Reckless (14 page)

He didn't mention that it would also—he
hoped—help him keep his mind away from the thought that had been
recurring all day: that if he was going to die tonight, and if he'd
been given a last request, it would have been to spend several
hours in bed with Antonia. Visions of her small, firm body,
unclothed and crushed against his, crept into his mind unbidden.
Whenever he touched her or caught the barest hint of her scent, he
had to restrain himself from taking her into his arms and kissing
her breath away. When had this obsession with her taken over? He
was about to go into battle, for God's sake—yet all he could think
about was how it would feel to love every inch of the ebony-eyed
beauty.

He sat cross-legged on the floor and began
sorting the outside pieces, forcing himself to concentrate on the
task at hand.

Toni stopped arguing the sanity of doing a
puzzle at a time like this as soon as she thought about how nervous
he must be. She tried to imagine how she would feel if she knew
that in a short time people would be shooting at her. She'd go
along with the puzzle thing, she decided, if it would help Nick not
to think about what was ahead of him tonight.

Nick’s intense concentration made a furrow
between his brows Toni ignored the urge to put her finger there to
smooth it away.

“I probably had a hundred jigsaws when I was
a kid,” he said softly.

“I had a couple,” she responded. “But my
favorite pastime was paint-by-numbers. You remember those black
velvet ones? Took forever to dry, but they were so pretty they were
worth the wait.”

He glanced up at her, and his relaxed smile
took her breath away. “I'll bet it killed you—the waiting.”

“Drove me crazy! I could only do one color,
then wait and wait for it to dry before I could do another. I used
to prop the picture on a chair and point an electric fan at
it.”

“Wouldn't a hair dryer have been faster?”

“Who has patience enough to stand around
holding a hair dryer for hours on end?”

“Not you, that's for sure.” He held her gaze
with his, then looked down again and fit a corner piece to another.
“When did you start writing?”

“I don't know exactly. It's just something
I've always done. First it was journals and silly poetry and fairy
tales. It wasn't until high school that I got into the serious
stuff.”

He looked up again, his gaze intense. “Such
as?”

She frowned for a moment before deciding it
wouldn't hurt to be honest with him. To a point, anyway. “Social
injustice, corruption, that kind of thing.” She wondered if he
would get bored with the subject. He leaned forward, the puzzle
momentarily forgotten.

“Okay, so what was the first so-called
serious thing you wrote about?”

“Prejudice.”

She didn't elaborate. Nick studied her. “Tell
me about it.”

Toni looked at him. She hadn't talked about
it in a very long time. It was a painful subject. In her entire
life, the only person who'd been allowed to glimpse just how
painful, had been her mother. And even she had never known the
extent of Toni's guilt. She was struck all at once with the urge to
share it with someone—with Nick.

She cleared her throat, set down the puzzle
piece she’d been trying to fit. “It was during my senior year—a
nurse was raped and murdered, her body found in the hospital
parking lot. There were no witnesses, no fingerprints. No DNA
sample. But they managed to get a blood type.”

She couldn't go on with his eyes focused
unblinkingly on hers, so she got up and walked a few steps away.
“The only clue was a tie clip found at the scene. It was one of
three that had been awarded to three of the hospital's outstanding
surgeons something like twelve years earlier.”

“That must have narrowed it down,” Nick said.
He sounded puzzled, and in a moment she heard him get to his feet,
as well. “Did you know the woman?”

She shook her head. “No.”

“One of the suspects, then?”

She nodded. “My father.”

She heard Nick suck in his breath, but
hurried to continue before he could say something that would make
her change her mind. “None of the surgeons were able to produce
their tie clips. It had been twelve years, after all. They all had
alibis for the time of the murder, but people lie, so none were
rock solid. My father was home that night. I know because I was
home that night, too.”

She glanced at Nick and found him frowning.
“What happened?”

“The other two were Caucasian,” she said
softly. “My father was one hundred percent Puerto Rican. What do
you think happened?”

Nick shook his head. “The blood type—”

“Could have been any one of them.”

“But they didn't convict him—not with
evidence that flimsy.”

“No,” she told him. “It never went to trial.
But during the investigation, Dad’s...indiscretions came out. He’d
had affairs. He’d fathered at least three other children by three
other women. For sure. There was evidence there could be more. My
sister, the one I’ve mentioned, she’s one of them. The only one
I’ve managed to make contact with. I’ve never even met the others.
We don’t even know who they are.”

“Your poor mother.”

She nodded. “I saw what was happening. Dad
was ostracized. The hospital suspended him. He was shunned by the
community. Even my mother turned against him.”

“Given all the other women, maybe you can’t
blame her.”

“I don’t. I never did. I just thought she
could’ve dealt with it after. A murder charge trumps a string of
affairs, you know?” She lowered her head, remembering how angry
she’d been at her mom, still not sure she could’ve had any other
reaction. “We started getting hate mail and crank calls. He was
dying inside. I could see it happening right in front of me and I
wouldn't admit it. I just kept thinking everything would be all
right. Then the day came. The last day. He kissed me goodbye...”
She looked up, into Nick’s eyes.

Nick stood close to her, put his hands on her
shoulders, gave them a comforting squeeze. “Where did he go?”

She clenched her jaw, but forced herself to
relax it and tell him the rest. She’d come this far. For some
reason she was compelled to let Nick know he wasn’t the only one
with trauma in his childhood. “They found his car at the bottom of
a ravine. It was ruled an accident. But it wasn't. I knew it
wasn’t. The thing is, I knew it before he left, but I wouldn't
believe it.” In her life she'd never uttered the confession to
anyone else. It had been eating at her soul for thirteen years. “I
could have stopped him, Nick. I could have told my mother or the
police or someone. But I didn't have the courage to do it.”

He pulled her into his arms and held her to
him. “It's okay, cry.”

She did, letting the hot tears soak into his
shirt and absorbing his strength. “This is stupid. I'm not a little
girl anymore.” She sniffed and tried to straighten.

He looked at her, shook his head. “You've
been living with a heap of guilt, Toni. It had to come out
sometime. It wasn't your fault. You might have seen the signs
afterward, but hindsight is always clearer.”

“I should have stopped him,” she repeated.
“God only knows why I'm telling you all this.”

“Maybe for the same reason I told you about
my family,” he said slowly.

“Maybe,” she whispered. She thought it might
be the most honest moment that had passed between them since their
first encounter. She blinked her eyes dry and cleared her throat,
allowing the pain to slip away into the past where it belonged.
“When my grief subsided enough to vent some of the anger, I wrote a
lot. Scathing editorials about prejudiced bigots who see everything
according to its color, or judge people by their past mistakes. My
focus broadened gradually, until I was writing about anything I saw
as unjust and exposing those responsible.”

Nick nodded and then his eyes narrowed. “Is
that what you were doing in the alley?”

She was surprised by his insight. She hadn't
intended to give herself away by revealing some of her past. Her
face must have confirmed his suspicion because he let the arms that
had been so comforting, fall to his sides. “Tell me the truth,
Toni,” he said slowly. “Don't keep secrets that could get us both
killed. Not today.”

She looked at him for a long time and then at
the floor. “You want the truth? Truth is, I'm some kind of fool,
Nick. Truth is, I'm getting used to having you around and I'd
really hate to see you riddled with bullet holes. So much so that
I'm willing to tell you all of it... if you'll call this off.” She
put a palm to his cheek and stared hard into his eyes. “I don't
want you to go.”

He swallowed hard. She saw his Adam's apple
move. His hands flattened themselves to her cheeks, and he tipped
her face up, searching it with his eyes. She felt his warm breath
on her lips. When his lips parted, she thought he would kiss her.
Instead, he said, “Then there
is
something you're not
telling me.”

Disappointment rinsed through her. His eyes
had been so intense—but she banished that thought. “No more than
what you’re not telling me.” She would have pulled her face from
his hands, but the look on his paralyzed her. For an instant she
glimpsed pain and raw longing. Then his lips came down to meet
hers, and she couldn’t help but stand on tiptoe to meet them
halfway. He kissed her softly, parting his lips to capture hers
between them and sipping at them like he would a fine wine.

Toni's knees trembled. Her heart fluttered in
her chest, and before she'd made a conscious decision to do so, her
hands had slipped down to link around his neck. Her body melded to
his. Her lips relaxed open at the first gentle nudging of his
tongue. She welcomed it.

Nick's hands left her face to cradle her
head. His fingers tangled in her hair. His stroking tongue set her
on fire, and the subtle movements of his hips told her that he was
just as aroused. When he lifted his mouth away, she pulled him in
again, kissed him again. With a low groan, he complied with her
unspoken request and kissed her once more. He kissed her until her
breathing was broken and ragged, until her head was spinning and
her entire body throbbed with wanting him.

Finally he straightened and held her to him.
Her head rested against his chest. His heart hammered like a drum.
He was breathing as erratically as she was. His voice was barely
more than a whisper when he spoke. “You're seeing things that
aren't there.”

She frowned and would have looked up, but he
held her where she was.

“You'd rather believe a fairy tale than to
admit the truth, Toni,” he went on. “I'm not hiding a damn thing.
I'm exactly what I seem. Your problem is you can't stand to admit
that you're hot for Lou Taranto's right-hand man.”

Toni stiffened, and this time he let her step
away from him. He turned his back on her, picked up the vest and
put it on. His words were like knives in her heart— mostly, she
realized, because they were true.

“You want to pick up where we left off when I
get back, I'll be happy to cooperate,” he said. “But you need to
know who I am.” He slammed a clip into his gun with the heel of his
hand and worked the action. He never even looked at her. “Right now
I have to go. Lou's counting on me.”

Toni's face burned with humiliation as she
stared at the door he'd just slammed. She'd made a fool of herself,
let herself believe in something that was pure fantasy. Like a
little girl dreaming of a knight in shining armor, she'd allowed
her imagination to twist the truth. She'd seen everything exactly
the way she'd wanted to see it. Nick had nailed the reason, in his
crude way. She couldn't allow herself to feel what she was feeling
for a criminal, so she'd built him into a hero.