Did they give him Felicity, the twenty-four-year-old bombshell of a nurse, just out of school, ready to be impressed by the brave and handsome FBI agent who’d been shot while on the job?
No.
No, they give him Stanley. The male nurse.
“A visitor?” George whispered. “Who?”
Stanley shrugged. “I didn’t catch the name, dude.” Stanley, the surfer nurse. Even better.
“Man or woman?”
“Woman,” Stanley told him. “A most excellently bodacious woman.”
Nicki. It had to be Nicki. He’d expected to see her when he was in ICU, expected her to push her way through the door and plant herself next to his bed.
He’d asked for her. He’d been in a haze of pain, light-headed from the loss of blood, afraid he was going to die, but he could remember asking for Nicki. He’d wanted to tell her he was sorry about everything. He’d wanted to hold on to her hand, certain that if anyone was strong enough and tough enough to pull him back from the dead, it was Nic.
But she’d never shown up. Not until now.
“Better late than never,” George whispered to Stanley. “Dude.”
The nurse checked the amount of painkiller going into his IV drip. “I’m going to assume that was a hearty yes.”
“Yes.” George closed his eyes, managing a wan smile. Nicole was finally here.
He heard Stanley leave, heard the door open and close and then open again. He heard her footsteps as she approached his bed.
“Omigod, you look awful!”
George opened his eyes.
Kim. It wasn’t Nicki, it was Kim. She smiled at him tremulously. “I guess you must look pretty good considering you almost died, but …”
Kim. He fought the haze of stupidity caused by the painkillers. “How did you …? What did you …?”
She sat down next to the bed, looking oddly out of place in the sterile hospital room. She was wearing jeans and a T-shirt, but despite that, she still looked like a stripper. Her generous bustline seemed seriously disproportionate to the rest of her. Bodacious, Stan had said. He should have known.
“Your partner told me what happened,” she said, “and gave me a ride up here.”
His partner? “Harry?”
Kim shook her head. “Someone named Christine.”
McFall. What was Chris McFall doing, giving Kim a ride to be by his side? Chris was really tight with Nic, and …
And she’d probably called Nicki, who no doubt had let her know she didn’t give a damn if George lived or died. And Chris, being a complete softy had brought someone here to sit by his bed.
He fought to blink back the tears that had rushed to his eyes, afraid that Kim might see, and know.
But he was too late. She did see. But she didn’t know a thing. She took his hand and smiled sweetly, gently brushing his hair back from his forehead. “You really are glad to see me, aren’t you?” she said. “Oh, honey, I’m so glad I came.”
Eleven
ALICE PLOTKIN.
The woman in the motel-room mirror was definitely named Alice Plotkin.
Alessandra Lamont had vanished, perhaps forever, and in her place stood geeky Alice Plotkin, whose life was destined to be one bad hair day after another.
Her new bangs hung limply in her eyes. The short cut itself was exactly wrong for the shape of her face. And the color … There was almost no distinguishable color. Her hair was now simply drab. More mousy than brown.
Without any makeup on, she looked both older and younger. Her eyes looked naked and tired with unconcealed bags beneath them, yet the freckles on her face made her look like a fourteen-year-old.
And her clothes …
Nothing fit quite right. Her jeans were so baggy she had to wear a belt to hold them up. Her T-shirt was oversize. It swallowed up her breasts and hung down to her thighs, concealing the fact that she actually had a waist. It drooped off her shoulders, the short sleeves coming down past her elbows. The entire outfit—if you could even call it that—made her look skinny rather than slender, her arms and wrists bony instead of elegantly graceful.
The running shoes she wore weren’t a name brand either. They were a hideously horrible mix of bright white and neon blue, made of plastic and fake leather.
No, Alice Plotkin would not be turning any heads in the near future. She looked like a rather unremarkable teenager.
And that had been Harry’s idea. She would move into this still-nameless town in northern Colorado, pretending to be a very young woman. Gradually, over the next few years, as the people in the town came to know invisible Alice Plotkin, she would age a bit and graduate up to clothes that fit a little bit better and a haircut that actually made her look decent again. At best, she would be quietly pretty.
Alessandra sighed.
Harry was sleeping the sleep of the dead on one of the beds behind her, still wearing his jacket and baseball cap, the cap bent uncomfortably beneath his face.
He’d checked them into this room under false names, paid in cash, unlocked the door, tossed the bags with her new department-store clothes onto the dresser, and fallen facedown onto the nearest bed.
They were alone in a motel room, and Harry had fallen instantly asleep. Alessandra didn’t know whether to be insulted or relieved.
She caught another glimpse of herself in the mirror as she gently pulled his cap free and set it down on the bedside table. Was it any wonder he hadn’t tried to kiss her again, to reignite that fire they’d started back in the Stop and Shop nearly three whole days ago? She looked like a fourteen-year-old boy.
Not that she really wanted him to kiss her again. And, indeed, she wouldn’t have kissed him again, not after the way he’d betrayed her. But she wanted him to regret the fact that he couldn’t have her. She wanted him to lie awake, desperate from wanting her. She wasn’t proud of that, but it was the truth. She wanted him to suffer.
But since about ten hours ago, since she’d had her “makeover,” she didn’t look like anything anyone would ever want. And Harry sure wasn’t having trouble sleeping.
Alessandra sat down on the other bed, watching him. With his face slack, his mouth slightly open, his soulful eyes tightly closed, he shouldn’t have been so good-looking. Shouldn’t have been, but he was. What was it about him? He’d lied to her, nearly gotten her killed. And now he’d gone and forced her to conceal her beauty—the only thing she’d ever been 100 percent positive she had going for her.
“You bastard,” she whispered.
She stared into the mirror at her reflection, and Alice Plotkin—Lord, even the name he’d given her was awful—stared expressionlessly back. Geeky and plain, unskilled and unwanted.
Completely unlovable.
But tough. Way tougher than Griffin ever imagined her to be, of that much she was certain. Tougher and stronger and smarter than Ivo and Michael Trotta—and even Harry—realized.
She may have lost everything she’d ever thought she’d cared about, but as long as her heart was still beating, as long as she could draw air into her lungs, she was winning.
She’d hit her low. Right here, right now was the absolute bottom. From now on, it could only get better.
She hoped.
“He wasn’t exactly sure when he was going to arrive. He’s driving out,” Marge said, and Shaun looked away, carefully keeping his face expressionless.
It was stupid. He should know by now not to let his hopes rise when his aunt told him something like “Your father is coming to visit.” Until Harry arrived, unless he had a plane ticket in his hand with the exact date and time of his arrival printed on it, it was more likely than not that he’d be calling back to apologize, to say that something important had come up, something he couldn’t get out of.
To say that he wasn’t coming.
“Do me a favor,” Shaun told Marge. “Don’t tell Em.”
Emily was too little to temper her expectations. She would be horribly disappointed if Harry didn’t show. If? Who w
as he kidding? When was more like it. His stomach twisted.
“He got the letter from the lawyers,” Marge told him. “He’s pretty upset.”
Harry wasn’t the only one. “Just don’t tell her, all right?”
“All right.” Marge sighed. “Shaun, about this custody thing …”
Shaun didn’t want to talk about it. It made his stomach hurt too much, made him want to cry. He stood up and took his plate to the sink, rinsing it and putting it in the dishwasher. He forced a bright smile, forced it to touch his eyes, so Marge would know that he really didn’t give a shit about Harry. “I’ve got a lot of homework.”
Marge brought her own plate to the sink. “You’re so much like him.”
“No,” Shaun said, escaping down the hall to his room. “I’m not.”
Alessandra stirred, and Harry looked over to find her awake.
The early morning air was cool coming in the car windows, and she pulled her legs up under one of the enormous sweatshirts he’d bought her. Without any makeup on, her beauty was more delicate, more subtle. More. He couldn’t believe it. She’d gotten the worst haircut in the world, and he now found her more attractive than ever.
He knew she didn’t see it that way, though. She looked into the mirror and only saw what she was missing. As if the makeup, hair, and clothes had been the crucial elements in her beauty. It was completely absurd.
He was worried that she was still too beautiful. That too many people would still notice her. She was going to have to lose that regal manner of sitting and walking. Start ducking her head down, slouching her shoulders. Stop looking like a queen dressed down in her kid brother’s clothes.
Of course, right now, the way she was sitting, she looked a lot like a gray beach ball with a head. Harry smiled. When he’d first met her, he never dreamed in a million years that he would ever describe Alessandra Lamont as a beach ball with a head.
“What’s so funny?” she asked.
During the days they’d been on the road and the night they’d spent together in a motel, she’d initiated conversations maybe twice. Maybe. He’d lectured endlessly about the best ways to hide herself. She shouldn’t wear perfume, especially not the scent she wore in the past. She should take care to keep her dairy allergies completely hidden, even to the point of occasionally going to the local ice-cream stand and getting a cone, throwing it out when no one was looking. She should get a job doing something completely alien to her past life. She should change her habits and her lifestyle. She should overcome her fears and get herself a dog. Something big with lots of teeth. She should take that dog everywhere she went.
She’d listened quietly, somberly agreeing to it all—except the part about getting a dog. She’d asked questions, but never personal ones, not even vaguely personal ones like “What’s so funny?”
He was going to take the fact that she’d asked one now to mean she wanted to talk.
“I was thinking about George,” he said. That was not entirely untrue. “He would be really proud of the way you’ve been sticking with your disguise.”
Alessandra made a vague sound, focusing her attention on the scenery zipping past the window.
Oooh-kay. Hell, even if she didn’t want to talk, he did. He was completely bored, the radio was bringing in only static, and this silent treatment thing was getting old.
“You know, I’ve been meaning to ask you, Al. Where’d you learn first aid? Not everyone would’ve known what to do when the person they were standing next to suddenly had blood pouring from a major vein.”
She glanced at him. “Artery.”
“Vein. Artery. Close enough.”
“Arteries carry blood away from the heart. It’s more life threatening to open an artery than a vein.”
Harry glanced at her, but she was already staring back out the window. “So. Where’d you learn that? And if you tell me you went to medical school, I may faint. I’m not sure I can take many more surprises from you.”
“Medical school?” She snorted. “Not in this lifetime.”
“So where, then?”
She didn’t answer right away. “I took a first-aid class in tenth grade and I really liked it, so I paid attention.”
“And the fact that you liked it so much didn’t make you think about studying medicine in college?”
Another pause and a long cool look. Harry watched the road, but he could feel her studying him, as if deciding whether to answer his question.
“It never even crossed my mind,” she finally said. “My mother would’ve been ecstatic if I’d married a doctor, but be one myself? Not a chance. But then again, I knew by the time I hit high school that I wasn’t going to college. There wasn’t any money. And there was no way I was getting a scholarship with my grades. They weren’t really that bad, just relentlessly average.”
Harry scratched the back of his hand with the three days of stubble on his chin. “I thought your father was in banking.”
“That was only his day job,” Alessandra told him. “In the evenings and on weekends—and probably on his lunch hour—he was a gambler. And that job didn’t pay quite so well.”
“Christ. I’m sorry. That must’ve sucked.”
“Yes,” she said. “It did.” She laughed, but there wasn’t any humor in it. “That’s how I met Griffin, you know.”
“What, at the racetrack?”
She gazed at him again for several long moments. “You must be really bored.”
“I’m … interested in …” He took a deep breath. “The truth is, you’ve been handling all this shit really well, and I’m, well, curious about you. You’re tougher than I thought—smarter, too. Frankly, I just don’t get how someone like you got hooked up with Lamont and Trotta in the first place.”
“Ah,” she said. “There’s that refreshing honesty again. It’s very appealing, Harry, the way you put all the cards out on the table for everyone to see.” Her voice hardened. “Except the last time you did that, you had an entire deck still up your sleeve. You can’t blame me for wondering what you’re hiding from me this time.”
Alessandra was staring out the window again, her chin held self-righteously high. But it was just an act. She was working hard to hide her hurt. He could see it trembling in the corner of her mouth. It was there, too, lurking in her eyes.
I thought you were special.
“Jesus,” Harry said, hating the guilt that pressed down on him. “You want complete honesty? Sweetheart, I’m more than happy to give it to you. No secrets, no tactful white lies, just the hard truth—is that really what you want?”
“Yes.”
“Great,” he said. “Let’s see. We can start with the fact that I’m scared shitless about seeing my kids again. I don’t know if Emily’s going to recognize me—or worse, if I’m going to recognize her. I’m dreading talking to Marge, and I’m still worried about George. I knew a cop who was recovering nicely from a gunshot wound. One day he seemed fine. The next day he was back in the ICU with an infection. Day after, we were sitting shivah at his house. But I digress.
“When you sit that way, you look kind of like a beach ball with a head,” he continued. “Your haircut is really, really bad, I’m probably going to lose my job for helping you this way, and I’m dying to fuck you.”
He glanced at her. “That honest enough for you?”
Alessandra emerged from the bathroom in McDonalds to find Harry leaning against the wall, waiting for her. He straightened up, no expression on his face as he saw her, and she resisted the urge to touch her hair, to somehow try to fix the disaster that had looked back at her from the ladies’ room mirror.
If she’d succeeded, it would have forever been known as the miracle of the McDonalds, because, quite frankly, nothing short of a miracle would make her look anything besides awful.
But that was the point. Looking awful was her disguise. It was her way of taking charge of her own destiny.
Some people might’ve gone out and bought a gun, learned to de
fend themselves. But Alessandra wasn’t going to kid herself. No way would she ever be able to outshoot a mob hit man, even with years of training.
No, she was going to stay alive the way Harry suggested—by becoming invisible.
The biggest problem—aside from the fact that she was completely broke—was in figuring out exactly who she was now. Take away the beautiful face and hide the body, and what exactly was left?
Someone scared. Someone completely untrained to do anything useful. Someone who no longer knew how to communicate with other people.
Back when she was Alessandra, she knew how to respond to a statement such as “I’m dying to fuck you.” While it was rarely said quite so bluntly, it was a message that she’d received more often than not, usually intimated with body language and subtle looks. As Alessandra, she might have dismissed it with little more than a pointed look. Or, she might’ve subtly flirted back, if there was something she wanted or needed.
But as Alice Plotkin, she simply did not know how to respond. First of all, she was uncertain how to read the statement. Did Harry actually mean what he said, or was there another underlying message? Did he mean “Wow, you are so completely unattractive, no other man could possibly be interested in you, so I’ll take advantage of you by pretending to desire you. And maybe I’ll get lucky and get laid while having a big laugh at your expense?”
Or did he mean “I’ll tell you this to make you feel better because, even though it’s not completely true, you don’t repulse me, and if we do end up having sex, I’ll just make sure all the lights are off.”
“Look, Allie, I didn’t mean to freak you out or anything,” Harry said. “I mean, by saying what I said back in the car …”
Alessandra realized that she had blindly followed him and they were standing on one of the lines, waiting to order their daily indigestion. She had been staring sightlessly up at the menu.
“It’s just … You wanted honesty,” he continued, “and I …” He shrugged. “I took it a little too far, as usual. Some things probably just shouldn’t be said.”
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