Lone Star Santa

by Heather MacAllister

  There was some seriously good raw material here.

  Rough up a few of his edges…and now that she thought about it, he was just made for the stubble look, except that was losing popularity, which was fine with her because kissing stubble was bad for the skin.

  His jaw clenched. Kristen looked down and saw his finger at the place on the chart where the money trail began to loop back on itself. Companies were investing in themselves, but were losing money. Kristen hadn’t been able to figure that one out, either. And she was no expert, but it didn’t look good to have Mitch taking clients’ money and investing in his own company. He’d discover that info after he moved his finger another three inches. If he was clenching his jaw now, he’d be steaming when he got to that part.

  Kristen became impatient. She’d waved their waiter away twice, but was rethinking a second margarita.

  She shifted, peeling her thighs off the booth’s vinyl seat.

  It couldn’t be long before Mitch realized he’d been betrayed by his partner and Kristen wanted to catch his expression at the precise moment he realized it.

  Betrayal was such a powerful action and elicited an equally powerful emotion. Kristen had never been betrayed on the level Mitch was going to experience. Sure, she’d been fooled and disappointed, but she’d never been blindsided.

  This was an opportunity for her to see genuine emotion and remember exactly how it looked so when she was called upon to portray it, she’d be able to do so convincingly.

  Mitch’s finger moved slowly across the page and he seemed to recalculate or look something up every few seconds.

  Hurry up already! Kristen was afraid to blink in case she missed something.

  But Mitch blinked. Repeatedly. He must have seen the part where the money ended up back in one of his own shell businesses.

  Kristin watched closely. But he said nothing.

  Blinking? That was it? Huge betrayal equals blinking?

  She could do blinking. In fact, she tried it, but there should be more.

  Mitch’s chest rose and fell and Kristen thought she heard the faintest catch. That was when she realized that there was more to Mitch’s reaction. His face had paled, but due to the festive ambient lighting—beer advertisements and chili pepper lights—she hadn’t noticed. Sweat appeared on his upper lip. Okay, she couldn’t do that, but the breath thing was good.

  And then he raised his eyes to hers and her breath caught for real.

  Pain. Deep pain. There was no life in his eyes, which dominated his face. They were huge and dark and his skin was putty-colored in between flashes of the blinking red-and-yellow neon beer sign.

  But his eyes would always haunt her. Such overwhelming pain in them. No denial, no bitterness, no anger—not yet.

  Just soul-searing pain.

  Kristen was deeply disgusted with herself. How could she have treated Mitch’s feelings as an acting tutorial? Looking at his face made her stomach queasy.

  She wanted to ease the pain, but what could she say? What was there to say? The only good thing about this was that as awful he felt, Mitch now knew the truth and could take steps to protect himself.

  Chapter Seven

  The silence stretched until Kristen couldn’t stand it. “I’d hoped I was wrong,” she finally murmured. Mitch probably didn’t hear her.

  But he must have picked up the sentiment because he closed his eyes, inhaled and tilted his chin slightly.

  When he opened his eyes, his expression had hardened. Anger and self-loathing had mixed with the pain. “I’ve been a prize-winning, gold-medal sucker.”

  “No—” Kristen started.

  “Yes. When I look at you, I see pity. Just what every red-blooded man wants to see in the eyes of a hot chiquita.”

  “That’s not pity. It’s empathy.”

  “Sure, it is.” His mouth twisted. “I suppose you got a good laugh out of this.”

  “I never laughed and I never felt like laughing.” Kristen hoped this wasn’t going to turn into a kill-the-messenger situation.

  “I’ll bet Jeremy’s laughing.”

  “We already know Jeremy’s a jerk.”

  “He must not be able to believe his luck. He got a partner who did all the grunt work and never thought to check up on him. When Jeremy came up with some idea that stretched legal boundaries or even appeared dicey, I’d tell him why we shouldn’t do it. Sure, he’d grumble, but we either compromised or he’d agree to drop it. It never occurred to me to make sure he did.” Shaking his head, Mitch stared at the papers spread in front of him. “How stupid was that? Stupid, stupid, incredibly stupid.”

  Kristen signaled their waiter. “I’m ordering you another margarita.”

  “I don’t want another margarita.”

  “It’ll numb the sting. I’ll drive.”

  “Oh, this is so much more than a sting. This is a stab in the back.” Mitch illustrated with the table knife.

  “Another margarita,” Kristen said as the waiter approached. “And hurry.”

  “Cancel that,” Mitch snarled.

  She turned to him. “Mitch…”

  “Tequila shot. Limes,” he ordered.

  Well, all right then. “Efficiency is good.” She wondered if he’d actually ever drunk a tequila shot before.

  Mitch slumped against the padded vinyl back of the booth and stared at her across the table.

  Kristen was encouraged to see that the raw pain in his eyes had been replaced by anger. Fortunately, it wasn’t the boiling-over-punch-the-wall-and-break-a-hand anger. She imagined he was mentally reviewing everything he’d been doing lately and looking at Jeremy’s activities through a different lens.

  “You don’t have to babysit me,” he said.

  “I’m a designated driver. Not a babysitter.”

  The waiter rushed over with a shot glass of tequila, salt and a dish of limes. “Wait,” Mitch instructed.

  Deftly, he licked his hand, poured salt on it, licked it off, downed the shot and bit into a lime wedge. “Another one and make it El Tesoro Platinum this time. I don’t want a hangover.”

  “Si, señor.” The waiter actually bowed.

  Kristen raised an eyebrow. This was an interesting development. It appeared that Mitch wasn’t as blandly vanilla as she’d thought. Good to know.

  Mitch resumed staring at her, all affability gone from his expression. His eyes were harder, his jaw was set and his slouch gave off a sullen vibe.

  There was no bewildered whipped-puppy air about him.

  The man had been done wrong and he was barely containing his rage. “So tell me what the club bit was all about earlier.”

  “Just making sure your hands were clean,” Kristen told him.

  He made a disgusted sound and reached for the salt and lime when he saw the waiter approach. “I’m flattered you thought I had enough brain power to be involved.” He picked up the tequila shot directly from the tray before the waiter could set it on the table. Slamming this shot back with the same smooth proficiency as the first, he returned the glass to the tray and waved away a third.

  And how hot was that? Hot enough that Kristen wished she were sitting on the same side of the booth so she could kiss some of that salt and lime and tequila and tongue into her mouth. Oh, yeah. Mr. Vanilla Nice Guy had left the building. This guy was pure Rocky Road.

  She was supposed to be taking a break from the aptly named Rocky Road types. She was not supposed to be listening to the immature part of her that found brooding bad boys appealing.

  But Mitch wasn’t a bad boy. He was a nice guy with experience. Hey, a new combo. She liked it. A lot. How messed up was that? Mitch’s life had blown up in his face and Kristen found his reaction hot.

  This was so not about her.

  Except he was looking at her. No, looking wasn’t the right word…. Watching? Waiting? For what? For her to say something? Do something? If he kept staring at her that way, she was going to crawl across the table and—

  “I’m in real trou
ble,” he finally said.

  At least he acknowledged it. Kristen made herself ignore his hotness factor and be supportive. “That’s what lawyers are for. And at least you’ll be able to provide this information so—”

  “I am in real trouble because no one will believe that I could have been so stupid.” He grimaced in disgust.

  “Please stop beating yourself up.”

  “I’m not beating myself up.”

  “Then stop using the word stupid.”

  “Kristen.” Mitch straightened and leaned forward, lacing his fingers together on top of the table. His knuckles were white. He spoke slowly as though lecturing a child. “Even the most junior bank teller is trained to recognize this. I have a masters degree in business and accounting. I’m half owner of a company that invests and manages other people’s money. I have years of experience. There is no government investigator, no jury, no judge anywhere who will believe that I was totally unaware of what’s going on.”

  He was mad. She got that. But he needed to ditch the patronizing attitude. “Well, I’m not a bank teller. And I never finished college,” Kristen snapped. “So do you suppose you could tell me what’s going on? Use little words.”

  Mitch’s expression didn’t change. “Money laundering.”

  Kristen had visions twentieth-century gangsters in baggy pinstriped suits. “For real?”

  He nodded.

  “How do you know?”

  “All the activity and the shell companies. The whole point of money laundering is to hide cash that comes from crime and make it appear as though it was legitimately earned. This—” he waved at the papers “—is the ideal setup. Yeah.” He stared at Kristen’s chart. “Perfect.”

  “Show me.”

  Mitch stood and came over to her side of the booth. Kristen slid over to make room, sighing for the lost tequila-salt-lime-tongue opportunity. The mood was so over.

  “Okay.” He turned the papers around to face them. “There’re three parts to money laundering—placement, which is getting the excess cash into the system, layering, where it’s mixed all around with legit money, and integration, where it can be withdrawn without attracting suspicion.”

  “There are three parts and they’re named?”

  “Oh, yeah. Underground money is a huge problem. There are organizations and Web sites devoted to fighting money laundering. Annual conferences are held all over the world.”

  “I didn’t realize.” And it sounded as though Mitch was in worse trouble than she thought.

  “Anyway, say you’re a crook and you’ve got a whole lot of cash. It attracts attention you don’t want. So you look for businesses where a lot of cash is used like casinos, restaurants, bars—”

  Kristen gasped. “Strip clubs! Think of all the tips.”

  “Exactly. Oh, and banks or, say, financial services firms.”

  “Omigod.” Kristen was getting the picture and it wasn’t pretty.

  “But financial institutions are trickier to use because you need somebody on the inside. Or even better, somebody who can be fooled into being a cash conduit.”

  “And that was you.”

  He nodded. “Apparently so. Except I would have been suspicious if a client had handed me a suitcase of cash, so I wasn’t the entry point. I just sent the money into the machine to be washed.”

  “How?”

  “I’d set up an account. I’d make some legit investments, as I always do. But the client can also make deposits and withdrawals.” Mitch pointed to the twisted trail of companies. “They’d transfer money here and shift it around so many times that no one could ever trace it.” He ran a finger along Kristen’s chart. “Here you didn’t really follow one sum of money. What you did was link the shell companies that did business with each other.”

  “Oh.” There went two days of her life.

  “Hey.” He nudged her with his shoulder. “You did good.”

  “Thanks.” She nudged him back. “So what about Jeremy’s dad? Does he know?”

  Mitch looked down at her, his expression grim. “What do you think?”

  “Just considering my mother’s reaction, I’d have to say guilty, guilty, guilty.”

  “I’d say that, too, because guess what’s one of the favorite ways to get money back out of the system?”

  “Well, it’s got to be something to do with real estate.”

  “Buying and selling property. Lending money to buy and sell property.” Mitch folded the chart. “Big ticket stuff. The sales price is recorded on the county tax roles for anybody to see all nice and legal. And so the money is back from the cleaners.”

  Mitch continued to gather the papers as Kristen struggled to understand. “So…this isn’t like a one-time thing.”

  “Oh, no.”

  “It was a setup.”

  “And a good one.” Mitch handed her the papers and then inexplicably salted a lime wedge and bit into it.

  “You can order—”

  “No.” He signaled the waiter for the check, reached for his wallet and tossed some bills on the table.

  It was a generous tip. Mitch probably earned less than the waiter.

  “Let’s go.” Mitch dropped his keys into Kristen’s hand.

  Suddenly liking him very, very much, she squeezed her fingers around them.

  “BUT WHY DOES JEREMY need to launder money?” Kristen asked. She’d asked lots of questions. Questions that made Mitch think. He was tired of thinking.

  “Because it’s very profitable.” He got in the passenger side of the car and slammed the door.

  Kristen walked around to the driver’s side and got in, flashing lots of leg as she did so. “But where did he get the money to launder?”

  “I don’t know. Just start the car!”

  She gave him a look that was withering and poutily sexy at the same time.

  The tequila had quenched the burning fires of rage—and also colored Mitch’s thoughts with over-wrought drama.

  The tequila had not quenched the burning fires for Kristen, which had ignited back when she’d opened the door to her house. If anything, it had fanned those flames.

  As though he had any chance with her at all now.

  He didn’t know for sure, but he had the impression that dating her would be problematic while he was in jail.

  And it was all thanks to his buddy, his pal, his one-time roommate, his partner, his amigo, Jeremy.

  At least now he could think the name without danger of rupturing a blood vessel.

  Mitch hadn’t known he was capable of such anger—a lot of which had been directed at himself. Jeremy shouldn’t have been able to fool him and now Mitch was taking his anger out on Kristen.

  This would be the same Kristen who was his only ally. The Kristen who had spent untold hours digging around when he’d been stringing Christmas lights and waiting for Jeremy to fix everything.

  Oh, he’d fixed everything all right.

  Mitch stared across the car at Kristen and forced himself to inhale and exhale deeply.

  He should have drunk more tequila because as much of a mess as he was in and in spite of knowing that she had been pretending tonight, she was still wearing an outfit that revealed a whole lot of skin, which he liked. The skin and the outfit.

  Kristen signaled and merged onto the freeway. “Has that tequila kicked in yet?”

  “As much as it’s going to.”

  “Feeling any better?”

  “I will after I apologize for snapping at you.”

  “It’s okay.”

  “Not really.” Mitch rubbed his eyes. “I haven’t even thanked you. You spent hours on this, Kristen.”

  “I sure did. And don’t think I won’t remind you when I need a favor some time, like when I’m rich and famous and need someone to handle all my money.”

  “I’m not going to be doing any favors from jail.”

  “Are you giving up?”

  “Nah. I’ll go through the motions, but…” He made an L with his fi
ngers and pressed his forehead. “Loser.”

  “Hey! I don’t hang out with losers. Oh.” She grimaced. “Okay, I’m not going to hang out with losers anymore, starting right now. With you.”

  “Great. Now I’m a charity project.”

  “I’m not that altruistic. I’m with you because I want to be.”

  Sure she was. “So you’re saying that dumb, gullible, number geeks appeal to you?”

  “Now you’re just being morose. It’s not attractive.”

  “Too bad, ’cause there’s a lot more morosity where that came from.”

  Kristen grinned. “Morosity isn’t a word.”

  “So what? Are the language police going to send me to vocabulary jail?”

  “You have now moved on to petulance. I’m not seeing that as an improvement.”

  “I wasn’t trying to improve. There’s no point.”

  “And depression makes an appearance.”

  “Kristen, this is not an emotions quiz. You don’t have to identify each one.”

  “But you’re going through them so fast.”

  “Not as fast as you drive. Wanna back it off a little?”

  He expected an objection, but didn’t get one. Kristen eased her foot off the accelerator.

  There was silence, blessed silence in the car. But that meant he could think and his thoughts weren’t pleasant. “I never suspected anything. I wonder how long…when it all started. I saw Jeremy every day. How many of those days did he look me in the eye and lie to me? I have no idea. He’s the same Jeremy he’s always been. We even shared an apartment for four years! How could he do this to me? And why did I never sense this about him?”

  He looked over at Kristen. “You’re not saying anything.”

  “No.”

  “Smart girl.”

  “Yes.”

  He smiled, surprised he still could.

  He stared out the window as the big city lights of Houston faded from view and the flat land opened up.

  So now what? Jeremy had set him up but good. The guy was smarter than Mitch had given him credit for. Or his dad had helped him. Or both.