Nancy Warren - A Valentine from Harlequin - Six Degrees of Romance

Lowering her head very slowly, she sighed. “If I knew the son of a bitch who was responsible for putting my father through all that, I honestly don’t know if I could keep myself from doing them harm. Physical harm.” Then finally, she looked up. “What about you, Johnny? What are you doing here? You’re supposed to be dead.”

He pursed his lips, glanced her way. “I’m the son of a bitch who put your father through all that,” he said. “My name is Michael Drummond. I work undercover for the US Government’s Organized Crime Drug Enforcement Task Force. And your father’s arrest was the result of a year-long investigation in which I played the role of Jonathon Stone, got close to him, and gathered evidence against him.”

Charlotte felt as if he’d just stuck a hot blade straight into her chest. “And one of the ways you got close to him…was by getting close to me?”

He lowered his head.

“You used me? It was all just an act? Everything you said to me, everything we said to each other? It was just a game to you?” She stared at him in disbelief. “My God, you made me fall in love with you. You asked me to marry you—all just so you could destroy my father?”

He couldn’t seem to hold her eyes. “I didn’t mean for things between us to get…as far as they did. Your father was pushing for the marriage, and I ran out of reasons to put him off. He was beginning to suspect—”

“So you decided it was necessary to rip my heart out and crush it in your hands, all to keep your cover intact. Hell, Johnny, that makes perfect sense.”

“Michael. My name is Michael. And I’m sorry.”

“Not as sorry as you’re going to be,” she whispered as she closed her hand around the gun, lifted it between them, and pointed it at him. It was hard to see through all the tears, but she didn’t suppose that would matter at such close range, anyway.

“Stop the car, Michael,” she said, and to his ears it sounded as if his name, his real name, tasted bad on her lips.

“I don’t blame you for being angry,” he began.

“Angry? Angry?” She laughed, a short, harsh sound that made his belly tighten with guilt. He could hear the pain in her laugh. “I’m not angry, Michael. What I’m feeling right now is ice-cold hatred. I hate you. I hate you.”

“I don’t blame you for that, either. It’s good that you hate me. Better for you that way. But you’re not going to shoot me, Charlotte. You’re not the kind of woman who could kill a man.”

“Maybe I didn’t used to be.” She sniffed. “Then again, maybe you never really knew me as well as you thought you did. God knows it’s possible.”

He shook his head. “I was coming back for you.”

“Liar. Stop the car.”

He kept driving. “I know it sounds like a lie. Something any man would say to a woman holding a gun to his head, but it’s the truth. It killed me to leave you the way I did, Charlotte. But I had to.”

“Why?”

“Because your father was on to me right at the end. He told the drug lord he was working for that I was a cop, and a hit was put out on me. If I hadn’t “died” on my way to the wedding, Charlotte, I’d have been killed shortly afterward. Your father had it all worked out with Carl Magenta.”

She lifted her brows. It made him hurt to see her beautiful face so ravaged by emotion. The tears had burned red paths into her cheeks and her eyes were swollen and bloodshot. “Uncle Carl?” she asked. “A drug lord?”

“Yeah. And unlike your father, he lived to go to trial.”

“Where he was acquitted of all charges.”

“A hung jury is not an acquittal. There’s already an investigation into jury tampering underway. Those jurors were threatened, Charlotte. Their lives and their spouses and their kids were threatened. That’s the only reason ‘Uncle Carl’ is still on the streets.”

“Carl Magenta wouldn’t hurt a fly,” Charlotte whispered.

“And those men who are chasing us right now—just who do you think they work for? Hmm?”

While he let that sink in, he gave her a bit more to think about. “You were safe, so long as you believed me dead. Carl assumed you’d been taken in just as he and your father had. But then you came here, to the same city where his spies had already tracked me. You showed up at the same party, were probably even seen talking to me there, and so they have to assume you know. That you were in on the whole plan with me, all along.”

She blinked slowly. “You’re saying Carl wants me dead? Me, his precious, pregnant, honorary niece?”

“That’s exactly what I’m saying. I left the way I did, without telling you a thing about any of this, because it was the only way to keep you safe, short of killing the bastard in cold blood. An option I might have taken by now, if I could get close enough to the son of a bitch. And just so you know, the blonde at the party was one of Carl’s associates. I was hoping to get to him through her.”

“So the blonde meant nothing to you, and you only broke my heart to save my life,” she whispered. “Doesn’t that sound noble?”

“Yeah, it does. Which is why I feel compelled to ask why you’re still pointing that gun at me.”

“Because I don’t believe a word of it. Now stop the car.”

“I’ll stop the car when we get where we’re going. If you still want to shoot me, you can do it there, okay?”

She blinked, then suddenly closed her eyes and clenched her jaw.

“Charlotte?” The car swerved as he spent too much time looking at her and not enough looking at the road. “Charlotte, what is it?”

“Nothing!” She barked the word, keeping the gun on him, though her hand shook badly.

Finally, she opened her eyes again, lowered the gun to her lap, but kept it clasped tightly in her hands. “How much farther?”

“Half an hour,” he said. “It’ll be safe there. I promise. I know this has all been a terrible shock to you, Charlotte. I know you don’t want to believe anything bad about your father, and I don’t blame you. If you give me time, I can show you proof that everything I’ve said is true.”

“That’s not possible.”

“Of course it’s possible. We have all kinds of evidence.”

“Really? How do you document that you weren’t just using me all along, Michael? What physical evidence do you have that will convince me that every time we made love, you meant one thing you whispered to me? That you ever cared about me in the least? You told me you’d love me until you died, Michael.” She searched his face with eyes so probing they felt like blades. “You’re still alive.”

He drove in silence for a while, saying nothing at all. He didn’t know what he could say that would sound any more genuine to her. She was right; he had used her. Lied to her. Made promises he knew he would probably never be able to keep.

But he’d wanted to keep them.

She leaned back against the headrest, closed her eyes, and after a few more miles slipped by, he thought she might have fallen asleep. It was good for her to rest. She’d been through so much tonight, God, so much in the past year. Losing him, her father, and then…

He glanced down at her belly. She was pregnant, carrying his child. He didn’t think she had it in her to lie about something like that. His baby. Due any time now, by the looks of things. The thought of his child being born to a woman who hated him was not a pleasant one.

And yet, unless he could fix things, put Carl Magenta away for good, it wouldn’t matter who bore the child. It wouldn’t be safe. None of them would be safe, ever.

He turned at last onto the spiraling dirt road that lead up the small mountain to the cabin that was his only haven. It was where he hid out in between cases. It was where he retreated when he was being hunted like a dog and needed a few days off. It was the only place he felt truly safe, and it was a place he had never shared with another living soul.