One More Night with You (16 page)

“Call him.”

“I—” Joey sobbed, sniffled then reached to start picking up the roses. “I can't.”

“Then I will.” Charlotte rooted around in Joey's purse, didn't comment on the weapon she must've encountered, and pulled out the phone. “Zaf, this is Charlotte Blue. I'm at LJD's Couture Brides. Joey needs you.”

Joey and Charlotte remained in the dressing room, seated on the floor saying nothing as staff came in to clean the mess and Tem poked her head in to report she'd sent everyone else ahead to Le Cirque.

Leda's voice had them both looking up. “Ladies, again, I'm so sorry. None of the staff knows where the key could've gone. It grew legs and ran off.”

“Cassidy,” Joey said. The woman hadn't appeared in the dressing rooms area when the commotion hit. “Where is she?”

“She went home sick— Wait. I'm certain there's a sensible explanation.”

Sure there is. It's green paper and has the power to buy and sell people.

Zaf arrived and went directly to Joey, crouching and scooping her into his arms, then carrying her in a trail of lavender silk to a settee.

Faintly she was aware of Charlotte and Leda both sighing, “Oh.”

Joey hugged him. “You smell like sawdust. Were you working on the shoe closet? Even though we argued?”

“You're building her a shoe closet?” Leda asked with a taken little smile. “You are a prince.”

He wasn't, though. He was the flawed, dangerous, devilish man she wanted.

“About earlier,” she began, feeling the need to put into words that despite what they'd said before, she did need him now. She wanted him to stay with her.

“It's okay,” he said against her temple.

It wasn't, but if she held on tight enough and believed hard enough, maybe it would be.

* * *

Joey had tears on her cheeks when she fell asleep—and Zaf was ready to cause some pain. Slipping out of the house at the height of night, he drove to DiGorgio Royal Casino.

Gian DiGorgio was a defiant son of a bitch, continuing to operate the casino while it was for sale and remaining a fixture at the place even as it bled investors and its clientele.

Zaf figured it came in handy now. The vacantness made DiGorgio easy to locate.

In the Mahogany Lounge, the silver-haired sociopath commanded a table decorated with liquor, cigars and playing cards.

“It took you longer to get here than I expected,” the man said, not looking up when Zaf approached his table. “Her fear finally lured you from your hidey-hole.”

“You don't know me.”

“I've been hoping to change that fact. First, I wondered if you were a legend—a phantom. Now I see you're a mortal man, with weaknesses.” DiGorgio plucked the cigar from his mouth, and the wet end glistened under the lounge's gold lights. With a slow, slurred blend of Italian and English, he dismissed the people gathered at the table for a lazy hand of poker. “Sit down, Zaf. Take a cigar. Here's a light.”

Zaf claimed a seat, eyed the older man steadily as he lit the cigar and took a deep drag.

“You and Josephine,” DiGorgio said. “You deserve each other. Both of you have an annoying way of involving yourselves in other people's affairs.”

“Target her and you target me. Is that what you want?”

“She's too by-the-book to be more than a nuisance to me,” DiGorgio decided. “She'll follow the law off a short pier. But that's her flaw. You, Zaf Ahmadi—Archangel—you crossed lines that folks don't cross if they love their lives.” He started sweeping his hands over the table to gather cards. “When did you stop loving your life? In lockup? The military? After the first kill...the tenth...the fiftieth?”

Zaf didn't allow a single muscle to twitch in response.

“Keep smoking. That's a quality cigar. I don't want to see it go to waste.” DiGorgio was glowering now as he scanned the nearly empty lounge. Business had gone to shit—that was what hurt him below the belt. “Wilcox was one of yours, wasn't he? Tell me the truth and you walk out of here the way you came. Lie and I can't guarantee that you won't end up spilled in an alley.”

“I hired Wilcox to intercept the order you put out on Al Franco. That's why Franco's still alive. By the way, I don't feel threats. They bounce off the armor.”

“Hmm. But you're here confronting me in my establishment after I had a friendly chat with your woman, so evidently you feel something.” DiGorgio sat back, sighed. “Too many men fall because of some irrational attachment to a woman. Women are among the world's most plentiful commodities. Easy acquisitions, and they all have a price.”

“Wrong, but feel free to continue rambling like the crazy old bastard that you are.” Zaf had an innocuous smile ready, and he could tell the lid on the other man's temper was beginning to tremble.

“My question remains unanswered. When did you stop loving your life? Was it—” DiGorgio rested his hands flat on the table “—when your cousin got himself quartered in DC eight years ago?”

Zaf kept his form relaxed until the moment that he was up and had the other man contorted against the wall before his chair crashed to the floor.

DiGorgio's face began to redden, but he grunted out, “The FBI wanted you only because you're a ticking time bomb they'd rather have on their side than against it. Your woman, Josephine—do you genuinely believe she can forgive you for crippling her?”

The question threw Zaf, causing him to loosen his hold.

“This is my offer, Zaf Ahmadi. It expires in exactly one minute. Work for me. Give me your loyalty and let the woman go. Perhaps, if you prove yourself loyal and capable during a probationary period, I'll get you what you need for retribution for that stupid kid cousin of yours.”

“I don't need the minute,” Zaf said. “To hell with your offer.”

“As I said, too many men fall. Woman will always be the demise of man.”

Zaf released him, though not before immobilizing him and letting him drop. “Come near Josephine again, scare her again, and I will hunt you.”

DiGorgio coughed, angrily watching him. “You shouldn't have come here. Love made you do that, didn't it? That was the worst mistake you'll make.”

There were a few things the old man could do with his threats, but Zaf strode out of the Mahogany Lounge and DiGorgio Royal Casino with his adrenaline rushing and his heart beating wildly until he was back at Joey's house.

She was still asleep in her bedroom. Zaf stood in the doorway for a few moments, observing her through the dark. What the hell could he do for her now? DiGorgio wasn't going to let her go, and Zaf couldn't.

Was he the best man to shield her when he loved her to complete desperation?

Go to your room. Go to sleep. Leave her alone.

But that was the problem—he was incapable of leaving her alone.

There were plenty of reasons that would justify walking away.

She was angry with him.

She didn't know if she could forgive his handling of Alessandro Franco's confession in Italy.

She didn't know the secrets he kept.

She didn't know he loved her.

Zaf rejected the part of him that warned he should allow some distance. Selfishly, he came nearer just to touch her soft, soft skin and reassure himself that tonight she hadn't been taken from him.

“Zaf,” she said on a drowsy sigh, wrapped around one of her pillows. She released the pillow and caught his shirt. “Come here.”

He toed off his shoes and slid onto the bed, and she automatically draped an arm around him.

“I felt it, when you left the bed. Where'd you go?”

“Go back to sleep, Jo.”

She snuggled against him. “What did you smoke?”

“A cigar. You probably don't want to kiss me, then.”

Joey's mouth found his in the dark. “I don't care about that tonight. Kiss me, okay?” After he complied—thoroughly—she said, “You taste like Jelly Belly.”

“I ate a handful when I came home. I think I'm eating more than you are.”

“Good thing you bought the big jar.” She paused, gently working a hand underneath his shirt to stroke his chest. “Hey. You said
home
.”

This place was the first that'd felt like home in a long time. The words refused to form, however.

Joey yawned, but began to pull up his shirt to lay kisses across his abs. He knew her body was tired. “I want to go home, to my real home.”

“Your family reunion's around the corner.” She would be safest with her family right now, but he wasn't in the position to reveal to her how he could be so certain of that.

“Come with me. I want you to meet the family. They'll like you.”

“Go back to sleep,” he whispered. “I'll go to the reunion with you.”

“When it comes down to it with DiGorgio, I'm going to face him alone.”

“I won't leave you alone.”

“It's not that I'm all that afraid anymore—about that,” she continued as though he hadn't spoken. “What scares me is that something will happen and you won't know that I—” Joey suddenly stopped, took her hand from his chest and turned her backside to him. “I guess I am really wiped.”

Had she been on the verge of saying
love
? Did she love him despite every reason she shouldn't?

Zaf's fingers found her waist, drifted somehow to encounter the knotted terrain of her scar. “Josephine... God, Jo, I love you.”

The whisper of her even breathing was the response he got. It was just as well. Complicated confessions, words he had no right to say, belonged unanswered in the dark.

Chapter 10

“J
une Creek's about a half hour outside the city,” Joey said from the passenger seat of a rented Ford F-350 Crew Cab. El Paso International Airport was far behind them but there was a ways to go before she and Zaf would drive beneath the wood-and-metal Yellow Hawk Ranch sign. The open road carved into the desert landscape, presenting an opportunity to lower the window, take off her aviator sunglasses and consume the sights, sounds and scents of the familiar stranger that would always be home to her. But almost of its own defiance, her body was tuned into Zaf. A seat belt was the only thing keeping her from crawling to his lap and curling up there.

Zaf reached to squeeze her thigh, and she applauded herself for wearing a pair of short-shorts with her camisole. His hand rested there, where it belonged. She skated her fingers over the fine dark hair along his forearm, traced his large knuckles, toyed with the watch and the beads and the straps on his wrist.

“Our spread's at the farthest edge of town, traveling this route. We should be at the ranch before dark, but there are two stops I need to make before we get there.”

The first was to The Flannel Blanket—or, as locals called it, Blanket's. When Joey had been a kid, the folks running the massive Western apparel store held the glass door with a lawn gnome, the town's ugliest doorstop. The autumn she and her friend had worked the closing shift to wage-earn their way to a ski trip up north, they'd decided—with encouragement from too much rum-spiced cider—that it would be funny to dress the gnome up as Santa Claus. Drawing on spectacles and rosy red cheeks with Magic Markers, they had come into work the next day to news that they'd been fired and fined for defacing a valuable town artifact.

Automatic sliders had replaced the old glass door and gnome. Stepping inside with Zaf, she wondered if the store owners had forgotten the hell she and Honey Sutherland had raised in their heyday, all in the grand scheme of being a couple of bored country girls sowing some wild oats.

Probably not, seeing as Jacob and Coraline Sutherland had been the ones handing down the punishments for one half of the teenage troublemaking duo.

“I'm looking for something specific,” she told Zaf as they passed a row of snakeskin belts and a table topped with leather wallets and shaving kit cases. “Have a look around. I worked here once—ran the counter, stocked inventory. Sometimes, off the clock, I helped the entertainment sound check.” She looked toward the other side of the store and found a modest wood stage set up and a chalkboard where the performers' names were always posted. “Looks like nobody's scheduled for the weekend. Are you still any good on the acoustic?”

“Don't think about it,” he interrupted. “I'm in cowboy country, but there are two things I won't do while we're here. Play the guitar and wear a hat.”

“Boo,” she teased, and damn, did it feel incredible to joke around and know a sense of safety, no matter how fragile it was.

“You sang a song in Spanish at the bar in Mexico that first night,” he commented, taking her back to those moments that had been charged with sexual awareness and unexplainable need. “So many sides to you, Jo. All of them made to hook me.”

She stilled her cane and grabbed hold of him by his buckle. “I'm glad you're here. If work hadn't kept us in DC or out on jobs, would you have brought me home to your folks in Jersey?”

“No, because I haven't been back in eight years.”

“Your parents are likely missing you.”

“They don't know who I am anymore,” he said softly. “I don't think I do, either.”

I know who you are. I know I'm in love with you.

But they were friends with benefits because that was all of himself he would give her. As she habitually did, Joey accepted what she could get. “I'm checking out the boots. My mother's side would be offended to know I brought sneakers and stilettos but not a single pair of boots.”

Mulling over the selections, she decided on a sandy-brown pair with turquoise embroidery and cherry leather inlay. Then, craning her neck to get a visual on Zaf, who was in conversation with the person behind the counter, she joined the shoppers fussing over the impressive collection of hats.

Determined to get him to do both of the things he said he wouldn't on this trip, she started by choosing a black Stetson and hauling her finds to the counter.

“I'm not wearing that,” he said, setting her boots on the counter.

“No?” She motioned for him to lean so she could whisper in his ear, “Wear this hat and I'll do you in the back of the truck.”

Zaf slid the Stetson toward the register. “Do you accept American Express?”

Joey was wicked and not an ounce sorry for it. She would make good on the deal, some night this week after dark when the stars came out of hiding.

“Josephine de la Peña?” the woman behind the counter asked, already rushing around the counter.

“Hi, Coraline.” She braced herself for a sympathetic look but instead got a hearty hug. “This is my boyfriend, Zaf. So, where's the hometown girl?” she asked when Coraline returned to the register.

“Delivering one of her orders. She teaches art at the elementary school, but during the summers you can hardly take her attention off her stained glass studio. Are you heading to Yellow Hawk?”

“After I see Papá at the shop.”

“Okay. I'll let Honey know you're back. Don't y'all start cutting up and painting the town red the way you used to.”

“Can't promise that,” Joey said with an angelic smile.

“Trouble, both of you. Oh, hey, Josephine—” Coraline waited until Zaf was out the sliding doors before she said conspiratorially, “Don't tell my husband I said this, but your man is oh, my God, hot!”

Their next stop was Bonita Gardens of Texas. It wasn't until they'd parked in the lot that she finally confided that she'd spoken with her father the day before and he wanted a man-to-man talk with Zaf.

“Papá's traditional,” she told him. “He's protective of me. We can't exactly hold him at fault for being cautious.”

“Is he going to be waiting with a shotgun at the ready or something?”

“Only if he's cleaning it.” She tried not to alarm him, but getting past her father's reservations would be only the first obstacle. It was her mother, Anita, Zaf would need to approach with utmost care. The gentle-voiced accountant with the big brown eyes and dimpled smile had an intricate personality. Not many knew exactly how intricate.

“Do they know about Arizona?” he asked.

“Some secrets are mine to keep, even from the family. I never told them you were the shooter. All they know is you're in law enforcement and we're dating.” She gently added, “Both of my parents are willing to trust my judgment. But since we expect a full house at the ranch, Mamá and Papá want to establish that you have gentlemanly intentions.”

Zaf looked her dead in the eyes. “I certainly do not. In fact...”

His filthy words left a blush on her cheeks that remained as they entered the main building.

While Blanket's renovations were no more dramatic than new doors and a fresh coat of paint, the town's family-owned florist had undergone a transformation that included increased square footage, a second-story addition that held offices and a consultation room, and delivery vans that looked more like showroom SUVs that boasted the company logo.

“Is Hector de la Peña around?” she asked the receptionist. “I'm his daughter, Joey.”

“Oh, hello! You're today's top subject. He's in the greenhouse. Go have a seat in the consult room, and I'll page him.”

When Hector arrived, he promptly reintroduced Joey to the hall and shut the door, leaving her blisteringly indignant as she paced and looked through the glass wall and tried pitifully to gauge their conversation.

But she'd been privy to none of it. When Hector finally swaggered to the door and opened it, she stepped in and said, “
¡Válgame Dios!
Papá, if I didn't miss you so much, I would be pissed that you did this. I'm not a little girl. You can't grill my boyfriends.”

“Zaf's a good man,
mija
,” Hector declared, deflating her fury. “Take him home to meet the family.”

Joey hugged her father, staring over his shoulder at Zaf. “What did you say?” she mouthed.

Zaf put his palms together and bowed his head as if to say, “I was a saint.”

When they reached Yellow Hawk Ranch, the sun was sitting low and the main house brimmed with people. Most of the family had arrived yesterday, so she and Zaf were late arrivals. If that wasn't enough to call too much attention to them, Joey's cane picked up any slack. Relatives converged from every direction, pulling her into conversations that put her bilingual ability to good use.

Somehow she and Zaf got separated. The Yellow Hawk Ranch sat on several acres of open Texas land, the closest neighbor was over a mile away...but for the first time in days she felt at peace without needing to have him in her sight.

“I want to know what you said to Zaf,” she warned Hector once he'd returned to a house all but vibrating with noise and music and life.

“
Sí
, okay. We'll talk in the garden, after I help you and Anita here.” He came to his wife, nuzzling her neck and murmuring something that might be romantic if Hector and Anita weren't
her parents
.

“Eh,
cochino
. No foreplay over the food,” someone ribbed.

She and her mother ruled the rustic millionaire-meets-mountain-living kitchen, selecting lemons for what must be the third pitcher of fresh-made lemonade of the afternoon. Liquor was plentiful—and going fast—but there were more underage cousins than Joey had realized, and they were a thirsty, demanding lot.

“Hurry up!” five-year-old Graciela shouted. “If I stay thirsty for too long, I get hiccups. When I get hiccups, I have to drink more to stop the hiccups. When I drink more, I pee in my jammies. When I pee in my jammies, Mommy gets mad.”

“Gracie,
vamanos
,” Joey's brother, Eduardo, said, swooping in to interrupt the onset of a preschool diva's tantrum.

He looked like a normal kid guilty of following trends—tattoos on his arm, which Anita had called her to commiserate over, and the sides of his head shaved low with the rest of his hair in a man-bun that might be kind of edgy hot to the girls around town.

Only, Eddie was following a path that Joey found familiar. At seventeen, Eddie had his eye on law studies and his ambitions set on Quantico.

“
Gracias
,” Joey said, waving them over. “But she reminds me of you at that age, Eddie. Impatient, petulant—”

“What's pech-u-ant mean?” Graciela asked.

“Josephine means to say you're being a brat,” Anita explained, handing the girl a plastic cup. “Of course, who knows a brat better than a brat?”

Joey scrunched her face. “How
could
you say I'm a brat? I was thinking I'm your favorite.”

“You're my favorite daughter.” Anita laughed at Joey's
“Hey!”
Passing off her lemon-squeezing duties to her husband, she said, “Josephine, your father said you'd called some time ago and asked for me. Is there something going on that I should know about?”

“No, Mamá.”
Lies.
“I'm just here for family.”

Over an hour had passed before she was able to slip away from the chaos and meet Hector in the garden, which was actually an eco-friendly greenhouse where he often spent time to reflect.

Joey shut the door, and there was a weighty silence that seemed louder than the hum of the cooling system. “You worry about me too much, Papá.”

“I can't help it. I don't care that you're an adult and you're smart and you work in law enforcement. None of that matters to me because you're my daughter.”

“Is the cane hard to look at?”

“No, it's the fear in your eyes. Tell me what's scaring you.”

She couldn't. At some point she'd thought that she might be able to, but with so much family here—in the house, visiting the stables, playing rowdy card games in the carriage house—she didn't want to wreck the reunion.

For their sake, she swallowed her childish instinct to run to her parents, who'd slay her dragons then do everything to map out the rest of her life.

She would show them she could take care of herself, even if she had to lie.

“I'm not scared,” she told her father. “I'm just nervous that you and Mamá might mistreat my boyfriend.”

“Zaf. Has Anita taken a look at him?”

“Beyond shaking his hand and telling him to eat plenty? No, and she won't. When I was a teenager she promised she wouldn't pry. My relationships are my business.”

“She wants to protect you.”

“Papá, I've heard this all before. Corpus Christi happened over twenty years ago, and I've been through a lot—with Zaf.”

“He cares about you. It's what we talked about at the flower shop.”

“I know.”
But he doesn't love me.
“Can I ask you, how do you sleep in the same bed as Mamá and work with her and love her, knowing in your heart that there will always be secrets?”

“Anita's the love of my life.”

“What about Eddie and me? Papá, I have to tell you... I passed the LSATs.”

Hector ruffled his gray-streaked hair, crossed his arms and turned toward a row of cacti. “Yeah. You were too intelligent to fail, but too concerned about my ego to defy me. Why tell me now?”

“To ask you how you can go on loving me when there are lies and secrets. Your daughter chose the FBI over the flower shop. Eddie's speed-racing down that same road.”

“Josephine, I love my family. It's as simple as that. As the head of this household, I can exercise certain power, but ultimately you have your own minds. Whatever I can't control, I address in prayer. It's all I can do.”