Hustled To The Altar

by Dani Collins

  Or maybe less. The door had barely clicked closed behind them when Laila said, “Where is she?”

  “I didn’t say she’d be in this room.”

  Laila swiveled back to the door.

  Spencer figured Con was entitled to fire him over this fiasco, but he still wanted to give Con a head’s up as to why Laila was pursuing the story. He picked up the phone.

  At the sound of the lifted receiver, Laila paused and leaned against the door to wait while he dialed the front desk and asked for Con’s room.

  “No answer,” he told her.

  She sighed and pushed off the door, then dug in her bag for a mobile phone. “I’ll check my voice mail and I need to call my producer. He wasn’t happy about my coming here. In fact, I’d be better equipped to sweet talk him if I had something concrete to give him,” she said pointedly.

  Spencer lifted his hands, palms up, willing to give her everything he had, but it was damned little. What he really wanted to give her was a proper kiss.

  No, that was too much to hope for. At fifteen, Laila had thrown herself at him, but the physical intimacy she had encouraged had been a means of getting the affection and attention she had really craved. He would have taken her up on it if he hadn’t been too shy to strip when they were so likely to be interrupted.

  Shyness had held him back from some profound experiences over the years. Things might have been different for him now if he had taken advantage of her then.

  Things certainly would have had a different outcome for her, if he’d been another kind of boy. He had been in awe of her and had treated her as the special person he had known her to be. Still was, because she had turned into a fine woman. Very fine.

  While he fiddled with the sound system he found tucked in an armoire beside the fireplace, he admired the curve of her neck, the slope of her back. She had nice shoulders, feminine and narrow, and they tapered to a trim waist until her very excellent booty filled out the seat of her baggy beige pants.

  She had nice breasts, too. He’d been stealing glances all day, and even though her breasts weren’t large, they were high and firm. He was dying to know if her nipples were as dark and responsive as they had been twelve years ago.

  He had to stop torturing himself. He wasn’t going to have a relationship with her. He couldn’t work up the nerve to ask for a dinner date and, even if he could, she was way out of his league and royally pissed at him besides. He would settle for the camaraderie she shared with her cameraman, though. She was interesting to be around, quick-witted and curious about everything, a woman with style.

  “Fuck.”

  He had been trying to decide between waterfalls and birdcalls, but he turned off the sound effects. “What’s wrong?” he asked.

  “The son of a bitch thinks he can fire me in a frigging voice mail message.” Her hand trembled as she ended the connection and then dialed again.

  Spencer felt his gut clench. He had put her on this story and now it had cost her her job. Holing up in this room would save his own ass, but it was jeopardizing hers. Unless he came through on the story.

  Dammit, he needed Renny. Anyone capable of convincing Mona to have a mammogram would know what to do with a single-minded newscaster.

  “Ike? It’s me. Yeah, I got your message. Very funny,” she said into the phone. “I did not steal the van—no, you listen. It’s a good lead and I’ll—the hell you will. I have a contract that’s good for another sixty days and—no, I won’t drop everything and come back right now—try it, Ike. Just try it and—why are you doing this?” Her voice thinned.

  Spencer ground his teeth in frustration.

  “No,” she continued. “Okay, yes, I have an appointment with them. So what? People move on. I can’t go any further in this market and—” She caught her breath. “That’s not true,” she said in a small voice. “I’ve done a lot of good work since the Prince of Play.”

  Spencer winced. That damned story was going to haunt her forever.

  “Yes, I want to work. I know. All I’m saying is it was worth a shot—I do appreciate all you’ve done for me.” Her confidence was flagging. “I do so have what it takes to keep moving up and—” She went silent. “No, he’s not here—No, you’re not going to fire him over something I—all right, all right. I’ll go find him and we’ll leave.” She ended the call and said, “Asshole.”

  Then she sniffed.

  It was his undoing. Maybe he was too shy to make a pass at a beautiful woman, but he wasn’t too shy to approach someone who was hurting and offer what comfort he could. Cupping her small shoulders in his hands, he touched his cheek to the side of her head and said, “I’m sorry.”

  “Why? You got what you wanted. I’m off the story and I’m leaving.” She flung her purse up to hook it on her shoulder, forcing him to step back to avoid being clobbered. She headed for the door.

  4:10 p.m.

  When Felix had left Renny, he had mentally been giving himself stadium waves for his slick handling of the situation. His only goal now was a new briefcase. It would have to be a big one. Renny was going to liquidate her mother’s jewelry and he’d have a lot of cheddar to pack after eight o’clock tonight.

  She had suggested including her wealthy friend in the deal—“he’s in town for his own health reasons”—but Felix had discouraged her. The last thing he needed was someone with judgment getting involved.

  So all he had to do was evade Tyrone long enough to collect both his own money and Renny’s, and he was off to Florida.

  He came up short against the locked door of Braid’s Bargain Baggage. Cupping his hands around his face, he peered through the glass and saw the shop was empty. He could have sworn they were doing business yesterday.

  Shrugging, he went to the hotel down the street. They had a mezzanine of shops carrying everything from fur coats to bubble gum, but no luggage. Not even a canvas book bag.

  Annoyed, he continued down the street and tried the camping gear outlet. Some bastard had bought out the backpacks a few hours ago.

  Across the street, the drug store offered him a transparent purse with flowers on it or a paper sack with string handles. It wouldn’t hold a pound of butter. He went along to the next hotel, a dated inn run by hippies. Their handcrafted macramé shoulder bags were overpriced and too small to hold all his money. Nice problem to have, but still a problem.

  Crap. The whole town couldn’t be sold out of luggage. He looked across the street at his last chance, a high-end designer boutique. What the hell. He was leaving town. He’d kite a check for their best leather attaché.

  He had to wait to cross as an open T-top Camaro, red with two memorable white stripes up the hood, passed in front of him. As it did, Felix made eye contact with the passenger: Tyrone Verona.

  Ty sat up and Felix clearly heard him say, “Stop the car.”

  4:14 p.m.

  At the concierge desk, Mr. Laramie seemed pre-occupied with a group of women and their luggage problems. Renny took her place behind them.

  “Why don’t you let Con take care of whatever it is?” Jacob asked on one side of her. “The car is at the curb. Let’s get back to Greenbowl.”

  “Why don’t you just tell him you lost the ring?” Con murmured on her other side.

  “Why don’t you both back off and let me breathe?”

  Both men stepped away and put their hands up, sharing a knowing look before turning patronizing smiles on her that said, “We understand, honey. Need a Midol?”

  She would love one, with a side of Xanax, and a martini intravenous drip.

  Her throat swelled and she felt a pressing urge to cry. It was frustration, she told herself, because she had dropped that stupid ring down the stupid elevator shaft. This overwhelming sadness had nothing to do with Con trying to send her away when she was finally committing to his stupid little game. When she had finally figured out she loved the stupid, stupid man.

  “There’s the Spitfire. Right there. Waiting.”

  Renny followed
Jacob’s pointing finger and looked through the floor-to-ceiling windows to the curb, where an older couple were climbing into a modest Oldsmobile sedan. The man shut the woman’s door and rounded the car to the driver’s side. His profile clicked in her mind.

  “They were with Felix this morning,” she said, grabbing Con’s arm to direct his attention. Here was their chance to get a statement from someone other than Mona. It wouldn’t be much, but surely it would help the police bring charges against Felix.

  “Got it.” Con started forward.

  The man was in his car and pulling away before Con could take three steps.

  “I don’t got it,” Con said.

  “Oh, man. I would love to see this day get worse,” Renny muttered. She had barely spoken when the woman in front of her raised her voice in a plaintive whine. It grated like a bottle cap in a rock grinder.

  At that point, Renny almost turned to Jacob and confessed she’d lost the ring. She suspected he would want to leave without it, though. Then she would have to drag him somewhere quiet and explain her change of heart, along with her desire to stay and finish her business with Felix. It didn’t feel right to do that to him without the ring. Silly to be so stubborn, but she couldn’t bear to be tawdry. Again.

  “Ma’am?” A woman in uniform waved from the registration desk.

  Renny abandoned her place in line at the concierge desk and walked over. “Yes?”

  “I just put a call through to your room. If you’re not there, it goes to the message service, but the man seemed very anxious to speak to you. I didn’t notice you were here in the lobby until after I had transferred it.”

  “A man asked for me?”

  “Renny, right? He described you and he knew you were staying in the hotel.”

  “Did he speak with a bit of an impediment?”

  “I think he did, yes.”

  Con came to stand next to her. “What’s up?”

  “I think Felix called me.” Renny glanced once more toward Mr. Laramie and the women with the flushed faces, and abandoned the idea of getting the ring back right now.

  “Ready to go?” Jacob asked, strolling up behind them.

  Renny glanced apologetically at him. “Not yet. Apparently there’s a message for me upstairs.”

  Con didn’t have to put pressure on Renny to leave. Jacob was doing a fine job of it, verbally battering her in a reasonable tone all the way up in the elevator.

  Logic told Con he should regain the ground they’d lost by coming back upstairs or it might be lost completely, but he couldn’t bring himself to add his own arguments to the cause. Not right this second. He was too busy doing a mental moonwalk because Renny’s departure had been postponed.

  Until his heart rate had returned to normal and his jaw had relaxed, he hadn’t realized how tense he’d been. The anxiety had been similar to the feeling he used to get as a kid, when he would suddenly see what had collected at the bottom of the stairs while he’d been conducting gravity experiments at the top. There was always that unbearable few seconds when time stood still, when the sound of shattered glass still hung in the air and the thick scent of perfume rose from the pile of debris to sting the back of his throat. Those long, intolerable seconds when he knew consequences were imminent, when he waited for the pain. Not physical pain—his parents had never spanked him—but it had always hurt to see his parents’ love for him dim.

  That’s how he’d been feeling from the moment Renny had taken back Jacob’s ring: as if his world was about to fall apart and he had no one to blame but himself.

  Inside the suite, Renny listened to the telephone in silence. When she hung up, she said, “Felix wants to sell me the insurance right now.”

  “We’re leaving right now,” Jacob argued.

  “He expects me, so I’m going. I intended to be more prepared for this, planned to have some show mon . . . ey.” She cleared her throat self-consciously.

  “Show money?” Jacob asked. “What’s that?”

  “Exactly what it sounds like. Money I could show to Felix. Something to make him think he’s going to be rich instead of arrested.” Turning to Con, she solicited his opinion. “He thinks I’m pawning the jewelry. I don’t even know what that would be worth in cash and it would take a few hours to get it here, wouldn’t it? I might be able to string Felix along for a while, but what if I can’t?”

  Con knew he should focus on finding out where Felix was and keeping Renny out of it, but she had snared him with hints of her plan. He loved setting up a strategic attack, loved it even more when the pressure of time demanded he tap into his deepest resources.

  “Fifty,” he said, thinking of the scratch sheet Felix had written out. A nice fat number well past what Renny’s jewelry would net him. Felix was greedy.

  “Fifty dollars? Honestly, Renny, if Con has fed all his fifty-dollar bills to that smug hotel manager, I’ll give you one.”

  “Fifty thousand,” Renny corrected absently. “Do you have that in the safe?”

  “Fifty thousand dollars? You’re not serious!” Jacob blurted.

  Con was. Very serious. And, as was his habit, he was jumping ahead as many spaces as he could, looking at all the angles. “How did you see it playing out?”

  “I was going to buy some insurance and when he leaves—”

  “You’re going to let him walk with my money? Do you know how stings work?”

  “I was going to let him sell me some insurance in front of the police, so they’ll have the evidence they need to arrest him as he leaves.” She looked at her watch. “I’ll try to stall him.”

  “Wait,” Con said. “Let me think.”

  Renny had a plan and a date to meet Felix. Sure, she’d be safer in Greenbowl, but the operation would run more smoothly with her here, especially if Felix had a briefcase full of cash, because Renny had already laid the groundwork for him to trust her. She could convince Felix to bring his money to the party a lot more readily than he, Con, could. They weren’t on exactly the same page where Felix’s come-uppance was concerned, but that was a minor detail. He’d keep her in the dark if it meant keeping her safe. And he could keep her safe, he rationalized, as long as he glued himself to her side. “You’re right. We need cash.”

  “And you keep a cool fifty for emergencies in your safe?” Jake said with a pithy snort of disbelief.

  “No, I keep a cool million for playing Monopoly. You don’t use that baby stuff that comes with the game, do you?” Con held Jake’s goggling stare as he took out his cell phone, speed dialed his security guard and gave him the combination, warning him Spencer would be there shortly to pick it up. He was showing off, but Jacob was starting to irritate him. When he ended the call, he ignored Renny’s, “You do have a cellphone!” and hit the speed dial for Spencer. He got voice mail.

  “Where is my pilot? Didn’t you say you arranged for him to take a cab?” He scowled at Jake.

  “I saw him at the health mine.” Renny moved toward the telephone on the end table. “I left him a message that I’d arrange a suite here for him.” She dialed, asked for Laramie and said, “It’s Renny O’Laughlin. What room number did you put—oh, good. Could you ring that for me?”

  A moment later, Renny shrugged and hung up. “No answer. That means no money.”

  “Renny,” Jacob said in an ultra-reasonable tone. “I can see this means a lot to you, but I really think we should head straight back to Greenbowl.”

  As the ideal strategy unfolded in his mind, Con said, “You know what, Jake? We could wrap this up faster if you helped.”

  Con was wearing his “welcome to my spaceship, buckle up” smile. Renny’s shoulder muscles gathered in a knot.

  “Really?” Jacob brightened. “What did you have in mind?”

  “Yeah, what did you have in mind?” Renny asked with suspicion.

  “We need cash, right?” Scooping a drawstring bag off the floor, Con crossed to Renny. “Where’s the ice?”

  “The what?”

 
“The jewelry.”

  “In my purse. Why do you want it?” She dug it out of the depths of her purse, along with a handful of change, a lipstick and—oops. Almost a tampon. She palmed it back into her purse, shot an embarrassed glance at Con.

  “I would have given it to him,” he said with a grin.

  Never missed a thing, damn him.

  Taking all the pieces of jewelry and dropping them into the bag, Con offered it to Jacob. “See what you can get for this.”

  “What? Con!” Renny tried to snatch it back, wishing more than ever she had already severed her engagement.

  “Do you want to make sure we have money when we get Felix back here?”

  “Yes, but you do it. Don’t send Jacob.”

  “You and I have work to do. Here you go, Jake. There oughta be more than one pawnbroker in town. Shop around. Get a good price. ’preciate it.” Con closed Jacob’s hand around the bag in a double-handed shake.

  “I wouldn’t know where to start. I can’t possibly—”

  “We’re counting on you.” Con slapped Jacob’s shoulder and curved his arm around Renny’s waist, sweeping her toward the door.

  “Con, you can’t ask him to do that.”

  “I already did. He won’t let us down.”

  “But . . . but—”

  “I’ll goose your butt if you don’t light a fire under it. Let’s go. Felix is waiting.”

  “I know, but . . . .”

  Con already had her out the door.

  Her last vision of Jacob was his baffled expression, as he stood with the bag of jewelry dangling in his grip like the freshly wrung neck of a chicken.

  * * *

  Laila figured Murphy might have picked up his phone if he had known she was calling to rescue his career.