Chapter 13
Ellie
“You’re fooling yourself,” Kat whispered in my ear.
I paused, mid sip of the virgin cosmo I asked her to make for me. “What?”
“Don’t make me repeat myself. That man.” Her head tilted toward Ringo.
She didn’t have to say the rest. My brain was already screaming it. Or maybe it was my pussy, or my stupid, stupid heart. I was putting up a good fight, and that’s about all I had going right now. “I’m tired of fighting it.”
Her eyes went a little wide. “It?”
“You know…”
The glance she shot to the chair where Ringo sat by the door was obvious. Her voice lowered. “It?”
“Yes, it. I had sex with him in Italy and it was good. No. Not good. Cosmically altering.”
Her jaw canted a little to the side as she absorbed my words.
“For six months you strung the baby-faced guy with the barely legal mustache along and never once mentioned anything cosmically related. You were a veritable saint—which I know you ain’t—and then you know Mr. Dangerously Sexy over there what, one day… two?”
She was fishing.
“One day was on the plane. We sat together.”
Her eyebrow went up. “Together? In those first-class reclining seat bed things you showed me you booked?”
I bit my lip. “I sold him Johnny’s ticket.”
“You sneaky dog.” Kat held up her hand for a high-five.
“There was a barricade between the seats so we really couldn’t do much more than talk.” Sexual banter was more accurate of a description. We both pondered the logistics of mile-high sex. I picked up a coaster and fanned my over-warm face because thinking about it made me remember other things.
“And then?”
“We landed in Venice. He did the touristy stuff with me for the first part of the day. Then he had ‘business’ so had to leave. That’s it.”
Kat was really confused. “I could have sworn you implied that you had sex with him.”
“I did. Later.”
Realization dawned on her face. “He came back for you.”
I nodded, trying to tamp down the flutter that my started somewhere between my stomach and my heart. Even after finding out he killed people for a living, that memory sent tingles through me.
“And he came here for you.”
“No, this is just business.”
She held up a hand. “Flag on the play. Let me clarify something for you. If he were only here on business, he’d have stayed in whatever hotel room he was holed up in and not come here.” She pointed at the rug under her swirly Keeyahri heels.
That flutter? It went south to my stomach. The discomfort didn’t stop my heart from doing a little dance.
“Okay, what if his business here, in this room, is to keep me safe?”
Kat’s face took on a little gray. “From? I need you to elaborate here.”
I glanced around. The party had wound down.
Only a dozen people remained. Some of the usual regulars and a few of the girl posse Kat and I cultivated chatted in little groups.
Some of them had even paired off. Which had been the point of all this.
I mean, just because I was single didn’t mean that my friends couldn’t find love, right?
And because the focus was no longer on me, I could admit a little to Kat.
“Allie’s husband is kind of a—um…” I tried to gesture my meaning.
“Italian? Duh. I spotted that a mile away.”
“Sardinian, actually.”
She blew out a raspberry. “And that’s a crime?”
I let my eyes go a little wide to indicate that yes, very much yes it was. “And Ringo is his best friend,” I finished.
Her head tilted, and she used a tone I was certain to interpret correctly. “Girl?” Her hand wiggled as she tried to imitate Ringo’s earlier knife juggling act.
“Yeah.”
My breath was shaky. Even admitting that much out loud was dangerous.
She lowered her volume and deliberately did not look anywhere incriminating. “Does Casey know?”
“It’s likely. He’s probably run at least three deep searches on him.”
“Do you think he’ll find anything?”
I shrugged. “Rumors probably. I don’t know. It’s better for him if he doesn’t find out, if you know what I mean?” I winced. That was too bold of me.
She took a longer look at Ringo this time. “And yet, he came back, twice.”
I took a delicate sip of my drink. “He came a hell of a lot more than that.”
Her cheeks turned a little pink. “Does he have any friends? I’ll take a little danger if it can tear your big sister out of her sphincter and knock you right into a rebound fling with all the zing. Especially after you tried so damn hard to keep things with the bow-chicka-bow-wow man virginal.”
We’d been huddled with our heads together, so there was no warning.
“Virginal? Not me, I hope?” Ringo grinned like he’d invented a cure for that. While he certainly wasn’t the first panty-melting badass to crack a killer smile, he owned it.
Every inch of it.
I flushed red.
Kat, the traitor, jumped into the breach. “Obviously. Why aren’t you two going at it like rabbits? Or are you and Ellie’s just pretending to fight the good fight?”
Ringo stared at me. Something dark was in his thoughts because I’d seen that piercing hyperfocus at least once, likely twice before.
The first time was too quick, so it didn’t register.
He was lining up a killer in his gun sights.
The second time was when he carried me out of a gun battle.
That time I woke in his arms, jostled seven ways to Sunday, and he glanced down.
I didn’t know that man, and it scared me. So, I did what I always do. Lied. “I’m saving myself again.”
“Bullshit.” Kat was quick to call me out.
Ringo, on the other hand, wasn’t as versed in my twisted quagmires of illogical blurtations. “Saving yourself?”
He was right to speak with such caution. This was my version of a mined zone which was one of the first bastions of protection I’d erected around my heart.
“For marriage. Like she did with Johnny Pornstach.”
Too late, I realized what Kat had inadvertently confessed.
Ringo’s left eyebrow went up. He valiantly rallied. “That’s a lie.”
“This is the Blarney Zone, and lies hold as much truth, and maybe more weight when they happen here. What is your best swagger? Lay it on us.” Kat swung her arm around as she faked an Irish accent. Her antics distracted Ringo from the gaffe she made.
I laughed and played it off like this was exactly what she said, not a deeply personal secret I’d confessed to her one drunken night before I left for Las Vegas.
Ringo played along. “Oh, that’s an easy one, lass. I am the gentlest man in all of Chicago at this moment. I’ll kiss you so sweetly, your Christmas candy will pale in comparison.” His accent was much more convincing.
She laughed hard. “I’ll wager we can find at least one man gentler than you.”
“Never. The truth is, I’m just plain impotent. Isn’t that right, Ellie?”
Asshole. He knew how this game was played. I hadn’t counted on that.
But I had the key to his undoing. I shot a hand out and brushed it across his groin, intending to make a joke about his flaccidity, or the lack of any evidence of a maleness at all, and met the hard ridge of his cock instead.
He trapped my hand against it, practically daring me to measure his length extending the full span of my hand from wrist to finger-tip with another inch to spare. “Now, now, you wouldn’t want to make me break my gentlemanly vows, would you?”
I squeezed. “A gentleman, you say? I’d not make anything occur that wasn’t possibly there in the first place.”
His laughter was good-natured, but the light growl that rumbled against my ear held an edge as he whispered, “It’s getting late. We need to leave soon.” Then, his lips brushed against my cheek.
A zing of awareness shot through me. His teasing ignited a fire in my soul that flared outward, consuming with a sharp longing for more. Memories of his lips, of his skin, and of those too-few nights flashed through my body leaving a buzzing trail of arousal I struggled to contain.
On the outside, I laughed. I fired off one-liners and solid ripostes that kept both Kat and Ringo on their toes and off my ass. But inside? I was a horny bundle of need that wanted one thing.
Funny how you always seem to want what you shouldn’t.
The shadows were deep as I walked Kat to her car parked in the alley behind the bar. Ringo lurked on the perimeter like a phantom. Even with my back to him, I was hyper-aware of exactly where he was. There was a compass tuned to him, not true north, and my heart wanted to follow it.
The taillights of her car faded into the distance. I was rooted to the spot, knowing if I took a step, it would be straight toward him. Would that be awful?
Of course it would. He was everything I shouldn’t want. A killer, a criminal, a man who’d never be content to stay here in Chicago, and one who’d eventually bring the wrath of law down on me.
And if, God forbid, we had children in this little fantasy of mine? What then? Would they be stalked and monitored like I was?
I shivered a little.
The soft scuff of Ringo’s shoes on the pavement sounded behind me. I may have leaned a little when I felt his heat near my back. “Are you ready to go home?”
A gloved hand brushed my shoulder.
“I’ve been waiting for you to ask.”
The voice was too high. I turned just as Johnny grabbed my hair and yanked hard. His other hand covered my mouth as he dragged me deeper into the alley.
I kicked, twisted, tried to smack his balls with my fists, but nothing worked.
“Quiet. Just come with me and you won’t get hurt.”
My muffled, “why” was plainly written on my face.
He twisted my head and looked me in the eyes. “You left me at that wedding chapel.”
Technically, Allie had. I tried to tell him that but there was no way with his mitt acting as a muzzle. I kicked his shin instead to get my point across.
“Ow!”
He let go of me to hobble back a couple of paces and rub at his abused bone.
“You son of a bitch.”
“Language, Ellie.”
“Fuck you, Johnny. Fuck you, and your stupid cheating on me— your fucking stupid mobster-wanna-be antics with shooting Adelmo Conti, and fuck your ugly mustache!”
He pulled a gun from his coat.
I may have went a little too far with the mustache comment. I did what anyone normal does. I froze.
“You’re coming with me. I need that money.”
That’s what this was about? “Money? That’s all I am to you?”
“Of course.”
Despite suspecting that admission was coming, hearing it knocked me for a loop. “You lied to me.” My voice was weak.
“Like you don’t lie to everyone you meet? Hell, you lied to your friends, your sister, your parents… You even lied to me.”
“What? How?” I hadn’t caught up yet. I was stuck with the emotional aftermath of being betrayed. I’d had weeks to deal with that, but somehow it had just become real.
“You are anything but pure.”
Gun or not, I was going to murder him. “I was going to marry you.”
I’d have said more, but a car came to a screeching halt in the alley, mere feet from where I stood.
I jumped back and flattened myself against the brick wall of the bar, stupidly thinking that it wouldn’t hurt as bad if I melted into the brick.
My feet slid on the little bank of snow that hadn’t thawed, and I ass-planted into the icy slush.
Johnny took flight.
A car door slammed and Ringo shouted something at me. But my brain was in fuzzed-out mode where hearing and thinking, heck, even digging my soggy keister out of the numbingly cold snow was more than I could handle.
But I did note one thing. Ringo left me.
I was going to die in an alley, and he left me.
That made my insides turn frigid. No one loved me. My compass was completely wrong, and Johnny was right. My lies were burying me.
“Are you okay?”
Ringo panted, and his face was flushed. I’d never seen him that way. Even under gunfire, he was calm and deadly competent. But this?
If I didn’t know better, I’d say he was upset. “Where’s Johnny?” I accepted the hand Ringo held out so I could stand.
Water dripped off my dress. It was ruined. Was my whole life cursed? Every time I got something nice, it was destroyed, ruined, or tainted by tragedy.
“He took off. I should have ran him down and killed him, but…”
I brushed the grayish-black sludge off my ass.
Ringo’s words registered. “Killed him?”
“He had a gun on you. Didn’t you notice?”
I had. Funny how that little detail had shrunk in my memories. It was as if I knew it wasn’t the biggest danger to me. “You want to kill him?”
Ringo’s eyes narrowed on me. “Babe. I don’t just want to kill him, I’m going to.”
There was a pause that lingered a beat or ten too long.
“You got a problem with that?” he asked.
For the first time in my life, I couldn’t dig up a lie. I didn’t want to. “Ringo? I… I wish you didn’t do that. But I’d be fooling myself if I said I didn’t feel the same way.”
His jaw shifted, as if he were making room for something too big to clamp down. “Not everyone acts on their emotions. Especially the ones that result in such… permanent solutions.”
I laughed. “That’s a funny way to phrase it.”
He blinked once. The words he wanted to speak rolled around his face in a jumble of emotions. “I’m used it. You’re not.” He held out the crook of his arm, as if expecting me to take it so he could guide me to the car he’d left running in the alley.
But I needed him to know the truth. “A long time ago, I thought being bad was my only choice. I mean, if was going to be blamed and stalked for something I didn’t do, I wanted to actually deserve it.
But the first time I got in trouble, real trouble, I realized I’m not cut out for prison. ” I shrugged.
“No one is. It goes against human nature to crave confinement.”
I studied him. “Then why?” Why do you do what you do? Why do you take the risk? Why can’t you stop?
“Because it is also in human nature to crave order. Without the will to commit to that path, you get lost. There’s no purpose.
That makes you prey to the people who embrace order.
” He paused to laugh bitterly. “Cops and killers aren’t that much different.
Once you realize that, it makes a lot more sense. ”
There was one question burning in my soul. The flame had been there for as long as I could remember. But I’d never had anyone explain this to me. “How do you stop being prey?”
Ringo didn’t smile. He took my left hand and held it in both of his with my palm facing the sky.
His fingers touched my thumb. He spoke quickly in his strangely accented Italian, then translated.
“This part of your hand grips. It makes you able to cling to life. Therefore, it represents life. It gives purpose, promise, and strength. It’s the code.
” He paused to clear his throat and look around. “We shouldn’t be doing this here.”
No, we shouldn’t.
“Take me home. Your home. Please?”