“Of course,” I said, able to see every bit of convoluted logic. “You were doing what you thought was best.”

“I’ve been doing what I thought was best ever since. I thought that if she came back to me once, she’d come back again, so I stayed away.” He shook his head, looking so lost and alone it broke my heart. “I stayed away from my family and my home and I’ve been lying ever since. Everything I’ve done…” He shrugged. “It’s all been a lie.”

“No,” I sighed, cupping his face in my hands, holding on to him as hard as I could as if pushing the truth—the truth of him as I saw it—right into his skull. “No, it hasn’t. Wanting to do good, wanting to help this city, even staying away from your family to protect them—that’s you. That’s who you are.”

“Not a liar?” he asked, his laugh thick with scorn, and there was a terrible desperation in the sound. “A criminal? Just another Notorious O’Neill, despite every effort I’ve made to be something else?”

“Oh, no,” I sighed. “You’re a good man, no matter what your last name is.”

His smile was tender, like early-morning sunshine, and he ran his fingers through my hair, tugging a little at the ends. “And you are going to be a good mother.”

I laughed, feeling as if I’d stepped off a bridge. It wasn’t air beneath me, but it wasn’t the ground, either, and it was going to take some serious getting used to.

“So,” he said, looking around my kitchen at the dinner that was intended to feed four with leftovers for a week. The air was thick with the smell of garlic and turkey. Sweet potatoes and cranberries. His grin was wicked and knowing. “What are we going to do with all this food?”

“Eat,” I said, putting my arms around his waist, reaching up to kiss those beautiful lips. “But not just yet.”

JIM

I lifted my finger and within moments another shot of Beam was at my elbow. Drinking in the day got you much better service. Much better. Maybe I should write a story about that—the benefits of daytime boozing.

“You mind putting on the mayor’s press conference?” I asked the brunette behind the bar who looked like she’d been tending bar for about twenty lifetimes.

She glanced back at the soap opera flickering on the TV above the bar and clicked around on the remote until Mayor-President Higgins’s face filled the screen. The old man was about to endorse Mayor Pro Tem Carter O’Neill for mayor, and I was sitting in a bar.

Off the story. Off the goddamned story. And who knew Noelle was so uncrackable, unbribeable. Maybe I should have been nicer to her before I’d needed a favor.

Ah. Hell.

The bourbon burned on the way down.

“Jim Blackwell.” The soft purr of a woman’s voice was a very welcome distraction from my own sad life.

“Hello there,” I said, swiveling on my chair and nearly falling off it when I saw who it was.

The blonde that had to be Carter O’Neill’s mother. The HR bitch out at The Rouge hadn’t confirmed it, but this was the same femme fatale who’d been in that alley with Carter.

I could only gape as she sat next to me and ordered a Diet Coke.

“Stop staring,” she muttered, not once glancing my way. “You look like an idiot.”

“How…how did you find me?”

“You’ve been drinking here every day for the last three days,” she said. “You’re hardly incognito.”

“What are you doing here?” I asked, unable to contain my delight at the story coming back to me like a lost child.

She stared down at the ice cubes melting in her glass for a long time, and I decided I needed to nudge her along.

“You’re Vanessa O’Neill, aren’t you?” I asked, and she nodded, finally taking a sip from the thin red straw.

“You’re here about your son?” I led her down the only path I wanted her to go.

She took a deep breath, like a reluctant diver on the high board, then spun to face me. “I have information,” she said. “On him.”

Oh. Oh, this was better even than I thought. She was going to sell Carter out.

“Okay, I’m listening.”

She shook her head. “It’s going to cost you.”

I licked my teeth, trying not to look too eager. Trying not to pump my fists in the air, do a victory lap around the bar. “How much?”

“Ten thousand,” she whispered, looking down at the bar, her fingers spread wide. Two of them were taped together and the dots connected in my head.

“That’s enough to get you out of the country,” I said.

She was silent, strung so tight she was about to snap, and while I didn’t enjoy her misery, I was real glad it had brought her to my door. Or bar, as it were.

“That’s a lot of money,” I said. It was going to wipe out my savings. But what was I saving it for, really?

Tags: Molly O'Keefe Notorious Romance
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