Texas Proud and Circle of Gold (Long, Tall Texans #52) - Diana Palmer Page 0,31
hold anything against you. He’s more worried about what you’ll think of him. He’s...had some problems in his past.”
Bernie cocked her head. “Can you tell me about them?”
“I think he should tell you,” Sari replied. “I don’t like to carry tales. He’s not a bad man,” she added firmly. “Everybody has shameful secrets. Some get told, some never do, some we carry inside us forever like festering wounds.”
Bernie nodded. “That’s like mine. Festering wounds. They blamed all of us, you see, not just my dad. They blamed Mama and me, as well.”
“Bernie, you were just a kid. How could anyone have blamed you?”
“They said Mama made him mad in the first place,” she explained. She closed her eyes. “I was just ten years old, I didn’t have anything to do with it. Neither did Dad. But people died, and I live with the guilt.”
“You shouldn’t have to,” Sari said curtly. “There was no possible way you could have stopped it.”
“Losing my grandmother and my mother was the worst of it, especially for Dad,” Bernie confessed softly.
She put a hand over Bernie’s. “You can’t live in the past. I’m having a hard time with that myself. My father killed a woman. He more than likely killed my own mother. I have to live with that, and so does Merrie. We have our own guilt, although I don’t know what we could have done to stop it. We were terrified of our father, and he was so rich that nobody around here would go against him. He made threats and people did what he wanted them to.” She sighed. “It was like a nightmare, especially when he was arrested. He tried to make me marry a foreign prince so that he’d have money for his defense attorney,” she recalled bitterly. “He came at me with the belt and I screamed for help. He died with the belt in his hand. I thought I’d killed him.”
“You’d never hurt a fly,” Bernie returned gently. “Neither would Merrie. Your father was an evil man. That doesn’t mean you’d ever be like him. You couldn’t be.”
Sari smiled. “Thanks. I mean it. Thanks very much.”
“I guess we’re all products of our childhoods,” she commented. She searched Sari’s blue eyes in their frame of red-gold hair. “What was Mikey’s like, do you know? He said he grew up in Newark, and his grandmother raised him and your husband.”
Sari smiled. “She did. She was Greek, very small and very loving, even though she was strict with them.”
“What about their parents?”
“The less said the better,” Sari said coolly. “I’m frankly amazed that they both turned out as well as they did.”
Bernie sighed. “I know how that feels, except it was my grandfather, not my parents.”
Sari nodded. She smiled. “I hope you’re prepared for Monday. When Jessie finds out about the hot date, she’s going to be a handful. Glory and I will run interference for you. And it isn’t as if Mikey even likes her.”
Bernie sighed. “That’s a good thing. She’s really beautiful.”
“She is. But as our police chief likes to say, so are some snakes.”
They both laughed.
* * *
In the office, things were less amusing. One of Cotillo’s henchmen had actually managed to get inside Marcus Carrera’s Bow Tie Casino in the Bahamas while Tony Garza was in his private study there. Only quick thinking by Carrera’s bodyguard, Mr. Smith, who sensed something out of the ordinary, had saved the day. The henchman was arrested and held for trial.
“They found the henchman dead in his cell the next day, of course,” Paul told his cousin.
“Of course.” Mikey stuck his hands in his pockets. “It’s a good bet that Cotillo knows where I am, as well. I’ve got no place else to go in the world where I’d have protection like this,” he added.
“True enough,” McLeod said. His gray eyes narrowed. “Once you testify, we have plans for you.”
“They’d better be plans for two people, because I’m not leaving here without Bernadette.”
The words came as a pleasant shock to his cousin, who’d only known Mikey to get serious about a woman once in his life, and that had ended badly.
McLeod chuckled. “We can arrange that.”
“Okay, then.”
“But we’re going to have to up the protection,” Paul said. “Eb Scott wanted to lend us the Avengers,” he added, referring to Rogers and Barton, two of Scott’s top men, “but they’re on a top-secret mission overseas. He sent us Chet Billings instead. And we’ve got Agent Murdock here assigned to you as well.”