by Anne Stuart
The man's eyes crinkled with amusement. "Me neither. But since none of us were born then, who's to know the difference? Hi, Helen."
"Hi, Mel. This is a friend of mine, Jamey…"
"Just Jamey," Rafferty interrupted, holding out his hand. Despite the occasional lapses, this was too well-informed a crowd to make free with his last name.
"Mel Amberson." The older man took it, giving it a decent shake. "You guys want to drink that swill, or do you want to know where they keep the good stuff?"
"Uh, Mel, it's a little early for liquor," Helen said, setting her untouched cup of whiskey back down on the table.
"No, babe, I'm talking about the really good stuff. Pure Colombian."
"Mel," Helen warned.
Mel grinned. "Coffee, honey. I'm talking about coffee."
"I'll be your slave for life," she said, casting a mischievous glance up at Rafferty. "Mel likes to tease me. He's known me since I was a baby, and he still thinks I'm wet behind the ears."
"To put it mildly. I was on the force with her old man. He and I were even partners for a couple of years, until I decided there were more honest ways to make a living."
"Mel's a stockbroker. A very successful one."
"That's just another word for professional gambler," Mel said. "The main trick is to earn money and keep a clean conscience."
Rafferty found he could laugh. "How do you manage to do that?"
"That's where I use my police background. I investigate. Find out who's dirty, who's clean. Who runs a tight shop, who rips off little old ladies, who screws up the environment, who has decent pensions and benefits. I find that the happier the workers, the stronger the company, and the stronger the company, the better the profits." He gave Rafferty a curious glance. "What do you do for a living, Jamey?"
"I'm retired," he said. "As a matter of fact, I used to be involved in gambling myself."
"Did you, now? How'd you do?"
Rafferty grinned, finally finding someone he liked. "Let's just say I had a certain gift for it." He hadn't even realized Helen had moved away until she reappeared, two mugs of coffee in hand. He took one, his fingers just brushing hers, and her eyes flew up to meet his for a brief, shaken moment before she stepped back.
"You say you're retired?" Mel said. "A young man like you? Ridiculous! If you ever need a job, look me up. I can always use someone with a certain gift. Picking the right stock isn't that much different from picking the right horse. You just have to have the talent."
For a moment it flashed before him, like a perfect jewel, just out of reach. The woman standing beside him, the scent of white roses mixing with the aroma of coffee. A job, a future, a life. And then it vanished like the pipe dream it was.
"I wish I could take you up on it," he said, not bothering to disguise his own regret. "But I can't stay."
"Says who?" Mel asked.
"He's been trying to convince me…" Helen began, and then her voice trailed off as he shot her a mild, warning look. "Been trying to convince me he'll settle down sooner or later," she continued smoothly. "But I'll believe it when I see it."
Mel nodded. "I can understand wanderlust," he said. "I had it myself. You two known each other long?"
"Long enough," Helen said, flashing her own warning look, and she threaded her arm through his.
"Your father met him? Or those brothers of yours?"
"Not yet," Rafferty drawled. "Should I be scared?"
Mel laughed. "If it were anybody else I'd say so. But you strike me as a man who can hold his own, even against five Chicago cops named Emerson."
"I imagine I can."
"Let me know if you change your mind," Mel said, clapping a hand on Rafferty's shoulder. "You got to settle down sooner or later, and I can always use a good man."
"That's the best offer I've had in a long time," he replied. "I wish I could say yes."
Mel looked between the two of them, and there was a very definite twinkle in his eyes. "I'm not sure if I believe that, son," he said. "But you keep me in mind if you ever need a job." A look of distaste crossed his face. "Lord, that little horror Greg is heading our way. I'm out of here, Helen. See ya."
"Let me walk you out," Rafferty said with a trace of desperation, but it was too late. Greg had already jumped in front of Mel, and beside him was a watered down version of Crystal Latour in her prime.
"This is Helen's friend," Greg gushed. "Have you ever seen anyone more marvelous?"
"Marvelous," the woman breathed. "Hi, Helen." She didn't even glance at Helen, her kohl-rimmed eyes glued to Rafferty.
"Hi, Clarissa," Helen muttered, and Rafferty could hear the annoyance in her voice. Clarissa had a quite spectacular body, one that usually would have interested Rafferty, but not today. Right now all he cared about was the slender, far more subtle woman beside him, not this brightly dressed creature looking him over as if he were a piece of blueberry pie.
Clarissa sidled up to him, and she smelled like Shalimar. He'd always hated Shalimar. "You look so realistic. Where did Helen find you?"
"He's a time traveler, Clarissa," Helen said irritably. "He actually comes from another century."
He looked at Helen and smiled. She was definitely annoyed with Clarissa. She was also undeniably jealous. It had been too long since he'd had time for someone to grow jealous over him. It felt good. It felt damned good. "I thought you decided it was just another planet," he said, and his eyes met hers in a rueful smile.
The tension was gone. "Mars," she agreed.
"Pluto," he corrected her, teasing.
"Well," Clarissa said, not one to be ignored, "you still look absolutely perfect for an occasion like today. You look just like one of those cold-blooded gangsters."
That artless statement drew his attention away from Helen. "I do? How would you define what they looked like?" he asked in a silken voice that should have warned the woman.
But Clarissa wasn't a sensitive soul. "Oh, you know what I mean. Ruthless. Sadistic. Amoral. Those men cared more about their clothes and their cars than they did about human life." Now that she'd got his full attention she was making the mistake of enjoying it. She tossed her mane of lacquered hair. "They were just a bunch of murdering hoodlums."
His smile was thin, threatening. "I don't think so."
Clarissa was still oblivious to his reaction. "I know what I'm talking about, Jamey," she insisted. "I've read…"
"The majority of men involved in the mob were family men," he said. "They earned money the only way they could to keep their families going during the Depression."
"Oh, grow up, Jamey!" Clarissa pleaded, almost getting her capped white teeth knocked down her throat for the trouble. "You've been seeing too many of Helen's old movies. No one believes that kind of romantic stuff about a bunch of cold-blooded killers anymore."
He wanted to refute her casual words. There were good, decent men, involved in not so good, not so decent work, and he wasn't that impressed with modern-day business in comparison. But the memory of Ricky Drago and his deadly usefulness wiped out any of Rafferty's possible defenses.
"Maybe you're right," he said instead, turning away from her.
She put her hand on his arm, possessively, and he was about to shake her off when he saw Helen's eyes narrow in rage. He left it there, enjoying the sensation of a woman caring enough to be angry. Angry enough to care.
"Where did you find this man, Helen?" Clarissa said again. "He's absolutely wonderful."
"He's mine," Helen said flatly.
Rafferty almost kissed her there and then. Instead he simply smiled, coolly, and detached Clarissa's clinging arm. "That I am," he agreed, and watched the blush rise to Helen's rouged cheeks.
Clarissa was a good sport. "Let me know if you get tired of him," she said, conceding defeat. "You know who you look like, Jamey? It's finally come to me."
"He looks like a cross between Humphrey Bogart and Cary Grant," Helen said sharply, and Rafferty almost expected to hear her say "he's min
e" again.
"Perhaps," Clarissa conceded. "But he's a lot taller. No, he looks exactly like one of the guys in an old photograph I was looking at last night. A gangster."
Rafferty took a slow, careful sip of his coffee. It was already cold, and the noise from the party was overwhelming. He knew what was coming next. He just wondered how Helen was going to react.
She was still innocent. "It's the suit," she said.
"Uh-uh. It's the face," Clarissa said. "He's the spitting image of one of the guys killed in the massacre. One of Bugs Moran's more trusted lieutenants. What was his name? Doherty? Gogarty? Something Irish like that. I remember… Rafferty!"
Helen dropped her coffee. It landed at Clarissa's feet, shattering, splashing Clarissa's sturdy white legs. Rafferty moved Helen in time, protecting her white dress from the stuff. "You've got a good memory," he said evenly. He looked down at Helen, at her white face and huge, shocked eyes. "You ready to go, Helen?"
She could only nod. He took her arm and she followed, docilely enough, as he led her through the noisy crowd. "This party is awful," he muttered, reaching for her coat and draping it around her shoulders.
She stopped, staring up at him. "Did you tell her to say that?"
"Say what?"
"I didn't tell anyone your last name. You must have told Clarissa…"
"Helen, I haven't been away from your side in the last thirty hours. When would I have told her? Besides, she seemed too stupid to be able to carry something like that off."
"Clarissa is a circuit court judge," Helen said.
"You're kidding."
"Most of the people here are lawyers and judges. Rafferty…" Her voice trailed off, and she shook her head.
"Let's get out of here, Helen. I don't want to waste my last day in Chicago like this."
It didn't require much persuasion. "All right," she said, heading for the door.
There was something to be said for Greg after all. They were out the door, standing on the sidewalk, when their host came barreling after them, pushing between them in his effort to catch Rafferty's arm.
Helen slipped in her very high heels, falling sideways as the car roared around the corner. Rafferty heard the noise with a sickening sense of horror, and his next move was pure instinct, shoving Greg out of the way, diving on top of Helen as the thunderous sound of machine-gun fire filled the chilly February air.
And then suddenly all was a hushed, horrified silence. Until Greg pulled himself to his feet, shook himself off and announced, "God, that was absolutely fabulous!"
The door to the garage was full of guests, staring wide-eyed at the street, and an enthusiastic cheer went up. Rafferty's heart was still racing too fast to control, and beneath him Helen lay soft and panting, staring up at him with the same sort of panic he was feeling. And unless he was wrong, the same sort of desire.
And then hands hauled him upright, pulling Helen to her feet as well, as Greg continued to bounce over the sidewalk. "I can't thank you enough, Jamey!" he announced. "I never thought of staging a drive-by shooting. It was fabulous, just fabulous."
The idiot hadn't noticed the bullet holes in the outer wall of the garage, or seen the chips of flying debris. The whole gaggle of slightly tipsy legal minds thought Ricky Drago's latest attempt was nothing more than a party game. Rafferty wanted to knock some heads together.
He controlled the effort. Drago was long gone, but that didn't mean he wasn't crazy enough to turn around and try it again. The sooner they got out of there, the better.
Besides, Helen was swaying slightly on her feet, and her color wasn't that much better than the off-white velvet dress that fitted her slender body so perfectly.
"Let's go home, Helen," he said, shaking off Greg's enthusiastic embrace and putting an arm around Helen's shoulder. The fox coat had ripped in their fall, and for a moment he had the sudden terrifying thought that she might have been hit after all.
But she was tougher than he would have thought. "Yes, let's," she said in a slightly shaken voice.
"Home," Greg echoed archly. "Things have moved pretty quickly between you two."
"Try not to be too big a jerk, Greg," Mel said, stepping forward. His faded blue eyes surveyed them, and Rafferty knew that unlike the others, he hadn't missed a thing. "You need any help, Jamey?"
"We'll be fine."
Mel nodded, glancing at the bullet holes in Greg's brick garage. "The offer still holds, you know."
Rafferty managed a tight smile. "I only wish I could."
Helen was silent as he helped her into the car, silent when he leaned forward and fastened the seat belt around her. He was getting better with the stupid metal buckles, and Helen was in no shape to criticize. As a sop to her nerves he even fastened his own belt, as a sop to his own nerves he lit a cigarette, waiting to hear her start nagging. She said nothing as he pulled into traffic, barely missing an oncoming truck.
"Did you arrange that?" she asked finally, her voice slightly husky.
He glanced over at her. She'd managed to pull herself together, at least a bit, and he wondered how much he dared tell her. Whether she'd believe in Ricky Drago any more than she believed in him.
He shook his head. "It must have been someone else's clever idea. I wish to God they'd warned us. It scared the hell out of me. I thought those were real bullets."
He could see the tension in her shoulders relax slightly. "I almost thought so, too," she said. "It…it frightened me."
"Hell, it frightened me, too. I bet it was Greg's idea. He's enough of an idiot to think it might be entertaining."
"You're right," Helen said, breathing more evenly now. "A couple of years ago he had four men come in with machine guns loaded with blanks. Two men dressed as policemen and two in period clothes. We knew it was all part of the act, but when they pretended to fire on us it felt… real."
Rafferty closed his eyes for a brief moment, then opened them in time to miss a fire hydrant. "I know what you mean," he said roughly. He glanced out the rearview mirror, but there was no sign of Drago, at least for now. "What the hell would you want to go to a party like that for? Apart from the sheer bad taste of it, they didn't seem like your kind of people."
"And what are my kind of people?" she asked, her voice cool and brisk. "From our long-standing and intimate acquaintance I gather that you're more than ready to come up with a pronouncement. What kind of people do you think I belong with?"
"Not saps like them."
"That's the problem, Rafferty. I don't know where I belong. I'm twenty-nine years old, and I've felt at home, really at home, with only a few people. My family, even though they drive me crazy. And as crazy as it sounds, Crystal Latour. I only knew her for a few short months, but we had a kind of understanding, a rapport, that you don't usually find. She told me I was born eighty years too late."
Rafferty drove up over the curve, swore and pulled back into the street. "She did, did she?"
Helen turned to look at him, and her brown eyes were very clear and certain. "I feel at home with you, Rafferty," she said, her voice soft.
"Don't!" He pushed his foot down on the gas pedal, hard, but it was already floored. "I thought I warned you. I'm no good for you. Here today, gone tomorrow, and there's no way I can change it."
"Maybe it would be worth it," she said meditatively. "Maybe half a loaf is better than none."
Rafferty saw the outline of her apartment building with a sense of profound relief. He aimed the car for a narrow space near the front, zipped into it and slammed on the brakes.
Helen put out a hand to stop herself from hurtling toward the windshield. "Do you always have to drive like a maniac?" she asked mildly enough.
"Do you always have to behave like a maniac?" he countered. "I've warned you, and I'll warn you again. I'm no good. You can believe what you want, but even if you won't believe I'm a small-time gangster from sixty years ago, believe that I'm not the kind of man you want. I've lied to you…"
"If you were the Raffer
ty that died in the shoot-out then you weren't small-time," Helen pointed out, unfastening her seat belt.
Rafferty growled, "You're making me crazy."
Her smile was brilliant and absolutely devastating. "I'm doing my best."
He slammed out of the car, starting up the wide front steps. She caught up with him as he unlocked the door, putting her hand on his arm.
It was the last straw. He turned, to look down at her, at her wide, lost eyes, at her soft, vulnerable mouth, at the dress his own bride should have worn, and something inside him snapped. He'd stared death in the face too many times, not his own death, which no longer mattered, but hers. And suddenly he wanted to affirm life in the most basic possible way.
He pulled her into the hallway, slamming the door on the bright winter sunshine, cocooning them in warmth and darkness. Pushing her up against the wall, he slid his hands under the heavy fur coat, around her body and pulled her tight against him, against his own hard, aching body, wanting to scare her away, wanting to take her, wanting a thousand conflicting things.
She stared up at him, wordlessly. And since he made no move to kiss her, she reached up on her tiptoes and put her mouth against his, sweet and shy and very brave. "Come on, tiger," she whispered against his mouth. "What are you afraid of?"
"You, Helen. Just you."
Chapter Ten
« ^ »
Rafferty frightened her. There was no other word for it. As he stared down at her in the darkened hallway, his body pressed up tight against her, she could feel the tension, the need in his tall, wiry body. She could see the desperation and anger in his face. She was afraid of that intensity, that emotion. And the fact that she was mirroring those feelings.
But she was even more afraid of his leaving, disappearing, before she discovered just what it felt like. Afraid that once he was gone, as inevitably he would be, that she'd never experience those emotions again. And she was brave enough to take the risk.
"Rafferty," she said, but he put his hand over her mouth, his long fingers hard against her lips.
"Don't," he said, and there was no mistaking the desperation in his voice. "There's just so much I can take, Helen. I'm only human."