Caught in the Billionaire's Embrace (14 page)

He leaned forward in his chair, taking both of her hands in his. “No, Della, you can't. We need to talk more about—”

This time, when Marcus stopped speaking, it wasn't because he cut himself off. This time, it was because of a loud crash in the living room—which Della was pretty sure was the sound of the front door being broken in—followed by a wildly shouted, “Della, it's Geoffrey! Are you okay?”

And then, just like in the movies, everything turned to chaos.

M
arcus sat on the sofa in Della's house—even though both obviously really belonged to Uncle Sam—and wondered when his life had morphed into a Quentin Tarantino film. One minute, he'd been sitting at the kitchen table trying to tell her how he felt about her, and the next, he had been face down on the linoleum with some guy's knee in the small of his back yelling that he should keep his hands where the guy could see them at all times.

At least the guy, whom Della had eventually been able to introduce as the federal marshal assigned to keep an eye on her, had taken off the handcuffs after shoving Marcus onto the sofa. Now, as he rubbed at his wrists and tried to crane his head around the man to see how Della was faring, the guy—who Marcus couldn't help thinking looked like an older version of Dwight Schrute, only not as well-dressed—leaned the
same way he was trying to look, cutting off his view of Della. Again.

“Geoffrey, it's okay,” Della said. Again.

Marcus had gathered from the frantic exchange between Della and the marshal only moments ago that before answering her front door, she had dialed Geoffrey's number without pressing the call button, and that when she dropped the phone on the floor, it had somehow performed that function anyway. Geoffrey had answered his phone after seeing Della's name attached to the caller ID and heard her talking to someone in the distance. Even though the conversation hadn't sounded threatening and she hadn't sound frightened, she wasn't supposed to be talking to
anyone,
so he had leaped into action and driven to the safe house to check on her. Then, when he mistook the wine stain on her shirt for blood…

Well, that was when the knee in Marcus's back had nearly broken his spine.

Now, however, all was well. The marshal was only looking at him as if he planned to cap him in both kneecaps with the sidearm he hadn't even had the decency to reholster. At least he wasn't pointing the weapon at Marcus anymore.

“Tell me one more time,” Geoffrey said, “what the hell you think you're doing here.”

Marcus had already told him that twice—as had Della—but Geoffrey didn't seem satisfied. This, okay, maybe Marcus could understand, since he hadn't been completely honest with the guy. But there was no way he was going to tell a total stranger he was here because he was in love with Della Hannan when he hadn't even told Della that yet.

“He's a friend,” Della said. Again.

Marcus looked at Geoffrey to see if that would satisfy him. It clearly did not.

“I thought you didn't have any friends in Chicago,” Geoffrey told Della. Still looking at Marcus.

When Della didn't reply right away, the marshal glanced over his shoulder in silent inquiry, then quickly returned his attention to Marcus. As if realizing his dilemma in not being able to see them both at the same time, Della moved to sit on the sofa, too. Marcus tried not to read too much into the fact that she crowded herself into the corner as far from him as she could get. But—call him an alarmist—the gesture wasn't exactly encouraging.

Della glanced at Geoffrey, then back at the floor, looking like a twelve-year-old who'd been caught with her first cigarette. “I met him two weeks ago,” she said.

Geoffrey narrowed his eyes at her. “How could you have met him two weeks ago when you never leave the house?”

Della nibbled her lip nervously but said nothing.

“Della?” Geoffrey prodded.

“Yeah, about that,” she said. She then launched into a long, winding, somewhat convoluted explanation about sneaking out of the safe house from time to time due to extreme cabin fever, then about some promise she'd made to herself as a child, then she spoke at length about opera in general and
La Bohème
in particular, then she backtracked to something about a little shop off Michigan Avenue and haute couture, then she moved on to dinner, then Marcus, and then—

And then she stopped abruptly. Probably, Marcus thought, because she'd gotten to the part about where the two of them checked into the Ambassador Hotel.

At that point, had Geoffrey been a character in an old-time novel, he was what would have been referred to as
apoplectic.
But his voice was level when he told Della, “I cannot believe you've been sneaking out of the house on a regular basis without letting me know where you were going.”

“Only a few times,” she said defensively. When she looked up and saw how sternly her caretaker was eyeing her, she amended, “Okay, six. But that's all. And if I'd told you, you wouldn't have let me go. I was always careful.”

Geoffrey spent a few more minutes admonishing her like a child and making her look even guiltier, but there was little he said that Della—or Marcus—could take exception to.

That didn't, however, stop Marcus from taking exception. “Give it a rest, Geoffrey,” he interrupted the man midsentence. “It's the feds' fault for keeping her cooped up here for eleven months.”

Both Geoffrey and Della glared at him for that. Geoffrey's irritation Marcus could understand, but Della's?

“Don't make this worse than it already is,” she told him. “Geoffrey's right. I shouldn't have left the safe house. Ever.”

Something in the way she said it made Marcus think her reasoning had less to do with the fact that she'd broken the rules and more to do with the repercussions of her actions. He just hoped one of the repercussions in question wasn't having met—and spending a weekend with—him.

He opened his mouth to try and reassure her that the weekend the two of them had spent together had been anything but wrong, but Geoffrey jingled the handcuffs
he was still holding and said, “Keep it up, Fallon, and you're going to find yourself in federal custody, too. Only it won't be a safe house you'll be going to.”

Yeah, yeah, yeah, Marcus wanted to say. He knew his rights when it came to law enforcement. He watched network television.

“I only meant—”

“I don't care what you meant,” Geoffrey admonished. “I really ought to take you into custody, at least until Della leaves town.”

“But—”

“But since she'll vouch for you, and since, like she said, you're such a paragon of professionalism and a scion of the community—” there was no mistaking the sarcasm in his voice when he said that last part “—I'm going to let you go.”

Marcus bit back the indignation he felt and forced himself to mutter a reasonably tempered, “Thank you.”

“But you'll have to leave the premises now and not come back.”

Okay, so much for the reasonable temper. “What? But you just said yourself that Della vouched for me, so what's the harm in—”

“I don't have to explain the harm again,” Geoffrey stated emphatically. Then, to hammer it home, he added, “To either of you. Now maybe the physical threat to Della is minimal, but she's got a big job to do next week, and we can't have it messed up because she gets a little stir-crazy being cooped up.”

Both Marcus and Della started to speak at once, but Geoffrey lifted a hand to stop them. When neither of them stopped, the marshal raised his voice louder than theirs and talked right over them.

“Here's what's going to happen,” he said. “Fallon, you're going to go home and forget you ever saw Della Hannan here in Chicago.”

“Oh, no I'm not,” Marcus said. He didn't care how loud the other guy was talking.

“Yes. You are,” Geoffrey countered. “And, Della.” He turned his attention to her before Marcus had a chance to object again. “You're going to pack everything you brought with you to Chicago while I wait.”

“What? But why?” Della sounded as annoyed as Marcus was.

“Because you're checking out of Chez Uncle Sam tonight,” Geoffrey told her. “The safe house has been compromised. You can't stay here.”

“But Marcus is the only one who knows—”

“The safe house has been compromised,” Geoffrey repeated. “You can't stay here. Now go pack your bags. We'll find you somewhere else to stay for the next couple of nights—not that you're going to be let out of my sight, meaning I'll be missing my favorite nephew's bar mitzvah on Sunday, thank you very much—and then, Monday, you'll fly back to New York as scheduled.”

For a moment, Marcus thought Della was going to fight the other man's edict. Her back went ramrod-straight, her eyes flashed with anger and her hands doubled into fists. Then, as quickly, her entire posture changed. Her shoulders rolled forward, her gaze dropped to the floor, her fingers uncurled.

“All right,” she conceded softly. “I guess it's inevitable.”

“And, Della,” Geoffrey said, bringing her attention to him. “I want the cell phone that we gave you. You're not to have any contact with the outside world until
after the grand jury hearing. And you're going to be assigned a twenty-four-hour escort in New York—no,
two
twenty-four-hour escorts in New York,” he hastily corrected himself, “until the powers that be say it's okay to cut you loose into the program.”

“The program?” Marcus asked.

Now Geoffrey turned to look at him. “WITSEC,” he said. “The Witness Security Program. You might know it better as witness protection, thanks to our good buddies in Hollywood,” he added with more sarcasm.

Marcus looked at Della. “Is that true?” he said.

She continued to study the floor as she replied. “Yes.”

“You're going into the witness protection program?”

“I told you I had to start over somewhere new, Marcus, where no one would know me. Where I had a whole new identity.”

“I know, but I thought…”

Now she did look at him. “You thought what?”

He struggled over his words. “I thought…I mean, I just figured… After everything that happened between you and me…” He halted, took a deep breath and released it slowly. “Witness protection means you'll never be able to contact anyone from your old life,” he finally said. “It means I won't have any way to find you. Not even my guy with the contacts could find you there.”

“What guy with the contacts?” Geoffrey asked, turning suspicious again.

Marcus ignored him. Della still looked at the floor.

“Della,” he pleaded. “Don't do it.”

“What guy with the contacts?” Geoffrey repeated. “If he knows how to get past government smokescreens, we need to know about him.”

“Then you can question me at home later.” Marcus ground out the words without sparing the marshal a glance.

“Oh, we will, Mr. Fallon. We will.”

Della remained silent.

Marcus knew there was no way he would be able to find her once she disappeared. It was obvious that Geoffrey's concern for her went beyond what a federal marshal would undertake. From the moment he'd crashed into the kitchen, there had been an unmistakable air of paternity about the guy. He was protecting Della the way he would protect a daughter. Marcus might as well be doing battle with a mama polar bear.

“Della,” he said again, “please. You and I need to talk.”

“Not tonight, you won't,” Geoffrey assured him. Then, to Della, in a much gentler voice, he said, “Go pack your stuff. I'll call around and find another place for you. A place that's
safe,
” he said, looking back at Marcus, still obviously not trusting him.

Della lifted her head and looked at Marcus, her eyes brimming with tears. “I'm sorry,” she told him. “I—I just…I can't—” She shook her head. “Goodbye, Marcus.”

And then she was off the sofa and disappearing into the hallway. Unthinkingly, Marcus stood to follow her, but a heavy hand on his shoulder stopped him.

“Front door's that way,” Geoffrey told him. “Use it.”

Marcus didn't have much choice but to obey. He took two broad steps in that direction, but stopped to look down the hall. There was a light on in one of the bedrooms at the end, and he could see Della's shadow moving around in front of the lamplight. That was all she
was to him now—a shadow. Just as he'd been before she came into his life, Marcus was back to being alone.

No, wait, he realized as the thought formed in his head. It wasn't like before at all. Because before, Marcus hadn't realized what he was missing. Before, he hadn't recognized the emptiness, because he'd been able to fill it with mind-numbing carousing and willing, if faceless, women. Before, Marcus had been able to delude himself that he had everything he could possibly ever want and that his life lacked absolutely nothing. Before, he had been able to pretend that he was happy and contented. But now…

Now he really did know what happiness and contentment were. Because those were the things he'd felt when he was with Della. Now he knew how full, how fun, how fantastic his life could be. Now he understood how much more enjoyable it was to share life with someone else. He realized that loving someone wasn't just something a person
did,
but how being in love was something a person
was.
Marcus was in love with Della, and that completed him as a human being. It was something that brought him greater joy, greater peace, than he ever could have imagined. With Della gone…

Well. He would still be in love with her. He would always be in love with her. But with her gone, so went a part of himself. A part she would always keep with her, but a part he would never have back. Not unless he had Della.

And Della would be someplace where the feds would make sure she was never found again.

 

Although the grand jury hearings lasted less than a week, they seemed even more interminable and
emotionally draining than the eleven months Della had spent cooped up in Chicago. Because she was the only witness the federal prosecutors had, her testimony took up the majority of the time, and she spoke for hours every day, until she thought she would run out of voice and words and nerve. By the end of the proceedings, all she wanted was to escape into her new life where she would be left alone.