Toni stopped arguing the sanity of doing a puzzle at a time like this as soon as she thought about how nervous he must be. She tried to imagine how she would feel if she knew that in a short time people would be shooting at her. She'd go along with the puzzle thing, she decided, if it would help Nick not to think about what was ahead of him tonight.
Nick’s intense concentration made a furrow between his brows Toni ignored the urge to put her finger there to smooth it away.
“I probably had a hundred jigsaws when I was a kid,” he said softly.
“I had a couple,” she responded. “But my favorite pastime was paint-by-numbers. You remember those black velvet ones? Took forever to dry, but they were so pretty they were worth the wait.”
He glanced up at her, and his relaxed smile took her breath away. “I'll bet it killed you—the waiting.”
“Drove me crazy! I could only do one color, then wait and wait for it to dry before I could do another. I used to prop the picture on a chair and point an electric fan at it.”
“Wouldn't a hair dryer have been faster?”
“Who has patience enough to stand around holding a hair dryer for hours on end?”
“Not you, that's for sure.” He held her gaze with his, then looked down again and fit a corner piece to another. “When did you start writing?”
“I don't know exactly. It's just something I've always done. First it was journals and silly poetry and fairy tales. It wasn't until high school that I got into the serious stuff.”
He looked up again, his gaze intense. “Such as?”
She frowned for a moment before deciding it wouldn't hurt to be honest with him. To a point, anyway. “Social injustice, corruption, that kind of thing.” She wondered if he would get bored with the subject. He leaned forward, the puzzle momentarily forgotten.
“Okay, so what was the first so-called serious thing you wrote about?”
“Prejudice.”
She didn't elaborate. Nick studied her. “Tell me about it.”
Toni looked at him. She hadn't talked about it in a very long time. It was a painful subject. In her entire life, the only person who'd been allowed to glimpse just how painful, had been her mother. And even she had never known the extent of Toni's guilt. She was struck all at once with the urge to share it with someone—with Nick.
She cleared her throat, set down the puzzle piece she’d been trying to fit. “It was during my senior year—a nurse was raped and murdered, her body found in the hospital parking lot. There were no witnesses, no fingerprints. No DNA sample. But they managed to get a blood type.”
She couldn't go on with his eyes focused unblinkingly on hers, so she got up and walked a few steps away. “The only clue was a tie clip found at the scene. It was one of three that had been awarded to three of the hospital's outstanding surgeons something like twelve years earlier.”
“That must have narrowed it down,” Nick said. He sounded puzzled, and in a moment she heard him get to his feet, as well. “Did you know the woman?”
She shook her head. “No.”
“One of the suspects, then?”
She nodded. “My father.”
She heard Nick suck in his breath, but hurried to continue before he could say something that would make her change her mind. “None of the surgeons were able to produce their tie clips. It had been twelve years, after all. They all had alibis for the time of the murder, but people lie, so none were rock solid. My father was home that night. I know because I was home that night, too.”
She glanced at Nick and found him frowning. “What happened?”
“The other two were Caucasian,” she said softly. “My father was one hundred percent Puerto Rican. What do you think happened?”
Nick shook his head. “The blood type—”
“Could have been any one of them.”
“But they didn't convict him—not with evidence that flimsy.”
“No,” she told him. “It never went to trial. But during the investigation, Dad’s...indiscretions came out. He’d had affairs. He’d fathered at least three other children by three other women. For sure. There was evidence there could be more. My sister, the one I’ve mentioned, she’s one of them. The only one I’ve managed to make contact with. I’ve never even met the others. We don’t even know who they are.”
“Your poor mother.”
She nodded. “I saw what was happening. Dad was ostracized. The hospital suspended him. He was shunned by the community. Even my mother turned against him.”
“Given all the other women, maybe you can’t blame her.”
“I don’t. I never did. I just thought she could’ve dealt with it after. A murder charge trumps a string of affairs, you know?” She lowered her head, remembering how angry she’d been at her mom, still not sure she could’ve had any other reaction. “We started getting hate mail and crank calls. He was dying inside. I could see it happening right in front of me and I wouldn't admit it. I just kept thinking everything would be all right. Then the day came. The last day. He kissed me goodbye...” She looked up, into Nick’s eyes.
Nick stood close to her, put his hands on her shoulders, gave them a comforting squeeze. “Where did he go?”
She clenched her jaw, but forced herself to relax it and tell him the rest. She’d come this far. For some reason she was compelled to let Nick know he wasn’t the only one with trauma in his childhood. “They found his car at the bottom of a ravine. It was ruled an accident. But it wasn't. I knew it wasn’t. The thing is, I knew it before he left, but I wouldn't believe it.” In her life she'd never uttered the confession to anyone else. It had been eating at her soul for thirteen years. “I could have stopped him, Nick. I could have told my mother or the police or someone. But I didn't have the courage to do it.”
He pulled her into his arms and held her to him. “It's okay, cry.”
She did, letting the hot tears soak into his shirt and absorbing his strength. “This is stupid. I'm not a little girl anymore.” She sniffed and tried to straighten.
He looked at her, shook his head. “You've been living with a heap of guilt, Toni. It had to come out sometime. It wasn't your fault. You might have seen the signs afterward, but hindsight is always clearer.”
“I should have stopped him,” she repeated. “God only knows why I'm telling you all this.”
“Maybe for the same reason I told you about my family,” he said slowly.
“Maybe,” she whispered. She thought it might be the most honest moment that had passed between them since their first encounter. She blinked her eyes dry and cleared her throat, allowing the pain to slip away into the past where it belonged. “When my grief subsided enough to vent some of the anger, I wrote a lot. Scathing editorials about prejudiced bigots who see everything according to its color, or judge people by their past mistakes. My focus broadened gradually, until I was writing about anything I saw as unjust and exposing those responsible.”
Nick nodded and then his eyes narrowed. “Is that what you were doing in the alley?”
She was surprised by his insight. She hadn't intended to give herself away by revealing some of her past. Her face must have confirmed his suspicion because he let the arms that had been so comforting, fall to his sides. “Tell me the truth, Toni,” he said slowly. “Don't keep secrets that could get us both killed. Not today.”
She looked at him for a long time and then at the floor. “You want the truth? Truth is, I'm some kind of fool, Nick. Truth is, I'm getting used to having you around and I'd really hate to see you riddled with bullet holes. So much so that I'm willing to tell you all of it... if you'll call this off.” She put a palm to his cheek and stared hard into his eyes. “I don't want you to go.”
He swallowed hard. She saw his Adam's apple move. His hands flattened themselves to her cheeks, and he tipped her face up, searching it with his eyes. She felt his warm breath on her lips. When his lips parted, she thought he would kiss her. Instead, he said, “Then there is something you're not telling me
.”
Disappointment rinsed through her. His eyes had been so intense—but she banished that thought. “No more than what you’re not telling me.” She would have pulled her face from his hands, but the look on his paralyzed her. For an instant she glimpsed pain and raw longing. Then his lips came down to meet hers, and she couldn’t help but stand on tiptoe to meet them halfway. He kissed her softly, parting his lips to capture hers between them and sipping at them like he would a fine wine.
Toni's knees trembled. Her heart fluttered in her chest, and before she'd made a conscious decision to do so, her hands had slipped down to link around his neck. Her body melded to his. Her lips relaxed open at the first gentle nudging of his tongue. She welcomed it.
Nick's hands left her face to cradle her head. His fingers tangled in her hair. His stroking tongue set her on fire, and the subtle movements of his hips told her that he was just as aroused. When he lifted his mouth away, she pulled him in again, kissed him again. With a low groan, he complied with her unspoken request and kissed her once more. He kissed her until her breathing was broken and ragged, until her head was spinning and her entire body throbbed with wanting him.
Finally he straightened and held her to him. Her head rested against his chest. His heart hammered like a drum. He was breathing as erratically as she was. His voice was barely more than a whisper when he spoke. “You're seeing things that aren't there.”
She frowned and would have looked up, but he held her where she was.
“You'd rather believe a fairy tale than to admit the truth, Toni,” he went on. “I'm not hiding a damn thing. I'm exactly what I seem. Your problem is you can't stand to admit that you're hot for Lou Taranto's right-hand man.”
Toni stiffened, and this time he let her step away from him. He turned his back on her, picked up the vest and put it on. His words were like knives in her heart— mostly, she realized, because they were true.
“You want to pick up where we left off when I get back, I'll be happy to cooperate,” he said. “But you need to know who I am.” He slammed a clip into his gun with the heel of his hand and worked the action. He never even looked at her. “Right now I have to go. Lou's counting on me.”