Until You (A Romantic Suspense Novel - Author's Cut Edition)

by Sandra Marton

He felt like a coiled spring, tightened to the breaking point, needing to release all the energy stored inside him before it exploded. But this had been her pain long before it had been his, so he sucked in a couple of lungfuls of air, let her take his hand and tug him down to the edge of the mattress beside her.

  "He never really—really did anything to me. He looked at me. Touched me, but he didn't actually..." She licked her lips. "I was too young to understand what was happening but I knew it wasn't right. I told him that, and he said that he was my daddy now and that he loved me."

  "Miranda, dammit, I know you want me to be calm and hear you out, but don't you see? I have to kill him. He deserves killing."

  "I was going to tell Eva. But I didn't have to, because Eva—because my mother—"

  "Because she what?" Miranda bowed her head, and Conor felt as if he were going crazy. "Are you telling me she knew?"

  She nodded, and then she looked at him and her chin took on that defiant tilt that struck him now as the saddest thing he'd ever seen.

  "I told Eva I didn't want Hoyt to tuck me in at night anymore. She said that was nonsense. She said I was an ungrateful brat, that every little girl in the world wanted a stepfather as kind and generous as Hoyt."

  "Damn her," Conor whispered.

  "She said she'd punish me if I didn't behave. I tried. God, I tried... but then one night, when he came to my room, he started to—to touch me differently, and I screamed."

  Conor looked at the woman he loved. She wasn't weeping; she wasn't trembling. He had the strange feeling she wasn't even in the room with him. Her thoughts and memories had gone back to a night he knew had changed her life forever.

  "Eva came bursting into the room," she said softly. "And she saw what he was doing. There was this one awful minute where everybody froze and then she pointed to the door and Hoyt skulked off like a dog that's been caught doing something it shouldn't. Then she closed the door, yanked me out of the bed, and told me that I was no good. She said I was evil, that I was just what she'd expected I'd be, and that she was going to send me away."

  Conor nodded. He'd retreated into a detached coolness so he could listen without interrupting because he understood that what Miranda needed now was his love and support, not his rage, but God must have made women from different stuff than men because he knew he'd never be able to set aside what had happened to her until he destroyed Hoyt Winthrop, utterly and completely.

  For now, though, he could only take Miranda in his arms and feel her tears hot against his face. He held her, and rocked her, and whispered that he loved her until, at last, the first rosy glow of dawn streaked the sky.

  Chapter 17

  Watching Miranda pose for the camera was heaven and hell combined.

  She had a shoot a couple of days later at a loft in lower Manhattan, and Conor went along with her. He was still between assignments, he told her, and he wanted to see what fashion photography was all about.

  "You'll make me self-conscious," she said, but she was smiling.

  "You won't even know I'm there," he promised.

  She gave him a coffee-flavored kiss.

  "You're not exactly the inconspicuous type, O'Neil. But the truth is, I'd love to have you come with me. I'm sure Manuel won't mind."

  Manuel, who turned out to be a little guy with a sad face, a lisp and an unusual, if interesting, devotion to leather, didn't mind at all. He eyed Conor up and down, told Miranda she had excellent taste, and got to work.

  "Your lady has a special relationship with the camera," he said as Miranda sailed out of the dressing room in a shimmery column of white silk trimmed in gold.

  Conor took only a few minutes to decide he understood what Manuel meant. He also decided that if he ever sensed electricity flowing between Miranda and another man the way it flowed between her and the camera, there'd be a classic tragedy in the making.

  She smiled.

  She pouted.

  She teased.

  And the camera loved it all.

  "Yesss," Manuel kept saying, as he shot off photos from every imaginable angle and some Conor figured only a tightrope walker would have attempted, "oh yes, darling girl, you are superb!"

  Every now and then, Miranda glanced over, caught Conor's eye and winked.

  "Having fun?" she whispered once, when she rushed past him to make a costume change.

  He smiled and assured her that he was. And he probably would have been, if he could have turned off the thoughts racing through his brain.

  Every person Miranda had loved had lied to her. That included him. Would she forgive him when he could finally tell her the truth?

  He had to go on telling himself that she would, just as he had to tell himself he could hang on and not wring Hoyt's neck, or de Lasserre's, until the time was right. And Eva's, too. Hell, he was a firm believer in equality of the sexes.

  How could Eva have done such things to her daughter?

  He had long ago reached the point where there was little that could surprise him. It was one of the things that happened, in his line of work. You discovered a basic truth about the human race and you learned to accept it.

  Some people, most people, would do anything for a buck, if they thought they could get away with it. But not even that explained Eva's behavior. By the time she'd married Hoyt, she'd made her first million at Papillon, and probably her second and third. If she didn't need Hoyt's dough, what had stopped her from tossing him out on his ass? Not love. Whatever Eva and Hoyt Winthrop felt for each other, it wasn't the kind of passion that would make a woman blind to a man's faults.

  And, dammit, they weren't dealing with small potatoes here, they were dealing with child molestation. With a grown man putting his hands on a defenseless little girl, and the little girl's mother finding out and blaming her...

  "Conor?"

  It took a couple of seconds to bring himself back. When he did, he found Miranda standing over him, wearing a dress the same color as her eyes.

  "Sweetheart," he said, "are you done?"

  "Yes." She smiled, bent down and kissed him. "And you're ringing."

  Damn. She was right. His cell phone was shrilling. Conor smiled sheepishly, took the phone from his pocket and flipped it open.

  "Hello?"

  "Can you talk, my boy?"

  Miranda kissed his cheek. "It'll take me five minutes to change," she whispered. He nodded, jerked his chin towards the door, and stepped outside.

  "Conor? Can you talk, or do you want to phone me back?"

  "I can talk, Harry." Conor said quietly. "You sure took your time getting back to me."

  "You phoned at seven this morning. It's not even noon."

  "Listen, I'm not interested in hearing how overworked you are. Hang onto what you've got." Conor shot back his sleeve. "I'll call you from a secure line in half an hour,."

  "There's no need. I don't have anything to tell you."

  Conor's eyes narrowed. When he'd spoken with Thurston's P.A., she'd told him Beryl Goodman had come up clean. He'd said he'd expected as much and then he'd made it clear that he wanted in-depth, heavy-duty background checks on Hoyt and Eva Winthrop.

  "We must have our wires crossed, Harry. I told Sybil—"

  "I know what you told her. And I'm telling you that the examinations on those, ah, items, were completed weeks ago. Perhaps you've forgotten that it was you who carried word of the final check to our client."

  "I've forgotten nothing,and you know it. Those examinations were standard. What I'm asking for now is cabinet-level."

  "You want us to dig deeper and look for bodies."

  "Yes."

  "Such a thing will stir things up. If our primary client finds out, he will not be thrilled."

  Your primary client would be even less thrilled, Conor thought grimly, if he knew his ambassadorial candidate has a thing for little girls.

  "Remember our agreement, Harry? I get carte blanche, whatever I want, and no questions asked."

  "Conor, my boy, this i
s an unreasonable request."

  "Do it and get the results to me quickly or I'm done with this assignment. I'm not fooling around, Harry. You got that?"

  Harry Thurston's tone grew cool. "I seem to have no choice in the matter. Is there anything else?"

  The door opened, and Miranda stepped into the hall. Conor reached out and clasped her hand.

  "Yes," he said pleasantly. "Stop calling me 'my boy.' "

  * * *

  They headed uptown, holding hands and walking because it was, Miranda said, an absolutely beautiful day.

  "So," she said, glancing at him, "who was that on the phone?"

  "A client," Conor said, hating himself for how easily the lie came to his lips. "Well, a possible client. He wanted to set up an appointment for next week."

  She smiled. "Ah."

  "Ah?"

  "Ah, as in ah, the man really does work for a living."

  Conor laughed and tugged her closer as they reached the corner.

  "Give me a break, Beckman. Nobody's ever accused me of being independently wealthy."

  "No, but you're pretty independent, nonetheless. Here you are, sashaying around the city with me instead of keeping your nose to the grindstone."

  "You complaining?" he said with a mock growl.

  "And I heard what you said to that man on the telephone."

  Conor's smile faded. "What did you hear?"

  "Oh, you know. 'Don't call me 'my boy,'" she said, dropping her chin to her chest and her voice to her shoes. She smiled. "Do you always treat prospective clients that way?"

  Conor laughed. "Listen, kid," he said, in his best Humphrey Bogart imitation, "you stick with mugging for the camera and I'll stick with playing gumshoe."

  "How does somebody become a detective, anyway?"

  "I told you. You buy this Handy Dandy kit..."

  Miranda poked him in the ribs. "Come on, be serious. I mean, is that what you wanted to be, when you were growing up? A detective?"

  He looked at her, his smile fading. Okay, this could be a start. He could begin the long process of telling her the truth about himself, not all of it, but at least enough so that when the time came, he could make her see that not everything had been a fabrication.

  "No," he said, "not exactly. What I wanted to be was a cop, like my old man."

  "That's right. You said your father's a policeman."

  "Was. Detective-Sergeant John O'Neil, NYPD retired."

  "And your mother? What did she do?"

  "Whatever the old man told her to do." Conor smiled, trying to take the edge off but doubting he was succeeding. He wasn't very good at this. Talking about himself had never been his thing and his ex had never let him forget it—but then, she'd never studied his face while he spoke, hanging on to his every word as if each was special. "My mother was the quintessential mom, a 1950s leftover, I guess. She cooked, she cleaned, she ironed his shirts and polished his shoes."

  "You speak of her in the past tense," Miranda said softly.

  "Yeah." Conor cleared his throat. "She died when I was fourteen."

  "I'm sorry, Conor, I shouldn't have—"

  "No, it's okay. Hey, it was a long time ago." He cleared his throat again. "The thing was, I blamed her, for a while."

  "For dying and leaving you?"

  "For letting the old man do her in. Oh, not really," he said quickly, when Miranda turned a stunned face up to his. "What I mean is, he wore her down. Hell, he wore everybody down."

  "I'll bet he did," she said. There was a sharpness to her words and he knew she was remembering what he'd told her, about the beating the old man had given him after he'd taken the motorcycle for a joyride.

  "Anyway, when I said I wanted to become a cop, he almost went crazy. He said he hadn't worked his tail off so I could clean up the garbage in the streets the way he had. Nope, not the son of John O'Neil. I was gonna go to college, get a law degree, hang out my shingle and make him proud."

  "And, naturally, you decided you wanted no part of college, or of law, or of making him proud."

  Conor sighed. "Am I really that easy to read?"

  "It takes a rebel to know a rebel," Miranda said lightly. "So, what did you do? Join the force anyway?"

  "I wasn't that dumb. The old man would have sabotaged me."

  "Sabotaged you?"

  "Sure. I don't know how, exactly. Maybe he'd have seen to it I flunked the exam or that I didn't make it out of the Academy, or if he couldn't manage that, he'd have gotten me appointed to a shit detail."

  "The South Bronx?"

  Conor laughed. "The Internal Affairs Division." He took her hand, drew her towards a cluster of tables sheltered under a striped awning outside a neighborhood bar. "It isn't the Champs Elysées but how about we sit down and have lunch?"

  "I'd like that."

  "I think you have to go inside and place your order. What would you like?"

  "A salad or a sandwich. Whatever you have. And some iced tea, please."

  "Payment up front," Conor said, and he dipped his head and kissed her.

  Miranda sat back, smiling to herself as he strolled inside the bar. He was right, this wasn't Paris, not by a long shot. It was a grey, slightly grungy street in New York—but she was happier than she'd ever been in Paris, happier than she'd ever been in her entire life, now that she'd fallen in love with...

  God, what was that?

  Her heart gave an unsteady leap. She sat forward, trying to see through a snarl of traffic to the other side of the street. For a minute, she'd thought she'd seen—

  "Here we go, mademoiselle. Two iced teas, one ham on rye, one turkey on white. Mademoiselle gets her choice of..." Conor got a look at Miranda's bloodless face and set the tray down with a clatter. "What's the matter?"

  She looked up at him. I just saw that man, she wanted to say, I saw Vincent Moratelli.

  But she hadn't seen him. There was nobody on the opposite sidewalk, nobody in the street at all that bore more than a passing resemblance in height and weight to Moratelli. It had only been a horrible illusion and to talk about it would be to give life to an ugly memory.

  "Nothing's the matter." Conor looked unconvinced so she shot a look at the turkey-on-white, gave an exaggerated shudder, and lapsed into an overdone French accent. "On second thought, monsieur, perhaps somesing iz zee mattaire. Do zee Americans truly call zat stuff 'bread'?"

  Just as she'd hoped, the put-on eased the tension and made Conor laugh. He sat down, shoved the ham-on-rye towards her and bit into the turkey-on-white.

  "You just don't know what's good. This is gourmet fare. Spongy bread, lots of mayo... Are you laughing at me, Beckman?"

  "I am indeed, O'Neil." Miranda took a bite of her sandwich. "And I'm waiting to hear the end of your story. What happened after you decided you were going to spite your father by not studying law?"

  Conor swallowed, wiped his mouth with a paper napkin, and took a drink of iced tea.

  "I enlisted."

  "In the army?"

  "I know you'd prefer the French Foreign Legion but yes, in the army."

  "And?"

  "And, I hated it. The orders. The jerks giving the orders. The whole bit."

  Miranda grinned. "Just like home, huh?"

  "Exactly like home—except, after a while, I saw that it wasn't. For a change, the rules made sense." Conor moved his glass of iced tea idly over the table top, leaving a pattern of rings within rings. "I ended up in Special Forces."

  "The guys who wear those sexy berets?"

  He looked at her and chuckled. "Amazing, how all you broads think alike."

  "Conor O'Neil, you're impossible."

  "But sexy. Remember that."

  "I could never forget it," she said softly.

  Their gazes met and held. Conor smiled and reached for her hand.

  "So," he said, "here we sit, just a pair of overgrown delinquents."

  "Well, not anymore. We've both got completely respectable jobs." Miranda straightened in her seat, tossed he
r head and gave him the kind of smoldering look she'd given Manuel's camera. "I," she said in tones of deepest drama, "am a famous model. And you are an internationally recognized private investigator."

  A muscle knotted in Conor's jaw. "Yeah," he said, after the slightest hesitation, "that's me, all right."

  "Were you an investigator when you met your wife?"

  "Ex-wife," he said, his fingers lacing through hers. "No, I was in college when—"

  "College?" She thought back to the evening in the park and the frayed Columbia sweatshirt he'd been wearing, and she began to smile. "Don't tell me. Boy enlists in army rather than follow orders and go to law school, boy survives army and grows up in the process, boy gets his discharge, enrolls in law school—"

  Conor laughed. "Some rebellion, huh?"

  "Absolutely. You got the degree because you wanted it, not because your father wanted it. But how come you aren't practicing law?"

  Because Harry Thurston, that smooth-talking bastard, got hold of me and convinced me I'd be doing the honorable thing for God and country if I went to work for the Committee instead.

  "My ex used to ask me the same thing." He shrugged his shoulders, let go of Miranda's hand, picked up the remaining half of his sandwich and then put it down and pushed the plate aside. "I don't know. Law seemed too tame after Special Forces."

  "Is that why you got divorced? Because your ex wanted you to be a lawyer instead of a detective?"

  Conor looked at Miranda. He could almost see the lies he'd told her stacked up between them, pulsing with the glow of their duplicity.

  "I'm sorry," she said quickly, "I don't know what's gotten into me. It's none of my business. I never ask anybody so many ques—"

  "It's very much your business," he said, clasping her hand again as he leaned towards her. "I want everything about me to be your business. It's just that—that..." Anger knotted in his gut. "Dammit to hell, why couldn't we have met like anybody else? Over a bowl of pretzels, at a party, or on a plane."

  Miranda's face went white. Her hand shot out, as if she were warding something off, and her glass of iced tea toppled over.

  "Oh God," she said, "I knew it! It's him!"

  "Who?" Conor was already on his feet, swinging around and scanning the street.