Texas Proud and Circle of Gold (Long, Tall Texans #52) - Diana Palmer Page 0,35
girls safe. I’ll never forget you for it, not as long as I live.”
Mikey flushed a little. “They’re sweet girls, both of them.” He glanced at Sari. “Sweet women,” he amended.
Sari waved away the apology. “I don’t get offended at every single word people come up with. Besides,” she added with twinkling blue eyes, “I got called a whole new word in court by a man I was prosecuting for assault. The judge turned him every which way but loose.”
Mikey chuckled. “Good for the judge.”
“She’s a great judge,” Paul agreed. “I had to get a search warrant from her several years ago. We had a long talk about Sari’s mother. The judge was friends with her.”
“My mother was sweet, kind of like Bernie,” Sari said. “She loved to plant flowers and grow things.”
“My grandmother did, too,” Paul said.
“Yeah, she always had an herb garden, and she grew tomatoes out in the backyard,” Mikey added. “It was hard, losing her. She was the only real family Paulie and I ever had. Our parents weren’t around much.”
“Which was just as well,” Paul said grimly.
Mikey nodded.
“Well, I’ve got some research to do,” Sari said, rising. She bent to kiss Paul. “Don’t eat my part of that cake,” she warned. “I’ll be back for it later.”
“Would I do that?” Paul said with mock defensiveness.
“Of course you would,” she replied. She chuckled as she left the room.
“Damn, you got lucky,” Mikey said after she’d gone.
“I did. Maybe you got lucky, too,” Paul said. “Everybody who knows Bernie loves her.” He grimaced. “Shame what happened to her,” he added.
“Yeah, the arthritis is pretty bad,” Mikey agreed.
Paul frowned and had started to speak when his phone went off. He looked at the number and groaned, but he answered it. “Fiore,” he said.
He listened, glanced at Mikey, grimaced again. “I see. Yeah, I’ll make sure he knows. We’ll double up down here. No worries. I wouldn’t want to risk Carrera getting mad at me, either, but these guys aren’t playing with a full deck, if you know what I mean. Sure. Okay. Thanks.”
“Trouble?” Mikey asked.
Paul nodded. “Somebody made an attempt on Tony, a new one. He’s in custody and they’re hoping he’ll sing like a bird when they extradite him back here.”
“A break, maybe.”
“Maybe. If they don’t suicide him, like they did the other one.”
“Yeah.” Mikey drew in a breath. “You know, my life was going along so well up until now. I’ve got the hotel. I’ve got all the money I’ll ever need. I was really thinking about a home and a family. I guess I lost sight of what I’ve been, what I’ve done.” He looked up at Paul. “Maybe the universe is set up so that you get back what you give out, every time, in double measure. I don’t mind for me. I just don’t want to put her in the crosshairs. She’s the sweetest woman I’ve ever met.”
Paul didn’t need prompting to know that his cousin was talking about Bernadette. There was a look on Mikey’s face that his cousin hadn’t seen in many years. “We’ve got all our bases covered,” he told Mikey. “You have to remember, outsiders stand out here. There’s already gossip about that woman Jessie in Isabel’s office, and even Barbara’s new cook at the café. Outsiders draw attention.”
“Did you check out Jessie and the cook?” Mikey asked.
Paul gave him a sardonic glance. “What do you think?”
“Sorry.”
“No worries. But we dug pretty deep. I think we’d have found anything obvious, like an arrest record. Well, unless the guy’s working for one of the letter agencies,” he added, referring to the federal intelligence and justice community.
“True.”
“You going to bring Bernie over Saturday?” Paul asked.
Mikey chuckled. “What do you think?” he said, throwing his cousin’s own words back at him, and they both laughed.
* * *
Bernie couldn’t sleep. It had been raining all day and the pain was pretty bad. She had pain relievers, massive doses of ibuprofen for when all else failed, but she didn’t like it. The medicine messed her stomach up, even when she took it with food. Besides that, there was a limited amount of time that she could take it. It was so powerful that it could cause major problems with the liver and kidneys if people used it for a long period of time without a break. She was afraid of that.
But this was one time when she had to have some relief. She could barely hold back the tears.