Fake I.D. Wife Page 3

“Just assessing the work we have to do.” Cass stepped away from the refrigerator and touched Elise’s long, light brown hair. “We’ll have to change the style and color. Makeup. Eye color. I hope you can adapt to contacts quickly.” As an afterthought, she added, “And then there’s your voice, of course. A little lower, a little southern. The way you walk—”

  “Whoa, you want to change my looks?”

  “We can’t have you going around looking like Elise Mitchell, who is supposed to be dead.” Cass cocked her head and squinted at her. “Though something is different about you, anyway. It’s the nose—”

  “Broken after I pitched into the river.” Elise self-consciously fingered her nose. Henry had done his best, but it had set a tiny bit crooked, and the swelling hadn’t completely gone down. “It doesn’t look too bad, does it?”

  “No, just different. Which is good, I guess.”

  Elise nodded. “How long is this transformation going to take?”

  “It depends on how motivated you are to keep Elise Mitchell dead.”

  “I’m motivated.”

  Cass was staring deep into her eyes, as if trying to read her thoughts. Then, seeming to approve of whatever it was she saw there, she nodded.

  “Good. In the meantime, I can offer you a place to stay until you get your plan together.”

  Elise trembled with relief. “I was hoping you could help there. I don’t have much in the way of resources left. Enough for groceries and a few bus rides. I’ll need traveling money once I get Eric.”

  Cass considered that for a moment, then said, “Maybe I can help you with that, as well.”

  STILL DISGRUNTLED that Gideon had hired the flamboyant new hostess against his advice a couple of weeks before, Logan felt his antennae go up when Cassandra walked into the club early, followed by an equally showy friend. This one was a little shorter and a little more rounded, especially in the hips. Actually, his own taste ran to well-rounded women; he equated the gaunt high-fashion look with those starving people to whom his church had sent food when he was a kid.

  This one was a looker, short bronze hair spiked with a froth of pale golden red, wide green eyes smudged with the same golden-brown tone as her skimpy dress. Those legs were a knockout, too—long and shapely.

  Too bad her association with their new hostess was enough to put him off.

  “So, who do we have here?” he asked, his gaze aimed at Cassandra.

  “If it’s any of your business—”

  “It is.”

  “—this is my friend.”

  He noticed she didn’t give him a name. Having checked Cassandra Freed for himself, Logan knew she’d been incarcerated for theft. Immediately suspicious, he wondered if this was a friend from stir.

  “You gotta name?” he asked the knockout.

  Her eyes widened and she licked her lips nervously. “Yes, it’s, uh—”

  “Nicole,” Cass interrupted. “Nicole Hudson.”

  The friend appeared surprised, but only for a moment. Her expression quickly turned neutral and Logan felt shut out.

  Cassandra tugged her shorter friend down the hall. “Come on, let’s go see Gideon.”

  “Maybe this isn’t such a good idea,” the Nicole wannabe said, her voice husky and faintly southern.

  Smelling trouble, Logan straightened his suit lapels and followed.

  FRIGHTENED BY THE MAN Cass had told her was in charge of club security, Elise wanted to run from him. Every fiber of her being told her that Logan Smith was trouble. He seemed to think like a cop; he was fit and muscular like a cop and he definitely talked like a cop…which meant he probably was one.

  An ex-one, maybe.

  Probably a detective, if the suit was any indication—though, oddly enough, he wore his shirt open at the throat. The tailored cut of the suit complemented his brawn; the soft gray of the cloth, his coloring. His light brown spiked buzz cut was feathered at the temples with what she figured was premature silver—he looked to be in his mid-thirties. His eyes were gray, and in this light looked hard and silvery, too.

  Sensing a buzz of her own in his presence, Elise reminded herself that cops and authority figures of any kind weren’t her favorite people.

  As Cass stopped at a door and knocked, Elise surreptitiously glanced over her shoulder. Yep, he walked like a cop, too, like he was stalking her with intent—

  “Come in,” came a deep voice from the office.

  Even knowing the gorgeous dark-haired, deep-blue–eyed man behind the desk was the club owner, Gideon, the man who might hold her fate in his hands, Elise was distracted by the equally attractive if suspicious Logan Smith lurking behind her.

  Cass rudely closed the door in his face. “Can we speak alone?” she asked Gideon.

  “I can give you a few minutes.” When Logan opened the door and stepped into the room, a ticked-off expression making his features as hard as those eyes, Gideon waved him off, saying, “Later.”

  A thrill shot up Elise’s spine at the look Logan gave her before grunting “Fine,” and stepping back into the hallway.

  “So talk,” Gideon said, leaning back in his leather chair.

  Cass was all smiles now. “This is a friend of mine, Gideon. Nicole Hudson. She needs a job.”

  “Anything,” Elise said. “I understand you need a dishwasher.”

  “I do. But why would you want something so menial?”

  Before Elise could answer, Cass lied, “Her boyfriend kicked her out without proper compensation. She needs some fast money. And, uh, she needs it…in cash.”

  “So you want me to give her a job of any kind, and you want me to pay her under the table.”

  “That would do it.”

  “What kind of trouble are you in?” he asked, pinning Elise with his gaze.

  “N-no trouble.” Elise’s heart was pumping so hard that she almost forgot her southern accent. Then she got herself under control. “You won’t even know I’m here, I promise. Except that I will be. Working hard, of course.”

  “I assume that your needing cash means you don’t have identification.”

  Cass began, “Of course—”

  “I asked her,” Gideon said pointedly.

  Elise licked her lips and tried to figure out the right answer. If she admitted as much—that she had nothing to prove she was Nicole Hudson—would he call in his security chief to throw her out? Or worse? And if she didn’t, would he refuse to give her work, anyway?

  “I don’t have any identification on me,” she hedged. Not a lie, not an admission. “I let my driver’s license expire.” Which was true. She’d been in lockup at renewal time.

  “Credit cards?”

  “If I could afford credit cards…”

  “Right. You wouldn’t need this job so badly.” Gideon fixed her with his gaze and asked, “So, when did you get out of Grass Creek?”

  Elise nearly choked at the mention of the women’s correctional facility. “H-how did you know?”

  “That’s where Cassandra was incarcerated.”

  “I didn’t tell you that!” Cass protested.

  “True,” Gideon agreed. “But I make sure I know everything about my employees. Even the ones who haven’t done time. You’re very pale, so why don’t you sit—Nicole, is it?”

  Elise nodded and took a seat. How was she going to get out of this? She gave Cass a wild look. At the moment, her friend didn’t seem quite so sure of herself. Great.

  Cass looked to Gideon. “I know things about people and—”

  “What kinds of things?”

  “The kind no one has to tell me. Call it intuition, if you want. I know you can trust her, just as I knew you would hire me the moment we connected.”

  “I don’t quite remember it that way.”

  Cass smiled. “But you did hire me.”

  “You told me the truth. She hasn’t.”

  “C-coming here was a mistake,” Elise choked out, and got to her feet. “Please, just forget I was ever here.”

&n
bsp; “It wasn’t a mistake!” Cass insisted, hanging on to Elise so she couldn’t run from the room. “You can trust Gideon.”

  “How do I know?”

  “Because I know.”

  Elise’s gut twisted as she sat back down. She remembered murmurings at the correctional facility about Cass being a little spooky because she knew things without being told. Dear Lord, she prayed Cass’s instincts, however one defined them, were correct in this instance.

  “I need the money so I can save my child,” Elise told Gideon. “He’s in danger. I have to get him to safety, no matter what it takes.”

  Gideon stared at her for a moment, then nodded. “So far, so good.”

  Obviously he believed her. But Elise’s relief was short-lived.

  He asked, “Where is this child?”

  “With relatives,” she said evasively.

  “And he’s not safe with them?”

  “No.”

  “Why not? What are you afraid of?”

  Elise debated telling him more. Had she gone too far to back out? Maybe not. Maybe she could leave and get a job elsewhere. But Gideon’s expression stayed her. He really wanted to know…almost as if he cared.

  She said it before she could change her mind. “I’m afraid one of them might kill him for my late husband’s estate.”

  Surprise registered in the eyes of the man behind the desk. “And your late husband—was he murdered?”

  Elise bit her lip, then nodded.

  “Well, I’ll be… So you’re not dead, after all.”

  “W-what?”

  “I read the papers. It all fits. Elise Mitchell, sentenced for the murder of her husband—”

  “No, I didn’t murder anyone!”

  “—breaks out of jail, is shot and presumed dead. Not that I ever would have recognized you. You look nothing like your photos.”

  No, she didn’t. When she looked in the mirror, she didn’t even recognize herself. Her looks and the attention she got from men made her nervous. She was uncomfortable in her own skin.

  Now it seemed all that work on her had been for naught. Gideon would call the authorities, and she would be back in prison by morning. And then Eric had no one to protect him against the greed that had killed his father.

  Tears welling in her eyes, she begged, “Please, don’t condemn my child. Please.”

  Gideon studied her before picking up the phone. Elise burst into tears.

  “Do you want a job or not?”

  “A job?” Elise choked out.

  “Apprentice to Blade Stone, my number-one bartender. You’ll be reporting to him.”

  Gideon indicated a box of tissues on his desk and made the call. Exchanging a wary look with Cass, Elise took a tissue, blew her nose and quickly pulled herself together.

  “Would you introduce her to Blade?” he asked Cass.

  “You won’t regret this,” Elise said. “I promise.”

  With Cass’s arm around her, Elise made for the door, hesitating when she saw Logan Smith lounging on the other side. He gave her an intense look and then raised one eyebrow. Elise shivered in apprehension.

  Cass dragged her past him, but Elise felt him following her with those silver-hard eyes and had the awful feeling she was not out of the woods yet.

  LOGAN WATCHED THE WOMEN until Gideon summoned him inside the office.

  “What’s up, boss?”

  “I have an assignment for you. One that may take you away from the club.”

  Logan narrowed his gaze. “I’m not interested in anything extracurricular. I thought you understood that.”

  He had his own interests, his own investigation to pursue. When his sister died in a car crash up in the North Shore area the winter before, her death had been declared an accident. But he knew different, and so did Gideon, because Logan had been straight with him when he’d taken the job. The suburbs were out of a city detective’s jurisdiction, so there had been nothing he could do. Not officially. He’d tried, and his badge had been threatened. So he’d turned it in and had gone low profile while he quietly investigated a prominent politician.

  He straightened his jacket sleeves and buttoned the front. “I don’t have time for anything extra.”

  “What if it involved a certain state senator?”

  “Mitchell?” When Gideon nodded, Logan said, “Maybe you ought to give me the details.”

  “I thought you might be intrigued. I don’t have the details yet. I’m leaving that up to you.”

  “Where do I start?”

  “With our lovely new employee…”

  Chapter Three

  Grabbing a bottle of Herradura Reposado from the rack behind the bar, Elise got a glimpse of herself in the mirror and stopped to stare and wonder at her reflection. Cass had used her considerable talent to transform her. Elise didn’t even recognize herself.

  She was certainly light-years away from the young girl who’d fallen in love with a visiting law professor at her university. That girl had been thin and fragile-looking, pretty but quietly so. She’d faded into the background. The woman who looked back at her now was mature, sophisticated and definitely shapely and well-muscled. And she was aware that people noticed her.

  “Hey, where did you disappear to?” came a smooth voice from behind her. “What about those margaritas?”

  Blade Stone looked at her enquiringly as he mixed some kind of fancy martinis.

  “Coming up,” she assured him.

  Blade was easy to work with. Soft-spoken and polite, he was the antithesis of Logan Smith. Better-looking, too, she told herself, glancing at the man whose ancestry obviously included some Native American. He was tall and broad-shouldered, and his long hair was pulled back from a face of interesting planes and angles, tied at the base of his neck and wrapped with leather.

  The most important thing was that Blade was giving her a chance without casting judgment or viewing her with suspicion. He didn’t try to penetrate her defenses with a cold, sharp stare. Which was quite a relief since she needed to make money, and, equally important, needed to plan her escape with Eric.

  Club Undercover was the perfect place to wait it out. A modestly successful club with an eclectic clientele in a still edgy neighborhood wasn’t open to a lot of scrutiny by the authorities or the media.

  A margarita was one of the few drinks she’d known how to make before her life had been detoured so perilously. And the club specialized in fancy ones. While thinking about Eric, about how she longed to see her boy, to hold him in her arms, she limned the glasses with salt, added ice, lime juice, the reposado tequila and an orange liqueur called Citronge.

  “Here you go,” she said, setting the pair of glasses before the customer who’d ordered them for himself and his date.

  She took his money, but when she tried to give the man change, he told her to keep it.

  “Thanks,” she said with a smile, four dollars closer to her goal and wondering if she could really wait for as long as it would take. Considering making a preemptive visit just to see her son for herself, she moved next to Blade. “Is it all right if I take that break now?”

  He nodded. “I can handle things here.”

  The neon-trimmed bar was tucked into a cove away from the entrance, so she had to make her way across the dance floor, tonight sparsely populated with bodies gyrating to music. Distracted by thoughts of Eric, by a growing determination to see her son to make certain he was all right, she glanced at the seating area, part of which rose in tiers and was only at half-capacity tonight.

  Since the regular girl was on vacation, Cass was playing hostess, but Elise knew she longed to use other talents. The club alternated between being a venue for performance art and poetry slams, and a place people came to dance the night away, mostly to music spun by a deejay. Cass had a theater background. And her last job—the one at which she’d been arrested—had been as a magician’s assistant. How frustrated she must be.

  But Cass was wearing her usual smile when Elise reached h
er at the entrance. “How’s it going, Nicole?”

  The name still strange to her ears, Elise said, “Not bad. For the moment I’m in charge of soft drinks, beers, shots and margaritas.” She grinned. “But I’ve been watching Blade and I’m ready to make my move.”

  “And what move would that be?”

  Recognizing the voice behind her, Elise started and then stiffened when she realized Logan Smith had sneaked up on her. His very presence unnerved Elise. His being security was one thing. His being a man with a certain fascination-factor was quite another.

  Glaring at him in hopes that he would take a hint and go away, she said, “We’re simply talking about mixing drinks.”

  “Don’t let me stop you,” he said, not that he looked like he was going anywhere.

  But a crush of twenty-somethings suddenly descended the stairs from the street.

  “I have customers,” Cass said, her attention shifting to the first group. “How many in your party?”

  And Elise slid away, toward the small employee lounge.

  Unfortunately, she was all too aware of Logan Smith following.

  LOGAN HAD SPENT every waking minute of the past twenty-four hours sizing up the woman who could give him an in to the Mitchell clan. At least insight into the way Kyle Mitchell thought. Maybe some history he didn’t yet know. She could be valuable, even if she was only a Mitchell-by-marriage.

  Entering the employee lounge with its upholstered couch and chairs, snack bar and lunch table, he remembered the publicity surrounding the woman’s trial. Elise Mitchell had claimed she was innocent all the way to her jail cell.

  But then, they were all “innocent,” every offender he’d ever put behind bars, Logan mused, as he watched her add cream and sugar to the coffee she’d just poured.

  Still, whether or not she was innocent was really no concern of his. He was getting paid to do a job, and now it was one that would bring him closer to his own goal. He just had to figure out how to use Elise to his advantage. Until he did that, he wasn’t about to tell her that he was onto her…or what he knew.

  When he got right behind her, Elise spun around to face him. “Why are you following me?”