Covert Cowboy. Harper Allen

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СКАЧАТЬ another reason cake in the staffroom wouldn’t have been a fun idea. Since that disastrously eye-opening final evening with Tony Corso and his abrupt resignation the next morning, she’d suspected she hadn’t been the first female at M & G he’d shown his true colors to. She had no desire to exchange girlfriend horror stories with Angie, the receptionist, or Leeza, the records clerk.

      And none of that mattered a damn, Marilyn thought. Because everything else faded into insignificance beside baby Sky’s disappearance.

      She’d had the chance to hold him. She’d turned Holly down. Regret, more corrosive than acid, spilled through her. As it had done a hundred times in the days since Sky’s kidnapping, the memory of the one and only occasion she’d allowed herself to visit her half sister and her newborn nephew came flooding back.

      “Sweetie, it’s a Karan blouse and a Jacobs suit,” she’d said coolly. “Baby sick-up isn’t my idea of the perfect accessory. Here’s a little welcome-to-the-world gift for him, by the way. When I told the store clerk what I wanted engraved on it I’m sure he thought we were holdouts from the hippie era or something. Why would you pick Schyler as a name, when you must have known he’d be saddled with such an odd nickname?”

      Holly’s only reply had been the annoyingly beatific smile Marilyn had privately told herself her half sister must have received along with the rest of the trappings of motherhood. That smile had been infuriating on more than one level, but at the very least it had been a clear indication that the status quo between them had changed, in Holly’s mind, anyway.

      It had always been so easy to prick Holly’s perfect little bubble, she’d thought with a flash of irritation—easy and satisfying and…and justified. Except now it seemed her half sister’s lifelong lack of self-confidence where their father’s first daughter was concerned was gone. Incredibly, that smile seemed to indicate that Holly felt sorry for her.

      “It’s beautiful, Marilee. Thank you.”

      The use of the foolish pet name that had been the closest a baby Holly had been able to get to pronouncing “Marilyn” had set her teeth on edge. Her half sister had enclosed the solid-silver baby rattle in its nest of tissue paper and ribbon.

      “Aren’t you going to let him play with it?” Her usual tone when speaking to Holly was a bored drawl. It had been disconcerting to hear a touch of sharpness in her voice, and she’d modulated it with a laugh. “It’s never too early to develop good taste, and hallmarked silver beats a chewed-up terry cloth toy any day. Take that disgusting rabbit thing away from him and give him the rattle.”

      “That disgusting rabbit thing is Bun-Bun, I’ll have you know,” Holly had replied with a smile. “Sky frets when he can’t find him. And besides, Marilee—” Her smile had faltered. “—he’s just a baby. The rattle’s exquisite, but it’s far too heavy for him to lift.”

      She’d dropped a quick kiss on the top of her son’s downy head. “I never imagined I’d feel like this,” she’d said softly. “I could just sit here all day and inhale him. Are you sure you don’t want to hold him for a minute?”

      “I think I’ll pass on that thrill, sweetie.” She’d barely been able to get the words out. “I’d rather inhale something a little more fragrant, like a dry white wine, and I’m late for my lunch at Zenith with Tony.” As she’d kissed the air near Holly’s cheek the sight of her discarded gift had prompted her to add, “Next time I come a-callin’ on Mama and baby I’ll ask him along, shall I? A little boy should have at least one male figure in his life besides his uncle and grandfather, don’t you think?”

      As soon as she’d launched the barb some part of her had wished she could recall it…and some part of her, she remembered now with shame, had felt a surge of satisfaction as Holly’s complacent smile had given way to a stricken look. Her half sister’s back had curved slightly, as if to protect the baby in her arms from the words that had just been uttered.

      “You were jealous.” Marilyn stared sightlessly at the glittering panorama that was Denver at night. Her voice rang out too loudly in the shadowed office.

      “You wished he was yours. Never mind that either his father didn’t want to stick around or Holly decided she and Sky were better off without him. You only used that because you wanted to hurt her, and you wanted to hurt her because you envied her. You were terrified of holding that baby—terrified of showing how you really felt, terrified Holly would somehow guess that you’d give anything in the world to have one of your own.”

      Her reflection wavered darkly in the window in front of her, and she stared at the woman she saw standing there as if she were looking at a stranger. Pale blond hair brushed the woman’s shoulders. An expensively plain blouse tapered in at the waist and then slightly out again to skim a pencil-slim black skirt. Longish legs ended in narrow, elegant feet shod in narrow, elegant heels. She looked pulled-together, businesslike, attractive.

      Marilyn flinched. The illusion shattered. The woman in the glass was a fraud and a bitch. The woman in the glass didn’t exist at all, except as a collection of possessions and poses.

      The only real thing about her was the dread in her eyes.

      “Holly’s out of her mind with fear,” her brother Joshua had told her curtly when he’d called to notify her of their nephew’s abduction a few hours after it had occurred. “She’s sitting by the phone clutching that damned stuffed rabbit of his, waiting for the kidnappers to call.”

      “Sky frets when he can’t find him…” More than anything, that had haunted her over the past weeks, Marilyn thought—a tiny baby snatched away from everything and everyone familiar, not even allowed the comfort of a beloved toy. Trivial as it was, that knowledge had brought home to her the ruthlessness of the people who had taken Sky.

      The people who had taken him, and who perhaps by now had panicked and—

      The pain that had been building in her burst forth in a terrible, keening cry that felt like it was splitting her asunder. A nightmarish jumble of images flashed through her mind and her hands flew up reflexively, as if by pressing the heels of her palms to her eyes she could turn off her imagination. Still the pictures, each one more horrible than the last, seared their way into her soul.

      There was only one way to blot them out. Marilyn stopped fighting the blackness and let it overtake her. Her knees buckled. The floor rushed up to meet her.

      And the man who had been standing in the shadows the whole time strode forward to catch her as she fell.

      HE WAS GOING to have to lie to her, U.S. Marshall Conrad Burke told himself as he carried Marilyn to the couch in the corner of her office. Against the creamy pallor of her cheeks her lashes stirred, and his self-disgust intensified. Merde. The lying was going to have to start now.

      Me, I was born to hang, sure. Despite the situation he found himself in, a corner of Con’s mouth twitched upward as he remembered his great-uncle Eustache’s oft-repeated boast. But you were born to lie, boy, so make sure you do it like a Creole gentleman. Steady eye contact, and with the ladies, a small smile, no?

      Dark lashes fluttered open. Eyes as blue as heaven gazed blankly up at him, and for a moment Con forgot everything Eustache Ducharme had ever taught him. He recovered smoothly.

      “Not the way I meant to introduce myself, sugar,” he said with a quick, and he hoped, reassuring, smile, his gaze steady on her suddenly widened one, “but it seems I walked in just as you fainted. You feeling all right now, cher’?”

      He СКАЧАТЬ