The hell with it. He stopped dissecting his impulses, eased Pamela’s hand free from her tortured napkin, and sandwiched it between his palms.
Despite the heat, her fingers were as icy as her eyes. If she’d had less poise, she no doubt would have been trembling.
“Pamela.” He tightened his hold on her, hoping to warm her up, thaw her out. “I think we can make this marriage work, as long as we don’t lose track of what’s important. Okay? The thing isn’t perfect, but we can make it work.”
She flicked her tongue against her lips to moisten them. Observing the damp pink tip as it circled her mouth made him far more aware of her lack of ugliness than he wanted to be. He lowered his gaze to her chest to remind himself that her body wasn’t his type, but somehow, in her demure silk blouse, the modest dimensions of her chest looked right. A small bosom became her. He imagined her breasts would be like ripe peaches—perfectly round, firm and sweet....
He banished the image with a quick shake of his head. “If you’re having problems,” he continued, his voice as tame as his thoughts had been wicked, “now’s the time to make them known.”
“Well...” She flexed her fingers against his palm, and he was visited by more uninvited thoughts: her fingers flexing against his naked back. Her slim, neat, nude body pressed beneath his. In his bed on the house boat, rocking, rocking... “I think we ought to spell some things out first,” she said, wrenching him from his fantasy.
“What things?” No rocking. No bed. No nude bodies.
He felt her fingers move again—not as if she wanted to escape his grip, though. He loosened his hold slightly, but she didn’t slide her hand out from between his. Her eyes looked a little less sleety. “Exactly how much of a role model would you expect me to be?”
Lizard. Damn the kid. Why couldn’t she have behaved better with Pamela? “Forget Liz’s big mouth,” he insisted, cramming his voice with earnest emotion. “You aren’t ugly.”
At that Pamela did slide her hand free. She inched her chair back, pivoting it to face him. “I really don’t care whether she thinks I’m a gorgon,” she said. “I’m more concerned with how much of a mommy you expect me to be. I told you last night, I’m not terribly maternal. I don’t derive pleasure in baking cookies and playing with dolls.”
“Lizard isn’t into dolls, either,” Joe assured her. “She’s big on action-adventure games.”
Pamela nodded. “Boo Doo and bikers.”
“Yeah, that kind of thing.”
“Well, I’m not big on Boo Doo and bikers. Understand, Jonas, what my life was like before I came to Key West. I lived in a condominium full of expensive furniture and breakable objects. I listened to classical music. I went to work, and after work I went out to dinner or to the theater with friends. I’m not used to clearing my schedule with a baby-sitter before I make a plan. I’m not used to tripping over toy arrows.”
A few particulars leapt into sharp relief: she went out with friends. Boyfriends? Dates? Had she left a lover behind when she’d fled from Seattle? Was she going to cry herself to sleep every night in her bed at the opposite end of the hall from his?
And Jonas. Why had she called him that? Was she trying to maintain a greater degree of formality in their relationship? Was she trying to distance herself from him? “Most people call me Joe,” he reminded her warily.
“I like Jonas. It’s an unusual name.”
Okay. He’d take his compliments where he could get them. “Then call me Jonas. Can I call you Pam?”
“Nobody calls me Pam,” she blurted out. Then a slow smile crept across her mouth. “Sure. Pam would be fine.”
He supposed that meant she hadn’t ruled out their possible marriage. It also meant that she was allowing Joe to call her what no one else called her. Did she consider him unique? Or was she just pretending that who she was in Key West bore no relationship to who she’d been in Seattle?
Why in God’s name was he analyzing every little detail? He ought to just push the negotiations forward, get the final okay from her, and tie this sucker up. “All right,” he said, wishing he could take her hand again. “As far as maternal responsibilities, no sweat. Birdie takes care of Lizard. There are plenty of bakeries in town if any of us develops a craving for homemade cookies. And I’m around most days. I’ve got two other bartenders working for me, and we rotate shifts, but I’m usually around the house through mid-afternoon, so I can take care of most stuff. Next September Lizard will start kindergarten, so child care will be even less of a problem.”
“Then what am I supposed to do during the day?”
He shrugged. “That’s up to you. Maybe there’s an architecture firm hiring on the island.”
She scowled. “No. I can’t do that. I’m trying to make it impossible for anyone to find me. The architecture world isn’t so big. If a firm hired me down here, someone might hear about it someplace else.” She shook her head. “No, I definitely can’t go back to work right now. I can’t pursue jobs that would draw attention to me.”
He resolved to stop resenting her fancy career. How could he not feel sorry for someone who’d had to sacrifice her job—and so much more—because some gangster had slipped through the cracks? “You can do whatever you want,” he said gently. “I’d only ask that if a social service lady comes to call, you try to act domestic.”
“I’m never going to be mistaken for June Cleaver.”
“Oh, I don’t know about that,” he teased. “Maybe if you wore a string of pearls and a starchy dress—”
“And baked cookies.” Pamela sighed. “What about cleaning the house? Who’s responsible for that?”
“Lizard,” he deadpanned. “Can’t you tell?”
“Seriously, Jonas—are you going to expect me to vacuum and dust and—”
“How about, we’ll all pitch in. You make a mess, you clean it up. I make a mess, I clean it up. Lizard makes a mess, so what’s new?”
She fought against a grin and lost. “Are you sure you want me to marry you?”
“We need each other, Pam,” he said. That sounded melodramatic, but it was true. “I think you can help me convince the social workers that Lizard’s got a good home here. That’s all I’m asking of you.”
She moistened her lips once more, and averted her eyes, as if what she was about to say was extremely difficult. “What about money?”
“What about it?”
“I can contribute something toward room and board. Most of my money is tied up in a bank in Seattle, and getting it out of there without alerting half the world to my whereabouts won’t be easy. But...”
Typical yuppie attitude—distilling everything down to dollars and cents. “I’m asking you to marry me, okay? You’re going to be my wife, not my tenant.”
She lifted her gaze back to him. Her eyes were as moist as her lips. Oh, God. He didn’t want her to start crying. Especially over something as trivial as money.
But before he could think of what magical words he could say to cheer her up, she spoke. “I don’t want to take advantage of you, Jonas. You’re being so generous. I think I ought to pay something...” A tear skittered down her cheek.
“The hell with generous. You’re doing me a favor.” Why was she crying? It couldn’t be money, and it sure as hell couldn’t be how generous he was, because he really wasn’t that generous at all. He’d asked her to marry him for the most selfish reason: because he wanted Lizard.
Something else was bothering her, something he couldn’t begin to fathom. He felt utterly helpless watching her dab at her cheeks with her tattered paper napkin.
“What if he finds me? What if he tracks me down?”
The assassin. “He won’t track you down,” Joe promised, although he had no way in hell of guaranteeing that. But the proper manly response to a woman’s distress was to swear she was perfectly safe with him, and when a woman started crying, a man had little choice but to be properly manly. “How could he possibly find you? You’re just going to be a quiet little housewife in the
Keys, right? Mrs. Jonas Brenner.”
“Because if my marrying you endangered your niece in any way whatsoever, I...” She let out a shaky sigh. “I couldn’t live with myself if anything happened to her.”
If anything happened to Lizard, Joe couldn’t live with himself, either. The whole reason he was going through this charade was to prevent something from happening to her. Not that his in-laws were as bad as hit men, but he simply couldn’t believe living with them in their ritzy-glitzy California home would be good for her.
All night long he’d thought about it. He’d weighed the pros and cons, the risk of marrying Pamela versus the risk of remaining a bachelor, or marrying the wrong woman. He’d considered everything Pamela had told him at the Shipwreck last night. And he’d concluded she wasn’t in all that much danger. The cops in Seattle were keeping tabs on the hit man, right? They’d know if he left the state. Besides, a hit man couldn’t turn up in Key West without everybody knowing about it. It was a small place. Everyone knew everyone—which was why he hadn’t been able to find a wife among the locals.
And if Pamela Hayes the architect transformed into Pam Brenner, the little woman, how would anyone at the opposite end of the continent track her down?
Except for her weird little entanglement with a professional criminal, Pam was perfect. Joe wanted to marry her. And he wasn’t going to let her apprehension stand in his way.
“Lizzie’s going to be fine,” he promised. “We’re going to make a great little family, Pam.”
“I hate...” Her voice cracked, and she bit her lip and dabbed at her cheeks once more. “I hate having to impose on anyone.”
“Who’s imposing on who? You’re doing me a favor, remember?”
She began to weep freely. “I hate crying. I hate being afraid like this. I used to dream of getting married, Joe—all little girls dream of big white wedding. Except maybe Lizard....” She sniffled. “And instead, here I am, inflicting my danger on her. If he finds me...if he finds me...”
That did it. Joe stood, gathered Pamela’s hands in his and lifted her out of her chair. Then he closed his arms around her.
She was thin, but not skinny. He felt the sleek padding of her skin over her shoulder blades, the surprising softness of her narrow waist. She sobbed into his shoulder, and a strange sense of power stole over him.
She would be his wife, and he would protect her. “Everything’s going to be all right,” he whispered. “The biggest danger you’ll face if you marry me is, Lizard might drive you insane.”
He felt her smile, her cheek moving against his shirt, her hands timidly rising to his sides. “I guess I didn’t really want a big white wedding, after all.”
“Not this time,” he said. “After everything’s all squared away, and you go for the real thing, you can make it as big and white as you want. Okay?”
She pulled back and gazed up at him. Her eyes were wet, as if all the ice had melted. “Are you sure, Jonas? Are you really sure this is going to work out?”
“I’m sure.” And the Pope was Jewish. But what else could he say? If he revealed he was as dubious about the whole thing as she was, he’d lose her—and Lizard, too. He’d wind up with nothing but sorrow.
Declaring his certainty seemed like a properly manly thing to do. More than manly—it was husbandly. With a tenderness he’d thought had been reserved only for Lizard, he wiped the last of Pamela’s tears from her cheeks, brushed a pale strand of her hair back from her cheek, and told himself that even if he didn’t get to indulge in the fun parts of being a husband, he’d do his damnedest to hide his misgivings from his wife-to-be.
That, after all, was what husbands were supposed to do.
Chapter Four
“TONY? IT’S Mick Morrow.”
“Mick!” Tony’s voice boomed through the telephone. “What are you up to? I’ve got to file a report on you.”
“Another report?”
“Hey, you’re my job these days, Mick. I’m supposed to submit a daily record of your comings and goings. I didn’t know I had such a flair for fiction. They don’t teach creative writing in the police academy, you know.”
“What have you said about me?”
“According to my reports, you live the most boring life in the world. You go to the supermarket, you go to the post office, you go to the pizza place for take-out. You’re a model citizen, Mick.”
“And you’re a model cop.”
“Hey, I admire you, Mick. The way you beat that murder rap—you really have lady luck in your bed.”
Mick forced himself to smile. He hated small talk, but he knew he had to suffer through it before he could get down to the business at hand. Tony was a small-talk kind of guy.
“I mean, the way you manage things, she’s just spreading her legs for you,” Tony went on, obviously taken with his metaphor.
Patience, Mick ordered himself as he gazed about his modest kitchen, a room full of unoriginal pine furniture and built-ins, with white blinds at the window and muffin crumbs on the counter. He made a lot of money doing what he did, but he was too smart to spend it all in one place. His apartment’s decor was the residential equivalent of a plain brown wrapper, the sort of home that shouted, “No wife, no kids, no pets, no attachments.” That pretty well summed up Mick’s life.
“You and I both know I didn’t beat the rap,” he reminded Tony. “I’m still under indictment. They tossed out the verdict on a technicality.”
“Yeah, right. One of the jurors went to nursery school with the widow of the guy that got murdered. And that never came out until after the verdict was handed down.”
“Don’t blame me,” Mick said, all innocence. “The D.A. didn’t do a good job of screening the jurors.”
“You’d think that juror would have disqualified himself.”
“Maybe he figured it wasn’t worth mentioning until it was too late. Not that I’m saying I had anything to do with anything, even though the whole thing bought me a new trial. That’s the American system of justice, Tony.”“
“You’re clever, Mick. Very clever.”
Enough chit-chat. “Listen, Tony, I’ve got a problem. They’re planning to retry me, you know that. You also know the district attorney hasn’t got much against me, other than the word of that woman.”
“Pamela Hayes.”
“She’s left town, Tony.”
“How do you know that?”
“I know it,” Mick said tersely. He wasn’t about to tell the cop who was supposed to be keeping an eye on him all the things he’d been up to while the cop wasn’t keeping an eye on him. “She’s disappeared. And you know damned well she’s going to reappear the minute they put together a new trial for me. The bitch is going to show up in time to testify against me again. You see what I’m saying, Tony?”
“I know, but—”
“She’s their whole case. Nobody else happened to see the hit go down. No evidence was found at the scene, other than a bullet slug in the guy’s body. The Hayes lady swears it was me she saw doing the job.”
“And she’s taken a powder?”
“Vanished into thin air.”
“I know her name is Pamela Hayes. What else have you got on her?”
Mick pulled out his notes. His lawyer had done a lot of research before the first trial—a lot of frustrating research. Pamela Hayes had proven to be what in legal circles was referred to as an unimpeachable witness. “She’s thirty years old. The only child of Ronald and Margaret Hayes of Kirkland. Never been married.”
“You wouldn’t by any chance have her driver’s license number, would you?”
Mick snorted. Tony was the cop here; he was the one who had access to all the data. “No, Tony. But I do know she worked for Murtaugh Associates as an architect. Did her undergraduate work at Stanford, graduate studies at U.W. She’s skinny and blond—or at least she was during my first trial. She could be a brunette now, for all I know. When people disappear, sometimes they get carried away.”
&nbs
p; “Speaking of getting carried away... Has she run into foul play that you might know about?”
“You accusing me of something?” Mick asked, forcing a laugh he didn’t feel. “I visited her old address and they told me she was out of town. If the lady had gotten shot during a robbery attempt or something equally tragic, me and my lawyer would know about it.”
“Here I am, supposed to be tracking you, and now you want me to track her.”
“Carefully, Tony. Not so anyone would find out.”
“I’ll see what I can do,” Tony promised. “God gave us computers for a reason, didn’t He?”
Sure, Mick thought. And God gave us crooked cops like Tony for a reason—to make life a little easier for guys like Mick. “Whatever you can find will be greatly appreciated.”
“Meaning, we’ll be celebrating Christmas the usual way?”
Mick pulled a face. “Of course, Tony,” he said, laboring hard to filter his irritation out of his voice. Mick always honored the holiday by donating a huge sum of money to Tony’s favorite charity: the Tony Fund. These days it wasn’t easy to own one’s very own personal police officer. Too many honest cops screwed up Mick’s way of doing business.
But Tony had his price. And especially now, when a second murder trial loomed ominously on the horizon, Mick considered the guy worth every penny.
***
“I DON’T KNOW,” Mary said.
She was seated next to Joe at the table on the screened porch. Through the screen they could observe Lizard and Pamela in the back yard doing what Joe hoped was some extremely quick bonding. Pamela, as usual, was dressed too formally, in a crisp shirt and pleated slacks and those gold-button earrings that seemed like the sort of jewelry best suited for a funeral. Lizard, as usual, was dressed like a savage, in a pair of bib overalls with the legs cut off and multicolored ink scribblings all over them, and under the overalls the top half of her Bart Simpson pajamas. She scampered barefoot through the herb garden, identifying various plants to Pamela, who seemed alternately interested and dismayed.
Sighing, Joe turned to glance at Mary DiNardi. It occurred to him that Pamela looked more like a lawyer than his own lawyer did. Mary had shown up at his house an hour ago, dressed in a Hawaiian-print shirt and khaki shorts and carrying a canvas tote with several folders of documents in it. He happened to know Mary owned a couple of suits—he’d seen her in one, once—and a leather briefcase that she saved for court appearances. But any lawyer who made house calls certainly couldn’t be expected to resemble a Wall Street wheeler-dealer, or even an architect from Seattle.
CRY UNCLE Page 6