“You always did have trouble managing money.”
The pen slipped out of her hand.
Later, she would curse herself for that little slip in her composure, but for now she simply picked it back up, placed it carefully in its holder.
And looked into the eyes of her uncle.
Her eyes, she admitted, and the thought of it left her cold. She had Carlos’s eyes. But she used the chill to her advantage.
“Actually, I’m very capable. It’s just more challenging to handle funds when you have to acquire and disperse them through legal means.”
He laughed, low and smooth. And the sound of it scraped her nerves.
He was so handsome, she thought. Slim, well-dressed. Just a touch of gray to distinguish his temples. He’d shaved the mustache he’d always worn since the last time she’d seen him, and the cleanness of it suited his face.
The deadliest snakes were often beautiful.
Thank God, she could only think. Thank God Katie had gone home for the evening.
“Nice place you have,” he commented as he reached into the inside pocket of his jacket, pulled out one of the black clove cigarettes Ava knew he hadn’t purchased legally.
“I don’t allow smoking in the building.”
“Nice,” he continued, eyeing her over the flare of the match he struck despite her warning. “Ambitious of you, to set up your own practice. You always had your ambitions.” He gestured to the framed diplomas on the wall. “College, veterinary school. The kinds of things that take lots of funds. Your father, he worried he couldn’t support you well enough to indulge those ambitions. It’s why he came to work for me, you know.”
She wanted to scream. She wanted to rage, to throw things at him, to hurt him as he liked to hurt her. It wasn’t true. Her father had gotten caught in Carlos’s web before Ava had taken her first step. Long before she’d had a notion of where she wanted to go, what she wanted to be. But it didn’t stop the little thread of guilt that wanted to tangle her up with him.
“Cat got your tongue?” he asked as the smoke from his cigarette caused Jack to skulk into the corner and hiss.
“What do you want, Carlos?”
“Want?” He leaned against the doorframe, insolent, lethal. “You’re my only niece. I wanted to see how you were doing.”
“Why didn’t you just ask one of your goons?”
“Ah.” He strolled closer, tapped his ash into her coffee mug. “You wound me, querida. Visiting your father, claiming you’ve been harassed.” When his gaze flicked up to hers, Ava’s heart tripped like a hammer. “My men were supposed to watch out for you. You could have let me know one of them became… overly enthusiastic.”
She hadn’t seen the goon in the T-bird since she’d come back from Atlanta. There was that night, the night she and Jordan… she’d suspected someone was outside, she remembered. But apart from that, she’d been left alone.
And she’d been feeling relieved, maybe even smug.
But now all she felt was sickened. “What did you do?”
“It’s of no matter.” He tapped his finger to her nose. “The problem has been taken care of. He won’t be bothering you again.”
Slowly, because she wasn’t entirely sure her legs would hold her, Ava raised herself from the chair. “Out. I want you out of here, you bastard. I won’t let you put his blood on my hands.”
“Who said anything about blood?”
When she bared her teeth, he merely grinned. “There’s the Martinez spirit. I’ve always enjoyed you, Ava, contrary to what you might think. You and me, we’re more alike than you realize.”
“Guess I better schedule that exorcism, ASAP.”
He laughed, delighted, and stuck the cigarette between his lips. But as he took a final drag, his easy expression hardened. “Pleasant as this has been, I think it’s time I showed myself out.” The butt plunked down in her coffee. “Take care of yourself, little Ava. And take care of your new boyfriend. I would hate to think that your relationship with me would cause you to… lose another man.”
He slithered down the hall, and Ava listened for the sound of the back door before allowing herself to crumple.
He knew. Carlos knew about Jordan. Almost certainly knew what he did for a living. Maybe – probably – knew that he was the man his men had mistakenly abducted.
There were medical records, surely a police report – it was certainly an open case. Assistant district attorney assaulted. Oh yeah, that would heat the cops up.
And Carlos likely had a snitch on the force.
Money – its lure, its lies – corrupted even the best intentioned.
And if he knew about Jordan, knew the details of the case, he’d know Jordan had been dropped off at the ER that night. And, of course, he’d know from Ricardo that the man they’d abducted had disappeared from the club’s parking lot.
The same night she’d been called there for a meeting.
Shit, shit, why hadn’t she thought, why hadn’t she realized it was really a simple puzzle? Take a few pieces, fit them together, and que pasada, you’ve got the big picture.
“Ava?”
Jordan filled the doorway her uncle had vacated only minutes ago, and all the blood rushed out of her head.
“Whoa, what the hell?”
Hands, she felt his hands on her. Strong, steady. Lifting her. Settling her back into the chair. One of them tapped her cheek, just a little tap – pat, pat – and gray dots swam across his face as she tried to focus.
“There you are. There’s my girl.”
“Jordan.” Her vision cleared. Seeing the concern on his face, realizing how she must have looked folding like an accordion onto the floor, Ava fluttered her hand shakily. “I…” She had to think fast. “I guess I got a little lightheaded.”
“No kidding.”
SHE was white as a corpse, Jordan thought angrily. And he’d seen enough of them lately to know. Pale, pasty, limp beneath his hands.
What she looked, he concluded, was terrified.
He sniffed, noted the stench of cigarette smoke in the air. But this stench had the kick of something spicy, like those things the Goths had smoked before the FDA had them banned.
Ava didn’t smoke. One-eyed Jack, who glared at him from on top of the filing cabinet in the corner, sure as hell didn’t smoke either. The sign out front indicated the clinic was a smoke-free building.
So someone else had been in the office, quite recently if he was any judge.
Someone who’d scared the hell out of Ava.
His lips thinned, but he kept his tone light. “Got some bills here, I see. I always get a little sick when I pay mine, too.”
“What?” She blinked at the desk. “Oh, right.”
“How about we get you some water?” He glanced at the mug on her desk, saw the black cigarette butt sticking out of it.
It rankled, that after everything they’d talked about, everything he’d said, she still seemed to be holding out on him. He wanted to shake some sense into her, demand that she just trust him, for God’s sake, but he’d tried that approach before and all it had gotten him was her cold shoulder. He reminded himself that he had Evan looking into Sheppard. He figured he’d know all about the ex soon enough.
Well, maybe not soon enough, he amended as she seemed to struggle to pull herself together. Because Ava was hurting right now.
“I’ll be right back.”
“What? Oh. Water.” She grabbed his hand as he straightened. “Jordan. Don’t bother. I’m feeling much better now.”
He could see that she was. Her color had come back – a little high, in his opinion – but it was better than the death-warmed-over look of a moment ago.
“Ah…” Ava brushed at an ink stain on her scrubs. “Wow. Let me just say, how embarrassing.” Her eyes lifted to his, chagrinned. “Not the way you care to be greeted, I’m sure.” And the chagrin shifted to sympathetic. “I’m sorry. I didn’t even ask… your friend?”
“Positive id
entification was made this morning.”
“I’m so sorry, Jordan.”
So was he. And having just come from talking to Leslie’s mother, was feeling bruised. And admitted he’d come by because he needed, simply needed, to see Ava. “You know, I’ve spent the past several days dealing with blow after blow. I’m… beaten, just at the moment. So I was wondering,” he squatted in front of her chair, brushed a loose strand of that dark hair from her face. “I was wondering if we could go back to my place – or your place. Or a park bench. I don’t care – and just sleep together. Or if you wouldn’t mind lying with me while I sleep. I’m exhausted, Ava. But I have this overwhelming need to feel you next to me.”
If she hadn’t already done so, Ava thought she would have fallen for him right then. She studied his tired – wounded – eyes, and felt her heart turn over.
It would be best for both of them if she cut him loose. Safer for them, anyhow.
But not yet. Not when he’d just handed her a piece of himself and asked her to take care of it. “Let me close up,” she murmured and leaned forward to kiss his head. “Then we can go – my place, your place, whatever. I’ll give you whatever it is you need.”
JORDAN took her face between his hands, kissed her. Then stood so that she could get past him to the door.
And after she’d gone, stood several moments longer, staring at the cigarette butt in her coffee.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
JORDAN woke to the dark, and to tiny needles pricking his foot. Hoping to restore circulation, he tried to wiggle his toes but found them pinned to Ava’s mattress. He opened one groggy eye to locate the source of the problem.
He and Ava weren’t alone on the bed.
“What is this, Dr. Doolittle?” he mumbled and gave Finn a reproachful look. Sleeping on the bed was one of the few lines Jordan had drawn between himself and his dog, and from the sheepish way the animal glanced at him and then quickly looked away, Finn knew exactly what he was doing.
If he had to guess, Jordan would say Ava invited the dog up after Jordan had fallen to sleep.
So much for his authority.
“Yeah, you know which side your bread’s buttered on, don’t you, you little traitor?” Looking around, Jordan noted One-Eyed Jack glaring at him again from his outpost on the windowsill.
He guessed the menagerie was the price one paid for sleeping with a veterinarian.
Taking care not to disturb Ava, Jordan swung his legs off the bed and made a grab for his boxers, carelessly discarded along with the rest of his clothes when Ava had tucked him in with a bedtime story.
He was pretty sure he’d never heard that particular take on Sleeping Beauty when he was a kid. Her suggestion for how the prince should wake the snoozing maiden was a hell of a lot more entertaining than the Disney version.
Glancing at her, huddled under both comforter and dog, he felt the tightening in his chest that had come to be so familiar in the short time he’d known her.
She’d brought the light, when so much of the past weeks had been dark. And Finn, in a roundabout way, had brought her. Serendipity, he mused, and ruffled the fur between the animal’s ears. Yes, that was the perfect word for it. He’d been looking for a veterinarian, and had found his heart instead.
For that alone, he’d let his sleeping dog lie.
Heeding the call of his stomach, Jordan padded toward the kitchen. Food had been more of an afterthought than a priority over the past week – certainly the past couple days – and suddenly he was starving. Pitiful, he decided, after checking the contents of the fridge. Food obviously hadn’t been a priority for Ava recently, either. Maybe they could make a run after work tomorrow, stock up for the weekend.
He’d enjoy that, he realized. Sharing that sort of homey, domestic chore. Handy, he thought, as he unearthed a jar of peanut butter, a box of crackers. Since he hoped to work his way around to cohabitation in the not so distant future.
He peered out the window, scanned the street, saw nothing he deemed suspicious. A light came on in the big house, and Jordan gathered Lou Ellen was up for the day. He thought of the log she’d created for him, detailing most of the street’s vehicular traffic – and pithy observations regarding the same – over the course of the past week, and wondered if she slept in the first place.
The woman loved Ava. That was obvious. It was also obvious he’d earned her stamp of approval. Seeing as she was the closest thing to family Ava seemed to have – he still wasn’t clear on what had happened to her parents, other than that her mother had died – Jordan guessed that was another plus in his column.
He remembered how wistful Ava had seemed, how sad, the night they’d sat in her clinic and talked of family.
He needed to get her over to his parents’, let her meet his. Maybe Sunday dinner. He’d talk it over with his mom.
Once he had, once he’d nudged Ava into that big, messy tangle of family ties, he figured she didn’t stand a chance.
Grabbing a glass of water, Jordan balanced the rest of his booty in his arm and made his way back toward the living room. Popping naked crackers for a hold-me-over, he sank onto the sofa and considered turning the TV on low. But it wasn’t yet six a.m. Not only did he not care to disturb Ava, but figured his late night viewing choices to be infomercials and eighties sitcoms.
Dumping his armload onto the coffee table, he spotted the photo album.
Ah, blackmail time, he thought and dragged the album onto his lap. Naked babies, prom dates from hell, really embarrassing fashion statements.
Good stuff.
It was full of Ava, as he’d hoped. As a squished looking newborn, a messy one-year-old shoving her mouth full of Barbie cake. Missed the boat there, he thought. Ava was more… well, Dr. Doolittle than Barbie. He smiled at her as a toddler, long brown pigtails blown into a sea swept tangle, constructing a castle out of sand – complete with a hermit crab sentry.
Jordan slathered peanut butter on a cracker and turned the page.
Ava, resplendent in the white lace of a first communion, posed with a woman who had to be her mother. The resemblance was strong, hair, build, smile – though Ava’s looked a little pained. Jordan decided he wouldn’t be too happy either with that tiara on his head.
And there she was as a teen, surrounded by a litter of pups, laughing as they licked her face.
“Jordan?”
He looked up to find Ava – fully grown – mussed and owlish in the doorway. She was wearing his shirt, he noted, and felt the trickle of heat beneath his skin. White against her dusky legs. One lonely button holding it together. The trickle turned into a flow.
Her big, brown eyes blinked heavily as she joined him on the couch.
“What are you doing?”
“Fuel.” He held the box of crackers up and waggled it back and forth. “I guess I should have crunched a little more quietly. I didn’t mean to wake you.”
“That’s okay.” She shoved her hand into the box and rooted around until she produced a cracker. “If you hadn’t gotten up, I probably would have, anyway. We skipped dinner.”
“I’m not going to complain.”
She smiled, sleepy and smug, and pressed her lips to his. “Me neither.” Her smile faltered as she looked at the album on his lap.
Following the direction of her gaze, Jordan sat the crackers aside and flipped back to the picture from the day she was born. “For someone who started life looking like a raisin, you turned out pretty well.”
“HA ha.” Ava made an attempt to grab it from him, just playfully enough to keep him from guessing the panic he’d lit in her heart.
There were photographs of her father in there. She doubted Jordan had cause to recognize Luis Martinez – currently under federal indictment on murder and racketeering charges – but it wasn’t a chance she wanted to take.
Jordan, whose reach was considerably longer than hers, held the album over his head. “Come on now, sweetheart. No need to be embarrassed.” His dimples flashed in a tea
sing smile as he found a photo of her in a baby bathtub. “I’ve already seen you taking a bath in your birthday suit. Although I have to admit you’ve improved a bit in the past twenty-eight odd years.”
“Very funny.” Ava feinted high, and when he dodged low, managed to get hold of the album. She shoved it under the sofa. “Next time we stay at your place so that I can rummage through your drawers.”
“Next time,” he agreed, kissing her head as she settled against him.
And Ava’s heart kicked, one hard beat, because she doubted there’d be a next time.
She had to cut him loose.
She’d lain awake for long hours after he’d fallen to sleep, trying to figure out a way out of the mess she’d inadvertently gotten herself into. She owed Jordan the truth. And it was becoming increasingly difficult to hide everything from him, the photo album being a case in point.
But if she told him the truth, she risked not only her life, but his.
Carlos’s little visit had made that clear.
So the smartest thing, the safest thing, was to discourage him. Or not only discourage him, she realized, but hurt him. If she merely wounded his pride, he had enough tenacity to lick the wound, then take up the battle from a different angle.
She had to do her best to break his heart.
If he cared about her as he said he did, she figured she might just be able to do it. Lord knew the thought of hurting him was enough to break her own.
But all things considered, it was better than one or both of them winding up dead.
Of course, knowing what she had to do, and finding the fortitude to do it were two different things entirely. Here, in the dark, with his hand stroking over her hair as he fed them both crackers, she just wanted to sink in. To take this little slice of time, this small window of happiness, for herself, and for him.
“Morning’s coming.”
Ava glanced out the window beside them, saw the first gray light that presaged dawn. And thought, not yet. Please, just a little longer.
Fighting the urge to close the blinds, to burrow in like a bear in hibernation, Ava laid her head on Jordan’s chest.
The Southern Comfort Series Box Set Page 23