“And why did you have two cell phones anyway? And why do you have a standing reservation at Spooner’s safe house if you were happily part of the DiNardo clan?”
“I told you. I got cold feet.” He lowered his head again and I took a full step back.
“Cold feet doesn’t cut it, buster. You couldn’t have anticipated that enough in advance to sign up for the Grooms with Cold Feet Secret Cell Phone and Safe House plan. It’s almost as if you’re… Holy crap!” I may be slow, but eventually, I come around.
“Beth.” Jack reached for me and for the first time since our little adventure had begun, he looked unsure of himself.
“The deadbeat dad. The troubled childhood the DiNardos rescued you from. It was all bullshit. You’re lying to me and I know why.”
“You don’t know anything. Everything I told you is the truth.” He ran his hand through his hair in an action I would have previously found attractive, okay, I still did, but the point was I don’t like being lied to.
“Don’t ever try to play poker against me, Jack, because when the sex on wheels façade falls away, you’re not such a great liar.”
He raised a brow. “You think I’m sexy?”
Oh, God, yes. I shook that thought away and tried to focus on the facts, listing them for him. “Don’t distract me. You’ve got one cell phone for the DiNardos and another one hidden and set on vibrate on which a mysterious man calls to warn you to stay out of sight. You’re undercover. Who is it for? The FBI? CIA? The Rhode Island anti-mob crime unit? Tell me the truth right this minute or I swear to God I will scream these woods down and attract every bad guy back there in our supposedly safe house. You’ll have to kill me to shut me up.”
That last challenge seemed fairly stupid once I took the time to go over it again in my mind. If Jack was what I thought he was, he was willing to do anything, including marry DiNardo’s daughter for his job, whoever the hell he worked for. More importantly, he was probably trained in secret operative skills and could kill me with one finger.
I took another step back.
“Don’t do that.”
“Do what?”
His handsome face looked pained. “Don’t be afraid of me.”
“Give me a reason not to.”
The muscles in his throat worked as he swallowed. He glanced around us, tilting his head toward a downed tree. “We better sit down for this.”
I eyed the log carefully, evaluating it’s potential as a weapon he could use to off me and keep me quiet, then I remembered the gun and decided if he wanted me dead, I’d be dead. “Okay.”
He sat. I sat, but not too close.
Jack sighed. “You’re not exactly right, but you’re close. I’ll tell you as much as I can, but honestly, it’s better—safer—if you don’t know it all.”
My heart began to beat in my chest. I was right? Could he really be one of the good guys? How romantic would that be? It would make one hell of a story for our grandchildren. My planning of our wedding was interrupted as he continued to talk.
“I grew up in a neighborhood ruled by the DiNardos but my family wasn’t involved. What I told you about my father ditching my mother and me, that was true. What I didn’t tell you was that after that my mother became a mistress to one of the DiNardo bosses.” He drew in a deep breath. “It wasn’t really a secret. The guy’s wife turned a blind eye to who her husband was sleeping with. Even when my mother got pregnant with his baby, he was going to continue to support us. He was happy about it. Proud actually. Too proud. One of his enemies killed my mother to get to him.”
I couldn’t help the scowl that formed on my face. How much more over the top could you get? If I’d seen this on TV I’d be ranting at the absurdity. I stood. “You better retake that Lying to Your Hostage course at work, because you suck at it.”
He stood too and grabbed my arm. I saw a suspiciously emotional glassy sheen in his eyes. “It’s true, Beth. Ask Spooner if you want.”
I frowned. “What does Spooner have to do with this?”
“He and I grew up together in the same neighborhood.” Jack watched me roll my eyes at that. “It’s true. We were both kind of outcasts, you know? Anyway, he can verify all this. He was there when I came home and found my six months pregnant mother with the…single bullet hole in her forehead.”
The story he’d told to Spooner about me being pregnant suddenly made sense. I started to believe, until another piece of the puzzle didn’t fit. “But hey. Wait a minute. If Spooner is your friend, then why did you lie to him?”
He smiled sadly. “You didn’t let me finish my story.”
I sat again. I was this deep in the shit, I may as well stay for the whole show. “Okay, finish.”
Jack sat too, this time closer to me. “I was a teenager when my mother was killed, and although the DiNardos took me in I still blamed…blame them for her death. Besides the fact that instead of going to college and joining the police force, which had always been my dream, I was now working for one of the biggest mob families in the state. Not exactly what I had planned and I saw no way out of it. I hated the DiNardos as much as I hated the family that killed my mother to get to them but I didn’t know what I could do about it until I was on a run, making a delivery for the family and I was approached by a guy. He worked for an ‘agency’ whose goals were the same as mine, ridding this state, hell, this entire country of the mob influence. That day, I began secretly working for them and no one outside of that agency knows…until you.”
“Wow.” I swallowed hard. I believed him. I really didn’t want to believe him. Stupid women believed the lies of insanely attractive men every day and lived to regret it. Actually, there were some who didn’t live…
“That’s all you have to say? Wow?” Jack let out a short laugh and ran his hand up and down my arm. “I wish you’d been this quiet at Spooner’s.”
“You calling me a big mouth?” I joked until I could get my head together and decide how I felt about all this.
“If the shoe fits…” He smiled, but in his eyes I saw something deeper. Doubt? Worry? Sadness?
“Why did you tell me?” Assuming this was the truth, he’d just taken a huge risk confessing it.
He shrugged. “Because for most of my adult life, I’ve been living a lie, earmarked as Lorraine’s future husband, even though I delayed that as long as possible without appearing suspicious, and now that I’ve finally met a woman I’m interested in the shit has really hit the fan and I’ll probably never get the chance to know her better.”
My heart beat faster. He liked me. That was just about my luck. I finally find the man of my dreams, well, except for the mob mess, and we were most likely both going to be killed before our first date. I found myself leaning forward until my lips were just inches from his. “We have some time right now.”
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