Anne Stuart's Out-of-Print Gems

by Anne Stuart

  “He’s come back for good. I haven’t.”

  “Why not?”

  “How the hell do I know? Maybe I’m worse than the others. Maybe I’m not deserving. Maybe…”

  “Maybe you’re full of crap.”

  Rafferty’s eyes narrowed. He reached past her for his mug of coffee, and his long arm brushed hers. She could feel the tingle all the way to the pit of her stomach. Ulcer, she reminded herself. Not desire.

  “You think I’m making this up?” he asked, taking a deep drink.

  “I think you’re probably a science fiction writer. That, or you work for ‘Candid Camera.”’

  “What’s ‘Candid Camera’?”

  Something snapped inside her. “Don’t give me that, Rafferty! You aren’t some zombie gangster returned from the dead, and you aren’t crazy enough to believe it. You’re only crazy enough to think you ever had a chance of hell of convincing me.”

  Rafferty didn’t move. That sense of stillness hovered around him, that unnerving quiet. And then he smiled, a wry, self-mocking smile. “You did strike me as extremely gullible,” he said, taking another sip.

  Perversely enough, now that he was admitting he lied she was starting to wonder whether there was any chance he was telling the truth. Then she gave herself a mental shake. “Why did you do it?”

  “Do what?”

  “Lie to me.”

  For a moment she hadn’t been aware how close he was standing. He moved, leaning forward, and his body pressed against hers, pressed her back against the counter. She could feel the heat of his skin, the muscle and bone and sinew, she could feel how much he wanted her. He bent his head down and brushed his lips against hers, and he tasted of coffee, and cigarettes, and desire. “Because you’re too tempting.”

  She let her lips cling to his for an instant, before drawing away. “And you’re not a man who can resist temptation?” she whispered.

  “I’m trying, counselor. I surely am trying.” He pushed away from her then, and she suddenly felt cold. “What are we going to do today?”

  “What’s this we, white man?”

  He stared at her in obvious surprise, but he made no comment, which was just as well. Everyone on this earth had heard the old Lone Ranger joke. Everyone, apparently, but Rafferty. “It’s Valentine’s Day, Helen. And as far as I can see, you don’t have a line of eager young men ready to celebrate it. You’ll have to make do with me.”

  “What are we going to do—visit the garage where you were gunned down?”

  He shook his head. “It’s long gone. There’s a retirement home in its place, and I don’t feel like visiting. Particularly since everyone in there would be younger than I am.”

  “Rafferty…” Her voice carried a very definite warning.

  “I’ll behave myself. Just pretend I never mentioned my scarlet past. I’m a dry goods drummer from Ohio, stopping over.”

  “Drummer?” she echoed, mystified. “Dry goods?”

  “Salesman,” he corrected. “In textiles and ready-to-wear clothing. I left my samples in the Packard…”

  “Rafferty,” she warned again.

  “So how are we going to spend the day?”

  She should order him out of the house. She should call the police, or the psychiatric ward, she should make some excuse and get the hell away from him. He’d done nothing but lie to her since she first met him, about Billy, about himself, about everything. And the odd thing was, the most outrageous lie of all was the most believable.

  “I’m supposed to go to a party,” she found herself saying.

  He didn’t look pleased at the notion. “Did you have a date?”

  “It wasn’t that kind of party. I have a bunch of friends who like to celebrate on an annual basis. They have an Oscar party every year, when we all wear evening gowns and eat popcorn and watch the Oscars. They have fireworks on the Fourth of July, they have Easter egg hunts where we all dress up in garden dresses.”

  “What do you do for St. Valentine’s Day?”

  She wished she hadn’t opened her big fat mouth. It wasn’t as if she believed him, even for one moment. But still, it felt tacky to explain. “We have a mock-gangster party in their garage,” she said in a foolish little voice. “Everyone dresses up in 1920s’ clothing and we drink rotgut liquor and listen to jazz and dance the Charleston.”

  “And then in the end everyone gets mowed down by tommy guns?” he suggested, his voice even, and there was no way she could read his reaction.

  He had no right to a reaction, she reminded herself. He’d simply tried to fob a ridiculous story off on her. The annual day-long massacre party was a harmless spoof, and if Rafferty couldn’t relate to that then he could take his tall, lean body and his sexy mouth and his deft, clever hands elsewhere.

  “No,” she said. “In the end everyone pairs up and goes out to dinner.”

  “And who were you planning to pair up with?” Lord, he sounded jealous. Another lie, of course.

  She met his gaze calmly. “You,” she said.

  He closed his eyes for a moment, and she almost thought his expression was one of pain. And then he opened them again, and the mockery was back in full force. “Have you ever been warned about tweaking the tiger’s tail, Helen? You may regret teasing me. I’m trying to be a gentleman, but I have very definite limits.”

  She wanted to push him past those limits. Or did she? She was no longer quite so certain. “Look at it this way, tiger,” she said. “At least you won’t have to come in costume. You already look the part.”

  She slid away from him, before he could say anything else. “I’m going to take a shower. Everybody has to be there by ten-thirty.” She hesitated. “Aren’t you going to ask me why?”

  “I know why. That’s when the massacre took place. You’ve got a tasteful bunch of friends, Helen.”

  “You don’t have to come with me,” she said, trying not to sound defensive.

  “Yes, I do.” He turned from her, staring out the window into the slowly lightening city sky. She watched him, the tall, straight back beneath the elegant white cotton shirt, the curl of dark hair at the back of his neck, and she wanted to go to him and thread her arms around his waist, to hold him tight against her. For whatever his reasons, he was going to leave, she had no doubt about that whatsoever. And she already knew she couldn’t bear to let him go.

  TELEVISION had lost the ability to charm Rafferty. While his tastes were catholic enough to include Saturday morning cartoons and ads for sugar cereal, he had too much on his mind to concentrate on the high-powered wonder of kids’ TV.

  He’d never made such a botch of something in his life. First, by kissing her. Second, by trying to tell her the truth. Of course she didn’t believe him—who would? He hadn’t even considered that possibility. He’d spent so many years not telling a living soul about who and what he was that he never thought they simply wouldn’t believe the story.

  He couldn’t tell her about Ricky Drago. She’d already made it clear she didn’t believe him—if he complicated matters by warning her about Drago she might kick him out for good. As long as he behaved himself she’d probably let him trail along after her.

  He knew exactly how he needed to do it. He needed to flirt with her, just enough to keep her going, not enough to do anything about it. Flirting seemed to be a lost art nowadays, and he was out of practice, but a long time ago he’d been an expert. He’d become too cynical in the past few decades to be really good at it anymore, but when an attraction as strong as the one that blazed between him and Ms. Emerson existed it didn’t take much to fan the flames.

  His only mistake would be to give in to it. He’d come too damned close already, a fact that astonished him. He prided himself on being a man in control—of his emotions, which were nonexistent, his libido, which was too damned strong, and his temper. Since he had no control whatsoever on the rest of his life, he needed those small pieces of power.

  But Helen Emerson stripped that power from him. She st
irred emotions he didn’t know still existed, she infuriated him and she made him feel as if he were a hormone-laden teenager, ready to jump on the first female that moved. Except that he didn’t want to jump on any female but Helen.

  Lord, this was getting worse and worse. It was bad enough that he was stuck spending his allotted two days on earth baby-sitting for an overage virgin. But then he had to go and fall in…

  He stopped that treacherous thought cold in its tracks. He didn’t even believe in love. He believed in sex, and companionship, and even parenthood for those who were cut out for it. But true love went out with Romeo and Juliet. Look where it got people like Ricky Drago. Crazier than a bedbug, because he couldn’t live without his dead wife.

  That wasn’t for the likes of Mrs. Rafferty’s little boy Jamey. He’d made it this far without anyone. He could continue on that way, and be just dandy. As soon as he made sure Helen would be safe.

  He was on his fourth cup of black coffee, his second episode of something bizarre called “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles” when Helen emerged from the bedroom. He looked at her, momentarily stunned.

  She was wearing the kind of dress women wore when he was young. It was an off-white velvet chemise, studded with pearls, and her bare arms and neck were adorned with chains and beads. She was wearing white silk stockings, rolled to her knees with uncharacteristic daring, and her hair was pouffed and held back by a jeweled band around her forehead. Her eyes were lined with makeup, her lips and cheeks rouged and she looked like the woman of his dreams.

  “It unnerves me when you do that,” she said, tugging at her dress self-consciously.

  Somewhere he found his voice. “Do what?” he asked.

  “Stare at me like that.” She did a nervous little pirouette, and he noticed she hadn’t bound her breasts the way most women would have. The thought made him hard. “Don’t I look like a gun moll?”

  “No.”

  “No?” She tried for a pout, and almost succeeded.

  “That’s not a gun moll’s dress. Where’d you get it?”

  “From an antique shop. How do you know it isn’t a gun moll’s dress? I suppose you were intimately acquainted with them during your previous incarnation?” She was learning to be just as mocking as he was. If it wasn’t so damned cute it would irritate the hell out of him.

  “A few,” he conceded, playing the game. “Including Crystal Latour.”

  That threw her for a moment. “You didn’t!” she gasped, believing him.

  “I did.”

  “That sweet old woman?”

  “She was three years younger than me.”

  She stared at him in mute frustration, then shook her head. “You’re good, Rafferty, I have to admit it. You almost had me going there. So tell me, Mr. 1920s-gangster-expert, what kind of dress am I wearing?”

  “A wedding dress.”

  She blushed. Damn, he loved it when she blushed. The color swept over her chest, up her face, even down her arms. “You’re kidding!”

  “All you need is a bouquet and a veil.” He started across the room toward her, wondering if she was going to scurry away like a scared rabbit. She held her ground, but just barely, as he reached her, and she tilted her head back to look at him with just a trace of defiance. “You look perfect, counselor,” he murmured, keeping his hands at his sides with the greatest of efforts.

  “So do you,” she replied, her voice husky. And she made the very great mistake of touching him, of putting her hands on the lapels of his suit, of moving close enough so that he could inhale the white roses in her perfume, so that he could feel the heat from her skin, and he couldn’t help himself. He threaded his hands through her thick fall of hair and stared down at her with something close to desperation.

  “I’m trying to do the decent thing, Helen,” he muttered. “And you’re making it impossible.”

  “What do tigers know about decency?” she whispered back. “Or dead gangsters, for that matter? If you really were who you said you were, you wouldn’t think twice about seducing and abandoning me.”

  “Is that what you want?” Her mouth was too damned soft, too damned close to his.

  “I don’t want to be abandoned.”

  “Oh, damn,” he groaned under his breath. And he couldn’t do anything but kiss her.

  She was already getting more adept at it. Her lips parted immediately beneath his, and she tasted of cherry-flavored lipstick and toothpaste, and she tasted of hope and innocence and love. And he wanted more and more and more.

  She slid her arms under his jacket, around his waist, and then she grew very still, and cold, as her hands found the gun he’d tucked in his back.

  She pulled out of his arms, and he let her go. “Why do you carry a gun?”

  “It’s yours.”

  “Why do you have it?”

  He considered his possible responses, and took the easy one. “I’m supposed to be a gangster, right? For the party? You didn’t have a tommy gun lying around, but I thought this would do.”

  She didn’t look convinced, but she was trying. “You could always pretend to be Elliott Ness.”

  “Who’s that?”

  “Cut it out, Rafferty. I’m not interested in your little game. You know as well as I do that Elliott Ness is the man who finally put Capone in jail.”

  “Did he really? What did he manage to get him on? Murder? Racketeering? Bootlegging?”

  “Tax evasion.”

  Rafferty just looked at her. “You’re telling me the most notorious crook in the history of Chicago got sent up the river for a tax problem?” He was incredulous. “You’ve got to be kidding.”

  She no longer knew what to make of him, that much was clear. She simply shrugged. “Gospel truth,” she said. “And I don’t think you’d make it as a G-man. You’re too haunted-looking.”

  “Good word for it,” he muttered beneath his breath. He glanced at his watch, the kind that hadn’t been made in more than fifty years. “It’s getting close to witching hour. You sure you want to go to this party?”

  “I promised.” He was marginally pleased to realize she no longer thought it was such a good idea. “Besides, the two of us look perfect. It would be a waste if others couldn’t appreciate us.”

  “A waste,” Rafferty said. “You still want to wear that pillow coat? It doesn’t really fit the dress.”

  “Pillow coat? You mean my down one?”

  “I guess. Looks more like an oversize life preserver to me.”

  “I’ve got something better.” She disappeared into her bedroom, then returned moments later with a fur coat over her arm. And it wasn’t just any fur coat. It was the full-length silver fox Crystal Latour had conned out of Bugs Moran himself. Rafferty ought to know. He’d been the one to deliver it, some sixty-four years ago. And he’d been the one who’d been rewarded for it.

  “So Crystal left you her fox, too?” he said, taking it from her and holding it out to her. The damned thing didn’t feel any older than he did.

  She glanced at him over her shoulder as she slid into it. She was thinner than Crystal, and taller, and the coat looked terrific on her. “How’d you know it was Crystal’s?”

  “You’ve got two choices. One, I saw her wear it some sixty years ago. Or two, it was a logical guess. Most states attorneys don’t wear silver fox coats. Take your pick.”

  “Actually I don’t like to wear fur. I hate to think of the poor little animals slaughtered for a woman’s vanity. But since these particular animals were killed half a century ago I decided it would be okay.”

  “Yeah, you wouldn’t want their sacrifice to be in vain,” Rafferty drawled. He let his hands slide up the soft fur sleeves, and he could feel her tremble.

  “Besides which, the coat was never worn.”

  That startled him enough to step back, reaching for his own wool overcoat. “Why not?”

  “Crystal told me the man who delivered it was killed the next day, and she could never wear it without thinking of him. S
o she just put it in storage.”

  “Helluva waste of a thousand-dollar coat,” Rafferty said.

  “It would cost a lot more now.”

  “Then you’d better take good care of it, counselor. Make sure no one takes a tommy gun to you.”

  “Which reminds me. The gun you’re carrying—it’s not loaded, is it?”

  “Trust me, Helen,” Rafferty said, “nothing would happen if I fired it.”

  She wasn’t going to be fobbed off with a half-truth. She stopped at the doorway, grabbing her oversize purse. “You didn’t answer my question. Is it loaded?”

  Push had come to shove. “I know how to use a gun, Helen. If I aimed it, cocked it and pulled the trigger, it wouldn’t fire. Now there are three possible explanations for that. One, that it isn’t loaded. Two, that the gun is broken, but you’re the offspring of a family of cops, and you know enough about guns to keep yours in working order. The third possibility is that there is something to what I’ve been trying to tell you about who and what I am. Which will it be?”

  For a moment she hesitated, and he could almost see what was going through her mind. He watched her warm brown eyes as once more she rejected the truth as too threatening. “The gun’s not loaded,” she said flatly. “Come on, Rafferty, if you’re coming. And this time I get to drive.”

  Chapter Nine

  Someone had done their research well. Rafferty walked into the cavernous garage and wanted to throw up.

  The original garage on Clark Street had been a lot bigger, of course. It had been used to store bootleg liquor and getaway cars. There’d been no source of heat, either, and this place was warm enough for Helen to slip off Crystal’s fox coat.

  He didn’t like the way the men looked at her. He’d never been particularly possessive—in his line of work it hadn’t paid to be, and in the intervening years it would have been a waste of time. The garage was crowded, with men in pin-stripe suits and wide lapels, women in fringe laden chemises, and none of them looked quite right. They were all overgrown children, playing dress-up. All of them, that is, except Helen.