He was falling deeper and deeper into Andrea Prentiss, whatever the hell her real name was, and he didn’t know what inadvisable or uncharacteristic thing he might say or do next while she had her big blue eyes trained on him. He was liable to just blurt out that he was going to see Michael to get his take on this whole situation.
Who knew?
Colleen Grady stood at attention off to the side of the helipad on the Reynolds Industries headquarters building in Manhattan as the rotors slowed and Evan stepped out onto the roof. The pilot had radioed ahead as to the precise timing of their arrival and then assured him he would just wait until the meeting concluded. Normally Evan would have told the pilot, part of Michael’s fleet of ever-at-the-ready-for-extremely-high-compensation minions, to chill out and get a burger or something, but he was too preoccupied for his usual laid-back niceties. He wanted the pilot there and ready to take off and back to Maine as soon as he was done with Michael. This urgency to be back to Andrea now that he had let her out of his sight was unsettling.
He shook Michael’s new assistant’s hand.
“Mr. Reynolds would have come out himself to meet you, Mr., er, Reynolds, but his, I mean, Miss Donald was, I mean she—”
“That’s fine. No problem,” he cut her off.
Miss Grady had stepped into her predecessor’s shoes, but clearly uneasy is the head who wears the crown. The poor girl looked frazzled and about five years older than the last time Evan had seen her. The day Andrea disappeared, as a matter of fact. He hadn’t been back to Michael’s office since. The meeting he had attended with the private eye Michael hired to find Andrea had been held at Michael’s apartment.
“Right this way, Mr. Reynolds,” the secretary said unnecessarily, gesturing for Evan to precede her from the elevator out to the hallway of Michael’s floor. As if he was likely to forget this place. Deliberately, he averted his eyes from the office where he had made love to—fucked—Andrea that last time. It was still dark, though. He had not been able to shake the feeling all this time that his treatment of Andrea that day had something to do with her disappearance. He knew now that it clearly went far, far deeper, but he felt no more reassured by the fact.
Just the thought of the knife wound she had shown up bearing on his shores made him feel sick. Maybe if he hadn’t been so childishly petulant with her that day she might have confided in him then, not run away.
They’d no sooner made it into Andrea’s old office, the anteroom to Michael’s, than he could hear his brother through the door that stood ajar.
“Miss Grady.” The tone was curt and authoritative with more of a snap in it than Michael had used with her predecessor.
Evan could just make out Vanny’s low tones before his brother enjoined, “Don’t tell me to calm down, Vanny. This is just the kind of thing I’m talking about. Yes, I asked her to go get Evan, but she doesn’t have to leave her post unattended while she’s doing so. The phone has been ringing off the hook, as you well know.”
Good manners should have caused him to slow-walk it into Michael’s office to pretend he hadn’t heard that exchange, but frankly he just didn’t give a shit at this point and the secretary herself looked beyond embarrassment, just wearily tightening her mouth. Let Miss Grady deal with her boss as best she could. Apparently he wasn’t the only one mourning the absence of Andrea Prentiss all this time. It looked as if Michael, Vanny and Miss Grady had been doing so as well with equal measure.
Vanny slid one hip off the desk where she had been perched and turned to them, saying to her fiancé over her shoulder, “God forbid you pick up your own phone once in a while.” She beamed at Evan and held out her hands. “Hi there, stranger.”
He took her hands and kissed her lightly on her cheek. “Hi, Vanny.” It still surprised him how warm the woman his brother had fallen for was. She tugged him into a full-fledged hug as Michael got up from behind the desk.
“Evan.” Michael shook hands with him before turning in a frosty tone to his secretary and saying, “Miss Grady, who do you suppose answers the phones if you get up from your desk and don’t either arrange for another girl to watch them or switch them over to the switchboard? How many times have I told you about that?”
“I’m sorry, Mr. Reynolds. I thought I had switched them over.”
Vanny let go of Evan to link arms with Miss Grady in a conspicuous show of support. “Oh don’t listen to him, Colleen. He’s been a bear all morning.”
Michael transferred his glare from his secretary to his true love while Vanny walked the girl out and closed the door behind her.
“Vanny, really, you undermine my authority when you intervene with Miss Grady.”
But Vanny had made her way back to him and slipped an arm around his waist, pecking him on the cheek while simultaneously winking at Evan. “You know I’m just trying to keep the poor girl from committing hari-kari on company premises and costing you a fortune.”
Michael’s stern look dissolved, right then and there, into a very un-Reynolds-like grin and he kissed the top of her golden curly head. “I wouldn’t be a bear if you’d just make an honest man of me like you said you would ages ago.”
“It’s only been a few months and these things take time, Michael. You know that.”
“Translation, Miss Grady is not carrying her weight in this whole endeavor,” he told Evan. “She’s the one who is supposed to be taking care of this long-overdue wedding. Damn that Miss Prentiss,” he said to Vanny with a big smile, and though it was a frequent joke between them from what Evan could see in the time since Andrea had left, he did not manage to tune it out as he usually did and instead cut to the chase.
“That’s why I’m here.”
Vanny glanced at him in surprise. “You want to help us with our wedding?”
“No.”
Evan wasn’t sure how much of the truth he had planned to tell Michael, but suddenly it felt all wrong to tell him the whole truth. Witnessing his brother’s easy domesticity with his soon-to-be-wife, Evan felt he would be betraying whatever hope he had of achieving that same intimacy with Andrea if he disclosed to Michael she was on his island. Sure, the woman he had set his sights on wouldn’t even tell him her real name and might disappear at a moment’s notice or show up with completely unexplained life-threatening injuries, but hell—details, details. He could still be making wedding plans with her someday too, if he didn’t fuck up everything.
Andrea had been wrong, dead wrong not to involve her very powerful boss in whatever trouble she was in, to not enlist him as an ally, and instead to run away. Even if Evan hadn’t been in the equation, she was wrong not to secure Michael’s protection and Evan would be wrong, he was wrong, not to try to secure it now on her behalf.
But Jesus, he just couldn’t.
So he said instead, “I want you to get me a meeting with Fredrico Stavros. As soon as possible.”
Vanny and Michael traded a shared look of apprehension mixed with pity. Once Andrea had disappeared, he had never come right out and confessed to them the full extent of his relationship with the vanished girl, but he was sure Miss Prentiss Jr., if not his father, had filled in the blanks.
“Stavros is a dead end, Evan.”
“I don’t believe that. She looks, looked, too much like Stavros’ wife. I don’t believe that could be a coincidence. Or that it was a coincidence she disappeared on the day that resemblance was mentioned.”
“Other things were happening on that day as well, Evan,” Michael pointed out. “Maybe you’re underestimating those.”
He shook his head. “She didn’t disappear because I, ah, was, ah…”
“Banging her?” Vanny supplied.
“Vanny,” Michael admonished swiftly.
She laughed. “What? I meant it in a good way. Of course she wouldn’t run away because she was banging Evan. I’m sure you’re just as good in bed as your big brother, Evan.”
“Vanny, for Christ’s sake,” Michael chided but there was no bite in it and the sid
e of his mouth was turned half up. “And for the record, I’m not sure ‘just as good’ is quite appropriate. I do have a number of years of experience to my advantage.”
“Ah, but youth!” Vanny teased.
Michael seemed content not to rein her in, which kind of made Evan like his brother even more.
“Just take my word for it,” Evan continued, “she didn’t run away because of what happened between us. I may not have been sure about that before, but I am now.”
“Why? What’s happened?” Michael, ever one to get right to the point, asked.
“Nothing.” Not being straightforward was trickier than he had thought. He never realized what a Boy Scout he was in terms of telling the truth. “I just… I just am sure, okay? So I could try to get an appointment with the guy Stavros, but I’m sure you and Dad can get me one faster.”
“What’s the hurry?” Vanny’s soft voice held questions she for once seemed to be too diplomatic to ask.
“I want to get to the bottom of why Andrea disappeared. I intend to. I will,” he finished strongly. “So will you help me?”
“Of course, Evan, if that’s what you want,” Michael agreed easily. “I’ll even go with you.”
“No. I want to do this on my own.”
“Big surprise,” Vanny said and he glanced at her. So much for diplomacy. “Look, I know it’s none of my business—”
“Don’t even try to get her to end that sentence there,” Michael advised. “She never does. There’s always a ‘but’ involved.”
“But, Evan, you seem to have handled being part of this wild family of yours by pushing everybody away and doing everything on your own.”
“No really, Vanny, don’t be shy with my brother. Just tell him what you think,” Michael deadpanned and she pursed her lips at him.
“What I think is that when it counts, you shouldn’t be afraid to take help, Evan. To ask for it even. There may have only been my dad and me in my family, but I know that’s what family’s all about. Being able to ask for help if you need it.”
Evan smiled at her gently. “I am asking for help. I need Michael’s help to get me in front of Stavros. The sooner the better. Okay?”
Michael nodded.
“And if I need more than that, I’ll ask,” he assured Vanny. “Deal?”
She grinned and pulled him into another hug. “Deal.”
“Enough with the hugs,” Michael muttered.
Chapter Eight
Nick Dukakis was taking a chance calling in at this stage. He really was.
Fredrico Stavros was not much for small talk, on the phone or otherwise. Especially with somebody he paid to do his dirty work.
But Nick had what he thought could be his first big lead and if he didn’t follow up on it, he could get blamed for it later. On the other hand, if he did and it wasn’t what the old man wanted, he could get blamed for that later on too. So he thought he’d better call. Of course he could get blamed in the first place for bothering the old man. Who the hell knew? He was so volatile. There was plenty of blame to go around in the Stavros machine but at least they paid pretty well once you came through.
As long as you weren’t too dead to collect.
“Hey. It’s me. Dukakis,” he said when the old man picked up the cell number he had been given to call him about this matter.
“Did you find her?”
“Not yet, boss. But I did find out something interesting I thought I better let you know. Turns out there’s a Reynolds living around where they found Jimmy dead.”
“Michael Reynolds?”
“Not him. One of the other ones.”
“Lives in Montana, you say?”
“Maine, Freddie,” came from somewhere in the background.
“Yeah, whatever,” he snapped at the comment before saying into the phone, “that has to be more than a coincidence. I thought that might all be bullshit asking me if I knew where the bitch was. More likely they hid her away.”
Nick didn’t know about that, but he supposed it was possible. Add Jimmy to the mix and it was downright likely, maybe. “Yeah, I doubt a girl could have taken out Jimmy. She had some help, I bet.”
“You don’t know this girl,” the old man muttered. “Anyway, so where do we stand at this point?”
“Well, I been asking around, town by town down the coast, showing her picture around, and I got to this one and wasn’t having any more luck, everybody blowing me off, you know, but then I seen him. The Reynolds, I mean. He was getting out of some fancy Reynolds company helicopter and I recognized his picture from the file you gave me.”
“And the girl?”
“As I said, I been showing her picture around, but no sign of her yet. Now I seen him, though, I’m gonna check out his place and—”
“No! Don’t do that.”
Good thing he called, he guessed.
“I do not want that family alerted to the fact I’m looking for the girl, whatever their connection to her may be at this juncture.”
“But what if she’s with him? I mean—”
“Then get around him. Be subtle. You can continue to ask around, but you find her on your own! Don’t involve anyone from that family. All I need is them on my ass again. So I’m warning you, Dukakis, be subtle.”
“Subtle. Yeah. Sure. I can be subtle, boss.”
He said it into the dead air.
* * * * *
Tommy O’Neal had been away from the slums of New York a pretty long time. But he’d never left them. He recognized danger when he saw it. He didn’t even want to hazard a guess as to what country the guy at the bar came from, but he knew he was dangerous. The piece the guy was packing, artfully concealed under his tailored suit coat, only confirmed it. Finishing the beer he wasn’t even technically allowed to drink yet, Tommy threw down a five. “Thanks, man.”
If being raised by the old man for the first thirteen years of his life had given him nothing else, it had finely honed his sense of when to skitter away from trouble.
“I tell you, she a beautiful girl. Beautiful. Dark hair, blue eyes. Maybe a little roughed up or something,” the guy with the accent was telling Kenny Adams, the bartender.
“I told you, pal, I ain’t seen anybody like that.”
“You didn’t even look at the picture. Look at the picture.”
“Hey, Tommy,” the bartender called down to him. “You see anybody who looks like this?”
The unfortunate thing about trouble was that if you looked as if you were trying to avoid it, it’d seek you out big-time.
Tommy went back to the bar without any visible show of reluctance and looked at the picture Kenny was holding out to him, apparently care of the swarthy stranger downing a whiskey. “Pretty girl,” he said.
“This is the guy you should be talking to. Nice piece of ass in this town, then Tommy’s sure to have nailed her.”
Kenny’s instincts on avoiding danger were probably not quite as seasoned as Tommy’s but they weren’t half bad. Right now Kenny was trying to deflect the stranger’s attentions from him to Tommy.
“Oh yeah?” the stranger asked. “You see this girl? Got her in your crib right now?”
Tommy purposefully kept himself guffawing—who the hell said “crib” around here—and shook his head. “Unfortunately no. But if I see her, I’ll certainly give it my best shot.”
Grinning casually at Kenny, he was just leaving as he heard some other anonymous loser call out, “Let me see the picture. I saw this hot bitch today with Cassie Bailey getting off her boat.”
At the mention of Cassie’s name, Tommy froze.
“Yeah, that’s her,” he heard behind him. “She looked a little older than that, but I think it was her.”
Tommy headed out of the bar right away and practically ran the six blocks directly over to the apartment adjacent to Bailey’s Grocery Store. He had a very bad feeling here.
Even though he was going to incur old man Bailey’s wrath for ringing the doorbell at this time of
the night, he had to do it. Once the door opened, though, he was momentarily disconcerted that Cassie herself answered the summons. In a two-size-too-big T-shirt that went down to her knees, her blonde hair rumpled and falling out of some kind of half-assed braid, she had obviously just gotten out of bed, even though it was only nine o’clock. He brushed past her, fighting down the leap of excitement her very presence gave him, let alone dressed for bed, un-Victoria Secret-like as her outfit was.
“Tommy, what the heck?”
“Where’s your dad?”
“He had to be in Portland early in the morning, so he went overnight.”
Code, Tommy knew, for the old man getting a piece of ass—maybe even Evan Reynolds’ mom, if she was still around—which God knew Tommy did not hold against the widower even though his own daughter would probably be shocked. But Tommy felt unusually unhappy about it right at this moment, since that would leave Cassie alone for the night. And given the circumstances, depending on what was going on here with the guy in the bar, that didn’t exactly give him a warm and fuzzy feeling.
“And he wouldn’t like you showing up here like this, Tommy.”
An understatement if ever there was one.
“So what are you doing barging in? What’s going on?”
“Shut the door,” he snapped and when she did, he added, “Lock it.”
Cassie’s eyes got a little wider, but she did.
“Who was the girl you were with this afternoon?”
“What girl?”
“Dark-haired. Blue-eyed. Pretty.”
Cassie’s arms went across her chest, making it clear she wasn’t wearing a bra, and she frowned, making it clear, big-time, he wasn’t going to benefit from that fact. “You came all the way over here this time of night over some girl you’re after? God, you’re a jerk. You know that?”
“Who was she to you?”
“She wasn’t anybody to me. And she’s not going to be anybody to you either! She belongs to Evan Reynolds. Jesus, why is everybody so interested in this girl?”
“Belongs to him? What do you mean by that? How do you know that?”
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