Covert Cowboy. Harper Allen
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 hadn’t planned on introducing himself at all and he certainly hadn’t walked in only minutes ago, so even if you didn’t count the fact that he needed no introduction to Marilyn Langworthy, those were lies number one and two right there, Con thought, guilt rippling unfamiliarly through him. And the lady wasn’t buying them, he realized as he saw that heaven-blue gaze focus and begin to harden.
She was going to ask him how he’d gotten past security and into her locked office. He needed to plant other questions in her mind, and fast.
“New Orleans P.D.” He slipped two fingers into the inner pocket of his suit jacket and extracted a leather identification case, complete with gold badge. Deftly he flipped it open in front of her. “Detective Connor Ducharme. I’m investigating—”
“Is he safe?”
Under his open jacket he was wearing a waistcoat—what those unfortunate enough to be born north of the Mason-Dixon line and west of the Missouri River called a vest, he supposed. Before he’d known what she intended she’d grabbed its lapels. Slim fingers gave a surprisingly strong tug and she repeated her query, those perfect features of hers etched with strain.
“Is he safe? Have you found him? Dear God—New Orleans? Why in heaven’s name did they take him there?”
He’d needed her to ask questions. He wished now she’d asked the one he’d been trying to steer her away from.
“Cher’, I’m not here about the little one,” he said, as gently as he could. “The case I’m working involves a certain Tony Corso, wanted on fraud charges in Louisiana. I wish I had news of your nephew for you, but I don’t.”
She closed her eyes. When she opened them again he saw the urgently hopeful light in them had disappeared. Her fingers slid from his lapels.
“I—I thought maybe it was all over. The nightmare, I mean. I thought Sky might be on his way home right now.”
She took a deep breath. Letting it out, she sat up on the couch. Her head bowed, she swung her legs to the floor. Looking up, she met his look with a suddenly flinty one of her own.
“How did you know my nephew had been kidnapped? Since it’s not common knowledge in Denver, I can’t believe every last man-jack on the New Orleans force has been alerted.”
“Probably not.” He shrugged easily, more sure of his ground now. “But