Caught in the Frame

by ReGina Welling

  While he prattled on, EV ran through her mental list of possible motives. Most crimes were committed over love or money. Whether he was even capable of the first, she had no idea, so she decided to move on to the second. Nate’s research hadn’t turned up a solid connection between Remy and Gilmore. Remy’s net worth far exceeded the assets of Gilmore and Ponderosa Pines combined. Yet, the line had to be tugged. The trouble was, she had no idea where to begin pulling at those particular threads. Stalling for time, she picked at her meal.

  “I’m sorry; I’m talking your ear off.” The candy coating was back on him; too bad EV knew the chewy center was made of something that looked similar to a Tootsie Roll, but was definitely not flavored with chocolate. “Can I confess something to you, EV?”

  Nope. Nope. Nope.

  “Of course,” EV forced a smile that could have passed for genuine to anyone who didn’t know her well; Remy included.

  “I’m as nervous around you as a teenager trying to get to first base. The new hair, the new clothes--”

  That happened before you even got here. EV’s blood ran cold. You’ve been watching me. For how long?

  “Seeing you here like this, touching you, knowing we’re going to …” his thumb brushed over the back of her hand. He mistook her shiver of disgust for interest, “I think I’m falling for you all over again.”

  Dalton muttered several uncomplimentary things about Remy into EV’s ear before Nate’s voice commanded silence. Her delighted smile at hearing them worked in her favor when Remy took it to mean she felt the same.

  Now what? She thought.

  As though answering her mental question, Nate instructed, “Humor him.”

  “This is all very flattering, but we lead such different lives.”

  “It doesn’t have to be that way, you could come with me. You know things were better when we were alone together,” scorn made his next words sound like an epithet, “away from that…hole of a town.”

  And there it was again, the contempt he always shown for Ponderosa Pines. Could it be that it was the entire town he hated, and not any one member specifically? The town wouldn’t fold without her, if that’s what he thought. Was it?

  Might as well ask. “Why do you hate Ponderosa Pines so much?”

  “That place killed my parents.”

  “It was an accident, it could have happened at any time. How is that the town’s fault?

  “If they hadn’t been heading off to try and convert more people to backwoods living, they would still be alive and my grandmother wouldn’t have…” He swallowed twice. Hard.

  Her ear piece erupted, “They’ve found Baylee—safe and sound and on her way back here. The locals will be here soon, and we need him out of the way before that happens. It’s time to move this operation upstairs,” Nate’s message was a welcome one; both because Baylee was safe, and that it meant this whole ordeal was coming to a close. Dalton, dropping into a stooped, limping gait, circled toward the exit with his face averted. He meant to be in place before Remy put a single foot in EV’s suite.

  “Wouldn’t have what? Tell me what happened.” EV pulled her attention back from the external goings-on and seized on Remy’s unfinished sentence. He’d let something important slip.

  “Remy’s grandmother passed peacefully in her sleep according to what I can find online.” Nate caught on quickly that they’d finally hit on something. Busy fingers flew over his keyboard, and as they appeared, he whispered his findings into her ear. “I’ll pull up the coroner’s report, see if there’s more to the story. Either way, you’ve hit a nerve, poke it harder.”

  “It killed her.”

  Sympathy painted EV’s eyes with compassion while her mind spun like a top. Several possible outcomes played through her mind, each one giving him motive for revenge. This was it, maybe not the whole story, but the beginning of it, anyway. A wild elation bubbled up inside her.

  She tamped it down, thinking hard on how to draw the rest from him.

  “I only met her that one time, but your grandmother seemed like a lovely person. I’m sorry for you, and for your grandfather.”

  A muscle twitched at the side of Remy’s mouth, signaling a rush of negative emotion. To EV, it looked like annoyance, which seemed an odd reaction given the conversation. Her head tilted left while she let him see her assessing his state of mind. Now was not the time to hammer at him, she decided; instead, she needed to force impatience back and become his confidant.

  “Would you feel better if you talked about it? Not here, though, up in my room.”

  Anticipation flared in his eyes. “Lead the way.”

  The minute the door closed, he turned to and bracketed her against it, leaning in to capture her lips with his. She just managed to slip her hand between his mouth and hers. “No, Remy. I want all the ghosts cleared from between us before we take that next step. Please, tell me about your grandmother, what happened to her?”

  For a full minute or more, he stayed silent, his posture slowly changing while she thought he battled the decision to tell her some part of the truth, all of it, or to continue with the facade he had built. When another pang of sympathy surfaced, EV gave in to it and trusted her instincts. “I can see you’re hurting,” she gentled her voice, surprised to note the modicum of truth in her own words. She waited on the edge of what felt like all or nothing.

  His arms dropped to his sides ending in tightly clenched fists. EV took the opportunity to move into the seating area. Reluctantly, he followed to settle beside her.

  At his first words, she knew she’d won. “My grandmother went away after my father died. Not physically, just somewhere inside herself where no one could touch her. It was like something inside her had gone with him to wherever it is people go when they pass, and nothing we did could make her live again.” His eyes, when they met hers, held the kind of pain that can suck a man under. Some small part of her felt sorry for him. “Grandfather couldn’t reach her, and when I couldn’t either, he blamed me for her falling into that state to begin with.” He swallowed hard, and she watched the pain slide back down to his gut where it fed the fiery rage always simmering there.

  Okay, then what colossal leap of intellect did you take that landed an entire town on your revenge list? Blurting out her inner dialog wasn’t one of EV’s problems; her internal filters were, if anything, too strict most of the time.

  “That must have made you feel awful.”

  Red crept back up to color his face, “My parents walked away from everything to ‘give their child a chance to connect to the earth’,” he singsonged mockingly. “It was my fault they were there in the first place, and Grandfather made it clear that it was my duty—my family legacy—to make it right in the end.”

  “Make it right how?”

  “Sometimes the law turns a blind eye,” he spit out. “Some things you just have to do for yourself.”

  “We’ll see about that,” Dalton’s voice hummed over the radio.

  “What did you do, Remy?” An edge crept into her tone that, in his zeal, he failed to notice. “How can I be with you if you’re going to keep secrets from me?”

  He wanted to tell her; the need to lay his sins out in a row before her was almost stronger than the ego-swollen thirst to finish what he had started.

  The moment spun out in deafening silence. He wasn’t going to go through with it, she knew when the battle inside him finally ended when the smarmy look indicating he was about to move on her again came over his face.

  “It’s nothing. I swear. Didn’t we come up here to have some fun?”

  In her ear, Nate whispered the words she’d been waiting to hear, “Baylee’s evidence was in Chloe’s closet. We think he’ll try to retrieve it. You should let him.”

  She let him think his distraction worked. “I need to freshen up first. I won’t be a minute.” EV made a beeline for the bathroom. The second she was gone, Remy launched off the sofa and silently pulled open Chloe’s bedroom door. The dry cleaning,
shrouded in plastic, hung in plain sight. EV heard the rustling of the bag through the cracked open bathroom door; hurriedly closed it again when she heard him coming back. He was back in his place, a smug smile on his face when she entered the room.

  He rose to meet her halfway, his intention plainly to lead her to her bed.

  A split second decision lay before EV, and a wrong choice now could lead to disaster. Should she keep stroking his ego by making him think she would follow him anywhere, no matter what laws he had broken? Or should she go for the proverbial knee to the nuts and play on his extreme dislike of being bested at anything?

  “You know what? It’s okay, you don’t need to tell me.” Feigned interest fell off her face to be replaced by a hard, speculative stare. She leaned back in her chair nonchalantly. “I already know most of it, anyway.”

  An eyebrow shot up before he could catch himself. Quickly, he forced it back down while relaxing his facial muscles into a less shocked arrangement. No way she knew. No way. “What are you talking about? You always did have a vivid imagination. There’s nothing to tell. Why don’t we go back to my room and talk about us?”

  “I don’t think so, Remy. Just out of curiosity, what did you have on Evan Plunkett.”

  The name dropped like a boulder to land between them, and Remy flinched.

  “That’s really the only thing I can’t get a handle on about your whole scheme. How did he figure into it all?”

  “I don’t know any Evan Plunkett.”

  “Oh, I think you do. You blackmailed him.” Remy cut his eyes toward the door—a sure sign he was thinking of bolting. He wouldn’t get far in any case, but she preferred to skewer him right here and now. “What on earth made you choose him of all people? A braggart—” she sent up a little apology for speaking ill of the dead, “—with a limited sphere of influence. You truly do have a poor sense of judgment when it comes to choosing evil minions.” EV pursed her lips and slowly shook her head.

  Without giving him time to reply, she needled him again.”You actually did Ponderosa Pines a favor. While we’re not going to be annexed by Gilmore any time soon—ever, really—working closely with the leaders over there paved the way for a reconciliation of sorts. A new respect on both sides, if you will.”

  His temper was fast on the way into red-line territory.

  “You’re crazy, you know that? I offer you everything you could ever want, and you come at me with some trumped up conspiracy theory.” He curled his lip, but his sarcasm fell flat.

  “I’m sorry, you’re probably right. Frankly, I don’t think you’re smart enough to go to such elaborate lengths.” She smiled brightly and pushed him over the brink. “But I do think you’re petty enough to ruin someone else’s life just to make yourself feel better. Or wait, maybe you were just your grandfather’s little puppet. Did it hurt when he pulled your strings?”

  “You bitch,” he leaned toward her, venom practically dripping from his tongue. “You have no idea what I’m capable of.” His hand closed over her arm with a painfully tight grip.

  Here it comes, just like in books and movies, the stupid criminal monologue.

  “Grandfather knew, though. He trusted me to make it right. To rip that town apart the same way my family was torn apart. Everything I tried failed, until I met Evan Plunkett at a hotel in Atlantic City. He was supposed to be in Boston attending an investing seminar. Instead, he was drunk, and into the house for more money than he made in a year.”

  None of that surprised EV, or anyone else from Ponderosa Pines listening to the conversation.

  “When he started bawling about how he could get the money if they’d just let him go back to Ponderosa Pines for it. He swore he was a big shot with access to town funds, and I knew this was my one chance to have someone on the inside. I paid his tab, took him back to his room, sobered him up, and let him tell me all about his little town.”

  Tiny droplets of saliva splashed over her face, his was so close. She did not flinch.

  “It took me a month or so to put together a good enough cover to keep him from figuring out who I was, and then I played the angles. Let him loose on your beloved elders while I posed as someone else and established contact with an elected official in Gilmore.”

  EV let all the scorn she could muster infuse her voice, “Worked out real well for you, didn’t it? Ponderosa Pines is intact, stronger than ever. Your cover wasn’t so solid, either. Tomas Delarosa is Javier’s half brother.”

  His eyebrows shot toward his hairline.

  “Looks like you didn’t do your homework, Remy. And now, you’re busted.”

  “Hell I am,” the hand not clutching her arm reached into his pocket to pull out a SIM card. “I’ve already destroyed the documents and now, here’s your evidence.” The card hit the floor and Remy ground it to pieces under his heel. “You’ll never prove a thing.”

  Dark vengeance painted itself across her face as she wrenched her arm free. Turning, she pulled up her shirt so he could see the wire. “Really? I think I will.”

  Furious at being beaten by the one woman he was sure he could control, Remy did exactly what Dalton had sworn he would never allow; lifted arm and backhanded EV with all his strength. Where his hand landed, her cheek stung and burned; a bruise already forming. He only had a second to lean over her, sneering, before Dalton flew from EV’s bedroom where he had been watching.

  “What did I tell you?” Dalton grabbed Remy’s shoulder and spun him around to face the consequences; Dalton’s meaty fists being consequence one and consequence two. At this point, EV faced another hard choice. Remy had taken her by surprise, or he would never have landed the blow; now the desire to get up and practice her kickboxing skills on him was about as strong as any she’d ever known. But, there stood Dalton; fists raised, fight face on, and ready to defend her honor. With an internal grin, she decided to let him.

  Remy had just enough time to open his mouth, but not enough to get out whatever taunt trembled on the tip of his tongue before Dalton landed a solid right punch, and EV had to scramble out of the way to avoid Remy’s falling body. When Dalton reached down to help her up, Nate burst through the connecting door with two members of the Garda right behind.

  The white cat stalked out the door of EV’s bedroom where he had hidden yet again, took one look at Remy, and hissed. The sound brought a smirk to EV’s face.

  Leaving Remy to their less-than-tender mercies, Dalton slung an arm around EV’s waist, and guided her into Lila’s suite without a backward glance.

  Chapter 19

  With Remy locked up and Baylee safe, Chloe and EV decided to take a page from Lila’s book and put together a fabulous bachelorette party. When they checked with Antoine to see if he could help with preparations, his response overwhelmed. Chloe gave him a few ideas that would put Lila where she was happiest—in the spotlight. Within minutes, he had marshaled his forces and had a group of staff minions ready to do his bidding.

  Spurred by a series of increasingly insistent calls from Lila, Chloe was forced to leave everything in Antoine and EV’s capable hands, and go join her mother and Javier in greeting new arrivals.

  Wedding guests and participants had begun trickling in early that morning, which meant the guest list for the bachelorette party grew by the hour. Cousin Faith and her husband arrived right on time; closely followed by several carloads of Javier’s family, flown in first-class from their home near Madrid.

  “Chloe, this is Javier’s mother, Concetta; his sisters, Della and Karmen, and their husbands, Luis and Sal; and cousins Victor, Iliana, and Edita.” Lila pointed at each in turn, then, noticing the look on Chloe’s face whispered, “You don’t have to remember them all right now; don’t worry.”

  After being showered with more cheek kisses than she could count, and having been squeezed practically to death by a bevy of delighted, soft-skinned Spaniards, Chloe began to understand how easily Lila had been drawn into Javier’s close-knit family. They made her feel included, even loved,
within minutes of meeting them.

  Baylee barely made it down the stone steps toward the milling horde before being surrounded and eventually shuffled out of sight. Tomas was hoping to be cleared to travel the next day, but Chloe was sure Baylee was in good hands until then. Earlier in the day, Antoine had delivered the welcome news that no charges would be filed against Baylee or Javier for breaking into Remy’s room, provided they both testify when his case came to court. In trade, Remy would plead out to a lesser offense on the kidnapping charges. He’d still be spending most of his twilight years in a correctional facility, but it would be a minimum security one versus a federal penitentiary.

  And then, Lila dropped a bombshell on Chloe. “You’ll be meeting your new step siblings later on today,” she said, as though this wasn’t entirely new information.

  “My new what?” Chloe couldn’t process the words. “You couldn’t have told me before?”

  “You didn’t ask,” A trace of rebuke was softened by a smile. “We were busy and things have been frantic. It never came up.”

  A dozen thoughts crowded into Chloe’s mind. How many siblings was she about to gain? Would they like her? Being an only child had its privileges, and yet it had also, at times, meant for a lonely childhood. Changing schools, leaving friends behind, and never having anyone else with the same experiences had left more of a hole in Chloe than she realized. It might be late in the game, but sisters and brothers, if they were anything like the rest of the clan she’d met so far, weren’t an entirely horrible prospect. Nerve wracking maybe, but good.

  “How many siblings am I about to get? Are they younger or older?” The questions came rapid fire. “Do they know about me, at least?”

  Lila held up a hand to stop Chloe talking, “Three. A sister and two brothers. All younger, but not by a lot. They can’t wait to meet you.”

  “You still could have told me.”

  “Yes, Dear, but it wouldn’t have been nearly as much fun.”

  * * *