Hustled To The Altar

by Dani Collins

  Spencer.

  He’d filled out across the shoulders but still seemed to favor button-up shirts and button-fly jeans, ball caps and sunglasses and boots older than the big guy upstairs.

  Spencer glanced toward the van with curiosity. His body stilled before a slow grin climbed from cheek to cheek. He tugged his hat low on his forehead and adjusted his sunglasses.

  Instantly, she was fifteen again, fragile as a strand of glass, determined to prove she was as tough as cowhide. She knew how to handle boys with more bravado than brains, boys who wouldn’t let a girl say anything, especially “no”. But she didn’t know how to handle a quiet young man who respected her privacy. A strapping young man with muscles built from honest work. A confident young man who knew how to shoot but didn’t carry a gun. A young man she had been too young to appreciate.

  Spencer approached her and tugged the bill of his Cubs cap a fraction lower.

  “Hello, Spence.” She hesitated then went in for the hug she wanted.

  His body stiffened with surprise before his arms closed around her. He felt good, like soft flannel and sweet memories and strength, as the unyielding muscles across his chest shifted beneath her cheek. He smelled even better. Like pine trees and warm cotton and a hint of fuel.

  His hand lingered at her waist when she stepped back.

  “Take off your glasses. Let me see your eyes.” She tugged the cheaters down his nose.

  He removed them and hooked the folded arm into the pocket of his shirt. He smiled self-consciously.

  She waited for a “holy shit, I can’t believe how far you’ve come” comment.

  And waited.

  And waited.

  She would settle for “nice to see you,” but she intended to wait him out.

  “I’m surprised to see you here,” he finally said.

  “I’m working on a story.”

  His hand went to his sunglasses, as though he wanted to put them back on. There was something cautious in the way he waited for her to continue.

  But that was Spencer, she reminded herself. When she had first met him, she had thought he considered himself better than the borderline delinquents who stayed on his parents’ farm. After a couple of weeks, she had seen it wasn’t snobbery but shyness that kept him from yakking as much as she did.

  “I was driving to the health mine,” she continued. “It closes soon and I want to do some interviews, but I saw this car broken down on the road and the driver said he was supposed to meet you.” She hit a mental wall. Her buoyant happiness at running into him deflated. I wonder if he knows?

  Her gaze went to the Performance Games logo on helicopter. Of course he knows.

  “Your mother didn’t tell me you flew for Performance. She said you worked for some rich guy.”

  “Conroy Burke.”

  Of course. Murphy had been right. She should have read the cosmic signs and left town hours ago.

  She could maintain her composure while reading a tragic story on air. She could keep a straight face while a lover told her she demanded too much and gave too little. But when her teenage crush said he worked for her frigging nemesis, she got an acute case of quiver-lip.

  Looking to mountain peaks as broken and coarsely carved as the Yellowstone arrowhead she’d walked away from reporting on this morning, she wondered when she was going to quit coming up against the humiliation of the Prince of Play story. Here she was fighting the clock, trying to get a story that would restore her reputation and help her move to the next level, and she was hitting a major setback just because she wanted to be a good Samaritan.

  “The guy on the road said he was supposed to pick you up, but his car broke down and he’s riding back with the mechanic. He asked me to tell you to call a taxi. That’s why I’m here.” She ought to leave now, get back in the van and carry on to the health mine.

  She didn’t, though.

  Her time on his parents’ farm had been eight weeks of summer, but the effect had been years of motivation. His family had treated her kindly, with respect, with encouragement. They had believed in her potential before she knew how to properly spell the word. She had left the farm wanting to make them proud. She couldn’t bear for Spencer to think she had forgotten a minute of what she had learned around his mother’s supper table, couldn’t bear to have disappointed him. But she didn’t know what to say, how to start explaining what had happened, how the Prince of Play story had exploded and left devastation in its wake.

  And he was no frigging help, standing there with as much animation as a hitching post.

  “You know all about the story, I guess. How long have you worked for him?”

  “Three years.”

  Plenty long enough. Oh, man, this hurt.

  “Do you want to hear my side?” she asked.

  “If you’d like to tell me.”

  She folded her arms, hugged herself and clenched her teeth against a groan of frustration. Get in the van, she told herself. Get on with your dream. But this was Spencer and she wanted to pour her heart out the way she had done years ago, and feel his arms around her. Did he still consider their kisses as the sweetest ever shared between any two people? Innocent, tender, trembling with passion so new it went unrecognized?

  “How can you work for such an asshole?” she blurted.

  His eyebrows went up and the corners of his mouth twitched.

  “If you laugh at me . . . ” she warned. “That’s why he’s an asshole, you know. He went on television and turned me into a national joke. ‘Did you hear that Laila Washington won the Pulitzer? For fiction? Top ten reasons the Pope cancelled his visit to the U.S. Number one, Laila Washington requested an interview.’ Conroy Burke is a cruel son of a bitch.”

  “He’s a person, Laila.” He folded his arms across his chest. He had a wide chest, big shoulders, thick biceps and corded forearms. And she had such an urge to touch him.

  She met his gaze, found him watching her with concern.

  “He used me. He let me blow the story out of proportion so he would have ammunition against Alicia Mills.”

  “Alicia Mills used you.”

  She looked away again. He was right and, what’s more, she had used Alicia Mills. They had fed off each other as they had climbed the ladder of notoriety, dragging Con along whether he wanted to go or not.

  “I would have told his side of the story if he had given me the opportunity. He knew I would talk to him anytime. You could have called me.”

  He flinched.

  “Forget it. That wasn’t fair. I’m acting like a ten-year-old, stamping my feet because I want things to be different from the way they are. This is a reunion. Let’s be happy. How’s your family?”

  Spencer frowned into the distance over her head while he pulled his cap off, rubbed his hair and tugged the cap back into place.

  “I didn’t know what to believe,” he said. “And I doubted a request from me would pull you off a story. Would it?” His penetrating look had a hint of frustration behind it.

  She bit the inside of her cheek and reluctantly shook her head. “No. I’m known for my tenacity.”

  He frowned like he was facing a cow tangled in barbed wire.

  She put her hand on his arm, felt his muscles jump.

  “I didn’t mean to come down on you like that. I get cranky when I talk about it because I was caught trying to cut in line and I feel guilty. I’ll get where I want to be, but I’m going to do it by working hard and playing by the rules. That’s why I’m here. I have a story that’s going to get some executive heads nodding in Salt Lake City.”

  “Laila—”

  A purring sound interrupted him.

  “That’s my phone. Just a sec.” She reached through the open window of the van and answered. It was Murphy.

  “Where are you? I’ve got our guy,” he said.

  “What? Where? How do you know?”

  “The babe at the hot pool near the Juniper Hotel says it’s him. He comes in all the time and talks to the
tourists. She says he went inside a few minutes ago.”

  Laila squinted at the map of tourist sites she’d lifted from the Glacier View. “Not the health mine, but the mineral baths? I’ll be right there.” She quit the call to smile at Spencer.

  “I have to go.” Her throat closed with regret. She wanted more time to find out what he had been about to say.

  “To the health mine?” he asked.

  “Back to town.”

  “Give me a lift?”

  “Of course!” She smiled, pleased to spend a little more time with him. She wanted things between them to end on a good note.

  1:45 p.m.

  At first, Renny had been worried when Con hadn’t met up with her after she had left Felix. Then she’d been indignant. After a few minutes of walking through the quiet residential neighborhood, she decided he must have found some truly damning evidence and gone directly to the police, rather than wait for her.

  He hadn’t.

  The deputy was hosing off his garden tools and hadn’t seen Con.

  A prickly rash, the second of the day, broke out on her inner wrist as she talked to the cop. Authority figures intimidated her. She was so uncomfortable, she didn’t get into the details of her pursuit and conversation with Felix, or Con’s intentions. She only mentioned she thought she had spotted him and gave the deputy directions to Felix’s apartment. He promised to swing by the location as soon as he changed, but she could tell it wasn’t an urgent priority. Frustrated, Renny headed back to the hotel.

  She wanted Felix stopped.

  When she had lost him outside the restaurant, she had felt like a failure. By losing him, she had enabled him to continue taking advantage of trusting, hard-working people. Though it wasn’t completely logical, she felt that by allowing Felix to continue, she was as guilty of his crimes as he was.

  Seems she needed a refresher course in thinking logically, because when Con had burst in with the opportunity to take another shot at stopping Felix, she had jumped on it without any thought at all. Certainly without due regard for the effect it might have on her engagement.

  She was so dreading making excuses to Jacob again, she exhaled in relief when she entered the hotel suite and found only Con. He sat at the bar, finishing the first half of a sandwich and indicated it, inviting her to eat the other half.

  “In a minute. I’m thirsty.” She leaned to pull a bottle of water out of the bar fridge, then stood to find Con giving her a cocky grin.

  “I know something you don’t know,” he taunted.

  She and Mona could share a corner suite like this and lose each other. With Con, it was too small. She rounded the bar, slipped past the table at the first window and went to look out the window behind the desk, aware of Con spinning on the stool to keep her in his sight.

  “Something about Felix? What did you get from his apartment?” she asked.

  “Not much. A couple of phone numbers. He’s definitely getting ready to bolt. He wears man make-up.”

  “I didn’t know there was such a thing.”

  “I didn’t know there was so much. Gran doesn’t own that many tubes and bottles and she wears more Spackle than a drywaller’s boot.”

  She smiled against the mouth of her bottle of water. “Be nice.”

  “Just making an observation.” He got a bottle for himself, took an organic apple from the basket on the coffee table, and joined her at the window, adjusting the gold curtains so they could better see the valley and hotel garden fourteen floors below.

  “What about the money?” she asked.

  “Not there. I’m not surprised. He’s only got a deadbolt for security. He had a list of expenses. Looks like he’s got about fifty thousand in travel money. What did you get?”

  “Not the confession I’d hoped for.” She thought about telling him Felix had half committed to meeting her at the health mine, but decided to leave that with the police instead. As usual, Con was pushing all of this way past where it needed to be. She could tip off the police before she left town, except, “I really hoped you were collecting evidence that would get him arrested. Fifty thousand dollars, Con? If he takes a few grand from each person he suckers—“

  “That’s just his surplus right now. He’s been paying for that high-priced condo and he eats out a lot. There was an appointment card for a spa and he’s had a facelift or major dental work, or both.”

  “All those people.” Renny walked over to an overstuffed sofa and sat down, her water clasped in front of her like a magic eight ball that would provide answers. “He has to be stopped.”

  “You think?”

  “Don’t be like that. I want to do it. I do. It’s just, Jacob—” Jacob saw her as she wanted to be: confident, sensible, respectable. Around him she was all those things. “Con, I’m getting married tomorrow. I can’t keep going into pool halls without my fiancé, ditching him while I take off with my old boyfriend—”

  “How ’bout kissing your old boyfriend? That’s not a problem, is it?”

  Vexing man. “I don’t want to jeopardize my wedding by going after Felix.” She rolled the dewy bottle between her palms.

  “But he has to be stopped.”

  “The police can do it. I’m marrying Jacob.”

  “Let me tell you something about your knight in tarnished armor—”

  “No!” As he strolled around the end of the sofa, she rose and bolted around the other, keeping it between them. “I’ve had enough of your opinion of Jacob.”

  She went back to looking out the window. A tour bus had arrived and everyone disembarking wore a yellow T-shirt. From up here, they looked like bees circling an ice cream social.

  “Okay, forget Jake. Let’s talk about you. You’re not the type to settle down.”

  Neither was her mother, and she didn’t want to talk about that, either.

  “You’re the type to play a conman like a carp and enjoy every second of it,” he said.

  “I couldn’t do it even if I wanted to.”

  “Lie to yourself all you want. I know the truth.”

  What truth did he know? Her mouth dried and she didn’t dare look over her shoulder to see.

  Anyone can run a pocket sting, she could hear her mother say, but it takes balls to run a long con. That’s why you work the parking lots and I pin the fat pigeons. Renny had come to believe the real reason was because her mother had wanted to eat every day but hadn’t wanted to work that often. And she had also come to believe all of it was in the past and would never again crawl out of the drain she’d washed it into when she had cleaned up her life.

  Con didn’t know that truth. Couldn’t. It would be unbearable. “I want to go back to Greenbowl. Where’s Jacob?”

  “Out.”

  The air in the suite took on an electric quality. The spaces seemed bigger, the carpet thicker, the silence more profound. Below her, the milling tourists blurred into a revolving kaleidoscopic pattern. She desperately needed water but didn’t trust her hands not to shake. She set the bottle on the windowsill, saw the movement of Con’s reflection appear behind her. Another ghost from her past.

  “I don’t want to talk about this anymore.”

  “How ’bout us? You want to talk about that?”

  His suggestion sparked a light alarm inside her. She shook her head.

  “We’re good together, Renny. Why do you want to throw that away?” His fingertips grazed her bare shoulder, scooping her hair away from her nape, smoothing it to the front of her opposite shoulder. When he would have bent to touch his lips to her skin, she whirled and stepped back against the window.

  “You had six months—”

  “I thought you were bluffing.”

  “And if you had known I wasn’t, what would you have done?” She flicked her hair back, lifting her chin in a dare.

  “Exactly what I’m doing now. I would have shown you that you don’t want a safety net, you want risk. Otherwise, you wouldn’t be here, now, with me.” He crowded her against the windo
w, curling his hot hands on her waist as he drew her to him.

  She should have pushed him away, but he wasn’t attacking her. He was just holding her, looking down, probably at her breasts, and softening his grip to stroke her, causing prickles of goose bumps wherever her skin was exposed.

  “God, you smell good,” he muttered and pressed his face into her neck, resting his damp mouth against her collarbone, inhaling as if he’d been waiting to do it for six months. He folded his arms behind the small of her back and she felt all her bones shift and adjust until she fit against him perfectly.

  Her reasons for resisting him became foggy and, besides, he had surprised her. Con was fun and exciting and wickedly charming when he wanted to be, but he used humor to keep people at a distance. He said things like “You’re beautiful,” and “I want you,” never “I need you.” He had come close just now. He had told her he valued their relationship, had implied he would have come after her. It seduced her as thoroughly as the feel of his pulse in his neck hammering against her palm, compelling her to keep him close and hold onto the moment.

  When he moved to find her lips, she intended to resist, but he didn’t come at her like he had something to prove. He slid his fingers into her hair like he was gathering up something precious and he paused—waiting to see if she would reject him, she realized. When she didn’t say anything, he didn’t laugh, didn’t narrow his eyes with triumph. He let his eyes half close and tilted his head as he parted his lips over hers.

  His lips were warm, damp, oh so nice to rub her own against. He waited until the fit was sweet and perfect, increased the pressure, and gently invaded.

  She let him in. She opened her mouth and absorbed his taste and stroked his tongue with hers because she had missed this. Before Con, she hadn’t considered herself a particularly sensuous person, but he was so tactile, constantly touching and stroking and nuzzling, so that when they finally did make love, it was often a combustible end to a full day of foreplay. She discovered deprivation had the same effect on her. Kissing him after months of abstinence made her greedy for the whole package. She slid her arms around his neck and sank into the pleasure they gave each other.