Borrowed Bride

by Patricia Coughlin

  “If you want to go swimming,” Toby told him, “I’ll go with you.”

  An unspoken message burned brightly in his eyes. I won’t let you be alone, it seemed to say. I won’t laugh at you. It broke Connor’s heart and put it back together again in the few seconds it took him to find his voice. The kid could teach him a lot about guts and about facing up to your fears. Hell, thought Connor, he just did.

  “You know, all of a sudden I do feel like a swim.” Grinning, he yanked Toby away from the boat. “Let’s do it, partner.”

  Chapter 12

  From where she sat on the deck, Gaby watched in disbelief as Connor and Toby walked hand in hand toward the lake. Joel’s son and his best friend.

  It was a sight she had never thought she’d see. At first because she had no desire to have Toby spend time with Connor. Then, during these past few days, because Connor himself seemed to be going out of his way to keep a safe distance between the two of them.

  She had been sitting there sketching while Toby played with his dinosaurs in the sand near the bottom of the deck steps. She had recently taken on a project that was going to give her an opportunity to restore a damaged stained-glass window and also create a new fanlight to be installed above it. The. new window had to have the same feel as the old, and though she’d been toying with design possibilities for several weeks, she had yet to put anything on paper. This bizarre vacation seemed like the perfect time to get started.

  She’d looked up from her sketching a while ago and had seen Toby wandering down toward the dock where Connor spent nearly every waking minute working on that damn boat. An avoidance technique, she was certain. She almost went running after him, but then decided to finish her sketch first.

  It wouldn’t kill Connor to pay a little attention to Toby, who was so obviously in awe of him. It might even be good for him. Perhaps it would also help influence him to change his mind about taking a chance on them. Heaven knew, she had no idea how to make that happen.

  The next time she glanced up, the two of them were leaning against the boat, side by side. She grinned at the way Toby had mimicked Connor’s stance. He even had the casual slant of the shoulders right. Oh, yeah, Connor definitely had himself a one-man fan club. Certain that by now Toby must be driving him crazy with questions, she started to go to his rescue. That’s when she saw Toby reach out and take Connor’s hand. She winced, waiting for Connor to brush him off. To her amazement, however, Connor let him. A minute later they started walking together toward the water, hand in hand.

  “Well, will wonders never cease?” Gaby murmured out loud, feeling as if she was witnessing a minor miracle.

  She settled back in her chair, holding her sketch pad as a decoy as she continued to observe them. She was half-afraid that if Connor looked up and saw her watching, the moment would be lost.

  They stopped on the hard-packed sand at the water’s edge and faced each other. Gaby caught her bottom lip between her teeth as she saw Connor unbuttoning his shirt, talking to Toby the whole time. He kicked off his sneakers, unzipped his jeans and dropped them to reveal his bathing suit underneath. The jeans were kicked aside, too. Then together the two. of them pulled off their shirts, and Toby once more stuck out his hand and Connor reached and took it.

  Her eyes filled and her lungs ached as the breath she’d been holding escaped in a giant rush of relief. She had been worried, she realized, aware as she was of all the subtle complications the action she’d witnessed held for both the man she loved and her son. Aware of all the ways they could each be hurt. Now, along with relief came a special kind of joy. Much greater than anything she could feel on her own behalf, it washed through her, giving her the sense that in just those few short moments the world had been washed clean. Her world, at least, the world she shared with Toby and longed to share with Connor, as well.

  Her gaze followed their movements as they headed for deeper water. Deeper than where she would have allowed Toby to venture. She resisted the urge to call to them that they had gone out far enough. She trusted Connor with Toby, trusted him to look after her child as if he were his own. To her astonishment, she realized that she already trusted him around Toby even more than she had Adam. It was hard to define the difference. What she felt with Connor was the kind of trust that comes from someplace deep in the heart, the kind that can’t be forced or coerced or faked. If she’d had any doubts that what she felt for him was real or that it was love, they were gone now.

  She watched as they engaged in a wild splashing contest, something Toby loved because he didn’t get to do it at the club pool where Adam was a member. He splashed hard for a little kid, and Gaby, his usual opponent, always let him win. Connor, she noted, did not. Another guy thing, she decided. Toby still ended up laughing, a sound so sweet and welcome it made her laugh, too, with sheer happiness.

  After the splashing they got down to business, with Connor demonstrating to Toby how to put his face underwater while he swam, something he refused to even attempt with her coaching him. Naturally he didn’t refuse Connor. In an amazingly short time he had mastered the feat and evidently felt comfortable enough to allow Connor to swing him in the air and toss him.

  Gaby sprang from her chair before he hit the water and was leaning over the railing before he came up for air. Be careful. The warning was always at the tip of her tongue, instinctive and necessary in her opinion because of all Toby had been through. Be careful, she would warn whenever he rode his bike or played ball or wanted to go to his friend’s house. Be careful of falling and getting out of breath and... of the wind in your face. She smiled ruefully and let the warning go unspoken. Just please be careful, she prayed.

  The sound of a phone ringing reached her as she crossed the deck to her chair. She paused and listened. The commonplace sound struck her as decidedly out of place there, as startling as the nightly chorus of owls would be back home. She knew that Connor had brought along a high-powered police cellular phone that he used to check in several times a day, but this was the first it had rung to signal an incoming call.

  She spun toward the lake to shout to Connor, then changed her mind. They were having too much fun to disturb. Instead, she ran inside and up the stairs toward Connor’s room. If the call was urgent, she would get him. If not, she’d take a message.

  The phone was in a case on the table by his bed. She grabbed the receiver. “Hello?” Static. She pulled up the antenna. “Hello?”

  A pause. Then a deep voice asked, “Who is this, please?”

  “This is Gabrielle Flanders.”

  “Mrs. Flanders, State Police Captain Marino here. Where’s Wolf?”

  “He’s...” She glanced out the window to look at Connor, where he was once again working on Toby’s swimming technique, then turned away. “He can’t come to the phone right now. He told me to take a message for him.”

  Captain Marino seemed to hesitate. “All right,” he said finally, “since this involves you I might as well fill you in on what’s happening. The officer we’ve had working on the computer finished early this morning. Your late husband’s secretary helped. Seems she used to type some nonfirm-related material for him on a fairly regular basis, but she didn’t come forward at first out of loyalty. She didn’t want anything to taint his memory.”

  Gaby smiled affectionately. Good old Lynn, she thought, still looking out for Joel even now.

  “How was she able to help?” she asked.

  “She was familiar with the documents as they originally existed. Once she realized no one was checking into anything improper your husband might have done, she spoke up and offered to help piece together whatever we came up with.”

  “What did you come up with?” Gaby asked, anxiously winding the phone cord around her finger.

  “Enough to provide motive for the explosion that killed your husband.”

  “Are you saying it wasn’t someone trying to get back at Connor, the way we first thought? That it had to do with the books Joel kept for the restaurant?
That Adam was involved ?”

  Marino was silent for a few seconds even after she finished firing questions at him.

  “Listen, Mrs. Flanders,” he said finally, “I understand that you and Adam Ressler have plans to get married?”

  “Not any longer,” she replied. “My plans have changed.”

  “Yeah, that’s what Wolf told me, too. All right, here’s the thing. Wolf’s hunch was right on the money. Ressler is using the Black Wolf to launder money for a big—I mean big and ugly—drug cartel out of some hole-in-the-wall country south of the border... I’m talking south of the Colombian border.”

  “Drugs,” she whispered, sinking to sit on the edge of the bed as her knees turned to jelly. “I can’t believe it.”

  Marino snorted on the other end of the line. “You will when you see the pile of facts and figures we’re putting together here... most of it thanks to your late husband. He’d evidently been tracking this situation and documenting everything for quite a while before he made a move to confront Ressler about it and...well, you know the rest.”

  “Yes. I know.”

  She was still struggling to come to terms with everything that Adam’s involvement in this meant, the betrayal and the lies to Joel and to her. He was actually going to marry her, she thought, feeling a wave of nausea she had to press her knuckles to her lips to squelch. All his kindness and concern over the past two years was suddenly thrown into a new light. Of course he’d hung around her. He had good reason to cover his tracks by appearing to be the loyal friend. He probably also needed to secure his control of the Black Wolf against any future threats of exposure, and marrying her was the surest way to do that. A small cry of anguish escaped her.

  “Mrs. Flanders, are you all right?” Marino asked.

  She nodded, then realized he couldn’t see her. “Yes,” she said. “I’m fine. Just a little bit...shaken up.”

  “Understandable,” he said gruffly. “You just sit yourself down and take it easy. We’re going to get these guys, Mrs. Flanders, you can count on it.”

  “These guys.” She shuddered. “You mean Adam isn’t the only... of course he isn’t,” she said before she’d even finished the question, never mind waiting for an answer. “There have to be others.”

  “There are. And we’ve got a good line on who those others are. I’ll save the details for Wolf. Tell him to call me as soon as possible. Tell him we’ll be bringing Ressler in this afternoon for questioning. Something tells me he won’t be a hard nut to crack. Wolf might want to be here to see it.”

  “I’ll tell him right away.”

  “Besides, I want you all back here, just to be on the safe side.”

  Her heart thudded in her chest. “You don’t think—”

  “Mrs. Flanders,” he cut in, “I always think the worst. It’s my job. I’ll just feel better with you and your son back home instead of out there in the middle of nowhere. We can post a guard outside your place if we think it necessary.”

  “No,” she said quickly. “I don’t want my son to know about all this, at least not yet.”

  “Trust me, Mrs. Flanders. Discreet is my middle name. Tell Wolf to call. No, just tell him to get his butt back here. Better yet, tell him I’m going to see who I can shake loose to go up there and fetch you and your boy. That will speed things up by letting Wolf come straight here to headquarters.”

  “I’ll tell him,” she promised again.

  “Good.”

  He hung up.

  Gaby sat on the bed with the receiver gripped to her chest until it began emitting a high-pitched sound. She lowered the antenna, leaned forward and dumped it back into the case.

  With her palms pressed together, she brought her hands up and held them in front of her face, wrestling with the aftershocks of the truth Marino had just dumped on her.

  Outside, Toby squealed with delight.

  Gaby’s hands fell to her sides. Toby. She stood. She had to tell Connor what was going on. She had to get to Toby. She hurried to the door, reaching it just as someone rounded it from the hallway outside.

  She gave a sharp cry of surprise, then went weak.

  “Adam.”

  “Hello, Gabrielle.”

  Outside, Connor paused in the act of tossing Toby over his shoulder one more time. The kid was tireless.

  “Did you hear that?” he asked.

  “What?” Toby countered.

  “A noise, like a shout. I thought it came from the house.” He listened for a moment and heard nothing. Gaby had been sitting on the deck just a minute ago. She must have gone inside for something, he told himself. If she wasn’t back in a while, he’d get out and check on her.

  “I guess it was nothing,” he told Toby, lifting him higher. “Or maybe just an owl.”

  “Why do owls hoot?”

  Connor pretended not to hear.

  “One, two,” he counted, swinging Toby carefully. “Ready, set, three.”

  He let him go, and Toby gave his usual squeal of pleasure as he hit the water. Connor figured it would take him a few seconds to come up, then about thirty more to catch his breath and shake the water from his eyes. That meant he had less than a minute to come up with an answer to why owls hoot.

  “Adam,” Gaby said again, her dry mouth making it hard to breathe, much less speak. “How did...what are you doing here?”

  He smiled, revealing perfect teeth.

  Slick.

  That’s how her sister Lisa insisted on referring to him behind his back. Don’t call him that, Gaby would admonish her, demanding to know why a man couldn’t be well mannered and charming without being branded slick.

  Slick.

  Only now, too late, did she see how perfectly the name suited him.

  “What am I doing here?” he repeated, his soft tone as incredulous as if she’d asked him his name. “Gabrielle, darling, I’m here for you.”

  “I see.” Somehow she managed to flex her lips into a stiff smile. “It’s just that I...I thought my mother would have told you why I—”

  “Why you ran away from me on what was supposed to be our wedding day? The start of our new life together?” His smile was relaxed, but the look that came at her from deep within his eyes was cold and frightening.

  “I’m so sorry about that,” she told him. “It was unforgivable of me. I was all set to go through with it....”

  She saw his mouth twitch at her choice of words and hesitated. “I mean I was looking forward to the ceremony, and then all of a sudden I ... I don’t know what happened, I just knew I had to get away, that I needed...”

  “Time to think,” he finished for her.

  He smiled again. With his lean, aristocratic features and a physique honed at the most exclusive fitness center in the state, he was undeniably a handsome man, but Gaby had never found anyone as repulsive as she found him at that instant.

  “I understood all that,” he said in a tone she’d once found so soothing. “Of course, I assumed at the time that you would be doing your thinking alone. I wasn’t aware that my future bride would be sharing her hideaway with the man responsible for her late husband’s death.”

  Gaby had to bite the insides of her cheeks to keep from blurting the truth, that he was the one responsible for Joel’s death... for Joel’s murder. Not Connor.

  Connor.

  Her breath shuddered from her as her stomach churned with sudden fear. Where was Connor? And Toby? Connor would never have let Adam be alone with her. How had Adam gotten in here without being seen?

  The sound of water splashing, followed by a whoop from Toby eased the worst of her fears.

  “So?” Adam prodded as she continued to stare at him in silence.

  Gaby blinked.

  He prompted her. “Wolf. You were about to explain how you ended up here together. I had no idea you two were so...close.”

  “We’re not. At least we weren’t. I needed a place to stay for a few days and...” She shrugged. “Did you get a chance to say hello to him on yo
ur way in?” She took a step to go around him. “I’m sure Connor—”

  “Connor?” he repeated, moving to block her path. “Is it Connor now?”

  Again she shrugged.

  “He’s crazy, you know.” He watched her reaction closely. “Mad. I probably should have warned you. He’s been badgering me for months to advance him his quarterly payments, ranting about selling his share of the business. He even threatened to go to you with some off-the-wall story about me doctoring the books.” His lips thinned and turned up at the corners. “Crazy, right?”

  Gaby nodded. “Right.”

  Liar, she thought, aghast at the realization that her reaction to these latest lies would have been dangerously different if he had told them to her a week ago.

  “But to answer your question,” he went on, “no, I didn’t stop to say hello on my way in. You see, I wanted to surprise you first.”

  “Well, you did.” A new thought narrowed her eyes. “I didn’t even hear your car pull up. With that gravel drive you can usually hear people approaching a mile away.”

  “I know. That’s why I parked down the road and hiked up the back way. To surprise you, remember?”

  “Of course.”

  “Lucky for me I’d been here before and knew the way. It is a little off the beaten path.”

  “Yes. It is. Tell me, Adam, how did you know I was staying here?”

  He smiled. “A friend told me they saw you leaving your mother’s with Toby, heading this way.”

  “There’s a lot of places I could have been staying between my mother’s and here,” she stated in as light a tone as she could muster.

  “I got lucky.”

  Liar, she thought again, hiding her outrage behind a smile. Connor was right; Adam had had someone watching for her. Only he was even more clever than they realized. He’d been watching her mother’s house, knowing she would show up there to see Toby sooner or later. And she had played right into his hands.