But playing meant walking a fine line. He wouldn’t let her push him around. Give Opal an inch, and she’d take the length of the Mason-Dixon Line. “Shall we?”
Together they passed through the wall of French doors to the lanai, where a waterfall bubbled into the pool which glowed in a profusion of calming blue and green lights.
Opal dropped her shoulder bag onto the table and sat down.
He poured the martinis, brought her a glass. “So, how was your day, dear?”
She sipped her drink, proceeded to stare out at the pool and ignore him. Obviously since she’d had to tell him to ask, his question wasn’t enough to soothe her ruffled feathers.
He tried again. “Thanks for telling me about the Vertical Playground. I cornered Jake in the shower and we had a chat.”
That got her attention. He could see a grin tickling the corners of her mouth. “The shower?”
“It was the only place I could catch him without Mallory. Those two are stuck together like barbed wire.”
“That’s the truth, so what did you chat about?”
“About the man’s intentions toward my daughter. What else?” Duke set his glass on the table and sat down beside her. “He shows up out of nowhere and within hours he’s showering in her bathroom? I was within my rights to ask.”
“Of course. And what did he say?”
“That he hasn’t figured out yet what he wants from her.”
“Do you believe him?”
“No. He’s got a lot more than a hard-on for her whether he’s figured it out yet or not.”
Duke wouldn’t mention that he recognized the symptoms because he was suffering from them himself. Opal would have a party with that information.
“Of course you offered to help him figure it out.”
“Of course.” Duke smiled. “At least to help him sort out his priorities about what I find acceptable and unacceptable regarding his behavior.”
She tipped her glass in salute. “And did you?”
“Absolutely. I also asked him how he knew her.”
Something about that made Opal smile, a slow, secretive smile that made the hairs on the back of his neck prickle. “Really? And what did he say?”
“He claims he promised Mallory not to say anything. Apparently she wants to explain the situation to me herself.”
“You believe him?”
Duke shrugged. “I don’t know why he’d lie. He doesn’t strike me as stupid, and I’ll find out from her soon enough. He did admit to meeting her before.”
Her smile widened, and Duke plucked the glass from her hand and set it back on the table. He knew this woman too well not to recognize when she was stringing him along. “What’s up?”
Curiously, he watched her reach for her bag and flip open the leather flap to withdraw a videotape. It took a minute for him to place it.
A surveillance tape from the Innovative job.
By all rights that tape should have been destroyed ten years ago. Disposing of the evidence was normal procedure after every job. But the Innovative job had been different.
After his arrest, his crew had quickly stored his belongings to get them out of reach of the law. The surveillance tapes had been buried with his things and after his parole, Duke hadn’t disposed of them because he’d been feeling sentimental about his last job. He hadn’t thought about them in years.
Then the significance of that tape clicked.
“You’re not telling me he’s—”
“One and the same.” Opal laughed, and with her eyes glittering beneath the lights, she looked more beautiful than ever before. “I recognized him the instant I saw him. I ran by the storage facility to pick up this tape. That’s why I was late.”
Duke couldn’t contain a shot of adrenaline that launched him up out of the chair. “Clever woman. What would I do without you?” He dropped a kiss to the top of her head, pleased she preened beneath the attention. “Let’s play it.”
Within minutes he had the tape in the video player, and was turning the television to face them. Using the remote, he fast-forwarded through long spans of silent nothingness—the dimly lit interior of a business closed for the weekend.
The tape had degraded badly over the years, but Duke could still make out the entry to the warehouse where Mallory had been slated to disconnect the alarm sensor that would secure his egress from where he’d punched through the vault wall from his access point in the warehouse.
He almost fast-forwarded past her entrance and had to rewind to catch her rappelling down the line, dropping to the floor with an agility that the years had only honed.
His daughter moved with an economy of motion that still brought him a crazy feeling of pride, and he watched as she punched in the access code on the keypad to disable the sensors.
Despite the grainy quality of the tape, Duke recognized the instant she’d sensed something was wrong. Her whole body tensed, and she turned around fully to face the camera.
He stood beside Opal’s chair, thigh brushing her shoulder as they watched this long-ago scene play out in silent slow motion. Mallory raised a finger to her lips and tugged up the bottom of her mask as she moved across the room toward the young man who’d suddenly appeared in the camera’s range. She engaged the kid in a kiss that no warm-blooded male alive would have been able to resist.
Jake Trinity hadn’t been able to resist. And there was no mistaking that this young man was Jake Trinity.
Duke had known about Mallory’s run-in with this employee since the start. He’d never forget his first visit with her in the county lockup. She’d been hysterical, believing that her decision to stall the young man had been the deciding factor in getting him busted. That hadn’t been the case, and he’d assured her all the error had been his. He’d activated the alarm.
He remembered wanting to wrap her in his arms, as he’d always done when she’d been upset as a little girl. He’d wanted to tell her how proud he’d been of her. She’d been training superbly, and her actions when dealing with that unexpected situation on the Innovative job only proved it.
Her stall tactic would have worked if not for the silent alarm, would have bought him the extra time to complete the job. Given the situation, she’d made the same call he or any of his crew would have made.
But Duke hadn’t told her. He hadn’t wanted to do or say anything that might encourage her to continue living the life he’d raised her in, a life that could all too easily land her exactly where he was—behind Plexiglas and unable to comfort his heartbroken daughter.
He’d needed to make a point—crime doesn’t pay.
And it didn’t. He’d learned too late that the price of their lifestyle was too high. Way too high.
He couldn’t have foreseen that Mallory would run into Jake Trinity, who shouldn’t have been in the building during the break-in. He couldn’t have known she’d assume the responsibility for his arrest. Duke also hadn’t counted on the courts refusing to honor the documents he’d left with his attorney, which would have allowed Mallory to live with Opal.
All events which proved that he never should have involved his daughter in such a lifestyle in the first place.
Duke rewound the tape and played it again. “No wonder I had the feeling I’d seen him before.”
“Amazing,” Opal said softly. “I can even see it on this grainy old videotape.”
“What?”
“Their chemistry. Do you see what they’re like together? They practically glow.”
There was no missing it, and Duke hadn’t had to see them half-naked together to notice, either. “I always wondered what gave her the idea to kiss him.”
“She obviously thought he was cute. He is. Very cute.”
Duke frowned. “Her stall tactic worked. Trinity didn’t trip the alarm.”
“No surprises there. The promise of sex scatters most men’s wits. Most men think with their penises, or haven’t you heard?”
“Most being the operative term.” Duke
might have been offended except he was still reeling from the shock of Trinity’s identity and the implications of him showing up again in Mallory’s life. “So what the hell is going on between these two? They kiss once and then jump into bed the first time they see each other in ten years.”
“It must have been quite a kiss.”
“If my daughter had wanted this man that bad she’d have gone after him years ago.”
“Which raises a very interesting question. How did Mallory know it was him?”
“She recognized him just like you did.”
Opal shook her head. “I don’t think so. The instant Jake’s proposal came through on the fax, Mallory went on red alert. I told you about the astronomical fee she quoted him to take the job. I think she knew who Jake was when she saw his name.”
“So how and when did she find out?”
Opal eyed him thoughtfully. “It wouldn’t have been that hard to find out who he was. You know that. Jake wouldn’t have been in the building unless he worked for Innovative or the security company. She could have tracked down the information through personnel records.”
“Why would she care enough even to bother? And why would she ask Trinity not to tell me and then not tell me herself?”
Why seemed to be the operative question, and unfortunately, it was a question Duke thought he could answer.
Depressing the pause button, he stared at Mallory and Trinity’s frozen forms on the television screen, recalling that first visit with her after he’d been busted.
I should have called Polish Paul and told him I’d been made, Daddy, she’d said. Then you would have gotten out.
He turned to find Opal watching him. “Mallory thought she was responsible for my getting arrested. She thought the kid she’d run into—Trinity—had tripped the alarm.”
“I know she did. The poor thing was beside herself, but you explained what happened.”
“I told her I tripped the alarm, but what if she didn’t believe me? What if she thought I was lying so she wouldn’t feel responsible?” Duke sank into a chair, the effort of standing suddenly too much. “I’ve always played it straight with her. Why would she think I’d lie?”
Scooting her chair around, Opal reached out to take his hands, and Duke held on, grateful she was here and he didn’t have to sort through this mess alone. Maybe she was right. Maybe he was getting old. Or just tired of tackling life alone.
“Is it so hard to understand, Duke, really? Why would Mallory think you made a mistake? You were the best.”
“Everyone makes mistakes.”
“Mallory thinks you’re as close to perfect as they come,” she said simply. “So does your crew.”
“Well, I’ve always had an exalted sense of my self-worth.” He gave a brittle laugh. “You’ve told me so often enough.”
“I’m just saying it’s not so hard to understand why Mallory might not believe you tripped that alarm.”
There was something in her voice…something that raised his hackles even more.
“Accidents happen to the best of us,” he said. “If you put yourself in high-risk situations, you’re bound to run into trouble sooner or later. I surrounded myself with the best people so trouble would happen later rather than sooner.”
Her impeccably manicured fingers tightened around his. “I understand that, but Mallory was sixteen years old at the time. You’re her father, and she loves you. Put yourself in her position. She should have called for egress, but she chose to stall instead. It was a good call and would have worked had you not triggered that alarm.”
There was no missing that…something in her voice now, an intensity that threw his senses into high alert. “What’s your point, Opal?”
“Come on, Duke. Think about it. You trained us all. Did you really think we’d just casually accept that you’d screwed up? We’re better than that. You must have expected us to investigate and figure out exactly what happened.”
Duke sat back in the chair and stared hard. “But I did trip the alarm.”
She met his gaze as pointedly. “Not by accident.”
The silence hung between them, heavy with implication, with the weight of a decade’s old truth. And as he absorbed the silence, Opal held his hands, gave him an anchor to cling to, her thoughtful expression revealing that she not only knew the truth, but understood.
“How long have you known?” he asked when he could get the words out.
“Since shortly after the job.” She shrugged lightly, a gesture he knew she hoped would lessen the intensity of the moment, the intensity of knowing he hadn’t fooled anyone—especially the one person he’d needed to fool. The most important person of all. “It took a bit, but we finally pieced it all together.”
“Did you tell Mallory?”
“No. We understood why you did it. To protect all of us, of course, but to give her a shot at a better life. I can’t speak for Eddie and Paul but I wasn’t surprised. I’d seen it coming for a while. The minute Mallory started pushing you to let her join the team.”
“Risking my ass was a lot different than risking hers.”
“That’s what makes you such a good father.” She lifted his hands, bent low to press a kiss along his knuckles, a gesture he found so much comfort in that he couldn’t help but feel humble.
“A good father would have gotten a real job and set a better example for his daughter.”
Opal squeezed his hands tightly. “You were entrenched in the life long before Mallory was born. It was your shot out of the gutter and you took it. You’ve made good with your life. Don’t regret that.”
“You’re right, of course.” He knew it, but he didn’t feel it.
“If you don’t mind me pointing out the obvious, Duke.” She didn’t bother hiding her exasperation. “It wasn’t as if you’d actually planned to tackle family life. Normally, I’m not one to speak ill of the dead, but honestly, if it wasn’t for that idiot you were sleeping with forgetting whether or not she’d taken her birth control pills from one day to the next…”
Shaking her head, she sent platinum waves fringing around her face, a face that even while frowning was still so beautiful. “And you did do the honorable thing by marrying her. You reared a wonderful daughter. This was your life when Mallory came into it. Would you have rather missed out on her because your life wasn’t set up for a family?”
“Of course not.” Although he could have argued that he’d been well acquainted with his late wife’s flightiness and had made the choice to trust her enough to operate without a condom.
But he didn’t. Not when he so enjoyed Opal fiercely coming to his defense.
“Ironic though, don’t you think?” he said. “I was telling the truth about tripping the alarm and my own crew didn’t believe me. The more I think about it the more convinced I am that Mallory didn’t, either.”
“And I’m just as sure that if she didn’t, she would have kept it to herself.”
“Maybe even decided to do something about it.”
Opal inclined her head. “You think she blames Jake?”
“Not entirely. Mallory isn’t stupid, and she’s not one to cast off her decisions onto someone else. But he did get in her way. If she hadn’t run into him, she’d never have been forced to make a decision. There’s some reason she went through the trouble of finding out who he was. And I don’t care how much chemistry’s between them, she wouldn’t just jump in bed with this guy after ten years. If she wanted him that much she’d have found him a long time ago.”
Opal smiled thoughtfully. “I think you’re right.”
“This simply isn’t acceptable. The whole point of going to prison was so that everyone would be safe and off the hook. Mallory can’t feel responsible.”
She ran her thumb along his hand, didn’t say anything.
“Not to mention that Mallory finally has met a man who might be worthy of her and she’s going to run him off.”
“Back to that again, are we, Duke?” Opal rolled
her eyes in a look of profound tolerance. “If it helps any, I don’t think Jake will be easy to chase away.”
“Mallory’s relentless.”
“Just like her father.”
“She won’t let up.” Which meant she’d probably take until the eve of her sixtieth birthday to recognize a good thing. He didn’t admit that to Opal. “I’ve got to fix this.”
“Tell her the truth.”
“Tell her that I got myself busted and forgot to mention it? Oh, I’m sure that’ll go over big.”
Opal leaned forward until they were so close he could smell the faint scent of Chanel on her skin, see the glint of moisture in her eyes. “You tell her that you cared enough about her and all of us to take the hit and break us out of the life.”
“Telling her undermines the point, don’t you think?” he asked dryly, finding those almost-tears disconcerting.
“Ten years ago maybe, but not now. We’ve all moved on. Your plan worked. You made sure we all had enough money to get fresh starts, and watching you sit in prison made sure we all wanted them.” She blinked against her tears, shot him a look that was pure Opal bluster. “Why are you frowning? You can’t be worried that Mallory will go back to the life.”
“Not hardly. She’s been having too much fun working for the law lately.”
“Actually, I think she’s having more fun working for Jake,” she said. “Explain why you did it, Duke. She’s all grown up. She’ll understand.”
He didn’t say anything, couldn’t think of anything to say.
“Promise me,” she persisted. “You’ll never get grandbabies if Mallory thinks Jake helped get you busted.”
He glanced at the television screen where his daughter and Trinity were frozen in time, arms wrapped around each other and… Well, Opal was right. They did sort of glow.
“I’ll think about it.” That was the best he could do.
Apparently it was enough because Opal slipped out of her chair and into his lap. “And now that everything is out on the table, I want to talk about all this self-sacrifice. I really had no idea you had such a noble streak.”
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