Hot Rocks (15 page)

She let out a half laugh. “No, I don’t suppose so.”

“I’m in love with you. Hit me like a damn brick upside the head, and I still can’t see straight. I don’t know how I could’ve played that any different either, but it gives you all the cards, Laine. You can finish the hand, or toss it in and walk away.”

Up to her, she thought. Isn’t that what she wanted? To make her own choices, take her own chances. But what he hadn’t said, and they were both smart enough to know it, was that holding all the cards didn’t mean you wouldn’t lose your shirt.

Tavish would cut her losses and fold. But O’Hara, she’d want the chance to scoop up that big, juicy pot.

“I spent the first part of my life adoring a man who couldn’t spit out the truth if it was dancing the tango on his tongue. Jack O’Hara.”

She blew out a breath. “He’s just no damn good, but, Jesus, he makes you believe there’s a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. He makes you believe it because
he
believes it.”

She dropped her hands, turned to face Max. “I spent the next part with a woman who was trying to get over him. Trying more for me than herself, which it took me a while to figure out. She finally succeeded. The next part I spent with a very decent man I love very much standing in as my father. A good, loving man who will never give the same shine to my heart as that born liar can. I don’t know what that makes me. But I’ve spent the last part of my life trying to be responsible and ordinary and comfortable. I’ve done a good job of it. You’ve messed that up for me, Max.”

“I know it.”

“If you lie to me again, I won’t bother to kick your ass. I’ll just dust my hands and walk away.”

“Fair enough.”

“I don’t have the diamonds you’re after, and I don’t know anything about them. I don’t know where my father is, how to contact him or why Willy came to see me.”

“Okay.”

“But if I figure it out, if what I figure leads you to that five percent, I get half.”

He stared at her a minute, then his grin moved slowly over his face. “Yeah, pretty damn sure I fell for you.”

“We’ll see about that. You can come in. I need to call Vince and Jenny, ask them to come out so I can confess my sins. Then we’ll see if I still have friends, and a place in this town.”

She worried over it. Not just what to say, how to say
it, but
where
to say it. Laine started to set up in the kitchen with coffee and the coffee cake she had in the freezer. But that was too informal, she decided, and too friendly when friendship was at stake.

Vince was a cop, she reminded herself. And Jenny a cop’s wife. However tight they’d become over the past few years, the bonds of that relationship could unravel when she told them about her past. When she told them she’d lied to them right from the start.

The living room was better—and hold the coffee cake.

While she agonized if that was the proper setting, she got out her little hand vac and started on the sofa.

“Laine, what the hell are you doing?”

“Planting apple trees. What does it look like I’m doing? I’m getting the dog hair off the furniture.”

“Okay.”

He stuck his hands in his pockets, pulled them out, dragged them through his hair as she vacuumed, plumped pillows she’d restuffed, fussed with the angle of the chenille throw.

“You’re making me nervous.”

“Well, excuse me.” She stepped back, inspected the results. Though she’d shoved most of the stuffing back in the cushions, arranged them damaged side down, the sofa still looked sad and pitiful. “I have the chief of police and my closest friend coming by so I can tell them basically everything they think they know about me is a big, juicy lie; I’ve had two break-ins in the same number of days; my father’s suspected of taking part in a twenty-eight-million-dollar burglary, with murder on the side; and my couch looks like it was attacked by rabid ferrets. But I’m really sorry I’m making you nervous.”

“You forgot the part where you had a sexual marathon with the investigator assigned to the case.”

She tapped the vacuum against her palm. “Is that supposed to be funny? Is that supposed to be some warped attempt to amuse me?”

“Pretty much. Don’t hit me with that thing, Laine. I’ve already got a mild concussion. Probably. And relax. Changing your name and editing your background isn’t a criminal offense.”

“That’s not the point. I lied to them every day. Do you know why so many scams work? Because after the marks realize they’ve been taken, they’re too embarrassed to do anything about it. Someone’s made a fool out of them, and that’s just as tough a hit as losing money. More, a lot of the time.”

He took the hand vac and set it on the table, so he could touch her. So he could cup his hands on her shoulders, slide them up until his thumbs brushed her cheeks.

“You weren’t looking to make fools out of them, and they’re not your friends because of your all-American-girl background.”

“I could run a bait and switch by the time I was seven. Some all-American girl. I should change.” She looked down at the sweats she’d pulled on when the deputy had come by the house to wake her. “Should I change?”

“No.” Now he laid his hands on her shoulders, rubbing until she lifted her head and met his eyes. “You should stay just the way you are.”

“What do you think you’re falling for, Max? The small-town shopkeeper, the reformed grifter, the damsel in distress? Which one of those trips up a guy like you?”

“I think it’s the sharp redhead who knows how to handle herself, and gives in to the occasional impulse.” He lowered his head to press his lips to her forehead. He felt her breath hitch, a sob that threatened and was controlled. “There are a lot of sides to her. She loves her dog, worries about her friends, she’s a little anal on the organization front, and I’ve heard she cooks. She’s practical, efficient and tough-minded—and she’s amazing in bed.”

“Those are a lot of opinions on short acquaintance.”

“I’m a quick study. My mama always said, ‘Max, when you meet the woman, you’ll go down like you’ve been poleaxed.’ ”

A smile twitched at her lips. “What the hell does that mean?”

“Hell if I know, but Marlene’s never wrong. I met the woman.”

He drew her in, and she let herself take the warmth and comfort of him, the sturdiness of being held against a strong man. Then she made herself pull away.

She didn’t know if love meant leaning on someone else, but in her experience, that sort of indulgence often sent the leaner and the leanee down to the mat.

“I can’t think about it. I can’t think about it, or what I feel about it. I just need to take the next step and see where I land.”

“That’s okay.”

She heard Henry’s crazed barking, and a moment later the sound of tires crushing gravel. There was a quick dip in her belly, but she kept her shoulders straight. “They’re here.” She shook her head before Max could speak. “No, I have to gear up. I have to handle this.”

She walked to the door, opened it and watched Jenny play with Henry.

Jenny looked over. “Must be true love,” she called out, then started toward the house. “Getting me out of bed and over here before eight in the morning must be a sign of true friendship.”

“I’m sorry it’s so early.”

“Just tell me you have food.”

“I . . . I have a coffee cake, but—”

“Sounds great. What are you having?” She gave her big, barking laugh, then shut it down when she saw Max. “I don’t know what I think about you being here. If you’re some big-city detective, why didn’t you say so?”

“Jenny.” Laine laid a hand on her friend’s arm. “It’s complicated. Why don’t you and Vince go in the living room and sit down?”

“Why don’t we just sit in the kitchen? It’s closer to the food.” And rubbing circles on her belly, Jenny started back.

“Okay then.” Laine took a deep breath, closed the door behind Vince. “Okay.”

She followed them back. “This might be a little confusing,” she began, talking as she set out the pot of herbal tea she’d made for Jenny. “I want to apologize first off. Just say I’m sorry, right off the bat.”

She poured coffee, cut slices of cake. “I haven’t been honest with you, with anyone.”

“Sweetie.” Jenny stepped over to where Laine stood meticulously arranging the cake on a garnet glass dessert plate. “Are you in trouble?”

“I guess I am.”

“Then we’ll fix it. Right, Vince?”

Vince was watching Laine. “Why don’t you sit down, Jen. Let her say what she needs to.”

“We’ll fix it,” Jenny said again, but she sat, bored through Max with a steely stare. “Is this your fault?”

“It’s not,” Laine said quickly. “It’s really not. My name’s not Laine Tavish. It is . . . I changed it, legally, and I’ve used it since I was eighteen, but it’s not the name I was born with. That’s Elaine O’Hara. My father’s name is Jack O’Hara, and if Vince was to do a background check on him, he’d find my father has a long and varied sheet. It’s mostly theft, and cons. Scams.”

Jenny’s eyes went round and wide. “He doesn’t run a barbecue place in New Mexico?”

“Rob Tavish, my stepfather, does. My father got popped—” Laine cut herself off, sighed. How quickly it comes back. “Jack was arrested and sent to prison for a real-estate scam when I was eleven. It wasn’t the first time he’d been caught, but this time my mother had had enough. She was, I realized later, worried for me. I just worshiped my father, and I was doing considerably well, considering my age, at following in his footsteps.”

“You ran con games?”

There was as much fascination as shock in Jenny’s tone, and it made Laine smile a little. “Mostly I was just the beard, but yes, I did. Picking pockets was turning into my specialty. I had good hands, and people don’t look at a little girl when they realize their wallet’s been lifted.”

“Holy cow,” was all Jenny could say.

“I liked it. It was exciting, and it was easy. My father . . . well, he made it such a
game
. It never occurred to me that when I took some man’s wallet, he might not be able to pay the rent that month. Or when we bilked some couple out of a few thousand in a bogus real-estate deal, that might’ve been their life savings, or a college fund. It was fun, and they were marks.”

“And you were ten,” Max added. “Give the kid a break.”

“You could say that’s what happened. I got a break. The direction I was heading in convinced my mother to change her life, and mine. She divorced my father and moved away, changed her name, got a straight job waiting tables. We moved around a lot the first few years. Not to shake my father loose—she wouldn’t have done that to him. She let him know where we were, as long as he kept his word and didn’t try to pull me back into the game. He kept his word. I don’t know which of the three of us was more surprised by that, but he kept his word. We moved around to keep the cops from rousting us every time . . .”

She trailed off, managed a sickly smile in Vince’s direction. “Sorry, but when you’ve got a rep for scams and theft, even by association, the locals tend to look you over. She wanted a fresh start, that’s all. And a clean slate for me. It wasn’t easy for her. She loved Jack, too. And I didn’t help. I liked the game and didn’t appreciate having it called, or being separated from my father.”

She topped off cups of coffee, though she’d yet to touch her own. “But she worked so hard, and I started to see something in her, the pride and the satisfaction she got from earning her way. The straight way. And after a while, we weren’t moving every time we turned around anymore. We weren’t packing up in the middle of the night and slipping out of apartments or hotel rooms. And she kept her promises. Big Jack was long on the promises but came up short on keeping them. When my mother said she was going to do something, she did it.”

No one spoke when she went to the refrigerator and took out a pitcher of water with lemon slices. She poured a glass, drank to wet her dry throat.

“Anyway, things changed. She met Rob Tavish, and things changed again, for the better. He’s a wonderful man, crazy about her, and he was good to me. Sweet and kind and fun. I took his name. I made myself Laine Tavish because Laine Tavish was normal and responsible. She could have a place of her own, and a business of her own, and a life of her own. Maybe it wouldn’t have all those wild ups she’d ridden on during the first part of her life, but it wouldn’t have all those scary downs either. That seemed just fine. So anytime you asked me about my background, or growing up, I fabricated whatever seemed to fit Laine Tavish. I’m sorry. That’s all. I’m sorry.”

There was a long moment of silence. “Okay, wow.” Jenny goggled at Laine. “I’m going to have a lot of follow-up comments and questions after my head stops spinning, but the first thing I have to ask is how all this—and there’s a lot of this—applies to you being in trouble.”

“There’s probably a quote somewhere about not being able to escape the past, or cover it over. William Young.” She saw Vince nod slowly and knew he was putting some of it together.

“The man who was killed when he ran out into the street,” Jenny prompted.

“Yes. He used to run with my father. They were close as brothers, and hell, he lived with us half the time. I called him Uncle Willy. I didn’t recognize him when he came in. I swear that, Vince. It’s been years since I’ve seen him, and it just didn’t click. It wasn’t until after the accident and he . . . God, he was dying.”

She drank more water, but this time her hand trembled lightly. “He looked so sad when I didn’t recognize him, when I basically brushed him off. Then he was lying there, bleeding. Dying. He sang part of this stupid song he and my father used to do as a duet. ‘Bye Bye Blackbird.’ Something they’d start singing when we were loading up to skip out of a hotel. I realized who he was, and it was too late. I didn’t tell you, and that’s probably some sort of offense, but I didn’t tell you I knew him.”