INTIMATE STRANGER

by Donna Sterling

  Slowly Jennifer nodded. She supposed she was okay.

  "You understand what this means for you, don't you, Jennie?" Dan asked.

  She glanced at him. "Actually, no. What does it mean?"

  "As soon as Vick lets it be known that he's back, your part in this drama is over."

  "Over?"

  "More or less. I know about these men we're up against. I've studied everything about them for years—from rap sheets to wiretaps to informants' reports. His enemies want him. Big Vick himself. The only reason they'd take the time and trouble to hunt you down is to draw him out of hiding. Once he's out, they'll have no interest in you. I wouldn't advise taking back the name Palmieri or visiting the old neighborhood anytime soon—vengeance may still seem sweet to the ones he crossed, if there's not too much effort involved. But with a little common sense, you can go about your business as you did before Vick testified."

  "No," Trev said, drawing her closer to him. "That's not good enough." As much as he wanted her to be free, Dan's prognosis didn't sound like a guarantee. He couldn't stand the thought that Dan might have miscalculated. "Unless we know for sure that there's no threat to her—none whatsoever—she's staying in the Program."

  Jen gazed at him in clear surprise, as if she might contradict him. He braced himself for the fight. He wouldn't back down on this point. Of course, she hadn't given him the right to speak for her, or even to participate in the decision-making process. She hadn't even given him any real hope of remaining in her life, other than the love she'd confessed to feeling for him. He intended to work on that with everything he had.

  "Either way," Dan said to Jen, "whether you stay in the Program or not, I see no reason to change your name from Jennifer Hannah, or for you to move away from Sunrise. The only one who has breached your cover is Trev. As long as you intend to stay married to him, that shouldn't be a problem. Or maybe I should say, as long as you intend to marry him. As Jennifer Hannah, you're currently a single woman in the eyes of the law. If you decide you'd rather remain single—" Dan hesitated "—we'd have to rethink our strategy."

  Trev and Jen glanced at each other, and tension gripped Trev with an iron fist as he tried to read her intentions. Would she stay with him?

  "As far as my paperwork goes—" Dan leaned forward, his elbows on his knees, his hands clasped between them, his gaze on Jen. "There will be no mention of Trev Montgomery, or any previous marriage for Jennifer Hannah."

  A beautiful smile slowly blossomed in her eyes.

  Trev had a hard time looking away from her, when Dan shifted his focus to him.

  "Which means there's no reason at all for you to go into the Program, Mr. Montgomery. You're not connected to the Palmieri case in any way."

  Realizing the scope and importance of the favor Dan was granting him, Trev slowly nodded and gripped his hand in a deeply grateful handshake.

  When they'd drawn back from the clasp, Dan crossed his arms, cocked his head and squinted at him. "For the sake of doing better next time, Trev, I'd like to know where we went wrong in disguising her. We had the best cosmetic surgeons in the business engineering the change in her appearance. How the hell did you recognize her?"

  Jennifer tightened her fists in her lap as she waited for his reply. She hadn't wanted Dan to know about the days and nights they'd spent together—the intimacy they'd shared…

  "She's my wife."

  Dan stared at him for a long while. And though Jennifer half expected him to repeat the question, the U.S. Marshals security supervisory inspector nodded and sat back in his chair. "My hat's off to you, sir. She looks nothing like she did before. I don't believe anyone else will recognize her. Ever. Let me just say, Jennie, that if your fictional friend from high school had really existed, I'd have bet my last dime that she wouldn't have suspected a thing."

  Jennifer smiled at the man who had proven to be her friend, her heart buoying up with irrepressible lightness. "Do me a favor, Dan. Don't book that bet with anyone named Vick."

  Dan grinned, and before he left them for the night, squeezed her in a hearty hug. In an oddly earnest tone, he told her, "Things may look even brighter in a few weeks or so."

  As she shut the door behind him and slid the dead bolt into place, she frowned and turned to Trev, wondering what Dan had meant by that cryptic comment.

  Trev clearly mistook the cause of her knitted brows, and pulled her firmly into his arms with an answering frown. "I know, I know, I had no right to tell him that you were staying in the Program. And I have no right to hold you, either." He ran his large, strong hands down the curve of her back and pressed her into tight, provocative alignment against his hardening body. "Or to have you, every night and day for the rest of my life." He brushed his mouth in slow, light passes across hers, until she moaned with longing for deeper penetration, feeding the fire between them that never quite came under control. "But I want those rights, Jen," he whispered hoarsely. "Starting now."

  She didn't argue. She melded into his kiss, stroked beneath his clothes, lured him in deeper, in every way she could. They soon lost sight of everything but the love that drove them together in a fever of sumptuous lovemaking.

  It wasn't until morning, as she lay naked and languid against him, that Trev demanded confirmation of the answer he believed she'd given him. "You're not going to leave me, Jen. You're here in my arms to stay." Cautiously he peered into her face. "Aren't you?"

  Her soft, loving smile transformed her from the sweetest, sexiest, most beautiful woman he'd ever seen into the very lifeblood of his heart and soul. "I'll never leave you, Trev," she swore, smoothing reverent fingers along the curve of his face. "I learned a lesson from my father yesterday—maybe the last he'll ever teach me. There are certain freedoms that make a person's life worth living. For me—" she gazed with glowing, heated sincerity "—it's the freedom to love you. I'm ready to fight for that in any way I have to."

  His love for her pulsed and flowed in strong, hard currents. "Marry me, Jennifer Diana Carly Hannah Montgomery—or whatever name you end up with. Marry me."

  She kissed him with the most beguiling tenderness, stirring him more deeply than he'd ever imagined possible. "Everyone will say you're in love with me," she murmured, "because I remind you of your first wife."

  "They won't know how right they are."

  Pursing her lips, she tilted her head and narrowed her gaze at him—her schoolteacher look that never failed to make him smile. "You aren't marrying me just to save money, are you?"

  He raised a questioning brow.

  "A hundred dollars a night," she mused, "times sixty years or more…"

  He pulled her roughly to him, ready to start the next round. "Put it on my tab."

  * * *

  Epilogue

  « ^

  Shouts of "Author, author!" gave way to wild applause, whistles and a standing ovation, as Jen led her writing partner from their front-row table to the stage of The Georgia Seaside Dinner Theater. Squeezing the older woman's delicate but capable hand, Jen beamed at Babs as they took their bows. In her long gauzy skirt, flowing blouse and turquoise necklaces, her brown eyes lit with a smile and her many silver earrings glittering in the stage lights, Trev's grandmother looked ages younger than Jen had ever seen her.

  "We did it, Di," she crowed between the kisses she blew to the audience.

  "It's Jen, Babs. The name's Jen."

  "Oh. Yeah."

  Jen suspected that most people took Babs's occasional slips as age-induced forgetfulness. Jen knew better, of course. The old gal was as sharp as a tack. With hands still joined and smiles beaming, they took another bow, gratified by the audience's response to the debut of their romantic comedy.

  After the red velvet curtains had swept to a close, their favorite fans met them at the stage door with hugs, kisses and joyous grins—Veronica, Trev's soft-spoken sister who had recently entered med school; Sammy, as blond and high-spirited as ever at the age of seventeen; two young teenage girls from the school for the
hearing impaired, both clearly enamored of Sammy, judging from the giggles and sign language flashing between them; and Phyllis, Jen's partner at the Helping Hand Staffing Services.

  Jen still teased Phyllis about how she had mistaken Trev's name for "Montero" instead of "Montgomery" when he'd come to hire their services. Phyllis teased Jennifer about the kind of services she must have provided, considering she'd come back two weeks later married to the man.

  The man himself towered at the fringe of their merry little group, his smiling, golden-brown gaze lingering on her. The mere connection of their gazes filled her with sensuous warmth. They would celebrate her success in their own way, later tonight, in the dreamy seaside house he'd built for her.

  With a start of surprise, she noticed that Trev carried a huge bouquet of long-stemmed red roses. "Oh, Trev, they're beautiful," she murmured, as he made his way to her. "But you didn't have to buy me more. The bouquet at home is too extravagant already."

  "This one's not from me. The hostess said it just arrived." He studied the two-dozen roses, then slanted her a dramatically stern glance. "I don't have a rival that I'm unaware of, do I?"

  She smiled at him with so much love, she knew he had to see it blazing from her eyes. "Not one, in the whole world."

  He shifted closer, the warmth in his smile intensifying, and she almost forgot about the roses. Almost. Her curiosity over who had sent them was simply too great to be ignored.

  Evading his intensity with a deliberately teasing grin, she took the bouquet from his arms, carried it to their table and plucked a small envelope from the midst of the fragrant roses. The envelope was addressed to "Mrs. Montgomery." Inside the card was written in a bold, concise hand, I'm sure your father would be proud. Best regards, Vick.

  Warmth crowded her chest and misted her eyes.

  Before she had a chance to hand the card to Trev, Sammy loomed over her shoulder and read it out loud. "Hey, isn't Vick that gangster friend of yours, Jen? The one they made the movie about?"

  "Well, he's not a gangster anymore. I mean, that was the point of the movie, wasn't it? To show how he—"

  But Sammy had turned away to address his two young admirers. "Did you see that movie about Big Vick Palmieri? Yeah, well, Jen knows him. The real guy, not just the actor. He sent us passes to go see the premiere of the movie in Hollywood. It was awesome—especially the scene where he goes walking into that warehouse. I thought he was dead, man."

  Jen winced, unable to help it, even after all these years.

  "But then he hits the ground, and the bullets start flying. It really was a setup by the feds, wasn't it, Jen? In real life, I mean. I heard about it on the news. They wiped out the rest of that crime family. What was their name again?"

  "Uh, Sammy, the girls probably aren't all that interested in gangsters." Trev slid a supportive arm around Jen. "Besides, it looks like your grandmother can use help with those flowers. Why don't you go carry them to her car?"

  As Sammy loped off toward his grandmother with the girls in close pursuit, Jen slid her arm around her husband's waist and hugged him. Though she knew she was being oversensitive, she cringed at reminders of the trap the federal agents had indeed set. No one had ever admitted it to her, of course, but they'd clearly allowed her father to use himself as bait to provoke his enemies into carelessness.

  A team of federal agents had caught them in the act of drawing their guns and neatly finished them off.

  Hollywood had come a-knocking. Big Vick retired in style. The last she'd heard, he was vacationing in Europe. He apparently didn't feel entirely free of the past, though, or he wouldn't have insisted on maintaining the secrecy of their relationship.

  She supposed it was for the best. She felt safer as Jennifer Hannah Montgomery. In fact, she felt as if "Jen" had always been her name.

  "Uh-oh," Trev muttered beside her, his attention fixed on the stage. "I recognize that look in my grandmother's eyes. It's going to be an all-nighter."

  Jen turned in time to see Babs call out from the stage, "Hey, everyone! Let's all meet at my beach cottage in thirty minutes. It's time to party!" A rowdy cheer went up, not only from their intimate group of family and friends, but also from the actors, technical crew, stage hands, waitresses, and everyone else lingering in the theater after the bulk of the crowd had left.

  Babs, it seemed, had become a local favorite since renting a cottage nearby for the summer.

  In the ensuing commotion, Jen looked around for Christopher and Yvonne. They'd been helpful critics during the three years she and Babs had worked on the play. Glancing around the massive dining room where waitresses and bus-boys cleared dishes from tables, Jen didn't see her two young in-laws anywhere.

  "Trev, have you seen Christopher and Yvonne?"

  "They were sitting right behind us when the curtain opened."

  "You looking for Chris and Yvonne?" Sammy piped up from behind Jen.

  Jen nodded.

  Sammy jerked his thumb toward the darkened balcony. "Last time I saw 'em, they were headed up those stairs. Hey, isn't that them, in the last booth? Yeah, I think it is. I'll go tell them we're leaving."

  He started toward the stairs.

  Trev and Jen shot each other wide-eyed glances, then dove after Sammy. Trev grabbed his arm; Jen caught a fistful of his shirt. "Let's just give them time to, uh, finish their meal in private," Trev suggested.

  "I'm sure they'll be down soon," added Jen.

  Sammy shrugged and bounded off with the rest of their party, headed for Babs's place.

  Trev and Jen met in a private huddle, trying to stifle their laughter—at least until the kids were out of earshot. Once locked together in the huddle, though, neither was in a particular rush to let go.

  "Since our booth is taken," Trev whispered, drawing her body flush against his, "why don't you and I go find an elevator somewhere? I hear a lot of action takes place in elevators."

  She kissed his neck, nipped at his ear, and asked in a throaty murmur, "Are you willing to hold the close button?"

  He considered the prospect, then shook his head. "Nah. Hey … what about an air-hockey table?"

  She slanted him a wicked glance. "Did you bring a cherry lollipop?"

  He patted the pockets of his jeans. "Fresh out."

  "Well, then. Looks like we'll just have to go home and … improvise."

  Trev liked the suggestion. Plans sparked and simmered in his mind. As usual, though, he didn't stand a chance of resisting his incorrigible wife. Before they'd even reached the expressway, his plans took a slight turn—a hot, desperate one—into the first secluded spot along the highway.

  * * * * *