Beachcomber (32 page)

“I didn’t, not really. But I do now. Come on, Christy, tell me the rest of it. I want to help you, honey, but you have to trust me before I can.”

Christy took a deep breath and opened her eyes again. She couldn’t resist any more. She needed someone in her corner too badly. She needed Luke in her corner too badly. “Have you ever heard of John DePalma?”

“Vaguely.”

“He’s head of the Masseria crime family in New Jersey.”

“Ah. This is your ex-boyfriend?”

“His father.” Christy hesitated, then reached up to touch Luke’s face. He was propped on an elbow beside her, leaning over her, and her palm rested lightly against a bristly, hard-angled cheek. “Believe me, you’re better off not hearing this.”

“Like I said, you let me worry about me.” He turned his mouth into her hand, brushing her palm with his lips. Christy felt the warm touch of his mouth clear down to her toes. “I take it your ex-boyfriend followed his pop into the family business?”

“Y-yes.” She let her hand drop to his wide shoulder, then slide down to rest on his triceps. The muscle there was hard and strong.
He
was strong, and smart, a man a woman could depend on. A man she could depend on? The jury was still out on that, but she thought … hoped … so. “I didn’t know it, though. I thought …”

Her voice trailed off. But if she was going to involve him, he had to know the truth. The truth about her as well as everything else. She began again.

“Look, my father was a mob soldier. He was shot dead when I was a little girl. Nothing was ever proved, but it was probably a hit. My mother’s boyfriend is a capo in the Masseria family. My sister was married to a guy who was in the mob. We’re a mob family, you understand? That’s how I was raised. Half the people I grew up with were criminals, and still are. No big deal, okay? Not then, and not now. But I didn’t want to live that way. So I stayed clear of all that as much as possible,
went to school, became a lawyer. Well, lawyers are a dime a dozen, so when Michael DePalma, my ex-boyfriend, offered me a job right out of school at a really good salary I jumped at it. He’s a lawyer with his own law firm, and I’d known who he was forever, although I didn’t really get to know him personally until I went to work for him. But I thought he was like me, a kid from a mob family who didn’t want that kind of life.”

She paused to take a breath, wishing she could see his face more clearly so that she could read his reaction to what he was hearing. But on second thought, maybe it was better not to know until she’d gotten it all out.

“But you were wrong,” Luke said.

Christy nodded.

“Oh, yeah, I was wrong. But I didn’t know it until just about a week and a half ago.” She swallowed. “This is the part you really don’t want to know.”

Her hand tightened on his arm. He trailed warm fingers down her cheekbone and into her hair in response.

“Yeah, I do. Come on, honey. Tell me the rest.”

Christy wet her lips. “Franky—my sister Nicole’s ex-husband—came to my apartment one night. I never did like him much, he was lousy to Nicole and the kids, but he was still kind of family and so I let him in. He was really agitated, begging me to help him, telling me that I was the only one who could. I asked him why, and he said it was because Michael—my Michael—had put out a contract on him because he had gambled away some money—a whole lot of money—he’d been
supposed to turn over to the Family. He said if I talked to Michael for him I could make it all go away.”

“So did you talk to Michael?”

Christy shook her head. “I didn’t believe Franky at first. I started checking things out. I went through the computer files at work, I cross-checked bank statements and case logs and pending litigation and settlements, and I found some things that didn’t add up. When I figured out what was going on, then I went to talk to Michael. He admitted everything.”

“Admitted what, Christy?”

“That the firm was basically a sham. Oh, we really did legal work, but it was a cover for the company’s real business, which is money laundering. Apparently all the illegal profits the Masseria family collects for things like drugs and prostitution and illegal gun sales and cigarette smuggling and gambling and kickbacks and, well, just about anything illegal you can think of, get run through the law firm, where the money is disguised and recycled and parceled out in various ways until it’s untraceable to its original source.” She paused, grimacing. “Just so you’re aware, knowing that much is enough to get you killed.”

“I’ll take my chances.”

He didn’t sound nearly worried enough to convince her that he really understood the danger she had just put him in. If
she’d
understood how dangerous such knowledge was when Franky had come knocking on her door, she never would have gone digging into those files. Heck, she never would have answered the door. She’d still be happy as a clam in her old life, doing the
legal work she loved by day and being Michael’s girl at night.

At the thought she frowned. Whatever else she regretted, she didn’t regret losing Michael. The man she’d been in love with had never really existed. She’d never actually known the true Michael DePalma until the end—and when she had finally made his acquaintance he had both terrified and repulsed her.

Luke interrupted her thoughts. “So what happened after you confronted Michael?”

“We had a fight, and I broke it off with him. Then I went to visit my mother. That’s what I always do when things go wrong in my life: go talk to my mother. But not far from her house, my Uncle Vince—that’s my mother’s boyfriend I told you about—had some goons pull me out of my car. They shoved me in his, in the backseat. Uncle Vince was waiting there for me, and he told me that if I told anyone what I knew, my mother and my sisters and I would be killed. Up until then, I had always l-liked Uncle Vince.”

Her voice started to shake. Luke gave an incomprehensible mutter and gathered her into his arms. He was lying on his back now and she was almost on top of him, shivering like it was thirty degrees outside.

“That’s not all,” she said, holding herself away from him with both hands on his chest, determined to keep nothing back so that he would know exactly what he was—what they were both were—facing. “Uncle Vince took me to a warehouse. There was a meat locker in the back. He and the goons took me inside—I was so scared, Luke; I thought they might be going to go ahead
and kill me right then—and Franky was in there. Just lying there on his stomach on the floor. He was naked. He was dead. Uncle Vince said—he said Franky had been hit by a car. And the goons laughed.”

“Shit,” Luke said, and this time when he pulled her close she let him, burrowing her head into the hollow between his shoulder and neck, wrapping her arms around his neck, holding on to him like he was the only solid thing in an unstable world. “Jesus Christ, Christy, did you tell anybody? Did you go to the police?”

“You still don’t get it, do you?” She lifted her head. His face was so close that she could feel the scratch of his chin when he spoke, and the warm flutter of his breath against her cheek. “These people—they
own
the police. They own judges. They own prosecutors. They own people that you would never believe. If I tell—if they think I’m going to tell—I’ll wind up like Franky. Or my mom will. Or my sisters. Or all of us. They won’t think twice about killing us. That’s why I think that the guy who’s after me might be a h-hit man. I think he might have killed Elizabeth Smolski by mistake while he was coming after
me.
”

All of a sudden she couldn’t talk any more because her throat had closed up. She rested her head against him, greedy for his warmth, his comfort. Her cheek nestled into the crisp hair on his chest. Beneath it she could hear the steady beat of his heart.

“It’s okay,” Luke said quietly, his hand sliding around the back of her neck. “You don’t have to be afraid any more. It’ll be all right, I promise you.”

Christy lifted her head again.

“I keep thinking, if I’d just done something different. If I’d
believed
Franky… . I didn’t even like the little twerp, but I just can’t seem to quit remembering how—how
pathetic
he looked lying there dead.”

Her voice broke, and she could feel the hot rush of tears crowd her eyes.

“Hey,” Luke said. “You’re not crying, are you?”

“No.” Christy blinked rapidly to push back the tears that she refused to shed. “What would be the use of that? Anyway, I never cry.”

“You know what?” Luke’s voice was even softer than before. “I’ve got a real thing for girls who never cry.”

Then his hand tightened on her neck and he pulled her mouth down to his and kissed her.

22

H
IS KISS WAS EVERY BIT
as devastating as she remembered. All he had to do was touch his mouth to hers and heat exploded inside her like a supernova. Christy closed her eyes and wrapped her arms around his neck and kissed him back as if she’d die if she didn’t.

His arms tightened around her and he shifted so that they were lying side by side with his hard-muscled triceps pillowing her head. Clad in nothing but his soft cotton underwear, his body seemed to burn hers everywhere they touched. Fingers tangling in the curls at his nape, she pressed her breasts to his chest, reveling in the heat of it, in the abrasion of his chest hair, in the firm resilience of the muscles there, in the contrast between his hard masculine contours and her softness.

The hot sweet fire they generated was enough to dry her eyes, to block out memories of Franky and Elizabeth Smolski and the danger she and Luke were in, to narrow her focus to one thing: Luke, and the way he made her feel.

“I love the way you kiss,” she whispered when he
broke off to slide his lips along her jaw, then pressed his open mouth to her neck. As the wet heat of it crawled over her skin she tilted her head back and abandoned herself to sensation. A rhythmic throbbing sprang to life deep inside her as his mouth traced the length of her collarbone and then moved down the upper slope of her breast, only to be blocked by the silken edge of her bra. His mouth burned there against the creamy softness of her skin for a long moment before sliding over the thin nylon and opening over the tip of her breast. Her body tightened instantly as the scalding wetness of his tongue sought out her nipple through the cloth, jolting her clear down to her toes. Drawing in a quick, hard breath, she melted, going absolutely boneless. From that instant it was all over: she was his, to do with as he would.

“You’re beautiful.” His voice was a husky whisper. His hand replaced his mouth on her breast as he lifted his head to kiss her. She returned his kiss wildly, burning for him, feeling as if every nerve ending she possessed had been set aflame. She arched up into that caressing hand, loving the heat of it, the friction as he rubbed her nipple through the still-warm dampness his mouth had left behind. Then even that flimsy barrier was too much and his hand slid inside her bra to find her bare skin. It was large enough to cover her completely and warm and hard enough to make her shudder. She ached as his palm flattened on her. Then his thumb found her nipple, and she gasped as he moved it deliberately back and forth over the sensitive nub.

“You remember earlier, when I said I wasn’t going to jump your bones?” His voice was hoarse now, guttural,
as his hand curved over her breast, gauging the shape and weight of it, caressing it, possessing it.

“Yes,” she managed, scarcely able to draw breath.

“I lied.”

That was her cue to object if she had a problem with what was happening, she knew, but objecting was the last thing she wanted to do. The tantalizing heat of his hand on her breast and the blatant masculinity of his body against hers were blowing her mind. The last time he had kissed her like this, she’d been desperate to keep him with her, to do whatever she had to do to persuade him to help her make it through the night. The fact that he’d managed to turn her on had been something extra, something surprising, a special bonus gift that had caught her unawares. But now there was no ulterior motive, nothing on her agenda at all except exploring what it was like to be with Luke. She wanted him so much that she was dizzy with it, and she knew that he wanted her too.

There was no mistaking that. Pressed tight against the whole long length of him as she was, she had irrefutable evidence of the strength of his desire. Everything about him was hard: his breathing, his muscles, his erection. In response, the throbbing inside her grew more urgent, causing her body to burn and quake. She snuggled even closer, sliding her hands over his back. The skin was warm and faintly damp and smooth. The muscles beneath were firm and resilient. As she ran her hands along the length of his spine, she felt his chest expand and heard a sound that made her think that he was sucking in his breath.

“I want you naked.” He reached behind her to unfasten her bra even as he growled the words into her ear.

“Naked’s good.” She wanted to be naked. Wanted to be touched. Wanted him inside her.

Running his tongue around the tender swirls of her ear, nibbling her lobe until she was breathing fast and felt as light-headed as if she were on a starvation diet, he got the last hook undone and pulled her bra away from her body. Christy’s heart pounded in triple time as she felt the silken straps slide down her arms, and then she let go of him for just long enough for him to take the thing off. When the fragile garment hit the sand behind her with the merest whisper, she was already too distracted to do more than note the sound in passing. Her hands were sliding up his chest, her palms registering the hard arousal of his nipples, her fingers exploring the firm contours of his pecs. She was sweeping her hands out along the muscled width of his shoulders with real appreciation for their size and strength when he refocused her attention in a hurry by bending his head to just brush her nipple with his lips.