himself into this mess and it was up to him to get himself out of it.
“Hey,” he said brightly, after a glance at his watch, “look at the time!”
“Rafe. Wait a minute—”
But he was already on his feet. “Great seeing you guys,” he said, and scrambled for the door.
Nick and Falco watched him go. Then they looked at each other.
“You got any idea what just happened?” Nick said.
Falco shook his head. “Not in the slightest.”
Nick nodded and signaled for another round of beer.
Rafe had taxied downtown.
His condo was on Fifth Avenue, in the midsixties. Any way you looked at it, it was a long walk home, but that was a good thing. Long walks usually helped clear his head.
Involving his brothers had not been a good idea. Not that he’d really involved them. He hadn’t told them much of anything, but what he had told them was not good.
Still, the confrontation, if you could call it that, had had one positive effect. It had made him face reality. He’d been dealing with this as if he were standing outside the problem, observing it. He wasn’t. What he was, he thought as he passed a group of suburban women in for some shopping and dressed more for a New Jersey mall than for the eclectic streets of Soho, what he was, was a man standing in a hole six feet deep, busy digging himself in deeper.
He’d married Chiara, yes, but given the same circumstances, he’d have done it again. What kind of man would turn his back on a desperate woman? And it wasn’t because of how she looked, those big violet eyes, that trembling mouth, or of how that mouth had felt under his, or of how she’d felt in his arms.
She’d needed help. He’d offered it. So, okay. The marrying part had been necessary.
What had been going on since then was not. The arguing. The accusations. What was the point? It was a done deal. And then, this morning… Proof of how crazy things had gotten. He couldn’t imagine why he’d tried to jump her bones.
To say she wasn’t his type was a laugh. She had a pretty face, yeah, but so did a million other women, and none of those million other women went around looking like little old ladies. None of them would ever look at him as if he were a mustachioed villain.
None of them was a wife he didn’t want. And none of them had hang-ups about sex.
Not that Chiara had seemed to have many of those this morning. That kiss. The way she’d clung to him. Moaned into his mouth. Arched her body against his, lifted herself to him…
Just what he needed. Turning himself on while he walked down a crowded street. Oh, yes, that was a great idea.
He swung toward a shop window, found himself staring at a display of hammers and power tools while he fought for control. That was another thing. When had he ever had to struggle for self-control? Never. Not since he’d left the Marines. Now he fought for it all the time. Either he was furious at his wife or so turned on that he couldn’t see straight for wanting her and—
“And she isn’t your wife,” he said sharply.
A couple coming out of the store gave him a wary look.
“Sorry,” Rafe said, “sorry. I was just—”
He was just losing his mind. The couple moved quickly past him. He took some deep breaths, began walking again.
It was time to move on. She wanted a divorce. So did he. He pulled his cell phone from his pocket as he reached the corner. The light turned red. Time to separate the tourists from the natives. The tourists stayed on the curb. The New Yorkers, Rafe among them, kept going. A car horn bleeped. A voice shouted something. Rafe met the driver’s eyes, flashed a look that silenced him.
Rafe stepped onto the curb, brought up his contact list, selected Marilyn Sayers’s number. Her phone rang and rang. When it finally picked up, what he got was not her but her voice mail.
“Marilyn,” he said impatiently, “it’s Rafe Orsini. Pick up if you’re there. Or call me back, fast. It’s urgent.”
He’d hardly closed the phone when it rang. He glanced at the face plate, saw with relief that it was her.
“Marilyn. Thanks for getting back to me so fast. No, I’m okay. I’m just in a messy situation, is all. See—” She interrupted. He blinked. “You’re where?”
She was in Istanbul. Five thousand miles away. Something about the first vacation she and her husband had taken in years, blah-blah-blah, but Rafe didn’t give a damn. All that registered was that she’d be gone another week.
“A week?” He shook his head as he navigated a particularly crowded stretch of Sixth Avenue. “Impossible. I have a problem. A personal problem. And—Marilyn?”
The call broke up, then died. Rafe cursed, hit redial. Marilyn picked up and said they had a bad connection.
“Yeah. I know. Listen, this problem I have—”
She interrupted again, told him to get in touch with her partner. He’d handle things. Rafe shook his head, as if she could see him. Sayers’s partner was ninety if he was a day, a starchy old guy who wore a vest, carried a pocket watch and took ten years to shuffle across a room.
Explain to him how he’d come to have a wife who wasn’t a wife? Ask him to expedite things so they could get divorced quickly because if they spent another day together, he was liable to strip his wife-who-wasn’t-a-wife out of her ugly black clothes and bare all her soft, sweet flesh to his eyes and hands and mouth?
“No good,” he growled. “I need you, not your partner.”
It was useless. Sayers was sorry but—The line went dead. Rafe snarled and closed the phone with a vengeful snap.
Okay. What now? Easy. Get Chiara out from under his roof. A week’s wait was nothing, once he’d done that. Out of sight, out of mind.
He’d find her a place to live. It was an excellent idea, one that would bolster the fact that the marriage wasn’t a marriage at all. And how hard could it be to find someplace to stash her? The city was loaded with real estate agents. He just needed one who’d move his request to the top of the list.
Of course!
Rafe flipped the phone open, checked his contact list again, hit a button.
“Chilton Realtors.”
“Elaine Chilton, please.”
It was the perfect solution. Why deal with an agent he didn’t know when he had one at his fingertips? He’d met the Chilton woman somewhere. A party, a dinner. It didn’t matter. She’d tugged his phone from his hand after he’d taken a call, smiled prettily and programmed in her number.
“In case you ever need me,” she’d purred.
He hadn’t. He’d been involved with Ingrid at the time but he sure as hell needed her now.
“Hello?”
“Elaine? It’s Rafe Orsini.”
“Well, well, well,” she said in a throaty whisper, “how are you, Mr. Orsini?”
He said he was fine and then he cut to the chase, said he was interested in seeing her.
“It’s urgent,” he said.
She gave a sexy little laugh. “How nice!”
Rafe felt a second’s unease. Were they talking about the same thing?
“Where are you?” she asked.
He told her.
“Perfect. I have a rental a couple of blocks away.”
“What’s it like?”
Another