One Last Chance

“Paul de Cortez is your brother?” He enunciated each word with careful precision, as if his life depended on perfect communication.

She nodded slowly. “What did you think he was?”

He took a deep breath, and his eyes flicked away from hers. He stared down at the table.

“I thought he…that you were…”

His voice trailed off, and at last he lifted his head to look at her. She was staring at him.

“Were what?”

“They said he put you ‘off-limits.’ I thought…”

One arched brow rose. “You thought we were…lovers?”

He nodded, still shaken.

An odd look came into her eyes. “That’s why you were down on him so hard?”

Slowly he nodded again. At the moment, with all else chased from his mind by this unexpected revelation, it was the truth, and he was too astounded to realize what he was revealing by that admission.

She sank onto the booth’s seat, two spots of color staining her cheeks.

“I suppose I should be flattered.”

Something in her voice, a kind of shy pleasure, caused a burst of heat inside him. He stared at her, at the becoming blush, at the innocent gray eyes. It was the innocence that brought him back to reality with a snap. And with that reality came a sinking realization. He sat down abruptly.

“Your name,” he said slowly, “they said it was Austin.” Was she married, he thought, to somebody else?

“It is. Paul is my half brother, really.”

“Then de Cortez is…?”

She sighed. “It’s kind of complicated. That’s our mother’s maiden name. She married my father after Paul’s father was…killed.”

He knew how de Cortez’s father had been killed, it had been in the files. He pushed the knowledge aside for the moment. “But he uses her name?”

“He does now.” A shadow darkened her eyes. “She died a few months ago. He did it in her memory.”

She believes it, he thought in bewilderment. She really believes the guy gives a damn. “I’m sorry,” he managed to say.

“So am I,” she said softly. “But she’d been very sad for a long time. She missed my father terribly.”

Chance’s head came up. “He’s…dead, too?”

“Twelve years ago.”

“That’s tough,” he said quietly. “You must have been just a kid.”

“Is that a tactful way of asking how old I am?”

He smiled slightly. “If it was, would you answer?”

“Twenty-six.”

“Your brother’s a lot older, then.” He couldn’t quite suppress the twinge of relief using that word gave him.

“Ten years,” she said, eyeing him curiously. “You seem to know an awful lot.”

“I don’t even know your first name.”

“That makes us even.” A look of surprise crossed her face. “On second thought, it doesn’t. I don’t even know your last name, let alone your first.”

“Chance.” If there was any significance to the fact that he never even thought of giving her a cover name, he didn’t dwell on it. Her brother hadn’t been here long enough to make him, anyway. “Chance Buckner.”

“Chance as in ‘not a’?”

He grinned. “Nope. As in ‘last chance.’ My mom had about given up on kids when I finally came along.”

“And how long ago was that?” she asked sweetly.

He laughed. “Okay, it’s only fair. Last birthday was the big three-oh.”

“You don’t look any the worse for it.”

He smiled, toying with the handle of his mug of cooling coffee. “Speaking of fair, you’re still one up on me.”

“What?”

“Your name.”

“Oh. It’s Shea. Shea de Cortez Austin.” She laughed. “Quite a mouthful, huh?”

“An interesting combination.”

He studied her as she sipped her coffee. They’d been way out in left field on her relationship to de Cortez, he thought, trying to contain the thankfulness that flooded him. Easy, Buckner. You’re not that much better off knowing that she’s his sister. She still more than likely knows what he’s up to. Unless…

“Do you live around here?”

A legitimate question, he thought, for a man interested in a woman, as she assumed he was. Right, Buckner. Like she’s wrong. Keep kidding yourself.

“No,” she was saying. “I live in Zephyr Cove.”

He looked blank.

“It’s on Lake Tahoe,” she explained with a laugh that said she was used to that reaction. “Just north of South Lake Tahoe. I have a small house there. I only came here because Paul wanted me to open the club for him.”

The flight from Reno, he thought. “You sing there?”

“Sometimes. In the winter, in some of the smaller places. I can handle small crowds. And I don’t ski, so it keeps me from going stir-crazy.”

“It’s almost winter now.”

She laughed. “Guess they’ll have to struggle through without me.”

“What do you do in the summer?”

“Goof off, mostly.” She grinned. “Providing I make enough money during the winter, of course.” She shrugged. “I sell some of my songs. It keeps me in firewood.”

“How long have you lived there?”

He saw her look change, and realized he was sounding a little too much like a cop questioning someone. Watch it, he warned himself. But she answered easily enough.

“Full-time? Almost five years. But I’ve always spent a lot of time there. The house I live in was my father’s. He left it to me.”

“Then you must not have seen much of your brother,” he said tentatively.

“No,” she said regretfully. “He left home when he was sixteen, and I didn’t see him often after that. I hadn’t seen him at all since I moved. I’m glad he came back to California. At least we’re in the same state. There’s only the two of us now.”

She hadn’t been anywhere near Miami. God, maybe she didn’t know. Maybe she really didn’t know her dear brother was neck deep in slime. He never doubted the truth of what she was telling him. If she was lying, he’d hang up his badge.

“—here?”

He fought off the swamping relief to catch only the end of her question. “I…what?”

“I asked if you work around here.”

He nodded, alarm bells ringing in his head.

“Doing what?”

He owed her this, he thought, but he hoped she would stay clear of questions he couldn’t answer.

“Paperwork, mostly.” That, at least, was true, he thought dryly. “For a local company. I monitor shipments, keep track of some people, that kind of thing.” Nebulous but accurate.

“Have you always lived here?”

“No. I was born in Iowa, but my folks came here when I was just a baby.”

“Are they still here?”

“No. They moved back a few years ago. Said this place was too crazy for them.”

“Were you really the last?”

It took him a minute. “Yeah,” he said with a laugh. “I guess after me they decided one was enough.”

“Waiting for grandchildren now, I suppose,” she teased.

He went pale, as if she’d hit him. Then he yanked his gaze downward, swallowing heavily as he stared at the cup on the table.

“Chance?”

Only the sound of her saying his name so tentatively in that silken voice got through the sudden, unexpected fog of pain. And he found himself answering, telling her the thing he never spoke of.

“They had one. Almost. He died before he was born. Along with his mother.”

“Oh, God,” she whispered. “I’m sorry.”

He took a deep breath. “No. I am. It’s been a long time, and I don’t usually react like that. I guess you caught me off guard.”

“Things like that are never really a long time ago.” Her voice was soft with an empathy that washed over him like a warm tide.

“No. They’re not.” He let out the long breath slowly, back in control. “But after four years it’s not usually so…close.”

After that, the conversation was purposely light, full of such things as likes and dislikes, tastes in everything from music to books to movies, and a few childhood escapades recounted with almost sheepish pride.

When she spoke again of her brother, he had to force himself to remember who she was talking about.

“He used to seem so angry, before he left. I know he resented his father being killed when he was so young. But when he came back the first time, for my father’s funeral, he was different. Like he’d grown up while he’d been gone.”

Probably made his first deal, Chance thought sourly. But now that that vivid image had been shattered, he was able to keep his mouth shut.

“He told Mom that he was the man in the family now. That he’d always take care of us, that he’d see we never needed anything. And he did.”

Could she? he wondered as he made some appropriate reply. Could she really be so calm about it, sounding almost proud of the brother who had no doubt sent them money, if she’d known where it came from?

I don’t believe it, he thought, knowing even as the words formed in his mind that they stemmed more from his own unwillingness to believe it than from any firm conviction. You just don’t want to believe you can be fooled so easily, he told himself sourly.

Aware she was looking at him rather curiously, he quickly asked her about the small, prestigious college she’d told him she’d attended. Had de Cortez paid for that, too? Had the man who sold death on the streets lovingly sent his little sister to school?

He couldn’t think about it, not now. She was sharp. Sooner or later she was going to realize that he was asking a lot of questions and not answering many of her own. He had to take it on faith for now and analyze it later, or he was going to press her too hard and lose the contact altogether.

Later, keeping it carefully vague, he found himself telling her about Quisto and his family, guessing that it would seem as chaotic to her as it did to him. She laughed at their antics and smiled warmly when he told her of how the matriarch of the clan kept treating him like another son.

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