Deep (The Pagano Family Book 4) (27 page)

He sipped his scotch. “For years, there was no business done in this home. This place was a sanctuary. One of my most closely-held rules—no business at home. And then Church stood up on his mountain of trash, and we seem to talk business here more than anywhere else.”

“I know.” It wasn’t simply Church who had changed that tradition. It was Ben himself. If he were still putting in full days at the warehouse, they could have had this discussion at the office. But Nick knew there was no use pointing that out. His uncle needed no reminders of his waning.

“So tell me.”

“We’ve got a new Fed on us. DHS—Homeland Security.”

“Homeland Security? Is this because we knocked back the Zapatas?” DHS was normally only interested in organized crime when it crossed national borders. With a few discreet exceptions for connections to the homeland, the Paganos kept their business within the country.

But a car bomb was seen as an act of terrorism, and that got DHS hard, too.

“It’s the bombing at Neon. A DHS agent got a tip connecting Neon to the diner, and now we got a freshman agent looking for a commendation.”

Ben tossed back the rest of his scotch and held out his glass to Nick. “Top us off, nephew.” Nick took the glasses and poured doubles for them both.

“What’s his name?”

“Her. Amy Cavanaugh. Do we have anybody in DHS?” Handing the glass back to his uncle, Nick sat down.

“No. I’ll have to call Marjorie.” Marjorie Russo was the senior senator from Rhode Island. “A tip? Who knew the connection?” Ben’s eyes narrowed, showing every bit of the fearsome power he had ever wielded. “Do we have a rat?”

“I think it’s Chris Mills.”

“Bev’s friend, you mean. The bookseller. You’ve had confrontations with him already.”

“Yes. And the last time I told him that if I heard more from him, it would be the last anyone did. Now I have to make good on that promise.”

“Are you sure it’s him?”

“He’s the likeliest suspect, by a wide margin. And he was threatening this kind of trouble. Of course I’ll confirm before I make the order, but it’s him.”

Ben stared into his glass for several seconds, then released a long, weary breath. “An accident. He can’t disappear.”

“Agreed.”

“And what will you tell your girl? I know they’re on the outs, but her heart is big. She’ll feel his death.”

“I know. But, Uncle, with respect. That’s for me to work out.”

Ben nodded, but he went on nonetheless. “
Ogni verità non è a dire.
Truth isn’t always the best course. Some lies are kindnesses. We know this. To keep our family innocent of our business, to keep our loved ones well and happy, some truths should stay unsaid.”

To start a life together with Beverly’s pain and his secret between them—what path would that put them on? This was why he’d never had an interest in mating. His life was too dark, too complicated, too cloaked for intimacy. But it was too late for him, and for her, to remember that now. Since he’d known her, what he’d known about himself had shifted and shuffled. His control over his emotions had become something to assert rather than a passive fact of his personality. He needed companionship and connection at a depth he’d never had need of before. His capacity for love was much greater than he’d known.

He didn’t want to lie to her. He didn’t want to hurt her again, ever. She’d been hurt enough because of him. But rats were exterminated. A man who would take the risk to rat once would take it again. Mills was even more dangerous because of his feelings for Beverly, and because Nick was sure she would eventually forgive him. Mills was too close, too incendiary. If he was the rat, then he had to be taken care of.

That put Nick between the horns of an unsolvable dilemma. Lie to her, or hurt her more. Maybe lose her.

“I’ll figure it out, Uncle.” He hoped that, at least, was a truth.

~ 18 ~

“I got you curly fries for a side. Oh—and I got a couple of chocolate chip cookies, too.” Skylar set the tray down on the little round table overlooking the beach and sat down next to Bev.

Bev stared at the tray. Curly fries, chocolate chip cookies, and grinders. And soda—probably not diet. She sighed. “You, too?”

Sky shrugged. “I’m not even sorry. What is it, fifteen pounds you’ve lost?”

Closer to twenty, but Bev nodded. “I’m not starving myself, Sky. I’m okay.”

“Good—then eat. We’ll eat a disgustingly delicious lunch, and then we are going to shop. It’s a beautiful, sunny summer day, we are two women with time on our hands, and I am employed again. We deserve some retail therapy.” Sky had taken a job at a family restaurant not far outside the Cove. When Bruce got Sal’s going again, she’d said she planned to work both places for awhile.

Bruce was home and recovering well, and the odds of his reopening Sal’s had increased to a near certainty when Nick had forgiven his debt as recompense for the attack. Bev had been psyching herself up to ask him to do just that. She loved Nick all the more because she hadn’t had to ask. He might have been a killer, but he had honor.

“Not on Gannet Street, though.” Sal’s and Cover to Cover Books were both on Gannet. Bev picked up her sandwich and took a bite. It was good—the food at the Cove Café was basic deli stuff but always fresh and tasty.

“Nope. I thought we’d do the thrifts and antique shops on Breakwater. And I want to run into The Sea Weaver.”

“The yarn shop? Why?”

“I took a knitting class over there while I was trying to find ways to spend my time. Remember?” Bev nodded. “Turns out, I love it. It’s like my yoga. Or my crack. Either way, I need a fix. Plus, have you ever been in there?”

Bev shook her head. She was not a knitter. She could barely tie a bow.

“You’ll like it—it’s beautiful, and the owner, Andi, is all up in incense and meditation and crystals and stuff. It smells like your place.”

“I’m not into crystals, Sky. I just meditate.” Meditating hadn’t been going so well lately. She couldn’t find her center no matter what she did. But she was back teaching her yoga class. Her neighbor, Carlotta, had taken over for her while she was ‘ill.’ Everybody, including Carlotta, seemed to be glad she was back.

“Anyway, I just want to get some yarn. Everybody is getting knitted goods for Christmas this year, because I have a productive obsession and I’m going to exploit it for all it’s worth.”

Bev chuckled and looked out over the water, quickly getting lost in the view. She didn’t spend much time in the ocean. She preferred to swim in the pool. But there was something calming about being on the beach. She liked to sit and watch the people—children playing in the waves; parents preparing their lunches, everything from simple sandwiches pulled out of tote bags to elaborate meals set out on tables; lovers lying coiled together on blankets; groups of teen girls baking their skin, groups of teen boys ogling them; solitary readers or sleepers. The beach in summertime was a place to find people being happy.

Sitting here, Bev could almost remember that feeling.

“Bev?”

“Hmm? Oh, sorry. Just daydreaming.” She set her half-finished sandwich down, done with it, and picked at a cookie. “Have you seen him?”

“Who? Chris? We’re going to talk about Chris?” Sky set her sandwich down, too, and folded her hands together. “I thought he was
verboten
.”

It had been weeks since that day he’d come to Ben’s house and she’d found out her most lasting and important friendship had been a fiction. For years, she’d thought she had a real best friend, someone who cared about her and was interested in her just for her, and not for what he wanted from her. She had been completely open with him. He knew everything about her. And she knew everything about him—or she’d thought so. Now, though, it turned out that he’d simply been taking notes and biding his time, waiting for her to come to her senses or something and fall in love with him.

She’d never thought about him in that way, and she’d had no idea he’d thought about her like that. How completely stupid and naïve was she, really?

But she missed him. There was no chance they’d be friends like they had been, but in the past couple of weeks, her anger had ebbed enough that she’d missed him, what they’d had—what she’d thought they had.

“I just wondered if he’s okay.”

Sky huffed. “Okay. This isn’t high school, and I am not going to be running notes back and forth between you. But I will tell you that I see him around a little. It’s not like we were all that close. You were the thing that connected us. So we’re not hanging out or anything. But we’ve run into each other. He’s…okay. It looks like he’s okay. Doing his thing.”

“Okay.”

“Are you thinking about talking to him?”

“I don’t know. Probably not. I’m just sad to lose what we had.”

“What you thought you had.” Sky’s expression suggested that she was pissed at Chris, too.

Bev pushed the cookie away. “Yeah.”

“I swear, that ‘friend zone’ bullshit is fucking infuriating. Like all we are is somebody to fuck.”

“Sky, you’re not helping.”

“Sorry. It’s just…I had a big fight with Rome about this not so long before all that shit went down. He said Chris had it bad for you, and I tore him ten different new assholes about how misogynistic it was to assume that a guy couldn’t be friends with a woman. And then that bastard goes and proves him right. And trust me, my Romeo has not let me forget it.”

Nick had apparently seen it, too. Bev replayed the exchange she’d overheard between him and Chris that day at Ben’s. Nick had known. At least Sky hadn’t known—it made Bev feel fractionally better that another woman had missed the signs the men had apparently seen.

“You’re not going to finish your lunch, are you?” Sky turned a disappointed eye on Bev’s basket.

Bev shrugged.

“Fine, then. I’d sacrifice small children for your curves, but waste away if you want. Come on. Let’s shop.”

~oOo~

Nick pulled his Tahoe into the small gravel lot at the Quiet Cove lighthouse and parked. Bev was surprised—he’d said he wanted to take her somewhere special. She wasn’t sure what she’d expected, but it hadn’t been this.

“We’re here?”

He turned and smiled his beautiful smile. “We are. Have you ever been here?”

“It’s not open to the public, is it?”

“Not for the last few years, no. It’s still a working lighthouse, but the path down to the shore isn’t for the faint of heart—it’s steep, and the shore is all rocks, no beach. Some dumb kids were being assholes, and one of them fell and died. Since then, until the town gets a proper walkway built, which is turning into a hassle, it’s closed to everyone but the people keeping the lighthouse working.”

“And us.” Bev smiled. Rules didn’t often apply to Nick. Not the same rules normal people followed, anyway.

His smile became a grin. “And us.” He opened his door. “Come on.”

Knowing that he wanted her to wait until he opened her door for her, and liking that he had this little old-fashioned quirk, Bev sat until he did so. When she stepped out, he led her around the lighthouse to a deck facing the water.

The Quiet Cove lighthouse was, as far as Bev knew, a typical New England lighthouse: a tall, white, tapering column topped with a glass-paned beacon, painted bright red. There was a tiny house-shaped building attached on one side, where, before the days of automation, the lighthouse keeper lived, she supposed.

Situated at the edge of a rocky bluff and ringed with a railed, wooden deck, the structure had guided ships into the harbor for probably three hundred years.

Nick led her onto the deck and around to the front—or was it the rear?—of the lighthouse, overlooking the ocean. There was a wooden bench, painted bright red, against the building on this side. He led her there, and they sat. He put his arm around her, and she settled against him.

And then he said nothing. He just stared out at the water.

She let him be quiet for a few minutes, but eventually, she had to know. “Nick, why are we here?”

Without turning from the ocean, he said, “I come here a lot—usually around this time, in the evening, when the light gets gold. I sit and smoke and think. I don’t care much for the beach, but I love the ocean. I’d like it just fine if they never get the walkway built.”

She looked over the railing at the steep, rocky incline. There was a kind of a path, but not one she’d have been brave enough to attempt. And the shore below was all rocks, big and craggy. “Why haven’t they built it?”

“To get one that’s safe, and meets ADA requirements, and is consistent with the regulations on changes to historical sites, it’s expensive—and it’s the Cove. Once people start talking about historical sites, it’s years before they stop fighting and make a decision. It’ll happen. Like I said, I’m in no rush.”

She wondered if he was hampering the process at all. Maybe, for a Pagano, not being in favor of it was hamper enough. “Why are we here?”

He turned and met her eyes. “I love you,
bella
.”

She smiled and started to return the sentiment, but he put his fingers on her lips. “I think of this place as my place. I come here to be alone with the ocean and to work out difficult problems.”

He paused, his green eyes searching her face. Bev felt like there was something she should be understanding, but whatever it was, it eluded her. “I don’t understand, Nick.”

Something went through his eyes like a shadow, and Bev got the sense somehow that he’d changed his mind. From what to what, she had no idea; she wasn’t even sure why she was so sure that he had. But when he spoke, she didn’t think it was the thing he’d meant to tell her when he’d brought her here.

“I got some news about my family today—family you haven’t met. My cousin Carmen is getting married. Here in the Cove, in a month or so. She’s going to be in town this weekend. I want you to come to Mass with me and meet the rest of my family. I want you to start coming to Mass with me.”

They’d not yet talked much about religion. He went to Mass every week, but he’d never even raised the idea of her going with him before. “I’m not Catholic.”

“So you won’t take communion. You believe, right?”

“Sure, but—”

“It’s settled, then. You’ll sit with me at Mass, and this Sunday we’ll go to my cousin Carlo’s house after. They’re throwing Carmen an engagement party.”

All he’d said about his cousins was that there were a lot of them. In her earlier life, she would have been excited at the thought of meeting new people, but now she felt overwhelmed by the idea. She wondered if she’d ever get her old life back. “It’s important to you?”

“It is. I want you to meet the rest of my family. I want them to know you.”

“You hardly talk about them at all.”

His expression clouded over a little. “They’re good people, all of them. They’re not in the business I’m in. They know me for who I am, and that holds me apart. But they’ll love you. And you them.”

Still confused, and now feeling a strange sense of defensiveness on Nick’s behalf, she nodded. “Okay.”

With the kind of smile he gave only her, he leaned in and kissed her. “Thank you,
bella
.”

Meeting his family—all of it. That felt like a step. Part of her, most of her, was exhilarated to think that he was folding her into his family. A much smaller but adamant part of her was afraid. She was half of herself. She didn’t know how to find the rest, and she didn’t want Nick to be with her out of pity or a sense of responsibility. With every step he took that deepened what they had, she fought the urge to shrink back.