Sheri WhiteFeather – Marriage of Revenge (страница 5)

As if he hadn’t been there already. After Talia walked out on him, he’d saddled up with Satan too many times to count.

She activated her printer and handed him a copy of the Nevada GA list she’d compiled. “Happy?”

“Are you?” he shot back.

“Ecstatic,” she droned. “I can’t wait to become your phony wife.”

“We’re going to sleep in the same room.”

“Over my dead body.”

“That can be arranged.”

“How? Are you going to contract Julia and Miriam’s hit man to do me in?”

“If only I could. We don’t even know who he is.” Suddenly he thought about the person who’d asked them to help the FBI find Julia and Miriam. Thunder’s brother, Dylan, was the concerned party. Dylan had inadvertently rescued Julia from a kidnapping just days before she and her mother had disappeared, and now he was tangled up in their lives. Dylan even felt guilty about the assassin, but that was a long story.

“I don’t need to hire someone to take you out,” Talia said. “I could do it myself.”

“Go ahead and try,” he retorted. “Better yet, you can do it while we’re sharing a room.”

“I’m serious about that, Aaron.”

“So am I. It’s part of our cover.”

“Bull.”

“If we’re going to pull this off, if we’re going to become a married couple, then we have to behave accordingly, to get into character, to make our cover believable.” He glanced at the fragile butterfly, itching to touch it again, to threaten to break it. “We’re not going to blow this, Talia. We’re not going to put our lives on the line.”

She gave him a cynical look. “No matter how much we want to waste each other?”

Touché, Aaron thought, recalling her pearl-handled gun. “We’re going to pose as a couple on vacation in Nevada. I’ve been working on the details.” He paused, explained further. “I’ve got a makeup man on the payroll who will teach us how to change the way we look, just to be sure that the assassin doesn’t recognize us. We don’t know who he is, but he might know who we are.”

“I don’t mind changing my appearance.”

He took an unabashed gander at her. “I’m still deciding on the color of your hair.”

“Red,” she told him.

“We’ll see.” He wanted to tug her head back, to use her hair to rein her in. “SPEC will provide us with new identities, but I’ll make sure the feds approve them.”

“How long will we be gone?”

“Two weeks. Three if we need more time. I’ll make the travel arrangements.”

“I’ll be there with wedding bells on.” She fluttered her lashes, then mocked him with a breathy seduction. “I can’t wait to shack up with my husband.”

He didn’t appreciate her rotten-tempered wit. He stood and left her office, wanting to choke himself with his tie, right before he strangled her with it.

There was nothing funny about how badly he wanted to check into a hotel with her.

Nothing at all.

Three

Less than a week later, Talia sat next to Aaron on a flight that took them to Reno. Silent, she sipped apple juice and picked at the snack the flight attendant had distributed.

As specified, Aaron had created their cover, right down to her auburn wig. The chin-length hairstyle he’d chosen for her was straight and sleek. The designer clothes he’d suggested were from last season’s collection. He’d told her that she was going to play an elegant thirtysomething wife who stood by the man she’d married. Or that was the impression she gave. In truth, she was struggling to hold her emotions together, to remain loyal to a gambler who maxed out their credit cards, drove a car that was beyond his means and insisted on the finest foods and best hotels.

A pretentious Californian, she thought.

The trip to Nevada was the husband’s idea. He wanted to hit Reno, Carson City, Las Vegas and Laughlin, sightseeing in between. But his wife had other ideas. Once their vacation was under way, she was going to threaten him with divorce if he didn’t get some help.

According to Aaron, they loved each other. Deeply, desperately. So her threat was going to work. But not without a struggle. He didn’t want to lose his wife, but he didn’t want to admit that he was a compulsive gambler. That he was ill. That his actions were destroying their lives.

Talia glanced at Aaron. He’d changed his appearance, too. He’d added threads of gray to his hair, making him seem a bit older than he was. He’d changed the color of his eyes with greenish-gold contacts and dusted his skin with an amber-hued bronzer, softening the deep, dark tone. Like Talia, his features had been altered with carefully applied prosthetics. Although he still carried an ethnic flair, his heritage wasn’t easy to define. To her, he looked like a suntanned American with European roots.

He toasted her with his cocktail, and Talia wished that his non-Native genetics were real. If his culture hadn’t been an issue, he would have married her all those years ago. Their relationship would have worked.

After their plane touched down in Reno, Aaron rented a luxury car, which they would use on the remainder of their trip.

His new name was Andy Torres, and hers was Tina. They lived in Los Angeles, and he was a real estate agent who gambled away most of his commissions, chasing his dream to win big and maintain the lifestyle he craved. She ran a successful Internet business, but his losses were cutting into her hard-earned endeavors and putting them deeper in debt.

Once they arrived at the Reno hotel, Talia’s nerves kicked in. She was going to spend the next two to three weeks posing as Aaron’s wife, sharing rooms with him at night, waking up each morning with the shower running, watching him emerge with a towel wrapped around his waist.

This was too close for comfort, she thought. A job she should have refused. But she wanted to find Julia and her mother. She wanted to help them survive, to turn them over to the FBI for safekeeping.

Julia and Miriam didn’t know a hit man had been contracted to kill them. Originally Julia had been kidnapped as a threat, as a means to force Miriam into paying her interest-bearing debt. Only Miriam hadn’t complied. After Julia was rescued, she and her daughter had run away.

Then came the hired assassin.

Aaron handed Talia a key card. “We’re on the fourth floor. Poolside.”

She merely nodded. The hotel was big and brightly lit, with a maze of slot machines and gaming tables at its disposal.

Her husband, as she was forcing herself to think of him for the sake of their cover, had an anxious gleam in his eye. He looked like the gambler he was supposed to be.

But he wasn’t, of course. He was the former lover who’d yanked out her heart, who was reaching for her hand while the busy bellhop tagged their luggage.

She wanted to tell him to leave her alone, but Tina, the wife she was portraying, wouldn’t cause a scene in public. So she let him hold her hand.

In the crowded elevator, he lifted it to his lips, brushing it with a barely there kiss.

Gallant, sexy.

Her entire body went warm.

When he smiled, she leaned into his ear and called him a jerk. He kept smiling, as though she’d just whispered something soft and sweet.

Once they were alone in the room, she ripped her hand from his.

“Don’t get testy,” he said, looking tall and tanned and much too smug.

“Then don’t get so affectionate.” She fought the sensual chill he’d given her. “Andy doesn’t need to be all over his wife.”

“Did I tell you that Tina and Andy have a great sex life?” He sat on the edge of the bed and waited for the bellhop. “After they fight, they make love.”

“Like we used to?” The solitary bed was a problem, she thought. A major obstacle. “I’ll be giving you a pillow and a blanket, and you’ll be sleeping on the floor, Romeo.”

“No way, Juliet. I’m going to—”

A knock sounded at the door, and Aaron quit talking and answered the summons, allowing the bellhop to enter. He tipped the young man generously, playing his Andy Torres part with ease. Andy wouldn’t let anyone at the hotel call him cheap. He wanted the employees to think he was rich.

After the bellhop left, he turned to Talia. “Change into a pretty dress, and we’ll haunt the casino. And after I win some money, I’ll take you out for a candlelit dinner.”

“We’re not here to play.”

“Andy is.”

She narrowed her eyes. “Andy is going to lose his shirt.”

“Not tonight. Tonight he feels lucky. Besides, Aaron is a hell of a craps player.”

“I’m not interested in a candlelit dinner.”

“Yeah, but Tina is. She needs to be close to Andy. She needs to pretend their lives are normal before she threatens to divorce him.”

“I’m looking forward to that part. I can’t wait to burst Andy’s bubble.”