by LETO, JULIE
“He didn’t know anything about me!”
Only inches separated them now, inches that only hours ago might have turned into hot, punishing kisses or unbridled, animalistic sex. Now Alex’s passion turned into rage. How dare she betray him. Lie to him. Mislead him. And how much of what she’d said—how much of what she’d done since they’d been together had been a sham?
All of it? Every kiss? Every touch? Every pleasured cry?
“If he knew he was my brother, he should have come to me,” Alex insisted. “Not when he was in trouble, but before. Long before.”
A teardrop splashed off her chin, and despite the fact that they were not touching, he could feel her trembling.
“He did.” She swallowed and brushed the tears off her face with an angry swipe. “When he found out about Ramon, he did research. He found out about you. He went to Spain to meet you.”
Alex shook his head emphatically. “He never approached me.”
“He never told you who he was, but he met you. He went to your gallery, and according to him, you treated him like something foul you might have stepped in while walking across the sidewalk. He left without telling you who he was. Who could blame him?”
“I could,” Alex retorted. “How dare he judge me based on one test I didn’t even know I was taking? And you weren’t there—you have no idea how he presented himself to me. More than likely, I recognized him as a con and a thief and had him removed from the House of Aguilar, as I would have done with anyone who I sensed was there on false pretenses. I used to be able to spot such imposters—an ability I’ve apparently lost.”
His jab hit its mark because she turned away.
“Where is this Daniel now?” Alex asked Michael.
“County jail, awaiting trial.”
“I want to see him.”
“Not a good idea,” Michael said, shaking his head.
“Why the hell not? He’s our brother. How dare you keep this from me? You’re as bad as she is.”
“Alex,” Michael said, his voice pleading.
Alex didn’t care. Not only did Ramon’s unscrupulous blood run through the veins of both of his siblings, but it had infected the people around them, too. Perhaps if this Daniel hadn’t been accepted so readily into her household, Lucienne—née, Lucy Burnett—might have grown up to be a woman who valued honesty and honor and morals. But she had not. And now he had two brothers who wouldn’t know the truth if it slapped them in the face and a lover who’d done nothing but lie to him since they’d first met.
He’d had enough. He retrieved his cell phone and called for his driver, instructing him to meet him a couple of blocks away. He needed to walk. He needed air.
But mostly, he needed to get away.
15
“WHERE CAN I TAKE YOU?”
Lucy jumped, having forgotten that Michael was still in the room. She couldn’t tear her gaze away from the door Alex had slammed on his way out. Had that been moments before, or hours? Her body had nearly become accustomed to the pain slicing through her. She’d taken a man who’d built himself up on a foundation of truth and honor and torn him down with lie after lie after lie.
“Don’t worry about me.” She glanced down at her desk as if to gather her things, but nothing here was hers. Nothing here was real. She started toward the door, but as she passed Michael, he grabbed her arm.
His grip was gentle, but firm. Still, she freed herself with one definitive tug.
“Why didn’t you tell him you and Daniel were lovers?” Michael asked.
“Because we’re not,” she answered.
“You told the jail you were his girlfriend,” he argued.
“I also told the jail my name was Sienna Bruce. Danny didn’t want people to know we were related.”
“You’re not related,” Michael insisted.
“Maybe not by blood, but that doesn’t seem to mean all that much in your family anyway, does it?”
He took a step backward. “Why should I believe anything you say?”
She shrugged. “I don’t give a damn if you believe me. Now that you know who I really am and why I came here, you also have to realize that I’ve had easy access to your father’s ring. I could have taken it from Alex and disappeared and saved Danny and you never would have known. I don’t have a record, Special Agent Murrieta, and there’s a reason for that—Danny’s always protected me. And illegal or not, I’m good at what I do. So before you expend all your righteous indignation on me, remember that I did not steal your father’s ring, not even to save the brother I love. Why don’t you chew on that for a while and figure out what it means?”
She stalked out of the auction house and immediately turned left. Two blocks downhill would take her to a busy street where she could jump on a cable car or trolley. But she spotted Alex moving in the same direction, so she turned right and trudged up the steep slope that would lead to another major thoroughfare, albeit one that was farther away.
“Hey!”
She turned to see Special Agent Dawes jogging toward her.
“Where you going?” she asked, not the least bit winded by the run.
“I have no idea,” Lucy said. “I suppose you don’t want me to leave town.”
“I don’t give a shit where you go,” Dawes replied. “I’m off the clock. And as far as I know, other than bashing some asshole over the head, you haven’t committed any crime.”
“But I meant to,” Lucy argued. “I think that’s all that matters to Alex. And to your partner.”
“Yeah, well, I’ve been meaning to knock Michael on his ass for stealing my last slice of cheesecake out of the break room, but no one’s arrested me for that just yet, either.”
Lucy nearly laughed. Under any other circumstances, she might have found a friend in Special Agent Ruby Dawes. She was everything Lucy wasn’t—genuine and honest and strong. Before Daniel had sent her on this fool’s errand, Lucy had thought she was all those things, too. Well, maybe not the honest part. But always genuine. And always strong.
But now, she was none of those things. Somehow, in finding Alex, she’d lost herself. Or maybe he’d simply forced her to see that she’d never truly known her own identity. And as for strength, she’d had the power to cream a bad guy in order to save her life, but she wasn’t entirely sure she had the power to walk up the hill and find her way home.
“Let me give you a ride,” Ruby said, cupping her hand over Lucy’s shoulder in such a gesture of caring that Lucy nearly dissolved.
“I don’t think Michael will be too happy about that,” she replied.
“Yeah, well, I’ve got the keys. And besides, you might still have bad guys after you. No one’s caught up with Jimmy the Rim yet, or his partner, whose name, by the way, is Baxter Jones. But the locals have leads. Guys like them can’t stay hidden for long, but they also have mean friends who might come looking for the woman who bashed them on the head. Let us help you.”
Lucy glanced up the steep incline. She’d been on her feet all day. The thought of climbing to the top of the hill and then taking a side street to the main road exacerbated the burning in her arches. She couldn’t help but scan downhill again. She could no longer see Alex. Trying not to think that her final memory of him might be the sight of his retreating back, she swallowed the tears burning down her throat and nodded her silent consent.
As anticipated, Michael’s displeasure at playing bodyguard to Lucy wasn’t hard to miss. He sat beside her in the backseat, anger radiating off his skin. As much as Lucy wanted to lose herself in the flashing streaks of neon as they cruised through a neighborhood packed with restaurants and clubs on the way to her apartment, she forced herself to turn and meet Michael’s eyes. By the time he finally spoke, her own were dry and burning.
“Did you care about him? About Alex, I mean.”
“I fell in love with him,” she replied.
“You’ve only been together for two days,” he argued.
From the front seat, Ruby snorted.
“Actually, we’ve been together for almost two months. We’ve worked side by side organizing an auction that is going to make you and your mother a lot of money. And in that time, we got to know each other pretty well.”
“Actually, you got to know him,” Michael said. “The woman he knows doesn’t even exist.”
“Yeah,” she said. “Maybe.”
Until she’d met Alex and tailored the Lucienne Bonet persona to entice him, the name had been nothing more to her than a disguise—a safe personality she could slip into until the heat died down. Knowing it was only a matter of time before Danny called her back to be Lucy Burnett again, she’d never embraced the life of a woman who actually loved her job, enjoyed her coworkers and was respected for her skill and knowledge by people who appreciated art enough not to steal it.
Now she didn’t know who she was. She couldn’t be Lucy again—at least, not the Lucy she’d been in the past. Because of Alex, she fully understood Lucy’s loneliness and lack of moral center. And she couldn’t be Lucienne. Like Michael said, the woman had never truly existed.
“I don’t have answers, Michael. Not about who I am. But I swear to you that I never meant to hurt Alex. Once I knew him…once I understood what the ring meant to him, I couldn’t take it. I couldn’t steal the only…the only piece of his father he had left.”
Her voice caught and Michael cleared his throat.
“What were you going to do about Danny?”
“I didn’t know,” she wailed, throwing up her arms in frustration. “I wanted to get away from Alex and talk to Danny and try to work something out, but then we were attacked at my apartment and Alex learned the truth. Wait… Alex! Michael, if someone still wants the ring and he’s out there all alone, they could grab him! You have to—”
“Already covered,” Michael insisted. “I called in a favor and a pal of mine has been watching him since we left the auction house. After we drop you off, I’ll take over his protection myself. I’ve arranged a short leave of absence until this matter is cleared up. Once he goes back to Spain, I’m not too worried.”
This time, Lucy couldn’t help but look away. Deep in her heart, she knew that returning to his homeland was the best thing for Alex. What did he have left here that she hadn’t destroyed? Even his relationship with Michael needed rebuilding, thanks to her and Danny.
Unfortunately, six thousand miles would not be enough to sever the connection they’d made—at least, not for her.
“You’re not safe, either,” Michael continued.
“I’ve never done business from my home,” she said. “Unless we’re being followed, no one knows where I live. When someone had product for me to move, I went to them.”
“What about the IDs that were stolen during the robbery?”
“The Lucienne Bonet IDs were fake, but that’s how they found my rental. The Lucy Burnett IDs have the address of a cabin my family owns up north, but no one has been there in years. My apartment is leased to a dummy company that Danny set up years ago to protect us from situations exactly like this. I’ll be fine.”
“Will you?”
This time, his question held no accusation or disdain.
She could only shake her head.
“Look,” he said, reaching across the seat and placing his hand on top of hers in a gesture so tentative and sweet, she thought she might lose her mind. “I’ve visited Danny a lot in jail. Clearly more than he’s told you. I keep trying to reach out, but he’s a block of stone.”
“Must be a family trait,” Lucy said.
“Hey, I’m not that stubborn.”
Again, Ruby snorted in the front seat.
“Hey,” he chided.
She started singing along to Lady GaGa on the radio.
“I guess the Murrieta men can be fairly pigheaded,” he confessed.
“Yeah, they can,” she agreed. “I asked Danny to go to you as soon as he was arrested. Danny is a lot of things, Michael, but he’s not a killer. He never takes jobs where there’s a risk that someone other than himself might get hurt. Someone set him up—maybe the same someone who’s trying to get their hands on the ring. Jimmy the Rim and Baxter Jones are two-bit hoods. They’ll work for anyone if the money is untraceable. I told Danny myself that you might be able to help, but he wouldn’t listen. I begged him to let me tell Alex the truth from the start, but he wouldn’t hear it. It was his choice. I guess I should have gone against his wishes, but I never have. I’m not sure I know how.”
Michael’s hand curled around hers, lifting it up so he could look at their entwined hands in the glare from the oncoming headlights. She realized that all this was hard for him, too—that he didn’t trust any more easily than his brothers. She supposed that was the risk of having Ramon Murrieta for their father. Michael’s childhood had differed from Alex’s and Danny’s, but in the end, all three of them carried the sins of their father, whether they’d realized it or not.
“As much as I tried to reach out to Danny, I never accepted him for who he was or what he went through as a kid,” Michael admitted. “I condemned him too much for him to think I’d ever help him out of a jam like this.”
“He doesn’t trust easily,” she said. “In fact, except for me, he doesn’t trust anyone.”
“But he didn’t tell you anything more about who wanted the ring?”
“I don’t know if he knew, to be honest. He just said the less I knew, the better. Once I had the ring, he was going to make the arrangements. And Michael, that’s the most disturbing part. Danny doesn’t scare easily. He’s been through a lot. Whatever they’re holding over his head is big.”
“Maybe they were threatening to hurt you if he didn’t turn over the ring. Maybe he thought that if you transformed into the personality that had kept you safe so many times in the past, he was somehow protecting you.”
She raked her hands through her hair, more anxious than ever to remove the extensions, pop out her contact lenses and, at the very least, look like herself again. When she’d become Lucienne Bonet in the past, she’d never altered her appearance so drastically. She would cut her hair or wear it up, maybe throw in a temporary dark wash to tone down the auburn and add a pair of funky glasses, but otherwise, she looked relatively the same.
This transformation had been for Alex alone, and if he didn’t want her, then she saw no reason to continue the charade.
“Maybe,” she said.
“Well, we won’t know until we talk to Danny.”
“He won’t talk to you.”
“We’re all going to see him. I’ll arrange it. It’s time we had a family meeting and worked this all out. Together.”
“I’m not a part of your family,” she insisted.
“You’re part of Danny’s. For now, that’s enough.”
MICHAEL CALLED Lucy the morning after he and Ruby had dropped her off at her apartment and told her that he’d arranged to have Danny moved to a more secure area in the jail. He was working with Danny’s attorney to set up a meeting for the whole family—something she still had trouble wrapping her mind around.
She’d have to see Alex again. When she did, she wanted to look like herself again. For once, Lucy Burnett would be the persona who protected her. Or at least, that’s what she hoped.
Until the conference could be arranged, Michael insisted that she lie low and contact no one. He even sent Ruby over to make sure Lucy had everything she needed. She had no idea why he was being so nice to her, but she decided it probably had more to do with his own guilt about misjudging Danny and lying to Alex than anything else. But since she didn’t want any more run-ins with men with guns, she did as he asked.
The daughter of a hairstylist, Ruby helped her take out her extensions and then they made an afternoon out of dying her hair back to its original color and boiling up a pot of delicious gumbo that would keep her fed until she could resume her life in the open. By the time the sun went down two days after her world imploded, they’d finished three bowls of
spicy stew and had downed half a six-pack each of Ruby’s favorite beer.
“How are you holding up?” Ruby lounged beside her on the couch, watching a DVD of The Big Easy with the volume turned down low. Ruby was big on theme nights.
Lucy lifted her beer bottle and swallowed the last of the cold, yeasty brew. “Bored, mostly. Except today. Thanks for spending so much time with me, Ruby. Honest to God, I don’t know why you and Michael are looking out for me after all I’ve done.”
“As you pointed out to Michael a couple of nights ago, you didn’t do anything but lie about who you are,” she answered. “And as I’m thinking you don’t really know who you are, it’s an understandable mistruth.”
Lucy looked to the left. Her reflection bounced back at her from the window. Funny how her face and hair and eyes seemed familiar again, but she still didn’t know the woman in the mirror. She’d been alone with her thoughts for a long time. Over and over, she’d reviewed every single mistake she’d made, not only with Alex, but her whole life. And so far, she’d come up with only one life lesson she could take away from all the hurt and pain she’d caused: she needed to learn how to be herself.
Trouble was, she didn’t know who that “self” was. And she wasn’t sure how she could find out.
“Maybe there’s no such thing as an understandable mistruth,” Lucy said. “Maybe a lie is just a lie.”
Ruby lined her empty beer bottle up with the other five on the table. “In my line of work, lying is part of the job. Catching bad guys requires it. You lied to catch a good guy. Who the hell am I to judge?”
Ruby’s cell phone trilled, but when she answered, the call was for Lucy. Michael confirmed that the meeting with Danny would happen the next morning.
“And Alex is going to be there?” she asked, her voice so shaky, she could feel her cheeks reddening with embarrassment.
“Absolutely,” Michael replied. “He’s anxious to bring all of this to a close.”