by Hailey North
“I’m fine.” She smiled at him, her normal serious smile, and this time she left off the fake flutter of her lashes. If Tony couldn’t see, what was the point? “But David, there’s no one else here.”
He stopped in front of a curtained alcove, pulled out the table so she could slip into the semicircular booth. “No, there’s not.” He looked quite pleased with himself.
Penelope knew she looked shocked. “You didn’t pay them to close for the night, did you?” Such a waste of money bothered her.
“Darling Penelope,” he said, but lightly, “I’ll do whatever it takes to impress you.”
“Well, I am stunned.”
He sat down beside her. Not too close, she noted with relief. It was beginning to sink in that she’d been completely wrong about David’s interest in her. He sure didn’t look as if he wanted to spend this evening discussing business.
A waiter approached the table.
“Good evening and welcome to Primo’s.” He nodded deferentially to David and sketched a bow toward Penelope. She smiled back. Penelope made a point of being nice to waiters and waitresses.
A second waiter appeared, his arms full of a tissue-wrapped bundle. He handed the bundle to the first waiter, then disappeared.
“Ah, the flowers.”
The waiter held forth a dozen red roses for David’s inspection. He nodded, accepted them, and in turn presented them to Penelope.
She stared at the baby soft petals of the twelve perfect flowers, twelve perfect flowers the color of blood. “Thank you,” she managed, wishing he hadn’t made such an extravagant gesture.
The waiter whisked them into a vase he settled on the table. One petal dropped free and floated to the white tablecloth. David frowned and the waiter pinched it off the table.
Penelope felt like she should show more appreciation. Here he was making such a fuss over her. Summoning more enthusiasm than she felt, she said, “They are beautiful, David. I’m overwhelmed.”
He lay an arm along the booth, his fingertips just reaching the edge of her bare shoulder. “Good,” he said lazily. “Now let’s unwind from the day, shall we?” To the waiter, he said, “Bring us a bottle of the 1989 Chateau du France Bordeaux.”
“Very good, sir.”
“And I’d like an iced tea,” Penelope said, knowing full well she was committing a fine dining faux pas. But she needed her wits about her. It didn’t take half her IQ to tell her David wasn’t planning to discuss law and politics tonight.
“Very good, ma’am.”
But David did launch into a business monologue, regaling her with a story of his verbal jousting in court that morning. The familiar language set Penelope at ease and she began to relax, began to forget her dress had a slit that opened her thigh to the wind and a neckline that exposed more cleavage than her mother’s old waitress uniform.
She shared a story of a victory she’d won in a Tax Court ruling. David listened intently. She sipped her iced tea, noticing that the waiter poured the wine for two.
She started to ask for sweetener for her tea, but David had launched into a story about the legal recruiting firm that had brought her to New Orleans.
She hadn’t realized he was familiar with that agency, but he said something in passing that indicated he knew that was how she’d gotten her job at her firm. She listened as he described a job in New York the recruiter had once tried to get him to take, relaxing despite herself.
Then, as if the waiter had read her mind, packets of sweetener and slices of lemon appeared. Penelope fixed her tea to her taste and smiled at David. Perhaps this dinner wouldn’t be so bad after all.
The two of them were having a jolly good time, Tony thought, sucking on a peppermint and scowling. He didn’t understand how they could enjoy themselves when all they talked about was law, law, law, but then his little sister always got excited when she told him about law school.
Stretched out in his rackety car listening to the recording equipment he had stashed in his trunk and wired through to a special speaker in his dash, Tony worked the mint around in his mouth, figuring he should be glad Hinson was only talking shop.
Squeek, though, had led him to believe otherwise. Hinson had been ordered to marry and settle down. And Hinson, Tony knew, did what he was told. The runt from the wrong side of the tracks had worked too long and too hard to achieve his version of the good life to risk losing out.
The part of the puzzle Tony didn’t understand, though, was why he’d picked Penelope. Having a tax lawyer in the family would come in handy, but that alone wasn’t reason enough to single her out. Because she was from out of town? Because—
“Holy Toledo!” Tony sat up so fast he hit his head on the roof of his car. He grabbed his phone and punched in a number.
The waiter removed the crème brûlée dishes. Penelope sighed in appreciation and spoke without thinking. “I’d love to meet the chef. This meal was magnificent!”
“It’s as good as done,” David said, smiling indulgently. Closing the gap between them, he slid his arm around her shoulders. “Happy?”
Penelope tried not to think about the clear view David had down the neckline of her dress. She thought instead of how if it weren’t for Tony Olano she wouldn’t be sitting here half-naked. She merely nodded in answer to David’s question.
“Glad you moved to New Orleans?”
“Oh, yes.” Penelope folded her hands in her lap. “It requires some adjustment, but I like living here.”
“Good.” David lay his free hand over hers. His palm was cool. He pried her fingers apart, capturing one hand and bringing it to his lips.
Penelope watched him kiss her hand, almost as if she were watching him kiss another woman. When Tony had merely brushed her cheek, she’d gone hot all over, but now she felt nothing other than a strong desire to escape before the situation grew awkward.
He gazed into her eyes. “Penelope—”
“Perhaps I could go to the kitchen to see the chef.”
He tightened his grasp on her hand. “Forget about the chef,” he said, not in a mean way, but Penelope heard the annoyance.
“Penelope, I’d like—”
Snatching her hand free, she held a finger against her upper lip. “I think I’m going to sneeze.” She wrinkled her nose and willed a sneeze to appear. It was a trick she’d used many times in school when she’d been caught daydreaming by teachers and hadn’t known an answer. Rather than admit to it, she’d manufactured the time she needed to return to the reality around her, to figure out the question and come up with the answer.
David produced a beautifully pressed linen handkerchief.
“Oh, thank you,” she said, and made a fuss of patting her nose.
A slight twitch appeared in David’s right cheek just below his eye. “Penelope”—he accepted the handkerchief she’d folded neatly, then lay a square velvet jewelry box on the table—“I’m trying to ask you to be my wife.”
“You’re what?”
The twitching intensified. “I don’t think it should come as any surprise. We’re perfectly suited for one another. You’re intelligent, talented, successful.” He lifted one shoulder. “We’re two peas in a pod.”
Penelope blinked. What happened to beautiful, sexy, charming? She was sick of being intelligent, talented, and successful. A murderous feeling rose up within her. She wanted to be wanted for the woman she was, no matter how deeply hidden that woman was, even from her own knowledge.
He popped open the box. Penelope’s mouth dropped when she saw the marquise-cut diamond, a gem almost as big as a jawbreaker.
“Like it?”
“It’s amazing.”
He lifted it from the box and slipped it on her finger.
Her hand almost drooped from the weight. She immediately began to wiggle it off.
“Thank you, David, but I can’t—”
“Don’t say no.” He smiled, which had the effect of spreading the twitch in his cheek. “Perhaps I sprang it on you too soo
n. Think it over.”
“But I don’t—”
He held a finger to her lips. “No is not a word I like to hear,” he said softly.
She swallowed. He obviously wasn’t open to discussion, but there was no way she could marry David. Boy, had she messed up. The huge stone winked at her in the light, mocking her.
He slipped it back in place and squeezed her hand. “You could get used to being Mrs. Hinson,” he said, tracing a finger in slow circles from the ring, over the back of her hand, and onto her wrist.
Penelope knew a bribe when she saw one.
Gently but firmly she said, “I can’t wear this ring.”
“I insist.”
“Take the goddamn ring!” Tony heard the tension in Hinson’s voice. He knew the man was too smart to get too rough with Penelope at this point, but all the same, Tony wanted her out of there. And soon. She could flush it down the toilet when she got home, or pawn it and say she lost it, or mail it back UPS.
It was probably cubic zirconia, anyway. Hinson liked flash, but he liked to spend his money on his own appetites.
Which he’d certainly done this evening. Dinner had gone on and on and on, the extended event driving Tony nuts. He’d munched on the Chee•tos he’d brought to hold him over, his mouth watering as Penelope exclaimed over one dish after another. Leo had done himself proud.
He hoped Hinson would hustle her out rather than fulfill her request to meet the chef. Except for the extra pounds and inches, he and his cousin could have been identical twins. It would be just like Penelope to comment on that resemblance in front of Hinson, and that wasn’t something Tony wanted in the forefront of Hinson’s mind.
He licked the salty orange crumbs from his fingers and asked Saint Christopher for a bit of help.
A few minutes later, after no further discussion of the ring or the proposal, the two of them emerged from the restaurant. They walked side by side, but at least the creep didn’t have his arm around her. Penelope held a bunch of roses in her arms that would have cost a cop a month’s salary. Hinson held open the door of the car that had sat in a no-parking zone the entire time, got in, and drove away.
No ticket on his car, Tony couldn’t help but note.
Penelope closed the door of her apartment and leaned against it, grateful David hadn’t insisted on coming upstairs.
The ring weighted her hand. She tugged it off and stared at it. At least she’d gotten rid of the roses, dropping them on a table in the entrance area of her building. Someone would find them, take them, and maybe even appreciate them.
“Eventful evening?” Mrs. Merlin sat cross-legged on the sofa, curiously looking at her hostess while keeping one eye on the small television Penelope had positioned on the coffee table.
She answered with a shaky laugh, crossing to the sofa and holding out the ring. “Just look at this diamond! And he absolutely insists he won’t take no for an answer. It’s almost scary.”
“Hmmm.” Mrs. Merlin used the remote to switch off the TV. She tapped on the stone with the end of her magic incense wand, then shook her head. “Men,” she said with a sniff. “Some of them you just can’t trust.”
“What do you mean?”
“Are you familiar with the expression, ‘All that glitters is not gold’?”
“Oh.” Penelope stared again at the ring. “How do you know it’s not a real diamond?”
“No fire.”
“No wonder he insisted I take it with me even though I said I wouldn’t marry him.”
“Oh, cubic zirconia is still pricey. And that’s a pretty good fake.”
“Gee, thanks for that.” Penelope dropped her head back on the sofa. “At least dinner was delicious. The most marvelous appetizer, escargots wrapped in escarole and served with a sauce of—”
“Stop!”
Penelope clapped a hand to her mouth. “I’m so sorry. How rude of me, when you’re living on oatmeal.”
“I like oatmeal.”
“It’s a good thing.” Penelope laughed. “Come on, I’ll make you a dish.”
In a flash, Mrs. Merlin vaulted off the couch. It amazed Penelope how she managed to zip around using her stick. She traveled in leaps and bounds, literally, into the kitchen and landed on the counter. Straightening her skirt, she said, “I think you’re ready to call on Mr. Gotho again.”
“Am I?”
She nodded, smiling as Penelope mixed oatmeal into the water.
“Why now and not before?”
“When you found out the ring wasn’t real, you didn’t take it personally.”
Unaccountably pleased, Penelope stirred the oatmeal. Mrs. Merlin did make a strange kind of sense.
“Maybe you should run over there now, dear, while your ego is properly aligned.”
“Tonight?”
Mrs. Merlin nodded. “But finish my oatmeal first and change your clothes. Go to the Quarter dressed like that and you’ll likely be mistaken for a hooker.”
“Mrs. Merlin!” Penelope flicked the burner off and filled a small dish with oatmeal. “The lady at Macy’s assured me this was a perfectly respectable dress.”
“So who are you trying to convince? You or me?”
Penelope thrust her hands on her hips. The neckline ruffles swayed. “Oh, forget it. I’m just not made to look sexy.”
Still on the counter, Mrs. Merlin dug into the oatmeal with her demitasse spoon. “Not true. You’re just wearing the wrong dress. How much did that cost? I bet that woman worked on commission.”
Penelope laughed. “An arm and a leg, and I did it just to torment that rascal of an ex-cop, and Hinson defeated my entire plan by taking me to a restaurant where the guy couldn’t see or hear me.”
Mrs. Merlin’s eyes twinkled. “Oh, he seems like a determined fellow.”
“David and I were the only diners. He had them open the entire restaurant just for us.”
“Why does he want to marry you?”
Penelope had headed into the bedroom, but she turned back at Mrs. Merlin’s question. Dropping into a kitchen chair, she said slowly, “That is a very good question.”
Tony saw Penelope delivered to the door of her apartment and watched Hinson drive away. Tom between a raging desire to find some excuse to see Penelope and the instinct that tonight Hinson would do something violent, he followed Hinson.
Another member of Tony’s undercover detail was already tailing him, but Tony wanted to be in on the chase.
No man with Hinson’s ego could take a rejection and not explode in some fashion. That he’d remained under control with Penelope spoke volumes to Tony. That meant he needed Penelope to marry him.
The call he’d made earlier had confirmed what he’d suspected. The law firm Penelope had joined represented the other party in a long-contested multimillion-dollar lawsuit that Hinson’s boss had been waging both in and out of state and federal court.
None of the wiretaps in place on Hinson or any of his boss’s several offices had disclosed any clue as to Hinson’s interest in Penelope. He’d kept completely mum. Hinson’s boss was on tape making one reference to how marrying settled down a man, but the comment had been made in passing.
Or so Tony had thought until Squeek gave him the word from the streets.
Hinson must have told one of his favorite whores that he was tying the knot, no doubt, which is how the news had filtered to Squeek.
To visit one of those whores was no doubt where Hinson was headed at the moment, as he swung out of the Warehouse District and drove speedily toward the seedy end of Tulane Avenue. That bleak street, lined with hole-in-the-wall bars, run-down motels, and abandoned buildings no one would spend the time or money to repair, served as backdrop for many a prostitute.
Tony stopped at a red light, keeping Hinson in sight but making sure at least another car separated them. He hated to see how sad this stretch of the city looked, and nighttime showed it to better advantage than the harsh light of day.
He alone of all his family had remained
in the city. Everyone else had migrated to the suburbs. Too dangerous, too full of minorities, too crowded, too expensive. He’d heard all the reasons, but he stayed behind, keeping up the shotgun house his grandparents had built in uptown New Orleans more than a hundred years ago.
Ahead, Hinson pulled his Lincoln to the curb. Tony watched as a young girl in a tight white dress slunk from the shadows and approached the fancy car.
“Bastard,” he said, and reached for his radio.
It crackled to life before he could send a message out for backup to create a diversion that would send Hinson scurrying off like a cockroach into the night. Hinson wasn’t to be arrested before he’d offered Tony a post, no matter what he did on his personal time, but Tony would be damned before he’d let him beat up a girl who looked no more than fifteen.
“Your favorite lady lawyer’s going for a drive,” said the voice over the radio.
“Roger.” Tony swung into a U-turn, sent the message he needed to send, and left Hinson and the girl’s fate in the hands of the uniformed law.
Where in the hell was Penelope going at eleven o’clock on a Monday night? To the office? Nah, not even Penelope Sue Fields qualified as that extreme a workaholic.
And even though his undercover assignment required him to track Hinson, and he knew Penelope wasn’t headed toward Hinson, he couldn’t stop himself from choosing to follow her.
He had to know what she was doing.
“Face it, Olano,” he said, “you’re obsessed with the woman. Not healthy. Not a good thing at all.”
On Canal nearing the turn toward the area where she lived, Tony slowed and tried to talk himself into returning to Hinson. Instead, he checked with the man he had tailing her, another private investigator whom he’d hired earlier that day under the auspices of Olano Investigations to help him keep an eye on Penelope when duty required him to be otherwise occupied. After what Squeek had told him, he had to protect her, without her or anyone else knowing he was doing so.
Tony got her location, headed into the French Quarter, and, ignoring the NO LEFT TURN sign, veered onto the streets of the Vieux Carré.