Hustled To The Altar

by Dani Collins

  No one. Nevertheless, she was certain he was here, trying to scare her. As her stomach cramped with nerves, she admitted it was working. She was afraid to proceed and afraid to stay.

  Leave, she decided.

  A clammy hand reached out of an alcove and closed around her arm.

  * * *

  Spencer was standing next to Murphy near the front doors of the spa, his T-shirt wet down the center of his chest. Laila had dressed quickly, but Spencer had been quicker. Apparently, he was determined to stop her.

  While she had dressed, she had processed her disbelief through denial and into anger. His playing mind games with her infuriated her. She felt betrayed, as if he had stolen the value of her stories. As if he had controlled how far she had progressed in her career. As if he didn’t want her to proceed to the next level, which must be true, because he wanted her to let go of the swindler story.

  She couldn’t look at Spencer, so she raised her brows in question at Murphy.

  Murphy thumbed toward the reception desk. “She said Felix ordered a taxi to the health mine.”

  “The health mine. Figures. Let’s get the van.”

  “Laila,” Spencer began.

  “No. I’m pursuing this. End of discussion.”

  Spencer walked with her. She kept her gaze straight ahead, as focused on her current goal as she had always been on her ultimate one. Guilt racked her, though. She owed Spencer’s family, and when she mentally reviewed the leads Spencer had given her, she acknowledged she owed him, too. But this was her Big Break. This was It. Maybe it wasn’t huge, but it was big enough. She was doing the legwork, proving herself.

  She still had the van keys in her pocket, so she climbed into the driver’s seat and pushed the button to release the locks on all the doors.

  Murphy had the nerve to go around to the sliding door at the side and hop into the back, allowing Spencer to climb into the passenger seat.

  “Your hotel is there,” Laila told Spencer.

  He tugged his hat lower over his eyes.

  She didn’t waste time arguing. It would serve him right if she ditched him at the health mine. As she swiveled to watch behind her while she backed up, she frowned at Murphy.

  “What’d I do?” Murphy asked.

  Laila said nothing, just jammed the van into drive and steered out of the parking lot.

  “You’re pissed because I lost Felix?” Murphy asked.

  “She’s angry with me,” Spencer said.

  “When did that happen? You were necking in the pool.”

  “We were not.” She sent Murphy another warning look in the rear-view mirror. “Spencer wants us off the story.”

  “Nice try, dude. She’s got plans for this story.”

  No one spoke as she headed out of the town center and began the climb up the valley road, passing clumps of yellow flowering scrub and signs that warned of road closures in winter.

  “I can let you off at the road to the airport if you want to walk back to your helicopter,” she suggested.

  “No, thank you.”

  “You’re a pilot? That’s cool,” Murphy said.

  “He’s Conroy Burke’s personal pilot. Isn’t that cool?” Laila asked with savage sarcasm.

  “You’ve got the hots for Burke’s pilot? Ouch.”

  “Shut up, Murphy. Was that a taxi? Any passengers in it?” She looked in the rear-view mirror and saw Murphy look out the rear window at the late-model white Chevy heading back to town.

  “It’s got the word ‘taxi’ painted on the trunk. Looks empty,” he said.

  “He must be there, then. Good.”

  * * *

  Spencer felt his gut knot up. He really needed Laila to back off. Not so much because Con was his employer, but because Con was his friend, a good one, and friends didn’t set each other up like this.

  “So why does he want you to drop the story?” Murphy asked.

  “Us, Murphy. We’re both doing the story.”

  “Oh. Right.”

  Laila shook her head. “I don’t know. Why do you want us to drop it, Spence?”

  Spencer felt the hot-cold sweats wash over him. He hated being put on the spot. It had been hard enough when he and Laila had been the only two in the van. Trying to explain himself in front of an audience, even one as low-key as Murphy seemed to be, made him uncomfortable.

  “Con might be here,” he finally said. “In Deception.”

  “Oh, and he used the proceeds from the sale of Performance Games to buy this town?” Laila’s tone made him think of the woman he’d seen on the screen when she had been pursuing the Prince of Play story. That woman had been hard, nothing like the sensitive girl he had known. “I’m not going anywhere near him,” she added curtly.

  “You will if he’s with Felix,” Spencer said.

  “Why would he be with Felix?”

  That tone he knew. Why do you have to mount a horse on the left? How do you turn a calf while the cow’s in labor? You put your hand where? She was a woman who needed a lot of answers, but this was one time she was going to be disappointed, because his loyalty to Con wouldn’t let him talk about it.

  She waited and, when he didn’t answer, sniffed indignantly. “Is he with Felix? You know that for sure?”

  “No,” he conceded, but he knew Con, knew how protective he was of Mona.

  He also knew every one of Con’s vehicles and wished to hell that wasn’t Con’s 1962 fully restored twin-carb If you go for girls who go for swinging cars Michelotti-prototype Triumph Spitfire crouched in the parking lot of the health mine.

  3:03 p.m.

  He loved her.

  What a frigging disaster.

  Cherry blossoms clung to Con’s shoes and a mower purred in the distance as he hiked toward Felix’s apartment. He walked with a sense of purpose but felt as though he were slogging through knee-deep doom.

  All he had wanted was to get his grandmother’s money back, to put Felix in his place and to get back to designing games. He had wanted to have fun, dammit. He had wanted to recapture his enthusiasm for life, but he had hurt Renny and had fallen in love, and love wasn’t fun. Love peeled the skin from your bones and left you raw.

  He should have put away his trading cards and gone home a year ago, the minute Renny had prompted more than arousal out of him. He would have, too, if she hadn’t been so damned intriguing on so many levels. If she hadn’t been the opposite of most women he met: unimpressed by his money and amused by his misbehavior. Hell, he’d even known her to encourage his hijinks. To participate! Sure, she had a cute little conscience that tortured her when she went along with him, but that made him appreciate her naughty moments all the more. It had made him want to encourage her.

  He had spent his childhood trying to suppress his eccentric behavior, feeling guilty for unconsciously confusing and disappointing and exasperating his parents. Their frustration had been hard as hell to face. If he hadn’t also known Gran’s unconditional acceptance, he would probably be in solitary confinement by now. Gran had taught him to channel his creativity, to value it. As a result, when he saw those same qualities in Renny, he was compelled to treasure them.

  He treasured her. Not just the wild times, either. He cherished the simple things: waking next to her, spending his day with her. She liked listening to his wacky ideas. Her enthusiasm inspired him and her thoughtful questions concentrated his thoughts like a magnifying glass focusing sunlight. Her truly special quality, though, was her ability to relax him. Somehow, she dissolved the drive that propelled him through his days. Making love with her brought him extreme pleasure but afterward, his body spent and damp, his mind would quiet. He could drift in the sea of heated skin, feminine scent, mossy darkness, her heartbeat against his cheek, and have absolutely no compulsion to deconstruct any of it. Those moments were genuine bliss.

  Love destroyed bliss. It complicated everything. It dulled your wits and, before you knew it, you were setting yourself up for emotional slaughter.

 
He realized he was standing at the patio door of Felix’s apartment with no memory of how he had arrived there. His body cast a shadow against the blinds and he was just wondering how he was going to play this when a meaty fist whipped open both blinds and door in one motion.

  Con had an impression of shoulders like a holiday ham and a head like a fuzzy bowling ball before his chest hairs were yanked into a knot with his shirtfront. His feet left the floor, the room blurred and his ass hit Felix’s slippery leather sofa. He snapped his head up in time to hear the door slam shut and the blinds rattle back into place.

  Renny, he thought, and felt as though the thug had reached through his chest wall and ripped out his heart.

  3:09 p.m.

  The way Renny jumped when he touched her arm delighted Felix. It gave him the opportunity to align himself with her, to take a protective role that would segue nicely into one of authority.

  “It’s only me.” He smiled and let his hand drift down to hers, pressing it between both of his. Comforting. Apologizing. Nurturing the seeds of trust.

  “You startled me.” She looked up the corridor.

  “It’s an eerie place when it’s empty, isn’t it?” It was a grim place. A lot like prison, with its cold walls and hollow echo, but the abundance of mugs paying for an invisible miracle brought him here at least once a week.

  “Yes, it is,” she agreed. Her hand alternately grasped his and twitched for freedom, echoing the uncertainty he could sense in her.

  What was the source of her doubt, he wondered? Was she holding back from trusting him or was there something else? He didn’t like undercurrents. He liked genuine people who didn’t think beyond what he put in front of them.

  Lifting her hand out from their bodies, as if they were dancing and she about to twirl, he looked from her empty wrist to her bare earlobes, down her naked throat to her unadorned breast. “You haven’t lost your lovely jewelry?” It was the reason he was here, dammit.

  “I left it with a jeweler for appraisal. He’s going to make me an offer so I can pay you in cash.”

  “Wise thinking. It’ll be safe there.” Fuck me. Although, maybe . . . . “Which jeweler?” His fertile imagination began generating stories he could spin to expropriate the stones.

  “The one at the Juniper Hotel. That’s where I’m staying. We’ll have to go back there to sign the papers. Did you bring them?” Her question was smooth, her voice almost brittle.

  He felt an icy trickle of suspicion. It wasn’t anything concrete, just a lifetime of learning to avoid trouble. “I’m sorry, I left my apartment in a hurry and wasn’t able to get the documents. In fact, I’m on my way out of town and only came to tell you I can’t help you.”

  She was losing him. Choking. She coughed and let him see her distress. “That’s unfortunate,” she said in a strained voice. “You must be a very busy man.”

  Keep ’em talkin’ to keep ’em from walkin’, Mom would say.

  “Very busy, yes.” He glanced at his watch.

  “That’s a beautiful watch. Is it a Rolex?”

  He hesitated and looked her right in the eye, as if he knew what she was doing. As if he could see through her inane remarks. As if he was looking in a mirror.

  She was. This lying vampire of a man had everything in common with her mother, and Renny could so easily have wound up in those shoes in this kind of town, wearing a watch that hadn’t been paid for. This was where she had come from and, from her current perspective, exactly where she was winding up. Lying. About to cheat someone out of something he valued.

  Shame crawled up her throat, poured heat beneath her skin, and glowed hotly off her cheeks. After ten years of distancing herself from this life, she was being dragged back into it, but this time it was justified, she reminded herself.

  “I can’t shake the feeling that you have a hidden agenda,” he said.

  She did, and she was letting her personal baggage cloud that fact.

  “I’ve made you uncomfortable, haven’t I?” she said, searching for Felix’s weakness and recalling Con’s remarks about Felix’s cosmetics. “You don’t want to do business with someone who is so obviously attracted to you. I can’t help it,” she said in an apologetic whisper. “You’re very good looking.”

  He smoothed his hand down his front, trying and failing to suppress a smile.

  She’d found his button. Satisfaction curled through her. “It’s refreshing to meet a man of your integrity. I understand if it’s a conflict of interest, but could you recommend some options? I really don’t know what to do.”

  “Perhaps we can work something out.”

  With the certainty of a seasoned grifter, she knew she had him.

  Until Laila Washington strolled around the corner.

  3:10 p.m.

  Con didn’t move as he eyed the man who had hauled him into Felix’s apartment. The goon had the bloated build of a gym junkie and a face like a decaying pumpkin.

  Carefully, Con let his gaze stray to the other man. He was slightly built and a head shorter than the first, clean cut from his neatly trimmed hair to his black silk shirt, all the way down his pinstriped slacks to the break in the cuff just above his polished shoes. His coloring, black hair with a hint of curl and an olive complexion, suggested an Italian or Greek background, and the ropes of gold around his neck suggested a poor one. No one who had grown up with money needed to advertise his financial status like that.

  “Who are you?” the slick one asked. He stood with his feet apart and his hands folded one across the other, as though protecting his balls.

  “I’m Renny’s—” Con realized he wasn’t Renny’s anything. He’d have to fix that. “I came for Renny. Where is she?”

  “Where’s Felix?”

  Con started to rise, but the big one clamped a hand on his shoulder and forced him back onto the sofa. Con felt cold and empty, too weak to stand anyway.

  “I thought she was meeting Felix here. Where is she?” His voice came out hollow.

  “You’re looking for a woman? I don’t know who you’re talking about. Why is she meeting Felix?”

  Con let his body sink into the cold, slippery sofa. Renny wasn’t here, hadn’t come here, wasn’t in danger.

  Yet.

  “She said business.” Con was able to speak smoothly now, able to think ahead enough to set up some protection for her if she did show up. “I think she’s trying to make me jealous.”

  Slick snorted out a disgusted breath. “Women.”

  Con nodded, trying to look like a man who was suffering the mood swings of a fickle woman, not exactly a stretch right now.

  “You think they’re coming here?” Slick asked.

  “Possibly.”

  “Where do I know you from?” Slick demanded, brushing the Mountain out of his way so he could stand in front of Con.

  Going on an instinct that money would make an impression, Con held out his hand as he stood, as if he were greeting one of the many lawyers he’d met over the last three months. “Conroy Burke. Founder of Performance Games. Nice to meet you.”

  Surprise made Slick fall back a step before he took Con’s hand in a firm shake. “Tyrone Verona, owner of Ty’s Auto Parts.” He nodded slowly as though absorbing every nuance of the introduction. “No shit? You own Performance Games?”

  “Not anymore. It went public.”

  “Really.” Tyrone seemed genuinely interested. “When’d that happen?”

  “Last week.”

  Tyrone thrust his hands in the air with frustration. “This is always happening to me. I meet the movers and shakers an hour after they’ve moved and shook. Man, that pisses me off.”

  “I’m more snakes and ladders than move and shake.”

  “Right. Games.” Ty gave a little smirk of appreciation.

  Con folded his arms and fell back on routine small talk so he could get his bearings and lull his opponent into giving him control of the play. “Do you like board games?”

  “My one sister, Mari
a—she’s married to Sergio here—” he nodded toward the Mountain. “She loves ’em. Brings ’em out at every family dinner. They’re all right. Fun for a while.” Tyrone rocked on his heels, hands in his pockets now, just shooting the bull while they waited for the crook who owned this apartment to return.

  “So you don’t know where Felix is, either?”

  “No.”

  “He got your girl, too?” Con asked, reinforcing the atmosphere of male banter as he strolled toward the countertop.

  “It’s business,” Tyrone said.

  “Ah.” Con looked at the goopy mess he had left in Felix’s briefcase to slow him down. Felix had tried to clean it without success. Con wondered whether Felix had collected his cash and what he was going to store it in when he did.

  “You said this woman is doing business with Felix? Would that be your business?” Ty asked.

  “No, I’m not sure what she’s doing with Felix,” Con said, dividing his attention between Tyrone and the empty cupboards he was checking.

  “Mmm. So you’re not starting up something new, something that could use an injection of capital? ’Cause I’m always interested in opportunities.”

  Con had sold Performance because he was sick of working with people who were more interested in making money than in making games. He could talk the talk, though, if it would get Tyrone off his back. “I haven’t explored all my options, but I’ll keep your offer in mind. Fiscal support is always a challenge with something as volatile as game publishing.”

  Oops. He might have overplayed that. He shut the last cupboard and checked on Tyrone, saw the man’s head shake.

  Tyrone snorted and said, “You don’t need my money, do you? You must have made a mint on the deal when you sold.”

  Con reassessed his position and the players he was up against. There was another reason he had dumped the company. The necessary security had begun to infringe on his desire to do whatever the hell he pleased. He wasn’t as valuable as he used to be, but he was still a commodity.