Dangerous Disguise

Pleased, the nurse nodded her approval. “Good work.” Scanning the area, she pointed toward the first empty bed that came into view. Long floor-to-ceiling curtains separated each bed from its brethren. “Put her right there,” the nurse instructed.

Maren noticed that Jared placed the girl on the gurney as if he were handling something delicate and precious. His compassion impressed her more than the way he conducted himself in an emergency situation.

April clutched at his arm as he began to withdraw. A fresh wave of panic had entered her eyes. “Are you going?”

Jared paused to squeeze her good hand, communicating support and comfort as best he could. “We’ll be right outside,” he promised. “In the waiting room.”

The nurse indicated outer doors that would take them there. It was only as he followed Maren through them that he realized he was still wearing his apron. He slipped the loop off his neck and took off the apron, bunching it up in his hand like an unwanted appendage. He dropped it in the first empty chair he came to.

They had their choice of places to sit since the waiting room was largely empty.

“I take it you’ve been here before.” Maren took the seat beside him.

She looked restless, he thought, as if she didn’t want to be here. Two of his cousins hated hospitals. His uncle Mike had died in one, Aurora General. A bullet to the chest in the line of duty had taken him permanently away from them.

He shrugged in response to her question. “One emergency room is pretty much like another.”

A note of interest entered her eyes. “What was the matter?”

He caught himself thinking that her eyes were beautiful. So blue if you stared at them for any length of time, they could make your soul ache. For a second, he lost the thread of the conversation. “What?”

She wanted to distract herself. Papa Joe had been in a place like this. She was eighteen at the time, about to go off to college, to stand on the brink of new horizons, when he’d been in a car accident. She remembered how terrified she’d been, praying in the small chapel on the premise that he wouldn’t die and leave her alone. One moment he was this big, larger-than-life man, the next, she was facing the possibility of his being taken from her. The edifice of her confidence was never the same again because she’d discovered that the foundations were built on sand.

She’d spent the spring nursing him back to health and the summer arguing with him that she wasn’t going to college, that she couldn’t leave him alone. Eventually he prevailed upon her to go, that he was fine.

Being here brought it all back to her; the fear, the uncertainty. She needed something to get her mind off that. So she turned to the man beside her, hoping for some kind of respite. “Why did you need to go to the emergency room?”

Because my partner was shot buying drugs off a dealer we spent two months setting up. Two cops wandered in, thought we were junkies. Messed up the sting.

It wasn’t the kind of explanation he could give her. Jared thought for a moment, digging around in his past for something plausible that he would remember in case she asked about it later. “My sister had appendicitis.”

A family threat. Instantly she related to it. “Did you get her there in time?”

It had been his father who’d brought Janelle in, but he let that part go, nodding instead in response. “The appendix burst on the operating table. Doctor said it was touch and go at the time.”

So this wasn’t an isolated incident. Maren took new measure of the man beside her. “You’re pretty cool under fire, aren’t you?”

The smile he offered her was almost shy. Maren felt herself warming to him despite resolutions not to. “Don’t see much point in losing your head. Just makes things that much worse.”

She liked that. The man didn’t fold under pressure. So many people stood back, waiting for someone else to do something, never wanting to be the first. Maybe hiring him was not such a bad thing, after all. “Your sister, how old is she?”

He found it safest and easier to stick as close to the truth as possible. Lies had a way of tripping you up. He’d played so many people since he’d joined the force, the various names were hard to keep straight. If he’d added a different life for each, it would have been impossible. Besides, something told him that Maren Minnesota reacted well to tales of hearth and home. “Younger than me by a couple of years.”

“Just the two of you?”

He was right, he thought. There was more than just mild curiosity in her voice. It was as if she was hungry for information. Almost as hungry as he was, but for an entirely different reason. His job was to find out as much as he could about everyone there and to see how they figured into this tale of money laundering that had been brought to the department.

“Four,” he corrected. “I’ve got two more brothers.”

Her blue eyes became almost animated. “Younger? Older?”

He thought of Dax and Troy, both were detectives in the Aurora police department, although neither had ever gone under cover. “One of each.”

He watched in fascination as a smile literally lit up her face. “Must be nice.”

“It has its moments,” he allowed. It was no secret that they were close. All the Cavanaughs were now that they had reached adulthood. “But when we were growing up, my mother would have given us away to the first person with stamina who came to the door.”

She laughed and he found himself reacting to the sound. It was soft, like wind tiptoeing through rose petals. He pulled himself back. The important thing was that the ice between them had been broken. He couldn’t have done this any better than if he’d planned the scenario.

Shifting in his seat, he looked at her. “What about you?”

He could all but see the edge of the curtain as it began to come down again in her eyes. Maren’s smile remained, but it became a little more formal. She didn’t give her trust easily and he wondered if she had secrets. Was she involved in any part of the money laundering if those allegations turned out to be true?

“What do you mean?” Maren asked as she rose to her feet again.

“Do you have any siblings?” Jared watched as she began to move restlessly around the area.

“No.”

There was a note of longing in her voice. Which would explain the wistful look in her eyes when he’d mentioned his siblings. He turned as she drifted toward the TV mounted on the wall in the far corner. “You’re an only child, then.”

The shrug was casual, dismissive. “As far as I know.”

It was an odd thing to say. Unless she was an orphan, he realized suddenly. April had alluded to a relationship between Maren and Joe Collins. He knew the bookkeeper was a lot older. Was Maren looking for a father figure?

Rising to his feet, he crossed to her. She looked a little uneasy when he came up behind her. “Sorry, I tend to talk before I think.”

Maren relaxed a little. “Nothing to be sorry about. Not everyone comes from a large family.” A trace of a fond smile slipped over her full lips. “I have no complaints whatsoever. It wasn’t as if I ever really lacked for anything. Papa Joe saw to that.”

He cocked his head. Was she talking about the bookkeeper or was there someone else who shared the first name? Joe was about as common a name as you could get, other than John. “Papa Joe?”

Her mouth curved more generously. The phrase about someone lighting up a room occurred to him. “Joe Collins,” she clarified, then added, “He’s the bookkeeper at Rainbow’s End.”

“He’s your father?” There hadn’t been any mention of that in any of the notes. He was going to have to get his hands on a more detailed summary of the people at the restaurant.

She crossed her arms in front of her, as if to hold a chill at bay. Instead of looking at him, she’d looked away. “Only father I’ve ever known.”

Which meant that biology didn’t have anything to do with it. If it had, she would have said yes and left it at that. He went back to his revised theory and took a shot at it. “You were adopted?”

She was about to say yes, but caught herself. The antiseptic word didn’t begin to describe what had actually happened to her all those years ago in that Minneapolis back alley.

“I was found,” she corrected. And then she stopped abruptly. Her eyes narrowed like morning glories closing before the approaching dusk. “You always wheedle information out of people this way?”

He grinned, as if she’d discovered his secret. “I like finding things out about people, what makes them tick.” He tried to coax a little more out of her. “Helps pass the time. Everyone’s got a story to tell.”

“Well, mine’s over right now.” Glancing at her watch, she took in the time. They’d already been here over an hour. Maren took her cell phone from her pocket. “I’d better call and tell Max to be on the lookout for the wine delivery.”

A short, dark-haired man wearing nurse’s scrubs looked at her reprovingly as he was about to exit the room. “I’m sorry but you can’t use that in here.” He nodded at her open cell phone. “It interferes with some of the equipment.”

Maren sighed as she flipped the cell closed. Dropping it into her purse, she looked around the area. “Is there a pay phone around here?”

“Right outside those doors.” The nurse pointed toward the ones leading into the main wing of the hospital. Turning back, the man paused to look at Jared. His eyes narrowed as he studied his face. It was obvious that he was trying to place him. “Excuse me, do I know you?”

Everything inside Jared went on high alert, although he made sure that his anxiety didn’t register on his face. Being under cover, he lived daily with the threat of being recognized, being exposed. Of having his cover blown.

The nurse had looked vaguely familiar. And then it hit him. The man had been on duty in the E.R. over at Aurora General the night he’d brought in his partner.

“Sorry.” Jared shrugged casually. “But I don’t think so.”

But the nurse wasn’t ready to retract his question just yet. The man looked at him intently. “You sure?”

“Positive. You must be thinking of someone else.” Aware that Maren was listening, Jared kept his response friendly, low-keyed. “I just moved here a few weeks ago.”

The nurse reluctantly accepted the disclaimer, but he still glanced at him over his shoulder one last time as he walked away.

Maren’s expression was difficult to fathom as he turned back to face her. “He sounded pretty convinced that he knew you.”

Jared laughed shortly, relieved that the man had stopped pressing. “I guess I’ve just got one of those faces people think they’ve see before.”

Maren’s eyes slowly washed over him. He could have sworn he felt the path they took. “Just your average Joe, huh?”

“Yeah.”

Not hardly, she thought. The average man was passable, not handsome, and Jared Stevens’s features were as close to godlike perfection as any she’d ever seen. She searched for a flaw, something that would render him less than perfect, and finally saw one. He had a tiny little scar at the corner of the left side of his mouth.

“Where did you get the scar?”

He didn’t know what she was talking about, only that when she moved around the room, he didn’t know which part of her was more lyrical, her swaying hips or her body in its entirety. Maybe she was involved with someone with underworld ties and that was what this was all about, he thought.

He found he didn’t really like that theory. For a number of reasons. “What?”

“Your scar. This one.” She lightly touched the corner of his mouth. Their eyes met and held for a second. Maren felt something shimmy up her spine, dragging a torch as it went. Momentarily self-conscious, she dropped her hand to her side. “Sorry, none of my business. I’ve got a call to make.” She began digging in her purse for change.

“April’s parents might want a heads up.” Jared handed her a couple of quarters he found in his pocket. “Here.”

“Thanks. And April’s parents live back east. No sense in calling them until it’s over. They can’t do anything three thousand miles way.” She began to walk toward the double doors. “I’ll only be a minute.”

“It was a cat.” Her hand on the double doors, she was about to push them open when he mentioned the feline. “The scar.” He came toward her. “I was on the floor, playing with my mother’s cat, baiting it with some yarn. The cat batted at it, caught my lip with her claw.”

Maren cringed slightly, as if she could feel the blow. “Ouch.”

He laughed at the empathy he saw there. “I believe I said something a little more forceful than that.”

She felt bad about asking. “It’s hardly noticeable, you know. The scar.”

His lips twitched in a smile he didn’t bother suppressing. “You noticed.”

She paused a moment, debating just how honest to be. She decided there was nothing to risk. “I was looking for imperfections.”

His eyebrows pulled together quizzically in confusion. “Why?”

Because she didn’t want him perfect. Not if they were going to work together. Perfect was a place for people like Kirk to reside. “It’s what makes us all human.” The words hung in the air as she went to make her phone call.

“I’m not good at waiting,” Maren said when he mutely raised his eyes toward her. Three other people had come and gone, and they were still waiting to hear how April was doing. In the background, a talk show had given way to a soap opera whose dialogue she was attempting to block. “I always have to know things. Now.”

They had that in common, Jared mused. What else did they have in common? He dropped the magazine he was pretending to read on the chair beside him. It slipped on his apron and slid to the floor. Jared bent to pick it up and this time, tossed it on the small table where the other magazines were sitting.

“Why don’t you go back to the restaurant?” he suggested. “No point in both of us waiting around.”

If she drove off, that would leave him stranded. “How will you get back?”

“I’ll get a cab.”

“Why would you do that? Wait here to find out how she’s doing?” Maren was trying to understand, but unless she was missing something, it didn’t make any sense to her. “You don’t even know her. April’s my responsibility.”

Despite her innocent appearance, the lady was highly suspicious, he decided. “She looked afraid. I felt bad for her. You’ve got the restaurant to run. This is just my first day, how indispensable could I be? You, on the other hand, are very indispensable.”

It made sense, she supposed. She was surprised he saw things in that light. “Do you always know the right thing to say?”

He shrugged casually, playing a part, although he did pride himself on having a knack of knowing what people wanted to hear. When he was growing up, his father had said more than once that he sincerely hoped his middle son would go into law enforcement. Otherwise, the life of a con artist seemed inevitable for his quick-witted progeny. “I just say what I feel.”

“Uh-huh.” The man was too good to be true, Maren thought. And she knew all about men like that. If they seemed to be too good to be true, then they weren’t good at all.

She had the scars to prove it.

Not like the one on his mouth, where anyone could see. But inside. On her soul. Scars that would never heal no matter how much time passed.

She was about to urge him to leave again when the inner doors of the emergency room opened. A tall, gray-haired man in green livery entered the waiting room and walked toward them. “Are you the ones who brought April Turner in?”

Jared was on his feet, crossing to the physician. Maren was right behind him. “Yes. How is she?” he asked before Maren had the chance.

“Very lucky.” There was sincerity in the doctor’s voice, devoid of any melodrama. “I’m Dr. Johnson. I was the one who operated on her. She could have easily lost that finger if you hadn’t acted so quickly. We managed to sew it back on. You got her here just in time.”

Jared grinned, knowing where to give credit. And how to work the scene. He looked at Maren. “You should see her drive.”

The remark had an extremely personal sound to it, Maren realized, as if they’d been friends for a long time instead of two people who hadn’t even known each other three days ago. She knew she should take offense at the tone, knew that there were extreme precautions to take against men who looked like Jared Stevens. And yet, at the same time, he sounded so genial that she found it difficult to erect the concrete barriers necessary to sustain her.

Not that she was a pushover in any sense of the word. Kirk had made her afraid to trust anyone, least of all a man who made words like “delicious” pop up in her head. For once the word wasn’t to describe anything that he might be able to whip up in the kitchen.

She had a hunch that the only ingredients involved in that sort of whipping were a male and a female.

“I’d like to keep her overnight,” the surgeon was saying, “just to be sure no infection sets in.” The doctor looked at Jared, as if he was the one to field his questions. “Ms. Turner said she didn’t know if that was covered by her policy—”

“It’s covered,” Maren injected. And even if it wasn’t, she thought, arrangements could be made. She and Papa Joe would put their heads together to come up with something. “Can we see her now?”

“She’s still sedated. I doubt if she’ll wake up for another half hour or so. She was so terrified, it seemed best to give her a general anesthetic rather than use a local,” he explained. He looked a little uncomfortable as he added, “If you wouldn’t mind stopping at the outpatient registration desk with her insurance information…”

Maren nodded. “No problem.”

Jared thanked the doctor then turned toward Maren. They started walking toward the registration desk that Dr. Johnson had pointed out. “I guess it’s a lucky thing I didn’t talk you into going back to the restaurant.” He held the door open for her. “I haven’t got a clue when it comes to insurance.”

Maren stepped through, nodding her thanks. She sincerely doubted that Jared Stevens was clueless on any subject.

Chapter 4

“I hear the new guy’s pretty resourceful.”

Maren had barely touched the doorknob before she heard the deep voice. She grinned as she entered the office she shared with her favorite person in the whole world.

As she opened the door Joe Collins turned to face her. It was the accountant’s first visit to the office in two days. Things never seemed quite right without him. In his later fifties, Joe still gave the impression of being larger than life. His very presence filled up a room for her, the way it had from the very beginning when he had been her entire world.

She owed him everything.

Maren paused to kiss his cheek before tossing her purse onto her desk and stripping off her jacket. “Nobody told me you were coming in today.”

“I sneaked in like the wind,” he said, winking.

After hanging up her jacket, she pulled her chair away from the desk and sat down. Slowly she felt the tension leach from her body, the way it always did whenever Papa Joe was around. He made her feel that everything was going to be all right, as long as he was close by.

“The wind, huh?” She raised one amused eyebrow. “Then how did you hear about the new guy?”

“Wind with ears?”

His big, booming laugh wrapped itself around her, just as his arms had all those years ago when he had taken her home from the hospital. From the hospital and into his heart and life. He’d saved her from a system that could have very easily stripped her soul if she’d been placed with the wrong people. Or put her in one foster home after another.

She never tired of hearing the story, even though it had gone through many phases over the years. When she’d first asked the man she always thought of as her father why she didn’t have a mother when all the other girls in her kindergarten class had one, he’d told her that she was secretly a princess.

As she listened with wide eyes, he’d gone on to tell her that her mother had been a queen in a distant land. A queen who had saved her from a big, bad ogre, but she’d gotten mortally wounded in doing so. He was the knight who had come by, found her and slain the ogre. Maren remembered always applauding when he came to this part. The dying queen entrusted her infant daughter to him, making the knight pledge to guard her always.

Periodically, as she grew older and brought her questions to him, Papa Joe would revise the story, trimming away the fairy tale and replacing it with a little more of the truth. Then came the time when she’d turned thirteen. After he had swallowed his embarrassment and gone with her to purchase her very first bra, because she’d pressed so hard, he’d told her the complete truth.

Taking a shortcut through a dimly lit alley to his apartment one rainy night, he’d happened across a teenage prostitute named Glory just after she’d given birth. Her pulse was reedy and she’d lost a great deal of blood. He’d known she was dying. Without hesitation, he’d hailed a cab and taken both mother and child to the hospital. He’d left the complaining cabdriver with a huge tip.

But it had been too late for Glory. She’d lost too much blood and had died within the hour. Because there’d been some misunderstanding at the hospital, the attending physician and emergency room nurse had both thought that he was the newborn’s father. Something had stopped him from setting the record straight. Alone, with no family of his own, he’d impulsively gone along with the error.

“You wrapped your perfect little hand around my finger and I was just a goner,” he told her time and again. That part of the story never changed.

For three days, he’d come back to see the baby. On the fourth day, she’d been discharged into his care. He’d paid the medical bills out of his own pocket, making arrangements with the cashier to make monthly payments. And then he’d taken his new daughter home with him.

Papa Joe had also paid for her mother’s funeral. For three months after that, he’d tried to locate Glory’s family. Even hired a private investigator to look into the matter, all to no avail. After three months, he’d stopped holding his breath and finally given up. The baby he’d saved from suffering the same fate as her mother was his.

He’d called her Maren after his mother and given her the last name of “Minnesota” because that was the state they’d been living in when he’d found her. He’d given her her own last name so that she could always feel independent, even though he’d promised to always be there for her if she needed him.

She’d grown up adoring him.

For a second Maren leaned back in her chair, not realizing until this moment just how tired she actually was. But there was no time to kick back. The unexpected run to the E.R. had put her at least three hours behind in her work. There were phone calls to return and orders to place if the restaurant was to keep on running.

She addressed the question Papa Joe had first posed. “The new guy’s cool under fire.”

Saving the figures he’d just input, he studied his adopted daughter’s face as he asked, “Speaking of which, I hear he put out a grease fire yesterday. What was that all about?”

She’d looked into the fire mishap as thoroughly as she could and had drawn a conclusion she didn’t intend to repeat to either restaurant owner, Shepherd or Rineholdt. Although it was the former who was most likely to show up. To her knowledge, Rineholdt had never put in an appearance, either here or at the other branch of the restaurant. He was the epitome of a silent partner, which was fine with her. Over the years she’d come to think of the restaurant as hers to run. Hers to make thrive. She thought of it as a living entity.

“That was just Max being careless.” He had been the one who’d left the oil standing next to Rachel’s elbow.

Joe frowned. Maren had too soft a heart despite the tough-as-nails image she attempted to project. “You’re going to have to have a talk with that man.”