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“Was my dad as handsome as Mom says he was?”
“Your mother said he was handsome?”
“Yeah. A hunkster.”
“Kelly, why don’t you bring in the rest of the luggage,” Janice said.
“I’ll help you,” Vincent said.
“Fantastic! And you have to stay for dinner. Mrs. Givens makes a to-die-for chicken potpie, not like that frozen junk you buy at the market.”
“Sounds delicious.”
Janice just stood there watching the two of them connect like old friends. She’d spent the past fourteen years praying Kelly would never know the monster whose blood ran through her veins.
Now the monster had escaped from prison and was moving in. Heaven help them all.
KELLY’S CELL PHONE RANG. She answered it, then left Vincent and Candy alone in the kitchen. Only she wasn’t Candy anymore. She was Janice Stevens, a legal secretary and widowed mom living in Chicago, Illinois. But it wasn’t only her name that had changed. She acted different, talked different, even looked different.
His chest tightened as the familiar image of her the night they’d met filled his mind. He’d walked out the back door of his father’s house on St. Charles Avenue, and there she was, dancing in the moonlight.
There was no music, and she’d had no partner. She was just pirouetting in a white halter dress that swirled about her shapely legs and slender hips. Her curly, blond hair had flown about, wild and tousled and… His body hardened, and he struggled to push the memories away.
“I liked your hair blond—and curly,” he said, letting the comment slip out before he thought about it.
“Janice Stevens never had blond hair. Her hair is mousy brown and posterboard straight.”
The kind of woman who’d fade into the back ground. That must be what she was going for. That explained the long skirt that hid her great legs and the loose blouse that camouflaged her full breasts. “Does Janice Stevens have a significant other?” Not that he gave a damn, except that it would com plicate what he had to do.
“No, she’s devoted to the memory of her late husband, a firefighter who died in the line of duty.”
“The hunkster?”
She knotted her hands into fists. “This may sound like some big joke to you, but I’m making it work, Vincent, for me and for Kelly.”
“Making it work. That’s not quite the same as being happy.”
“I’m happy enough. And so is your daughter. And if you have a shred of decency, you won’t do anything to spoil the image she has of her dead father.”
“It would surprise you if I had a shred of decency in me, wouldn’t it?”
“I don’t know what you have inside you. I never really knew you.”
“You’re right. You never knew me, and apparently I never knew you.”
“How did you and Tyrone find out the deaths were faked?”
“Bribes. Favors. Blackmail. The Magilinti way.”
“And if all else fails, there’s violence.”
“That, too.”
“And yet you expect me to believe you.”
“Unless you’re willing to risk Kelly’s life on the bet that she’s safer without me around. But if you do, I’ll take Kelly and run with her. I’ll keep her safe, one way or another, with you or without you.”
She shuddered, and he clenched his hands into fists, fighting a totally insane need to comfort her. Being with her was already messing up his mind and his emotions. He’d have to keep his guard up every second. He would not let her back into his heart.
The tension was as thick and as bitter as stale coffee by the time Kelly bounded back into the kitchen.
“So are we eating are what?” Kelly asked. “I’m starved.”
“Me, too,” Vincent said. “I’ll make a salad to go with the potpie.”
Janice started to say there were no ingredients for a salad, but Vincent was already at the refrigerator pulling out fresh leafy salad greens and a large ripe tomato. He’d apparently stocked their refrigerator and made himself at home.
Now he was moving about her kitchen almost as proficiently as she did, pulling out a salad bowl and a knife for slicing the tomato. And Kelly, who never helped without being asked, was setting the table for three.
Vincent Magilinti had moved back into her life as effortlessly as he had the first time. Only this time she wouldn’t thrill to his touch. She wouldn’t burn with desire from his kisses. She wouldn’t make love to him so passionately that she cried.
She wouldn’t let him destroy her life or Kelly’s. He’d done that one too many times already.
KELLY KICKED OFF her shoes and dropped to the chair in front of her computer. She was glad her father’s friend was going to hang out with them for a day or two, but thankful she didn’t have to give him her room. She could do without her bed but not her computer.
Vincent was sleeping on the daybed in the room her mother used for an office. It was between her bedroom and her mother’s. Her mother had wanted Kelly to take that room as her bedroom, but she’d talked her into this one. She liked being at the back of the house and away from her mother, who was always complaining that she played her music too loud.
She had mail, but it could wait. She hit a couple of keys and when the right screen came up, she logged into a chat room. She’d caught the tail end of a chat about a new video earlier tonight. She wanted to see if anyone knew the name of the guy in the black leather pants. He was cute.
A second later, an instant message popped up from Byron. She moved her cursor to the reply field and started typing.
We got back tonight. And we have company, a friend of my father’s. He’s pretty cool. Handsome, too, but I don’t think my mom likes him. She hardly talks to him at all.
Mothers can be weird.
Tell me about it. Is yours working tonight?
No, but she’s not home. I got some news, too.
What kind of news?
Big news. I’m getting a truck. Meet me and I’ll tell you about it.
Mom’s not going to let me out this late.
Tell her you’re going to Gayle’s like you always do.
She’ll say it’s after ten.
Then sneak out. You’ve done it before.
Yeah, but I’m always scared I’ll get caught.
I’ll be at the park in fifteen minutes. I really need to see you. C’mon, Kelly. Don’t let me down.
I’ll try.
She logged off the computer, then threw herself across the bed. She had to give this some serious thought. She liked Byron a lot, but she didn’t want to get into trouble. Not that it mattered. She wasn’t going to get to go to New Orleans even if she was an angel.
A new truck was a big deal.
And it wasn’t as if it were midnight or something. It was only ten after ten. Some of her friends got to stay out until eleven o’clock when they went to the skating rink. After all, they were starting high school this year.
Kelly waited ten minutes, then opened her bedroom window. The rest of the house was wired so that if any door opened after her mother set the alarm, a loud buzzer would go off. Kelly had found out how to disconnect the wires from her window in a chat room over the Internet.
Everything you could possibly want to know was floating around somewhere in cyberspace. All you had to do was find it. And what she couldn’t find, Byron could. He was the smartest high school boy she knew. Actually, he was the only high school boy she knew very well, but still, she knew he was smart. Might even be a genius.
He didn’t have a dad, either. Well, he did, but he never saw him. He didn’t see much of his mother. She worked nights as a waitress out at a truck stop on the edge of town. Byron worked there some, too. But he wasn’t going to do it much longer. As soon as he turned eighteen, he was going to split.
She released the catch on the screen and eased it out, leaning it against the house so that it didn’t fall into the grass. Fortunately, the air-conditioning unit was next to her window and very noisy. Her window was on the opposite side of the house from her mother’s bedroom.
Still, her heart beat really fast when she sneaked out like this. If her mother caught her, she’d be deader than roadkill. Holding her breath, she swung her legs over the edge of the sill and dropped the few feet to the ground below.
The streetlight in front of their house was out, but there was enough moonlight for Kelly to sneak behind the red-tipped hedge at the side of the house and creep out to the street. It was only three short blocks to the park where she was going to meet Byron. She really wanted to talk to him tonight, and not just because she’d been gone for a week or to hear about the truck he was getting.
Kelly wanted to talk about why her mother acted the way she did. Mom should be excited to have a good friend of Kelly’s dad visiting with them. But she wasn’t. Anyone could tell that. Yet she’d invited him to stay with them and they’d never had an over night guest, unless you counted Kelly’s girlfriends.
She picked up her pace once she reached the corner.
Only she had the strange feeling someone was following her. A second later, she knew she was right.
Chapter Three
“Out for a walk?”
Kelly froze for a second, then spun around. But it was only Vincent. “Kind of,” she answered, then felt herself getting all tense. “Are you following me?”
“I heard you leave the house and I thought you might like company.”
“Only if you don’t go blabbing to Mom. If she finds out I sneaked out, she’ll ground me until I’m thirty.”
“You must be off on some exciting adventure to risk that.”
“Not really. I have this friend…” She hesitated. Vincent seemed all right—for an adult—but that didn’t mean she could trust him not to repeat any of this to her mother. “I couldn’t sleep so I decided to go for a walk.”
“To meet the friend? Don’t worry. I don’t squeal.”
“Yeah, I’m meeting a boy, but just to talk, you know?” She started walking again, and Vincent kept pace.
“Nice neighborhood for walking at night,” Vincent said. “Well lit. I guess it’s safe.”
“Real safe. Nothing ever happens around here.”
“You must have missed your school friends while you were on vacation.”
“Yeah, but Byron’s not exactly a school friend.”
“Just a neighborhood buddy, huh?”
“We’ll both be at the high school next year.”
“So, Byron’s older?”
“He’ll be a senior. He’s a lot more mature than the freshman boys.”
“I’ll bet. So, how did you meet Byron?”
“On the Internet. We were in a Lord of the Rings chat room, ’cause we both loved the movies.”
“Good books, too.”
“You read them?”
“The whole series, from beginning to end.”
“So did Byron. I don’t read that much, but I read the Harry Potter books. I like all that magic stuff.”
“I read those, too.”
“You’re kidding, right?”
“No, I’ve had a lot of time to read lately. Does your mother disapprove of Byron? Is that why you sneak out?”
“You think I’d tell her about him? She disconnected me from the Internet for six months the last time she caught me in a chat room.”
“She’s pretty strict, huh?”
“Is she? You wouldn’t believe. It’s worse than being in prison.”
“I sincerely doubt that.”
“Believe me, it’s true. That’s why you have to promise not to tell her about Byron, or that I sneaked out of my room.”
“I’ll never tell—unless I think you’re in danger. Then all deals are off.”
“I’m not in danger. Byron’s a real nice boy.”
“That’s good to know, but I don’t think your going out at night without her permission is the right choice.”
