Texas Proud and Circle of Gold (Long, Tall Texans #52) - Diana Palmer Page 0,83
a burden that honorable people shared. She smiled, remembering the wonderful man who’d raised her. She missed him.
“You’re just on time,” Sari Fiore teased, smiling.
“I’m always on time,” Bernie replied with a small laugh. “I wouldn’t want Mr. Kemp to fire me.”
“No danger of that, as long as you don’t tell Ted Regan that court’s been dismissed,” Olivia said, tongue in cheek.
They all laughed as they filed into the office.
Bernie was the last one inside. She almost stumbled going in, but she regained her footing quickly, holding on to the doorknob. The back of her neck tingled. Odd, she thought, that feeling. But it was probably nothing. She ignored it and went on inside the building.
* * *
Sari was pregnant. It was happy news, and the whole office went wild when they knew. Even Mr. Kemp congratulated her, grinning from ear to ear.
“You’ll find that babies are addictive,” he teased. “Which is why we have another one on the way, too.”
“That’s wonderful,” Sari said, smiling. “I know Violet’s over the moon. Are the twins coping with your toddler?”
“The twins?” Bernie asked curiously.
“He has two Siamese cats,” Sari explained. “He made them mad one day and they tag-teamed biting his ankles and ran under heavy furniture afterward.”
Mr. Kemp chuckled. “They’ve calmed down. Well, a little. Violet learned early that they like salmon, so she keeps cans of it handy.”
They all laughed. Bernie was thinking about children. She’d wanted one so badly with Mikey. Just as well, she realized, that she’d never been intimate with him, considering the way things had turned out.
In his world of glitzy women and casinos, he probably had a procession of beautiful women at his beck and call. Including Jessie.
But she remembered that Sari had told her Mikey was no longer in danger; nor was his boss, Tony Garza. Apparently a group of bosses had decided that Cotillo was calling too much attention to certain underworld figures, and he’d been taken out of the equation. It was called “natural causes,” but Sari said it wasn’t at all, that the mob knew how to cause sudden death that looked natural.
That was Mikey’s world. Death. Violence. Glitter. Of course, she was well out of it. Her health wouldn’t have allowed her to endure the stresses of his profession, much less the strenuous lifestyle he enjoyed.
But she missed him terribly. It had sent her into days of depression when she knew he was gone. He’d left without even bothering to say goodbye. But what, she reasoned, could he have said? That he couldn’t live with a disabled woman, that he preferred her sexy coworker, that Jessie was great in bed? All those things? It would have tormented her forever. No. It was better the way it had happened—a quick ending, as painless as possible. It was over.
Now all she had to do was adjust to her new reality. Maybe one day she could look back and remember a handsome, dashing man who’d taken her places and kissed her as if he’d have died for her mouth, who’d seemed to love her. Maybe she could recall just the joy of being with him, without remembering how it had ended. It would be a pretty memory, tied up with ribbon and tucked away in a scrapbook.
* * *
Mikey watched people come and go in the casino with hardly any interest at all. Beside him, Tony Garza, who was breaking his California trip with a stop in Las Vegas to see Mikey, was sipping a whiskey highball.
“They ever find out who hit Cotillo?” Mikey asked.
“No. And they never will. The New York family arranged it all. Cotillo was about to point the finger at one of their underbosses. It would have devastated the family. So they sent Jack the Mackerel and Billy Tenspot down to visit Cotillo. They had a guy in the coroner’s office swear it was a natural death.”
“What about Cotillo’s family?” Mikey persisted.
“Running scared. It wasn’t that big, and most of them tried to talk Cotillo out of biting off more than he could chew. The New York boss even spoke to him personally and told him how it was. He didn’t listen.”
“Terminal error,” Mikey commented.
“Very.” He sighed. “At least we’re off the hook. I owe you, Mikey. Big-time. You ever need a favor, you know where to find me.”
Mikey shrugged. “No sweat. You’d have done it for me, boss.”
Tony chuckled. “Yeah. I would have.” He paused. “What’s this about some Texas girl you got involved with?”