01 Untouchable - Untouchable (19 page)

He ignored my remark, “Who
is going to benefit the most by getting rid of you?” he asked. “Do
you have a will?”

“
No, I’m like my mom in that
regard; I think it’s morbid.”

“
Wait a minute. Do you mean
to tell me your mother has no will? This says she was your
grandfather’s only child. People with that much money have
wills.”

I gave a half-laugh,
“Grandpa had a will, but my mom is only thirty-five…”

“
Age has nothing to do with
it. She’s worth a fortune if he left everything to her.”

“
She and I,” I corrected,
but he looked confused by the way I stated it. “He left everything
to her, and I’m the alternate or whatever they call the person
second in line.”

“
What about Kimmy and your
dad?”

“
Kimmy was only four when
grandpa died. His will was made a year before she was born and he
evidently never changed it. Mom and I were the sole
benefactors.”

“
How does your dad fit into
this?”

“
Robert is my step-dad—don’t
give me that face, he’s like a real dad to me.”

He flipped through the
paperwork and looked at what I had concerning Robert’s
family.

“
You’ll notice,” I said as
I watched him read, “He comes from a wealthy family, too. Maybe not
as wealthy as Mom’s, but they had millions.”

“
I’ll look these over
tonight and do some research.” He tucked them into his pocket as
the main course arrived.

“
So what now?” I asked. “I
don’t know what to say to you now that my premonitions about you
were right.”

That got an odd look.
“Premonitions?”

“
I had a very distinct
feeling that you were trying hard to get me alone with
you.”

“
Leese, do you ever really
look in the mirror? What guy wouldn’t want to be alone with
you?”

I enjoyed the compliment,
but yet it was hollow. “Isn’t there more than a guy just wanting to
sack a girl?”

He smiled, “Men are
shallow.”

“
Be honest with me about
something, really honest.”

“
I’ll try,” he said
cautiously.

“
Haven’t you ever, I mean in
your entire life, felt like you could love someone?”

He appeared to be struggling with what
he wanted to say, but finally resigned himself to a simple,
“No.”

“
How about you? Other than
the fact that you’ve never been kissed, hasn’t there been someone
that made you want to abandon your morals?”

Wow! This was going to be a
hard one to get through. “You know I put on mascara tonight, right?
That question for me is pretty emotional.”

He handed me his dinner napkin, “Tell
me about him.”

This big lump rose up in my
throat and just sat there blocking any intelligible sounds. I
dabbed my eyes a couple times and looked down at the dinner that
had been appetizing only seconds earlier. “I can’t eat if you’re
going to make me do this.”

“
All right, dinner first,
you pick the topic of discussion.”

“
Tell me about yourself and
your family,” I blurted. “And don’t give me that line about ‘if I
told you, I’d have to kill you’ because we both know I’m already
there.”

I spent the rest of the
evening learning what he would permit me to know about his family.
They were from New Orleans. That much had been true to form from
his school persona. He was of a French/Italian descent. He was
fluent in the French language (which I already knew) and Italian
(which I didn’t know) and had an older sister and brother. What was
a surprise was that his sister was a police chief somewhere in
Louisiana. I thought there was some glimmer of hope for his family
to have at least one redeeming member, but he told me
no.

“Working with the police is
the death knell for a mobster, but it is actually a pretty honored
position to be a ranking officer who is in the family. She’s the
person that keeps up with potential problems before they occur and
keeps us one step ahead of prison.”

With dinner finished, we
watched the sunset and then took a short walk on the
beach.

“
You know for someone who
has never fallen for anyone, you certainly know how to set the
mood,” I laughed lightly as he closed the car door behind
me.

He walked around and sat
down. “Top down for a little while?”

“
It’s only like seven or
eight minutes to Matt and Bev’s. It almost isn’t worth it for such
a short drive.”

He reached in his pocket
and pulled out a tissue and gave it to me.

“
Where did you get this and
why are you handing it to me?”

“
I grabbed it from the
hostess station on the way out of the restaurant. I’ll drive until
you can finish answering my question.”

I was momentarily blank and
then I remembered what he’d said he wanted to know. “It doesn’t
matter anyway—nothing is going to matter in a few weeks.” I
couldn’t look at him anymore.

“
All I want is for you to
tell me about him.”

“
This is stupid,” I
remarked, using his stolen tissue.

“
I’m curious, that’s
all.”

“
You really want to know?”
How about a picture, too?” I stated, opening my purse.

He was somber, but he
nodded.

I reached into the side
compartment and pulled out the small two-by-three and handed it to
him. I watched the expression on his face as he turned it over and
stared.

“
It’s you, you idiot.” I
said softly, reaching with trembling fingers to take back my
mirror.

“
You’d have to be crazy,”
he replied, still holding on to my hand. “Don’t you understand what
kind of person I am?”

“
I know who you’ve sold
yourself to be, but I don’t believe it. And you’re right. I’m
starting to think I’m more wacked right now than my mom, but I
can’t help how I feel.”

“
Then why do you want me to
follow the gentleman act? Let me at least kiss you, Leese.” He
leaned across the seat, “Don’t you want me to kiss you?”

“
Kiss me just before the
end, so I won’t care what’s about to happen.”

“
You don’t mean that,” he
said in disbelief.

“
I’ve thought about it ever
since I figured this whole thing out earlier today and, if you give
such stupid things as last requests, that’s what I
want.”

He slumped back into the
driver’s seat and just sat there staring at the dashboard. Finally,
his hand reached over and turned the key. Without another word he
took me home.

As I turned to get out of
the car, I reminded him to be back at nine-fifteen in the morning.
He never said yes or no or anything for that matter. He just waited
for me to shut the door and then he nodded once and backed
out.

CHAPTER EIGHT

The next morning was, as
the weatherman predicted, overcast and stormy. Bev and Matt were
not ready by the time Evan arrived, but they urged me to go ahead
and they would meet us there later. I found it extremely funny that
the lightening began popping just before we got to church. He gave
me a nervous look as we opened the car doors and ran for
cover.

We stopped under the church
overhang and the sky opened up and the rain began pouring down.
“Wow, that was close,” I remarked.

“
The rain or the
lightening?” He still looked worried.

“
You
survived this last Wednesday. I think you can make it through
today. Just remember three things if you
should
burst into
flames.”

“
What?” He asked
impatiently, holding the door open for me to the main
foyer.

“
Stop, drop, and roll,” I
laughed.

“
Amusing, Leese, very
amusing.” But he wasn’t smiling.

My Sunday morning youth
group was tiny compared to Wednesday nights. There were only about
a dozen or so teens. I honestly think Evan would have been more
comfortable had it been a large group so he could manage that
feeling of getting lost in the crowd. Pastor Shawn seemed glad that
I had returned with my visitor from Wednesday night, but I got that
same feeling from him that I did from Matt; he thought Evan was a
little older than the others.

One of the guys that played in the
mid-week band had brought his acoustical guitar and Shawn asked me
if I’d start us off with a song.

“
Tell me what you can play,
I can probably sing it.”

He looked up at me through
a mop of disarrayed dirty-blonde hair and smiled, “I just learned
all the cords and riffs for
Cry out to
Jesus
. Do you know the words?”

“
Sure,” I smiled. I
wondered how Evan’s conscious was going to handle the lyrics. I
couldn’t help the fact that something inside him was waking up
through music. I’m sure it was an uncomfortable feeling with
everything he had done in his life, but I felt like the pain was a
good sign that the guy I liked was in there somewhere.

Surprisingly, he smiled as
I sang. He was leaning forward in his chair, his forearms resting
on his knees and his hands clasped. I guess that was what made him
so good at what he did; no one would suspect what was underneath
the pretense.

When the song ended, I took
my place next to him and waited for Shawn to begin his lesson on
the conversion of Saul to Paul. Every sentence was another dart. I
gripped the inside of my lower lip with my teeth to restrain the
smile.

We met up with Matt and Bev
on the walk from Sunday school to the main sanctuary. We sat a few
rows back to the left of the podium.

Bev, grinning, leaned over and looked
at us, “You two look so cute together.”

He looked over at me and
gave me a quick, double-rise of the eyebrows and then leaned back
and put his arm around my shoulders. I should have felt like the
little pig that was invited to dinner by the big bad wolf,
especially since he told me this was the image he was paid to
create, but I was too comfortable to care. And then the pastor
asked the congregation to stand and open the hymnals—a look of
shear panic crossed Evan’s face.

“
You said I didn’t have to
sing!” he fiercely whispered in my ear.

“
That was Wednesday.
Everybody sings on Sunday morning.” The way he looked at me made me
really glad that he didn’t carry his gun on him.

The song was
I’ll Fly Away
, and I
didn’t expect that he would actually sing, but after the first
chorus, I could hear a soft rumble beside me. Although I loved the
song, I lowered my volume and listened carefully; he actually had a
wonderful voice. I could feel myself flushing with color as his
sexy base became clearer. We sat down and I looked at him with a
purposeful open mouth and then had to fan myself to cool off. He
was stone faced.

He was either actually
listening to the sermon or he was very good at being immobile for
an extended period of time. After church, he asked me to go with
him for lunch and I agreed. This whole business of being alone and
close with him had gone from frightening to something I craved. I
wasn’t going to change my mind regarding my virtue, but I simply
had a need to be with him. Maybe the old saying about keeping your
friends close and your enemies closer came about because your
enemies could sometimes be more interesting.

The rain was long over with
and the sun was trying to peek out from the straggly gray clouds so
I wasn’t surprised when we got in the car and he pressed the button
for the top to come down.

Kimmy hadn’t realized the
car was a convertible and I heard her cry out when she saw it, “I
want to go with them!”

He looked at me and asked
if I would mind letting her come along.

I didn’t have to debate the
question whether it was safe or not, I was certain that there was
no danger posed to her by him. Bev and Matt agreed to let her come
with us and she happily climbed into the back seat and buckled
up.

“
All right, Kimmy, do you
have a favorite place to eat?”

“
Of course I do,” she
answered smugly. “Chuck E. Cheese.”

He looked at me strangely,
“What’s a Chucky Cheese?”

“
You’ve never dined at the
famous Chuck E. Cheese? Wow, you haven’t lived.” I heard Kimmy
burst out giggling. “Head up one-ten to I-ten and I’ll show you
where it’s at. You’re really in for a treat; I hoped we’ve dressed
up enough.” By this point Kimmy’s giggles had turned to shrieks of
laughter.

He glanced at me as we pulled out on to
the street, “She certainly seems excited.”

“
Oh, you haven’t seen
anything yet.”

We pulled into a packed lot
at Chuck E. Cheese and headed inside. As soon as the doors opened
and the sounds of hordes of overly excited children reached his
ears, he looked at me and scowled.