Hustled To The Altar

by Dani Collins

  “Are you genuinely looking for investors?” Felix asked, playing it smooth, smiling indulgently at Renny, turning a more calculating eye on Con.

  “Always,” Con answered. “We can discuss it when you come to the suite. Eight o’clock?”

  Felix slid his gaze toward the spa again, checked his watch, eyeballed Renny with calculation. “Eight o’clock, then,” Felix agreed.

  Con nodded and shuffled Renny toward the car.

  * * *

  As Felix’s only chance of survival disappeared around the corner, Tyrone and Sergio came out of the spa behind him.

  “See?” Felix was able to act confident because he was starting to feel that way. “I told you I was waiting for the right opportunity and this is it. Conroy Burke. Performance Games. What could be more solid?”

  It was better than solid. It was a freaking dream. Okay, he wasn’t happy about parting with fifty grand, but he was going to walk away with his perfect face and Renny’s jewelry money. Better yet, he would be coming through for Tyrone with a legitimate deal and the man would be off his back forever. And it was so easy. The first chance he got, he was going to forge himself a certificate and stick with the investment racket. It attracted a better class of mark.

  “Burke told me flat out he wasn’t doing business with you,” Tyrone said.

  “That was this morning. A man like that demands courting. I’m meeting him at eight o’clock.”

  Tyrone wavered, looking up the side road where the little roadster had disappeared. There was envy in his stark expression. Felix used it.

  “You’d be a fool to pass up an opportunity to get in bed with him.”

  Tyrone took the rebuke with a frown of concentration and said, “I’m going to take a chance on you, Felix, but Sergio’s going to shadow you until I’m satisfied I’m getting more out of you than I put in.”

  “No problem.” Felix smiled through his fear.

  Tyrone jerked his head.

  Felix started walking, trying to keep space between himself and Sergio’s bulk without tripping off the edge of the sidewalk.

  “Where are we going?” Sergio asked.

  “Shopping. Hurry up before the stores close.”

  5:03 p.m.

  Con stopped against the curb a third of the way into the U of the hotel entrance.

  “Think he’ll show?” Renny asked, rerunning the scene in her mind, looking for clues as to how Felix had taken it. “I didn’t like leaving him.”

  “Me, either. I’d rather reel him in while he’s still hungry, but we’re not ready, so this’ll have to do.”

  “Why do you want him to bring his money?”

  The valet approached and Con waved the man off. He hadn’t pulled under the portico, so the sun warmed the top of Renny’s head and bare shoulders. The light breeze carried the sounds of passing cars, the tinkle of the fountain on her right and the tiny pings of the car as it cooled. More people in yellow T-shirts milled around the entrance of the hotel, asking for directions to restaurants, theaters and the park with the hedge maze.

  “I thought it’d be a kick to compensate his victims,” Con said. “I don’t know how we’d find them, though.”

  “I bet he keeps a sucker list.” She was briefly excited until she realized how much her enthusiasm had revealed, then felt horrid.

  “What’s a sucker list?”

  She looked toward the fountain, the gardens, the fuzzy crack the car window rolled into. “Exactly what it sounds like. Grifters trade and sell them.”

  “Why?”

  “So they can phone up Mrs. Smith and say, ‘You’re such a valued customer, we want to offer you this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to buy more of what you already own.’”

  “Which is nothing.”

  She nodded.

  “Did you have one?”

  Panic speared through her. She had known this was coming but still wasn’t prepared.

  “No. I just worked the parking lots,” she answered.

  “For pocket change.”

  “Don’t try to reduce it. Lying is lying.”

  He didn’t say anything.

  She wanted to look at him but didn’t have the nerve. “I try not to lie anymore.”

  “What made you stop?”

  She was running her thumbnail along the window crack and noticed she had torn open her cuticle again.

  When she didn’t speak, Con said, “Look, if you don’t want to talk about it—”

  “I don’t. Believe me, I don’t want to talk about it. But I should have been honest about it in the first place.” She sighed.

  The silence grew awkward. In her peripheral vision, she could see his body angled toward hers, arms resting on the seat back and the top of the steering wheel. She tried to sense whether he was tense or angry or disgusted, but couldn’t tell anything without actually lifting her gaze to his face. She couldn’t look him in the eye, couldn’t find the words, was too afraid to leave and too afraid to speak.

  Then she felt it, the lightest of touches on her hair. It increased her agitation, opening the zipper on her unbearable memories. Pain swelled inside her, but she held very still and felt it again.

  Closing her eyes, she found her voice. “It’s not that I didn’t know the difference between the lies and the truth, only that telling the truth was something we didn’t do.”

  “Who’s ‘we?’”

  “Mom and I.” His touch was still there, giving her something to focus on, giving her hope that he didn’t judge her too harshly. “Mom always lied, even when it didn’t matter. She would have my school records but tell the principal she didn’t. Or she’d tell the waitress I was allergic to plums. She was only ever honest with me. It made me feel special. The truth was a secret we shared only with each other.”

  “Where was Dad?”

  “If I knew who he was, I might be able to tell you.”

  His hand settled against the back of her neck, blanketing her thick hair against her skin.

  “I knew other people thought what we did was wrong, but they were stupid, not smart enough to live the way we did.”

  “On the run?”

  “Yeah.” She laughed without humor. “It was quite an eye-opener to learn Mom had lied to me about the rest of the world. I might have kept on believing her if she hadn’t lied to me about coming back.” She opened her eyes to see a streak of red around her thumbnail. It hurt like hell.

  “Coming back from where?”

  “Coming back to bail me out of jail.”

  Con’s hand tightened on the back of her neck. “She left you in jail?”

  “It was my fault I was there. I’d decided to graduate to a bigger game. I was trying to impress Mom, but the marks had more savvy than I gave them credit for. Mom tried to salvage it and wound up at the local precinct with me. She told me to cop to it, since she had a record. She said if they released her, she would come back to bail me out, but she didn’t.”

  “How long were you there?”

  “Only a week and a half. I was sentenced to two years’ probation with community service in a senior home.”

  “Only—” His hand left her neck and she almost expected it to come back in a blow. It didn’t, but the fury radiating off him made her hunch in her seat.

  He threw himself from the car and slammed the door behind him. After a moment, he opened it wide and slammed it again, making the car buck. “At least when my parents fucked off they left me with my grandmother, not in a fucking cell.”

  She stared at the floor of the car, afraid to move.

  “Fuck, Renny. Did you ever see her again?”

  She mumbled a response, not sure how he would react.

  “What?” He leaned on the door. She could see his fingers were white, looking as if they could bend metal. “What did you say?”

  “I pretended I didn’t know her,” she admitted more clearly. “She spotted me at a café three years ago and sat down across from me. She said, ‘Aren’t you going to say hello
to your mother?’ I told her my mother worked with special needs children and my father was a plumber from Boise, then I walked out and stiffed her with the check.”

  His fingers relaxed. After a moment he chuckled. “Atta girl, cookie. Never let them see you suffer.”

  She desperately wanted to read his expression, but still wasn’t convinced it was safe. “Are you okay with this now?”

  “I always was. I wouldn’t have hired you otherwise.”

  “You told me you hired me because I was the most suitable candidate.” Her thumbnail was a mess. She put some pressure on it, relieving the throb.

  “You were.”

  “Well, that just begs the question, ‘What did the other ones do?’”

  “Nothing. That’s why you got the job. At least you were interesting.”

  “Con!” She lifted her gaze reflexively, too surprised to keep hiding.

  He shrugged, but it wasn’t an apology. It was his that’s-the-way-I’m-made shrug.

  “You’re certifiable.”

  “I’m eccentric. Read the papers.”

  He was amazing, grinning at her like she was something special after she had just finished telling him how rotten she was.

  “Did you really go looking for me at Felix’s apartment?”

  “Yes.”

  “When? Why? How did he know?”

  “While you were at the health mine. Come on, let’s ask Laramie if he has a bandage for that thumb.”

  She expected him to answer the rest of her questions and stared at him as he came around to open her door. He held it, brows lifted as if he didn’t know what she was waiting for.

  He wasn’t going to tell her why he had gone after her. If there had been a reason related to Felix, or even Mona or Jacob, he would have told her.

  “Why—”

  “You’re going to need a transfusion soon.”

  She looked at her thumbnail. The streak hadn’t changed. In fact, it was going rusty. It was unsightly, sure, but it didn’t need attention. He was trying to distract her. He was sitting on a wildcard and didn’t want to play it.

  His remark about never letting ’em see you suffer came back to her. She wanted to believe he had deeper feelings for her than he wanted to reveal, but she wouldn’t go begging for proof of his affection again.

  “Are you going to tell me why you went after me?”

  “No.”

  Fine. She could play that way too.

  “Yes, let’s find Mr. Laramie. I want to speak to him about getting into the elevator shaft.” She climbed from the car and stood toe to toe with Con.

  He took on the look patented by the first man who ever said, You wanna piece of me? There was that underlying glint, though, the one patented by Con himself. The spark that ignited every time he faced a challenge.

  She took the door from him and closed it, maintaining eye contact the whole time.

  The valet appeared, breaking their stare. Secretly, Con was grateful. He figured he could outlast Renny but had a feeling he would have tears running down his cheeks before he won.

  “Keep it handy,” he said, giving up his keys and a fifty-dollar bill.

  Renny was walking ahead, obviously in a big hurry for that damned ring. Brat. She knew he was holding out on her and it was just like her to punish him for it. Well, she could just forget the goddamned ring, because marrying Jacob wasn’t going to happen. She’d had her chance to go back to Greenbowl and she’d blown it.

  “Hey, cookie, we need to get Spencer into the air.”

  “Check his room,” she said over her shoulder.

  “Did you say you saw him at the health mine? What was he doing there?”

  “Hooking up with Laila Washington, far as I could tell.”

  “The hell you say.” He spoke loudly enough to turn heads across the lobby.

  Renny stopped walking and let him catch up to her. “If you want my opinion, he has a crush on her.”

  “My pilot does not have a crush on Laila Washington.”

  “He PVRs her show if he’s going to be out of town. Did you know that?”

  “If he tunes into her show, it’s because he has a keen interest in the day-to-day happenings in Montana.”

  “Then he’s interested in fraud in Deception, because she’s after Felix. Can you believe it? I asked him to keep her from wrecking things with him.”

  “Good luck. I hear the meteorologists want to name a tropical storm after her, but they haven’t found one destructive enough.”

  Renny chuckled. “I hadn’t heard that one. Is it yours or Letterman’s?”

  “I stole it,” he admitted. “Listen, if she’s with him, then you have to come with me. I don’t want to talk to her.”

  “Chicken.” She veered toward the elevator, though, and he felt a quiet burn of satisfaction at stalling the ring retrieval. He was still ahead in that game, at least, but how was he going to handle Laila Washington?

  They were striding down the hall like Maxwell Smart and Ninety-nine, when Renny asked, “Will you tell me what happened with the Prince of Play story?”

  “No.”

  “Oh, come on. Please? Your Gran always told me to ask you about it if I wanted to know and I do.” She widened her eyes in her most innocent and appealing gaze.

  Con snorted. “The only reason I fall for that look is because you once made a very lewd request while wearing that expression and a black thong that didn’t survive.”

  She tripped.

  He caught her and set her on her feet again, then held her without advancing down the hall. “You fell for it. I wasn’t sure you would.”

  “I knew you were trying to change the subject.” She swiped the back of her wrist along her hairline. “Um, what were we talking about?”

  “The black thong—” His hand rested on her hip.

  “The Prince of Play,” she corrected. “Why did you sue for custody of the phantom baby? Mona said you knew you weren’t the father, so why’d you bother?”

  “Just being my usual contrary self.” He released her, tried to keep walking.

  “Come on, Con. I told you about my mother.”

  Yes, she had, and wasn’t Mom a beauty? The Crocodile Hunter would hesitate to get near that one. He started to say so and wound up sighing in resignation.

  Renny looked so pretty—no, not pretty. Soft. Yeah, she wore the feminine softness of a woman who wanted to soothe a man, fix all his problems and tuck him into bed. Her eyes were liquid, her lips pouty and her hair like duck down when he stroked it with the back of his knuckles.

  She would be a good wife, he thought, almost smiling at the thought, but hurting too. Renny awed him with her ability to dream the nuclear family dream after what her mother had done to her. He had come close to imagining something like it himself, after years of his grandmother erasing his own pathetic childhood, but had sworn off it after the Prince of Play insanity. Maybe he owed Renny the reason. He spoke as he walked.

  “Suing for custody was an impulse. I knew I wasn’t the father, but I thought Alicia was pregnant, and it was obvious she wanted publicity more than she wanted the baby. I thought about the way Gran had taken me in and figured I could give the kid a better upbringing than Alicia would.”

  “So it wasn’t strategy.”

  “Nope. Strictly sentimental bullshit that only showcased what a wing nut I am.”

  “You are not.” She stopped him by hugging his arm. “It was sweet.”

  “Are you coming on to me? ’Cause if you kiss me, I’m going to kiss you back.”

  For a second, he thought she might do it. Her gaze went to his mouth and his pulse went off the Richter scale.

  “You have a big heart, Con. You’re usually behaving like a big goof, so not many people see it, but I know it’s there and I admire you for it.” She picked up his hand and kissed his knuckle.

  He copied the gesture, then retained her hand as they continued walking, hyper-conscious of the level of pressure they both maintained in the
firm clasp of their hands. He wanted . . . oh, man, he wanted her so much.

  She paused and lifted her free hand to knock on a door.

  * * *

  All Spencer had meant to do was convince Laila he believed in her. He wouldn’t have kissed her if she hadn’t thrown herself at him. He certainly hadn’t intended to let the kiss roll into heavy petting.

  Nudity had not been on his agenda at all.

  But one long, wet kiss had slid into another. She smelled of coffee and cloves, and made a sound in her throat that clenched his gut. He liked the feel of her weight on him, and liked even more that the position freed both his hands so he could explore the firm flesh beneath her loose clothing. The feel of her narrow waist, her ribcage, the fragility of her neck, all made him feel powerful yet protective.

  She was slight and taut, her back soft as velvet beneath his fingertips and ticklish too, because she arched into him when he trailed his fingers up her spine. And when he felt her breasts flatten on his chest, he closed his eyes and brought his hands up to trace the swell. He had an urge to slide his legs between hers and lift his hips, but restrained himself. Barely. Because if he was letting things escalate quickly, Laila was pushing them farther and faster.

  She opened his shirt and pressed her lips to his chest, making him groan. Her hand went to his button fly and, without thinking, he rolled her beneath him on the sofa and kissed her hard and long, opening the zip of her pants before he realized what he was doing. With his hand flattened on her quivering belly, he lifted his head, breathing deeply while he waited for her to open her eyes.

  “How far are we going to take this? I’m really turned on.” He let his hand climb and felt her T-shirt bunch around his wrist, felt the heat of her skin as he approached the underside of her bra. Felt her nipple firm and taut through the soft cup.

  “What?” Confusion clouded her eyes and her hand came up to grasp his wrist.

  “Though so.” With regret, he gently pulled the hem of her T-shirt down again.

  “What?” she said again, sounding strained and a little irritated.

  “If you really wanted to have sex, you would have told me to shut up and take off my clothes. I’m all for getting carried away, but I need you to know what you’re doing.”