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Authors: Patricia Coughlin

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BOOK: Borrowed Bride
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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 what 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
I
t 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.
She still didn't completely grasp everything he had told her yesterday, only that he had drawn a line with him on one side and Adam on the other. Adam, who had always been there for her these past two years, who had sat with her and held her hand at the hospital when Toby was so sick, who had promised her a future when the one she'd counted on had been blasted out of existence. Adam offered her what she wanted most, she reminded herself, a safe, secure life for herself and for Toby. As opposed to Connor, who had never offered her anything but aggravation and heartache.
In a contest between Adam and Connor, she didn't even have to blink to know whose side she ought to be on.
In fact, as she'd told him yesterday, she refused to even consider the allegations he'd made against Adam. After all, the only thing she had to support any of it was Connor's word. She rolled her eyes. Hardly what she would consider irrefutable proof. For all she knew, it was a complete hoax and the state police hadn't arrested anyone for the bombing at the Black Wolf, and the investigation into it was as stalled as ever. And Connor was simply...
Simply what? she asked herself for at least the hundredth time since she'd shut herself in that room all alone. She pulled aside the white ruffled curtain to gaze without seeing at the lake as her fingertips drummed restlessly on the wooden sill. Any other time she would have enjoyed the peaceful tableau, with the sun glistening on the clear water, a light breeze ruffling the branches of the surrounding trees and dozens of birds providing soft background music. But not today. Today she was too upset to enjoy anything.
What in the world could Connor hope to gain from stopping her wedding and hauling her up here to this cabin in the middle of nowhere? Amusement? Perhaps at Adam's expense ? She bit her lip, wishing she could convince herself that was it. Lord knew she'd tried. But she couldn't.
In spite of his many faults, and the myriad well-deserved accusations she'd hurled at him yesterday, there was no denying that Connor had cared deeply about Joel and that he'd been shattered by his death. Even she couldn't believe that he would treat the matter lightly or use the explosion that had killed his friend as part of some stupid joke.
Last night she had woken again and again and lay there in the dark trying to figure out what other possible reason there could be for what he was doing to her. Ransom came to mind, but was quickly dismissed. The restaurant was earning more than any of them had ever dreamed it might, and Connor shared fully in those profits. Besides, unlike Adam, the man had never had expensive tastes. Far from it. Old jeans and boots and enough money in his pocket to have fun—that had always been the extent of his material needs. Nothing Gaby saw yesterday suggested he'd changed any in that respect.
One after another she had examined each motive she could possibly conjure for his actions, and one after another they crumbled in the bright light of reason. It was her misfortune to be consummately logical, and logic told her that as farfetched and ridiculous as it seemed, the only explanation that made any sense at all was the one Connor had offered in the first place. The one she had refused to accept.
Was it possible that he was right? That Adam had involved the Black Wolf in something illegal? If so, she reasoned, it followed that he might also be somehow involved in Joel's death. Everything inside her rebelled at that thought. Why? Gaby asked herself, struggling to dissect her own response. Was her vehement gut reaction prompted by loyalty to the man she planned to marry? Or was the reason more selfish? Perhaps her feelings were due to the fact that if Connor's suspicions proved true, it would be tantamount to another explosion in her life—and Toby's—just when it seemed everything was going to work out for them at last.
Only one thing was certain. If by some chance Connor was right, sticking her head in the sand wasn't going to make it all go away. And there was still the possibility that he was wrong and that there was a very simple explanation for everything, she told herself reassuringly. An explanation she might even be able to provide now that some of her anxiety had subsided. She had been so tense and furious with him yesterday it had been hard to hear what he was saying, much less think rationally.
She turned away from the window with a resigned sigh. There was no way around it, she decided. She was going to have to find Connor and listen again to what he had to say. This time with an open mind.
 
Connor bent over the outboard motor he was working on and tried for at least the fifth time to position his screwdriver to grip the screw positioned just beneath the swivel bracket. He needed to loosen the screw to remove the bracket so he could get at the transom clamp. Once that was off, he would be able to lay the motor on its side, lift off the cowling and see what the hell was wrong with the clutch lever. He carefully twisted the screwdriver, and once again it slipped off the screw without moving it so much as a millimeter.
“Damn,” he muttered as he used his free hand to wipe the sweat from his forehead. The red bandanna he'd tied around his head to keep the sweat from running into his eyes wasn't doing squat.
Straightening, he flexed his shoulder muscles and squinted first at the sun, which hung like a ball of fire in the cloudless sky overhead, and then at the oversize thermometer mounted on the side of the house. Eighty in the shade. No wonder he was sweating. It was too damn hot for June and too early in the day for a beer.
Especially, he thought derisively, when his brain cells were still struggling to regroup after the six-pack he'd chugged down last night. It had been a long time since he'd felt compelled to drink so much he could still feel it the next day. His fuzzy head was a reminder—not that he needed one—that dealing with Gabrielle was going to complicate his life in ways he should have been smart enough to anticipate.
He'd expected her to be furious with him for ruining her wedding, he'd expected her to fight him tooth and nail and he'd expected to feel like a louse for doing what he had to do. What he hadn't expected was that two years wouldn't have changed in the slightest the way Gabrielle made him feel.
He gripped the screwdriver and grunted with the effort of making yet another unsuccessful attempt to loosen the screw, wishing he had never promised Charlie he'd take a look at the temperamental motor while he was here.
Two long years. Two years of risking his life every way he knew how, of staying on the move, of trying to outrun a guilty conscience and the bloodred memory of the explosion that took the life of the best friend he ever had. Maybe the only friend he ever had. In all that time he'd rarely wanted a woman. Never had he wanted one badly enough to go out of his way to have her or to drink too much because he couldn't. In less than twenty-four hours Gabrielle had him drinking and wanting and hating himself for it.
He stood with the tool poised over the motor and simply stared into its grimy, rusted crevices, his thoughts trapped in a no win land between desire and guilt. The truth, something he was ashamed to admit even to himself and would never confess to anyone else, was that he had always wanted Gabrielle. He gritted his teeth and rode the wave of revulsion the acknowledgment always brought with it. From the first moment he saw her all those years ago, he had been hooked in a way he couldn't understand, much less explain.
Not that it was love at first sight. Far from it. They'd clashed right from the start, so much so that whenever they were together there always seemed to be sparks flying just beneath the surface of their mutual effort to be courteous. Besides, from day one Gabrielle had belonged to Joel, and that alone meant he was honor bound to keep his hands off her. It should also have meant that thoughts of her were off-limits, but for some reason he had never been able to quite manage that degree of nobility.
It bothered him that he couldn't. Then and now. He prided himself on his willpower. There was nothing he couldn't do, no challenge he couldn't face and conquer, if he set his mind to it. He was a man who disdained weakness in others, but most of all in himself. And Gaby's hold on him—as private and unacknowledged as it was—represented a weakness. She was like a fever he couldn't shake, a craving that simmered in the darkest corners of his soul.
His feelings for her confused and intimidated and irritated him in about equal parts. He wasn't good with feelings in general, and the only person he would ever have even attempted to discuss these particular feelings with was Joel, and of course that had always been out of the question.
The fact that Joel was dead only made the situation worse. Another man might feel that a friend's widow was not quite as forbidden as a friend's wife. Connor's lips curled into a sardonic smile. Obviously good old Adam subscribed to that philosophy. But not him. Oh, he understood that she was a young woman and life went on and all that. But as far as he was concerned, she was still Joel's and still off-limits and she always would be. Maybe if he hadn't had these feelings before, while Joel was alive, it would be different. But he had.
BOOK: Borrowed Bride
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