Twisted Shadows (46 page)

“Yes, but she never realized the demands.” His gaze bored into her as if searching for an answer to his unspoken question.

She knew what he was telling her. “Well, you don't have to worry about that with me,” she said tartly. “I received the comprehensive indoctrination of an agent's life in the past few weeks.”

“I can quit.”

“No,” she said. “It's who you are. And I love who you are.”

“Can you open a branch of Wonders in Denver?”

“We've been considering that,” she said. At least it had been mentioned once. And she could conduct the Internet business anywhere that had an electrical outlet and a phone line.

He leaned down and kissed her, his lips roaming over hers, then traveling across her face with a feather-light tenderness.

“I love you,” he said. “But I want you to be sure. It might be the adrenaline and … even gratitude.”

“I don't think so,” she said. “I'm grateful to a man in Steamboat who once helped me change a flat, but I didn't once think about marrying him.”

“Is that so? I thought
you
knew everything about flats.”

She flushed, then grinned. “I just know how to cause them.”

“Ah, shoot. I thought I had a real winner.”

“Well, I'm decisive. That's something you should know about me. And I'm bossy. I told the guy how to change that tire. He couldn't wait to get away from me.”

“I like bossy.”

“Then I think you should take me to bed.”

“You're shameless, too,” he observed with obvious delight.

“I'm afraid so.”

“And something
you
should know about
me
. I'm very good at taking orders.”

“No, you're not,” she disagreed.

“Well, maybe just
your
orders.” He kept his fingers busy taking off her blouse, then her bra. He leaned down and kissed her left breast, then her right. “See?” he said.

She did.

She ran her fingers through his hair, then touched the hard planes of his face. Emotion flooded her in waves. She couldn't believe he loved her, that he was offering a heart that she now realized had been repeatedly battered. She silently promised that she would take good care of it.

She held her arms up to him. It was her way of telling him she was giving him
her
heart.

A slow, lazy smile spread over his face. Still, he hesitated.

“Bed,” she reminded him.

“Only if you'll marry me,” he bargained.

She leaned back and looked at the tired face she loved, at the man who was so much better than he believed he was.

“That is an excellent—”

The rest of the sentence died in a kiss.

And the promise of forever.

epilogue

Nick, a small smile curving his mouth, looked out at the mountains from the patio of Sam's Steamboat Springs house.

He had arrived at Samantha's house with Nathan, who'd finished winding up the Merritta investigation and had just been transferred as second in command to the Denver field office. They had flown from Boston together.

Sam, delighted at their truce, had invited Simon and Patsy to join them for supper.

The case was all but over. Judge McGuire had somehow acquired a gun in jail and had killed himself. Anna had made a plea bargain in exchange for a lighter sentence. She would serve three years in a federal prison.

“So now it's really over,” Nick said. “The Merrittas have been neutralized and the family dispersed. The other families can have our territory. And Pop can rest easily.”

“Why did Paul Merritta talk about my mother as he did when I saw him?” Sam asked. “He sounded as if he detested her.”

“A mask he could never afford to put down,” Nick said. “I didn't know myself until I talked to him during your visit to the house that Saturday. I saw him before dinner and he told me everything.”

“Why didn't you say anything?”

“The same reason he didn't. Neither of us knew you, knew what your reaction would be. My father wanted to take your measure and I agreed with him. He had to know whether you should be hidden again, possibly under a different identity, or whether you were strong enough to take the information he had and use it in the right way.”

Her brother hesitated. “I think he realized it was a mistake after he contacted you. He'd thought his reputation would protect you. He wanted you to know he'd tried to take the family into legitimate businesses as much as he could without showing weaknesses to other families. But pain and drugs dulled my father's caution those last few months. He wasn't aware that McGuire had access to FBI tapes. He believed his protection was enough. What he didn't realize was that McGuire had just heard he would be nominated for the federal appeals bench and was desperate to find Patsy and eliminate one of the three people who knew what happened that night.”

Sam mulled that over. It was horrifying to think a man like that would be elevated to a federal bench. She wished the thought away. “And my mother? How did my … father feel about her?”

“I think he always regretted losing … my mother.” Nicholas looked at Patsy, who gazed at him with wistful eyes. “You know he never married again. He told me her loss was like a raw wound, even after all those years. But Victor had a relationship with McGuire, and he'd told him Patsy had the gun. As McGuire became more and more powerful, Pop knew he could never approach either one of you without putting you in danger.”

Nick paced the patio, then turned back to them. “When he heard he had only a few months to live, Pop felt he had to find you. He knew the key was Patsy's sister, and he had her monitored. It took a month, but then Patsy's sister met your mother and he was able to locate both of you.”

Sam listened intently. “And so did McGuire.”

“Yes.”

Nate broke in. “McGuire also had an arrangement with my boss. He approved warrants and wire taps, and milked Barker for information. He knew one day he might need Barker's help.

“When McGuire learned—through Barker—that Patsy's daughter had suddenly appeared in Boston, he feared she also knew about the killing thirty-four years earlier. Just the hint of corruption would destroy him. It was his chance to take her out, and at the same time lure the mother out of hiding.”

“So the attempts were meant to kill me, not just scare the wits out of me?”

“Several came from Victor trying to scare you. He wanted you out of Boston. But that gave Anna deadlier ideas and she went after you in earnest,” Nick said. “Strangely enough, Anna claims she wasn't aware of McGuire's interest. She had hoped to inherit most of the estate because she knew I didn't want it. McGuire, on the other hand, wanted to find both of you and obtain the gun in case Gaberra's body ever surfaced. They were at cross purposes until McGuire figured out what was happening and let the Carrolls' whereabouts slip to Victor. He made the trip to Chicago to keep you there. Then he would let the Merrittas do the dirty work and consume themselves.”

“And now you're free, too,” Patsy said.

“Pop was the reason I stayed in Boston. He was the only family I had. Not much of one, but sometimes he tried.”

“And now?” she said.

“I'm ready to leave. The Merritta name isn't worth much in Boston now. My partner and I can locate anywhere, and we both like this part of the country. It will also make it easier to administer the trust with my sister.”

My sister
. Samantha liked the sound of that. She'd liked him showing up on her doorstep to tell her in person what was happening.

“You had something to do with that trust, didn't you? Before you knew about me?”

He nodded. “Pop and I had come to an understanding. He knew George and Victor would take the family back into narcotics. He didn't want that. Both he and I understood I could never cleanse the family. Not completely. And not without a war.”

He hesitated, then continued. “But I didn't know about you, or that he intended to involve you. Unfortunately, he died and never really had a chance to get to know you. I talked to him the afternoon of the dinner, then the morning he died, though, and he was excited. You were everything he'd hoped for. You weren't easily intimidated, he said, and you're smart as hell.”

“Do you think he was murdered?” She hated to voice her suspicion, yet somehow it had become important to know. To have everything in the open.

A prelude to a fresh start for all of them.

“Yes,” Nick said softly. “I think Anna was afraid he would change his will. But I don't think it can ever be proven. He was taking so many medications.”

Patsy took several steps in his direction. “Are you really going to move to Colorado?”

“We're thinking about Colorado Springs,” he said. “Because we have such a large international business, we need proximity to an airport. I'll be up to Steamboat, though, to see my mother.” His eyes twinkled in a way Sam had never seen before. “There's a certain young lady there, too. I think it's time to do some courting.”

Patsy's eyes glistened with tears. She touched her bracelet, the one with the little flower that she always wore. Sam never thought it very pretty, but she knew it was her mother's most cherished piece of jewelry. Now Patsy took it off and fingered it for a moment, then opened it.

Sam had never known it opened.

Patsy held it out to Nick. “When you marry …”

Nick looked at it, and a muscle flexed in his cheek. Sam moved over and looked at it.

There was a tiny photo of two babies, not more than several days old.

“Paul gave that to me,” Patsy said. She looked at Nick. “You were always close to me. Always. It broke my heart when …”

Sam leaned against Nate's shoulder as a tear wandered down her mother's eyes.

Nick's fist closed around the bracelet. “Thank you,” he said in a husky voice.

Her mother's lips parted in a brilliant smile. Sam knew it would take a long time for the two of them to be easy with each other. But they had made a beginning.

So had Nicholas and Nate. They had flown to Denver together, then rented separate cars. But they even
smiled
at each other now. Her brother and her husband-to-be.

“Will you be here in time to give me away?” she asked.

Nick grinned. “Try to keep me away.”

“And I'll be moving to Denver to be with Nate. Mother and I plan to open a second Wonders. We can see each other often.”

Nick and Nate exchanged glances.

Maybe she was rushing things a bit, but now everything seemed possible. Still, it was a truce.

A truce. Not only a truce, Sam thought, but a covenant. Both men had conquered their demons, and perhaps she had, too. She would never again expect perfection from human beings. Not from her mother. Not from her brother. Not from her husband.

Not from herself.

She'd been so busy trying to create the perfect life, she'd never really lived, or felt, or cared enough to look beyond the surface. She'd judged her father and Nathan and Nick. They'd all made mistakes, but they'd all been trying to protect her.

What greater love …

She stood on her tiptoes to kiss Nathan. “Thank you,” she said, then turned to Nick. “You, too.”

Then it was Simon's—they would all always think of him as Simon—turn. “You're invited, too, of course,” she told him.

“I'll be there. Wherever you have it. David always said his daughter was something special.” He looked at her mother. “And his Patsy.”

Sam looked at her mother. The lines around her eyes had smoothed out. When she looked at Simon, she wore a smile Sam hadn't seen in two years.

“For the first time in thirty years, I feel free,” Patsy said.

“I bet Dad is smiling up there,” Sam said.

And suddenly she realized there were probably two dads smiling. At least she hoped so.

One she knew. One she'd never had the chance to know.

But now she knew that both had loved her.

She swallowed hard, and Nathan took her hand.

His lips skimmed over hers as if he read her mind.

“I imagine they are,” he said.

And she knew that the very last shadow had left them.

About the Author

Patricia Potter is a
USA Today
–bestselling author of more than fifty romantic novels. A seven-time RITA Award finalist and three-time Maggie Award winner, she was named Storyteller of the Year by
Romantic Times
and received the magazine's Career Achievement Award for Western Romance. Potter is a past board member and president of Romance Writers of America. Prior to becoming a fiction author, she was a reporter for the
Atlanta Journal
and the president of a public relations firm in Atlanta. She lives in Memphis, Tennessee.

All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Copyright © 2003 by Patricia Potter

Cover design by Mimi Bark

ISBN: 978-1-5040-0405-3

This edition published in 2015 by Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.

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New York, NY 10014

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