Читать книгу Undercover Protector - Molly O'Keefe - Страница 8

CHAPTER TWO

FIRST TEST, Caleb thought. If she doesn’t stammer or stare or run screaming, then they could commence with the interview. However, if she was going to cross herself and get all teary, the way the last woman he interviewed for the housekeeper job had, Margaret Warren could go. And quickly.

He found that his new body, as painful and ugly as it might be, was the great personality barometer. People took one look at him and their reactions told him all he needed to know about their inner workings. Their base-line take on the world.

Granted, his present appearance was more extreme than usual. Most of the time he didn’t use the cane and his arm was far more mobile than people assumed. But some days his physical therapist was a sadist and Caleb felt freshly tortured all over again. Today was one of those days.

Caleb used to pride himself on his spot-on first impressions. His editors had claimed he had the best gut in the business. But, man, this banged-up body was even better.

Survive some time in an Iraqi prison and a helicopter crash and this is what you get. A foolproof lie detector.

Margaret Warren took her time. She didn’t look away immediately, the way a lot of women did, throwing their attention to other places and yammering on about the weather.

Her eyes widened and her lips parted, which, frankly, he liked. They were pretty amazing lips.

He read a tangle of emotions on her plain face and thus began test number two.

If she was going to pity him as the guy he first interviewed for the position had, he’d boot her out himself, bad leg or no.

He would even let his dog out of the office to chase her down the driveway.

Well, not really. But he liked to think he was that kind of badass.

She blinked and all that stunned awareness vanished and instead of pity there was…nothing. Inwardly, he had to applaud. She was good. Politicians could learn something from her rock-solid composure.

“Perhaps you should tell me what the job will entail?” Her raspy voice went through him like good whiskey.

And that, it seemed, concluded Margaret Warren’s reaction to the relative monster he had become.

Great. If she wants to pretend there’s nothing strange about me, I’m all for it.

“Right.” He turned and lurched farther into the living room. “As you can see I am not much for housework.”

“Clearly,” he thought he heard her say, but by the time he got his head turned, her face had the same slightly interested but completely removed expression.

Those lips, though. They didn’t seem to belong on that plain face. The upper lip was fuller than the bottom and, while she did not appear to wear makeup, her lips were the color of the bougainvillea creeping over his window.

“I don’t really like to cook, either,” he said, too fast thanks to his juvenile reaction to Ms. Warren’s lips.

“The agency said nothing about cooking.”

“Yeah, well, I tricked you. Can you cook?”

“Sure.” She continued to look around his house, no doubt cataloging the months’worth of neglect.

“Would you be interested in doing it for me?”

Good grief, the woman was worse than Colin Powell, with all the stone-facing.

“For a price.”

“A girl after my own heart,” he said, hoping those lips would curl into a smile, but no.

“Perhaps a tour?” she asked, all business.

Stop trying to flirt, Gomez. You’re embarrassing yourself.

“Absolutely.” He gestured at the cluttered room. “This is the ocean room. This is where I look at the ocean and read the paper.”

He pointed over her shoulder at the kitchen. “That’s where I don’t cook.”

She turned and walked into the kitchen and, because he was sore from the physical therapy and using a cane, it took him a moment to get all of his appendages to agree to follow her. “You’ll notice the museum of pizza boxes, probably the largest in California. Again, they are not all mine, but I’ve added to the collection. Perhaps in—” He rounded the corner just as Margaret was hanging up his phone.

Irritation and suspicion leaped in him.

“What the hell are you doing?” he asked.

“Your phone is dirty.” Margaret scraped pizza sauce off the receiver.

He told himself to calm down. He was no longer a reporter, looking for the hidden agenda in every person he met. And, should things go well with Ms. Warren of the fantastic mouth and careful expression, he would no longer be a complete hermit.

He needed to get used to people again—or at least people who weren’t inflicting pain on his person in the name of healing.

Worse, he was going to have to get used to help.

“Well, it gets worse.” He smiled.

Margaret’s lips twitched and he relaxed.

Score one smile for the horny hermit.

He retraced their steps through his living room, kicking aside papers and books.

“Back here is the bedroom, which is probably the cleanest room in the place.” He opened the door and she ducked around him to enter the nearly empty dark room.

His clothes sat in stacks along the wall. Pulling open dresser drawers was more than he could be bothered with, thanks to his bad hand. His therapist had told him using the drawers would be good for him, but frankly being a slob made his life easier. His nicer stuff—suits and a tux he would probably never wear again—hung in the closet.

The bed, of course, was unmade. His brown comforter was tangled, the pillows were on the floor and the sheets pushed down to the bottom of the mattress. It appeared to be the site of rather athletic sex.

If only that were true.

Ah, sex. I think I heard of it once. If it weren’t so damn depressing, he’d laugh.

He hobbled over to the window to drag open the drapes, illuminating the dust motes in the air.

He turned as Margaret lifted her hand from his bedside table and rubbed her fingers together.

Again he felt that spike of irritation. He wasn’t good at sharing his space or having strangers touching his things. Made him antsy.

But considering it was going to be her job, he couldn’t tell her not to touch his stuff. He chuckled at his own absurdity.

Clean, but please don’t touch anything.

“I don’t suspect the bathroom is going—” she started to say.

“It’s a biohazard. You’ll probably need a special suit or something.”

She smiled again, a Mona Lisa curl to her lips that had devastating effects on his hermit-lifestyle suppressed libido. She really was lovely. Perhaps her features were plain, but her skin seemed to glow.

“Are you Irish?” he blurted. Nice. Really, so suave. It’s a wonder you ever got laid.

“No,” she answered and her attention drifted to the bedside table that showed that one finger swipe through the dust.

“Let’s go into the other room and discuss specifics,” he said and walked by her, close enough that he caught the soap-and-sunshine scent of her.

He heard her follow him into the hallway and then pause.

“What’s in here?” she asked and he turned just as she pushed open the door to his office. Inside, Bear, his dog, went berserk and Caleb reached out and slammed the door shut again.

“You don’t need to worry about that room,” he said. “I don’t want it cleaned.”

“But it looks—”

“It doesn’t get cleaned!” he said with more volume than was necessary with the reticent Margaret Warren. Her lips tightened and she nodded and Caleb felt like a fool.

He’d lost his touch, not just with pretty shy women who once fell to his bidding like ducks in a shooting gallery, but with other people, too. With everyone.

“Sorry,” he muttered. “I just—”

“You don’t have to explain,” she said. “I won’t clean that room.”

He nodded, relieved and a little surprised by her straightforward understanding. He could imagine that she might think he was a little nuts. Maybe he was. Most of the time, he wasn’t entirely sure himself.

SHE’D PLACED two of the three surveillance bugs. There was no way she was going to get into his office considering the way he’d flipped when she opened the door.

Obviously there was something in there he didn’t want people to see.

I need to get in that office.

“I think he likes you, Mags,” Gordon said in her ear. “Dude can’t stop looking at you…ouch… Man, stop throwing stuff at me.”

Gordon was right, Gomez was lonely. Really lonely if his awkward sideways glances were any gauge. She was not a woman men stared at. She was a woman men glanced at and forgot.

Apparently, not Gomez.

The back of her neck burned and her fingers tingled and she told herself it was the job. It certainly had nothing to do with that dynamic energy that surrounded him, that seemed to reach out to her with every glance.

That’s good, I can use that.

Things were going well. She seemed to have passed some sort of test when she didn’t react to Gomez’s injuries. She had handled the situation when he caught her bugging the kitchen phone. It had been close, but luckily there really had been pizza sauce on the receiver.

They seemed to get along, if his corny jokes were an indication. Except for his privacy issues about the office, which she planned on stepping all over, she guessed she had this job in the bag.

She followed him from the dark hallway back into the bright room with the view of the ocean. She didn’t pay much attention to what lay outside the window, instead planning to get her third and final bug planted under the table beside the overstuffed sofa.

“Your ad said mornings two days a week,” she said, breaking the silence in the room.

“Right. Eight to noon.” He limped over to the large armchair hidden underneath newspapers. He brushed them all to the floor then collapsed into the dark blue cushions with a groan. “I’ll be home most of that time, but I’m usually working in my office.”

“We need more time, Maggie,” Curtis said. “We’ll be here weeks if you keep to that schedule.”

“I’m afraid that’s not going to work, Mr.—”

“Gomez,” Gomez said, “but please call me Caleb.”

“Okay, Caleb.” She swallowed, his first name felt thick and awkward in her mouth. “It’s going to take me about a week of four-hour days just to get this place cleaned to a livable standard. And that doesn’t include the cooking.”

“Good point.” Caleb looked around and grimaced. “What do you propose?”

“Two weeks of eight-to-one and then we’ll see.”

Caleb smiled and Maggie glanced away from the twist of that wounded mouth and the humor that poured out of those eyes. “We’ll see. I like that. It’s been my motto for two and a half years.”

Maggie was startled by her desire to ask what he meant by that comment, but she quickly focused back on business. “Did you want to call my references?”

“Already have, they couldn’t say enough good things about you.”

Considering Curtis and his secretary had been her two references, she wasn’t surprised. Still, she smiled as though she was pleased.

One step closer, she thought. I am one step closer, Patrick.

“Great. So, is there some paperwork you want me to fill out?”

“Not so fast.” Gomez grinned again, the wry tightening of his face looked more like a grimace than an expression of pleasure. “Why don’t you clear a seat and tell me why you are so eager to work for slave wages for a disfigured cripple?”

Maggie inwardly winced. Though his tone was casual, joking even, it was very clear what this man thought of himself.

“I need the job,” she answered. More than you’ll ever know. “I have a son.”

“You’re married?”

“No.”

“Divorced?”

Maggie narrowed her eyes. “Is it important?”

“No.” Gomez wearily rubbed the scars on his neck.

Does it hurt? she wondered.

“Sorry. Old habits die hard, I guess.” He looked out at the ocean, his face touched by the sunlight and Maggie had the strangest feeling that he was searching for composure.

“So, Margaret with one son,” he finally said, turning back to her. “What brings you to Summer-land?”

“Will is getting older and his influences were getting worse at school and in the neighborhood.”

“Where were you from?”

“Los Angeles.” The lies came fast, natural. “Long Beach.”

Gomez nodded. “Spent a little time there myself. Some neighborhoods there can eat a kid alive.”

She knew all of this, of course. Long Beach and Will, her fictitious son, were all part of her cover designed to elicit reactions from Gomez, to create a sense of common ground. She needed him to want to talk to her.

It was what being undercover was all about. Building trust and then destroying it.

“How old is your son?” he asked.

“Ten.”

“What—”

“You mentioned a pay increase if I agreed to cook,” she asked, interrupting his twenty questions. Best to keep some mystery about herself, keep the journalist engaged in her story. Spilling all of her made-up beans wouldn’t do that.

Gomez did not miss a beat at her change of subject.

“An extra $150 a week. If it’s edible.”

Maggie nodded, clueless as to whether that was fair or not. “Sounds fair.”

Gomez watched her, unabashed, and the air slowly filled with tension like a gas leak. She could feel his regard, like fingers reaching out to stroke her hair, her face. His eyes probed hers and for a moment, because she knew, at least in words, all of the things that had happened to him, those beautiful eyes shook her.

She knew people torn apart, absolutely devastated by things not half as bad as what this man had suffered and survived. Her mother for one. Destroyed by what had happened to her golden son.

“So, do I have the job?” she finally asked, acting as the composed Margaret Warren once more.

“Yes, Ms. Warren, I do believe you do.”

She, Curtis and Gordon all sighed in relief. “That’s good news,” she told Gomez.

“Well,” he said with a wry chuckle, “you haven’t seen the bathroom.”

IN THE END Margaret wanted to write down a list of cleaning supplies but didn’t have a pen so he had to go into the kitchen to grab one.

Giant suitcase of a purse and she doesn’t have a pen? What do they carry in those things?

When she drove away Caleb stood at his back door and watched her crummy little hatchback until it vanished down the hill.

There was going to be a woman in his house. A woman with a gorgeous mouth and unreadable eyes, touching his things. Making him dinner.

Caleb didn’t know how to feel.

Bear, still locked up in the office, bellowed to be let out. Caleb propped the cane on the wall and limped as fast as he could and flung open the door.

“Oh, Bear,” he groaned when he saw the mess his big dumb dog had made. “I’m gonna take you back to the pound.”

Bear sat in a nest of shredded paper, fragments of newspapers and magazine pages dotted his fur. One triangular strip hung from his lolling tongue.

Even after more than a week of seeing the beast every day, Caleb wasn’t used to his looks. Half of the dog’s right ear was missing from a fight that also took out his right eye. Because of a skin condition, he was hairless except for a couple of clumps of fur along his sides. Those clumps were coarse and wiry, the fur constantly falling out. He had a bad temper toward strangers, which was the main reason Caleb had bought the damn dog, but that didn’t make him any more endearing. Bear adored chewing paper, but left shoes alone, which was nice except Caleb often liked what was on the chewed-up paper more than his shoes.

Caleb reached out and peeled the piece of paper off the dog’s tongue.

Bear licked his hand and Caleb stepped over him to the sliding glass door that led from the office to the patio and Bear trotted out the door, knocking over the books and magazines Caleb kept piled on his office bookshelves.

Dumb dog. Caleb followed and pushed open the screen door so Bear could flop down on the deck in the sunshine. Caleb flopped down as well in the padded lounge that faced the water.

Bear sighed and scooted around so he sat within petting distance and Caleb flexed and stretched out his bad hand to stroke Bear’s single hairless ear.

“A woman’s coming, Bear.” He long ago stopped feeling stupid for talking to his dog. “You’ve got to behave yourself.”

Bear barked, once, a succinct reminder. “Me, too,” Caleb agreed, thinking of Margaret Warren’s pink mouth and those other soft womanish things that he longed to sample but were no longer within his limited reach. “I have to behave myself, too.”

“WHERE THE HELL DID HE GO?” Benny asked. He watched Hernando squirm and gasp. It made Benny feel better to know that the pain in his belly was also in the bellies of his men. Benny looked down to the floor, where Boyer lay in a slick of his own blood.

Well, he did not feel much of anything anymore.

Benny had to come all the way to New York from L.A. to deal with this Caleb Gomez problem when it should have been dealt with three days ago.

He wanted Hernando to feel the pain.

“Jefe, I don’t know.” Hernando shrugged and licked his upper lip, beaded with sweat despite the frigid temperature in the warehouse.

Good. Good. Be nervous.

Benny nodded at Ramon who held Hernando’s arms behind him, twisted high behind his back. Ramon lifted Hernando higher off his toes and Hernando screamed in pain.

“He left New York, jefe. That’s all I know. Nobody knows where he went. All those reporters that were hanging around his house don’t know either. Trust me.” Hernando was crying, snot trickling down over his lip and into his mouth like a river.

Disgusting. It was so damn hard to find men who would behave like men rather than scared little schoolgirls.

“Did you talk to the reporters? Did you ask them where they think Gomez went?”

“Of course…I…”

“Did you ask them like I am asking you right now?” Benny cocked his gun and Ramon lifted him again and the screams echoed through the empty warehouse.

“No,” he finally gasped. “No, I didn’t, jefe. Give me a chance and I will. I will find out. I swear.”

The little bitch was crying in earnest and Benny thought about shooting him just on principle. Instead he uncocked the gun and put it back in the waistband of his pants.

He could be benevolent.

“Do it,” he said. “You have ten hours.”

Ramon dropped him and Hernando landed in a heap on the cold cement, sobbing.

Five hours later the sound of Benny’s cell phone cut through the canned music being piped through the speakers behind his head.

“He’s on the West Coast,” Hernando said. “North of Los Angeles, no one is sure where. That’s the truth, jefe. I swear to God.”

Benny flipped his cell phone shut and put the biography of Mussolini on the floor for some minimum-wage bookstore employee to pick up. He kicked Ramon’s foot to wake him up. He’d been dozing in the chair in the empty non-fiction section of the bookstore since they’d arrived after dinner.

“Wha—?” Ramon sat up, blinking and huffing like a man coming up from under water. “What’s going on?”

“He’s on the West Coast.” Benny stood and picked up his leather jacket from the back of his chair. “North of L.A.”

“You want me to go find him?” Ramon stood, too, his giant six-foot, three-hundred-pound frame uncurling like black smoke against the bookshelves behind him.

“No,” Benny said. “You take care of Hernando. I know who to call to take care of Gomez.”