Lucky Streak

CHAPTER FOUR

COURT HAD BEEN a breeze thanks to a green public defender straight out of law school. The guy didn’t know what he was doing, which meant Mike got out in time for lunch. He headed directly to the café near the station to meet his cousin Derek, who’d called early this morning, needing to talk.

Mike had a gut feeling his father, Edward, was causing trouble again, in one of his unpredictable irrational attempts to protect the family from the curse. It didn’t seem to matter that the curse had originated centuries ago and those who had perpetuated its belief were no longer wreaking havoc in his hometown.

The Perkins family had settled on the coast and made their money in real estate and shipping. Just recently, Mary Perkins, the descendant of the original so-called witch who had placed the curse on the Corwin family during the era of the Salem witch trials, was in jail for blackmail, conspiracy and a whole host of other crimes. Meanwhile, her granddaughter and namesake was in a mental institution until she was deemed fit to stand trial for arson. She’d burned down the Wave, a nightclub that had been an institution in the town of Perkins. Both women had used the Corwin curse to hold on to power in the town. With them out of commission, the younger Corwin generation, Mike, twenty-seven, Jason, twenty-six and Derek, thirty-two, hoped the old stories would die out. Unfortunately, their fathers wouldn’t let it. The older generation still believed in the curse.

Mike’s father most of all. Or at least, he was the one who’d taken fear of it to the most extreme.

After Mike’s experience in Vegas with Amber-meeting and marrying, half convincing himself he could have something special with this woman, a stranger, because of some connection he’d felt, only to lose both her and his winnings-he could almost begin to see why his father believed in such nonsense.

Almost.

He arrived at the café to find Derek already there. The cousins were similar in looks, with dark hair, but Derek kept his short while Mike avoided the barber’s chair.

“Hey, cousin, how’s life treating you?” Mike asked, sliding into the plastic-cushioned booth across from Derek.

“Pretty damn good considering.” Derek grinned, the same smile he’d been sporting since marrying his high-school sweetheart, Gabrielle Donovan.

“Considering the curse?” Mike asked knowingly.

Unlike Mike, who just didn’t deal with the curse, Derek had openly avoided it, breaking up with Gabrielle before college to avoid the fate of the rest of the Corwin men. Later, he’d gotten another woman pregnant, married her hoping to have a family and a child without invoking the curse because there’d been no love involved. The marriage had failed anyway. And Gabrielle, a successful author, had returned to prove to Mike’s stubborn cousin there was no such thing as a curse-just coincidence and bad choices. She was still proving it, every day of their almost year-long marriage. Though Derek was wary, he was too much in love to live without her.

Derek leaned forward on the table. “Considering your father is making us insane.”

“Can I take your orders?” a waitress asked, interrupting at just the right-or wrong-moment.

Derek shut his menu and ordered a hamburger and fries.

“Make that two, please,” Mike said.

They both ordered colas and the waitress left, leaving Mike to return to the subject at hand.

“Okay, what’s the old man done now?” he asked.

Derek’s gaze darkened. “He’s into voodoo.”

Mike wasn’t surprised. In the last few years, his father had taken to alternative religions to ward off the curse. Juju dolls hung from the trees lining the path leading up to his secluded house and he’d erected ancient totem poles for protection. Mike didn’t understand Edward’s reasoning and didn’t want to try. The farther he stayed from the insanity, the better.

“What’s going on?” Mike reluctantly asked.

“He’s spooking Gabrielle and you know that isn’t easy to do.”

As an author who made a living dispelling paranormal beliefs, Gabrielle wasn’t easily scared. If Edward was upsetting Gabrielle, he must have gone too far. “Tell me.” Mike gestured to Derek to continue.

“Well, we wanted to keep it quiet, but about six months ago, Gabrielle had a miscarriage,” Derek said, his voice low.

“Damn.” Mike shook his head, absorbing the news. “I had no idea. I’m sorry,” Mike said to his cousin.

Derek inclined his head, acknowledging the words. “According to the doctor, it was a freak thing. There’s no reason to think it will happen again or prevent us from having a healthy baby.”

“Thank God.” Mike expelled the breath he’d been holding.

“And we’re trying again.” Derek grinned once more. “But your father found out about the miscarriage. We figure he overheard Gabrielle and her friend Sharon talking about it in town.” He shook his head. “Ever since he’s been obsessed with protecting her.”

Mike muttered an expletive under his breath. “I’m sorry. All it takes is the slightest problem when a Corwin man is in love and my father loses it.”

Derek shook his head. “He’s already lost it, Mike.”

Mike knew. He just hated facing it because, too often as a child, he’d feared ending up like his father. As an adult, he prided himself on how well he had things together. He had a job as a cop, a career that enabled him to protect others, something he never quite felt he’d been able to do for his father. Edward fought his own demons. Mike fought other people’s, at least in a way, and remained sane.

“Look, we know my father has issues.”

“Right. The problem is, he’s spreading the insanity now. Gabrielle came home the other day to find red dust sprinkled outside the front door.”

“In Boston or Stewart?” Mike asked, since his cousin and his wife had a house in their small hometown village of Stewart and a Brownstone in downtown Boston. Gabrielle had lived in Boston before she’d gotten back together with Derek and they’d kept her place as a city retreat or an office in case Gabrielle was on deadline and needed peace and quiet.

“Stewart. But thanks for reminding me. I’m going to have to check the brownstone before I leave. I’d hate for Gabrielle to find a present from your father next time she visits.”

“I’m sure your place in Boston is fine. I can’t see my father going too far, can you?” The man rarely went into Stewart, let alone ventured beyond the town lines.

Derek shook his head. “But you never know. The red dust was followed by a string of juju dolls across the doorway. Gabrielle said she was damn near decapitated by the fishing line he used.”

“I’ll talk to him,” Mike promised. “I’ll call him tonight.”

“I think he disconnected his phone line. Afraid of traveling spirits or some such nonsense.”

Mike raised his eyebrows in surprise. “Are you sure? I just spoke to him before I left for Vegas on Thursday.”

“Did you call him or-”

“He called me from his cell.”

“No wires.” Derek shrugged. “Don’t ask me. It makes sense to him, that’s all I know. I paid him a visit on Saturday and he explained to me. I told him as nicely as possible that Gabrielle appreciates his concern but she doesn’t want his spirit-invoking items left in surprise places.” Derek spread his hands in front of him. “I just don’t think it sunk in.”

Mike nodded. “I can’t imagine it would. He’s too obsessed. I’ll see what I can do,” he promised.

But Mike didn’t hold out much hope. Renee, Mike’s mother, had threatened to leave Edward when the craziness became too much for her to handle, and when nothing changed, she followed through. Since then Edward hadn’t changed, only sunken deeper into his own world.

The waitress arrived with their burgers. While she put their plates on the table, Mike silently thought about his parents’ so-called cursed marriage.

Renee had fallen for Edward in the early days when he’d been fairly normal. But before she’d met him, Edward had been in love with another woman, Sara Jean. And Edward’s brother, Thomas, had fallen in love with her, too. When Sara married Thomas, something in Edward died. Rumors she’d been Edward’s second choice and Edward’s own hard-to-live-with personality, which only grew worse over time, led Renee to finally leave him.

Mike’s mother was now happily married to a doctor and living a normal life. Mike envied her.

Mike would do what he could for his cousin and his wife, but knowing Edward, once he had his mind set on a course of action regarding the curse, nothing would change his mind.

Mike turned his attention to lunch. “I’m starving. Long day in court,” he said, taking a large bite of the burger without bothering to add ketchup first.

“So on to more exciting things. How was Vegas?” Derek asked, taking a bite, as well.

At the mention of the subject Mike had been trying not to think about without any success, he lost his appetite.

“That good a time?” Derek asked into the silence.

Mike knew if there was anyone he could trust with the truth, it was his cousin Derek. “You know that expression ‘what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas’?”

The other man inclined his head. “Yeah…?”

Mike drew a deep breath and told his cousin the entire story.

“So basically both the woman and the cash stayed in Vegas,” Derek concluded for him. He shook his head. “Holy shit. Why don’t you press charges? You’re a cop, after all.”

“That is why. Where’s my credibility after I admit publicly that I let myself be taken in by the oldest con in the book?” And that’s what still got to him.

What prevented him from sleeping on the plane back to Boston late Saturday night and again in his own bed last evening. How had he misread Amber so completely? Her sincere gaze, her genuine excitement, that connection.

“I have to talk to her again first.” Because things just didn’t add up. He was a cop who acted on gut instinct and he was seldom wrong.

“Ego.” Derek finished his soda and signaled for a refill. “You can’t admit she conned you, so you’re going to let her get away with it?”

“I’m going back to Vegas first chance I get. I’m going to find her, and then get some answers, and a divorce.”

“Don’t forget to press charges,” Derek said. “Now I have another question for you.”

“Shoot.”

“To quote Jay Leno to Hugh Grant, ‘What the hell were you thinking?’”

He hadn’t been thinking. He’d been feeling and everything he’d felt had been so damn good. Which only made him feel more like a fool in the cold light of day.

“Never mind. Let me know when you plan to go back. I’ll go along and help you out,” Derek said.

“I appreciate it.” But Mike probably wouldn’t call his cousin.

Next time he faced Amber, he wanted to be alone.

A little while later, Mike left Derek and headed to the station to finish up some paperwork before starting his shift tomorrow. He’d taken today off in case court ran long, so he might as well make productive use of the rest of his day.

By the time he headed home, jet lag and plain old exhaustion beat at him. He let himself into his apartment and was immediately on alert. The dead bolt wasn’t flipped shut. He’d been tired this morning, but he couldn’t have been too tired to lock up.

Hand on his holstered weapon, he stepped inside. Everything seemed normal. He walked through the entry, gave a cursory glance into the kitchen, passed the empty den, entered his bedroom and nearly keeled over.

Amber lay in his bed wearing nothing but one of his collared shirts. She was a vision. The shirt was buttoned low, showing off a generous hint of cleavage, making his mouth water. Her long, bare legs peeked from beneath the hem of the too-big shirt. Her red-painted toenails teased him from beneath his navy blanket. And those riotous blond curls fell over her shoulders in gorgeous disarray, making him forget everything but his body’s immediate and obvious reaction.

He blinked, certain she was nothing more than a mirage, but when he opened his eyes, the vision remained. That was when he noticed the rest.

She lay on his bed surrounded by cold hard cash.

“Amber?”

He still didn’t believe she was real, even as every emotion imaginable rushed through him, from desire to relief, shock to gratitude, curiosity back to desire again.

Until she spoke. “Hi, honey, I’m home.” She waved at him.

Anger, the emotion he should have felt first, finally emerged. “What the hell is going on?”

“I know you’re angry and you have every right to be, but before you say another word, look around me. Money. Granted, it isn’t all of it, in fact it’s half. Less cab money and airline fare, but I can explain-”

“Get dressed.” He stepped forward and began collecting the clothes she’d left scattered at the foot of the bed, tossing them at her. “I’ll meet you in the other room.”

He couldn’t think clearly when she was stark naked beneath his shirt, lying seductively in his bed. Memories of making love to her came at him from all sides and he needed his head on straight to deal with her rationally like the sober cop he was now, not the guy who’d rescued her in Vegas and then let her sucker him.

IT COULD HAVE GONE WORSE, Amber thought. She’d seen a flicker of desire in Mike’s gaze before he’d banked it in favor of his anger.

She could work with that flicker. Amber had one goal and one only-she wanted to get back to having a real life, one similar to her life before her father had grown ill. Mike and this sudden marriage offered her possibilities she wanted to explore more fully. And she wanted that chance.

Before he could let his emotions overcome him and refuse to deal with her at all, she slipped on her shoes and headed for the other room.

She found him, arms crossed, staring out the window onto the street below. Her heels clicked on the wood floor and he turned at the sound of her approach.

“I thought I told you to get dressed.”

She glanced down at her sandal-clad feet and the shirt that covered as much as any skirt and top would. “I am dressed.”

“That’s not what I meant.” He exhaled a frustrated sound. “Never mind.” He shifted his hands to his hips. “Go on. Explain.”

She followed his movement with her gaze and paused. “Would you mind taking off your gun first?”

He rolled his eyes and removed his gun, muttering under his breath the entire time. “It’s not like I’d shoot you,” he said finally.

“You look pretty upset, not that I blame you.”

He held up one hand. “Start at the beginning. It was a scam, right?”

“Wrong!” she said, wanting him to understand that from the beginning. “Everything that happened between us was as much of a surprise to me as it was to you. And just as real. I had every intention of being there when you woke up. I’d made coffee and everything, but then I got a call on my cell phone-”

“From who?”

She met his gaze. “Marshall.”

“Your ex-partner. The one who was manhandling you.”

She nodded. “He wasn’t happy you ran him off. All day long I’d had the feeling I was being followed,” she admitted.

“Yet you didn’t say anything.”

“You’d already confronted Marshall. I didn’t want you to have to deal with J.R., too. He’s Marshall’s right-hand man. I thought I saw him and so I ducked into the wedding chapel to get away.”

He exhaled a rough breath. “Go on.”

“Anyway, like I said, that morning, Marshall called my cell. He knew about the money you’d won, and our marriage. He said he’d taken my father from the nursing home and the only way I could get him back was to meet him and hand over the cash or else. I didn’t believe him at first so I hung up and called the home. They said Marshall signed my father out. I wanted my father back and I had no other option but to do as he said.”

He held out his hand. “Give me your cell phone.”

She narrowed her gaze. “It’s in the other room.” She ran back to his bedroom and returned with her phone, handing it to him. “Here. Why?”

“To verify your story.” He turned on her phone and played with some of the buttons. “Incoming at the right time, outgoing immediately after…” He hit another button and placed the phone to his ear.

“What now, Officer?”

“Detective. I’m calling your friend Marshall.” He made a frustrated face and handed her back her cell phone. “It’s disconnected. But at least I can see you aren’t lying, for whatever that’s worth. What did Marshall want the money for?”

“To buy into a poker game. He needed to make some big cash to pay off a guy he owed. He promised he’d win back what I took so I could pay you back in full.”

Mike couldn’t believe the idiocy coming from her lips. “Exactly what guarantee did Marshall have that he’d win at cards? Isn’t that why it’s called gambling? The outcome is uncertain?”

“Unless you know how to count. Look, he’s good at what he does, but something went wrong. He only won back half of what I owe you. But if you remember, you said if you won, half was mine, so technically you’re paid back in full-less the taxi and airline ticket, which I’ll pay back. But I never intended to take any of your money, so I promise I’ll pay you back every cent of the other half, too. Somehow.” She smiled and fluttered her lashes at him, trying to make light of the mess she’d gotten herself into.

“Damn right you’ll pay me back,” he muttered.

“The first thing I did afterward was to come back to your hotel room, but you were gone,” she pleaded, wide-eyed and rushed, obviously hoping he’d buy her story.

“Should I have waited around for my wife to return with the stolen cash?”

She winced. “I’m sorry. I really am.”

“You could have woken me. I stepped in with Marshall once. I would have helped you again.”

She drew a deep breath. “My life is complicated. I wanted to get settled here and make things work with you. I even hoped to eventually move my father here if our relationship was strong enough.”

“But we’ll never know because you didn’t trust me with the first big thing that came up.” And that, Mike thought, hurt more than it should have.

So did the wounded look in her eyes at his bluntly spoken words.

“It’s got nothing to do with trust. It’s habit. I’ve been on my own for so long. I never had my mother, and my father was loving and fun, but he wasn’t always around. Look, I’m not used to turning to anyone. Marshall had my father and it was up to me to save him. But I came back. And I’m here now…”

It wasn’t enough that she distracted him with her long, bare legs and flashing cleavage, but he was drawn to her plea of understanding, to her words. She expected him to buy her crazy story. Crazy enough to be at least partially believable because she had come all the way east to find him.

Still, she was obviously omitting plenty and this woman was trouble. So why was he still so damn attracted to everything about her, including her fantastical tale?

His phone rang, interrupting his thoughts. He walked to the portable and picked up the receiver. “Hello?”

“Mike, it’s Derek. You’ve got to come deal with your father. In person.”

Damn. “What’s he done now?”

Amber watched him, curiosity all over her expressive face.

“He strung cats around our front porch,” Derek said.

Mike shut his eyes and groaned. “Live cats?” Mike asked, his stomach in knots. “Or dead ones?” He crossed his fingers as he waited for an answer.

“Stuffed ones, but that’s not the point. Dammit, Mike, Gabrielle’s going to have a heart attack wondering what he’ll string up next!”

Mike ran his hand through his hair. “I hear you. I’ll be there in an hour.”

He glanced at Amber and knew he had no choice. He wasn’t letting her out of his sight again until he could decide what happened next.

“Get dressed. For real this time,” he said.

“Where are we going?” she asked, wide-eyed.

“To meet your father-in-law.”

“NOBODY CONS King Bobby!” King Bobby Boyd bellowed into his cell phone, yelling at one of the men who worked for him in Texas. He had enough connections in the underworld to do his dirty work, but there was a lady involved and King Bobby didn’t like to hurt the fairer sex. For now, he’d just use those connections to get himself some answers. Now, if she didn’t cooperate, then he’d have to come up with another way to convince her. And that would be a pity.

But for now he’d take things slow. “Listen to the information I got and write it down. Got a pad and pen?”

He waited for the yahoo on the phone to get something to write with and puffed on his cigar.

“Calm yourself down or you’ll have another heart attack,” Emmy Lou said from the bed. “It’s bad enough the doctor told you to cut out cigars and you don’t listen-”

“You ready now, you redneck simpleton?” Bobby ignored his wife’s yammering, waiting for the man on the other end to return to the phone. “Good. Listen up. Blond hair. Curly. Pretty gal. First name’s Amber. Used to work as a concierge at one of the bigger hotels in Beverly Hills. Start with that and see what you can turn up.” He flipped his cell phone closed and took another puff.

“I really don’t think Amber had anything to do with you losing,” Emmy Lou said. “She seemed like a nice girl, not the kind who’d distract men so her partner man could fleece a table.” She shifted the V-neck top to even out her ample bosom.

“Maybe not, but she’s the only lead I got. You can’t con a con and that weasel she was with stunk to high hell. I knew he was no good.”

“You mean he outconned the King and you don’t like it.”

“Damn straight. And then he ran away fast like the pansy-ass I pegged him for. Didn’t give me a fair shot to win my money back.” Take it back was more like it.

King Bobby had been counting cards since he was a kid on his father’s knee and the only way he’d get beat was by another con.

“You don’t need the money. You’re the richest man in all of King’s County,” Emmy Lou cooed at him.

“It’s a matter of pride, woman! I’m gonna get me my money back and that little lady named Amber’s my key.”