hope not. I’d have you disbarred.”

Gina grinned. “As you know, Emma is an attorney.”

“Yours?” Rafe asked. “Did you change your mind and hire her?”

“No,” Gina said.

“But I will be if she needs me, and if she needs a New York attorney, I can arrange that, too,” Emma responded, gaze narrowed. “Does she need legal representation?”

“Not if she’s innocent.”

“Innocent of what?” Emma asked.

“Never mind. I am,” Gina said.

“Back up a minute,” Lauren said. “I thought she was just some sort of witness you were trying to question. Why is there any doubt about Gina’s innocence? Gina has never done anything illegal in her entire life.”

“Not even when Cassie begged her to,” Karen said in an obvious attempt to lighten the tense mood. “She was always the voice of calm and reason.” She grinned. “Not that the rest of us ever paid any attention to her.”

Gina held up a hand to prevent a recitation of the pranks the Calamity Janes had been involved with years ago. A few of them might have skirted the fringes of the law. A clever attorney—which Rafe most definitely was—might be able to use them to suggest a pattern of behavior likely to culminate in this massive swindle.

“Let’s not go there,” she pleaded. “Could we change the subject?”

“In a minute,” Emma promised. “First, I’d like to remind Mr. O’Donnell that sometimes the innocent need better representation than the guilty, especially if some shark is out to get them.” She regarded Rafe pointedly. “Watch your step, Mr. O’Donnell.”

Her gaze shifted to Gina. “Stay away from him,” she advised.

“I wish I could,” Gina told her.

“I’m crushed,” he said.

“Something tells me a freight train couldn’t crush your ego,” she retorted.

“Making judgments about me again?”

She shrugged. “I guess that makes us even, doesn’t it?”

He laughed and slid from the booth. “See you around, Gina.”

“I’m sure,” she said with a heartfelt sigh.

Somehow, though, in the last few minutes she had discovered that Rafe was far more complex and intriguing than she’d originally guessed. That made the prospect of bumping into him everywhere she turned a lot less daunting. She figured that was a very bad sign, given that the man wanted to lock her away.

* * *

Rafe assumed Gina wouldn’t be going anywhere for a while. He had a feeling these friendly gabfests went on and on once the five women got together. Just in case he was wrong, he walked down the block, leaned against the bumper of his rental car and placed a call on his cell phone to the paralegal who was doing follow-up on the case back in New York.

“Have you been able to get into the bank records of Café Tuscany or Rinaldi or Petrillo yet?” he asked Joan Lansing.

“The judge is looking over the paperwork now,” Joan told him. “We should know something before the end of the day.”

“I need those records. We need to see if any withdrawals and deposits match up.”

“I know, boss. I think we made a good case to the judge, though, if you ask me, that money is in some off-shore account by now, not in a personal checking account at the corner bank.”

Rafe sighed. “You’re probably right, but we need to know for certain.”

“Anything else I can do on this end?”

“Stay on that investigator. He should have found something on Rinaldi’s whereabouts by now.”

“Will do. No clues from Ms. Petrillo?”

“None. I’m actually beginning to believe she might not know anything, not about the con and not about Rinaldi’s disappearance.”

“How is that possible? They were partners.”

“We already know the man was a smooth operator. She could have been taken in by him, too.”

“Uh-oh, boss. I think I hear that knight on a white horse charging to the rescue.”

“Could be,” he conceded. “But please don’t tell Lydia. She’ll never let me hear the end of it.”

He glanced up just in time to see Gina and the other women emerging from Stella’s. They piled into Lauren’s fancy sports utility vehicle. Rafe got behind the wheel of his own rental car and started after them. His pulse began to pound when he realized they were heading straight for the small airstrip on the outskirts of town.

Sure enough, Lauren turned in, drove to a hangar operated by a charter company and parked. Blood boiling, Rafe stalked across the tarmac to intercept them.

“Going somewhere?” he asked Gina.

“You followed us?” she countered, her expression indignant.

“Of course I did. It’s a good thing, too. Are you planning on skipping town?”

“Oh, for heaven’s sakes,” Emma snapped. “There is nothing to prevent her from going anywhere, Mr. O’Donnell. Back off.”

“I can’t do that.”

“Then you’ll have to charter your own plane, because you’re not getting on board with us,” Lauren snapped.

Rafe ignored them both and kept his gaze on Gina. “Why the sudden decision to run?”

“I’m not running anywhere.”

“Then why didn’t you mention this trip when we were talking?”

“It didn’t come up. Besides, Lauren was still working out the details. I didn’t know if we were going.”

“Going where?” he asked.

She frowned at him, but she answered with barely concealed impatience. “I am going to Denver with my friends because Cassie’s mother is having surgery. We want to be there to support her. It’s not a big deal. We’ll be back in a day or so, as soon as we know that everything’s okay.”

Rafe caught the unmistakable worry in her eyes, the hint of urgency in her voice. Because of his career, because of his mother’s short-term attention span with men, he was a cynical man. There weren’t a lot of people he trusted. Something told him he could trust Gina, at least about this.

Finally he nodded and stepped out of her path. “Don’t make me regret this,” he warned.

“I won’t,” she promised. Her lips curved into the beginnings of a smile. “Careful, Rafe. Someone might get the idea that you have a heart.”

“They’d be wrong,” he said tightly, then watched her go. As she was about to take the final step into the plane, he called to her. She looked back. “I hope everything goes okay with Cassie’s mother.”