The Taming Of Reid Donovan

by Pappano, Marilyn

  Thanks for the compliment, she thought dryly.

  Back when she was fifteen and trying to turn her life into a great melodrama, the place would have suited her. Her constant black attire would have blended well into this many-shades-of-gray decor. The sleek lines and the spare furnishings would have suited her, too, along with all the hardness—the marble, the granite, the metal. But not anymore. Now she liked softness and color—the warm, buttery yellow of her bedroom and the deeper salmon in the living room. The snuggly weight of the woven throw she had tucked over Jamey’s old couch. The downy thickness of the comforter waiting to go on her new bed. There would be no stark lines, no monochromatic schemes, no sleek modern furnishings in her new place.

  Sliding her keys into her pocket, she gestured toward the boxes neatly stacked in the foyer. “There’s most of my stuff. There’s a chair in the office and a couple more boxes in the bedroom. I thought I’d leave my hanging clothes hanging since it’s such a short move.”

  “Why don’t you get the chair? We’ll work around it.”

  With a nod, she headed down the hall. When Smith had moved out of the condo and into Jolie’s little yellow house, he hadn’t taken a thing with him beyond the personal stuff.

  He had paid a fortune for the place and another fortune to have it decorated, and he’d walked away from it all without a single regret. It had been his home for years, but other than his clothing, his papers and a painting by Michael Bennett, it might as well have been a very expensive hotel. She felt the same way. Beyond the spectacular views, there wasn’t a thing about the condo that she would miss.

  Living across the hall from Reid, she imagined she would have some pretty spectacular views of her own.

  In the office, she pulled back her desk chair, a mix of teak and walnut more than seventy-five years old, and slid into its place Smith’s own chair, an incredibly ugly combination of highly polished steel and black leather. She rolled her. chair down the hall, stacked a couple of boxes on the seat and, with Reid carrying his own stack of boxes, headed for the elevator.

  It took four trips to fill the back of the Blazer but only two, with Jamey’s help, to unload everything into her apartment. As they moved slowly through traffic back toward the condo—the French Quarter was having yet another of its thousand and one festivals—she glanced at Reid. “Alicia brought Sean by the center yesterday.”

  Alicia Gutierrez had been Ryan Morgan’s girlfriend. After he’d hit her the same night he’d beaten Karen, Alicia had taken refuge in the condo with Cassie for a few days. She had started the visit angry and frightened, had made excited plans to remove Morgan from her life, leave Serenity and make a loving, safe home for the baby she was expecting at any moment. Soon, though, anger had given way to apology and regret. Maybe she had provoked him. Maybe she had deserved what he’d done.

  Cassie had tried to argue with her, but Alicia had turned stubborn and refused to listen. Cassie didn’t know, the other woman had pointed out, what it was like to be poor and pregnant, to have so few options. She didn’t know what it was like to be in love. Alicia had been right. Cassie hadn’t known about, any of that. But she knew that any man who would hit a nine-months’ -pregnant woman whom he claimed to love was no man at all. She knew that Alicia would never be truly happy, and neither would her child, as long as Ryan Morgan was in their lives.

  Now he wasn’t. Fate, and the bad decision he’d made in choosing to work for Jimmy Falcone, had done what Alicia couldn’t. On the day she had given birth to a sweet, adorable little baby boy, Ryan Morgan had been found by the river with a bullet in his brain.

  “How is she?”

  Reid’s question drew her out of her grim thoughts. “A little hopeless.”

  He shrugged as if not surprised. “Maybe she really did love him.”

  “Not that he ever did a thing in the world to deserve it.”

  “And what would you know about that?”

  She felt his gaze on her. Slowing to a stop inches off the bumper of the car in front of her, she turned to look directly at him. “What would I know?” she asked with a hint of sarcasm. “He hit her when she was carrying his baby. He beat Karen because he didn’t like her presence on his street. He never did an honest day’s work in his life. He supported himself by working for the biggest criminal in the state. He was a thief, a liar, a punk, a murderer, a crook—”

  “He was the best friend I had.”

  She gave him a long, steady look before turning back to the street ahead. “Then you’re badly in need of a better class of friends.”

  They traveled a block or two in silence before he surprised her with more. “Ryan did what he knew how to do. His father beat him. He learned young that that was how you deal with conflict. Might makes right, that sort of thing. His old man was a drunk who never did an honest day’s work in his life, either. His mother was a drunk, too. Sometimes she worked as a waitress or a housekeeper in one of the hotels, but usually she collected welfare checks or worked the streets.” His expression turned cynical. “We’re not talking Ozzie and Harriet here. Ryan and Trevor didn’t stand much of a chance from the start.”

  “Neither did you, but you were never like them.”

  “I was more like them than you want to know.”

  Cassie shook her head. He had run with them, yes. There was no denying that. But according to Jamey and Karen, when his buddies’ activities had turned to crime, as often as not, Reid had managed to be someplace else. He had never gotten involved in the big stuff—the assaults and death threats. He had never hurt anyone, and he had certainly never killed anyone.

  “I could have been a hundred times worse than any of them.”

  Any other young man on Serenity who made that statement would be boasting. Reid’s voice was flat, a grim acknowledgment of what he believed to be fact. She didn’t believe it. To be as bad as the Morgans, Marino and the others required some inherent and very basic character flaw, and Reid didn’t have it. If he did, he wouldn’t have spent the past six months making an effort to turn his life around. He wouldn’t have traded his only friends for a world that didn’t trust him. He wouldn’t have imposed such isolation on himself, wouldn’t have persevered in the face of such suspicion and doubt. He wouldn’t still be trying, no matter how lonely the battle, no matter how uncertain the outcome. He could spend fifty years doing everything right and never make everyone forget the first twenty-six, when he’d done everything wrong.

  But he was trying. Ryan Morgan had never tried. He had enjoyed his life. He had liked the power, the reputation and the intimidation. He had fed on the fear he’d created in everyone around him. He had liked being the biggest, the baddest, the meanest son of a bitch to whom Jimmy Falcone entrusted his business. It was ironic that what had given Ryan such pride had taken his life. It was Jimmy Falcone who’d ordered his death. There was no proof, of course. There rarely was when Falcone was involved. But it was no secret. Everyone knew.

  “If you were so much like Morgan, why aren’t you still part of that gang? When he died, why didn’t you take over?”

  “I lost interest, I guess. I didn’t want to take over. I just wanted to get out.”

  Drawing to a stop at a red light, she looked his way once again. This time she smiled. “And maybe, Reid,” she said softly, “you never were quite so much like him after all.”

  Chapter 4

  It was their final trip into the condo. Reid stood at the expanse of glass that made up the outer wall of the bedroom and gazed down while Cassie gathered the last of her belongings from the closet. From up here, the city was both familiar and foreign. There were places so well known that they couldn’t be mistaken even from a distance, but at the same time there was an alien feel to them. There was no shabbiness, no dirt, no poverty or decay. From eighteen stories up, New Orleans was no less than a lovely city cradled in the river’s bend. From eighteen stories up, there were no problems.

  Too bad he lived eighteen stories down.

  �
�Great view, huh?” Cassie laid the clothing on the bed, then came to lean against the glass.

  He glanced at her just long enough to get a glimpse of silky brown hair, smooth skin, long lashes and lightly colored lips. “Yeah,” he agreed, with no thought at all to the city below.

  “When I first moved in, all I did was look out. I couldn’t believe I had the good luck to have the place for my own—temporarily, of course. After a while, though, I got kind of restless. I mean, you can’t live your life looking out. The apartment is too big for me. I felt lost half the time. It’s too cold, too. I swear, I don’t ever want to see gray again until my hair starts to turn.” She smiled, and he saw it reflected in the glass. “And then there are the neighbors.”

  “What’s wrong with the neighbors?”

  “They’re rich.”

  “So’s your brother-in-law.”

  Another faint smile. “Smith has money. These people are rich. There’s a difference.”

  “Not where I come from,” he said dryly. “On Serenity anyone with money is rich.”

  “Smith is smart, talented and works hard. The fact that he has family money is immaterial. It doesn’t affect how he does things.”

  “So your sister is married to a man rich enough to not care about how rich he is. It must be nice.”

  “I guess. Frankly I never wanted to be rich, although I do sometimes think about all the good the right person—like Karen—could do with a few million bucks,” she said. “But I try to live by my friend Judith’s philosophy. She says she’ll never have a lot, but she’ll always have enough. I would be satisfied with that.”

  Lately he’d had more than enough, money-wise, but money wasn’t all a person needed in his life for satisfaction. Friends would be nice. Family. The promise of a better future. A woman, he added, giving Cassie a sidelong glance. A woman—the right woman—could make up for not having anything else.

  With a sudden, loud sigh, she turned away from the window. “I guess I’m ready to go. After we drop this stuff off, I need to pick up something from my parents’ house. If you’ll go with me, I’ll treat you to lunch afterwards.”

  He almost answered without thinking: Sure, he would go. He would help with the rest of the stuff. He would sit down to eat across from her. He would deliberately prolong this time with her. In time, though, he stopped himself and gave her invitation careful consideration. I need to pick up something from my parents’ house. He knew little about the Wades, but it was enough to know that they weren’t like any parents he’d ever met. They were married, for one thing, and apparently happily so. They’d raised thirteen kids to be good, productive adults and hadn’t abandoned a single one. They’d worked hard to escape Serenity, they went to church and had probably never broken a law in their lives, neither God’s nor man’s, and they were still protective of their youngest daughter. How thrilled would they be to see her with him?

  “I’d love to tell you that we could slip in, get the dresser and slip out again in under ten minutes, but it wouldn’t be true,” she admitted as she began gathering the hangers. “No one gets in and out with my mother in twice that time. She’ll be full of curiosity because it’s been a long time since I’ve taken anyone male to the house, and she’ll want to know all about you.”

  He waited until she moved toward the door before he approached the bed and scooped up the last thick pile of clothes, dividing the hangers evenly between both hands. “And what would you have me tell her? That I grew up on Serenity? That I have an arrest record a couple of miles long? That I used to work for Jimmy Falcone? That I finally gave up that life when my best friend got shot in the head? That now I work in a seedy bar and a two-bit garage and live in a shabby apartment above the bar? Right across the hall from you?”

  From the door, she gave him one of those unnervingly cool looks that she was so good at. “I would expect you to say, ‘It’s nice to meet you, Mrs. Wade,’ and leave the rest to me.”

  The rest. Answering the questions, fending off the curiosity, brushing off the concern. There would be concern. No self-respecting mother in the city would want him hanging around her daughter. Even Tanya’s mother, who lived over in Gretna with her fourth or fifth husband and saw her daughter only once in a blue moon, hadn’t approved of their relationship.

  With a stubborn set to her jaw, Cassie left the bedroom. After a moment, he followed, waiting by the door while she made a quick trip around the apartment, checking to make sure she had everything. The place was spotless, not a thing out of place anywhere. She could walk out one minute, and the pickiest tenants in the world could come in the next and find nothing to complain about.

  Once she finished her inspection, they left. He waited until they were in the garage and had hung all the clothes on the bar that stretched across the back seat before he rather grudgingly accepted her invitation. “Would you also expect me to say, ‘It’s a pleasure meeting you, Mr. Wade’?”

  Her expression was guarded. “My father always takes an assortment of grandchildren out on Saturdays. He won’t be there.” Then she gave in and almost smiled. He discovered he wanted her to smile, wanted it too damn much. “I don’t expect any male acquaintance to meet my father right up front.”

  Acquaintance. It was a perfectly acceptable term to describe their relationship. After all, they weren’t friends, and they certainly weren’t anything more intimate, even if he did lie awake nights thinking about it. They were acquaintances. Still, he thought as he slid into the seat and fastened the seat belt, the word rankled. “What was wrong with the last acquaintance you took home?”

  She grinned as she backed out of the parking space. “Trevor? My parents couldn’t stand him. He was a rebellious sort—or, at least, he thought he was. He dressed in black leather and behaved sullenly most of the time. He reminded Mama and Daddy too much of this guy that my sister Jolie used to date on Serenity. His name was Nicky Carlucci. I think he was a friend of Jamey’s.”

  “I know Carlucci.”

  “I guess that’s logical, considering that you both worked for Falcone. It’s hard to imagine Jolie’s old boyfriend and Jamey’s best friend turning out the way he did.”

  Reid’s only response was a shrug. He wasn’t sure Carlucci was so bad. In his few dealings with him, the man had been fair. He’d been a good lawyer who had gotten Reid out of jail a few times. More in his favor, Jamey had remained friends with him right up until he went to prison. Whatever Nick Carlucci had done hadn’t been enough to undo their lifelong friendship.

  Occasionally Reid found himself wishing that Jamey could be so forgiving of the things he had done. He was willing to bet his crimes weren’t as serious as Carlucci’s. But then, he and his father had never had a relationship to survive.

  Forcing his attention back to the original conversation, he asked, not completely free of jealousy, “Whatever happened to Trevor?”

  “He got accepted at Princeton. He cut his hair, ditched the leather, straightened up his act, kissed me goodbye and headed back east. The last I heard, he was in graduate school working on an MBA.” She sighed dramatically. “He was just a pseudorebel.”

  As opposed to the real thing sitting beside her. Was that it? She was interested in him because she had a thing for rebels, for guys who didn’t conform to her parents’ standards of the proper man for her? Wouldn’t that be a joke if it was true? If he was trying to mend his ways so he could have a decent relationship or two, and she wanted a relationship only because of his old ways? Quite a joke, but he didn’t find it the least bit amusing.

  “So you like guys who are a little crooked.”

  “No. I like guys who are decent, responsible and mature. Who understand loyalty and commitment. Who can. make a few mistakes without letting them ruin their lives. Who can accept a woman as an equal. Who can be kind to fatherless kids and homeless puppies.”

  Feeling the beginnings of a flush, he turned to stare out the side window. She was aware of his friendship with J.T., only grudgingly perm
itted by Shawntae out of respect for Karen and Jamey, and that mutt... So he’d fed a scrawny puppy enough to keep it alive until it found an owner. It was no big deal. Jethro didn’t even remember. He treated Reid to the same mildly ferocious stance that any other man who went close to Karen got, including Jamey.

  She parked the truck in front of O’Shea’s and climbed out to unload. The street had never been intended to provide two lanes of travel and parking, so the Blazer blocked half the street. It was all right, though. Other than Karen and Trevor Morgan, only a couple other people in the neighborhood had cars. Most of them had all they could do to cover the necessary expenses of rent and food. Like him, they walked wherever they needed to go or at least as far as the nearest bus stop on Decatur.

  Jamey was busy behind the bar when they went inside, their arms full of clothes. It was probably a payday weekend for most of the customers. That was the only way to get so many of them into O’Shea’s by noon on a Saturday. With no more than a slight nod of greeting to his father, Reid followed Cassie up the stairs, into her unlocked apartment and straight back to the bedroom.

  There was something personal about being in this bedroom. The one in the condo was so big, so formal and unwelcoming. It was the sort of place he couldn’t imagine himself ever setting foot in, the sort of place where he couldn’t in a million years imagine himself sleeping or doing anything else. But this room was smaller, warmer, cozier. In size and shape, it was exactly the same as his room next door. It was familiar, a place where he not only could imagine himself sleeping but virtually the same as the place where he did sleep.

  It was more intimate.

  He stood near the open closet door, his gaze focused on the room while Cassie hung the clothes. She had mixed a little of the same yellow from the walls into the ceiling paint, giving it a faint warm glow. She’d done a nice job of painting, sanding and cleaning. Even the old bed looked new with its fresh paint. Once she’d made it with the sheets and the thick comforter, still in their packages on the bare mattress, it would be transformed from a ratty old piece of junk into something worth having. When she was finished with the apartment, she would have created another oddity like Karen’s house—a neat, nicely done place that could belong in practically any other neighborhood in the city instead of the shabbiest and dreariest. If she was like Karen, though—and she was—she wouldn’t be satisfied with this small success. Next she would probably want to fix up the hall, the bathroom, his apartment and the kitchen, then the bar. And if she got away with that, she would want to turn her attention to the exterior of the building.