Diego politely ignored my outburst. “I’ll stay for a little while so we can talk about this. I don’t want it to go too fast. There’s a lot we don’t know about each other.”
You have no idea.
“Okay. That’s a start.”
“But I can’t stay here. I’ll check into a hotel.”
“You can stay here!” I wanted to punch myself. How could I take care of this job and train Romi if Diego lived here? And what was I doing anyway? What kind of example was I setting for my daughter if I just let a strange foreigner move in?
“No.” Diego reached for his pants. (Why was he reaching for his pants?) “It has to be a hotel. I don’t want Romi to freak out. She’s a great kid.” He started to get dressed, so I did too.
“Okay, it’s settled,” I said, once we’d installed ourselves in the kitchen with coffee.
“It’s far from settled,” Diego began, “and honestly, I don’t know what is going on in my head, but you’ve bewitched me. I can’t even think of leaving.”
Oooooh. That was so chauvinistic. Wasn’t that always the way men put it? They didn’t fall in love; the evil women cast spells over them.
“I hate that analogy,” I muttered.
Diego looked surprised, and I realized it was the first time I’d ever seen him like that. “What? Oh. The bewitched thing? It’s just a phrase.”
Ohmygod! We were just about to have our first light! “It also assumes that women are witches and men fall under their power.” Way to go, feminist Gin!
He laughed. “I never thought about it that way. Sorry. I’ll say it correctly then.” He paused for what seemed like two years. “I’m falling for you. And I don’t know what to do about it.”
“Yaaaaayyyyyy!”
I jumped up and down, punching my fists into the air. I kept up this action until I realized I wasn’t actually doing it in my head, like I thought I was. Damn.
Diego laughed so hard that tears were rolling down his cheeks. “I’ve never gotten a reaction like that before!”
I forgot my embarrassment and folded my arms over my chest. “Do you tell many women that you’re falling in love with them?”
He brought his hands up in protest. “No! That’s not what I meant! You’re the first since high school. But I love your reaction.”
I grabbed his hands across the counter. “Diego, I think I’m in love with you too.” I waited. “What? No little end-zone dance for me?”
Diego walked around to my side of the counter, lifting me onto it. I wrapped my arms and legs around him.
“Would you settle for a touchdown instead?” His voice was deep and I could feel him swelling between my thighs.
“Are we talking about football or soccer here?”
He closed his eyes and kissed me. “Football is soccer. And now I’m going to give you another lesson Down Under.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
“We’re going to have to redo every conversation we’ve ever had.”
John Smith,
Mr. & Mrs. Smith
After some kitchen counter nookie and the promise to talk more that evening, Diego left to finish up some loose ends and check into a hotel. I should have felt guilty that I’d given him the reason for the loose ends, but I didn’t. My demented mind told me that had I not knocked him off, Diego’s client would be making plans to go back to his own hemisphere soon—taking Diego with him. Always look on the bright side!
I spent the afternoon installing my phone taps and setting my workshop for some serious chemistry. I’d decided to use a simple poison for the mole. It was colorless, odorless and instantaneous. Kind of like a sodium-pentathol shot for when you put down your pet. After all, Mole Man was family. And I at least owed it to Richie, Lon or Phil to make it somewhat quick.
I’d ruled out Coney, Dak and Paris. Coney may be odd and frightening to children, but I just didn’t feel in my gut that he’d turn in the family. No, it was definitely the creepy cousins.
The phone tap/iPod was set up in my lab and plugged into my laptop. It would remotely cover all six phone lines, recording the data on my computer. Okay, that was done. Liv was going to need a few days to get the financial information, so I went to pick up Romi from school.
After plunking her in front of cartoons with cookies and milk, I decided to wash my sheets. Diego was coming by for dinner, and I wanted the bedroom to look a little better than it had earlier.
I grinned, thinking of how the two of us had managed to get all the sheets and mattress pad off the bed without really trying. It was a good thing my cousins weren’t surveilling me, because I bet I looked pretty stupid standing in the laundry room with my face buried in the sheets, trying to pick up Diego’s scent.
Romi barely made it through dinner. She was so tired from all the travel and a full day of school that she actually excused herself to go to bed. I tucked her in, then joined Diego in the kitchen where he was putting dishes in the dishwasher. My dishwasher! He looked like he lived here already. I tried to calm myself down. Slowly.
He wants to take it slowly, Gin
.
“You pay for dinner and clean up too? You’re too good to be true!” I said, planting a kiss on his lips.
“Mum raised me that way. Can’t really help it, I guess.” Diego smiled.
“See?” I said, “You’d be a great asset around here. Not to mention a good role model for Romi.”
“Hmmm.” He laughed. “Are you pressuring me?”
“Absolutely. I want you here. What reason could you have for leaving?”
Diego frowned. “I don’t want to leave, but there are reasons. I don’t have a job, for one thing.”
I wanted to scream,
But I’m rich! I have a huge trust fund! You’ll never have to work again! But I didn’t.
“Money isn’t an issue,” was all I said.
“It is to me. Of course, maybe I could work with you. Or we could start our own company together.”
I froze. I’d forgotten that he thought we were in the same line of work. While the feelings we had for each other were solid, I’d lied to Diego about my job and my family, and that was enough to screw everything up.
“Diego, I have to tell you something.” I looked him right in the eye to see how he would handle it. “I’m not a bodyguard.” He arched his right eyebrow, and I completely chickened out. “Not ... anymore, that is. I haven’t worked in a while.” Lies filled my head where the old lies used to be, but I couldn’t stop myself. “Ed left me a lot of money. I don’t have to work.”
Diego smiled again. “I don’t care about that. I wouldn’t care if you were an ax murderer ... that’s not why I feel the way I do.”
I was pretty sure I flinched. No, I wasn’t technically an ax murderer. Well, there had been that one time with a claw hammer, but I really didn’t care for blades too much. Of course, Diego had said he wouldn’t care if I were an ax murderer, so maybe we had something to work with here.
How would he handle the news I was an assassin? If I got down on my knees and confessed everything to him, would he connect me to his client? And what if he really liked his client? I was pretty sure I’d be screwed.
“Whew!” I feigned wiping a sweaty brow. “It’s good to get that off my chest.”
The kitchen was cleaned up, so we grabbed a couple of bottles of beer and went into the living room.
“Have you ever lost a client?” Diego asked me.
“How are you holding up?” I dodged.
He took a long drink from the bottle, then turned toward me. “Reasonably, I suppose. It was quite a shock.”
I put my hand on his thigh. “Tell me what happened.”
Diego began with the day he had come by, looking for Vic Jr. He stepped out of the shower to find a note saying his client had taken a walk. Diego tried Turner’s cell, but got no answer. He’d waited twenty minutes to see if his client would return. Then he drove around the neighborhood and thought of stopping by my house. After leaving me, he searched the neighborhood but came up with nothing. He spent the rest of the day calling work contacts, anyone connected to Turner. He ended with confirming his client’s identity at the morgue.
“The zoo?” I lied, feigning shock.
Diego nodded. “I just had this weird feeling when I watched the news that morning. So I went to the police department and later identified the body.
I remembered that the body’s head and neck had been mauled, “How did you identify him?”
“He had a Rolex with a personal engraving that was still on the body when they found him.”
I didn’t say anything for a moment or two. It had to be very, very hard to admit he’d lost a client. No matter what I said, it wouldn’t make him feel any better.
For the first time in a long time, I felt remorseful for a death I’d caused. It wasn’t like I was a psychopath or anything. I had a conscience. I just didn’t usually feel bad about the lives I’d taken. They were all assholes, hurting innocent people for profit. But I never thought of them as having family, friends or colleagues who’d miss them after. I never really saw the impact my work had on other people’s lives.
Granted, Diego wasn’t a perfect bodyguard, or this wouldn’t have happened. And I was merely a lucky assassin in that Turner had showed up unannounced ... hell, practically gift-wrapped. But I’d done something that had hurt Diego, made him feel bad about himself. A reputation isn’t a tangible thing, but when messed with, it can really screw you up.
“It’s all right, Gin.” Diego seemed to be reading my thoughts. “It was a freak thing. I can’t protect my client if he sneaks off to do whatever it is he had to do.”
“Does the company expect you to resolve the situation?” I had to know if Diego was going to hunt me down.
“No. Turns out he was laundering their money for terrorists. He never told me about his secret life. If he had, I would’ve resigned.”
“Oh, come on. Aren’t they all bad?” I joked.
Diego’s smile faded just enough to let me know I’d screwed up. “I don’t do the bad guys. I kind of have a thing about that.”
Uh oh. “What do you mean?”
“I try to screen my clients. I’m not religious or anything, but I draw the line at those who have connections to killers, terrorists, that kind of thing.”
A cold wash swept over me. People like me. “Not all killers are bad guys. What about soldiers, SWAT snipers, stuff like that?” Damn. The question popped out before I could think about it!
“Oh, I concede there are reasons to kill on a rare occasion. I just think of the others as nothing more than assassins. Killing for money. They’re bad for business.”
Nothing more than assassins? I knew what I did was wrong on many levels. But it was a time-honored tradition in our family. We kept things level. Maintained the balance for the circle of life and all that shit. Weeded out the wheat from the chaff. The scum from the good guys. Didn’t we? Nothing more than assassins? He said it like it was a bad thing.
I couldn’t focus. I’d go crazy trying to decipher things, but it appeared that my relationship with Diego could never work unless he warmed up to the idea that assassination wasn’t necessarily bad.
“Come on, Gin,” he swept a stray curl from my eyes, “I won’t have a philosophical discussion on this.”
He was right. “So what now?”
Diego relaxed, “I figured I’d give us a go. I’m not in any hurry to find another job.”
I arched my eyebrow. “Give us a go?”
He responded by taking me into his arms and kissing me. After a few minutes, I came up deliriously for air.
“I’ve never felt this way before, Ginny. You’re different from any woman I’ve ever known.”
I nodded, pulling him by the arm toward the stairs. After all, I had clean sheets and everything this time. I checked to make sure Romi was dead asleep, before pushing him into my (newly cleaned) bedroom and locking the door.
Diego kissed me as he lowered me to the bed, “That’s why I’m staying. At least for two weeks, that is.”
Even though I was drowning in pleasure, this phrase hammered through my head: Why the hell did everything have to happen in two weeks?
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
“Contracts ... neckties ... high voltage! Done Dirt Cheap!”
—AC/DC, Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap”
I tried to put Diego’s negative juju out of my mind when I woke up the next morning, alone, in my now not-so-clean bed. After dropping Romi off at school, I decided to put my head where it should have been all along and get with the assassination program.
I was delighted to discover that Missi’s phone bug really worked. Lon, Phil, Coney, Dak, Paris and Richie had all made calls or answered the phone in the last twelve hours.
Unfortunately, none of the conversations had the words, “I’m talking to the FBI and the Yard.” And one of Richie’s calls was to a 1-900 number for transsexual dwarves (I’d need a lot of beer to scrape that from my brain—
shudder
), but I figured something would turn up.