Loyalty. The word made him feel sick. What had she ever done to deserve his loyalty? She’d been a lousy mother who had run out on him a long time ago. She hadn’t loved him, hadn’t protected him and hadn’t ever, not even on one occasion, put his needs above her own. Even now, here she was living in the same city with her only son, and yet, if it weren’t for her legal problems, she never would have spared him a moment of her thoughts.
But she was his mother. She had given birth to him, had fed him, clothed him, sheltered him—for a time, at least. Clearly the relationship meant nothing to her, but it counted for something—for too much—with him. Hadn’t he stayed on Serenity all these years in part because of her? Hadn’t he nurtured a few pathetic dreams in those early years about her discovering that she missed and wanted him, about her coming back for him? Hadn’t he spent half of his life taking care of her and looking out for her and too much of the other half worrying about and missing her?
He was a fool. There was no denying that. Any man worthy of the name would turn his back on her, just as she had always turned her back on him. No man in his right mind would risk every decent, caring relationship he had to help the one person who’d done the most damage in his life. No man with an ounce of pride, dignity or self-respect would cause a woman like Cassie even a moment’s pain for the sake of a woman like Meghan.
But that was exactly what he intended to do. Maybe, when it was over, he could make things right with Cassie. Maybe she would still want him, Jamey would forgive him and Karen would understand. But right now he had to help Meghan. She was his mother. He had no choice.
He took up a place at the front window to watch for Falcone’s car...and for Cassie. It was almost time for her and Jaye Stephens to bring the kids outside for ten minutes of play, releasing tension and burning off pent-up energy. Sometimes she played with them. Other times she watched from the shade of a tall live oak. Once last week, she’d sat in the arbor with Tanya’s niece on her lap for a few quiet minutes of one-on-one time. He’d wanted that for himself last week, to share a few minutes of quiet intimacy with her, and he’d gotten it. He wanted more—would always want more—but he might never get it again.
She had come downstairs last night to fix her dinner and offered to cook for him, too, but he’d said no. Not No, thanks. Not I’m not hungry. Not I feel so damn sick inside that I can’t eat a thing. Just No. Short, blunt, rude. It had brought that wounded, rejected look into her eyes again that left him feeling damned to a certain hell.
He hadn’t seen her again since then. She had taken her dinner upstairs and hadn’t come down again. Her door had been closed, her apartment quiet, when he’d come up after closing up the bar, and she had left for school this morning without knocking at his door. Standing in the living room, listening to the sounds of her leaving, he had told himself that he was glad, that he didn’t want to see her this morning and sure as hell didn’t want to talk to her, but he had lied. She wasn’t more than a hundred feet away right now, but already he missed her. He wished he’d accepted her offer of an early dinner yesterday, wished that instead of moping around the apartment until time to relieve Jamey in the bar, he had spent that hour or so in her apartment, in her bed. He wished he’d spent last night with her, just one last night, and had gotten one last kiss from her this morning.
Across the street, the two classroom doors opened almost simultaneously, and kids raced into the yard. Jaye carried a chair out with her, positioned it near the brick wall and stretched out comfortably to watch the children. Cassie came out last and headed for the side steps leading to the veranda.
For the first time, he noticed that Karen was there, seated in a rocker with Sean Morgan—soon to be O’Shea, according to Jamey’s announcement in the bar last night—in her arms. Jamey was standing beside them, bending over the baby. They looked like the perfect family, Reid thought, hating the lump in his throat that was equal parts sentimentality and resentment. He was happy for them, but it was tarnished by bitterness. How different would his life have been if Jamey had been even half as eager to have him as he was to have Sean? If his father had ever given a damn about him, he would have tracked Meghan down when she fled New Orleans. He would have reclaimed his son and given him a decent home with at least one parent who cared, and now, all these years later, Meghan wouldn’t be able to come back into Reid’s life and use guilt and what should be meaningless ties to coerce him into helping her.
But Jamey hadn’t given a damn. He had come home and discovered his wife and son were gone, and he had been relieved, happy to be freed from the marriage and the fatherhood that he’d never wanted. Now, twenty-six years later, he had a new wife and a new son. Soon—unless he was a more forgiving man than Reid had seen evidence to suggest—he would have no use for the old one.
Reid became aware of the car before it drove into sight. The engine was finely tuned, a far cry from the shake-rattle-and sputter of Trevor Morgan’s car. Nothing but the best for Jimmy Falcone and his current whore, Reid thought bitterly as he picked up his keys and left the apartment. Immediately, though, he was ashamed of the thought. Whatever Meghan was doing with Jimmy and why were none of his business. All he had to do was the job the FBI had given him and get out with his life intact.
The car was parked in front of O’Shea’s when he unlocked the French doors and stepped outside. Across the street, some of the kids were still playing, but most of them had stopped and come to the fence to stare at the obscenely expensive steelgray car with its heavily tinted windows. Jaye was staring, too. On the veranda, Karen looked worried and Jamey was scowling. He might not recognize the car—it wasn’t Jimmy’s usual long, black limo—but no doubt he suspected who the owner was. Who else had the nerve—or confidence—to send an eighty-thousand-dollar car into a neighborhood like Serenity?
A man got out of the front passenger seat and opened the rear door. Reid stopped, unable for an instant to make himself move forward. This was his last chance to say no, to back away or walk past, to run hard and fast in any other direction. This was his last chance to stay in Jamey’s good graces, and Karen’s, and J.T.’s, who was standing at the fence watching him with a look of solemnity that no kid his age should wear. It was his last chance to keep Cassie in his life—Cassie, who had separated herself from the others and was watching him with a stark, disbelieving look.
It was his last chance to save himself.
And he threw it away for a chance to save his mother. He crossed the sidewalk to the car, then stood motionless a moment, his gaze locked on Cassie. She was gripping the railing so tightly with both hands that, if the wood were protected by fewer coats of paint, it might crumble, and she was looking at him, silently, eloquently pleading. He wished he could tell her not to worry, wished he could assure her that everything would be all right. He wished he could beg her to trust him, no matter what, but he couldn’t. If Falcone’s people were going to trust him, according to Meghan and Sinclair, then his own people couldn’t. They had to believe the worst.
Even if it damn near killed him.
The man waiting by the door shifted impatiently, but Reid didn’t look at him. He drew a deep breath, then climbed into the back seat. The guy closed the door and got in, and the driver pulled away from the curb. At the end of the block, he turned, then drove slowly past Kathy’s House again, giving Reid too much time to examine the expressions of the three on the porch. Karen looked shocked, paler than usual and afraid. Jamey’s surprise was quickly giving way to the cold, bitter, scornful anger Reid knew so well. As for Cassie, she couldn’t even bring herself to look. She was leaning against one of the posts that supported the roof, her head bowed, her hair falling forward to hide her face.
The last face Reid saw, though, was the one he thought might haunt him the most. It was J.T., by himself now, standing on the sidewalk in front of the gate. Although J.T.’s mother’s first rule of survival for her son had long been to stay away from Reid, they’d been friends anyway for a long time. Judgin
g by the look of disappointment on the kid’s face, Reid knew they wouldn’t be friends any longer.
Scowling, he slumped back in the seat. He damn well hoped Meghan and Sinclair appreciated what he was doing, because it was a sure bet that no one else did.
It was a leisurely drive across the river to Falcone’s estate. A tall stand of perfectly groomed shrubs extended a mile along the road, divided in thirds by two electronically controlled security gates set into granite pillars. Behind the shrubs was a twelve-foot-tall iron fence, wired for sound and monitored twenty-four hours a day. There were two armed guards at each gate and a number more on the grounds. The place was a fortress for the rich and well connected.
That included his mother. As of this morning, the wellconnected part, at least, included him, too.
The gates swung open as the car approached. The driver bypassed the main house and went around back to the garage instead. There, once again, the passenger opened the back door, and Reid stepped out, glancing around with curiosity. He might have worked sporadically for Falcone in the past, but he’d never been invited to his estate, where even the garage was a damn sight more luxurious than any place on Serenity. It was filled with cars of the sort Reid would never get his hands on, not unless he resorted to stealing again. There was the limo in an oversize bay at the end, a Jag, a classic hardtop T-bird and a twin except in color to the Mercedes he had just arrived in. Each of the cars was in showroom condition, treated with more care than most people in Falcone’s life.
Reid turned back to the man who’d opened the door. “So what do I do now?”
In reply the man gestured toward the house. Reid turned and found himself face-to-face with his mother for the first time in eleven years.
Her appearance wasn’t a total shock—he’d seen Sinclair’s photo, after all—but it left him staring. She bore about as much resemblance to the woman he remembered as the Jag did to Trevor’s gray-primer Ford. She was slender instead of too-much-drugs-and-booze skinny. Her hair was tinted auburn, short and sleek, instead of brown, long and unkempt. Her skin was clear, and her blue eyes were bright and alert in a way that he’d never seen. The unhealthy, scrawny, trashy look he remembered was gone, replaced by an air of good health and good living with a veneer of the best sophistication money could buy.
She was a stranger.
He was putting his life at risk for a stranger.
“Hello, Reid.” Walking with grace across the cobblestone drive in spite of her heels, she came straight to him and slid her arms around him in an expensively perfumed embrace. He stiffened, disliking the contact, resenting all the times he would have done anything to get such a hug from her, remembering all the times he’d gotten the back of her hand instead.
Wisely she kept the embrace brief, pulling back after only a few seconds, then sliding her arm through his and starting toward the house. “Come along. We’ll find someplace quiet where we can talk.”
She drew him past the biggest swimming pool he’d ever seen, through the center of a flower-filled gazebo and into the house. It was huge, about ten times more space than she and Jimmy could ever need, and intimidatingly quiet. He felt as if he were in a museum as he followed her through inlaid-marble halls, past one elaborately decorated, antique-filled, high-ceilinged room after another. She finally settled in what was probably the only room in the house where he could feel reasonably comfortable, a sitting room with windows, plants and wicker furniture of such quality that it shared little in common with most of the stuff he’d seen. Not even Cassie’s wicker dresser—
His mouth tightened. He hadn’t helped her move the dresser to her apartment or finish the other pieces. Monday afternoon they’d been too busy in bed, and yesterday he’d been out feeling sorry for himself. He might never get a chance to see the dresser in her bedroom, might never get a chance to set foot in her apartment—or her life—again.
Meghan arranged herself on a chaise while he took a seat nearby. “You’ve grown up.”
“A kid does that in eleven years.”
She laughed. “It’s been a long time. Not long enough to make you forgive me, was it?”
He didn’t reply.
“You would realize that I did you a favor if you weren’t so stubborn. I wasn’t much of a mother.” She admitted it freely, without guilt, without regret. “You were better off with your grandmother.”
“My grandmother kicked me out after a few months. I lived on the streets.”
“Oh.” For a moment, she sounded disconcerted, then with a wave of a manicured hand in the air, she dismissed his pronouncement with a flash of bright red nails. “You would have been on the streets with me, too. I had a few tough years after I left you here.”
“Obviously your luck has changed.” His luck had changed, too, every bit as dramatically as hers. Now, thanks to her, the pendulum had swung back. He was back where he’d started, working for a man who gave corruption a bad name and with less reason to hope than he’d had in a long time.
Meghan took exception to his dry statement. “I worked hard for everything I have.”
“Yeah. I heard what kind of work you did to get where you are now.”
She gave him a cool, measuring look. “Considering what kind of work you’ve engaged in—when you’ve bothered to work at all—you hardly have room to criticize.” She paused to shake out a cigarette and light it, then abruptly announced, “You look like your father.”
There had been a time when he’d fiercely resented every O’Shea trait he’d recognized in himself, from his height to his blond hair to a few unconscious mannerisms. That time was months in the past, though. If he had to take after one of his parents, Jamey was the better choice.
“You two ever settle things?”
“We were working on it. You’ve unsettled them all over again.”
She smiled thinly. “How is he?”
“Fine. He’s married now.”
“And your grandmother?”
Even though he hadn’t been close to the old woman, even though she had kicked him out on the street, his resentment grew at Meghan’s careless question. “She died years ago.”
There was a flash of regret in her eyes, but it disappeared as quickly as it had come. She was so self-absorbed that she couldn’t conjure up more than a passing remorse for her own mother’s death. What the hell was he doing here? It meant nothing to her that her mother was dead, nothing that she was disrupting her son’s life to the point that he might never get it straight again. Since the bonds between mother and child were so obviously missing from her life, why the hell was he here? Why was he helping her? Why did he care when she didn’t?
Because that was the way it had always been. To her, he had been a burden from the moment she’d known of his existence. He had ruined her plans, her future and her life. He had forced her into a marriage she’d never wanted and had been her excuse for everything that had ever gone wrong. It was his fault that she’d been eighteen, divorced, uneducated and on her own in Atlanta, that she’d never been able to make anything of herself, that one man or another hadn’t wanted her, that she’d had to resort to drugs or booze to find any pleasure. To him, she had been his mother. She’d been his entire world.
She had never wanted him, but he had always needed her. She had always neglected him, but for as long as he could remember, he had taken care of her. He had fed her when she was too sick to eat, had put her to bed when she was too drunk to find her way, had lied, cheated and stolen for her. Now here he was, trying once again to help, but this time would be the last. Once he was finished here, he would never see her again. He would never need her again. He would have Karen, who, in six months, had been a better mother than Meghan had ever been, and that would be enough.
Depending on the generosity of Jamey’s and Cassie’s spirits, Karen might have to be enough. She might be the only one to forgive him.
Abruptly Meghan rose from the chair and tapped him on the shoulder. “Come on, let’s go shopping. If yo
u’re going to work for Jimmy Falcone, you have to dress better than that. We’ll buy enough to get you started—my treat. After that, you’re on your own.”
He followed her out of the room. He’d known his clothes wouldn’t be suitable, though his jeans were relatively new and unfaded and the blue-and-white-striped button-down shirt was starched and pressed. He’d seen how Jimmy’s people dressed—in well-cut suits usually roomy enough for a holster or two underneath—but, hell, he was a garage mechanic and a bartender. Just how many suits did they expect him to have in his closet?
After a stop to pick up her handbag, she led the way to the garage, where she literally snapped her fingers in the direction of one of the men lounging there. “Give Reid the keys to the burgundy Mercedes. If Mr. Falcone asks, tell him we’ve gone shopping.”
The man tossed a set of keys to Reid. He approached the car slowly. He had never driven a car that could compare to the Mercedes before—had never even wanted to until that moment. Circling behind it, he started to open the driver’s door, but stopped when Meghan, standing impatiently on the opposite side, gave him a chiding look.
“You’re being paid to be my driver, Reid. My driver always opens and closes the doors for me.” She said it with just the right amount of snippiness, as if she had long been accustomed to such courtesies. Not a bad trick for someone who had many times found the fare for the city bus out of her reach.
He went around the car, opened the door, waited until she slid inside, then closed it again. Once again he returned to the driver’s side and got in, inserted the key and turned it. The engine sprang to life, smoother and more powerful than any he’d ever gotten his hands on. Driving this car would be pure pleasure, even if his reasons for doing so weren’t.
As he backed out of the garage, he met Meghan’s gaze in the rearview mirror. “I hope Jimmy is well insured.”
The Taming Of Reid Donovan Page 19