Harper Allen - Covert Cowboy

His unforeseen change of subject startled her. “Lunch?” she ventured. She passed a shaky hand across her forehead. “I know I had an apple this afternoon.”

“Merde, it’s no wonder you look like you’re about to take another header on me,” Con muttered ungallantly. “What the hell were you thinking, going without food for so long when you’re supposed to be eating for two?”

“I was about to order in a pizza or something when you showed up on my doorstep.” Marilyn’s dizziness subsided. She tried to pull her arm away but he didn’t relinquish it. “And for your information, women aren’t encouraged to eat for two anymore when they’re pregnant.”

“When they start out as scrawny as you were three months ago they should. Show me what you’ve got in the fridge and I’ll make you a meal.”

Releasing her arm, he shrugged out of his suit jacket and slung it over the back of the sofa. He looked down at the leather shoulder holster he was wearing as if he’d forgotten it was there, made a low sound of annoyance, and slipped out of it, too, laying it beside his jacket.

Her first annoyed impulse was to take him up on his scrawny remark. She was going to have to let it go, Marilyn admonished herself edgily. They’d gotten way off track here, and—

She jerked her head up. “What do you mean, the public isn’t going to know?”

“Just what I said. The public isn’t going to know, the police aren’t going to know, Mills & Grommett isn’t going to know. What you told me tonight about Corso stealing viral stock is our ace in the hole and I don’t intend to lay it on the table just yet.” He looked surprised. “You didn’t think I was going to let you take the heat for this, did you, cher’?”

“But I deserve to.” She pressed her lips together. “We can’t just keep this information to ourselves, Con.”

“I’ll make sure the right people are informed.” He grimaced. “But in this case, the local authorities aren’t the right people. I’m pretty sure DeMarco’s bought off some of the boys in blue, and although I’d be willing to trust the rest of the department with my life there’s no way of knowing right now who’s dirty and who’s not. If one of his paid informants gets word to him that we’re on his nephew’s trail, both Corso and DeMarco will sink out of sight as completely as an old she-gator and her pup in a swamp.”

He smiled tightly. “And as a born-and-bred Louisiana boy like me knows, it’s the gator you don’t see that’s most dangerous. No, we’re going to let them keep thinking they’re safe. Meanwhile, we’ll be gator-hunting. And baby-hunting, too,” he added in a softer tone. “I don’t know what DeMarco wants with your half sister’s baby, but I know he’s definitely behind the kidnapping.”

I have a chance to save Sky. Marilyn felt as if a crack of light had just pierced the clouds that had shadowed her world for the past four months. Tremulous hope leaped in her.

“Oh, Con, I’d give anything to bring him home safely! You don’t know what a nightmare it’s been since the day Josh phoned me and told me he’d been taken.”

“I’ve got a pretty good idea of what you’ve been going through.” He hesitated, and then his hands came up to lightly clasp her shoulders. “And I know that night in your office never would have happened if you’d been able to turn to your family for support.”

She shook her head in sharp negation. “That night in my office never would have happened if you hadn’t been a stranger. Right now wouldn’t be happening—I couldn’t go to anyone in my family about how I provided the opportunity for Tony to get his hands on that virus.”

She frowned, wondering how she could make him understand. It was important that he understand, she realized in faint surprise. She didn’t know why, but it was.

“My father divorced my mother and remarried when I was just a little girl,” she said slowly. “He insisted on retaining custody of Josh, and didn’t contest it when Mother decided to move back to Boston with me. I was only five years old and I adored my father, so instead of blaming him I blamed his new wife. I decided she’d been the one who’d persuaded him he didn’t need me anymore.”

“That’s Celia Langworthy?” Con’s gaze was shadowed. “I remember reading her name in one of the police reports.”

“Celia Grace Langworthy.” Marilyn tried to keep the censure from her voice. “I don’t think I’ll ever fully forgive her. Who knows, my parents might have gotten back together again if she hadn’t come along.”

She shrugged. “I’m not a little girl anymore and I’ve even come to see that she makes my father happier than my mother ever did, but I still can’t feel close to the woman. She’s an ex-southern belle type—fussy and fluttery. And I guess I’ve always felt it would be disloyal to Mother to forget that Celia replaced her. So I became an outsider in my own family, never feeling I could be myself with them, always knowing there was a barrier between us. Now I almost prefer it that way.”

“I’d better stay a stranger, then.” A corner of his mouth lifted in wry appraisal. “If we’re going to be working together and living in the same building for the next little while, I’d like the barriers to stay down.”

“Living in the same building?”

“I’ve taken the loft upstairs on a short lease,” Con said offhandedly. “I like what you’ve done with your place better, especially that mobile. Who’s the artist?”

She was beginning to know the way the man operated, Marilyn thought. He was a master at distraction, not only when he was performing some baffling piece of sleight-of-hand, but in any conversational confrontation, too. Except this time she wasn’t going to allow herself to be distracted.

“A local. The LoDo area’s an artistic haven,” she said firmly. “Which as a new resident you might find interesting, Ducharme. Why did you sublet the Dickenson’s loft?”

“I needed a base of operations for while I was in Denver. I wanted that base to be near you.” He fixed her with the same steady gaze as before, but this time she instinctively felt he was telling her the truth. “DeMarco isn’t a cute movie gangster, sugar. He’s the real deal, and as cold-blooded as they come. From the moment you became pregnant with his nephew’s baby you were in danger, because that made you the link between him and the Langworthys—and if he finds out that Corso’s theft from Mills & Grommett’s been discovered, he’ll want to sever that link.”

His grip on her shoulders tightened. “DeMarco took one person away from me. I won’t give him the chance to do it a second time, cher’.”

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