Borrowed Bride Page 5

  “Like everyone else, I bought the results of the official investigation into the explosion at the restaurant. I accepted the conclusion that the bomb was—”

  “Was intended for you,” she broke in, an edge to her voice. “It was done in retaliation by some gang members you’d arrested, and Joel just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. I read the report, too.”

  “Yeah, that’s right.” He kept his gaze on the table before him, where he was absently batting the metal tab from the beer can back and forth between his fingers. “You don’t know how that made me feel.”

  “I know how it should have made you feel,” she said in that same cool voice. “Responsible. Guilty. Reprehensible.”

  His smile was reflexive and self-mocking. “I take it back. You do know.”

  “You should have felt responsible,” she reiterated, visibly struggling for control. She wasn’t the only one. Connor felt as if a balloon full of heat were filling up in his chest. “It wasn’t as if you didn’t have advance knowledge,” she continued. “They warned you... they sent threatening letters...hell, they’d even tried once already and screwed up....Damn it, Connor, you knew it was going to happen.”

  “I didn’t.” He made an impatient gesture. “Oh, sure, I knew about the threats and the stuff they found wired under my car the week before, but I didn’t know what they might try next or where or when they might try it. I didn’t even know if they were serious. Cops get threats all the time, Gaby. It’s all part of the game. Did you expect me to lock myself in a cage and stop living?”

  “I don’t know. I only know I didn’t expect you to put my husband—your best friend—in danger, too. I didn’t expect—”

  Her voice broke off, the tears running down her face so profusely it was impossible for her to speak clearly. The urge to reach out and wipe them away rose up so strongly inside him that Connor shot to his feet to get away, knocking his chair over in the process. He left it where it fell, too agitated to sit.

  “Maybe I didn’t,” he said to her.

  Gaby wiped her face with her hands. He tore some paper towels from the roll on the counter and thrust them at her.

  She dried her eyes before shooting him a bewildered look. “What did you just say?” she asked.

  “I said maybe I didn’t put Joel in danger that day. Maybe it was the other way around.”

  She frowned, her tone incredulous. “What are saying? That Joel caused that explosion? That he put you in danger?”

  “Of course not,” he said, shaking his head. “Joel couldn’t have known it was going to happen any more than I did. All I’m saying is that maybe the explosion wasn’t aimed at me the way you and I and everyone else assumed. Maybe we were all intended to assume that to hide the fact that the real target was Joel.”

  She smiled. Connor hadn’t been sure exactly what her response would be when he finally told her his suspicion, but the last thing he expected was a smile.

  “I see,” she said. “Let me see if I’ve got this straight. You’re saying that the explosion that killed Joel, a happily married man, a father, an accountant, for God’s sake, the same explosion which you—a cop with plenty of enemies and a history of trouble—managed to survive, was intended for my husband all along? Is that it?”

  “I said he might have been the target.”

  “That certainly would be nice for you, wouldn’t it, Connor? It would get you right off the hook, ease your conscience, give you a chance to come back home from wherever it was you ran away to, an excuse to stop licking your wounds.”

  “Mexico.”

  “What?”

  “Mexico. Just for the record that’s where I ran away to lick my wounds.”

  “I don’t care, do you hear me?” she shouted, standing. “I don’t care where you went. I don’t care why you came back. And most of all I don’t care what lies you want to tell yourself to try to soothe your conscience as long as you don’t try telling them to me or go trying to drag me and my son into it, do you hear me?”

  “It’s not a lie,” he said flatly. “It may not prove to be true. That’s what I came back here to find out. But it’s not a lie.”

  “So after nearly two years, out of the clear blue, you’ve come up with this notion that the bomb might have been meant to kill Joel rather than you, and based on that you come charging back to Providence, ruin my wedding and tell me I have to hide out from the man I’m going to marry. What precisely is poor Adam’s role in all this supposed to be? Let me guess, he planted the bomb, right?” she asked, her tone blatantly mocking.

  “Maybe,” he said, shocking her into silence. “That’s what I intend to find out. And it’s not just some idea I pulled out of thin air...I got a call a couple of weeks ago from a friend back here on the force. He told me they picked up a guy for a bombing that had a lot of the same markings as the one at the Black Wolf.”

  Gaby clasped her hands together, her fingers tightly knotted, and stared at him. “They caught him?” she asked, her voice small and hollow. “I didn’t know.”

  “I asked them not to tell you...or anybody else, for that matter. The guy they picked up has a record going back to the Stone Age, along with half a dozen outstanding warrants. They had plenty to hold him while they leaned hard on him. It didn’t take long for him to roll over to his part in the blast two years ago. The last thing any smart con wants is to take the fall for an attempt on an officer’s life. He laid it all out for them, told them how it was a contract job....”

  “A contract job?” she asked, her arms locked tightly across her chest as if she were trying to hold herself together.

  “That means the guys who planted the explosives were specialists hired to do the job.”

  “But the gang that threatened you...”

  “That supposedly threatened me,” he corrected. “It looks now as if that was a ruse, all part of the plan to lead us in the wrong direction. And it worked. These guys are very, very good at what they do. They’re also very expensive.”

  “That doesn’t even make sense,” she exclaimed. “Joel was an accountant. He used to joke about how boring he was...even you used to make jokes about it,” she reminded him, her voice strained and quaking. “Who would pay anyone to have him killed?”

  He met her gaze without offering an answer.

  “Adam?” she asked, clearly stunned. “Is that really what you think?”

  “I already told you, I don’t know.” He paced across the room. “When I got that call, I had the same reaction you just did. I kept asking myself who would want to hurt Joel, and the answer kept coming up ‘nobody.’ Then I started thinking like a cop, and everyone became a suspect. I made a list of all the possibilities, as wild and unlikely as they seemed. You think Adam is a long shot?” he asked her. “Hell, Gaby, I had you on that list.”

  “Me?”

  “Like I said, everyone is a suspect. Finally I eliminated all the real way-out possibilities. Like you.”

  “I suppose I should thank you for that at least,” she muttered.

  “I called my friend back and had him get in touch with that fancy accounting firm Joel was working for at the time. Higley, Bigley and—”

  “Higgins, Blackwell and Clarke,” she corrected.

  “Right, those guys. The state police already had an investigator checking it out. There was nothing suspicious there. I knew that Joel also handled the books for the restaurant so I decided to check out that angle. I started with my own records. I get the same biannual profit-and-loss statements you must get.”

  She nodded.

  “I don’t know what you do with yours, but I toss mine, unopened, into a file marked Miscellaneous.” He gave a selfdeprecating grimace. “Actually it’s more of a shoebox than a file, and it’s not marked anything, but I dragged out all the old reports and studied them.”

  “And?”

  He shrugged. “And when I was finished, I understood why it is I toss them in the box without opening them. I have no idea w
hat all those columns and figures mean. My share of the profits is direct-deposited in the bank and it’s more than I need to live on. That’s all I care about...or rather, all I did care about until this came up. I knew I needed help, so I asked around and found a numbers nerd I could trust and asked him to look over the statements.”

  “What did he say?”

  “He told me he needed more information to draw any meaningful conclusions. I called Adam and told him I was having some nightmare tax problems and needed to have an independent audit of the books done in order to straighten out my own mess.” He saw her surprise. “I take it he didn’t mention anything about it to you?”

  “No. And I should think he would have since...”

  “Since what?” he prodded when she hesitated.

  She shook her head. “Nothing. Go on.”

  “I’m not sure he even bought the tax story, but what could he say? I am an equal partner. Anyway Nathan, that’s my numbers guy, turned the books inside out. He did a lot of talking to me about money in and money out, expenses as related to profits and—”

  “For heaven’s sake, Connor, get to the point.”

  “Bottom line?”

  She nodded anxiously.

  “He says the ratios are off somewhere.”

  “That tells me a lot. Does he think Adam is skimming off profits?”

  “No, exactly the opposite.”

  “Because that really doesn’t make any sense. I mean, the business is flourishing, profits are better than ever since Adam expanded to include catering. Besides, for all practical purposes, once he and I are married he’ll own two-thirds of the business. Why would he want to risk...” She finally halted and tipped her head to the side, her eyes narrowing in confusion. “Did you say the opposite?”

  Connor nodded.

  “You mean...” Her frown deepened. “What do you mean?”

  “I mean there’s a lot of money coming into the business, a lot of money going out in assorted expenses and a lot of money being racked up in profits...so much profit that you and I were happy to simply cash the checks and leave the rest to Adam.”

  “So what? I don’t know about you, but I have no problem with the business making money, especially not when I have Toby’s future to consider.”

  “I have nothing against profits, either,” he told her. “As long as they’re legitimate.”

  “You think Adam is doing something illegal?” she asked, her expression incredulous.

  “Yeah,” he said, hating to have to be the one to pop her fairy-tale balloon...again. “That’s exactly what I think. I don’t understand it the way the numbers nerd does...the way Joel must have,” he added, holding her gaze. “Eventually I’ll have Nathan explain it to you in detail. For now I can tell you that he’s got the figures to prove that there’s simply too much money everywhere on the books for the amount of business actually being conducted.”

  “But Adam says that the catering end of it alone...”

  “Nathan took all that into consideration.”

  “Then where is all this extra money coming from?”

  His smile was unavoidably sardonic. “Good question. Unfortunately I don’t have an answer. Yet. I am willing to venture a guess that it isn’t coming from anything wholesome.”

  “Why?”

  “Because, my innocent, only dirty money needs laundering.”

  “Money laundering?” She looked stunned. “Is that what you think is going oh at the Black Wolf?”

  “It fits.”

  He watched her wrestling with all he’d dumped on her in the past few minutes. She bit her bottom lip, looking worried, then shook her head adamantly.

  “No. I don’t believe it. I won’t believe it. Maybe the books are wrong...or your numbers man is. Anyone can make a mistake. You can’t simply sneak around looking at the books and then jump to a conclusion like that,” she told him. “It isn’t fair to Adam.”

  “Fair to Adam?” he snarled. “Believe me, Adam is the least of my concerns. And I haven’t jumped to any conclusions. Think about it, Gaby, it all fits. Joel was the one who handled the books. I think he found something that didn’t smell right two years ago, and that’s why he called a meeting with Adam and me at the restaurant that day. Only instead of a friendly business meeting, someone arranged for some surprise fireworks.” He slammed his empty beer can onto the counter. “Joel died, for God’s sake, and I came damn close, but thanks to Adam the Black Wolf somehow miraculously rose from its own ashes and went on, and now we’ve got money flowing through there like it’s our own personal Fort Knox.”

  She sank back onto her chair, pressing her hands together in front of her face as if she were praying.

  “Oh, no,” she murmured. “I can’t believe this is happening. Just when I thought everything was going...when it seemed that...” She drew herself up and glared at him. “That restaurant is all I have, it’s Toby’s future...all we have left of Joel.”

  “I know all that,” he said, his voice sounding low and raspy, like something out of his control. “You don’t know how I wish this wasn’t happening.”

  “Really?” she asked, getting to her feet once more, her usually soft-looking mouth pulled into a tight, thin line. “Is that what you wish, Connor? Well, let me tell you what I wish. I wish you had just minded your own business and not gone trying to dig up more trouble for everyone. I wish you had just stayed the hell in Mexico and away from me and my son. I wish I’d never met you. I wish Joel hadn’t been your best friend, but most of all,” she said, her voice cracking with bitter anger, “I wish...I wish it had been—”

  She halted abruptly, her chest heaving with the effort of choking off what she had been about to say.

  “Yeah, I know,” he said. “I wish it had been me instead of Joel, too.”

  Chapter 4

  It had been a horrible thing to say, even if every word had come straight from her heart. Gaby stared at the ceiling above her, built from rough-hewn logs like everything else in the dratted cabin, and wondered if the fact that the words had come from her heart made them even worse.

  One thing was certain; it hadn’t made any difference that she’d bitten her tongue at the last second. Connor had understood exactly what she meant to say. Hearing him utter the words she’d been wanting to lash out with for so long hadn’t been quite the triumph she’d imagined, however. Instead, the moment had somehow drained all the emotion from her, leaving her feeling empty and numb inside.

  Even the bitterness that she’d clung to for so long had been stripped away as she looked into his eyes. Or rather, tried to. Although they’d stood there staring at each other for a long moment, his gaze had been flinty and closed to her.

  I wish it had been me instead of Joel, too, he’d said to her.

  Gabrielle shivered all over again as she recalled his tone, the way his words had sounded as if they’d been chiseled from a glacier, leaving her no doubt he meant every one of them. As if, she thought grimly, they had come from his heart, as well.

  After Joel’s death she’d been convinced that no one else could possibly feel the same depth of anguish that she felt. Oh, she’d known that Connor was suffering, too, but in the midst of her pain and anger she hadn’t considered that given the shared history and close friendship between Joel and him, his loss had been almost as devastating as her own. She hadn’t wanted to consider it. Last night, in that agonizingly silent moment, she’d been forced to confront his grief. What she’d seen was sorrow so deep, so overwhelming, it could make you question your own life. She knew firsthand how that kind of sorrow felt.

  Her salvation had been Toby. He’d been her impetus to go on, her reason to drag herself out of bed in the morning when all she wanted to do was pull the covers up over her head and cry, a reason to smile even when she felt like screaming. In the past two years she’d thanked God a million times that she had Toby, someone who needed and loved her, someone who was a part of Joel that she could hang on to. What had Connor had to
hang on to to help him through his pain?

  Gabrielle sighed as she tried to sort through the feelings, old and new, churning inside her. It wasn’t easy. If Connor hadn’t stalked from the kitchen after their little scene last evening, she would have been forced to. As it was, she’d spent the rest of the night alone up here in the room she’d claimed as her own. When he had rapped on the door later and curtly asked if she wanted to eat dinner, she had just as abruptly replied that she would rather starve.

  She nearly had. She’d awoken this morning with her stomach growling painfully. Still she’d waited until she heard him finish puttering in the kitchen and go outside before she ventured downstairs to help herself to the coffee he’d made and toast a cinnamon-raisin English muffin for breakfast.

  He had left the knapsack full of clothes outside her door, and after breakfast she had reluctantly helped herself to them, as well. She’d showered and washed her hair and dressed in a pair of khaki shorts and a cream-colored T-shirt before retreating into her room once again. She wasn’t sure whether to feel pleased or annoyed that everything he’d brought for her fit perfectly. Including the lingerie. The bra and panties were even a style she would choose for herself, neither too plain nor too fancy. Pale ivory, they were made of a body-hugging ribbed cotton knit and trimmed with a narrow band of crocheted lace.

  She would have expected something different from Connor. Either some ugly monstrosity that was the wrong size and just happened to be the first thing he grabbed, or else something made of red satin and trimmed with black lace that would serve to both titillate his legendary libido and satisfy his adolescent need to shock. The fact that instead he’d chosen something so absolutely right for her was very unsettling.

  How could he possibly know her so well, she fretted, when some of her assumptions about him had been so wrong?

  Swinging herself off the bed, she paced across the room to break her thoughts. There was no way she was going to let herself get sucked into taking that path. Now more than ever, she couldn’t afford to indulge in any self-doubts or second guesses where Connor DeWolfe was concerned. So he had gotten lucky with the clothing he selected. Big deal. That didn’t change what he was, what he had always been. Reckless and impulsive, an adrenaline junkie always on the lookout for the next big risk, the next rush. That was the real Connor, and she of all people understood that he couldn’t be trusted for a minute.