“You mean them?” She sent a wave in the direction of the limo.
“Hey, let’s not invite them over.”
“I was just greeting them—not that they waved back. How rude. But what’s the problem, Joe? You don’t think they’re anybody but Maury’s friends.”
He shrugged. “I could be wrong.”
“Are you serious?” Her voice said he better not be. “Now—after everything we’ve been through with these guys—now you think they’re Mafia?”
“Maybe. Don’t look at me like that. Women aren’t the only ones who can change their minds. But I’ll tell you this, those hulks get out of that car and I’m calling the cops. They can’t just openly follow us, like they’ve been doing, and then pull off the road like that right behind us.”
“Yes, they can, Joe. This is a public beach.”
“You know what I mean. These guys aren’t here for the tropical weather. They’re stalking us and—I don’t give a damn who they are—that’s a threat.”
“Really? You feel threatened? I don’t. I think they could just be nice concerned guys—”
“Oh, stop right there. Are you telling me that now you don’t think they’re the Mafia? Is that it?” He shook his head. “Unbelievable.”
After two days of hysterics over these same guys, Meg now shrugged like it was no big deal. “No, it isn’t. I think they like me and—”
“Have appointed themselves your personal bodyguards who intend to follow you everywhere you go for the rest of your life? Well, I’m not okay with that. I don’t think you’re safe around them.”
“Maybe they don’t think I’m safe around you.”
That hurt. “Do you think you’re safe around me, Meg?”
Instantly apologetic, as if she realized she’d gone too far, she abandoned her standoffish attitude. She put her hand on his forearm and sighed, resigned. “Of course I think I’m safe with you. I know I am. I’m sorry.” She paused, then added. “Actually, I’m over those guys following us, too. I wish they’d go away.”
With his ruffled feathers settled, Joe said, “I agree. But forget about them for a minute. They don’t have anything to do with what’s going on between us.”
“No, they don’t. You’re right.” Withdrawing her hand from his arm, Meg retreated to her original position against the car. And there she waited, watching his face.
Joe was quiet for a moment, gathering his thoughts. Then he said, softly, “So, Meg, what’s going on here? I mean, between you and me. Why were you crying?”
She lowered her gaze and pushed the toe of her sandal through the sand. “Because I want you to stay here with me,” she told her feet. “Or I did. Now I’m not so sure.”
“You’ve gone from sure to not so sure in the amount of time it took me to pull off the highway?” With her head still lowered, she nodded. His heart melting, Joe stared at the top of her head, noting the brilliant highlights in her dark auburn hair, almost gold, and wondering why this had to be so hard. “Meg, can you look at me, please?” He waited until she did. Her big, brown eyes sparkled with reflected sunlight…or more tears—he couldn’t tell which. “Why aren’t you sure now?”
She shrugged. “I don’t know. Maybe because it’s not the same if I have to tell you, or ask you, or beg you to stay. I can’t believe you’re leaving me just like that.” She snapped her fingers for emphasis.
“I’m not leaving you ‘just like that.’ Go with me back to Denver.”
Although Meg’s surprised gaze locked with his, Joe felt certain she could not be more shocked than he was that he’d just extended an invitation to her to join him in his life. Did he mean it? Did he really want that? What if she accepted? What would he do if she did—or if she didn’t? This was major. How could he have said something so—
“No,” Meg said, her voice actually sounding dismissive. “I can’t go to Linda-land. I live here, and my family and friends are here. So is my job, and school’s not even out for another two months. You’re sweet to ask, but you have to be reasonable about this, Joe.”
“I have to be reasonable?” Joe felt stunned. Then he was all outrage and broad gestures. “What, are you kidding me here? I had to pull off the road—” he pointed to it “—not ten minutes ago because you—” he pointed at her “—were crying over my saying I had to go home to my job and family. Then I—” he pointed at himself “—ask you to come to Denver with me, and you say you can’t for the very same reasons I gave for not staying here?”
“Yes.”
“Yes? That’s it? That’s all you have to say? It’s okay when those are your reasons, but not when they’re mine? What the hell is reasonable about that, Meg?”
She pulled away from the car and got in his face. “Everything. I’m not the one leaving me and Florida, Joe. You are.”
He threw his arms out at his sides and shook his head. “Hell, yeah, I’m leaving Florida. I have to. I don’t live here.”
“Oh, come on, it’s not like your visa is expiring. You live in Colorado, not some foreign place.”
“What if the situation were reversed and you’d come to Denver and I wanted you to stay there? What would you do?” he asked.
“Well, of course, I’d have to think about it—”
“A-ha!” Joe pointed accusingly at her. “We know what that means, don’t we. So you would need time to think, but I’m not allowed—”
The intrusive sounds of opening and closing car doors cut Joe off. At the same time as Meg, he turned to look in the direction of the Mafia-mobile. Sure enough, the big guys—the ones from the elevator last night—had got out and were now standing beside the car. Despite their dark sunglasses, they were making no secret of the fact that they were watching them.
“Uh-oh, Joe,” Meg said fatalistically, drawing his attention to her, where he saw she’d bracketed her waist with her hands, “now you’ve done it.”
Disbelief pinched his features. “Now I’ve done it? I didn’t do anything.” That sounded lame, even to him. “You know what? This is a bunch of bull. Are you as tired of those yokels interrupting us as I am?” With that, Joe stalked off toward the limo.
“Is that another rhetorical question?” she called after him.
“Yes,” he yelled back. Within seconds, Joe sensed, rather than saw or heard, Meg on his heels. Who was surprised? But he had bigger problems in front of him, meaning the closer he got to his quarry, the larger the men loomed. Undaunted—or, at least telling himself he was—Joe stopped in front of the man named Rocco.
“All right, look, just who the hell are you guys, anyway? What do you want?”
The two wingmen raised their eyebrows above the rims of their sunglasses. But Rocco showed no response. In fact, he ignored Joe, choosing instead to speak to Meg, who’d stopped beside Joe.
“You okay? Is he embarrassing you again?”
“No. We were just talking.”
Joe felt vindicated…but too soon, because Meg added, “He’s going to leave me and go back to Denver.”
Rocco raised his sunglasses off his nose and stared at Joe, who saw narrowed eyes as deeply black as onyx marbles.
“Is that true?”
Since, by all appearances, he was about to be stomped into a mud hole, Joe figured he might as well make his last words memorable. “Is it any of your business?”
Resettling his shades, the man surprised Joe by chuckling, apparently in admiration. “You got guts, I’ll give you that. So, why are you leaving this fine lady? You nuts or something? Look at her.”
Automatically, Joe did as this unlikely relationship counselor suggested. He looked at Meg, who returned his gaze from apprehension-rounded eyes. Incredibly cute, she was. And brave and stubborn. And intelligent and kind and funny and sexy…among her many other fine attributes. Suddenly, Joe knew what he was going to do. “I wasn’t leaving her. Not forever. I was coming back.”
“You were?” Meg said in unison with her defender.
Joe watched her exchange a g
lance with Rocco.
“I didn’t know that part yet,” she told him, grinning.
Joe caught the cheery looks on the faces of the two backup singers, or shooters—whatever—who flanked the talkative one of their trio.
“So how come you didn’t tell her you meant to come back?” Rocco said, recapturing Joe’s attention. “No reason to upset the lady.”
“I never meant to upset the lady.” He hoped his terse reply served notice that he had no intention of further discussing his love life with a helpful godfather, or whoever the hell he was.
“I see.” The man was nodding, causing the sunlight to bounce off his slicked-back hair. “So, are we good here?” he asked, checking his wristwatch. “We still have business to conduct today in Tampa, so if there are no questions—”
“I have a question,” Meg said.
Her defender smiled benevolently. “Ask away, sweetheart.”
“Thanks. How’d you know my name? I never told it to you last night, but you called me Meg.”
“Ah, that. Let’s just say…I do my homework.” He turned to Joe. “Are we done here?”
Joe nodded.
“Good.” With a flick of his jacket, the man turned away. His two henchmen jumped into action, one opening a door and standing back, the other sprinting around to the driver’s side.
Right before he got into the back seat of the stretched vehicle, Rocco turned again to Joe. “You’re a cute couple. You should kiss and make up. But, just so you know, once we all get to Maury’s, I’d stay out of the way if you don’t want to get hurt.”
LESS THAN THIRTY MINUTES later, with a disgruntled Meg stationed at the big picture window in his uncle’s living room, where Joe had posted her as designated watch for the bad guys, he stood in Maury’s bedroom and watched the frenzy of packing the little old guy was engaged in.
Maury was yanking open drawers, sorting through them, tossing a hodgepodge of mismatched clothes toward his bed, where he’d placed an old-fashioned, beat-up suitcase that looked to be every bit as ancient as its owner. About every third toss of loud pants and gaudy shirts actually hit the suitcase. Everything else hit the carpeted floor or adorned the ceiling fan’s blades. Luckily, it wasn’t turned on.
All of this would have been comical, Joe decided, had the range of possible explanations behind his great-uncle’s actions not been so scary. But the very fact that Maury Seeger was packing, after hearing Joe’s and Meg’s recounting of their last twenty-four hours’ worth of close encounters of the mob kind, confirmed for Joe that the events of this weekend had not been orchestrated by Maury as some elaborate game. They were serious. However, the question remained, what exactly was going on?
Joe knew he ought to call the police. But he was stopped by two things. One, the bad guys weren’t anywhere around, so he could hardly call and ask the police to stake out the place just in case some threat materialized. Not that he looked forward to telling his tale to the cops, who would most likely haul him off as a nutcase.
And two, Joe didn’t know yet the extent of his great-uncle’s involvement in all this. Bottom line? What if he called the law and it turned out that Uncle Maury was among those taken to jail? He might deserve it, but Joe didn’t think he could live with knowing he’d sent the old man up. Especially when his family found out. He’d rather have the Mafia on his back than his mother.
Joe’s only hope, then, was to get quickly to the truth and hope he had enough intellect and cunning to devise a plan that would not get them killed but would make this go away. As if that wasn’t enough, he needed to accomplish everything in the unknown amount of time he had between right now and the moment the trouble came knocking—which could be in the next second. Hence, he was forced to bully a beloved old man more than fifty years his senior.
“All right, Uncle Maury,” Joe said, “we’ve told you everything—” well, not about the sex “—that’s happened with us. Now it’s your turn. No more games because I’m thinking those limousine lizards could show up at any minute. And when they do, it won’t be for tea and cookies.”
Standing in front of his chest of drawers and checking out a blaringly loud Hawaiian shirt he had wadded up in his hands, Maury smelled the garment, grimaced and tossed it to the floor. “Relax, Joey. Don’t worry about it. Those guys don’t scare me.”
“Right.” Joe crossed his arms over his chest.
His back to Joe, Maury next held up a lime-green knit pullover, which he was studying. “I’m serious. They don’t. They wouldn’t make pimples on the butts of real hit men.”
“Imagine my relief…when I’m dead.”
Maury turned to him, looking stern. “Don’t get smart with me, Joey. I can still turn you over my knee.”
Joe let that one slide. “So, all right, these guys don’t scare you. Why are you packing?”
“What? This?” He pointed to the suitcase on his bed. “This ain’t got nothin’ to do with them.”
Joe’s bark of laughter was humorless. “Again…right.”
“I ain’t lying. Here, smell this shirt. Tell me what you think.” He advanced on Joe, the shirt held out in front of him.
Joe pulled back. “I don’t think so. Just put it in the suitcase.”
“Good enough for me.” Maury did an about-face, heading for his bed, but only making a circuit as he tossed the shirt in the suitcase and made for the nightstand, where he bent over and tugged on the bottom drawer. When he finally yanked it open, several balled-up pairs of black socks—the only color he seemed to own—sprang for freedom from the overstuffed space and landed around Maury’s feet. “Son of a bitch,” he muttered, bending over to retrieve them. “One of these days I got to clean out this drawer. I can’t find nothin’ in here.”
Joe watched all this, his heart softening. The old guy was as sweet and good as he was frustrating and hardheaded. Though he hated like hell badgering his uncle, Joe knew he had no choice. Only too aware of the ticking clock hanging over all their heads, he made another effort.
“So, Uncle Maury, when you saw these guys Friday night, what’d you talk about?”
Standing over his suitcase with about half a dozen pairs of those black socks in his hands, Maury said, “We didn’t talk about nothin’.”
And there it was: the last straw. “Then what the hell has this past weekend been about?” Joe demanded. “All the running around and the hiding? Come on, I met the guys. I talked to them. They exist.”
“I ain’t sayin’ they don’t exist, and that they ain’t after me,” Maury said. “They do and they are, I know that, Joey. I ain’t senile. All I’m sayin’ is, I didn’t let ’em in for no chat when they showed up, so we never talked. What we did was we yelled our business through the door and made a lot of threats. When I wouldn’t open up, they left. I think they was afraid of drawin’ too much attention to their sorry selves. But that was when I called you—and the rest you know.”
“You think I’d be in here questioning you like this if I knew the rest? The only one here who knows the whole truth, Uncle Maury, is you.”
The elderly man eyed him warily. “Yeah? What is it you think I know?”
“Okay, how about this? Where were you until sometime after midnight last night? Meg and I were worried when we couldn’t get you on the phone.”
The stocky octogenarian’s belligerence bled away, leaving his round little face a bright red, which scared the hell out of Joe until he realized his uncle was blushing, not dying. “What, I got a curfew now, Joey?”
Affection won out over exasperation and had Joe chuckling. “Man, you’d have a leash if I didn’t think you could slip it.”
Maury favored him with a flash of a smile. “I could do that, you know.”
“Like I said.” Joe studied the older man, wondering where he could have been last night that would embarrass him. Maybe this line of questioning would prove to be the pulled thread that unraveled the entire messed-up tapestry of the past forty-eight hours. “So, anyway,” Joe said conv
ersationally, “Meg and I thought about returning to Tampa last night to look for you. The only thing stopping us was that we had no idea where to start.”
Looking as relieved as he did guilty about something, Maury lobbed the socks, one bundle at a time, into his suitcase’s rapidly filling interior. “That was real smart of you to stay put, Joey, because it wasn’t no big deal. See, what happened was I went to take my heart medicine and saw I only had the one pill left. So I had to go to the pharmacy for a refill. End of story.”
“Right.” Joe knew from long experience that his uncle used the heart medicine line only when he was angling for a sympathetic reaction that would derail anyone who got too close to a truth Maury didn’t want revealed. Joe crossed his arms over his chest. “And where’s this pharmacy—in Tallahassee? I’ll bet I called twenty times last night.”
“There was a long line.”
“How long was it?”
Apparent disbelief had Maury searching Joe’s face. “What’s the matter with you? You think I had all those sick people number off or something? I don’t know how many. A bunch. I think something’s going around.” He coughed for good measure.
Joe raised a skeptical eyebrow. “Yeah, that has to be it. Well, at least Linda managed to reach you last night.”
Maury looked suddenly pained. “Yeah. Look, I’m sorry about that, Joey, but I had to tell her. She wouldn’t let up on me. The woman’s a barracuda. You’re better off without her.”
“Well, thank you, Maury, my friend and neighbor. I told him the same thing last night,” Meg said, entering the bedroom.
12
“SEE, JOEY?” Maury said. “Even Meggie agrees with me.”
Ignoring his uncle and tensing with alarm, Joe turned to Meg. She had been instructed not to leave her post unless she saw the bad guys drive up. And here she was. Oh, hell. Joe’s pulse immediately began racing. He didn’t know where to look first, what he could use as a weapon. “Are they here, Meg? Did you see something?”
“I’ll say I did.” Walking into the room, totally unconcerned as she affectionately patted his arm on her way past, she headed toward the king-size bed.
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