“OH.” JOE’S WORDS hit Meg like a slap to the face. “I see. You have a Linda. How nice. Is she your—” Meg winced “—wife?”
“Oh, hell no, nothing like that. We’ve been together now for about six months…and she wants the relationship to be more.”
“I see. Well.” A sudden sense of loss made Meg want to sit down in a big, dejected heap and cry. “Maybe we should introduce Linda and Carl, since they both seem to have a case of the commitment bug. That is, unless you’ve caught it, too.” She looked over at him.
When he didn’t reply right away, Meg surreptitiously crossed her fingers against his answer—and held her breath.
Joe rubbed a hand through his hair. “I don’t know. That’s why I came to Tampa. Time away to think.”
There was hope. Her mood suddenly lighter, Meg pointed at him. “So, that’s why you were asking me all those questions a minute ago. You’re looking for some insight yourself.”
Joe had the grace to nod and look sheepish. “I am, yeah. But my situation is different.”
“Is it? How so?”
“Well, no one’s been cheating.”
“Really?” Meg crossed her arms and shrugged. “Don’t give up so easily, cowboy. The night’s still young.”
Joe laughed. “I like a woman who knows what she wants.”
“Good.” Though she now adopted an air of sophisticated confidence, inside Meg was quaking with the audacity of what she’d just said…and implied.
Joe’s eyes twinkled. “You’ve certainly given me a lot to think about in the few short hours I’ve known you, Meg Kendall.”
“Yeah? Thinking of doing something stupid, are you, Joe?”
“You mean like this?” He grabbed her by her arms and pulled her tight against him. Before she could react, he’d lowered his head and crushed his mouth against hers in a bruising, passionate kiss that curled Meg’s toes and scattered her senses. His tongue explored her mouth…probing…pushing in and out…mimicking perfectly the thrusting act of sex.
People driving past wa-hoo-ed out their car windows or honked their horns.
Meg wouldn’t have cared if an actual cheering crowd, complete with marching band, had gathered behind them. Her heart was beating triple time and her knees had become weak with desire. She was helpless, unable to resist.
When Joe broke the kiss and pulled back, Meg stared deep into his magnificent eyes. “Yeah. Like that. We shouldn’t do that…again…Joe.”
That quirky little Elvis grin of his appeared on his lips—lips Meg now knew intimately.
“No. We shouldn’t.” Joe lowered his head, and Meg raised her mouth to meet his again. But he pulled back at the last second, teasing, staring intently into her eyes.
Meg’s blood heated. “Damn you, Joe Rossi.”
She reached up, gripped him around the muscular column of his neck and pulled him firmly down to her. This time, she took the lead, allowing only the tip of her tongue to dart in and out as she tasted the sensual fullness of his lips. With an evilly sexy chuckle, Joe finally captured her mouth and again plundered its willing depth as he put his arms around her and held her to him, her breasts hard against his chest, her hips hard against his thighs.
And then, unbelievably, a cell phone rang.
“AW, SON OF A BITCH!” Joe could not believe they’d been interrupted—again—by a damn cell phone.
Meg pulled back, gasping. “Is that your pants ringing—or my ears?”
“My pants. In more ways than one.” He gently released her and reached for the phone at his belt, tugging it off its clip. “I ought to throw the damn thing in the water.”
Meg stepped away from him and hugged herself as if she were cold. “I hope Linda can swim.”
Poised to push the talk button, Joe held off and looked into Meg’s smoldering bedroom eyes. He was hungry to kiss her again…and not stop there. “It doesn’t have to be…Linda.”
He hated that he’d hesitated over her name. But right now, with Meg standing less than a foot from him, the last thing Joe was thinking about was his girlfriend. Hell, he was no better than Carl, was he?
The cell phone continued to ring.
Meg’s gaze locked with his. “You might as well answer it, cowboy,” she said, sounding practical. And angry.
“You’re right,” Joe said, resigned. He pushed the button and put the phone to his ear. “Hello.” To his infinite relief it wasn’t Linda. It was… “Uncle Maury!”
Meg looked at him questioningly. Joe shrugged. He had no idea why his great-uncle would be calling him. Then, when he heard the tone of Maury’s voice, he tensed. “Wait. Slow down. What are you saying? What mob?”
“A mob?” Meg said. “At the complex? Does he mean a party at the pool?”
Joe shook his head and held up a hand to Meg. “Oh, I get it. Not a mob, but the mob?” His tensed muscles relaxed. “No, Uncle Maury, we’re not doing this. You know there’s no mob at the door.”
Meg clutched Joe’s shirtsleeve. “Is he okay?”
Joe covered her grasping hand with his free one and nodded, mouthing I think so. He turned his attention back to his great-uncle. “Well, just don’t answer it,” he told Maury. “What do you mean we can’t come home? We weren’t on our way home…. Not ever? Uncle Maury, have you been drinking?”
“What’s going on?” Meg hissed.
“Hold on, Uncle Maury. Let me talk to Meg. Don’t hang up.” Joe released Meg’s fingers and held his hand over the phone’s mouthpiece. “Uncle Maury says we can’t ever come home because the mob is after him—and now they’re after us because we’re in The Stogie,” he said matter-of-factly. “He means the car,” he added.
Meg shook her head, looking confused. “But Maury’s called The Stogie, not the car.”
“They both are. I think Uncle Maury’s letting his imagination get the best of him.”
Meg pulled back. “But he always talks about the mob.”
“Yeah, but this is going a bit too far.” Aware of his elderly uncle hanging on the line, Joe spoke quickly to Meg. “You see, there’s a legend in our family that someone, at some time in the past, was in the Mafia. Uncle Maury decided he was that person and we’ve always gone along with it. It gave him stature. But he’s never made phone calls like this saying the mob is after him or anyone else. This is new.”
Concern shadowed her expression. “Maybe he didn’t take his medicines. Or maybe he took too many. I knew we shouldn’t have left him alone. Joe, tell him not to do anything. That we’re on our way home right now.”
Joe nodded and put the phone to his ear. “Uncle Maury? Meg says just sit tight, okay? We’re on our way home.”
Blinking, Joe jerked the phone away from his ear and said to Meg, “Whoa. He’s cussing like crazy. Listen.” He put the phone to her ear, saw her eyes widen, then pulled it away.
“Tell him we won’t come home, if that’s what he wants.”
“Sure, why not. Let’s go back to the car.” He grasped Meg’s arm to guide her and again spoke to his uncle. “Uncle Maury, listen to me—No, we’re not coming home…. Yes, calm down. It’s okay. No, I’m not lying. What? Shoot at us?” Joe’s knees locked, stopping him and Meg in their tracks, and he shook his head in disbelief.
“Shoot at us?” Meg parroted. “Who’s going to shoot at us?”
Joe held Meg’s fear-widened gaze as he talked. “Now, Uncle Maury, why would anyone be shooting at us?” He paused. “They want the keys? To what, the car? Uncle Maury, if anyone wants the keys to this car, trust me, I’ll hand them over long before they have to start shooting. Not the car keys? But don’t give them up, either? Well, what else would I have keys to, that some—How much money?”
Joe covered the phone and whispered to Meg. “He says the keys are worth a fortune.”
“Forget that. I want to know who’s going to shoot at us.”
“Apparently the mob.”
“Okay, Joe, this is beyond bizarre. And a little scary, I have to say.”
“Tell me about it. But such is life with Maury Seeger.”
“Well, what do we do? Do we believe him or not?”
“I don’t know. Something’s wrong, I’ll give him that much. Something definitely set him off.”
“Yeah, and it could be nothing more than some poor pizza delivery guy at his door.”
“True. And Maury could shoot him.”
Meg’s eyebrows rose. “Maury has a gun?”
“Yes.”
“Dear God.”
“Amen.”
“Joe?”
“What?”
She pointed to the phone in his hand. “Talk to Maury.”
“Oh, hell.” He put the phone to his ear. “Hey, Uncle—What?” He listened another moment and then pulled the phone away from his ear and hit the end button. “He said he thinks they’re trying to get inside and he has to go. Then the line went dead.”
“Ohmigod,” she breathed. “Joe, could it really be the Mafia?”
“I think Uncle Maury is harmless, but sometimes the way he gets caught up in his stories worries me—” Joe’s phone rang again. He exchanged a look with Meg and answered it on the second ring. “Uncle Maury? Is that you?” He nodded at Meg to let her know it was.
She looked so concerned, waiting to find out what Maury would say next, that Joe couldn’t resist putting an arm around her and pulling her close. He wasn’t sorry when the action squeezed her breast against his side.
“Really, Uncle Maury, did you have to hang up a minute ago? Are you okay? Your voice sounds funny…. You’re in the men’s room at the pool house? Why? What are you—Of course, you’re hiding. Look, stay there where you feel safe. Uncle Maury? Hello? You just dropped the phone? Why’d you drop the phone?”
He listened and then said to Meg, “Because he thought the mobsters were shooting at him, but it turned out to be a car backfiring.”
Meg leaned into him. “I might need to sit down, Joe.”
He took her arm to steady her and returned his attention to his great-uncle. “Is anyone else in there with you, Uncle Maury? Hell, no, I wasn’t suggesting you and another man—Yes, I do know how it would look for two guys to exit a one-holer bathroom together. Look, just sit tight and—”
Joe pulled the phone away from his ear. “Son of a—The line went dead again. When we get to his place, Meg, I swear I’m going to kick his ass. I don’t care if he is in his eighties and only five feet tall. I’m still going to kick his bowlegged, Mr.-T-gold-wearing, toupee-headed ass. Come on, let’s go see about my great-uncle, the nutcase.”
THEY WERE IN THE CAR with its front-mounted vanity plate that read “The Stogie” and on the way back to Meg’s apartment complex when she first became aware that she and Joe were being followed. Or, at least, she thought they were.
“Joe? Do you see—”
“Yes.”
Meg’s breath caught. “Oh my God, we are being followed.”
“I don’t really think so. Try not to let my crazy uncle, with all his mobster talk, get to you, okay?”
Too late for that. Meg turned to look over her shoulder at the occupants of the car behind them. “I kept seeing their bright lights in the side-view mirror, and I wondered.”
“Same here. Funny how quickly someone else’s paranoia can infect your mind, isn’t it? Still, maybe you shouldn’t turn around and stare at them.” Joe’s voice was level, like the patient one a parent might use to reassure a small child convinced that his bedroom closet held a monster. “And why aren’t you wearing your seat belt? Turn around and put it on, okay?” He glanced in the rearview mirror and then over at her. “No sense alerting them that we’re onto them.”
“Do you think we’re really being followed?” she asked, more interested in the action going on behind them than in his safety instructions.
“I really don’t.”
“Well, it’s possible.” Excitement and fear had Meg melting down onto the bench seat. From this new vantage point, she looked up at Joe. “Why can’t the car behind us just be a bunch of innocent people who’re going the same way we are?”
Joe looked over at her—or where she should have been—and then down to where she was. A puzzled frown claimed his features. “They could be. What are you doing?”
“Clearly, I’m hiding. Besides, I got a good look at those people. What we’ve got are two guys dressed in black on our tail.”
“Mobsters aren’t the only people who wear black. I occasionally wear black. Maybe these guys are some partying Goths heading to a nightclub.”
She stared at Joe’s profile, absorbing his handsome features. “But maybe they aren’t.”
“There’s one way to prove it to you.”
Meg became aware of another sensation. “Are you slowing the car down, Joe?”
“Yes. If these guys behind us are two partying Goths on their way to a night of clubbing, then they’ll be in a hurry to get around us, won’t they?”
“Yes.” Meg was silent, allowing for time and events to pass. When she couldn’t stand the suspense anymore, she said, “They didn’t pass us, did they?”
“No.”
“Oh, God.” But judging by the squealing tires and all the curses being flung their way, everyone else in Tampa was in a hurry to get around them. Meg heard Joe muttering something back at the other drivers, but it was nothing she could actually make out.
“So, Meg,” he said abruptly, “I have to wonder what the two guys in the really slick car behind us think you’re, uh, doing right now, since you’ve disappeared from view in the front seat.”
It took her a second, but she finally got his drift—and her face burned. She popped upright and finger-combed her hair out of her face. “Is this really the time to be amusing yourself with pornographic thoughts?”
He spared her a quick grin. “I was just trying to get you to sit up and put on your seat belt, which you still need to do.”
Soberly, Meg said, “I think we ought to go to the police.”
“Because of what I just said? Really?”
“No, because if these guys behind us are with the—and I use this word every day—mob, then we should find a police station. Every woman knows, or should, that if she’s being followed, she heads for the nearest police station.”
Joe stopped and thought for a moment, then nodded slowly. “Okay. Where’s the nearest station?”
Meg thought about it and shrugged. “I have no idea.” Joe leveled a look at her and then concentrated on the road. “Well, I’m sorry. I haven’t been followed before. This is new to me.”
He reached for her hand and squeezed it. “I’m sorry. Look, don’t worry about it. Can you actually see us going to the police with this story? What would we tell them? My sweet but crazy-assed great-uncle thinks the Mafia is after him—and us—because we have keys to something that contains a lot of money? What would you do if you were the cops and someone came into the station with that story?”
“I’d bust them for being high and lock them up.”
Loving his warm touch and the feel of his strong fingers clasped over hers, Meg held on to Joe’s hand. For just a moment, she let herself imagine how those same hands would feel on her body. Then, focusing again on their current plight, she said, “Maybe we need to take Maury seriously for just a few minutes. I mean, I know he’s the king of exaggeration, but maybe there’s a grain of truth to this tale.”
Joe riveted his gaze on her for far longer than it was probably safe to do while driving. “Meg, do you really think the mob was there and pounding on his door? I mean would they really want all the attention they’d get from about five hundred of his closest neighbors if they did that?”
She eyed him suspiciously. “You seem to know a lot about how the Mafia works, Joe.”
He took his hand back and put it on the steering wheel, holding it tight. “I’ve probably seen the same movies you have.”
Meg flushed with self-consciousness. “Touché. Still, what if something’s up—”
“Meg. Pizza delivery guy at the wrong door. Car backfiring. Nutty, paranoid great-uncle, whom I love very much, put two and two together and came up with the mob. End of story. What we’re going to do is go to his place and see for ourselves what’s up. So, please, buckle your seat belt.”
She quickly stretched the nylon straps across her chest and lap and snapped the buckle into place. “Okay. Done.”
“Good. Hold on. I’m going to speed up.”
Sure enough, the car jumped forward with a lurch and a stutter that wrenched Meg back and then forward and nearly made her bite her tongue. Once she regained her equilibrium, she gave voice to her current thought. “Joe, how can these guys behind us be the mob if they’re at the apartment with Maury?”
Joe changed lanes, moving to the inside-left one. “You’re not going to let this go, are you? All right. I suspect, Meg, that if it’s the Mafia we’re really dealing with, they probably have more than two members.”
“Good point.” She felt so dumb—and tried to cover it. “But how many of them do you think they’d send after one little old man?”
“Depends on the little old man. And what he might have of theirs.”
“True. Are we still being followed?”
He glanced into the rearview mirror. “If you mean is the same car still behind us, then yes it is.”
A chill washed over Meg. “Okay, that’s it. Pick a street and turn onto it. Don’t signal. We need to give them the slip. If they just go on by and don’t try to follow, then we have our answer. But if they stick with us, then we’ll know that they really are after us.”
Joe shot her a quick glance. “What were you—a gun moll in a past life? Think, Meg. If they are supposed to be Mafia, and they are following us, and there are other—I do not believe I’m even saying this—gangsters with my uncle, then these guys behind us already know exactly where we’re going. There’s no point in trying to lose them.”
“Darn. You’re right. So what are you going to do?”
“Exactly what I said. We’ll go to my uncle’s.”
She watched Joe for a minute, focusing on the curve of his cheek and the strength evident in his jaw. “Joe, if we don’t make it out of this alive, I want you to know one thing. You’re a really great kisser.”
He grinned. “Thanks. So are you.”
IN LESS THAN TWENTY MINUTES, Meg stood with Joe in the dining room of Maury’s apartment. The Goths, or whoever the innocents had been in the car behind them, had finally turned off, to Meg’s infinite relief, so they’d made it here without further incident…only to find the elderly man gone.
Before coming inside, Joe had checked the men’s room of the complex’s community pool, only to find it empty, too. But the note they found on Maury’s dining room table in the tidy apartment—no sign of a struggle—stated where he was. “On the run from the mob.”
Meg stood rigidly at Joe’s side, peering around his arm at the note in his hand. “Oh, no.” Her voice was breathless with fear and worry. “He was telling the truth.”
Joe frowned. “He asked me to feed his goldfish.”
“Well, how thoughtful. And odd.” Still, she looked from Joe to the note, like she might find a clue she’d missed. “If he was able to write this note, I guess they never made it into his apartment.”
“Meg, there is no ‘they.’ This is Uncle Maury’s idea of a joke. Or, worse, a scavenger hunt.”
“A scavenger hunt?” What was Joe talking about? She studied his profile. Yes, he was very handsome but he might also be very nuts. Like his great-uncle. She remembered Wendy talking about Maury and Joe being from the same murky gene pool. “No matter what’s going on, your uncle’s missing. Shouldn’t we be worried?”
“If he doesn’t show up soon, we should. But reading this note, Meg…well, it’s more like it’s just some big game he’s devised and he wants us to chase him all around town finding clues.”
Now she understood what he meant about a scavenger hunt. She let her gaze play over his chiseled features again. He was back to being unbelievably handsome, and not nuts at all.
She again studied the slip of paper. “You got all that out of his note?”
“I told you, he’s done this before,” Joe continued. “When I was a kid and the family would all be together, he’d make up cops-and-robbers games just like this. He’d hide from us and have us kids running all over the place looking for him because he had the prize.”
“What was the prize?” Meg realized it probably wasn’t the most relevant question right now, but she couldn’t help herself.
Joe’s blue eyes bored meaningfully into hers. “The same thing it is now. Money.”