“You’re going home,” he said, biting off each word as he backed her into the side of her SUV. “You don’t want to test your father right now. I really doubt you know how ruthless he can be—even with you,” Luca said as if reading her mind. “Don’t test me either.”
She shoved herself off the side of the SUV and got in his face, knowing now why she hadn’t shared the news about the baby with him. “You forget,” she said, refusing to back down. “My father’s blood runs through my veins, and we share at least some of the same genes. Which is why no one tells me what to do. I suggest you talk nicer to me and never testme.”
Luca smiled and looked away. She saw it coming even before he grabbed her neck with one large hand, tilting her head back so their eyes met as he increased pressure on her throat, before slamming her into the side of the vehicle.
“That goes two ways, sweetheart. Go home. You seem to have forgotten whoIam. You do whatever I tell you to.” He let go, turned and walked toward his rig.
Lolly coughed, her throat aching, her back sore. As she watched him reach for his door handle, her hand dipped inside the purse hanging from her shoulder. She closed her shaking fingers around the gun as she tried to catch her breath. Her throat ached. She could still feel the bite of his fingers cutting off her breath.
You always pick the worst man you can find, she heard her father say in her ear, as if he too were here watching as Luca opened the door and climbed into his vehicle.
“Good thing you taught me what to do when it’s time to cut my losses, isn’t it, Daddy?” she said to the sound of Luca Havers’s SUV roaring away.
Chapter Twenty
It was pure hell waiting for darkness and the town to sleep before Max ventured out of his house. All he could think about was Goldie and what she had to tell him as he moved through the slumbering quiet in what appeared to be a peaceful town.
He’d always loved this time of the night, just as he loved this town that had taken him and Cordell in. He liked feeling as if the townspeople were safe under his watch.
Now he knew better. Evil also came to towns like Dry Gulch, where people thought they were immune to the problems outside the city limits.
As he neared Clancy’s house, he thought of another time he’d crawled through Goldie’s window all those years ago. He’d been young and foolish and had consumed beer for the first time. It’s a wonder she hadn’t coldcocked him with a lamp. He’d often thought about what might have happened if her parents hadn’t heard him enter and sent him packing.
Now, as he approached the window and the dark room beyond it, he listened for any sound, afraid this time might end even worse than the first time he’d tried this. But he couldn’t be seen going into Goldie’s house. He knew this time what was at stake. Goldie had put herself in a precarious situation. He was determined to get her out. Now that she knew Mandeville and Donovan were in cahoots, she needed to get away from Donovan.
He assumed she was trying to help find out what they were up to. But what if he was wrong? What if her staying close to Donovan wasn’t an act? What if she had feelings for the man?
At the window, he wasn’t surprised to see that the screen had been removed. He fought the feeling of déjà vu. Only this time it wouldn’t be her parents who caught him. Stepping through the screen-less window, he dropped quietly into the dark room. For a moment, he stood perfectly still.
“Close the window and the blinds,” she said from the darkness.
He felt a thrill that rocketed straight to his heart. Just the sound of her voice in the darkness had always had that affect. That old ache to have this woman in his arms was almost his undoing. He closed the window, then the blinds before turning around.
The sudden light blinded him for a moment as Goldie snapped on a small lamp in the corner. She was sitting in a chair next to the bed, waiting for him.
“I wasn’t sure you would come.” There was a coolness in her voice that reminded him of the distance still between them, distance he’d put there.
“Of course I came.” She motioned toward the other chair in the room, and he moved to it and sat down. “I meant everything I said earlier. I love you and I—”
She waved that off. “I don’t want to talk about that right now. You need to see this.” She reached over on the table next to the bed, picked up a crinkled sheet of paper and handed it to him.
The words were printed neatly at the center of the paper. He read them twice. “This is from Mandeville,” he said more to himself than her.
You work for me now. You can still do your job flirting with the pretty blonde and keeping the sheriff distracteduntil I need you. Make sure you’re free next Tuesday on the day of the grand opening of Arnie’s. You wouldn’t want to let me down.
He looked up. “Where did you—”
“Donovan’s hotel room. It was balled up in the corner of the room.”
He dropped his gaze to the paper, her words sending a stabbing pain to his chest. Of course she’d been to the man’s hotel room.
“If he wasn’t working for Malcolm Mandeville, he is now.” He looked up at her. Had she suspected he was in cahoots with the crime boss even before this? “What do you make of this note?”
She gave him an impatient look. “You were convinced that something was going on. There’s your proof. Now you even know when it’s going to happen. Lolly Mandeville was in Donovan’s room right before I found the note. I assume she brought it to him since the note wasn’t there the other times I was in his room.”
Max thought about that for a moment, his heart aching. He didn’t want to know how far things had gone with Donovan. It wasn’t any of his business. “You need to get away from Donovan. Get out of town until—”
She shook her head. “I’m not going anywhere.”
