Her Christmas Surprise (Silhouette Special Edition) Page 5

  “They’ve got your name on the boards of some LLCs.”

  “They’ve got your mother’s name on those boards, too,” she countered.

  “Why do you think I’m here? I need to know what you know.”

  “I don’t know anything. I already told you, I’m not a part of this. Bradley was on his own.” She walked into the back and told herself she wasn’t fleeing.

  It didn’t matter. He followed her. “Oh, come on. You’re his fiancée, you’re an accountant. You know as well as I do he couldn’t figure this out alone.”

  “Nice that you have such a high opinion of him.” She didn’t look at him, just picked up some scarlet-berried holly off the counter and jammed it into a small vase to get it out of the way. Lex still made her as uneasy as he had when she was a teen, only now it was overlaid with something else, a humming tension she didn’t want to think too much about.

  “My opinion doesn’t matter,” Lex said. “What matters is that my mother could lose everything because of what he’s done. I need to get her out of this and to do that, I need you.”

  Keely snatched up one of the branches of mistletoe that lay on the worktable and began snipping off sprigs. “What you need is Bradley, and no, before you start in on it again, I don’t know where he is.” The snap of the clippers punctuated her words. “I don’t know anything about any of it.”

  “I find that hard to believe.”

  “And I don’t really give a damn.” She slapped down the clippers. “I’ve got the feds on my tail, a boss who told me to get lost and an apartment that’s been torn apart, thanks to your brother. I could give a hang what you believe.” Jaw clamped, she snatched up the scissors and began chopping off hanks of red ribbon to bind the mistletoe. “Now, either buy something or get out of this store.”

  Lex studied her for a minute, arms folded. “All right, let’s say you didn’t have any part of it. If that’s true, then it’s in your interest as much as ours to get to the bottom of this thing.”

  “Sure, I’ll get right on that. Let me just find my magic wand.”

  “Look, you’re an accountant. Even if you didn’t have anything to do with it, you should still be able to follow the trail. Maybe you’ll find something the big boys missed. Clear your name and my mother’s. As his fiancée, I’d think you’d want to get to the bottom of it.”

  “He’s not my fiancé,” she said tightly. “I told you, we broke up the morning of the raid.”

  “Perfect timing.”

  “No, perfect timing would have been two years ago when we first started dating,” she snapped. “Forget it, okay? If I want to play detective, I can do it on my own.”

  “Not if you want access to my mother’s papers.”

  “What for?”

  He shrugged, toying with a piece of mistletoe. “He used her accounts as part of his scheme. You might just find the key to something.”

  “Your mother is never going to give me access to her papers. From what I hear, she blames me for the whole thing. First her, then you. What could possibly make me want to work with people who don’t even believe me?”

  “Change her mind,” Lex suggested. “Change mine.”

  “Why should I? Why should I care what either of you think?” Keely reached over for a sprig of mistletoe.

  And his hand landed on hers, stopping her dead. “It’s in both of our interests.”

  Heat bloomed up her arm. For an instant, she didn’t move, couldn’t. His fingers were warm, his palm hard. And all she could do for a helpless instant was wonder what it would feel like on her naked body.

  “Think about it,” he suggested.

  For a bewildered second, Keely wondered how he could possibly know what was in her mind. Then she realized what he meant, and swallowed. “Thanks, but no thanks. And like I said, it’s time for you to go.”

  He removed his hand. “Let me know when you change your mind.”

  “If,” she corrected.

  “When.”

  “Try never,” she retorted.

  He laughed, his teeth very white against his dark skin. “I’ll be around when you’re looking for me.”

  Chapter Four

  Lex stepped out onto the sidewalk into the late afternoon. The last bits of snow from the nor’easter crunched underfoot. The setting sun stained the sky ruddy.

  And he could still feel the softness of Keely’s skin against his palm.

  She hadn’t told him anything he needed, he reminded himself. What she’d told him was to take a hike. He should have been frustrated, but somehow all he kept focusing on was how she’d felt, fragile yet strong.

  And the way that mouth of hers might taste.

  He gave an impatient shake of his head. There were many dumb things he could do, but getting involved with his brother’s fiancée—or ex-fiancée—pretty much landed at the top of the list. He didn’t even like the woman. He’d never had any use for her or her Junior League kind.

  So why did he find himself distracted by wondering whether if he kissed her, the Junior League girl would turn into a woman, hungry and urgent?

  Ridiculous. He’d kissed plenty of women in his time. He didn’t need to kiss one more, no matter how much she kept popping up in his thoughts. What he needed to do was get his mother off the hook and get gone, because the longer he stayed, the more bound he felt—by the need to help Olivia find someone to run her finances, by the questions about her estate. The maid had shown up in his room that morning with his father’s old tux, to measure him for alterations so Lex could wear it to the Christmas gala as Olivia’s escort.

  Charity balls and investment advice weren’t him. Servants and tuxedos weren’t him. He was about tramping through bush and desert and jungle, looking to capture that elusive moment that could encapsulate a place and time, giving people an immediate, gut-level understanding of what was happening in their world.

  And maybe after fourteen years, he was starting to get tired of the dirt, the exhaustion, the crappy beds and food, starting to get soul-deep tired of man’s seemingly endless capacity for destruction. That just meant he needed a break, that was all. It sure as hell didn’t mean he needed to come back to Chilton and take up where his father and Bradley had left off.

  He stared at the fading light on the horizon and thought of sunsets along the equator, where the transition from dark to light took place in the blink of an eye. Where the sunsets and sunrises hit at the same time every day, no matter the season, because the seasons were just warm and warmer and you slept naked in the heat. And that quickly, images of Keely were back dancing in his head.

  To derail his thoughts, he pushed open the door to Darlene’s.

  Darlene stood behind the baked-goods case with a white bag in her hand as she filled the order of a harried woman trying to buy muffins and manage the children hanging on to her legs.

  “Two corn, four blueberry—Tommy, stop,” the woman snapped. “Two bran and two…” She paused for thought, studying the baked goods in the case.

  Darlene shook the bag a bit. Impatient, Lex thought with a smile. “Apple banana?” she suggested. “Carrot?”

  “I’d go with carrot,” Lex said, stepping forward. “They’re the best. I swear, I could smell them all the way over in Tanzania.”

  The woman stared at him. “Cranberry,” she muttered.

  Darlene raised an eyebrow at Lex. “About time you came back. You hardly even said hello yesterday,” she complained, dropping the customer’s final two muffins into the bag. “And what’s this about Tanzania? The last postcard I got from you was from Chechnya.”

  “I thought I’d head somewhere warm for a while.” Darfur, to be precise, at least until he’d seen all he could take. Taking photographs of endangered species being slaughtered was a hell of a lot harder to stomach when they were human beings.

  With an almost physical effort, he turned his thoughts back to the present.

  “Well, I still think you’re too skinny, wherever you’ve been. Here, take
one of these. No, two.” Darlene shoved a pair of carrot muffins to him before she went back to her customer.

  Grinning, Lex watched her hand the woman change. Back when he’d lived in Chilton, Darlene had been one of the rare adults he could tolerate, one of the few who hadn’t treated him like either a brainless clone of a previous generation or a felon in training. So he’d broken a few rules; that made him a misguided kid, not a criminal, whatever anyone had said. Darlene hadn’t cared. She’d just treated him like a person and he’d adored her for it.

  “So what’s Tanzania like?” she asked, pushing a cup of coffee toward him.

  “Beautiful. So open and gorgeous it takes your breath away. You’ve got a postcard coming.” With a pair of smooching baboons on the front, he recalled.

  “It’ll go with the rest of my collection.”

  Glancing over her shoulder, he saw the wall behind her was decorated not with comic signs but with a rainbow patchwork of postcards—his postcards—sent from all over the world. She’d kept them all, he realized.

  And felt an unexpected stab of an emotion he almost didn’t recognize.

  When he’d walked away from home, he’d left behind all the strings and entanglements, and he’d kept it that way. It was easier. What little companionship he needed, he got from his colleagues, his editors, or passing involvements with women who wanted little more than an occasional warm body to hold in the darkness. It was a life that suited him.

  And if in the odd lonely night on the back side of the world he felt something was missing, whose business was it but his?

  Except that now he was staring up at all those damned postcards, tacked up there on the wall, as Darlene waited on another customer.

  He’d never sent letters to his mother, not wanting to make her the target of Pierce’s anger. He hadn’t really thought about why he sent them to Darlene; he wasn’t sure he wanted to now. It was easier to take his coffee to a table and leave Darlene to her customers.

  He didn’t need one more tie in Chilton.

  Keely stood at the front of the flower shop, hanging the bundles of mistletoe on the shop’s eight-foot pine Christmas tree. She’d gotten them all done pretty quickly after Lex had left. Better to keep busy than to think about that moment he’d touched her. It was nothing, of course. She’d been emotional anyway ever since things had blown up with Bradley. Of course she’d overreact to everything. She’d just been angry with him.

  That was all.

  Through the glass window at the front of the shop, she watched the early winter twilight fade into darkness. It was time for the evening commute, time for people to start flowing onto the Chilton common for the annual lighting of the town’s Christmas tree. It was the first official shopping night of the season and they’d get plenty of business from it. That was what she needed to focus on, not her problems.

  Not a pair of dark, unsettling eyes and a voice that sent something shivering through her.

  The bell at the door jingled. She glanced up to see a face she recognized from that nightmare day Bradley had left: John Stockton, the federal agent investigating Bradley.

  She blinked.

  “Evening.” He stepped across the flagstone floor of the shop, looking around approvingly at the vases of arranged flowers, the hanging plants, the gardening gear, the gift shop.

  “Aren’t you a little far from your turf?” she asked.

  “Not so you’d notice,” he said equably. “I live in Stamford. You’re on my way home.”

  “I’m not inside your jurisdiction, though.”

  “My jurisdiction’s wherever it needs to be. I’m not a cop. Nice place,” he added, looking around. “I hear your mother started it a few years back.”

  “After my family lost our money. You forgot to add that part.”

  “No.” He looked at her steadily.

  “I see. So I have motive, is that it?”

  “You tell me.”

  “I don’t steal. Besides, I’ve got a job and a trust fund. I don’t need to.”

  “If you say so.”

  “Maybe it’s time for me to get a lawyer.”

  He shrugged. “If you like. I’m just here to say hello. You’re not under arrest. Yet.”

  “Have you found Bradley?”

  He stopped to look at a display of sun catchers. “No, again. Your fiancé’s good at laying low.”

  “Ex,” she corrected.

  “That’s right. Ex. You heard from him?” He turned his gaze on her.

  Flat. Skeptical. The same way he’d looked at her in the interrogation room. “Not a peep. Did you talk with his family?”

  “I’m putting my money on you.”

  “Then you probably already have my phones tapped and people watching me. If Bradley calls me, you’ll know.” She finished hanging the mistletoe and walked back behind the checkout counter. “You’ve got nothing to worry about.”

  “But maybe you do.”

  Her stomach tightened. “What’s it going to take to convince you that I wasn’t a part of this?”

  “Vilis Skele,” he said.

  Keely blinked. “What?”

  “Vilis Skele.”

  “I haven’t a clue what you’re talking about.”

  “Who. He’s a Latvian arms dealer. Does a lot of business in the Middle East. Lives here part-time, mostly to simplify his business dealings.”

  “Oh, sure, I guess lots of Latvian arms dealers do that.”

  “Particularly when they’re getting money laundered.”

  And now she saw it. “You mean, Bradley—”

  “Laundered upward of two hundred million for him over the past year and a half,” he finished for her. “That we know about, anyway. It could be more. He could be a cottage industry for all we know. Slick operation, by the way. He set up LLCs for Skele, some of them clients of Alexander Technologies, some of them vendors. Some of them clients and vendors for those LLCs. Skele sent in money from the client LLCs and got it back through payments to the vendor LLCs.”

  “Maybe they’re real.”

  His gaze hardened. “You, of all people, should know that’s not true. You’re on the boards of several of them. Skele means slice in Latvian,” he added conversationally. “He’s slit the throats of twelve men that we know of.”

  Keely groped for the chair behind her. An arms dealer? “It doesn’t make any sense.”

  “Sure it does. Your Bradley got in deep enough while his father was still alive to arrange for some, shall we say, high-interest financing?”

  “A loan shark,” she said numbly. “You’re talking about a loan shark.”

  “Bingo. Papa died and Bradley starting siphoning off money from the corporation, but he couldn’t do it fast enough. Then he met Skele at a high-roller game in Atlantic City. I’ve got the dealer who introduced them. They got very cozy, she tells me. The dates correspond with the incorporation dates of most of the LLCs.”

  “I’m not a part of this.”

  “Enough, all right?” Stockton’s voice rose. “This isn’t just embezzling and SEC violations you’re looking at anymore. This is the big leagues and anyone involved is going to go away for a long time. You could go away for a long time. Unless you cooperate.”

  “I’ve told you…”

  “And I don’t want to hear it anymore,” he broke in. “Your boy crossed the line. He’s going down and he might just take you with him if you don’t watch it.”

  “This is harrassment. You don’t have a shred of evidence apart from my name on some boards.”

  “I’m just asking a few harmless questions,” he said. He started away then turned back. “Oh, and one other thing. If your ex is holding on to money for Skele, the man’s going to come looking for it. And I wouldn’t want to be the one there when he does.” Stockton slid a business card on the counter and turned to walk out the door. “Call me if you change your mind and want to talk.”

  The door closed behind him, leaving the shop silent, except for the roaring in
her ears.

  Arms dealers. Money laundering. Prison time, Keely thought, staring blindly at the workbench before her. What in the name of God had Bradley done?

  When the door opened to admit a trio of customers, she gave them an automatic smile and prayed that they wouldn’t need anything, because she just didn’t think she could cope just then.

  The front door jingled again. “Hi, Keely.”

  Keely glanced up to see Lydia sailing in.

  “Sorry I’m late.” The redhead hurried to put her purse away. “Melly threw up all over herself and I had to change her for the babysitter. Roy’s working late,” she explained, tying on an apron.

  “I have to go out for a minute,” Keely said distractedly, neither noticing nor caring about the perplexed glance Lydia gave her. Air. She needed air. If she stayed in the shop one more minute she was going to suffocate.

  Or start screaming and never stop.

  She was out on the sidewalk before she knew it, not registering the cold, not hearing the greetings. She just let herself be carried along with the others who were drifting toward the common, laughing and joking, without a care in the world.

  A week before, she’d been like them, happily moving through her days. Whatever fleeting unhappiness she’d felt over Bradley seemed a trifle, in retrospect. What she’d had seemed an idyllic existence.

  Even if it had been a lie.

  It was almost dizzying, Keely thought as she took a breath. How could Bradley have done it? Stealing was bad enough, but he’d begun dealing with bottom feeders. Dangerous bottom feeders. If your ex is holding on to money for Skele, the man’s going to come looking for it. And I wouldn’t want to be the one there when he does.

  Her chest tightened and she inhaled again. Across the common, the garlanded Christmas tree rose from the snow-covered ground. Disgrace and legal problems were one thing. Physical threats were another. She’d never thought Bradley would take chances with true criminals. She never in a million years would have guessed that he’d embroil her and his mother.

  What if the money was still out there? What if the dealer did come looking, and she had no better answers for him than for the police? She doubted “I don’t know” would carry much weight with a killer.