CRY UNCLE Page 2

  A little washed-out, but definitely an interesting face. Not quite pretty, but intriguing. It was the sort of face a man could look at for a long time without growing tired of it.

  Her expression was cautious. Maybe a touch skeptical. Haunted. Those eyes, so large and pale, seemed troubled.

  The notion of marriage troubled him more than a little, too. But the alternative—losing Lizard—was far worse.

  He took a step closer to her, and another step. In her search of the room, she stared at him, past him, and then at him again. Noticing the wine glass in his hand, she straightened up and eyed him warily. She bit her lip. Her teeth were as white as her dress.

  “Hi,” he said, sounding a hell of a lot more confident than he felt. “You must be Pamela. I’m the guy who wants to marry you.”

  ***

  OH, GOD. He looked like a bum.

  The door-frame dug into her spine as she backed away from him. Okay, she consoled herself, things could be worse. She hadn’t agreed to anything yet. She’d made no commitments, no promises. And honestly, any danger this man posed couldn’t be as bad as what she’d left behind when she’d escaped to Key West.

  As bums went, she had to admit, the guy extending the glass of wine toward her was actually kind of handsome. Unfortunately, he was also scruffy and grungy, with a stubble of beard and hair that clearly hadn’t had a close encounter with a scissors in some time, and a shapeless shirt, and jeans faded to a powdery blue, the fabric split like a fraying grin across one knee. And that earring...oh, God. An earring.

  She ordered herself to remain calm. Experience had taught her that just because a man was impeccably dressed didn’t mean he was safe. And really, this man—Joe, her neighbor Kitty had told her... Beneath the baggy shirt and the decrepit jeans she discerned a lithe, lean body. Behind the stubble of whisker and the shaggy auburn hair he had a lively face, his smile producing a dimple on one side, his nose long and straight and his eyes as blue as a summer sky, two lovely spots of light in the gloom of his low-rent bar.

  The Shipwreck, she recalled, glancing away from Joe long enough to remind herself of where she was. It was an apt name for the place. The rowdy, motley customers might well have washed ashore from some disaster.

  In a very real sense, so had Pamela.

  He continued to hold out the wine glass. If she took it, she might be tempted to consume its contents in one gulp—assuming the glass didn’t slip from her hand and shatter on the floor. That was a strong possibility, given how slick with sweat her palms were.

  His smile widened. It really was a charming smile, despite his rumpled appearance. Either that or she was rationalizing, trying to find a way to like this man.

  She didn’t have much choice. He was offering her exactly what she needed: some wine and a new identity. She might as well make the best of it.

  “Hello,” she said, discreetly wiping her hands on her dress.

  He shot a quick look over his shoulder, then shrugged. “It’s kind of crowded in here. If you’d like, we could go into my office to talk, or I could drag a couple of chairs outside. There’s a little yard behind the building.”

  “It might be more pleasant outside.” She wasn’t sure she was ready to shut herself up inside an office with him.

  He reached out and took her hand. Forget about being shut up with him in an office—she wasn’t ready to be touched by him. Yet she couldn’t very well make a fuss simply because he wanted to hold hands with his future wife.

  Besides, there was nothing threatening in his touch. His hand was as dry as hers was clammy, and his grip was warm and strong. If only he were barbered and well-tailored and didn’t have a silver hoop linked through his earlobe—and if only her life weren’t completely out of kilter—she might have responded positively to the smooth, leathery surface of his palm, the thick bones of his fingers. She might have liked the deft way he navigated through the crowd, smiling innocuously at people who greeted him, ignoring one creep who gave him a salacious wink.

  Pamela wished she could ignore the creep, too, but she couldn’t. She was too tense, too conscious of how ludicrous this whole idea seemed.

  Joe ushered her to the rear of the barroom and down a hall, past the men’s and ladies’ rooms to a door crowned by a glowing red “exit” sign. He released her hand so he could grab two chairs from a nearby stack. Then he jammed his hip against the door, and it swung open.

  The outdoor air was nearly as dense and hot as the indoor air, but at least it wasn’t stagnant. Instead of the acrid aromas of cigarettes and beer, it smelled of the ocean, rich and briny. Gravel and crushed sea shells crunched beneath her sandals as she followed Joe into a small lot bounded by a ramshackle fence that backed onto the buildings in the next block. A bright spotlight fastened to the rear wall of the bar glared down upon the yard, brighter than the moon.

  She filled her lungs with the salty air, then attempted a smile for Joe, who was positioning the chairs he’d dragged outside so they faced each other a safe distance apart. He gestured toward one of the chairs and she lowered herself to sit. Settling into the other chair, he handed her the wine.

  For a man dressed as disreputably as he, he had good manners, at least. And that smile, and those amazing blue eyes...

  And that earring. She took a long sip of chardonnay and lowered the glass. And zeroed in once more on the earring. She wondered if it was genuine sterling silver. She wondered how he’d felt marching into a jewelry store and standing in line for ear-piercing with a bunch of prepubescent girls. Maybe he hadn’t gone to a jeweler. Maybe he’d done it himself—plunged a needle into the heart of a flame and then into his own flesh.

  Maybe a former lover had done it. Maybe a present lover had. This evening’s discussion was about marriage, not about lovers past and present, or monogamy, or fidelity, or anything like that.

  All right, so Joe had an earring and, for all Pamela knew, hundreds of girlfriends. So he dressed like a bum. So he wasn’t her style. Nothing about this encounter was her style. For that matter, nothing about the recent progression of her life was her style.

  Things had gotten out of control. She didn’t have many options left. The essential thing was to stay alive. If marrying a man with devastating blue eyes and a dimple and an earring would provide the protection she needed, she’d be a fool not to give his offer a fair hearing.

  “So,” he said, his smile flagging slightly as he studied her in the pool of white light.

  It occurred to Pamela that he could be judging her as harshly as she’d judged him. Perhaps he found her wanting. Kitty had said he was desperate for a wife, but she hadn’t said he was desperate enough to settle for a skinny, panic-stricken architect from Seattle.

  He spread his legs, rested his elbows on his knees and tapped his fingertips together. “I guess you’re wondering why I called you all here tonight,” he joked, then flashed her a smile that, for all its edginess, she found comforting. If nothing else, they had their anxiety in common.

  The least she could do was help him out by contributing to the conversation. “Kitty told me you need to get married,” she said.

  He shrugged modestly. “That about sums it up.”

  “Forgive me...Joe?” she half asked.

  He smacked himself in the forehead, evidently disgusted by his lack of manners. “Jonas Brenner,” he said, prying her fingers from their death-grip around the stem of the wineglass and giving her a friendly handshake. “Everyone calls me Joe. And you’re Pamela. Kitty didn’t mention your last name.”

  “Hayes,” she said. “Pamela Hayes.”

  “Pleased to meet you.”

  She smiled faintly. She couldn’t quite say she was pleased to meet him, not yet. She wished he were a little less disheveled, a little more genteel. She wished circumstances hadn’t driven her to the opposite end of the continent, as far from her home as it was possible to be without leaving the country.

  Wishes weren’t going to get her anywhere, though, so she accepted h
is firm grip as he shook her hand, and consoled herself with the thought that at least his fingernails were clean. As soon as he released her, she took another long sip of wine.

  He leaned back in his chair, scrutinizing her. She felt exposed, like a job applicant unprepared for an interview and doing everything wrong.

  “Well,” he said, then fell silent as a squadron of thundering motorcycles cruised down the street nearby, riders hooting and mufflers roaring. When the night air grew relatively tranquil once more, he began again. “The deal is, I have this niece.”

  She nodded.

  “I’ve had custody of her for three years,” he explained. “When I first got her, I thought it was just going to be for a few months, but when Lawton and Joyce—that’s my brother-in-law’s brother-in-law and sister—”

  Pamela stopped nodding and held up her hand. “Your brother-in-law’s brother-in-law?”

  Joe smiled apologetically. “Okay,” he drawled, as if speaking more slowly would clarify everything. “See, Lizard—that’s my niece—”

  “Lizard?”

  “Elizabeth. But she likes to be called Lizard.”

  “Lizard,” Pamela echoed quietly. If marrying Joe had seemed like an absurd idea before, it seemed even more absurd now. How on earth could she take a man who had a niece named Lizard seriously?

  “Yeah. Now, Lizard’s parents—that would be my sister and brother-in-law—died.”

  “Oh—I’m sorry.”

  He disguised his sorrow behind a shrug that didn’t hide much. His uncanny blue eyes grew momentarily dark, the summer-sky irises obscured by storm clouds. Then the moment passed. “Well, anyway. That was three years ago. Lawton and Joyce said they’d take Lizard, which made sense. They were married, they were rich, they could afford nannies and all that crap. Only problem was, they were involved in setting up some sort of development deal in Singapore. So they asked me if I could keep Lizard for just a couple of months until they wrapped things up overseas. And I said sure. But then a couple of months turned into a couple of years. Three years, to be exact. I suppose those Singapore development deals can get complicated.”

  So could stories about orphaned children named Lizard, Pamela thought, although she refrained from saying so. She only nodded again.

  “Anyway, about a month ago, I got this letter from Joyce saying they were finally done doing their thing in Singapore, and they were returning to California, and they intended to take Lizard. But by now Lizard and I have been together a long time. We’ve grown pretty close.”

  “How old was she when you got her?”

  “Two.”

  Pamela didn’t know much about babies. She was an only child, so she’d never had the opportunity to observe younger siblings, or nieces and nephews. Even so, it seemed to her that the years between two and five must be significant in a child’s development.

  “I taught her the alphabet,” said Joe. “I potty-trained her. I nursed her through the chicken pox. And frankly, I’m not in much of a mood to hand her over to a couple of stuck-up financiers who haven’t even seen her in three years.”

  “I don’t blame you.”

  “So, I went to Mary DiNardi—that’s my lawyer—and asked how I could go about getting permanent custody of Lizard. And Mary said, ‘Joe, look at you. You’re thirty years old, you run a bar, you’re single and you don’t even shave regularly.’” He shot Pamela a sheepish grin. “Meanwhile, Lawton and Joyce have a ten-room house in Hillsborough and millions of bucks stashed in the bank. The fact that I potty-trained Lizard doesn’t count for much with family-court judges. My lawyer said I have to start living like a clean-cut good little boy. Specifically, she told me to marry a decent lady.” Another flash of a smile, this one curiously seductive. “You wouldn’t happen to be decent, would you?”

  Pamela shifted uncomfortably, causing the chair’s hinges to squeak. She crossed her legs, traced the rim of her glass with her finger, and managed a feeble smile. How did one answer such a question? How on earth did one go about measuring decency? Why did the mischievous glint in his eyes make her wish, for a fleeting instant, that she wasn’t quite so decent?

  “It would seem to me,” she said, steering clear of his provocative question, and his even more provocative grin, “that this child...Lizard—” she tried not to shudder at the name “—hasn’t really known any family other than you. Why would a judge award custody of her to two total strangers? I would think that after the trauma of losing her parents, the system wouldn’t want to traumatize her again.”

  “I would think so, too,” said Joe, leaning back and balancing one leg across the other knee. The position drew her attention to the faded strip of denim covering his fly. She drank some wine and was careful to keep her gaze on his face when she lowered her glass. “Thing of it is,” he continued, “Lawton and Joyce are rich. They’re respectable. They make fortunes pushing papers around. They listen to Bach. They’re such fine, fine people.” Sarcasm oozed from every syllable.

  “Do you think that marrying me would make you look respectable to a judge?”

  “Personally, I happen to think I’m just about as respectable as I can stand to be. Mary DiNardi, however—who’s taking me for three hundred and fifty bucks an hour, so she’d better know what she’s talking about—doesn’t exactly agree. She says I’ve got to project stability and maturity and all that kind of thing. And a wife—a nice, neat, well-behaved wife—is just the ticket.”

  “What does...Lizard think of this?” Pamela wondered whether she’d ever be capable of using the child’s nickname without cringing.

  “She doesn’t know anything about a custody challenge. All she knows is that Lawton and Joyce are these two mysterious people who’ve been sending her Christmas and birthday cards with funny Singapore stamps on them. She has no idea some shit-for-brains judge could rip her out of her home and force her to live with a couple of snobs she’s never even talked to. Last time she saw them was probably at her christening or thereabouts. These folks aren’t her family. I am—and Kitty, and Lois, and Birdie, and Brick. And my mother when she’s in town.”

  If Joe Brenner’s social circle included characters with names like Birdie and Brick, Pamela supposed it was no wonder he called his niece Lizard.

  “Anyway, what I’m looking for here is just a temporary arrangement. A year, tops. I’ve got a three-bedroom house, so you’d have your own room. If you met someone and fell in love, I’d only ask that you be discreet. You’re supposed to be the decent one in this situation.” He tempered his words with a smile.

  “If we had separate bedrooms—” no if about it, she thought wryly “—wouldn’t that make it obvious that the marriage is a sham?”

  “Well, of course, if some social worker stopped by to check us out, we’d have to put on a little lovey-dovey show for her. I don’t see that as an insurmountable problem.”

  “But Lizard—” wince “—would realize something was weird between us, wouldn’t she?”

  “Number one, Lizard is five years old, and I honestly don’t think she has any idea what husbands and wives do behind closed doors. Number two, people down here hang pretty loose about things. If a couple want separate rooms, they have separate rooms. No big deal.”

  Pamela mulled over what he’d told her, and she wasn’t entirely pleased. The separate rooms, the discretion, all the business-like details of the arrangement suited her fine. But the idea of presenting herself as a perfect wife and mother to a five-year-old... What did she know about raising kids? How were she and Joe going to trick a little girl into believing they were a genuine couple? As scant as Pamela’s knowledge of children was, she couldn’t shake the understanding that children were a lot harder to fool than family-court judges and social workers.

  Beyond that minor misgiving, there was another problem, a much more troubling one: Pamela was in danger.

  No matter how much she wanted to elude that danger, she couldn’t do it by hiding behind a five-year-old girl. What if—God forb
id! —Mick Morrow somehow tracked Pamela down? She didn’t want to die—but she wasn’t going to save her own life by placing an innocent child in harm’s way.

  She began to shake her head. “If it’s money you’re worried about,” Joe said, misreading her hesitation, “I’ve got to tell you, I’m not rich. But we could work something out. I’m willing to support you, put you on my insurance, pay all the expenses—”

  “No, it isn’t money,” she cut him off. She had plenty of money, an embarrassment of money. She’d withdrawn a large chunk of her savings from her bank in Seattle. She hadn’t yet opened a local bank account, because bank records were easy enough to trace. If she could deposit the money as Joe’s wife, using the name Pamela Brenner, maybe she would escape detection.

  But the child... She couldn’t take Joe’s name and his hand in marriage when doing so might place his niece in danger.

  “If it’s the sex thing,” Joe continued, “we can work that out any way you want. I’m looking for a little play-acting here. Public displays of affection, nothing more. I’m sure we—”

  “No, it’s not sex.” She stared into his eyes and felt herself tumbling into the blue, being sucked in. When a man with eyes like Joe’s talked about sex, she could forget about his earring, his beard, his slovenly apparel. She could forget about almost everything.

  But she couldn’t forget about Mick Morrow.

  “Joe,” she said, glancing away to break the spell of his enchanting gaze, “there’s something you need to know about me before this discussion goes any further.”

  He leaned forward. Tracing the line of his vision, she noticed that he was staring at her hands. She hadn’t realized she had furled them into fists so tight her knuckles had turned as white as schoolroom chalk.

  She made a concerted effort to relax—and then gave up. There was no way to say what she was about to say and remain calm. “Joe...” She sighed. “Back in Seattle, where I lived before I came here, I testified in court against a hit man.”

  Joe sat straighter and lifted his eyes to her face. He looked startled, horrified—but also sympathetic. “A hit man?”