Flirting with Danger by Bev Hardy (digital e reader TXT) 📖

her shoulders and heading for the tea and coffee making facilities, which were on a tray on one of the shelves. "Do you want a cup of tea?" she asked.

"You got coffee?" he questioned.

She knew he was going to say that. "Yes," she smiled, preparing the drinks.

"So, the fact that this Roberto has been murdered over here," she began, voicing a concern that had been niggling at her, "won't that bring more trouble across The Pond for you?"

"Maybe," he replied, "but Roberto was one of the most powerful guys in that gang, along with his brother, Tony. Now he's dead, they're gonna have troubles of their own in the city. Rival gangs will try to take territory from them," he explained.

She abandoned the drink making for a second, and turned to him. "What on earth have you gone and got yourself tangled up in now? Gangsters? Mafia? And by the way, who's working with you on this?" she asked suspiciously, waving a teaspoon at him.

He fell silent, simply staring at her.

"Luke? Don't tell me that you've been doing this all on your own. Are you mad?" she said, shocked.

"I just started investigating stuff. Thought I could get enough evidence to put them away," he explained.

"And they found you out," she remarked.

He ran both hands through his hair. "Yeah," he replied, a little dejectedly. "They sent some woman to me, a Bella Jackson..." The look on his face told her he wasn't impressed with the woman. "... She was pretendin' she wanted my services as a private investigator, that's what I was doin' as a side line to fund my investigations into the Borelli's. Anyway, turns out she was working with the Borelli's. The message was that they wanted me to join forces with them." He laughed. "Bullshit! So I decided I'd had enough, and that's when I left to come back here."

She returned to the mugs and poured the boiling water from a kettle into them.

"Who was the man you returned to New York for, the person you regarded as your brother?" she asked, finishing the drink making and approaching the desk. She placed his mug on the desk top for him and turned to take a seat on the maroon coloured sofa, which was against the opposite wall to the shelving units. She sunk into the soft cushions gratefully, cupping her hands around her mug and taking a warming sip of tea. "And how come you haven't mentioned him before?" she added.

He shrugged, and reached out for the mug, leaning back against the window sill to drink it. "Never came up in conversation. Besides, he moved out of New York for a few years so we kinda lost touch for a while. Then I came here," he replied.

"So, how do you know him? Who is he?" she pushed.

His face fell deathly serious and he glanced out of the window for a moment before he began to explain.

"His name was Danny. He was a half-brother to Tony and Roberto, only they didn't get on too well with him…"

So Danny's family were mafia.

"…Don't think they considered him a true Borelli. When they was kids, Tony and Roberto got mixed up in one of the Lower East Side gangs, real heavy handed guys. They started off running errands for them, being look out, you know, small stuff, but before they knew it, they were in over their heads. Well, the top guy, he wanted Danny too. Told them to persuade Danny to work for them. Danny wasn't interested, but the top guy thought Danny knew too much so, to prove their loyalty, he ordered Tony and Roberto to murder their brother."

He glanced sadly out of the window again, sipping his coffee.

She watched, transfixed, processing the information and waiting for him to continue in his own time.

"They was only kids really. They must have been nervous see because they shot him but never checked that he was dead. Some cop found him, left to die, bleeding out in a backstreet, but he was still alive, only just, but he was alive. It took him years to recover fully, but the cop who found him, he helped him out, gave him a new identity, you know, made sure the brothers never found out he was still alive, and helped him look after himself."

Her eyes flickered around the profile of his averted face and a soft smile touched her lips. "Luke, the cop years ago, the one who found Danny, it was you, wasn't it?"

He stilled for a second, but then nodded.

Now she had a greater appreciation for both why he cared so much about Danny and why he wanted to bring the brothers to justice so badly.

"He lived with us for a while, Ma and me, when he was recovering," he went on, "but then we decided he should move outta state, for his own safety. I didn't see him for some time, and then I moved out here. Only somehow, the brothers did find out about him…seven years ago. That was when I got the phone call and flew back. You know the rest," he finished.

He was gazing out of the window again. "Luke," she said softly. He didn't seem to hear. Placing her mug on the coffee table, she rose off the sofa and moved to stand in front of him, leaning back on the desk. He finished his coffee, and placed the mug down, glancing across at her with questioning eyes.

"I appreciate how much you cared for Danny, but facing the Borelli's alone was simply suicidal. Whatever made you do it?" she asked as gently as possible.

Why had he? He had to admit that his actions had been impetuous even for him. Well, his partner hadn't been there. Who else did he have that he could trust as much? He'd not only lost Charlie, but his friend, and probably the one person who had it in them to prevent him from going off the rails. But she was thousands of miles away, and even if he could have found her again, he'd been cut off from his life in the UK, so what good was it? She was hardly going to move to the USA to help him bring down the Borelli's. So, he'd lost his partner, he'd lost his job, he'd lost Danny, and the following year, he lost his mother; he had no one. Okay, well there was the odd woman here and there; he wasn't a saint. But he hadn't encouraged any of them to stick around. It was a risky business he'd chosen to get mixed up in, risky and lonely, but worst of all was the danger he was to himself because, after all, he'd had nothing whatsoever to lose.

"Luke?" she questioned.

He struggled to answer her and finally blurted out, with frustration, the only thing he could think of. "I dunno, I just had to do it."

She searched his face, looking for answers. Reaching out towards him, she placed her hands gently over his.

"Luke, you have to stop this…this vendetta. You'll never win it because," she titled her head slightly, willing him to take note of what she was saying, "even if you go after the other brother and succeed, there will be more and more people coming out of the woodwork after you. It will never end," she stressed. "You can't live like that. I'm sure Danny wouldn't want you to; anyone who cares about you wouldn't want that."

Do you care?

It was on the tip of his tongue to ask it, but nah, that would sound stupid.

He glanced down at her hands on his. They seemed so much smaller. He could feel the smoothness of her skin.

When he lifted his eyes, she was gazing at him, a slight frown wrinkling her brow, her eyes soft with concern.

"You deserve to find happiness," she went on, unable to stop herself, "everyone does," she said, finally withdrawing her hands when she felt her emotions threatening to take over. She'd said enough. She just hoped he had listened. But now he was staring at her with a strange expression that she couldn't read. It unnerved her. Maybe she'd said too much?

"And what about you, Charlie?" he finally said, reaching out with one hand towards her face. Her heart rate accelerated suddenly. What was he going to do? Sliding his fingers gently into her hair that was neatly tucked behind one ear again, he freed it, letting it fall around her face. "Are you happy?" he asked. She felt her cheeks warm at his nearness. Smiling, he brushed her flushed cheek with his thumb before he dropped his hand.

She hesitated as if to think, and then nodded.

He wasn't convinced. Okay, so she wasn't unhappy, but she wasn't satisfied either. He knew it, even if she didn't. And there lay the problem. Charlie could be incredibly stubborn when she wanted to be. If she thought that everything in her life was neatly arranged, trying to talk her into ruffling things up a bit was going to be difficult. He wondered how she would react to the thought of working for MI5 again. He wasn't going to broach that subject with her though, not then anyway.

"Has he got anything stronger over there?" he asked suddenly, moving towards the drinks cabinet. She followed his path with a wary expression. He could see that there was alcohol there. "What?" he questioned, after glancing back at her, "If we're gonna be here for the night, we may as well make ourselves at home, right?"

 

 

 

 

Chapter 6

His hand moved from her wrist then to clasp hers, whilst his other hand slid onto her bare back. That touch felt so intimate; she found herself struggling to catch her breath at the feel of it.

 

 

 

 

While Luke was invading the drinks cabinet, Charlie moved back to the desk, and studied the surveillance discs with interest.

 

Luke's eyes flicked to her, in between assessing the contents of the fridge. There was a lot of alcohol there on the shelves, from whiskeys to wine, but there wasn't that much in the form of food. He hadn't eaten since he'd been on the plane, and that food had been so bad, he hadn't eaten all of that either.

 

"You see anything of interest there?" he enquired, moving wine glasses, a bottle of wine he had opened and a selection of snacks he had found in the fridge onto the coffee table. "Any discs there that you wanna hide Charlie?" he grinned.

 

Her eyes widened and she turned slowly to him, not even humouring him with an answer to that question. He didn't expect one. "Guess not, eh."

 

Luke was far too excitable that evening for her liking, especially considering that she was stuck there in that room with him. How on earth was she going to calm him down? She felt a nervous anticipation of comments like that one. Not that she wasn't more than capable of coming up with some kind of appropriately witty reply, but it was the way he watched and waited for a reaction, as if trying to read something into her response. Sometimes he seemed to know too much…or at least he thought he did. And worst of all, sometimes she gave into laughter, which only encouraged