by Harper Allen
“The bet’s off.” Tony pointed a shaking finger at Con, the two stewards holding him back with difficulty. “The bet’s off because this game wasn’t straight. If you think I’m going to hand over my uncle’s whereabouts to you just because I gave you my word, you’re out of your mind.”
“You know you’re going to be blackballed from every club you ever try to walk into, don’t you, Corso?” McMurtry, his face grim, confronted the other man. “Whatever the hell your deal was with Ducharme, pay up.”
“Ducharme?” Tony laughed humorlessly. “That’s not even his name, for God’s sake. In my book, only a cheat needs to play under an alias. Or are you still insisting this was a straight-up game, Burke?”
As if through a haze Marilyn saw Con get to his feet. She saw his face darken, saw his eyes searching the cluster of onlookers, saw that emerald gaze seem to shatter into a thousand pieces as it met hers. She stumbled forward, and felt Jasper’s grip on her arm as she swayed against the raised mahogany edge of the table.
“What’s he saying, Con? What does he mean, your name’s not Ducharme?” Without waiting for his answer, she whirled to face Tony. “Of course his name’s Ducharme—Connor Ducharme! Don’t you think I’d know if he was using an alias, for heaven’s sake?”
“He’s Conrad Burke.” Tony stared at her, a disbelieving grin playing around his lips. “Poor, frigid Ice Queen—he didn’t even give you the right first name, did he? Hell, babe, if I’d known that’s the way you liked it I would have given you a phony identity myself. I probably would have gotten into your bed at least once, anyway.”
Appalled, Marilyn swung around. Con, his expression blank, met her stricken gaze.
“You never slept with him?” He shook his head. “I don’t get it, cher’. Why would you tell me you had? And if he’s not the father of your—”
As if he’d suddenly realized they weren’t alone, he stepped toward her and took her arm in a firm grasp.
“We need to talk somewhere private,” he rasped. “Come on, let’s—”
“Before you go, tell me, Burke.” Tony rocked back on his heels, his hands in his pockets and his smile not reaching his eyes. “What’s the Ice Queen like when she melts? Did I miss out on anything—”
He never got to finish his question. With a muttered oath Con let go of her arm and wheeled around to face the other man. Even as his fist drew back Corso yanked Crystal in front of him as a shield.
Con checked his swing. His arm fell to his side.
“This isn’t over between us, Corso,” he said harshly. “And the next time we meet I’ll make damn sure you don’t have a woman around to hide behind.”
It was strange, Marilyn thought disjointedly. Her legs still seemed to work—or at least she assumed they were working, because she could see shocked and curious faces blurring by and the double doors of the Red Room were getting closer. But she couldn’t feel her feet at all. She couldn’t feel any part of her. She realized they were in the hall only when Con spoke.
“Down here. I saw an empty meeting room on the way in.”
She supposed she could still call him Con. It just wasn’t short for Connor, as she’d thought, but for Conrad. Somehow that name seemed vaguely familiar, although she couldn’t think of any reason why it should be. Unless…
“No.” She shook her head and gave him a bright smile. “I don’t know any Conrad Burke, do I? I don’t know you. For a minute there I thought I did, but I—”
He’d lied to her. He’d lied, and then he’d assured her he was telling the truth, and he’d kept on lying. He’d lied while he was making love with her, he’d lied while she’d poured out her heart to him, he’d looked deep into her eyes and he’d lied.
All at once the fog around her was driven away by a cold, clear anger. Everything jumped into sharp focus.
“We won’t be disturbed here.” Con ushered her ahead of him into the small meeting room. He closed the door behind them and turned to face her, his features etched with strain. “I want you to hear me out, cher’. I know what I did was unforgivable, but—”
“Unforgivable?” She stared at him. “Unforgivable’s for standing someone up and making them worry that you’ve gotten into a car accident. What you did goes way beyond unforgivable, because what you did forces me into the position of having to ask you unthinkable questions.” Her voice shook with fury. “Who the hell are you? Who’s Connor Ducharme? Who’s Conrad Bur—”
Her hands flew to her mouth. She could feel the blood draining from her face. A few feet away she saw a partially open door, and she spun around and ran toward it.
It was a bathroom, as she’d hoped. She made it to the toilet just in time, falling to her knees in front of it and retching dryly.
“You remember.” As she raised her head, Con was there, a wet paper towel in his hands. He drew her to her feet and wiped her mouth, his gaze tortured. “You remember, don’t you?”
“I was five. You were visiting your Aunt Celia and I was visiting Father. Your mother is Celia’s sister.” She moved away from him and pulled another towel from the dispenser. “You never were a stranger, were you? You knew who I was that first night at my office.”
“That night at your office shouldn’t have happened, cher’. I didn’t mean for you to—”
“Don’t call me that, Burke.” Oblivious to his presence, Marilyn bent to the cold water tap and rinsed the taste of bile from her mouth. She straightened, and met his gaze in the small mirror above the sink. “No, really,” she said conversationally. “You just don’t have the right anymore. So why this insane deception? What was the point?”
“I wanted to better the odds.” His reply was barely audible. “I wanted a chance with you, and I knew I wouldn’t have one if you realized who I was. I knew it was a gamble, but I thought—”
“A gamble. Bettering the odds. Tell me, Con, was this all a game to you? Is everything a game?” They’d moved into the main room again, and she turned to him, her fists clenched. “But of course, it is, isn’t it? Tonight was proof of that. You didn’t even let the fact that a child’s life hung in the balance stop you from making a criminally reckless bet with Tony—”
“That wasn’t a bet. It was the nearest to a sure thing I could set up in the time I had.” Con’s jaw tightened. “Corso’s conspiracy theory was right—they were all in on it, from the start right up until the end, when Jasper finessed the river card.”
He rubbed his jaw. “Like I said, the world of high-stakes poker’s pretty small, and those four there tonight have known me for years. Even Sandoval played along when he knew what it was about. Corso didn’t have a snowball’s chance in hell of walking away from that table a winner.”
“It was rigged, just like Tony said? And you didn’t see fit to tell me that either?”
“Corso’s a poker player. Not a great one, but an adequate one. I couldn’t run the risk of him reading your reactions and wondering why you weren’t as tense as you were supposed to be.” Con took a step toward her. “It wasn’t a game, it was part of the job I was brought here to do, Marilyn. Rightly or wrongly, I felt I needed to play a lone hand on this one.”
She shook her head. “I don’t think so. You go ahead and tell yourself that for the rest of your life, if you have to, but that’s not the way it was. The truth is, you came to Denver wanting two things—Helio DeMarco and Marilyn Langworthy. When you had to make a choice, part of you wanted DeMarco more.”
As suddenly as it had filled her, the anger left. In its place was an all-enveloping sadness. “And part of me knew that all along,” she said softly. “You’re a gambler. I’m not. I couldn’t take the risk of telling you the baby inside me is yours.”
A muscle moved at the side of his jaw. “Whatever you’re basing that on, you’ve got it wrong, heart. Your calculations have to be off by a week or two—”
“Try a year or two, Burke.” Her tone brooked no argument. “I had a brief—a very brief—relationship in Boston about eighteen months
ago. You’ve been the only man since. I don’t care if a hundred doctors told you in the past that it’s impossible for you to be a father—this baby’s yours.”
She exhaled tightly. “If it was a childhood case of the mumps, from what I’ve read it doesn’t always totally eliminate your chances of having children. Sometimes it just lessens them. That has to be what happened in your—”
“It wasn’t a childhood illness. That was another lie.” His gaze was shuttered. “Celia was married to a Dr. Edward Grace before she met and married your father. Teddy’s passion was biological research, and during one of my visits with them he used me as a guinea pig to test a new vaccine he’d developed. I had a bad reaction to it, got very sick. That’s what drove Celia to leave the marriage—she discovered what he’d done to me.”
“Your own uncle experimented on you?” Horror washed over Marilyn, for the moment blotting out everything else. “Dear God, Con—was the man mad?”
“Certifiable,” he said simply. “But he was also a brilliant scientist. His unethical practices were uncovered not long after that—I think Celia had something to do with blowing the whistle on him—and his credentials were revoked, but although no legitimate facility would employ him I’ve always suspected he ended up working for an employer with fewer scruples.”
“An employer like Helio DeMarco,” Marilyn said in slow comprehension. “That’s why you hate him so, isn’t it? That’s why this is so personal for you. You see him as the kind of man who would employ someone like Teddy Grace—provide him with the money and the support to continue his evil research.”
Her eyes widened. “You don’t think—”
“That Teddy’s actually working for DeMarco?” Con shook his head. “No. He’s crazy, but even he wouldn’t be insane enough to have continued operating in this country when there are plenty of corrupt governments in every corner of the world that would be glad to take him in and give him what he wants.”
Except maybe what Dr. Teddy really wants is right here in Colorado. Marilyn frowned as the stray notion drifted through her mind. It didn’t make sense, she decided. Con was probably right, and Grace was living as the honored guest of some crackpot dictator with delusions of world domination. But none of that changed what she’d originally set out to tell him.
“What your uncle did to you all those years ago robbed you of the opportunity to live a whole life, Con,” she said, her tone low. “Just not in the way you think. Get yourself tested again if you’re still not convinced, but whatever the lingering effects of Teddy’s research might have been in the past, they’ve been reversed.”
She looked down at the noticeable curve of her pregnancy and attempted a smile. “Who knows, maybe more than reversed. I’m beginning to look like I’m carrying twins, for heaven’s sake.”
“A whole houseful of children, with a mama to go with them.” Con’s voice cracked. “I never wanted anything else. I never wanted anyone else but you, cher’. I know I hurt you, but if you’ll only give me the chance I’ll spend the rest of my life making it up to you.”
He was everything she’d ever wanted, too, Marilyn thought as she met his desperate gaze. And that was why his answer to her next question was going to tear her in two.
“If I say yes, can we leave tonight?” She didn’t allow the slightest tremor to enter her voice. “Catch the next flight out of Denver going to New Orleans, and leave all this behind?”
She made an impatient gesture. “Oh, I know you’ll have to be debriefed by Colorado Confidential, but once you fill them in on what we’ve learned and hand the case back to Colleen Wellesley, we could be—”
“Hand the case back to ColCon?” A flicker of astonishment crossed his features. “The case against DeMarco? You don’t understand, honey—this is my case. I’m bringing DeMarco in, whatever it—”
“Whatever it takes.” She finished it for him, her smile crooked. “You know, Con, I met a very wise man tonight. He told me that fortunes could be won and lost when that last card was turned over.”
“The river card.” He nodded, those emerald and gold eyes she loved so much shadowed with incomprehension.
“The river card,” Marilyn agreed softly. She stepped forward, pressed a light kiss to the side of his mouth, and stepped back, her own gaze suddenly swimming.
“You just turned over the river card, Con,” she whispered unsteadily. “And you just lost me and the life we could have had together with our child.”
Chapter Fourteen
Life wasn’t well-scripted, Marilyn thought unhappily as she waited for Con to collect her wrap from the coat-check. Real life was filled with awkward silences, dreary inconveniences, farewell scenes cluttered by trivial but necessary delays.
It was three in the morning. When they’d driven to the club hours earlier they’d used Con’s rental SUV, judging it a better choice than her small import to handle the slippery roads that were always a possibility during a Denver November. Short of calling a taxi to take her to the same building Con was heading for anyway, she needed a ride home.
So here she was, her makeup smeared from the tears she’d shed, waiting for Con while he in turn waited for a young woman to match up a coat-receipt to a coat.
The cloakroom racks were still full, in spite of the hour. This wasn’t a world she was used to, Marilyn acknowledged. In this world people got a thrill out of throwing away money, gave too much importance to black and red painted symbols on rectangular pieces of stiff paper, couldn’t tear themselves away from a round, felt-covered table even though it was only hours before dawn. Con had told her this wasn’t his world anymore, but he certainly seemed at home in it. She couldn’t help wondering if he might not return to it one day.
He’d tried to get her to change her mind. He’d stopped when she’d abandoned any attempt at reiterating her decision and had simply stood there in his arms, the silent tears slipping down her cheeks.
“Aw, don’t cry, p’tite,” he’d said hoarsely.
He’d pulled her to him, and she’d felt his hand roughly stroking her hair. She’d squeezed her eyes shut, her face pressed against his shirt, and heard him inhale.
“You don’t know how many times I pictured you in New Awlins, heart. Saw you drinkin’ chic’ry coffee and eatin’ beignets in bed of a Sunday morning, saw you laughing and catchin’ the doubloons they throw from the Mardi Gras floats, had a snapshot in my mind of you and me sittin’ in a courtyard restaurant, you with a big pink flower tucked behind one ear.”
She’d felt his lips brush the top of her head. He’d put her gently away from him. “You know what, cher’? I’m just going to tell myself that still might happen,” he’d said softly. “I’m going to pretend like I didn’t screw everything up between us. That all right with you?”
She hadn’t been able to reply. He’d held her tear-blinded gaze for a long moment, his own eyes dark, and then he’d nodded as if she’d agreed.
“The manager’s got something of mine in the safe.” Marilyn blinked. Apology crossed Con’s features as he held her coat for her. “The girl’s gone to find him. It shouldn’t take but a minute, hon.”
“What do you need from the club’s safe?” she asked listlessly. “Is it something you can pick up tomorrow? I—I’m tired, Con. I just want to leave.”
It was true. She was bone-tired, and not all her exhaustion was emotional, Marilyn realized. Despite the iron supplements she took faithfully on Dr. Roblyn’s orders, since her second trimester had begun she’d found herself needing a good ten hours of sleep every night. Right now her body was telling her it had had enough for one day—her back ached, her feet hurt and, as usual, she had to go to bathroom.
“I didn’t want to wear my gun into the game.” From the brevity of Con’s explanation, she knew he hadn’t wanted to bring the subject up. He went on with obvious reluctance. “I could have, I suppose, since I’m federal law. It just didn’t seem like the greatest idea, so when we arrived I had it locked away for the evening.”
She glanced down the hall past the bank of elevators. “I might as well use the ladies’ room while you’re waiting, then. I’ll be back by the time you’re finished up here.”
He still didn’t understand, she told herself a few moments later as she dried her hands under a stream of hot air. She could see it in his eyes, she could sense it from his actions—he still hadn’t accepted that he couldn’t somehow change the situation, couldn’t walk out of this with the girl, the gold watch and everything, as Jasper had said. Con still thought that after he brought down DeMarco, he would be able to win back that life he’d told her he’d pictured them having. Seeing the fugitive hope in his eyes every time he glanced at her was tearing her apart.
“Mr. Ducharme’s signing for his property in the manager’s office.” As she approached the coat-check, surprised to see no sign of him, the young woman behind the counter provided the explanation for his absence. “It’s the open door just down the hall if you’d rather join him than wait here.”
Marilyn turned indecisively, but the jingle of keys in her coat pocket as she did decided her. “No, I think I’ll take the elevator down to the parking garage and get the car warmed up. Let him know that’s where he’ll find me, would you?”
Tomorrow she would have to make it clear to him just how impossible it was for her to continue seeing him on the twenty-four-hour basis he felt she needed for protection, she thought as she entered the elevator. He’d mentioned Colleen Wellesley’s Denver people—surely there would be no problem in having an agent from ICU assigned to her for as long as necessary.
At most, that would only be another six days, if their fears about DeMarco’s desire to engineer a viral outbreak to sabotage Josh’s chances were right. By Thanksgiving—Dear God, that was this coming weekend, Marilyn thought as the elevator doors slid open and she stepped out—everything might all be—
“You were in on it, weren’t you, bitch?”
Her shocked scream was abruptly cut off as Tony Corso’s forearm tightened brutally across her windpipe, his action nearly jerking her off her feet.