Ride a Painted Pony (Superromance) (22 page)

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Authors: Carolyn McSparren

BOOK: Ride a Painted Pony (Superromance)
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“Maybe somebody wants Rounders to close. Say you liquidate everything. Josh, Max, and even you could walk away with twenty or thirty thousand apiece. A developer would probably pay a pretty penny for that building.”
Taylor threw up her hands. “I don’t buy it.”
“Me neither,” Nick said.
“The point is that nobody’s excluded,” Mel said.
“And then there’s Eugene,” Nick said.
“I talked to Vollmer about him today,” Mel said. “He seems to have dropped off the face of the earth.”
“That doesn’t mean he’s gone for good,” Taylor said.
“No. So be careful.”
“Would you two like to stay here, dear?” Veda asked.
Taylor looked around the small living room. “Thanks, Veda, but I think we’ll be safe.”
“Nick, are you opening Rounders tomorrow?” she asked.
“Why not? Yeah, sure.” Nick smiled at her. “Let’s try to act normal. Besides, as Mel discovered, I need the money.”
 
NICK AND TAYLOR MADE THE TREK to feed Elmo, and the return trip, with no sign of Eugene.
“Want a drink?” Nick asked as soon as they’d reached his living room.
Taylor shook her head. She felt uncomfortable here with Nick. From the way he stood uncertainly by the refrigerator, he wasn’t too comfortable either.
“So, you want to go to bed early or what?” he asked.
“What?”
Nick flushed. “I mean, it’s been a long day, we didn’t get much sleep last night.” He pointed at the futon.
“I’m not sleepy.” Taylor prowled the bookshelves. A few paperback thrillers, stacks of books on cabinetmaking, antiques and carousels. Some of them looked very old and very fine. “You told me your grandfather taught you about carousel horses, Nick. How old were you when you carved your first one?”
“Twenty-two.”
“Really? I don’t know why, I thought—”
“Drop it, okay?”
“Certainly. I didn’t mean to pry.” She knew she sounded huffy.
“No, I’m sorry.” He sank into the prairie armchair across from the futon. “I want to thank you for the work you’ve done.”
“That sounds like a pink slip.”
“No, but I don’t think we’re going to find out who stole the horses and killed the Eberhardts.”
“Wow, you are down,” she said.
“Yeah. I guess. I keep finding out things about my friends I’d rather not know.”
“I warned you there’d be a price to pay.”
“Even if we find the horses, I may come out of this with no friends left. Max and I can’t ever get back to where we were.”
“Maybe you can. Besides, there’s Veda. And me.”
“Yeah. Thanks.”
She watched him a moment. There was no sign of the joy he’d shown last night when he looked at the carousel. He seemed far away in a lonely, unhappy place. She ached to take him in her arms. Instead she said gently, “Truth can . sometimes hurt.”
“Truth always hurts.” He shifted in his chair.
She dropped down on her knees beside him. She wanted to shake him. “Stop that! We’ve found out a lot, Eugene is safely outside the wagons, we’re alive, we’re healthy. Anything else we can deal with.”
He smiled. His hand slipped up the back of her neck to ruffle her hair. “Tough cookie.”
She felt her breathing lurch at his touch. “Right.” For a moment they stared at one another. Then he bent and kissed her gently.
Her body seemed to have developed a mind of its own. She moved closer to him and felt his other hand against the small of her back, drawing her deeper into the kiss. She felt his tongue tease her mouth and answered it with her own. Flame ran along her nerve endings to converge deep in her belly.
She drew away breathless and stumbled to her feet. “Oh, God, I can’t.”
He stood. One arm slid around her, bringing her against him from knee to breast. She felt him hard and demanding.
Her head dropped back, unresisting. He kissed her eyes, her ears, leaving trails of heat and desire wherever his lips found her skin.
“You’re a client,” she choked.
He kissed her again. “You’re fired,” he whispered.
Her eyes snapped open. “What?”
He grinned down into her face lazily. “Fired, pink slip, kaput.”
“But—”
He stopped her mouth with another kiss. She resisted.
He broke the kiss and held her away from him. “I can always hire you back tomorrow morning,” he said and grinned.
She laughed. She ran her hands up his back and felt the muscles work beneath her fingertips. She felt him shiver as she caressed the nape of his neck, then curl her fingers in his hair. “That’s harassment,” she whispered as his lips inched down to the hollow at the base of her throat.
“Uh-huh,” he mumbled. His left hand slid under her sweater. She felt the snaps on her bra open. Then that oh-so-educated hand slid around beneath her bra to capture her breast.
As she felt her body sink into his, she whimpered, “Blackmail.”
 
TAYLOR WAKENED BEFORE DAWN, stretched lazily and registered that she ached with the sort of pleasurable pain she hadn’t experienced in ages.
She gazed at Nick, who slept with his back to her. Everything she had feared in that first moment she saw his lopsided grin had come to pass, only worse than she could have imagined.
Last night he’d needed a woman, the comfort she provided, the physical release, perhaps even the ecstasy.
She felt as though she’d been blindsided.
Because last night was much more than physical release or comfort for
her
. Before last night she’d never known the
meaning
of ecstasy. She’d never guessed she was capable of the passion, the abandon, that Nick had evoked. He seemed to know things about her body that she’d never realized herself before he caressed her, joined his body to hers. Nick had wrested control from her and accepted nothing less than total surrender.
She’d never again be willing to settle for less. And that presented problems.
Irene Maxwell had had kittens over the unsuitability of Danny Vollmer, a homicide detective who wore Nicole Miller ties and boasted a master’s degree in criminal justice. She’d have a stroke over Nick, a man who actually had calluses on his palms.
Irene would never understand that the lunk in the dusty jeans was one of nature’s true gentlemen—something Paul Hunt had never been for all his fancy clothes and his fancy career.
At the memory of the heights of pleasure Nick’s callused fingers had coaxed from her, Taylor wriggled and felt her body awaken to full-blown desire all over again.
Nick sighed and turned over. He smiled at her lazily and touched her arm. He did have the most beautiful brown eyes. She bent to kiss him.
“Am I rehired?” she whispered.
“Not yet,” he whispered and rolled over on top of her.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
“I
CAN’T COOK, but I can manage breakfast,” Nick said as he flipped rashers of bacon in a hot iron skillet. “After last night I think we can probably handle the cholesterol.”
Taylor wrapped her arms around him from behind and leaned her cheek against his shoulder. Her hair was still damp from the shower.
“Hey, woman,” he said, “you’re getting me all wet.”
Her hand slid down the front of his jeans. “So are you complaining?”
He caught his breath. “I’m liable to do myself an injury here if you keep that up.”
“You haven’t rehired me yet. I’m holding you hostage until you do.”
He quickly slipped the bacon slices onto a paper towel and the skillet onto a cold burner. “Now,” he said, turning around and pulling her against him, “about this hostage situation we’ve got growing here...”
“Big
hostage situation,” she whispered.
His hands slid down to cup her bottom and raise her against him. He nuzzled her neck softly. “Be a shame to let a really great negotiating ploy go to waste.”
“Ploy?” She laughed and tilted her head back to smile up at him. “Never heard it called that before.”
“Works for me.”
“Thought you wanted breakfast.”
“You taste a hell of a lot better than bacon.” He picked her up and carried her back to bed.
Twenty minutes later she lay curled against him, his arm around her shoulders, her fingers playing with the dark hair on his chest.
“Am I rehired or do I have to do some more negotiating?”
“Damned right you do. But not right this minute.”
“Nick!” She bit his shoulder.
“Ow!” He turned and wrapped his arms around her. “Okay, you convinced me. You’re rehired.” The smile left his face and his eyes. “For all the good it’ll do.”
Taylor raised herself on one elbow. “I promise we will fix this.”
He caressed her hair. “I didn’t want this to happen, Taylor.”
“Thanks so much.”
He shook his head. “That didn’t come out right. I wanted—want—to make love to you, but not if it means I have to worry about you even more than I do now.”
She sat up. “Mel worries enough for both of us. Don’t you start with me.” She stood and began to search for her underwear.
“Taylor...”
“No. I’m rehired. You’re the client again.”
“Forget last night happened? I can’t.”
“Don’t forget it. Just ignore it For the moment. Okay?” Taylor asked.
“Maybe you can keep business and pleasure in separate compartments. I can’t.”
“Well, one of us has to.” She sat on the edge of the bed and kissed him. “Please, Nick.”
He sighed and began to dress.
When they finally sat down to bacon and muffins, Nick said, “You asked me last night about my grandfather and the carousel horses.”
Taylor nodded.
“It’s time I told you.”
“So tell. I must admit I heard he was something of a rapscallion.”
“And a hypocrite. He was a deacon in his church. He practically kept my mother chained in her room. First chance she got, she went hog-wild and came up pregnant. He wanted her to tell him who the father was so that he could force the boy to marry her. She wouldn’t. I still don’t know. The only name on my birth certificate is hers.”
“Poor girl.”
“He kicked her out and forbade Gram to see her. She was just a kid herself. It was tough. I got all this later from my gram.”
“But you said your grandfather raised you.”
Nick picked up the wooden pear from the center of the table. “My grandmother really raised me—” he paused “—after.”
His voice remained unemotional, but his hands gave him away. That first night Taylor had watched him caress the wood. This morning his knuckles were white as though he wanted to crush it to sawdust.
“My mother used to get her dates to bring us to the park so I could ride the carousel, and after I got old enough to ride alone, they’d give me tickets to get rid of me, get her alone for a while. I knew what they were doing, but I didn’t care. The carousel was bright and noisy and beautiful, not shabby and dirty the way it was at home. I felt I like a knight in armor. Nobody could hurt me. Nobody could even catch me.” He stared at his hands and seemed to realize what he was doing to the pear. With a sigh he set it back into the bowl of wooden fruit and clasped his hands tightly in front of him.
For a moment he sat silent, then leaned back, closed his eyes, and began to speak again, “One day she stuck an envelope in my pocket, handed me the biggest fistful of tickets I’d ever seen, kissed me and put me on my horse to ride until the tickets were gone.”
Taylor felt a shiver run up her spine. She didn’t think she could bear to hear what was coming.
“By the time the tickets were gone, so was she.” He opened his hands like a magician making a dove disappear.
“What did you do?” she whispered.
“The letter was to my grandfather and grandmother, asking them to take me in. Her latest man didn’t want me as part of the deal. The security guards or somebody must have called them, because my grandfather came and took me to his house. It was the first time I ever saw him.”
“Oh, God, Nick.”
“My grandfather couldn’t let his precious church know he’d shirked his duty. He had to take me.” The venom in his voice made her catch her breath.
“How you must have hated her.”
He looked at her, startled. “I hated my grandfather. He was the one who sent her away. I used to pray she was dead so she had an excuse not to care about me. Then I decided it must be my fault.”
“Yours? How could any of it be your fault?”
“If she hadn’t gotten pregnant, she’d have been home where she belonged. My grandfather told me over and over that I was the ‘fruit of her sin.’”
Taylor went down on her knees beside his chair, wrapped her arms around him and pressed her head against his chest. “It’s a miracle you’re the man that you are.”
He stroked her hair. “I guess my gram loved me enough to keep me straight. And the old man did teach me to build and carve. He worked twelve—fourteen hours a day. He was a genius in his way.”
She looked up at him, her eyes bright with tears. “Nick, if my mother had abandoned me that way, I wouldn’t love carousels, I’d spend the rest of my life blowing the damn things up.”
“I did hate them. Then right after I graduated from high school Gram gave me a shoe box. Every year on my birthday until I was sixteen my mother had sent me a birthday card and a carousel horse—sometimes only a picture, mostly just Christmas tree ornaments, but something that showed she remembered and loved me. My grandfather told my gram to destroy them. Gram was afraid to give them to me at the time, but she hid them for me until then. But she paid for it,” he said dryly.
“He found out?”
“Oh, yeah. When Gram gave me the shoe box, I went out and got drunk. I stayed out all night. I must have read those letters a thousand times. Before I went home I gave the box to my best friend to keep. Knew I’d get a beating, but I was mad enough to kill my grandfather.”
“You told him you had the things?”
“Gram already had. When I walked up the back steps that morning I heard him yelling at her. I was still a little drunk. He was a big man, and strong. She’d been serving him breakfast at the kitchen table. He didn’t even look at her, just lashed out and knocked her against the refrigerator. The dish went flying. I still remember the sound it made when it broke on the floor.”
Taylor stared at his profile. His voice had dropped to a whisper.
“I was eighteen, with a bad hangover and mad as hell.” He blinked and turned to stare into her eyes.
“I kicked the chair out from under him, yanked him up off the floor and slugged him. I pinned him against the wall with my hands around his throat. I could hear Gram screaming and feel her beating on my back, begging me to stop. I told him that if he ever raised a hand to either of us again, I’d kill him.”
“My God, what did he do?”
“He called me a spawn of the devil, said he’d have me locked up, said he’d beat the skin off my back, said he’d call the police, said he should have strangled me and let the dogs eat me.”
“Did he have you arrested?”
“Hell, no. I told him if there were any police to be called I’d be the one calling them, and then I’d call his preacher and tell the whole congregation what a hypocritical wife-beating monster he really was and how he made his money faking antiques. I think that scared him, but not nearly as much as when I started laughing at him. He thought I’d gone nuts.”
“So how did it end?”
“I walked out, joined the army and didn’t go home for four years. He wouldn’t even let me come back for Gram’s funeral two years later. God, I still miss her.”
“Did you ever see him again?”
“I wound up taking care of him until he had to go into a nursing home, taking over the business—running it honest, for a change—to pay his bills in the nursing home until he died.”
“Did you ever forgive him?”
“We forgave each other. I guess in his way he really loved me, as much as he was capable of love. Hate eats you alive, Taylor. Gram tried to teach me that.”
“Did you ever find your mother?”
“Gram said she died when I was sixteen—that’s why the cards and presents stopped.”
Taylor still knelt at his feet. “How can you be so calm about all this?”
He smiled at her. “It’s not new to me, babe. Tell a story often enough and you get some distance, get to see things a little clearer. Most people try to do the best they can. Even my poor mother.”
“Do you know what happened to her?”
“She married. Never had any other kids. I hope she found some peace. My granddad and I did finally. And I came back to the carousel.”
He put his hands under her arms and stood up with her against him. She clung to him and felt the tears running down her cheeks.
He stroked her hair. “Hey, it’s okay.” He held her away from him. “That why I love carousels, Taylor. Nobody ever gets lost on a carousel—they just go around the curve and out of sight for a while, then they come back with music and bright lights.”
“Why are you telling me this now?”
“Because last night wasn’t any one-night stand, at least not for me. I want you to know about me, about what makes me tick—maybe warn you.”
She stepped away. “Warn me? About what?”
“You told me about your dad and about Paul and Vollmer. I saw you with your brother, remember? I know how you feel about violence. I guess I’m about the mildest human being this side of Caspar Milquetoast most of the time, but there’s violence in me too. I know it, I feel it. It scares the hell out of me.”
“You forgave your family, Nick. And you’re still making allowances for the friends who betray you. But there’s one other person who truly deserves your forgiveness.”
“Who?”
“You, yourself. There’s violence in all of us. In me too. All we can do is fight it or channel it. I wanted to kill Paul. Three teenagers did it for me.”
“But you didn’t hit him before he left.”
“If I’d hit him, it would have been with an iron skillet or a brass lamp. I had enough sense not to want to spend the next seven to ten years in jail for manslaughter, but the desire was there. My mother thinks I sold everything, moved to the country, cut my hair, changed my lifestyle, even went to work for Mel all because of grief.” She shook her head. “I never was the child my parents thought I was. This is me. Abrasive, difficult, nervy, opinionated, bad-tempered—”
“—beautiful, passionate, tender, empathetic.” He grinned at her. “Opinionated and nervy I’ll buy.”
“Thank you very much. But we were talking about you. Don’t you think it’s time you let go of your guilt over your grandfather?”
He shook his head. “There’s worse.”
“What could be worse?”
“I learned what my grandfather taught me because I loved the wood, but I was a troublemaker. I’m lucky I graduated. I spent more time in the principal’s office than I did in class.”
“So? Hardly surprising, given your background.”
“Today they’d say I had an attention deficit disorder. Then they just said I was stupid. My grades were lousy. Except in shop. There was this shop teacher, a little scrawny guy named Mr. Archer. He took an interest, let me stay after school and work with him. I betrayed him, Taylor. I stole a Skil saw from the lab.”
Taylor exhaled. “Did he find out?”
“Oh, yeah. I already outweighed the guy by fifty or sixty pounds and was maybe five or six inches taller, but he lit into me with everything he had. Then he sat me down and told me all about honor. I brought back the Skil saw two hours later. I’ve tried to live up to Mr. Archer’s standards ever since.”

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