Trust Me on This Read online

  Tom was handing Alec back his identification when she turned to tell him to hurry up. “Well, this is interesting,” he said to Alec. He gestured to the brunette. “This little lady has some information too.”

  Alec looked at the little lady appraisingly. “Hold on to her, will you?” he said to Tom. “I think we may have some information of our own.”

  “I want a deal,” Sherée said.

  * * *

  Dennie sat down at the table in a flurry of purple jersey, praying the fourth button would hold or she’d get arrested again. “Sorry,” she said to Bond. “We were up late last night.”

  Bond smiled back into her cleavage. “I heard. I bet that doesn’t happen often.”

  Dennie heard Alec stir beside her and kicked him on the ankle to make him behave. “Only when I get a house,” she said. “I am getting one, right?”

  “Right.” Bond tore his eyes from her breasts with great difficulty and shoved the contract across to Alec.

  “Great deal,” Alec enthused, and signed with a flourish.

  Dennie took the contract and handed it to Bond, leaning closer as she did so. “I want to watch you sign it,” she whispered.

  He straightened a little and shot a smile around the room. Then the smile faded. Dennie followed the direction of his eyes and saw Sherée, somehow detached from Tom, walking as fast as she could toward the lobby doors.

  “Brian?” Dennie said, and leaned closer. “Honey?”

  He turned and looked directly into her cleavage. “I thought I saw somebody I knew,” he said, his eyes moving from Dennie’s breasts to Sherée’s retreat and back to Dennie’s breasts again.

  Oh, hell, Dennie thought, and drew in as deep a breath as she could, filling her lungs all the way to her toes. The fourth button popped, and she said, “Whoops,” and shoved the pen in Bond’s hand. “Sign it, honey.”

  He signed.

  “From now on, you wear turtlenecks,” Alec said.

  An hour later, Dennie’s life was a little simpler. Bond had been taken downtown for further questioning—“Like the next fifteen years,” Alec said—and Sherée had finished explaining her bolt—“I was so nervous, I just needed some fresh air”—and Donald was making his move on Victoria once more, which was vaguely amusing since this time it wasn’t Dennie’s trauma.

  “How clever of you to trick this Bond fellow,” Donald was saying to Victoria. “Although you really should have told me. I could have been a geat help.”

  “You were a great help, Donald,” Victoria said, looking around for someone. “I’m going to miss you.”

  “Nonsense,” Donald said. “I realize now that the argument we had in the elevator was because you were distracted by all of this. You’ll marry me yet, you’ll see.”

  “Actually, she probably won’t,” Alec said, coming to stand beside Dennie. “Aunt Vic is married to her career. Nice try, though, Mr. Compton. Best of luck in the future.”

  Dennie leaned against him a little, and his arm went around her. He’d rescued her, he’d been there when she’d fallen, just as he’d promised.

  For some reason, Dennie wasn’t as grateful about that as she thought she’d be.

  “Nonsense,” Donald was saying. “A woman like Victoria should be married.”

  “That’s what I thought,” Harry growled from behind him. “That’s why I asked her.”

  Dennie felt Alec’s arm drop away from her.

  “Harry?” he said.

  “If you think I’m going to ask for her hand in marriage from you,” Harry snarled at him, “you’re nuts.”

  “Let me get this straight.” Alec looked from Harry to Vic and back again. “You weren’t around for the arrest this morning, which is unheard of, and now you’re marrying my aunt and moving to Columbus?”

  “No,” Harry said. “I’m marrying your aunt and going God knows where. Chicago is yours. I quit.”

  “You quit.” Alec swallowed, and then he looked at Victoria. “You’re going to take Harry onto a college campus with you.”

  “No, I quit too,” Victoria said.

  Dennie patted his shoulder. “Hang in there. Change is good for you.”

  “I thought that was trauma,” Alec said.

  “That too,” Dennie said. “Say congratulations to your nice aunt and new uncle.”

  “Uncle Harry?” Alec said, and Harry said, “Oh, hell.”

  * * *

  Another hour later and the lobby had emptied, Harry and Vic gone to catch a plane and Donald off to console himself with a drink and a sympathetic Sherée, who promised to tell him everything she’d done to save him when she’d turned state’s evidence against Bond.

  Alec was never happier to see people go in his life.

  “I don’t want another morning like this one,” he said, putting his arm around Dennie and trying to steer her toward the elevators. “I think we should go upstairs to bed and start this day over.”

  “I can’t.” Dennie stood still, and Alec had to stop or lose her.

  “Is this the Janice Meredith thing?” he asked. “Because I can fix that.”

  “I don’t want you to fix it,” Dennie said. “Remember that thing you said about catching me until I was ninety-six?”

  “Yes,” Alec said. “And I will.”

  “I don’t want you to,” Dennie said. “I want to catch myself. I need to know I can make it myself. Alone.”

  Alec felt cold. “I was with you until you got to the last word.”

  “Listen, all my life Patience was there for me.” Dennie came closer to him until she was almost touching him, her eyes directly on his. “And then today you were there. But there was a tiny moment, only a couple of minutes, where I had to fight my own battle. And I liked it. I just never got a chance to finish it.” She bit her lip. “I love you, Alec, but I have to do this first. I need to be on my own.”

  “How long?” Alec asked, and his voice cracked as he said it.

  “I don’t know,” Dennie said. “Six months. A year. As long as it takes for me to know that I don’t need you to save me. Then I can come back to you and just need you to love me.”

  He looked so unhappy that she almost relented, but just as she was about to give in, he stepped back. “Okay. How soon do you have to start?”

  “Now,” Dennie said, and he sighed and said, “I figured that. Janice Meredith?”

  Dennie nodded. “She and the police are waiting for me in the manager’s office. And you have to go downtown for the Bond thing anyway, and then you have a plane to catch. I heard Harry tell you so.”

  He said, “I can change the flight,” and she shook her head.

  “I need to get moving on this,” she told him. “I’ll call you when I get settled. I just need the time first.”

  “Right.” Alec sighed and took a business card and a pen from his breast pocket. “This is my home phone,” he said as he wrote, “and the business phone, fax, and e-mail are on the card. Call collect. And call often.”

  He sounded unhappy but resigned, and she took the card from him and said, “I’ll call a lot.” She stretched up and kissed him, and he caught her to him and changed the kiss from a good-bye into a promise, and she didn’t ever want it to stop. “I have to go,” she said when she finally pulled away, and he let her go, but then he called her name when she was halfway across the lobby.

  “Button up,” he said when she turned. “I don’t think Janice Meredith is going to appreciate the effect of those three buttons the way I do.”

  Dennie laughed and buttoned up, and then she watched him walk toward the lobby doors and out of her life. Just for a while, she told herself, but there were no guarantees. Life was what you went after.

  Armed with that thought, she walked into the manager’s office and found Janice Meredith sitting there alone.

  “I sent the police away,” Janice said, still looking at Dennie as if she were roadkill. “But I’m still not giving you the interview.”

  Dennie put her hands on her