The Taming Of Reid Donovan

by Pappano, Marilyn

  “What I do is my own business, O’Shea, not—”

  His voice ominously low, Jamey interrupted. “Don’t call me that.”

  O’Shea. For years that was all Reid had called him—except to his face, when, with all the bitter anger of the punk he’d been, he had preferred bastard. Using his father’s last name—the last name he had been denied—had been one way of distancing himself, of never letting himself forget how far from a real father-son relationship they were and would likely always be. It hadn’t been until recently that he’d been able to call him Jamey. He couldn’t even imagine ever reaching the point where he might call him Dad.

  “What I do is my own business,” he repeated. “If you’re angry about it, that’s your problem. You deal with it.”

  Jamey walked to the end of the bar, then turned back to look at him. “I’m not angry with you, Reid,” he said tiredly. “I’m just disappointed as hell.”

  As he walked away, Reid wished he could say the words didn’t hurt, wished he could pretend that he was so accustomed to such remarks that they just rolled off his back. After all, hadn’t he lived most of his life with his mother’s indifference and his father’s contempt?

  But he couldn’t pretend. He was already lying to everyone else, but he couldn’t lie to himself. His father’s simple, quiet words did hurt. They hurt so damn much.

  The evening passed in a blur. None of the customers seemed in a better mood than he was. No one wanted to talk. No one wanted anything but to drink his drinks in peace. For a moment, he considered joining them—filling a dozen glasses or more with samples of every beer and liquor Jamey had in stock, pulling a chair up to a table and methodically emptying them. But getting drunk never solved anything. Meghan had taught him that.

  Seeing her today had been a letdown. It wasn’t that she’d changed. She had always been self-centered and shallow. His own expectations had let him down. Even though he had accepted eleven years ago that she’d made a deliberate choice to remove him from her life, he had imagined a hundred different reconciliations, every one of them involving great emotion on her part. In every little dream, she had discovered some previously untapped and limitless source of love for her only son, and she had been driven to return to him, to make amends with him and make a happy, loving home for him. They had been the foolish dreams of a foolish child.

  He no longer expected love from her, but he would have liked some little regret. He would have appreciated some hint of gratitude for the help he was giving her or some acknowledgment of the sacrifice he was making for her. All he’d gotten, though, had been an impersonal hug, offered for effect, and a long day of Meghan discoursing on Meghan.

  It hadn’t been the reunion of his dreams, but it had taken care of those dreams, once and for all. He wasn’t a kid any longer. He didn’t need the mother who was never going to be there for him. All he needed was to know that he’d treated her fairly, that he had done what he could before walking away from her. Once this mess was over and she had betrayed Jimmy to the best of her ability, there would be nothing left between them.

  At the other end of the bar, the phone rang, a rare occurrence. When he answered, a voice belonging to a woman who embodied the ideal mother responded. “This is Rosemary Wade. I understand I can reach my daughter at this number.”

  He wondered how she had come to that understanding. As of yesterday, Cassie hadn’t confided her change of address to anyone in her family for fear of their reaction. Today she was probably wishing she’d never made the change in the first place. She would have been better off if she’d stayed in her expensive condo and far away from him. “Hold on, Mrs. Wade,” he said quietly. “I’ll see if she’s upst—”

  “Oh, I know she’s not there right now. She just left her sister’s a few minutes ago. I was just calling to confirm—Reid?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “So she is living there. When you two came to the house last weekend, you were helping her move in there, weren’t you?”

  “Yes, ma’am.” He felt guilty for the lie she’d been told, though he hadn’t been the one to tell it. Hell, he’d hardly said anything at all to the woman.

  “Is she safe there?”

  Safe from everything but him. “Things have gotten better down here. It’s not a place where she should be living, but it could be worse.”

  “Oh, that’s reassuring.”

  “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean...” Seeing a slender figure cross the street out front and head for the bar, he felt a rush of relief. “She just came in. Do you want to talk to her?”

  “Of course I do.”

  Cassie came across the bar, pointedly ignoring everyone in it. When she was only a half-dozen feet away, he spoke. “Telephone, Cassie.”

  She hesitated until he laid the receiver on the bar and went to the other end. Finally she climbed onto the stool and picked up the phone. He tried not to listen to her end of the conversation, tried even harder not to watch her, but he couldn’t stop. She was so damn beautiful, and he wanted to say so damn much to her. He wanted to hold her. He wanted her to save him.

  When she finished with the call, she hung up and simply sat there for a moment, her head lowered. He stood ten feet away, drying a glass that might not have been wet to start, and tried to think of anything to say. At last he settled on the obvious. “You finally told your family that you’ve moved.”

  She glanced up, looked as if she were going to say something obnoxious, then shook her head. “Yeah, I told them. They weren’t thrilled.”

  “What did you expect? They worry about you.”

  Her eyes darkened a shade or two. “Is that supposed to make a difference? Like it makes a difference to you that Jamey, Karen and I are worried about you?”

  He carefully set the glass down, laid the towel beside it, then approached her. “Cassie, it’s just a job. I’m not doing anything illegal. I’ve just been hired to drive this woman around. That’s all I’m doing.”

  “No. What you’re doing is breaking your parents’ hearts.”

  He knew it was stupid to go closer. It was crazy to touch her band. It was downright lunacy to look into her eyes, and it was madness to ask the obvious question, but he asked anyway. “What about you?”

  Turning her hand over, she gave his a squeeze, then pulled free and circled the bar. There she looked back. “Don’t worry about my heart, Reid. You’ve already broken it.”

  He followed her into the hall, catching hold of her again, pushing her back against the wall and holding her there with his body. She didn’t struggle, didn’t try to get away, not even when his mouth pressed against hers. Instead, she brought her hands to his shoulders. She moved against him—not struggling, not trying to get away, but trying to get closer. She even started to open her mouth to his tongue, but stopped, leaving him with a kiss that couldn’t begin to satisfy his need.

  “Damn it, Cassie, don’t shut me out!” he whispered fiercely before kissing her again, but she resisted. He could have coaxed her, could have pleaded or begged for that one small concession. He could have done any of a dozen things until he felt the dampness of the tear that had slipped down her cheek. Filled with sorrow, he ended the kiss and let her go. His silent curses echoed her footfalls on the stairs.

  Damn Jimmy Falcone. Damn Remy Sinclair and especially Meghan. Most of all, though, he damned himself for the biggest fool who’d ever known and lost a woman like Cassie.

  Chapter 9

  Traffic was light on Interstate 10 as Reid drove toward New Orleans. In the back seat Meghan was staring out the window, her expression decidedly bored. In the week he’d been driving her, she had apparently bought everything her heart desired in New Orleans and was now expanding her horizons. She had chatted all the way to Baton Rouge this morning about the shops where they would go, the things she would buy, the money she would spend. On this return trip, the Mercedes’s trunk was filled with boxes and bags from the city’s most exclusive stores, Jimmy was about eight thousan
d dollars poorer and Meghan was moody. Funny how, after so many years apart, Reid still recognized the mood that once would have resulted in a weepy attempt to drown her sorrows. Personally he had favored her mean, angry binges. Getting knocked around had always been preferable to her endless melancholy tears.

  For the first time since leaving the last outrageously expensive store, she spoke. “Do you have any fond memories of me?”

  He looked in the rearview mirror to find her watching him, her expression as idle and disinterested as if she had pointed out that there were clouds in the sky overhead. After a moment, he shifted his gaze back to the road. “No.”

  “Go on, answer truthfully,” she said, a hint of bitter laughter in her voice. “Don’t spare my feelings.” Then she gave a great sigh. “None at all? No Christmases, no birthdays, nothing?”

  “We never celebrated Christmas or birthdays.” He was twenty-six years old, and he’d never had a Christmas tree or a birthday cake. Last year’s Christmas gift from Karen was the first he’d ever received. “Which memories do you think I should treasure? All the times you hit me? The times I went hungry because you spent the food money on drugs? The nights I spent alone while you were out partying? How about the times I broke into our old apartments to steal our stuff after we’d gotten evicted yet again? Or maybe—”

  “All right, you made your point. Living with me wasn’t easy. I never wanted a baby, you know. That made it easy for me to blame you whenever something went wrong. When I left your father to go to Atlanta, I should have left you, too. Jamey would have provided you with more stability than I did.”

  “He never wanted a baby, either,” Reid reminded her, even as the image of Karen holding Sean in her lap and Jamey leaning over them came to mind.

  “Maybe not, but he would have dealt with the disappointment better than me. He would have accepted his responsibilities. He’s good about that. You must get it from him.”

  Reid ignored her description of him as a disappointment and focused instead on her last words. “I must get what from him?”

  She waved her hand, her nails a brilliant scarlet flash in the mirror. “Your sense of responsibility. Obligation. That’s why you’re here. Because I’m your mother and for some odd reason, you think that’s supposed to mean something.”

  “It’s supposed to,” he agreed, then dryly added, “Of course, the money doesn’t hurt.”

  Her smile came slowly. “Spoken like a true Donovan. Of course, that first part was more like a true O’Shea. Your father was always looking out for others.”

  “While you were always looking out for yourself.”

  “I have to look out for myself. I don’t have a husband, family or friends to turn to, and I can’t count on guilt over a lousy mother-son relationship to work with you again, can I?”

  He gave a shake of his head. Not a flicker of emotion crossed her reflection in the mirror. No regret, no dismay, no sadness. But he wouldn’t feel regret or dismay once he’d seen her for the last time. Sadness, maybe—after all, he’d had those dreams of a loving mother for a long time—but mostly only relief. He would be relieved to watch his mother walk away and know that he would never see her again, and that was reason for sadness.

  “So what are you going to do with all this sweet money Jimmy’s paying you? Got a girl to spend it on?”

  His hands tightened around the steering wheel. He’d hardly seen Cassie in the past week. She had come through the bar last evening while he was working, carrying the little table that he’d stripped for her, now all sanded, stained and poly-urethaned. A second trip had brought the bookcase, painted a high-gloss white. He had offered to help her with the dresser, but she had politely turned him down. She could handle it, or she and Karen could, or she and Jamey. She and anybody else in the whole damn world except him.

  He sighed heavily. “I was seeing someone until last week.”

  “What? She didn’t approve of your new job?”

  “No.”

  “You’re kidding. You’re a chauffeur. You drive a car. What’s to disapprove of?”

  “Well, let’s see. I’ve been in trouble with the law since I was a kid. I’ve spent the last seven months trying to get straightened out, and then I go and take a job as a chauffeur to the mistress and business associate of the most powerful organized-crime boss Louisiana has ever seen—who happens to have been my boss a few years back when I almost wound up in prison. What could she possibly disapprove of?”

  He got a glimpse of another casual, dismissive wave. “What does she do for a living that she can afford to be so high and mighty?”

  “She teaches kindergarten through third grade at the Serenity Street school.”

  “Oh, how sweet.” Her sarcasm made the muscles in his jaw clench. “You know, Reid, opposites might attract, but they don’t live happily ever after. Your little schoolteacher friend might have a lot of fun with you now, but when she settles down, it’s going to be with someone who’s just like her—someone educated. Someone who hasn’t been in trouble with the law all his life. Someone she wouldn’t have to be ashamed of with her family and friends.”

  The muscles tightened even more. She was only putting his own fears into words, but he hated hearing them, especially hated hearing them in that smug, confident voice of hers. Damn it, mothers were supposed to offer reassurance, encouragement and comfort, not destroy hopes and confidence. But Meghan freely admitted that she was a lousy mother, which apparently exempted her from common courtesy.

  “What—no argument?”

  He wanted to insist that Cassie wasn’t like that. She wasn’t ashamed of him, and she didn’t care that he’d been in trouble. She was just worried that he was going to get into trouble again, but it wasn’t going to happen. All the money in the world couldn’t make him go back to a way of life that always had been and always would be his greatest shame. Spending time in Jimmy’s big, expensive house didn’t make him any less appreciative of his own little apartment, shabbiness and all. That life held no appeal for him. Everything he wanted, everything he loved, could be found on one block of the poorest street in New Orleans’s poorest neighborhood.

  By the time they crossed the Mississippi River and reached Jimmy’s estate, it was nearly six-thirty and he was feeling anxious. He was supposed to relieve Jamey at O’Shea’s in another five minutes, but there was no way he could make it—and no way Jamey would be interested in hearing his excuses. In spite of his claim to the contrary last week, his old man was angry and seemed more so every time Reid saw him. Every evening when he walked into the bar, Reid half expected to get fired, but it hadn’t happened yet. He would like to think that his father was giving him the benefit of the doubt, but it was more likely that Jamey cared more about spending time with his wife and new son than he did about what was happening with his other son. He could tolerate Reid’s presence in the bar as long as it gave him time at home with Sean.

  He parked near the back door, as. Meghan had instructed, and made two trips upstairs with her purchases. He was on his way out to move the car to the garage, then get one of the men hanging out there to give him a ride home, when Meghan called his name. It was echoed from the doorway leading into Jimmy’s private study. He turned and saw Meghan coming down the stairs with a bag before settling his gaze on his boss.

  In all his years in New Orleans, he’d had little face-to-face contact with Jimmy Falcone. Even in the past week, he’d been in the house two dozen times and hadn’t seen the man. He was always shut up in his study, taking care of business elsewhere or meeting with associates over lunch at his favorite restaurant.

  He was a little guy with graying black hair whose dress was always impeccable, his behavior almost always so. To look at him, no one would ever guess that he’d grown up poorer than dirt in a family that had long been considered the trashiest in the parish. People who hadn’t known him back then couldn’t even begin to imagine how far he had come, and all it had taken was determination, hard work, ruthlessness
and an utter disregard for any life but his own.

  “How do you like your job, Reid?”

  Reid shrugged and avoided looking at him by watching Meghan instead. “It’s fine.”

  “He’s not thrilled with the company he’s required to keep,” she said, coming up to slide her arm through Jimmy’s, “but he’s quite taken with the car. He’s a mechanic, you know. Engines impress him, much more than wayward mothers.”

  “That seems only reasonable,” Falcone said mildly. “Any problems?”

  Reid shook his head.

  “Are you okay on money?”

  A nod.

  “I understand you’re still living on Serenity. I have a number of guest cottages here on the estate. If you would like to take advantage of one...”

  Before he had a chance to refuse, Meghan did with a less than charming laugh. “He’s quite happy on Serenity. It seems he’s got a thing for some little schoolteacher there. He wants to stay close to her.” As a flush heated his face, she offered the bag she was carrying. “You mixed up the bags. These shoes are yours.”

  They had spent a good portion of the day in various shoe stores, but all the purchases had been hers. Beyond a cup of coffee while she shopped for lingerie, he hadn’t bought a thing. Of course, there probably weren’t any shoes in the bag. Like the package she’d given him earlier in the week, this one undoubtedly contained information for Sinclair. Just as he’d done before, he would take it home, call the FBI agent and arrange to meet him somewhere crowded. The first time he’d caught a glimpse of cassette tapes, a notebook and a roll of film, and for a moment he had let himself hope that it would be enough, that whatever information she was providing was damning enough to let Reid off the hook. Apparently it hadn’t been, because he was still here and she was passing this new stuff along.