Authors: Judith Arnold
“
Forgive me...Joe?” she half
asked.
He smacked himself in the forehead, evidently
disgusted by his lack of manners. “Jonas Brenner,” he said, prying
her fingers from their death-grip around the stem of the wineglass
and giving her a friendly handshake. “Everyone calls me Joe. And
you’re Pamela. Kitty didn’t mention your last name.”
“
Hayes,” she said. “Pamela
Hayes.”
“
Pleased to meet
you.”
She smiled faintly. She couldn’t quite say
she was pleased to meet him, not yet. She wished he were a little
less disheveled, a little more genteel. She wished circumstances
hadn’t driven her to the opposite end of the continent, as far from
her home as it was possible to be without leaving the country.
Wishes weren’t going to get her anywhere,
though, so she accepted his firm grip as he shook her hand, and
consoled herself with the thought that at least his fingernails
were clean. As soon as he released her, she took another long sip
of wine.
He leaned back in his chair, scrutinizing
her. She felt exposed, like a job applicant unprepared for an
interview and doing everything wrong.
“
Well,” he said, then fell
silent as a squadron of thundering motorcycles cruised down the
street nearby, riders hooting and mufflers roaring. When the night
air grew relatively tranquil once more, he began again. “The deal
is, I have this niece.”
She nodded.
“
I’ve had custody of her for
three years,” he explained. “When I first got her, I thought it was
just going to be for a few months, but when Lawton and Joyce—that’s
my brother-in-law’s brother-in-law and sister—”
Pamela stopped nodding and held up her hand.
“Your brother-in-law’s brother-in-law?”
Joe smiled apologetically. “Okay,” he
drawled, as if speaking more slowly would clarify everything. “See,
Lizard—that’s my niece—”
“
Lizard
?”
“
Elizabeth. But she likes to
be called Lizard.”
“
Lizard,” Pamela echoed
quietly. If marrying Joe had seemed like an absurd idea before, it
seemed even more absurd now. How on earth could she take a man who
had a niece named Lizard seriously?
“
Yeah. Now, Lizard’s
parents—that would be my sister and
brother-in-law—died.”
“
Oh—I’m sorry.”
He disguised his sorrow behind a shrug that
didn’t hide much. His uncanny blue eyes grew momentarily dark, the
summer-sky irises obscured by storm clouds. Then the moment passed.
“Well, anyway. That was three years ago. Lawton and Joyce said
they’d take Lizard, which made sense. They were married, they were
rich, they could afford nannies and all that crap. Only problem
was, they were involved in setting up some sort of development deal
in Singapore. So they asked me if I could keep Lizard for just a
couple of months until they wrapped things up overseas. And I said
sure. But then a couple of months turned into a couple of years.
Three years, to be exact. I suppose those Singapore development
deals can get complicated.”
So could stories about orphaned children
named Lizard, Pamela thought, although she refrained from saying
so. She only nodded again.
“
Anyway, about a month ago,
I got this letter from Joyce saying they were finally done doing
their thing in Singapore, and they were returning to California,
and they intended to take Lizard. But by now Lizard and I have been
together a long time. We’ve grown pretty close.”
“
How old was she when you
got her?”
“
Two.”
Pamela didn’t know much about babies. She was
an only child, so she’d never had the opportunity to observe
younger siblings, or nieces and nephews. Even so, it seemed to her
that the years between two and five must be significant in a
child’s development.
“
I taught her the alphabet,”
said Joe. “I potty-trained her. I nursed her through the chicken
pox. And frankly, I’m not in much of a mood to hand her over to a
couple of stuck-up financiers who haven’t even seen her in three
years.”
“
I don’t blame
you.”
“
So, I went to Mary
DiNardi—that’s my lawyer—and asked how I could go about getting
permanent custody of Lizard. And Mary said, ‘Joe, look at you.
You’re thirty years old, you run a bar, you’re single and you don’t
even shave regularly.’” He shot Pamela a sheepish grin. “Meanwhile,
Lawton and Joyce have a ten-room house in Hillsborough and millions
of bucks stashed in the bank. The fact that I potty-trained Lizard
doesn’t count for much with family-court judges. My lawyer said I
have to start living like a clean-cut good little boy.
Specifically, she told me to marry a decent lady.” Another flash of
a smile, this one curiously seductive. “You wouldn’t happen to be
decent, would you?”
Pamela shifted uncomfortably, causing the
chair’s hinges to squeak. She crossed her legs, traced the rim of
her glass with her finger, and managed a feeble smile. How did one
answer such a question? How on earth did one go about measuring
decency? Why did the mischievous glint in his eyes make her wish,
for a fleeting instant, that she wasn’t quite so decent?
“
It would seem to me,” she
said, steering clear of his provocative question, and his even more
provocative grin, “that this child...
Lizard
—” she tried not to shudder at
the name “—hasn’t really known any family other than you. Why would
a judge award custody of her to two total strangers? I would think
that after the trauma of losing her parents, the system wouldn’t
want to traumatize her again.”
“
I would think so, too,”
said Joe, leaning back and balancing one leg across the other knee.
The position drew her attention to the faded strip of denim
covering his fly. She drank some wine and was careful to keep her
gaze on his face when she lowered her glass. “Thing of it is,” he
continued, “Lawton and Joyce are rich. They’re respectable. They
make fortunes pushing papers around. They listen to Bach. They’re
such fine, fine people.” Sarcasm oozed from every
syllable.
“
Do you think that marrying
me would make you look respectable to a judge?”
“
Personally, I happen to
think I’m just about as respectable as I can stand to be. Mary
DiNardi, however—who’s taking me for three hundred and fifty bucks
an hour, so she’d better know what she’s talking about—doesn’t
exactly agree. She says I’ve got to project stability and maturity
and all that kind of thing. And a wife—a nice, neat, well-behaved
wife—is just the ticket.”
“
What
does...
Lizard
think
of this?” Pamela wondered whether she’d ever be capable of using
the child’s nickname without cringing.
“
She doesn’t know anything
about a custody challenge. All she knows is that Lawton and Joyce
are these two mysterious people who’ve been sending her Christmas
and birthday cards with funny Singapore stamps on them. She has no
idea some shit-for-brains judge could rip her out of her home and
force her to live with a couple of snobs she’s never even talked
to. Last time she saw them was probably at her christening or
thereabouts. These folks aren’t her family.
I
am—and Kitty, and Lois, and Birdie,
and Brick. And my mother when she’s in town.”
If Joe Brenner’s social circle included
characters with names like Birdie and Brick, Pamela supposed it was
no wonder he called his niece Lizard.
“
Anyway, what I’m looking
for here is just a temporary arrangement. A year, tops. I’ve got a
three-bedroom house, so you’d have your own room. If you met
someone and fell in love, I’d only ask that you be discreet. You’re
supposed to be the decent one in this situation.” He tempered his
words with a smile.
“
If we had separate
bedrooms—” no
if
about it, she thought wryly “—wouldn’t that make it obvious
that the marriage is a sham?”
“
Well, of course, if some
social worker stopped by to check us out, we’d have to put on a
little lovey-dovey show for her. I don’t see that as an
insurmountable problem.”
“
But Lizard—”
wince
“—would realize
something was weird between us, wouldn’t she?”
“
Number one, Lizard is five
years old, and I honestly don’t think she has any idea what
husbands and wives do behind closed doors. Number two, people down
here hang pretty loose about things. If a couple want separate
rooms, they have separate rooms. No big deal.”
Pamela mulled over what he’d told her, and
she wasn’t entirely pleased. The separate rooms, the discretion,
all the business-like details of the arrangement suited her fine.
But the idea of presenting herself as a perfect wife and mother to
a five-year-old... What did she know about raising kids? How were
she and Joe going to trick a little girl into believing they were a
genuine couple? As scant as Pamela’s knowledge of children was, she
couldn’t shake the understanding that children were a lot harder to
fool than family-court judges and social workers.
Beyond that minor misgiving, there was
another problem, a much more troubling one: Pamela was in
danger.
No matter how much she wanted to elude that
danger, she couldn’t do it by hiding behind a five-year-old girl.
What if—God forbid! —Mick Morrow somehow tracked Pamela down? She
didn’t want to die—but she wasn’t going to save her own life by
placing an innocent child in harm’s way.
She began to shake her head. “If it’s money
you’re worried about,” Joe said, misreading her hesitation, “I’ve
got to tell you, I’m not rich. But we could work something out. I’m
willing to support you, put you on my insurance, pay all the
expenses—”
“
No, it isn’t money,” she
cut him off. She had plenty of money, an embarrassment of money.
She’d withdrawn a large chunk of her savings from her bank in
Seattle. She hadn’t yet opened a local bank account, because bank
records were easy enough to trace. If she could deposit the money
as Joe’s wife, using the name Pamela Brenner, maybe she would
escape detection.
But the child... She couldn’t take Joe’s name
and his hand in marriage when doing so might place his niece in
danger.
“
If it’s the sex thing,” Joe
continued, “we can work that out any way you want. I’m looking for
a little play-acting here. Public displays of affection, nothing
more. I’m sure we—”
“
No, it’s not sex.” She
stared into his eyes and felt herself tumbling into the blue, being
sucked in. When a man with eyes like Joe’s talked about sex, she
could forget about his earring, his beard, his slovenly apparel.
She could forget about almost everything.
But she couldn’t forget about Mick
Morrow.
“
Joe,” she said, glancing
away to break the spell of his enchanting gaze, “there’s something
you need to know about me before this discussion goes any
further.”
He leaned forward. Tracing the line of his
vision, she noticed that he was staring at her hands. She hadn’t
realized she had furled them into fists so tight her knuckles had
turned as white as schoolroom chalk.
She made a concerted effort to relax—and then
gave up. There was no way to say what she was about to say and
remain calm. “Joe...” She sighed. “Back in Seattle, where I lived
before I came here, I testified in court against a hit man.”
Joe sat straighter and lifted his eyes to her
face. He looked startled, horrified—but also sympathetic. “A hit
man?”
“
He was convicted of murder
based on my testimony. But his conviction was set aside on a
technicality. He’s free on bail pending a new trial. And...” She
sighed again, shuddering the way she did every time she confronted
the reality of her current existence. “He wants me
dead.”
***
“
DEAD?” The word came out on
a croak. How the hell could a fragile blond slip of a woman have
wound up on the wrong side of a hit man?
“
It’s all right,” she said
bravely. She seemed suddenly relaxed, or maybe resigned. “We
haven’t signed any contracts here, Joe. I know you didn’t bargain
for anything like this. If you want to retract the
offer—”
“
Not so fast,” he silenced
her. His brain told him he ought to run like hell from a woman who
was on a murderer’s shit-list. But his gut told him he should sit
tight and work it through.
He wasn’t given to heroics. If a gun-toting
mobster started buzzing the island in a fully armed Apache
helicopter, his impulse would be to grab Lizard and split, and the
hell with everyone else. Joe looked out for Numero Uno—which used
to be himself until Lizard came along and knocked him out of the
top slot. He would sacrifice his own life for the Liz-monster, and
he’d do whatever was necessary to avoid that sacrifice. But he
wasn’t about to play the white knight for some silver-eyed stranger
from Seattle who’d been stupid enough to testify against a
professional assassin.
On the other hand... If he didn’t marry
Pamela while he had the chance, he might not find anyone better.
Superficially, at least, she was everything he needed:
conservative, personable, reasonably attractive—certainly not the
sort of woman he’d be ashamed to be seen in public with. Given her
current predicament, she was probably as eager to grab a husband as
he was to grab a wife. She didn’t have the luxury of quibbling over
the fine points with him.
And what were the odds that a liquidator from
the Great Northwest would track her down to the Florida Keys?