Covert Cowboy

“Ducharme.” He deliberately took a step onto thinner ice. “But call me Con, sugar. The other’s a mouthful.”

Even if he hadn’t been trying to goad her he wouldn’t have been able to resist letting his gaze linger on the mouth in question, he admitted. Those lips weren’t Beacon Hill at all. They didn’t go with the prim white blouse and the straight skirt she wore, and they didn’t go with the smoothly brushed hairstyle. Those lush lips went with black fishnet stockings, half-undone bustiers, bed-messy tangles of hair obscuring a gleam of blue eye. They were lightly and invisibly glossed—another Beacon Hill legacy, Con guessed. He wondered what that mouth would look like slightly smudged from his kisses.

You’re wondering way too much here, Cap, for a man who doesn’t intend to do anything about it, the voice inside his head warned. Maybe you better back off a little and—

“What is it about me, Detective?” The lips he’d been fantasizing about thinned. “Why do I seem to present a challenge to men of a certain kind, like you and Tony Corso?”

He blinked, feeling obscurely outraged. “Me and Corso, cher’, we’re not two of a kind. I’ll let you take a look at his file sometime and you’ll see just what—”

“His references were solid and when he left he certainly didn’t abscond with the company’s payroll. Whatever you’re trying to charge him with, you’ve obviously made a mistake,” she interrupted him. “That’s not what I’m talking about. I wasn’t Tony’s type, I know now. But just the fact that I wasn’t particularly interested in him when we met made him determined to get some response from me, whatever it took. Even so, his approach was nowhere near as fast and crude as yours, Detective,” she added coldly.

She tipped her head to one side. “The innuendoes, the barely veiled insults. Tell me, do you ever get results with them?”

He’d given in to a reckless impulse by coming here in the first place, Con told himself tightly. He’d compounded that recklessness when he’d revealed himself to her. About the only admirable urge he’d acted upon was his hasty decision to take her mind off her nephew’s disappearance by rousing her ire, and that mission, it was all too obvious, had been accomplished.

He’d always known enough to fold his cards and get up from the table when logic and reason told him his run of luck was about to expire. Right now logic and reason were telling him it was time to walk away from Marilyn Langworthy.

Fast and crude? he thought, a tiny spark flaring inside him. Hell, I could have left you thinking anything else of me, sugar, but not that.

“You bet I do,” he said easily. “And if you were honest, you’d admit that sometimes you wish you could slip out of that ice-water manner of yours and into a little Big Easy fast and crude yourself. If you ever feel a lapse in good taste coming on, look me up, cher’.”

“And you’ll what?” Her tone was edged. “Be my—how did you put it?—my right-hand man? I don’t see my taste lapsing that badly.”

Her gaze lasered him. “But I guess I can understand how you work it, Detective. Some women probably just see a big man with dark eyes and black hair when they look at you. Some women might go for that drawl and the riverboat gambler air you put on.”

“I was born in St. Tammany Parish, honey. We all talk like this where I come from,” Con interjected. “And I put myself through college relieving high rollers of their cash on the riverboats, so that’s legit, too. I’m not the one pretending to be something I’m not.”

He smiled into her furious eyes. “Those shoes. Killer heels, sugar, and barely-there straps. They’re your secret sexy vice, aren’t they? They’re the real Marilyn. And deep down I think the real Marilyn could go for a big man with black hair and gambler’s hands if she wasn’t so damn scared of letting loose.”

Shrugging, he turned away. “Too bad for both of us that you’re such a coward, cher’. If Corso contacts you, try to set aside your fears long enough to let me know, will you?”

He felt suddenly angry with himself. If anyone had been a coward here it had been him, Con thought as he strode toward the door. He hadn’t meant to walk into her life this way, had always known there were reasons why Marilyn Langworthy’s path and his should never cross at all. And still he hadn’t been able to resist this encounter. That was bad enough.

But lying about who he was had been worse.

Didn’t have the guts to watch your dreams die right in front of your eyes, did you? the jeering voice said. Letting her think you’re a cochon is preferable to what you know she’d feel if she ever found out who you really are.

“Is it so obvious?”

Her question was so low he almost didn’t hear it. He turned and saw she was still standing by the couch, but that was all that was unchanged from a moment ago.

The self-possession she’d exhibited during their barbed exchange was no longer in evidence. Her cool demeanor had fled. And something had replaced the anger in her gaze with total and absolute devastation.

“I keep telling myself it wasn’t my fault, Con.” She didn’t seem to realize she’d used his name. “But it was.”

“What are you talking about?”

Frowning, he crossed the distance between them and stood before her. There was something wrong here, he thought—something badly wrong. Lightly he grasped her shoulders.

“What’s your fault?”

“I should have been there the day he was kidnapped.” Her whisper was raw, her words more directed to herself than to him. “If I had been, maybe I could have prevented it. But I turned around and came home again, because I was too afraid.”

Under his palms her shoulders trembled. She turned haunted eyes to him. “It’s like you said—I’m a coward. I hadn’t been able to stop thinking about Sky since the time I visited him and Holly. I hadn’t expected to feel that way about a baby, but I took one look at him and I just fell in love,” she added softly. “So I decided I’d set aside my pride and call on Holly that day, put things right between us after all these years. Except I lost my nerve. That must have been just about the time they—just about the time—”

The blue of her eyes sheened over. “I might have saved Sky, Con, and it’s tearing me apart that I didn’t!”

“Don’t say that, cher’,” he began, but with a quick shake of her head she overrode him.

“It’s true. By choosing to keep myself sealed off I put a little boy in terrible danger. And God help me, if you were anyone but a complete stranger, I wouldn’t even have the courage to admit that much.”

Guilt lanced through him. It was way past time to tell her, he thought. If he left it any longer the consequences could be disastrous.

Even as he opened his mouth to speak she forestalled him.

“And maybe I wouldn’t have the courage to go through with this, either,” she said hoarsely.

Her fingers fumbled with the top button of her blouse. She slipped it free and immediately began working on the second one, her movements clumsy with urgency.

“Holly has family and friends to support her.” Her head was bent to her task as if it required her full attention. Without looking at him she continued speaking, her voice little more than a thread. “My father has his wife. Josh may not have found the woman he wants to share his life with yet but he always has someone—someone to hold, someone who can help him keep the nightmares at bay. But I’m the Ice Queen, Con. And ice queens don’t have anybody.”

He had to stop this, Con thought. Whatever she thought she was doing, it was a sure bet she’d hate herself for it before twenty-four hours had passed. His hands moved from her shoulders to grasp her wrists. The edges of her blouse gaped open to reveal a swell of creamy skin, a delicately erotic edging of lace.

Immediate desire burned through him. He swallowed, and forced his gaze to hers.

“I had no right to say what I did, cher’,” he said huskily. “I had no real right to come here at all. I should go now.”

“No!” The single word exploded from her with the desperation of a plea. The blue eyes meeting his were dark with unimaginable pain. “Don’t you get it, Detective? I need to make the nightmares go away for a few hours. Sky’s disappeared. I might have saved him. For nineteen days that knowledge has been tearing me apart, and I just want to blot it out for tonight.”

She undid the last button. His hands slipped away from her wrists, and when she shrugged out of her blouse and let it fall to the floor he made no move to stop her. Cupped by the lacy bra, her breasts rose and fell quickly.

“Take the pain away, Con.” Her whisper was raw. “Please take it away, just for tonight.”

She needed a stranger. She needed someone who would walk away without a second thought after this was over. She needed someone who wouldn’t recall her name a month from now.

And he wasn’t that someone, Con thought. He was just the man who’d loved her for as long as he could remember. If he did what she was asking, after tonight she wouldn’t only have his heart but she’d own his very soul, and any faint hope he might have had for a future with her would have to be forgotten forever.

Take the pain away, Con. Please take it away…

His arms gathered her tightly to him and his mouth came down on hers.

Chapter Two

With a frown Conrad Burke looked around the massive and rustic great room of the Royal Flush Ranch. It had been three months and two weeks since his encounter with Marilyn Langworthy, he reflected, although encounter came nowhere close to describing the conflagration that had consumed the two of them that night in her office. Three months and two weeks of burying himself in his work, of drinking too much, of falling asleep, drunk or sober, with the memory of her haunting his dreams.

He’d promised himself he wouldn’t return to Colorado, but when his old friend Wiley Longbottom had come to him yesterday with a request to meet with a certain Colleen Wellesley here at her ranch, located a couple of hours outside Denver, even the fact that Wiley had refused to reveal what the meeting was about and who Wellesley was hadn’t given him pause. He’d caught a red-eye flight out of Louis Armstrong Airport, touched down in Denver, and the first damn thing he’d done after renting a vehicle had been to head for the city’s lively and upscale LoDo district. He’d parked near the corner of Blake Street and 33rd, within sight of the converted-to-lofts warehouse where he knew Marilyn lived, and had sat behind the wheel of his car all afternoon hoping to catch a glimpse of her. Only when the early November dusk had begun to fall had he left the city, taking I-285 until it hooked up with Highway 9 near Fairplay, just north of the Royal Flush.

Although apparently the house itself had been a bordello in the wild old days, to his mild surprise he’d realized when he’d arrived that the Flush was definitely a working ranch. He was willing to accept that as an excuse for the Wellesley woman’s absence so far, Con told himself, walking over to the antique portrait hanging above the gilded mirror running the length of the heavily varnished and well-stocked pine bar.