In Too Deep

by Janelle Taylor

  Romeo was Rawley’s nickname for Alberto. He’d seen Alberto work his Italian magic on the single women who frequented the restaurant His shameless flirting amused Rawley to no end even though Jenny, and the targeted customers, knew it was all in fun.

  “He likes you,” Jenny said.

  Rawley grinned. “I know.”

  “You’ve got to stop taking advantage of his sweet nature. I mean it.”

  This time Rawley didn’t argue with her. Jenny had some hope that all was not lost when it came to her son’s worrisome behavior. He did know when he was being a brat—even if it had to be pointed out to him now and again.

  She glanced over her shoulder. There was still so much left to do. Could she really afford to leave? Maybe. As long as she could find a few hours tomorrow, on Sunday, to come in and make up some work. Her birthday …

  “I’ll be ready whenever you are,” she said on a note of finality.

  He nodded. She marveled as he stuffed half an Italian sausage into his mouth with little effort. Retracing her steps to the kitchen once again, she felt another frisson of uneasiness run down her spine and wondered what in the world was wrong with her. She’d never been so susceptible to atmosphere and mood.

  Catching up with Alberto, she told him regretfully, “I’ve got to head out. My son needs a ride home, and I think we should spend some time together.” She wagged a finger in front of his nose. “And you shouldn’t let him twist you around his little finger.”

  “He is like my grandson. What I have, is his.” The twinkle in Alberto’s dark eyes gave him away; he was totally unrepentant.

  “Hmm.” Jenny gave him a mock glower.

  “He needs to be fed, that boy. To be strong.” Alberto lifted his chin and flexed his biceps. “To be a man, to take care of his mama.”

  “Oh, right,” Jenny muttered.

  Alberto laughed aloud, and Jenny shook her head. It was useless to talk to him. He and Rawley had an unspoken agreement—a male pact—and there wasn’t anything she could do about it.

  Five minutes later, her paperwork in hand, Jenny headed out of her office for the last time, standing for a moment in the kitchen, the heart of the restaurant Plates of steaming calamari and scallopini in garlic butter and savory osso bucco flew by. She loved all the mouth-watering aromas and lush-sounding names of the dishes. It was a kind of olfactory and auditory ecstasy.

  Soon, soon, she would be involved in Geneva’s. And she had her own amazing chef who was waiting in the wings, ready to step in as soon as the final renovations on the restaurant were completed. Gloria was one of the main reasons Jenny had chosen Santa Fe. Part Hopi, part Mexican, and a kitchen wizard with a true cook’s temperament, Gloria had been born and raised around Santa Fe. She was, like Alberto, a demanding personality, but her perfectionism translated into dishes that were indescribably luscious. She’d once worked for Jenny’s father, who had tried to force her into the Rancho del Sol mold and that had been a recipe for disaster. Sparks flew from the onset. Sparks? No. More like an exploding volcano. And Gloria had flat-out refused to work for another Holloway at first. When Jenny then explained her relationship with her father, the woman signed on with a flourish, ready to thumb her nose at the man she considered “stupid about food.” Jenny was thrilled to have someone so strongwilled and talented on her side.

  She smiled to herself again. She and Gloria would be up to their elbows in work within a few weeks, but for now there was Puerto Vallarta. And Jenny planned to use the trip for culinary exploration, as well. If there was something out there with just the right flavors and presentation, she would coax Gloria into giving it a try.

  At least that was the theory.

  Alberto was currently standing over the chef he’d upbraided earlier. The younger man looked ready to explode. But for once Alberto held his tongue. Whatever issue he wanted to address remained hidden for the moment as kettles and deep-dish frying pans bubbled and hissed on top of the burners.

  Jenny said, “Anytime you want our extra customer out there to wash some dishes for his meal, feel free to put him in front of the sink.”

  “Ah, bella, you are so cruel!” Alberto spread his hands expansively, stepping away from the other chef so that peace reigned—at least for the time being. “He is so thin. He needs my pasta to build strong muscles.”

  “Why are you patting your stomach as you say that?” Jenny observed.

  “Oh, funny, funny lady.”

  Chucking her under the chin, he then waved her away. Jenny shut the door to her office and locked it. On her way out at last …

  Carolyn caught her in the main dining room. “Did you see him?”

  “Yes, I saw him.” She smiled at her friend. “And he’s very handsome. A little young, perhaps, but hey, what’s twenty-some years.”

  Carolyn looked nonplussed. “What are you talking about?”

  “Rawley. I found him. And he’s in trouble whether he thinks so or not. He can’t just show up and expect a meal just because I’m here. He sure as heck knows how to work the system.”

  “Rawley?”

  “Yes, Rawley …” Jenny trailed off. With a jolt she suddenly realized her son had not been seated at table fourteen. He’d been at table eleven.

  “Not him! This was an honest-to-goodness hunk,” Carolyn declared. “Go look again! Maybe he’s still there. I want you to see him. I mean, the way he watched you when he first came in … wow. And then when you walked by while I was taking his order … He didn’t think I saw, but his eyes were all over you, like he was studying you or something.”

  “Oh?”

  She nodded. “He was mentally taking notes. I’m surprised you couldn’t feel it.”

  “You’re creeping me out, Carolyn.”

  “Oh, no, no. It was in a good way. I wouldn’t have minded him looking at me that way.”

  “Well, you’re not me.”

  “Look, he’s sexy. That’s all I’m saying. Go look. Table fourteen …”

  Filled with trepidation, Jenny slowly approached the stone archway one last time. Her gaze jumped from Rawley’s table to the now vacated table fourteen. Her heart beat quick and fast. Her breath jumped in and out of her throat. Nothing. No reason to be so jittery.

  “Come on,” she said to her son, shooting a glance around all the darkened corners just to make sure. “Let’s go home.”

  Outside Riccardo’s a slender yellow moon rose over the forest of commercial buildings, wires, and parking lots—ugly reminders of urban humanity. Hunter waited in his Jeep. He was tired. He’d driven from Santa Fe to Houston nonstop and had been unable to sleep much since, especially when he was lying on some hard motel bed and staring at the ceiling.

  But his weariness went further than that. It was bone deep, a product of long hours and lost hopes. These last six years in Santa Fe he’d managed to fight it back, but from the moment Joseph Wessver brought up Troy Russell it had come back with a vengeance. Oh, sure, part of him still wanted to get Russell, a hope that refused to die no matter how many times he reminded himself of the hard realities of “no evidence.”

  Troy Russell had killed Michelle Calgary as surely as if he’d put a gun to her head and pulled the trigger. That Michelle had leapt from the roof of her five-story apartment building near La Cienega Boulevard in Los Angeles didn’t cut any ice with Hunter. He knew Russell was responsible, and Hunter had lost his job with the L.A.P.D. because of it.

  He’d been unable to convince anyone that Michelle, who had a healthy fear of heights, would never choose to end her life that way. Troy Russell had pushed her off that building after mentally and physically abusing her for several years. That was Hunter’s theory. But that she’d been about to leave him, that she’d broken down and told Hunter she would testify against him, anything, anything to put him behind bars, was not enough to prove the man had been with her on the roof that day.

  But Hunter knew …

  Now, he closed his eyes and felt a familiar ennui settle over him. He�
�d outrun it for a few years, but it was apparently still there. Burnout. Bad case. A lack of passion for anything. He’d recharged some in Santa Fe, but when it came right down to it, the battery was essentially dead.

  But he’d promised to watch out for Allen Holloway’s daughter. Be a bodyguard. Save her from Troy Russell. Her ex-husband.

  That, at least, still penetrated.

  Sighing, Hunter thought over his meeting with Wessver, and then the subsequent one with Holloway himself. He’d learned a great deal about the man, and about his daughter, and about their relationships with the man Hunter wanted to bring to justice more than anything else. So, he’d agreed to be Jenny’s protector, only to learn that she had no knowledge of Allen Holloway’s plan and the danger that lurked in the shadows.

  “She won’t appreciate my interference,” Allen Holloway had told him. “Mention my name, and you won’t get near her. But I need you to be near her. Now, more than ever, because Russell’s putting on the heat. The man’s a bloodthirsty lunatic and he wants my daughter more than money these days.”

  “That’s what he said?” Hunter had asked.

  “No. He said he wanted to up the ante. More money. And if it were just that, I’d be glad to do it. I don’t care. But it’s not. He might know about the boy. I’m not sure. Jenny’s kept a pretty low profile for a long, long time. But Troy’s been out of Texas ever since the divorce, and now he’s back. Contacted me from the Warwick, which isn’t cheap. He lives high. Needs to, to pick up women.”

  Holloway’s words pricked Hunter like needles. Michelle had fallen for Troy Russell’s good looks, perfect charm and apparently endless supply of money. Holloway’s money.

  “I want her safe. She’s flying to Puerto Vallarta in about a week. Here …” He flipped an airline ticket Hunter’s way. “Get close to her. I’d rather be paying you than Russell,” he added emphatically.

  So, here he was. Following her. Had been ever since that meeting with her father. But it wasn’t for the money. It was for Michelle, and for himself, and yes, for her safety. And in the process he’d become immersed in Jenny’s life, waiting outside her apartment long after the last light had been turned off. What had started out as a job was fast becoming an obsession. And about all he felt was a kind of exhausted relief.

  Which was crazy, when he thought about it, but he was just glad to have a focus. A purpose. Quitting the Santa Fe police department to hang out on his dusty little ranch had seemed self-defeating at the time, yet he’d been unable to do anything else.

  Hearing voices brought him out of his reverie. Sure enough, there she was, coming out the back door of Riccardo’s and walking toward her car alongside a rangy teenaged boy. He knew her by sight now. Geneva Holloway Russell, though she’d dropped her married name even before the divorce was final. The boy was her son. Rawley Holloway. No last name of Russell for him, either, apparently. A good sign, as far as Hunter was concerned.

  He watched her walk with the boy to a blue Volvo sedan. Twisting the key in the ignition, he waited until she’d driven nearly out of sight before he eased into traffic behind her. When she turned into the parking lot of her ten-unit apartment building, he passed by, circled the block, then returned in time to see the master bedroom light turn on. He parked across the street and switched off his engine.

  Her building had only two stories. A person might be able to survive a fall from the roof here, he mused, his thoughts dark.

  A car drove past, slowed, crept for a block and a half, then sped up. Hunter memorized the license plate, but it looked like a rental. It didn’t return again, but he wrote the number down anyway. He might not be the only watcher out tonight.

  Eventually her bedroom light was switched off. Settling down further into his seat, Hunter dozed fitfully. Hours passed and nothing happened. In the gray hours of dawn he fired up the Jeep’s engine and drove to his cold motel room on the edge of the loop, the circle of freeways that girded Houston’s center. Standing in the dark in the center of the room he breathed in the musty scents of mildew and disuse. For a moment he had a flash of desire to be back at his own place, alone as always.

  I wish I had a dog.

  Hunter felt mild surprise at such an alien, normal thought invading his mind.

  Switching on his desk light, he glanced down at the travel documents in his name. A bright red brochure from Hotel Rosa lay beside the airline ticket.

  “It’s practically right on the bay,” Holloway had told him. “Great open air restaurant and bar. Thatched roof. Authentic, reputedly incredible Mexican cuisine. If so, Jenny’ll be there to taste the food. She fancies herself a restaurateur and I understand that she’s renovating a place in Santa Fe. Hang around the hotel and you’ll catch up with her eventually. Everyone goes there.”

  Hunter responded to the one thing that bothered him ever so slightly. “Santa Fe?”

  “You’re almost going to be neighbors,” Allen said with a sniff of disapproval. “She’s opening a restaurant on one of those arty little streets with all the galleries. Geneva’s. For the grandmother she’s named after. Yes, I know more about her than she thinks I do, but I want you to learn even more.”

  Now, Hunter gazed down at the brochure and airline ticket There was an underhanded element to this whole scheme that normally would have bothered him. But Allen wanted to stop Troy Russell.

  And there was nothing Hunter wanted more.

  CHAPTER TWO

  So many things to do …

  Jenny scratched off one item on the list and sighed as she studied the remaining twenty-plus errands. She was leaving for Puerto Vallarta in a week and she felt overwhelmed.

  A throbbing beat from Rawley’s bedroom speakers shook the apartment hard enough to measure on the Richter scale. Marching down the hall, she rapped loudly on his door. “Rawley! Rawley!”

  She didn’t doubt that he couldn’t hear her. He’d need the alertness of a hunted animal to discern anything beyond that awful noise. She slammed her palm against the door panels until her hand smarted, then twisted the knob and opened the door a crack.

  “Hey!” Rawley yelled, affronted. “Don’t I deserve some privacy?”

  “Not when your music is blowing away half of Houston.” His mutinous glare followed her as she walked to the speakers and deftly lowered the volume. “There are rules. I don’t make them. I just have to abide by them because I signed a lease to that effect. And I don’t feel like getting kicked out two weeks before we leave at the end of the month.”

  Benny barked as if to answer from the other side of Rawley’s bed. He bounded across the room, jumping up against her, muddy paws dirtying her denim shirt.

  Frustration filled her and it took effort to hold back her anger. Grabbing Benny by the collar she half walked, half dragged the dirty pooch to the door and pushed him onto the outside deck that led to the stairs to the street Instantly, he tried to turn around and wriggle back inside but Jenny clamped her legs against the doorjamb, blocking his entry. “For the love of Pete, go home!” she declared in exasperation.

  Moments later she slammed the door and turned back to Rawley’s room. The volume was somewhat higher than when she’d left, but at least it wouldn’t make her ears bleed. “There are muddy footprints across the carpet. Please clean them up,” she said in a tone that warned of future injunctions should her reasonable request be ignored.

  Closing his door softly behind her, Jenny inhaled a deep breath and blew it out slowly. Some birthday, she thought. She thought of her inheritance, due to be transferred to her account tomorrow, and wondered why it didn’t cheer her up. Right now all she wanted to do was sit down and cry. Rawley didn’t remember today was her birthday.

  But why should he? She hadn’t mentioned it And teenagers weren’t known for looking outside themselves. Had she been like that when she was young? So self-absorbed that she couldn’t even recall her parents’ birthdays? No. She’d always known her mother’s. She’d wanted to. It was important.

  As she
wiped off Benny’s pawprints from her shirt and slacks Jenny’s mind opened on her past. She remembered how ill her mother had been for so long. It had seemed like an eternity. She’d been alternately angry at her mother and consumed with despair. Iris Holloway had quietly passed away when Jenny was on the verge of adolescence and she had pretended to stoically accept her mother’s death during the daylight hours although she cried silent, bitter tears at night in the sanctuary of her lonely room.

  Her once close relationship with her father had ended at nearly the same time. Four months after Iris’s death he married Natalie, who’d barely passed her twenty-first birthday at the time of the wedding. The rest of Jenny’s high school years were a blur and only when she met Troy Russell did they focus on some kind of reality.

  What a mistake! She’d eloped with him at eighteen and spent six miserable months in a marriage her father had tried to break with every legal means available. And she had ended up leaving Troy the last time he shoved her against the wall hard enough to break through the sheet rock.

  She blocked the memories right there, fighting back an involuntary shudder. She’d made a life for herself and Rawley over the last fifteen years, and she rarely thought about those dark days. She’d walked through the fire and come out on the other side only slightly singed. She was one of the lucky ones.

  With new resolve she went in search of the carpet spot remover. It was all well and good to demand that Rawley clean up, but he always needed nagging if she wanted results. And sometimes she just did the darn job herself rather than wage the battle.

  After scrubbing up the worst of the pawprints from the hall carpet, she set the blue can of spot remover on the edge of the kitchen counter and set about making herself a cup of tea. She’d certainly made huge mistakes during her teen years, but she’d never been as outwardly rebellious as her son. Was it a matter of gender, or the times, or just fate? Whatever the case, Rawley was making a very noisy statement today.

  More memories came back to her. Her first Troy sighting, that summer after high school, when Jenny was supposed to be preparing for college. But all she thought about was Natalie holding hands with her father, Natalie girlishly squealing when Allen bought her a diamond necklace, Natalie learning tennis from a personal trainer who winked at Jenny a little too suggestively every time he walked by. It was revolting and Jenny spent endless hours driving her blue Mercedes convertible in aimless circles, wishing for something to happen.