Worth the Trip

by Penny McCall

  Lucius took one look at her expression and smiled grimly. “You’re angry,” he said. “At him or me?”

  “Don’t try to make this about anything but you and me,” Norah shot back. “Say whatever it is you need to say.” Before Trip comes out that door, and I have to deal with him, too.

  “I just wanted to thank you.”

  “But . . .” she said, thrown off guard by gratitude when she’d expected guilt.

  “Bobby isn’t the sharpest tool in the kit,” Lucius continued. “He’s a nice, steady lad, but he isn’t quickwitted like you are.

  “You were always my hope, Norah. A parent wants to see themselves in their children, and I see myself in you, and me being the egotistical man I am, that’s saying something. What’s even more gratifying is seeing you make your own decisions. You’ve taken the best of me and the best of your mother, and you’ve become a lovely, independent woman. I’m proud of you.”

  “And it doesn’t hurt that you’re getting 10 percent of fifty million dollars. Less the price of Bobby’s education, and my automotive repairs.”

  “Of course, darlin’, the least I can do is make sure the boy gets some sort of honest career.”

  “Seeing as he’s not suited to a life of crime.”

  Lucius smiled, ironic and a little wistful. “That tongue-in-cheek thing you just did there, that’s your mother.”

  Norah swallowed back her tears, not just because she always, always missed her mother, especially now when she was hurting so much over Trip, but because Lucius had really meant it when he thanked her.

  She stepped forward and hugged him. “I hope you’re going to find something honest to do with yourself,” she said when she stepped back. “So I don’t have to worry about you.”

  Lucius patted her cheek. “Again, so like your mother, which is a shame when you have such a talent for my kind of work.”

  “Not everyone would agree with you.”

  It hadn’t taken the sound of Trip’s voice for Norah to know he was standing in Mike’s doorway. She’d felt him behind her. Watching.

  Norah wasn’t going to let him send her running, though. She turned around and met Trip’s eyes.

  “I’m going to wait for the rest of the couriers,” Lucius said. “If I can’t have all that lovely loot, at least I can look at it one more time.”

  Norah nodded as he walked by her, but she kept her eyes on Trip’s face. He was still furious.

  “If you need me for anything, darlin’, I’m staying at the Ritz.” Lucius stopped when he got to Trip. “And here, boy,” he said, fishing one of the new paperback copies of Norah’s book out of the breast pocket of his suit jacket and handing it to Trip. “This is for you.”

  “I already read it,” Trip said, not noticing that Lucius was gone because he never took his eyes off Norah, “at least chapter four.”

  “And you’re angry.”

  “Not about that. I don’t understand why you didn’t tell me what you were planning.”

  “You’d have given it away.”

  Trip took his time responding, clearly still trying to get a handle on his temper. “I’ve done a hell of a lot of undercover work, Norah,” he finally said.

  “Not enough to fool my father. Lucius is the best there is at reading people. You had to be genuinely surprised and angry. I knew you wanted to be the one to find the loot—”

  “I was furious, but not because you solved the crime without me. I was pissed because you didn’t trust me.”

  “So was I last night.”

  “I didn’t do anything wrong.”

  “Neither did I.” She turned and walked away.

  “Norah.”

  Her step faltered, but she kept moving, one foot in front of the other, just like she’d been doing for the last few weeks.

  Trip followed her into the elevator, pushing the hold button once the doors slid closed. He didn’t say anything; she needed to fill the silence so she could bear the heartbreaking distance between them.

  “I didn’t tell you because I knew you couldn’t convince Lucius you weren’t just acting. He’s a better con artist than both of us put together.”

  “We could have found the list.”

  She shook her head. “I lived in that house my entire life. There’s not a corner of it I didn’t clean or paint or polish in the last fifteen years, and I never found it. And Lucius was never going to trust me after he saw us together that night. In order to convince him that I would take his side over yours I needed a grand gesture—especially after he had me kidnapped, and not just because he knew I had reason to be angry with him, because it meant he was running out of patience.

  “Sooner or later he’d have gone for that list, Trip, and after all those years in jail, do you think he’d have settled for more tricks? The next stunt he pulled to get us out of the house would have been aimed at you, and it wouldn’t have been harmless.”

  “So you did it to protect me.”

  “And myself.” It had hurt like hell to make him go, but in the long run it was easier than watching him walk away, knowing he’d made the choice to leave her behind.

  Trip snorted. “You know, that’s a failing of yours. You can read people, and not because you’re a psychologist, because your old man is right, you inherited that natural talent from him. But you don’t allow for the possibility that you might be wrong.”

  “Why am I wrong?”

  “For one thing, your father isn’t better than you.”

  “That wasn’t a fair test. He loves me, so he wasn’t seeing things clearly.”

  “Neither was I.”

  Norah went still, something blossoming inside her, something she knew was hope, bolstering the love so it spread, warming her from head to toe. “You were angry because you thought I was betraying you.”

  “I was angry because you were betraying me, but I’ve been double-crossed before. In fact I’ve always seen it coming, or at least been prepared for the possibility so when it happened I wasn’t caught off guard. But I was with you. I saw that moment through a haze of emotion, just like your father, and pain, and hell, it was worse than being shot, and let me tell you, discovering I was in love with a con artist wasn’t exactly the high point of that day. Although I didn’t really accept it then. It took me a couple of days to figure it out. You could have saved me that, Norah, but you were afraid to tell me you’re in love with me.”

  She was listening, listening and trying to make sense of the matter-of-fact, emotionless way he’d said he loved her, and how he’d flung out her feelings like an accusation.

  And suddenly she was angry, too, but her anger was hot, burning behind her eyes and tightening her throat, so hot and hurtful she lifted a hand to rub her aching chest.

  “Would you have believed me?” she managed to get out. “If I’d told you I loved you, that sending you away was the only way to convince my father I’d chosen his side, what would you have done? You’d have handcuffed me to that radiator last night, that’s what you’d have done.”

  “I handcuffed you to myself.”

  “What’s the difference?”

  “I wanted you in my arms, even thinking . . .”

  “Exactly.” She punched the button for the first floor. “If I’d said I love you last night you would have thought it was just another con? Or worse, an inconvenience.”

  He pushed the hold button again. “Wrong again. I’m not this guy in chapter four.”

  “I never said you were.”

  “But you believed it.”

  She shrugged. “You’re charming, attractive, smooth.”

  “Yeah, I am.”

  “I neglected to mention full of yourself.”

  He gave her a crooked smile, equal parts ego and self-deprecation.

  “And your job comes first.”

  “You’re right about that, too, because when I’m on an assignment my life is on the line, and I have to be all about keeping myself alive and getting the bad guy. But my job isn�
��t who I am, it’s what I do.

  “This guy in chapter four, he’s got a job or a hobby or a calling that keeps him from being all in when he gets involved, which means the person on the other side of the relationship has to accept those terms or move on. This guy is your father, in it for as long as the fun lasts.”

  “Are you going to stick around now that it’s over?”

  “Yeah,” Trip said, still a little rattled to hear himself say that out loud, even though he’d already done all the soul-searching he needed to be right with that decision. “That day at the prison your father accused me of being a tool for the FBI.”

  “And you agreed with him.”

  “It was the truth, and there’s nothing to be ashamed of in what I did.”

  “Was? Did?”

  “It’s okay to be a tool when you’re being used for good, but just because I work for the FBI doesn’t mean their intentions are always aboveboard. I’d have turned the loot over without a second thought. You took steps to make sure that even if you couldn’t control how the FBI used the loot, people got their family heirlooms back, and those who might be concerned about incriminating papers or sensitive information they’d had locked in those safe-deposit boxes would at least be forewarned that the FBI was in possession of those things.”

  “You and my father kept pushing me to choose between you. Nobody was standing up for the real victims of the robbery, and the future victims of whatever the FBI had planned. I figured your employers were going to get their hands on the loot one way or another; at least this way it sort of leveled the playing field. I’m sorry I had to hurt you in the process.”

  He took her by the arms, drew her in until all of her was pressed against all of him. “You found a way to come closest to doing what was best for everyone, and you put yourself on the line to do it. For a con woman you have a hell of a conscience.” He grinned when she frowned at him. “Jiminy Cricket with a PhD and a talent for getting people to do the right thing despite themselves.”

  “You’re saying I’m manipulative.”

  “Persuasive.”

  She relaxed against him, winding her arms around his waist. Her frown smoothed away, and her eyes lit with hope and the love he’d seen there before but been too skittish to recognize.

  “What have I persuaded you to do?” she asked, sounding unsure of herself.

  “What do you want me to do?”

  “Love me,” she said. “As much as I love you. The rest we can figure out as we go along.”

  “Done. God, you’re easy.”

  “No, I’m not, at least not anymore. I plan to be very high maintenance from now on.”

  “Then it’s probably a good thing I’m relocating to Chicago.”

  Norah pulled back so she could see his face. “Really?”

  “I’m thinking about becoming a private investigator. That way I can choose my own cases for a change.”

  “There’s a lot of crime in Chicago.”

  “It’ll probably save me some time if I can stick close to you. You seem to attract criminals.”

  Norah nodded. “It helps that I’m related to some of them.”

  Trip grinned. “What do you think Puff will say when he finds out I’m going to be around? All the time.”

  “I don’t really care.” She stretched up and kissed him, long and hard. “I’m writing another book, and I need the inspiration.”

  Trip made a face. “Don’t tell me. Chapter four.”

  “Darlin’,” Norah said, patting his face, “what makes you think you’re only showing up in one chapter?”