Cry Uncle (8 page)

“
Pamela.” He tightened his
hold on her, hoping to warm her up, thaw her out. “I think we can
make this marriage work, as long as we don’t lose track of what’s
important. Okay? The thing isn’t perfect, but we can make it
work.”

She flicked her tongue against her lips to
moisten them. Observing the damp pink tip as it circled her mouth
made him far more aware of her lack of ugliness than he wanted to
be. He lowered his gaze to her chest to remind himself that her
body wasn’t his type, but somehow, in her demure silk blouse, the
modest dimensions of her chest looked right. A small bosom became
her. He imagined her breasts would be like ripe peaches—perfectly
round, firm and sweet....

He banished the image with a quick shake of
his head. “If you’re having problems,” he continued, his voice as
tame as his thoughts had been wicked, “now’s the time to make them
known.”

“
Well...” She flexed her
fingers against his palm, and he was visited by more uninvited
thoughts: her fingers flexing against his naked back. Her slim,
neat, nude body pressed beneath his. In his bed on the house boat,
rocking, rocking... “I think we ought to spell some things out
first,” she said, wrenching him from his fantasy.

“
What things?” No rocking.
No bed. No nude bodies.

He felt her fingers move again—not as if she
wanted to escape his grip, though. He loosened his hold slightly,
but she didn’t slide her hand out from between his. Her eyes looked
a little less sleety. “Exactly how much of a role model would you
expect me to be?”

Lizard. Damn the kid. Why couldn’t she have
behaved better with Pamela? “Forget Liz’s big mouth,” he insisted,
cramming his voice with earnest emotion. “You aren’t ugly.”

At that Pamela did slide her hand free. She
inched her chair back, pivoting it to face him. “I really don’t
care whether she thinks I’m a gorgon,” she said. “I’m more
concerned with how much of a mommy you expect me to be. I told you
last night, I’m not terribly maternal. I don’t derive pleasure in
baking cookies and playing with dolls.”

“
Lizard isn’t into dolls,
either,” Joe assured her. “She’s big on action-adventure
games.”

Pamela nodded. “Boo Doo and bikers.”

“
Yeah, that kind of
thing.”

“
Well, I’m not big on Boo
Doo and bikers. Understand, Jonas, what my life was like before I
came to Key West. I lived in a condominium full of expensive
furniture and breakable objects. I listened to classical music. I
went to work, and after work I went out to dinner or to the theater
with friends. I’m not used to clearing my schedule with a
baby-sitter before I make a plan. I’m not used to tripping over toy
arrows.”

A few particulars leapt into sharp relief:
she went out with friends. Boyfriends? Dates? Had she left a lover
behind when she’d fled from Seattle? Was she going to cry herself
to sleep every night in her bed at the opposite end of the hall
from his?

And Jonas. Why had she called him that? Was
she trying to maintain a greater degree of formality in their
relationship? Was she trying to distance herself from him? “Most
people call me Joe,” he reminded her warily.

“
I like Jonas. It’s an
unusual name.”

Okay. He’d take his compliments where he
could get them. “Then call me Jonas. Can I call you Pam?”

“
Nobody calls me Pam,” she
blurted out. Then a slow smile crept across her mouth. “Sure. Pam
would be fine.”

He supposed that meant she hadn’t ruled out
their possible marriage. It also meant that she was allowing Joe to
call her what no one else called her. Did she consider him unique?
Or was she just pretending that who she was in Key West bore no
relationship to who she’d been in Seattle?

Why in God’s name was he analyzing every
little detail? He ought to just push the negotiations forward, get
the final okay from her, and tie this sucker up. “All right,” he
said, wishing he could take her hand again. “As far as maternal
responsibilities, no sweat. Birdie takes care of Lizard. There are
plenty of bakeries in town if any of us develops a craving for
homemade cookies. And I’m around most days. I’ve got two other
bartenders working for me, and we rotate shifts, but I’m usually
around the house through mid-afternoon, so I can take care of most
stuff. Next September Lizard will start kindergarten, so child care
will be even less of a problem.”

“
Then what am I supposed to
do during the day?”

He shrugged. “That’s up to you. Maybe there’s
an architecture firm hiring on the island.”

She scowled. “No. I can’t do that. I’m trying
to make it impossible for anyone to find me. The architecture world
isn’t so big. If a firm hired me down here, someone might hear
about it someplace else.” She shook her head. “No, I definitely
can’t go back to work right now. I can’t pursue jobs that would
draw attention to me.”

He resolved to stop resenting her fancy
career. How could he not feel sorry for someone who’d had to
sacrifice her job—and so much more—because some gangster had
slipped through the cracks? “You can do whatever you want,” he said
gently. “I’d only ask that if a social service lady comes to call,
you try to act domestic.”

“
I’m never going to be
mistaken for June Cleaver.”

“
Oh, I don’t know about
that,” he teased. “Maybe if you wore a string of pearls and a
starchy dress—”

“
And baked cookies.” Pamela
sighed. “What about cleaning the house? Who’s responsible for
that?”

“
Lizard,” he deadpanned.
“Can’t you tell?”

“
Seriously, Jonas—are you
going to expect me to vacuum and dust and—”

“
How about, we’ll all pitch
in. You make a mess, you clean it up. I make a mess, I clean it up.
Lizard makes a mess, so what’s new?”

She fought against a grin and lost. “Are you
sure you want me to marry you?”

“
We need each other, Pam,”
he said. That sounded melodramatic, but it was true. “I think you
can help me convince the social workers that Lizard’s got a good
home here. That’s all I’m asking of you.”

She moistened her lips once more, and averted
her eyes, as if what she was about to say was extremely difficult.
“What about money?”

“
What about it?”

“
I can contribute something
toward room and board. Most of my money is tied up in a bank in
Seattle, and getting it out of there without alerting half the
world to my whereabouts won’t be easy. But...”

Typical yuppie attitude—distilling everything
down to dollars and cents. “I’m asking you to marry me, okay?
You’re going to be my wife, not my tenant.”

She lifted her gaze back to him. Her eyes
were as moist as her lips. Oh, God. He didn’t want her to start
crying. Especially over something as trivial as money.

But before he could think of what magical
words he could say to cheer her up, she spoke. “I don’t want to
take advantage of you, Jonas. You’re being so generous. I think I
ought to pay something...” A tear skittered down her cheek.

“
The hell with generous.
You’re doing me a favor.” Why was she crying? It couldn’t be money,
and it sure as hell couldn’t be how generous he was, because he
really wasn’t that generous at all. He’d asked her to marry him for
the most selfish reason: because he wanted Lizard.

Something else was bothering her, something
he couldn’t begin to fathom. He felt utterly helpless watching her
dab at her cheeks with her tattered paper napkin.

“
What if he finds me? What
if he tracks me down?”

The assassin. “He won’t track you down,” Joe
promised, although he had no way in hell of guaranteeing that. But
the proper manly response to a woman’s distress was to swear she
was perfectly safe with him, and when a woman started crying, a man
had little choice but to be properly manly. “How could he possibly
find you? You’re just going to be a quiet little housewife in the
Keys, right? Mrs. Jonas Brenner.”

“
Because if my marrying you
endangered your niece in any way whatsoever, I...” She let out a
shaky sigh. “I couldn’t live with myself if anything happened to
her.”

If anything happened to Lizard, Joe couldn’t
live with himself, either. The whole reason he was going through
this charade was to prevent something from happening to her. Not
that his in-laws were as bad as hit men, but he simply couldn’t
believe living with them in their ritzy-glitzy California home
would be good for her.

All night long he’d thought about it. He’d
weighed the pros and cons, the risk of marrying Pamela versus the
risk of remaining a bachelor, or marrying the wrong woman. He’d
considered everything Pamela had told him at the Shipwreck last
night. And he’d concluded she wasn’t in all that much danger. The
cops in Seattle were keeping tabs on the hit man, right? They’d
know if he left the state. Besides, a hit man couldn’t turn up in
Key West without everybody knowing about it. It was a small place.
Everyone knew everyone—which was why he hadn’t been able to find a
wife among the locals.

And if Pamela Hayes the architect transformed
into Pam Brenner, the little woman, how would anyone at the
opposite end of the continent track her down?

Except for her weird little entanglement with
a professional criminal, Pam was perfect. Joe wanted to marry her.
And he wasn’t going to let her apprehension stand in his way.

“
Lizzie’s going to be fine,”
he promised. “We’re going to make a great little family,
Pam.”

“
I hate...” Her voice
cracked, and she bit her lip and dabbed at her cheeks once more. “I
hate having to impose on anyone.”

“
Who’s imposing on who?
You’re doing me a favor, remember?”

She began to weep freely. “I hate crying. I
hate being afraid like this. I used to dream of getting married,
Joe—all little girls dream of big white wedding. Except maybe
Lizard....” She sniffled. “And instead, here I am, inflicting my
danger on her. If he finds me...if he finds me...”

That did it. Joe stood, gathered Pamela’s
hands in his and lifted her out of her chair. Then he closed his
arms around her.

She was thin, but not skinny. He felt the
sleek padding of her skin over her shoulder blades, the surprising
softness of her narrow waist. She sobbed into his shoulder, and a
strange sense of power stole over him.

She would be his wife, and he would protect
her. “Everything’s going to be all right,” he whispered. “The
biggest danger you’ll face if you marry me is, Lizard might drive
you insane.”

He felt her smile, her cheek moving against
his shirt, her hands timidly rising to his sides. “I guess I didn’t
really want a big white wedding, after all.”

“
Not this time,” he said.
“After everything’s all squared away, and you go for the real
thing, you can make it as big and white as you want.
Okay?”

She pulled back and gazed up at him. Her eyes
were wet, as if all the ice had melted. “Are you sure, Jonas? Are
you really sure this is going to work out?”

“
I’m sure.” And the Pope was
Jewish. But what else could he say? If he revealed he was as
dubious about the whole thing as she was, he’d lose her—and Lizard,
too. He’d wind up with nothing but sorrow.

Declaring his certainty seemed like a
properly manly thing to do. More than manly—it was husbandly. With
a tenderness he’d thought had been reserved only for Lizard, he
wiped the last of Pamela’s tears from her cheeks, brushed a pale
strand of her hair back from her cheek, and told himself that even
if he didn’t get to indulge in the fun parts of being a husband,
he’d do his damnedest to hide his misgivings from his
wife-to-be.

That, after all, was what husbands were
supposed to do.

Chapter Four

“
TONY? IT’S Mick
Morrow.”

“
Mick!” Tony’s voice boomed
through the telephone. “What are you up to? I’ve got to file a
report on you.”

“
Another report?”

“
Hey, you’re my job these
days, Mick. I’m supposed to submit a daily record of your comings
and goings. I didn’t know I had such a flair for fiction. They
don’t teach creative writing in the police academy, you
know.”

“
What have you said about
me?”

“
According to my reports,
you live the most boring life in the world. You go to the
supermarket, you go to the post office, you go to the pizza place
for take-out. You’re a model citizen, Mick.”

“
And you’re a model
cop.”

“
Hey, I admire you, Mick.
The way you beat that murder rap—you really have lady luck in your
bed.”

Mick forced himself to smile. He hated small
talk, but he knew he had to suffer through it before he could get
down to the business at hand. Tony was a small-talk kind of
guy.

“
I mean, the way you manage
things, she’s just spreading her legs for you,” Tony went on,
obviously taken with his metaphor.

Patience, Mick ordered himself as he gazed
about his modest kitchen, a room full of unoriginal pine furniture
and built-ins, with white blinds at the window and muffin crumbs on
the counter. He made a lot of money doing what he did, but he was
too smart to spend it all in one place. His apartment’s decor was
the residential equivalent of a plain brown wrapper, the sort of
home that shouted, “No wife, no kids, no pets, no attachments.”
That pretty well summed up Mick’s life.