By Hook or By Crook Page 13

  “He’s back at the room. I’m getting takeout.”

  They left the restroom and arranged to meet at the car Joe had rented, giving Daisy and Pock time to collect their belongings from their room.

  “How did you get here without us seeing you?” Ivy said as she picked up her bag of carryout from the hostess stand.

  “We’ve got one of the interior rooms that looks out on the lobby. I didn’t have to go outside to get to the restaurant.” After a moment, Daisy’s carryout order came up too. The sisters stood, indecisive for a moment, near the door.

  Finally Ivy spoke. “You promise you’ll come out and not try to sneak off without us?”

  Daisy rolled her eyes. “Yeah, I promise. I’m not that mad. I may be ticked off at you, but I’m not going to leave you to deal with two crazy Vegas gangbangers all by yourself.”

  “I appreciate that, but I’m not by myself, remember. I’ve got Joe. He’s extremely capable.”

  Her tone must have betrayed a certain something, because Daisy’s gaze sharpened. “Capable, huh? How long did you say you were stranded in a cabin with this guy?”

  “A day or so,” Ivy said, trying to be offhanded. She hated her sister’s insinuating tone.

  “Is he hot?” Where men were concerned, Daisy always got right to the point.

  “That’s irrelevant.”

  Her sister took on the mien of a hound who had caught the scent of an injured rabbit. “Irrelevant to what?” When she didn’t answer, Daisy propped one hand on her hip. “Ivy, what have you been up to?” Daisy sounded suspicious, fascinated, and a tad bit jealous.

  Ivy tried not to squirm under her stare. Since when did her little sister interrogate her about proper behavior? “Nothing,” she said. “Look, the food is getting cold, and I have to tell Joe that we’ve found you,” she temporized, backing away as she spoke.

  Daisy’s eyes narrowed. “Fine. We’re in a hurry now, but don’t think you’re getting off the hook for good. I have some questions for you later.”

  Ivy waved in acknowledgment and slipped out the front entrance, glad to escape while she could. She only hoped that when her sister asked her about what had happened with Joe Dunham, she had some coherent answers.

  Back in the car, Ivy and Joe devoured their sandwiches and sweet potato fries with relish. Between unladylike gulps of soda, Ivy filled Joe in on her conversation with Daisy, except for the part where Daisy had grilled her about him, of course.

  “Did you get their room number?”

  “No. They’ll meet us out here after they eat and pack their stuff.”

  His head tipped back as he looked heavenward. “Ivy, what were you thinking?” he groaned. “What if they ditch us again?”

  “They won’t.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Because I know my sister. She promised.” At Joe’s glare, she insisted, “Daisy doesn’t lie about that kind of stuff.”

  “So you let her out of your sight, didn’t get their room number, and took her word for it that she wouldn’t run off? When she was furious with you for trying to disrupt her marriage to the man she loves?”

  “Well, when you put it that way, I sound stupid,” she said.

  “Really.” He quirked a brow.

  “Don’t be sarcastic,” she admonished. “I’m not stupid. And I’m not worried about Daisy and Pock running away again.”

  Crumpling the empty carryout bag, he sighed. “I hope you’re right about that.”

  She wanted to argue, wanted to tell him she knew her sister better than he did, and that she might be sheltered and out of her depth but she wasn’t a fool. Instead, she said, “Trust me.” It came out like a plea, but she held his gaze nonetheless.

  He lifted one hand to cup her cheek and brushed her hair back from her neck. His green eyes, quick with intelligence, snapped when he was angry or passionate, but now they were simply aware. They looked into her and saw things she didn’t necessarily want him to. Her breath caught. He was going to kiss her, much to her illogical delight.

  He leaned forward. His arm pressed against her shoulder, his knee against hers. His lips hovered above her mouth, and she felt the warmth of his breath fan across her cheek. Full of pent-up eagerness, she let her eyes drift shut as his mouth took hers. His lips were cool and moist from the iced tea he’d been drinking, and the flavor of lemon still lingered. His hand brushed across her hair, pushing it away from her face, and she leaned closer, deepening the kiss, unable to stop herself. His soft groan encouraged her.

  In the full light of day, this kiss was no frantic, half-asleep groping in the dark. She couldn’t blame it on a sleep-fogged mind or a stressful moment. Yet the feelings that bloomed in her every time she drew close to him like this could not be denied. Fitting or not, something in him called out to something in her, and she couldn’t change that even if she wanted to.

  Tentatively she grazed his abdomen with her hand, splaying her fingers across the taut muscles beneath the soft cotton of his shirt. Her fingertips slipped between two buttons to touch the bare skin beneath, and the simple gesture wrenched a groan from him.

  He deepened the kiss. His tongue moved deep within her mouth, exploring, and her temperature soared. Just like that, everything else fell away—the chill of the winter day, her doubts. Being the sole focus of this virile man’s attention was a heady rush.

  His lips moved from hers to her jaw, stopping to nibble and press below her ear. She bit her lip to keep from moaning at the totally unexpected sensation, but she must have betrayed her reaction subtly, because Joe smiled and returned to that particularly sensitive spot.

  “Like that, do you?”

  “Hmmm,” she agreed, unable to say anything coherent as a shiver snaked down her spine. “Oh, yes…”

  A pounding on the window behind her head shattered the moment. She shoved Joe away, righting herself to find a smirking Daisy outside the passenger window, with a huge companion who could only be Pock. He had a piercing in his lip, and she saw the dark shadows of tattoos along his neck and throat, only partly obscured by his collar.

  Good grief. This guy was farther out there than even she had feared.

  She opened the door to explain things to her sister, and sat open-mouthed when no words would come.

  “I can see he’s very capable,” Daisy said with a smirk.

  Joe’s intervention saved her from needing to respond. He went around to help Daisy and Pock load their bags into the trunk. “We’ll do the introduction thing later. This is the first place they’ll come looking for us. We need to get the hell out of here.”

  “Where are we going?” Ivy asked. “Back to the Vegas airport? I’ll call the pilot and tell him to get ready for a flight to Chicago.”

  “No!” Daisy burst out. “I’m not going back to Chicago. Our home is in Vegas.”

  “Cantor’s men are going to be crawling all over your place in Vegas. You can’t go back there,” Joe said.

  The sisters’ eyes met in a standoff that dragged on for several moments. Finally Ivy sighed. “Fine. I’ll call Dad and we’ll arrange some kind of rental out here where we can stay while we decide how to proceed next.” After a moment, her sister nodded in agreement.

  As Pock and Daisy climbed into the back seat, her sister leaned over the headrest and whispered, “Irrelevant, huh? You have some explaining to do!”

  Ivy didn’t acknowledge the taunt, but somewhere inside her she felt a thrill. She, Ivy Smithson, the sedate, responsible older sister, had finally shocked her wild-child younger sibling. Damn, it was fun.

  ****

  “Dad never does anything small, does he?” The resigned amusement in Daisy’s voice matched his own unspoken awe.

  Amazing what obscene wealth and powerful connections could get you, Joe reflected. A few hours ago, he and Ivy had been holed up in a rental car, running the engine every twenty minutes for heat, eating junk food, exhausted and cold.

  One phone call to Ivy’s father had changed all t
hat. Smithson’s office booked them a massive three-story chalet, isolated deep in the woods, per Joe’s instructions. The vast mansion looming ahead of them forcefully reminded Joe how far out of his league Ivy Smithson was.

  He clicked the remote the rental agency had given him, opening the cedar shingle-covered door on a four-car garage. He’d insisted on a rental unit with a garage that would allow him to hide the car from casual view, but he hadn’t anticipated anything quite this palatial. The chalet, all soaring windows and cedar shingles, didn’t exactly strike a low profile, but he supposed they were safe enough this deep in the woods.

  At Joe’s insistence, they’d changed cars yet again, this time paying in cash, and put several miles between them and their pursuers. Richard Smithson paid for the chalet, and wired a hefty sum to Ivy for their other expenses. Joe and Ivy had left their personal possessions behind when they’d abandoned the 4X4, but Joe wouldn’t let them stop near Zephyr Cove to buy clothes or necessities.

  “But I don’t even have a toothbrush,” Ivy had protested.

  “Neither do I. We’ll have bad breath together.”

  From now on, they would pay in untraceable cash. Joe drove them hard all day, taking precautions that the others clearly thought excessive. He didn’t care. He took his job seriously, and he took Ivy’s safety even more seriously.

  Besides, what was he going to do, listen to Pock and Daisy? They had created this mess in the first place. He’d only known them a short time, but their inability to grasp the danger they’d created already pissed him off. Not that he saw things Ivy’s way, however. Pock might be a dolt, but Daisy still had every right to marry him.

  Joe and Pock followed the sisters into the chalet, lugging Daisy’s and Pock’s bags.

  “Damn.”

  The hulking fighter’s monosyllable pretty much said it all. A cathedral ceiling soared to the upper rooms on the second level, and high windows gave panoramic views of the mountains and woods. An enormous stone fireplace dominated the great room, surrounded by sumptuous leather sofas and chairs. On the right, a wooden staircase swept up to the second level, where he assumed the bedrooms were. To the left, a formal dining area and an enormous kitchen opened off the great room. Everywhere, marble gleamed, wooden beams shone, and rich rugs dotted parquet floors.

  “Wow,” Pock said, his mouth agape.

  Joe shared Pock’s awe but hoped he didn’t wear it quite so obviously. Joe was no scholar, but he felt like one by comparison every time Pock spoke. Still, Daisy loved him, and that was what mattered. The fact that Pock had turned out to be an idiot didn’t excuse Ivy’s interference in Daisy’s life.

  “This is wonderful.” Ivy’s wistful voice drew his attention. She sank into one of the overstuffed chairs near the fire, relief etched on her exhausted face. Her head lolled on the seat behind her. Eyes closed, she was right at home in the lavish digs. She wouldn’t worry about damaging fancy furniture that looked like it cost more than he made in three months.

  Sour at the thought, he opened the sliding glass door and stepped out onto the wide verandah that encircled the house, scanning the chalet’s exterior. Most of the windows that opened were too high to be easily accessible from the outside, he noted with approval. The house, built into the steep side of a hill, had a walkout level below this one. He’d investigate later to see if it created any security vulnerabilities.

  He took a moment to scan the surrounding mountains, seeing only a few widely spaced homes, most as lavish as this one, dotting the hillsides. In the valley below, Lake Tahoe stretched, a blue jewel sprawling across a panorama of snow white and pine green.

  I could never afford to bring her to a place like this.

  Whoa. Where had that come from? Since when did he want anything more from Ivy? He’d been scolding her just hours ago for taking things too seriously, acting as if a lifetime commitment was on the table. This kind of thing was exactly why he avoided serious relationships in the first place—they messed with his mind and led women to expect what he couldn’t deliver.

  Ivy was something else, though. She could make him want things he couldn’t have or didn’t need with a simple kiss, or a long look from those blue eyes of hers.

  “Is everything okay?”

  He turned to see her standing at the open door.

  “Yeah. Just checking out the surroundings. When I’m on a job, I like to know where the weaknesses are.”

  Ivy moved to stand behind him. “Weaknesses? You mean you think those two could find us here?”

  “Maybe. We probably don’t have only one guy to worry about. Fight fixers don’t work alone. Ramirez and Cantor have connections to some kind of Vegas crime organization, and I wouldn’t be surprised if they had ties to Tahoe.”

  The fear on Ivy’s face made him soften. “I’m probably being paranoid, but that’s my job.”

  “Maybe we should have told Dad,” she said.

  At Daisy’s insistence, they hadn’t told Richard Smithson about the danger they faced. Against all logic, Daisy still hoped to win her father’s approval for the marriage. The already slim odds of that happening would be non-existent if Smithson knew they were on the run from an enraged Vegas gangster whom Pock had double-crossed.

  Ivy still hoped to talk her sister out of the marriage altogether, if it hadn’t happened already. If it had happened, perhaps this time together would give Ivy time to convince her sister to rethink the whole thing. Neither of them were eager to face their father. Ivy hadn’t been pleased about withholding the truth from him, but Joe didn’t mind. Her tendency to run to Daddy with every problem annoyed him.

  “Nothing he could do about it, except put us up in a safe place, which he did anyway,” Joe pointed out. “I’ll call the Tahoe police and file a report. They might be able to get something off the 4X4 we ditched. It’s unlikely they were stupid enough to use a vehicle that could be traced back to them, but the cops could get prints. If these guys are in organized crime in Vegas, they may well have criminal records.”

  “You can’t do that!” Ivy protested, eyes wide.

  “Why the hell not?”

  “My father would hate the publicity!”

  “Are you serious? You’re going to let a serious crime go unreported because your dad wouldn’t want publicity?” How typical of how the Smithsons operated, always thinking they could play by their own rules. “Your problem is that it’s always about what Dad thinks.”

  “He is your client,” Ivy reminded him. “You have to care about what he thinks. Besides, we’re not in real danger anymore, are we? This place is like a fortress, we lost those men, and we’ll probably go back to Chicago in a few days.”

  “Even if the cops don’t find these two, I still think we should get this on the record.”

  “No. You’re working for my father, and you have to protect his interests. I know what he would want, and so do you.”

  Joe couldn’t argue with her on that score. Richard Smithson abhorred publicity of any kind. Joe dropped the subject, although it went against his grain to do so. He was a consultant, and Smithson paid his salary. What the client wanted, the client got.

  “So what do we do now?”

  “What we came here to do. You try to talk your sister out of marrying Pock, or into divorcing him, and I make sure we all stay safe while you’re doing it.”

  “What if I can’t talk her out of it?”

  The question surprised him. “I thought you were pretty confident you could.”

  “I was. I mean, I still am. I’m more convinced than ever that he’s wrong for her, now that I know he’s mixed up with gangsters.”

  Joe couldn’t disagree with her. No doubt Pock had made a stupid move by getting involved with fight-fixers, and balking at the last minute made everything worse. “Still, at least he had the decency to be bothered about fixing a fight. A lot of guys would have gone ahead and taken the money,” he pointed out.

  “I can’t give him a whole lot of credit for belatedly realizing t
hat fixing fights and hanging out with gangsters is a bad idea. He should have realized that before he did it.”

  “He’s probably figured that out by now.”

  Ivy looked away. “Maybe.”

  A strange note in Ivy’s voice drew his attention, and he followed her gaze through the sliding door to where Pock and Daisy lay intertwined on the sofa. Pock leaned back on the couch, muscular legs spread, with Daisy draped atop him, kissing him passionately. He couldn’t tell exactly where Pock’s hands were because of the loose flowing fabric of Daisy’s outfit, but he had a pretty good idea.

  “Yeah. Well. Good luck. I think you’ve got your work cut out for you.”

  Ivy shook her head, as if to clear it, and stepped away from the patio door, clearly not wanting to intrude on their privacy. Joe had to give her credit. At least she didn’t barge in on them and drag them apart. Her father would have.

  “Yes, your opinion on the matter is well known,” she said steadily. “You think I’m doing the wrong thing.”

  “I do, but I also think you’re doing it for the right reason, because you care about your sister. That’s got to count for something, right?”

  He glanced inside again and saw that the couch was now empty. No doubt Daisy and Pock had taken their PDA to one of the bedrooms. Thank God for that, at least.

  “I guess so.” She sighed as if she didn’t believe it though. “I ought to make a grocery list. We’ll need enough food for at least a few days.”

  “I’ll take you into town later so we can pick up supplies.”

  Ivy nodded. On the threshold, she stopped and turned to Joe. “I want to say thank you. For what you did for me out there. You saved my life.”

  “Don’t mention it,” he said, impassive. “It’s my job.”

  Something flickered in her eyes. “Of course. You always do your job.” She went inside without another word, closing the door carefully and quietly behind her.