“Hold it.” Stepping forward, Jared took the handcuffs from his brother. He held them up in front of Maren. “You want to do the honors?”
Her surprise faded, to be replaced by pleasure. “I’d love to,” Maren replied with relish. She snapped the cuffs on one at a time. “Although it’s still won’t compare to shooting him and watching him bleed out.”
“In the long run, this’ll be worse.” Giving the cuffs a tug to make certain they were secure, he pushed Shepherd toward his brother. “And I won’t have to bake you a cake with a file in it. I’m not much at baking,” Jared confided.
“He isn’t,” Troy agreed, putting in his two cents. He beckoned one of the uniformed policeman over. “Take this scum down to the station.”
Jared suddenly felt tired and wired at the same time. He looked at Maren before telling Troy, “I’ll be in in the morning to do the paperwork.”
“I’ll be sure to have the confetti for the ticker tape parade ready,” Troy quipped before he got down to the business of securing the area.
Crossing to Maren, Jared second-guessed where she would go from here. It wasn’t hard. “Can I take you back to the hospital?”
She didn’t know if she was ready to be with this man. She was still nursing her anger. It might take a while to work her way through that. Besides, there was the problem of logistics to address. “I drove my own car, remember?”
Apparently he’d already taken that fact into account before making his offer. “I can have one of the uniforms drive it over to your place.”
She shook her head. The man was still smooth, even under life-and-death circumstances. Smooth with a dark center. Like black velvet. “Like I said before, you’ve got an answer for everything, don’t you?”
“Not everything,” he allowed. “I don’t have an answer for how long it’s going to take you to forgive me.”
Even as he said it, she knew that she was more than half leaning his way. Still, she couldn’t make it too easy for him. “What makes you think I’ll forgive you?”
There were too many people around. He wanted to be alone with her. Taking her by the arm, Jared guided her outside the house.
That she let him gave him hope.
The night was crisp, clear. He should have stopped for her jacket, but he was too intent on clearing this up. Maybe if she was cold, she’d see things his way faster. “Because I’m an optimist at heart.”
So had she been. Once. But that was before all her illusions had been shattered. “There’s optimist, and then there’s fool. Believe me—” a touch of cynicism entered her voice “—I know all about that.”
“You’re not a fool, Maren.”
“Aren’t I?” She raised her chin. The fight was still in her eyes. “I fell in love with someone who didn’t even exist.”
“The name didn’t exist. At least, not the last name. But the man did.” Unable to stop himself, he lightly touched her cheek. Wanting to caress it. For now, he held himself in check. “The man does.”
She glanced toward the open door and saw Troy pass by inside. The detective had called him “big brother.” “You really have two brothers and a sister?” she asked.
His lips quirked in a grin. “Got the scars to prove it.” Pushing up his sleeve, he showed her the faintest discoloration along the inside of his forearm. “That’s where Janelle bit me when she couldn’t get out of a wrestling hold I had on her when we were kids.” He rolled his sleeve back down. “I’ve also got a ton of cousins if you’re interested in those,” he offered. “They can be yours for the asking.”
She raised an eyebrow. “You’re selling them?”
“Actually,” he corrected, “I’m offering them. In exchange.”
“In exchange for what?”
This time he did caress her cheek. He wanted this to be behind them. But she deserved to work this out of her system at her own pace.
“You.”
Was he asking her to forget what happened? To start fresh? “I don’t understand.”
To have a better foundation for his argument, he backtracked. “You just said you fell in love with me.”
“With Jared Stevens,” she clarified. Besides, it wasn’t really love she’d left, just loneliness, Maren silently insisted. Loneliness made you do strange things. “And I got confused.”
“I didn’t.” He traced the outline of her lips with his thumb. She didn’t pull away immediately, and he grew more hopeful. “Maybe for the first time in my life, everything’s really clear to me.”
She couldn’t trust her emotions. They only served to mix her up and to muddy the water. “Well, it isn’t clear to me. I don’t know who or what you are. And don’t give me any of that garbage about ‘what you see is what you get.’ It isn’t.”
But he had a different opinion. A part of him was in every character he became. And never more so than this last time. If only because, at first, he tried to keep his facts straight. And then, because every lie he’d told her had hurt.
“It is when you come right down to it. No matter who I play, I’m still me. I’m still the guy who wasn’t looking to fall in love, who thought that love was a nice fringe benefit to life but that it only complicated things.” He raised her chin with his finger, forcing her to look at him when she looked away. “I was right about that, you know. It does complicate things. Because now all I can do is think about you.”
“They teach you those lines at the police academy?”
“Nobody taught me what I’m saying now. I had to learn that for myself. And they come from the bottom of my heart.” He took her hands in his, willing her to believe him. “Like I was saying, I wasn’t looking to fall in love, but I did. Hard. With you,” he added in case she was going to be flippant and ask to know who the object of his affections was. “And until just a few minutes ago, I didn’t know what I was going to do about it.”
She looked at him skeptically. Knowing she was losing the battle but trying desperately to still win it. “But now you know.”
“Now I know,” he repeated.
Damn, he was good. She could feel her knees melting even though she kept telling herself he was lying. “And it came to you when? When you saw me holding a gun on Shepherd?”
“Actually, yes.”
Without all the information, she drew the only conclusion she could. “Are you into kinky things?”
“No,” he laughed. “Only into you.” And then he grew serious. “What came to me was the thought of spending the rest of my life without you if you pulled that trigger. What came to me was that I was willing to lie, to ignore what had happened, just to keep you safe. I’ve never been willing to do that before.”
She stared at him. He’d almost had her. But he’d blown it. The man lied by profession. “Yeah, sure.”
“I don’t mean when it came to setting up an undercover operation, I mean where it counts. On the right side of the law.” Without realizing it, he placed her hand over his heart. So she could feel it beating. For her. “I’ve never compromised what I pledged to uphold and defend.”
“But you were willing to do that for me.”
His eyes never left her face as he tried to find some sign that told him he was, if not home safe, at least close to it. “Yes.”
“Why?” she persisted.
“You really don’t have a very long attention span, do you?”
He took her into his arms. She was cold. So was he. But there were ways to fix that. And then he realized that she wasn’t struggling to get free. She was listening to him. It was going to be all right.
If he was careful.
“Because I love you,” he told her. Emotion threatened to choke him. He’d never felt like this before because nothing had ever mattered this much before. “Maren, I want you to be my wife.”
“For a sting operation.”
“No, damn it.” Didn’t she understand? Or was she just trying to torture him because she thought he deserved it. “Forever.”
She wanted t
o fling herself into his arms. Wanted to have him kiss her until she was senseless again. But she needed to find her way to trusting him again. It was a shaky, narrow path. “How do I know that this isn’t just another fabrication?”
“You can hook me up to a lie detector if you’d like.”
She cocked her head, as if honestly studying his face. “I hear there are ways to beat that.”
“I never lied to you where it counted, Maren.” He went over just a couple of things he’d told her. “I can cook. It was my uncle who taught me. He just happens to be the chief of police, that’s all.”
He’d never mentioned what his uncle had done for a living. She’d just assumed it was cooking because he’d let her. “So you’re guilty of the sin of omission, as well.”
He pressed a kiss to her forehead. God, but he wanted her. But he couldn’t hurry this. He’d lose her if he did. “I’ll be guilty of whatever you want me to be, as long as you realize that I’m guilty of loving you and that I want you to marry me.”
She looked at him for a long moment. “If I marry you, I want to hear all the details.”
His eyebrows pulled together in momentary confusions. “Details?”
“Details of the rest of your life.” She loved learning about people. And none so much as Jared. “What I have is very sketchy.”
“If you marry me, you’ll be the rest of my life.”
She looked up at him, threading her arms around his neck. She was a goner and she knew it. There was no use in pretending otherwise. “You still have all the answers, don’t you?”
He framed her face with his hands. “All but the most important one.”
She smiled then and it went straight to his gut. “You know, Papa Joe likes you.”
“Papa Joe has excellent taste.” The air left his lungs. He’d never proposed before, never wanted to propose before. Never wanted anything so much in his life. “So is it yes?”
“Of course it’s yes, you big dope. I love you. Or haven’t you noticed?”
Framing her face between his hands, he kissed her then, kissed her like a man who had finally found the path that would take his soul out of darkness and into the light. Kissed her like a man who intended to spend a great deal of time at this pastime and wanted to be sure he got it right each and every time.
Hoots and applause caused them to move apart. When he looked, Troy was peering out of the house and giving him the high sign. He moved her out of the way.
“How’s Joe doing?” He realized he hadn’t asked her.
Maren smiled. “Doctor says he’s going to pull through.”
“Great. Let’s go tell Joe you said yes.”
He couldn’t have said anything that would have warmed her heart more if he tried.
ISBN: 978-1-4268-6855-9
DANGEROUS DISGUISE
Copyright © 2005 by Marie Rydzynski-Ferrarella
All rights reserved. Except for use in any review, the reproduction or utilization of this work in whole or in part in any form by any electronic, mechanical or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including xerography, photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, is forbidden without the written permission of the editorial office, Silhouette Books, 233 Broadway, New York, NY 10279 U.S.A.
All characters in this book have no existence outside the imagination of the author and have no relation whatsoever to anyone bearing the same name or names. They are not even distantly inspired by any individual known or unknown to the author, and all incidents are pure invention.
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*Unflashed series
*Unflashed series
*Unflashed series
*Unflashed series
Table of Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Dangerous Disguise Page 18