Wicked is the night

by Catherine Mulvany

  He glanced at his watch. Almost eleven. Surely his great-aunt had gone to bed by now.

  And yes, maybe it was silly to worry about Great-aunt Leticia figuring out that he intended to share Nevada’s bed, but he hated to be responsible for besmirching Nevada’s reputation. He felt sure that was how Great-aunt Leticia would word it—besmirching. Old sch£rch heool, his great-aunt, and proud of it. Not to mention judgmental as hell. How was it she’d referred to Luisa Gallo, a woman she’d never even met? As a grasping, disloyal, stone-hearted, money-hungry gold digger?

  Yeah, judging by that minidiatribe, he’d guess Great-aunt Leticia harbored a little animosity toward his former girlfriend.

  Surprisingly, he didn’t. Yes, Luisa had a streak of materialism a mile wide. She loved money and all the things it could buy, but even more than money, she craved adulation. And face it, who would envy a woman who’d tied herself to someone as physically imperfect as Trick? Yes, her defection had stung his pride, but his heart? No. After the fact, he’d realized that he hadn’t loved Luisa any more than she’d loved him.

  Nevada, on the other hand…

  Someone knocked softly on his door.

  A spurt of excitement set his heart thumping. Nevada, he thought. Then the door opened a crack and he heard Rivers’s hoarse whisper. “Sir, are you awake?”

  “Yes, come in,” he said, unreasonably disappointed.

  Rivers pushed the door open to its fullest extent but remained in the hall. “I don’t wish to disturb you, sir.”

  “You’re not disturbing me. It’s only eleven.”

  “Indeed. I was wondering, sir, if you’d like me to pull your car into the garage. There’s an empty bay large enough to accommodate it.”

  “Great,” Trick said. “I’d appreciate that.” He handed over the keys and Rivers turned on his heel and headed down the hall.

  Trick shut the door behind the butler, wondering again if it was safe to slip along to Nevada’s room. His great-aunt, apparently operating on the theory that distance promoted virtue, had put Nevada at the opposite end of the hall in the room next to the master suite. The only way Nevada could be sleeping any farther from Trick would have been if his great-aunt had arranged for Nevada to stay in the house next door.

  Another soft knock interrupted his thoughts.

  “That was quick,” he said as he opened the door, expecting to find Rivers, Trick’s car keys in hand. Instead, it was Nevada, and she looked as if she’d been crying. He ushered her inside and closed the door. “What’s wrong?”

  “We need to talk.” His heightened expectations took a nosedive. There they were again, those same four terrifying words he’d last heard from Britt on the drive to Reno.

  “Okay.” Talking wasn’t necessarily bad, especially talking with Nevada, but those reddened eyes gave him a moment’s pause. “Have a seat. Tell me what’s wrong.”

  Nevada glanced at the room’s only chair, buried at the moment under a pile of discarded clothing, and chose to sit on the end of the bed instead. A good move, in Trick’s opinion, since it meant he could sit next to her. The better to wrap my arm around you, my dear.

  Or not, he thought as she inched away from him.

  “I’m listening,” he said.

  She took a deep breath, then lifted her chin and turned to face him squarely. “Why didn’t you tell me you had a girlfriend?”

  “Had had,” he corrected her, but she only gave him a puzzled look. “No longer have. Had in the past.”

  “Until she ran off with Ellison.”

  “Right. Though frankly, I doubt it was Philip Luisa lusted after so much as all the money he stole from me.”

  “Marcello told me about the money, but he neglected to mention your girlfriend.”

  “Because she wasn’t important. She isn’t important. Ours was a relationship based on convenience and mutual lust.”

  Nevada didn’t say anything for a long time. Then she raised her head to look directly at him. “Is that how you feel about me, Trick? Is that all that’s between us? Convenience and mutual lust?”

  “I never said that,” he protested.

  Nevada frowned. “No, but you never told me you were just coming off a long-term relationship, either. Seems to me you’ve been holding out.”

  He took her hands in his and met her gaze straight on. “No, I haven’t told you every detail of my life before I met you, just those things that seemed relevant. But you have to believe me when I tell you I didn’t deliberately withhold anything important. Luisa is not important. You are. Nevada, I…care for you.”

  A tremulous smile lit her face. “Good. Because I…care for you, too.” She leaned a little closer. Favorable body language.

  And when he pulled her into his arms, she cuddled up to him with a sigh. Even more favorable body language.

  So he tilted her chin up and did what he’d been dying to do for hours, pressed his mouth to hers.

  At which point Rivers rapped once on the door before barging in, car keys dangling from one doughy fist. “Your keys, sir.”

  Nevada jerked herself away from Trick as if she’d been hit with a Taser.

  Trick glowered at the butler. “Thanks.” Right. Thanks for screwing up my perfect tender moment.

  Rivers seemed quite impervious to Trick’s irritation. “Will there be anything else, sir?”

  “No, Rivers. Definitely not.”

  “How about you, miss? Is there anything you require?”

  She shook her head, then shoved herself to her feet. “I was just leaving.” She bolted for the door, which Rivers held open. In the space of three heartbeats, they were both gone.

  Trick stared at the door. “Well, shit,” he said.

  All during dinner with a pair of potential campaign contributors, Latina firecracker Teresa Montoya and her squat, balding, up-from-the-ba£ upt="rrio husband, Gaspar, Daniel had waited for the call telling him his people had caught up with Whitney, but his phone had remained stubbornly silent. It wasn’t until he was pulling through the electronic gates into the grounds of the riverside estate he shared with his stepmother that a call finally came through.

  “Yes?” One preemptory syllable.

  “Representative Snowden, Zuckerman here, sir. I’m sorry to have to tell you the young woman suspected of stealing your stepmother’s credit cards got away from us.”

  “How could that happen? I thought you told me earlier she was trapped in a restroom on the second floor of the mall.”

  “I can’t explain it, sir, other than to tell you, we messed up. No one saw her leave, but she’s not in the restroom any longer. In fact, she’s not in the mall.”

  “How can you be so sure?” Daniel demanded.

  “Because the mall closed an hour ago. There’s no one left inside.”

  “But the Jeep. You had someone watching the Jeep.”

  “The Wrangler is still in the parking lot, sir. No one has approached it. No one at all. We’ve had it under close surveillance since this afternoon.”

  “I’m disappointed in you, Zuckerman.”

  “I let you down. I’m sorry, sir.”

  Daniel’s rage threatened to send him spinning out of control. Mindful of his reputation as a demanding but reasonable public servant, he broke the connection before he could inform assistant head of security Michael Zuckerman what a lame-assed fuckup he was. Still fuming, he snapped his phone shut, put his politically correct Prius in gear, and drove the final curved section leading to the house a little faster than common sense dictated.

  Regina was waiting for him in the entryway, dressed in a short black trench coat, rhinestone-studded stilettos, and nothing else. He knew this because the trench coat was virtually transparent. “I gave the servants the night off,” Regina whispered in the husky voice that told him she’d been hitting the vodka.

  “Why?”

  “Because this crafty cougar”—she stabbed her ample chest with one scarlet-tipped finger—“thought it would be fun to have the whole
house to ourselves for once. Think about it, Danny boy. We can do it on the living room rug or out by the pool or, hell, under the mirrored ceiling in the conservatory if we want. What do you say?”

  Daniel considered various scenarios, none of which had anything to do with fucking his oversexed stepmother. Though if all went as planned, the bitch would end up fucked all right. “Poolside,” he said. He was too angry to smile, but Regina had never been a Mensa candidate. Chances were, she’d interpret the fury coming to a boil now as a different sort of passion entirely.

  Nevada wasn’t sure why she was crying, but she couldn’t seem to stop.

  Okay, admittedly, she was apprehensive. She’d have been a £;d , bfool not to be considering the danger she was in. It was easy to run but hard to hide, especially when you weren’t really sure who you were hiding from. So apprehensive? Yes. Wary? Yes. Out-and-out terrified? Not at the moment.

  Nor was she depressed. Compared to her life at the Institute, where long periods of stultifying boredom were randomly interrupted by torturous experimental treatments, her life now, even plagued as it was with danger and insecurity, was a million times better, certainly nothing to be depressed about.

  She wasn’t even angry or hurt, not anymore. Trick had looked her right in the eye and told her that the only reason he hadn’t mentioned Luisa before was because Luisa wasn’t important. And Nevada believed him. He’d also said he cared for her. She believed that, too. And maybe that made her the front runner for Miss Gullibility, but…

  Trick cared for her, and he wanted her, too. She remembered the blistering glare he’d shot in Rivers’s direction. If looks could kill, the butler would be six feet under.

  Feeling a little less weepy, she wiped her eyes and blew her nose.

  Uncertainty, she decided. That was why she’d given in to her emotions. Not knowing who she was, where she came from, why she’d been locked away—all those holes in her memory had been eating away at her for weeks now. No surprise really that the pressure had finally found an outlet.

  Nevada suspected the scratching had been going on for a while before she noticed it. At first, she thought perhaps Leticia Granger’s piece of prime Pacific Heights real estate was infested with mice. But when her door opened a crack, revealing one bright blue eye and a narrow wedge of wrinkled skin, she rapidly revised her hypothesis. Not a mouse. An aunt.

  “Are you all right, my dear? I thought I heard someone weeping.”

  “I’m fine.” Nevada plastered a big fake smile across her face, hoping Trick’s elderly great-aunt’s eyesight was less acute than her hearing, because if not, then Nevada’s swollen red eyes were going to be a dead giveaway.

  Leticia Granger pushed the door open wider, wide enough for Nevada to see that she’d removed the red wig, revealing spiky white hair that stood out around her face like dandelion fluff. She’d changed her clothes, too, and now wore a long flowing white nightgown that bared her scrawny arms and bony shoulders. On her feet were red ladybug slippers, complete with spots, shiny black eyes, and waving antennae. “Don’t try to fool me, dear. You’ve been crying.” Apparently, those old eyes didn’t miss much.

  “My life lately…” Nevada shrugged. “I guess tonight I finally reached critical mass.”

  “It’s Patrick, isn’t it?” Great-aunt Leticia shut the door, then crossed the room, nodding in sympathy. “Men are such bastards.”

  “It’s not Trick,” Nevada said. “It’s…oh, just everything, I guess, the weirdness that is my life.”

  “Patrick and a heavy dose of hormones.” Leticia patted her arm. “I remember how it was. You should try a shot of tequila. Stuff works wonders. Three or four margaritas will fix you right up. Of course£t utte, I avoid margaritas myself. They remind me of the time I flew down to Mazatlán. There was this man—so handsome, so romantic—like…you’re probably too young to remember Ricardo Montalban, aren’t you?” She furrowed her brow for a moment. Then her eyes lit up and she snapped her fingers. “Like Antonio Banderas. Only his name wasn’t Antonio. It was Raoul.” Her withered face assumed a wistful expression for a second. Then she frowned. “Turned out he was married with six kids. Like I said, men are bastards.”

  Someone knocked on the door, a definite knock this time, not a mouse scratch. “Are you up?” Trick asked as he shoved the door open. Then, “Oh!” he exclaimed when he caught sight of his great-aunt Leticia, perched now on the end of the bed.

  “We’re having a little girl talk, Patrick,” Great-aunt Leticia scolded, as if it were her room he’d just barged into. “What do you need?”

  For a second, his face went absolutely blank. Then, “Aspirin,” he said. “I came to see if Nevada had any aspirin.”

  Nevada shrugged. “Sorry.”

  “Headache?” Great-aunt Leticia slid off the end of the bed.

  “Um.” Trick blinked. “Yeah, headache.”

  Great-aunt Leticia turned toward Nevada, careful not to let Trick see what she was doing, and mouthed the words, “Not just a bastard, a lying bastard.”

  Nevada stifled a spurt of laughter.

  Trick shot her a questioning look that she pretended not to see.

  “Follow me, Patrick,” Great-aunt Leticia ordered. “I have a great big bottle of extra-strength aspirin in my medicine cabinet.”

  She marched out of the room in her ladybug slippers. Trick trailed behind, leaving Nevada to wonder why he’d really come knocking on her door.

  FOURTEEN

  When Marcello entered Britt’s sitting room the next morning, he found her curled up in her favorite chair with a cinnamon roll in one hand and the telephone in the other. “Bye, Mom,” he heard her say. “Happy Mother’s Day, and tell Dad, good luck with the alligator.” She punched the disconnect button, then got up to replace the cordless phone on its base unit. “Help yourself to a cinnamon roll,” she told Marcello. “I sneaked them from the kitchen when Molly’s back was turned. The big Mother’s Day brunch starts at eleven, but I was too hungry to wait.”

  Marcello selected a roll from the box on the coffee table and took a bite. Still warm, it seemed to melt in his mouth. Molly Jones, Britt’s pastry chef, was a genius. Her doughnuts, éclairs, pies, and tarts were an unexpected but much appreciated side benefit of his stay.

  “I made coffee, too.” Britt waved a hand toward the small kitchen that opened off one end of the room.

  Marcello set his roll down on a napkin and stepped into the kitchen to get himself a mug of coffee. “Alligator?” he asked.

  “My parents retired to Florida,” she said, as if that explained everything.

  Marcello carried his coffee back into the sitting room and made himself comfortable on one end of Britt’s tan leather sofa. “I do not understand.”

  “Florida.” Britt held one hand out, palm up. “Alligators.” She extended the other palm, then shifted her hands up and down as if they were a set of scales. “Can’t have one without the other.”

  “Still, I do not understand.” He took another bite of his cinnamon roll.

  “My parents have a pool,” she explained, “and alligators are attracted to water. The pool is fenced, but if an alligator is sufficiently determined…”

  “Ah,” he said. “Your parents have an alligator in their pool.”

  “Yes, and my father’s trying to convince it to leave. Ordinarily, he’d call the cops or Fish and Wildlife, but”—she shrugged—“it’s Sunday. And Mother’s Day besides.”

  “Perhaps if he left the gate open?”

  “Tried that last time and ended up with two alligators.” She waved her hand, dismissing the subject. “The man’s a retired college professor. He’ll figure it out.”

  They finished their cinnamon rolls in a companionable silence.

  “What do you have planned for today?” Britt asked suddenly.

  Marcello helped himself to a second roll. “Trick asked me to research something for him. Other than that, nothing. Do you need my assistance?”

  “Need’s a
strong word.” Britt frowned thoughtfully. “But I’d appreciate your company. I have something I have to do, something I do every Mother’s Day.”

  “Here at the lodge?”

  “No, up the mountain at Granite.”

  “I am not sure it would be wise to leave the—”

  “If I distract Molly, you could slip out through the kitchen into the garage. No one would see you if you rode in the back of the SUV.”

  “Still, I—”

  “You don’t know anyone from Granite, do you?”

  “No,” he admitted.

  “Not that I expect to run into anyone where we’re going anyway,” she added.

  “That is reassuring, I think, but…” But what? Why was he arguing? It was extremely unlikely that he would encounter Sarge in the daylight hours. His kind usually didn’t come out until dark. And quite truthfully, Marcello would relish the opportunity to get out of the suite. Comfortable as it was, he was starting to feel like a prisoner«likil . “All right,” he agreed.

  “Good.” She studied him thoughtfully, her head tilted to one side. “But just as a precaution, it might be smart to disguise yourself.”

  “Disguise myself how?”

  “Oh, nothing too elaborate.” Britt disappeared into her bedroom, emerging in a few minutes with a navy blue sock hat and a pair of dark glasses. “This ought to do it.”

  Sneaking out of the lodge reminded him of all the nights he had crawled out his bedroom window as a teenager to sample forbidden pleasures with his friends, though generally speaking the sneaking out part had been more of a thrill than the forbidden pleasures part.

  Marcello, who had planned a couple of James Bond–esque moves, was almost disappointed not to encounter anyone between the suite and the garage. Feeling cheated, he climbed into the backseat of Britt’s shiny new Expedition to wait for her.

  “Did you have any trouble getting down here unobserved?” she asked when she finally showed up ten minutes later.