Red Carpet Christmas Read online

  “I may lose my home.”

  “I don’t mean things. I mean people. Friends. Family.”

  “I have my son.”

  “And your brother.” As much as Michael hated him, he loved his sister. Gideon had no doubts about that.

  “But not my father.”

  “He’s still alive.”

  “Incarcerated for a crime he didn’t commit.”

  Gideon stiffened. “I didn’t lie on the stand, Simone. I saw him shoot and kill my father.”

  “It was night. The weather was bad. You had to have made a mistake.”

  “Why? Because Papa says so?”

  She threw down her fork. “Papa never lied to me.”

  “You don’t know that.”

  “He may have done things that were against the law, but I know he didn’t kill your father.”

  “You’re blind, Simone. When it comes to your family, you just don’t want to see the truth.”

  “Can’t you concede the possibility of an error?”

  “No.”

  “Well, neither can I.” She slid off her stool. “I need to get home. My son will be expecting me. Don’t bother getting up. This time, I will grab a taxi.”

  He watched her put on her coat with giant tugs. The garment twisted around and frustrated her, but she didn’t give up.

  “How could you do it, Simone? After what we shared, how we felt about each other, how could you turn around and make a life with another man so soon? How could you sleep with him, have his kid when I know you loved me?”

  This time, he was sure he saw panic in her eyes as she finished pulling on her coat. She grabbed her shoulder bag and started for the door. He put out a hand to stop her so they could finish this, but she ripped her arm away.

  “Don’t touch me!”

  Gideon simply stared at her. For a moment, she went still, as if she were a deer caught in headlights. Then, her expression crumpling, a sob escaping her, she rushed out of the place, slamming the door behind her.

  If he didn’t know better, he would swear she still felt for him what he felt for her. He would swear she’d never wanted to marry another man.

  Then why had she?

  Somehow, he’d missed connecting some of the dots.

  Chapter Nine

  As she flagged down a taxi on Damen Avenue, Simone fought back tears. She’d come so close to breaking down in front of Gideon that it scared her. Hopefully, he thought she was upset over their argument about Papa—which she was.

  But she was even more upset by his angry questions.

  The truth was that she’d still been in love with Gideon when she’d married David. David had accepted that. He’d said she would learn to love him, and she had, if not in the way he’d wanted.

  How could she when Drew had been a daily reminder of the man who’d awakened her heart before he’d crushed it?

  Not that she could tell Gideon any of that. Let him believe what he wanted. She had to put her son first. She couldn’t destroy his world, his memories of the only father he’d ever known, the father he’d adored.

  She understood that kind of love because it was the way she still felt about her own father. She knew Papa had never been a law-abiding citizen, that he’d even been involved with violence, but she had to believe that he drew the line somewhere—at cold-blooded murder.

  Drew…she had to concentrate on her son.

  He was a growing teenager who was always hungry. So putting her mind to his needs, Simone had the taxi leave her off at the local market, then walked the two blocks home with several bags of groceries.

  Knowing Drew would find out about the second murder and her involvement soon enough, Simone vowed to tell him herself. Not a pleasant task. The very thought of giving him more bad news—this kind of bad news—made her stomach knot. Somehow she would find a way to do it.

  What she couldn’t do was make him understand, not when she didn’t understand how she’d found herself in the middle of such a nightmare.

  Simone was approaching the house when she realized she couldn’t find her house keys. What the heck had she done with them? Normally she kept them in her right-hand pocket, but they weren’t there; she had too many bags to juggle to easily find them.

  She was annoyed, but thankful she kept a spare key to the kitchen door wedged in an opening under the potting bench on the back porch. Not that she’d ever had to use it before. But Drew had, several times.

  She was halfway down the narrow gangway when a furtive movement somewhere in back raised the hair at the back of her neck. Though she slowed her footsteps and narrowed her gaze, she couldn’t see anything.

  “Drew?” she called out, her pulse skittering. “What are you doing back there?”

  No answer.

  Maybe she’d imagined the movement. Or maybe it had been the neighbor’s cat streaking through her yard. Just in case…she stopped to listen for any unusual sounds.

  Nothing.

  Puffing a breath through cold lips, she cautiously continued into the backyard, her gaze roaming and digging into every corner.

  Empty.

  Her imagination was really getting to her. Making her jumpy. And no wonder, considering what she’d been through in the past few days.

  Once on the porch, Simone set the bags down on the potting bench. Even as she bent over to feel for the key, she sensed someone was there, cloaked in darkness…waiting…watching. Fingers fumbling, skin crawling, she stopped what she was doing and straightened.

  “Who’s there?” she called, even as a dark silhouette slid out from a tree near the alley. Before the man could get away, she caught a glimpse of pale hair and, certain it was Michael’s bodyguard, called out, “Ulf Nachtmann, what are you doing in my backyard?”

  Ulf stopped and turned to face her. Stepping closer, he threw up his hands in a sheepish gesture. “I was sim ply checking on you for your brother. Mr. DeNali is concerned about your safety.”

  The bodyguard was wreathed in shadow, his bulk making a scary figure despite his innocent act.

  “Michael told you to scare me half to death?”

  “You weren’t here, so I waited for you to come home to make sure you were okay. I was trying to be discreet. How could I have known you would come to the back door?”

  “Tell my brother I don’t need…never mind, I’ll do it myself.”

  Adrenaline still pumping, Simone turned her back on the guard, fetched the hidden key and unlocked the kitchen door. When she glanced into the yard, Ulf was gone. Or so it seemed. For all she knew, he could be behind the garage or waiting in the gangway. Was tonight the first night he’d been watching her? If not, had he seen her with Gideon?

  Oh, great!

  Replacing the key, she grabbed her bags, set them down in the kitchen, grabbed a phone and speed-dialed her brother.

  Michael picked up on the first ring. “DeNali.”

  Without so much as a greeting, Simone said, “Tell your watchdog to back off, Michael. Now.”

  “Well, good evening to you, too.”

  “Don’t avoid the subject.”

  “You’ll have to be more specific.”

  “Ulf nearly scared me to death. I don’t want a bodyguard, Michael, so please, don’t send him around again!”

  “I didn’t. If Ulf has been playing maverick—”

  “Then fire him!”

  With that, Simone hung up on her brother so he would know she was serious. Taking a couple of deep breaths to release her anger, she emptied the bags and put the groceries away.

  Luckily she had time to change, shower and cook up a couple of burgers before Drew walked in the door. She wasn’t hungry, but she would try to eat with her son because that was the normal thing to do.

  “Hey, Mom,” he said, the sullenness of the previous day gone when he swooped to kiss her cheek.

  “Have a good day?” she asked before she saw the bruise on his cheek. “Honey, what happened to you?”

  “Ah, nothing. I just ran in
to something.”

  “Like a fist?”

  “It’s nothing.”

  Nothing…she bit back the demand that he tell her what had happened and hoped that he would volunteer the information.

  “You need to ice it.”

  “I already did. I’m not a kid anymore, you know.”

  He was still sixteen, but she didn’t remind him of that. He was growing up fast. He used to tell her about everything, including the fights. Either he was feeling too grown up…or the fight had been about her.

  “So what about your day?” he asked. “Are you okay?”

  At least he’d gotten over his pique of the night before, and his concern had kicked in.

  “My day started great,” she told him. “The fund-raiser made even more money than expected…”

  His expression concerned, Drew asked, “What about the rest of the day?”

  “Honey, I don’t know how to tell you this except straight out. I found Nikki Albright dead.”

  “Dead? Not murdered?”

  Simone nodded.

  “And you found her…like Mr. Cecchi? They don’t suspect you did it, do they?”

  “I—I’m afraid so. We’re DeNalis, Drew. We might not use the name, but you know the police don’t differentiate.”

  Thankfully, she’d talked to her son about what it meant to be a DeNali last year when he’d had a run-in with an officer after he’d been in a fight at school. The officer had found out his connection to Michael and had made assumptions that weren’t true.

  Drew knew that his grandfather had run some illegal businesses and that he’d been imprisoned for Frank Ruscetti’s murder. She’d told him this so he would understand that if he ever got into trouble, people might assume the trouble was his fault, whether or not it was.

  “Does Uncle Mike know?”

  “I’m not sure.”

  She wouldn’t put it past her brother to have a few cops in his back pocket who would supply him with information.

  “He’ll help you, Mom, you know he will. All you have to do is say the word.”

  Simone’s voice was tight when she said, “It’s not your uncle’s job to get me out of trouble. Well, maybe he could find me a criminal lawyer if I needed one.”

  “What good is having power if you can’t use it?”

  His question took away her breath. Drew’s expression was angry and confused. He wanted to protect her, and apparently he didn’t care how.

  “Drew, you scare me when you talk like that. Your father and I taught you better. We taught you to stand for doing the right thing.”

  “If the cops arrest you, that won’t be right, will it?”

  “No, it won’t, because I didn’t kill anyone.”

  “Neither did Grandpa—that’s what you said—and look where he is.”

  “I’m not going to end up behind bars,” Simone assured him, although she knew that she might. “And I don’t want you to worry about something that’s not going to happen.”

  Drew accepted her bravado, but she could almost hear his mind working.

  If he were desperate enough to go to Michael for help, then all the sacrifices she’d made to give him a good, safe life would have been for naught.

  GIDEON WAS in a dark mood when he returned to the club a couple of hours later. He was still wondering why he’d pressed the services of Team Undercover on Simone. Though she didn’t deserve to be convicted for something she hadn’t done, she certainly didn’t seem to appreciate his help in clearing her name. Then again, what had he expected from her—that she would be so grateful that she would simply decide he’d been telling the truth about her father all along?

  Trying to keep as detached as he’d been while working on the team’s previous cases was proving to be impossible. He would simply have to try harder.

  With that resolution made, he entered the security office where Gabe sat before the computer, exactly as he’d been hours earlier when the call had come in from Cass.

  “How’s it going?”

  Gabe spun around in his chair. “I got a few interesting hits. More interesting follow-up.”

  “As in…”

  “The napkin you gave me…the phone number belongs to a woman named Josie Ralston. She lives in a highrise over on Hampden Court. I happen to know the security guy there.”

  “And?”

  “He says Ms. Ralston only moved in a couple of months ago. And she’s not responsible for the rent.”

  “Cecchi?”

  Gabe nodded.

  “The mistress he denied having.”

  “Bingo.”

  “Good work. I’ll need that address. What else?”

  “This is even more interesting. Anthony Viglio, supposedly a new case, gave Cecchi a huge retainer, so he immediately caught my interest.”

  “And?”

  “The man’s dead.”

  Gideon started. “Another murder?”

  “Car accident. He was buried six months ago. A dead man hired Al Cecchi to represent him.”

  Gabe handed Gideon a printout of the obituary with a photo of a small dark-haired, dark-eyed man.

  “A dead man hiring a lawyer—that’s fresh. How big a retainer?”

  “Half a mil.”

  Gideon whistled. “Our dead man must have done something really bad, huh? Got right up from the grave and…what crime had he supposedly not committed that he needed Cecchi’s services?”

  “What else? Murder.”

  Though they couldn’t figure out how this worked into the case, Gideon had a gut feeling it somehow did. Maybe once he brought Simone up to speed on this supposed client, she would remember why the name had seemed familiar to her.

  Gideon was about to call Simone to ask, but decided instead to show up on her doorstep. First he would give her some time to cool down. He had some phone calls to make and checks to write to vendors, so for the next few hours he busied himself with club business.

  The whole time he tried to work, he was distracted with thoughts of Simone.

  He wished he were over her. He had hoped that being in contact with her would finally get her out of his system. No such luck. She had turned out to be as fierce a mother as she had been a daughter. She was all about family, something he missed and wanted. He made an occasional call to his mother or sister, but he hadn’t seen either of them in a few years. He didn’t think he’d ever fill the void in his life…until Simone had come back into it.

  Wondering how Simone felt about him in her heart of hearts drove him to distraction. He would swear she still cared, but what did that mean exactly? She’d turned her back on him once. When this was over, would she be able to cut him out of her life as easily as she had the last time? Maybe he was crazy but he wanted her more than ever, no matter that she was still misguided in believing her father instead of him.

  DeNali loyalty—there was nothing stronger. He’d conquered it once when he’d won her heart…and then had lost to it when he’d testified against Richard DeNali.

  Unable to concentrate on work any longer, Gideon left the club and drove toward Lincoln Park West. Finding an empty metered space on Clark Street was like winning the lottery. Walking, he passed nearby store windows glowing with Christmas displays and lampposts dripping with garlands of pine.

  Turning the corner onto Simone’s street, Gideon admired the century-old homes and two flats. They, too, were dressed in holiday decorations. Halfway down the block, he arrived at Simone’s and bounded up her front steps. He noticed the tree in the window had lights but no ornaments. Seeing her through the living room window, he knocked at the door rather than ringing the bell.

  Simone started and when she peered out the window, she frowned at him.

  The frown was still in place when she opened the front door halfway and wedged herself in the opening. “Gideon! What are you doing here?”

  “I have some interesting information.”

  Simone just stood there, almost as if she were debating letting him inside. Ap
parently she hadn’t yet cooled off from their earlier disagreement. She appeared perturbed rather than angry, but soon any expression was replaced by a neutral mask that was becoming all too familiar to him.

  She backed away from the door. “Come in.”

  Gideon stepped inside. The room had an inviting warmth with its fire and twinkling Christmas tree lights that immediately made him feel at home. Too bad he couldn’t say the same for Simone herself. From her, he felt a definite chill.

  “So what is it?” she asked.

  “Aren’t you going to take my coat?” He removed it and handed it to her.

  “If you must.” She hung it on a wooden tree to one side of the door.

  “Offer me a seat?”

  Her mouth tightened. “Take your pick.”

  “A glass of brandy?”

  “Gideon!”

  She was glaring at him, her green eyes glittering. And he was suddenly turned on. He wanted to take her right here, in front of the fireplace.

  As if she were a mind-reader, she gasped and stepped back. “If you have something important to tell me, out with it!”

  He leaned against the back of the couch that faced the fireplace. “Anthony Viglio is dead.”

  “What?” The delicate skin between her eyebrows furrowed. “Viglio…one of Al’s clients. How? When?”

  He handed her the printout with the photo. “Car accident months before he hired Cecchi.”

  She stared down at the paper in hand. “I—I don’t understand.”

  “I don’t, either. Apparently a dead man hired the firm to represent him. You thought you recognized the name. Anything more on that?”

  She shook her head. “I know the name, but not why. I’m sorry.”

  “Think on it some more.”

  “That’s it, then?”

  “In a rush to see me go?”

  “No, of course not. I’m just tired. Was there something else?”

  There was. With her. Definitely. He could sense it. Only what?

  “The number on that napkin I found in Cecchi’s desk—it belonged to a woman named Josie Ralston. She lives two blocks from here on Hampden Court,” he said, momentarily distracted by footsteps overhead. Then he realized they must belong to her son Drew. “Guess who held the lease on her apartment?”