To Catch a Thief (13 page)

Rafe shook his head. “Not that I don’t trust you, but I’ll feel better if I’m around to keep a close eye on you.”

Something in his voice alarmed her. “Because you still don’t trust me?”

“No, because we have no way of knowing whether Bobby took that money because he’s desperate for some reason.”

“Desperate? What on earth do you mean?”

“If he’s gotten himself mixed up in something bad, something like gambling debts or big-time drug deals, he could be in danger. I don’t want him dragging you into that.”

The thought of there being any actual danger in all of this had never occurred to Gina. The prospect of losing Café Tuscany had been daunting enough.

“Surely, if there were any danger, he would warn me,” she said slowly but without much conviction. After all, if Bobby had been concerned about her at all, he would never have put her in this position in the first place.

“We can’t be sure of that,” Rafe said, his expression grim.

He brushed a finger across her forehead. “Don’t look so worried. I am not going to let anything happen to you.”

He held out his hand. “Let’s go. I recommend a big plate of pasta and some wine.”

Gina sighed. Normally that was a prescription she would recommend herself. Tonight, though, she had a
feeling it was going to take a whole lot more to chase away the sudden butterflies in her stomach.

She was still unnerved when they reached Tony’s. Peg Lafferty, who’d been with Tony since he opened, led them to a table near the kitchen. “I know Tony’s going to be running in and out to talk to you, so this will be more convenient.”

“Where’s Francesca tonight?” Gina asked.

“Home. She’s not feeling well.”

“What’s wrong? Do you know?”

“I’m not sure,” Peggy said, her expression filled with concern. “She’s been staying home a lot lately. Tony doesn’t talk much about it, and I haven’t wanted to pry.”

He hadn’t said anything to Gina, either, but she had none of Peggy’s reticence about prying. She intended to get to the bottom of this. “Tell him I’m here, okay?”

“Will do,” Peggy promised. “Everyone’s eating late tonight, it seems. He’s got a half dozen orders going right now, but he’ll be out soon. Can I bring you a bottle of Chianti while you look over the menu?”

“Chianti would be good,” Rafe told her. When she had gone, he regarded Gina with concern. “Don’t start taking what she said and exaggerating it in your head. Francesca may be perfectly fine. She might just be taking some time off.”

“You don’t know her. She doesn’t take time off, not willingly.” She started to stand up. “Maybe I should go over there to check on her.”

Rafe tugged her back down. “Maybe you should wait and let Tony answer your questions before you go charging over to see her.”

“These are my friends,” she said, “not yours.”

“That doesn’t make my advice any less sensible,” he said mildly.

Gina sighed and relented. “You’re probably right. I’m probably making a mountain out of a molehill. Tony would have told me if it was anything serious.”

“Exactly,” he said just as Peggy returned with the wine and a promise that Tony would join them shortly.

“Do you want to order before that?” she asked.

“No,” Gina said at once. “I want answers before I want food.”

“Speak for yourself,” Rafe said. “How about a plate of antipasto for the time being?”

“You’ve got it,” Peggy said, then went off to check on another group of late arrivals.

When the antipasto arrived, Gina realized that she was ravenous. Since there was nothing she could do until Tony emerged from the kitchen, anyway, she picked up a carrot stick, then a stalk of celery, then reached for the warm garlic bread that Peggy had brought with it. Rafe watched her approvingly.

“That’s better,” he said at last. “You’ve got some color back in your cheeks. I was worried there for a bit. This tendency of yours to take on everyone else’s problems is not a good thing.”

“These are my friends,” she said defensively. “What would you have me do?”

He sighed. “I imagine telling you to maintain a little distance would be a waste of my breath.”

She studied his expression, trying to gauge if he was actually serious. “Can you do that? Can you maintain a nice, safe distance when your friends are in trouble?”

Her question seemed to catch him off guard. “Truthfully, there are not that many people I consider friends.”

Gina stared at him. “Surely you can’t mean that.”

“It’s true. I have business acquaintances. There are dozens of people at my law firm who are colleagues, but
friends? People I’d call up just to go out and have a drink for the fun of it? I haven’t had the time.”

“But that’s awful,” she said without thinking about her own barren social life in New York. Was she any better? “Everyone should have friends, people they can count on, people they would go the extra mile for without question.”

“Well, I don’t.”

“Do you expect me to believe that there is no one important in your life?”

“That’s the truth.”

“What about your mother? You said you jumped into this case because of her,” she said triumphantly. “You must care about her.”

“I don’t like to see anyone swindled.
That’s
why I took the case.”

“I don’t believe you.”

“It’s true.”

Before she could probe any deeper, they were joined by Tony, who looked more tired than she had ever seen him. Rafe looked relieved to have her attention shifting away from him and on to Tony, but she had no intention of forgetting about his admission that there was no one in his life who really mattered to him.

“Are you okay?” Gina asked Tony.

“It’s been a busy night. That’s all,” Tony said.

“Have you eaten?”

“I haven’t had the time.”

Gina jumped up. “Then you sit right here. I’m going to fix something for all of us. And if anyone else comes in, I’ll handle it. Have a glass of wine. Talk to Rafe. Relax.”

Tony patted her hand. “You’re a good girl,
cara mia.”

“And a better cook,” she reminded him with a grin. “I’ll make you two a meal that will make you weep.”

Rafe started to protest, but Gina silenced him with a look. “I need to do this,” she said quietly. “It won’t take long.”

“It will take as long as it takes,” Tony chided, his expression stern. “Good food cannot be rushed.”

Gina pressed a kiss to his pale cheek. “Advice from the master,” she teased, managing to keep a smile plastered firmly on her face as she left the two men to their wine and their conversation.

But once she reached the kitchen, she sagged against the door. Something was terribly wrong. Suddenly her own problems with Bobby, her confusion over her relationship with Rafe, none of it mattered. How sad that Rafe didn’t understand the meaning of such deep and abiding friendships.

But maybe, once she’d dealt with whatever was going on with Tony and Francesca, once Karen’s life was settled again, maybe then she could take the time to teach him.

R
afe studied Tony’s tired face and concluded that Gina was right to be concerned. He might not know the man well, but there was a general air of despondency about him that was unmistakable even to him.

“Gina’s worried about you,” he said.

“And I am worried for her,” Tony responded. “The longer this business with her partner drags on, the sadder she becomes. I don’t like it. If I knew this man, I would wring his neck myself.”

“Join the club,” Rafe said, though he chafed at Tony’s evasive change of topic. Apparently, he really was lousy at this friendship thing. Surely a man with his skills at cross-examination should have been able to get a direct response. He considered his words, realized then that unlike his courtroom style, he’d made a statement, rather than asking a probing question. It seemed like he was even out of practice at being a decent lawyer.

“But I wasn’t really talking about Gina. I was asking about you. Is everything okay?” he asked more pointedly. “Peggy said something earlier about your wife that made Gina conclude that she might not be well.”

If anything, Tony looked even more dispirited. “Francesca grows more homesick day by day. Her only sister, who lives in Rome, is not well. Francesca wishes she were there with her, but she refuses to go back to Italy alone, and I cannot simply close the business and leave.”

“There is a solution,” Rafe said thoughtfully, hating himself for even thinking of it, much less voicing it. He needed to get back to New York one of these days, though amazingly the pressure seemed to lessen with every day he spent right here in Wyoming with Gina. He was beginning to adapt to the slower pace and friendlier lifestyle. And except for court, he was able to keep up with most of his work. Lydia kept his fax machine humming, and what was too lengthy and complicated to be faxed she shipped overnight.

“Oh?” Tony said, his expression brightening hopefully. “What solution?”

“Let Gina take over. She’s insistent on staying here for the time being because of her friend Karen. It would give her something to do.”

Tony seemed startled by the suggestion. “Were you not the one who warned me not to expect her to work here again?”

“I meant permanently,” Rafe said, then shrugged. “Who knows, though? Maybe I was wrong about that, as well. Gina is not an easy woman to read.”

Tony looked shocked by the assessment. “Gina? She wears her heart on her sleeve. Anyone who knows her can see that.”

“Then maybe I don’t know her as well as I thought.”

“Or perhaps as well as you would like to?” Tony inquired, looking amused. “Or is it that what you see terrifies you, so you pretend not to see it?”

Rafe glanced toward the kitchen, hoping to catch a glimpse of the woman in question, but the door remained steadfastly closed. “It’s possible that you’re right,” he admitted, turning back to Tony. “Maybe I do see things that scare me, even though a part of me wants what she wants.”

“This is a good thing,” Tony said enthusiastically. “I am very pleased. Admitting what you want is always the first step.”

“First step to what?” Rafe asked.

“The future.” He grinned. “Now, what would you like to know about our Gina? Ask, and I will tell you.”

His sudden openness startled Rafe. “Why the change of heart? You’ve been refusing to discuss her with me before now.”

Tony’s amusement seemed to grow. “Because you have changed. As has your reason for being here, I suspect. Now, tell me, what is it about Gina that you do not understand?”

Rafe asked the first thing that came to mind. “Is she a good chef?”

“Of all the things you might have asked, that is what you pick?” Tony said with a sad shake of his head. “Perhaps I was wrong about you, after all. I was expecting something personal.”

“I thought cooking was personal to her. It’s what she does.”

“Yes,” Tony agreed. “But not who she is. Besides, I cannot believe you have never eaten in her restaurant.”

“Never, though my business associates dine there all
the time.” Rafe thought of Lydia and added, “And my secretary loves the place.”

“Because Gina has a passion for food. She understands it. She knows what will add to a meal and what will distract. She shares all of that when she cooks.”

“Then why hasn’t she fought harder to keep Café Tuscany afloat? I know she came here for that reunion, but I thought she would go back at once and charge into battle to save the restaurant. Instead, there have been times when I’ve had to wonder if she even cares whether it closes or not.”

Tony looked shocked by Rafe’s assessment. “You are wrong,” he said fiercely. “She cares, too much perhaps. She has tried to distance herself, I think, out of fear. She is trying not to let it matter, in case she is not able to keep it open.”

When Rafe would have responded, Tony stopped him with a sign. “Wait, there is more. There is one thing that matters more to Gina than food.”

“Her friends,” Rafe guessed.

Tony gave a curt nod of satisfaction. “Precisely. And can you see how that has affected what she’d done these past weeks? She has taken their burdens as her own, but she has not shared hers with them.”

“And she has stayed on because she cares about her friend Karen,” Rafe said slowly. “She will stay on longer because of you and Francesca. If there is another friend with another crisis, she will extend her stay yet again.”

“True, but it is more than that. She has stayed because a man she trusted, a man she believed in and counted on, betrayed her. Bobby Rinaldi is a criminal to you, but to Gina he was a friend. Think about that,” Tony said quietly. “I will go and get us another bottle of wine.”

He left Rafe feeling shaken. Not once had he stopped
to consider the impact Bobby’s actions would have had on Gina emotionally. He’d thought only in terms of dollars and cents, only in terms of the business, not the friendship, quite likely because he had never established such deep ties to another person.

Of course Gina had been devastated. To the woman Tony had described—the woman Rafe was only beginning to know—losing a friend would be far worse than losing a restaurant.

Rafe wasn’t entirely sure he could understand that depth of feeling for another person. He didn’t profess to understand love, either, and this was something altogether different, something he’d always assumed would be less intense, less demanding.

In his world, there were no messy, emotional connections. No long-term lovers. As he had explained to Gina, there were colleagues, business associates, casual acquaintances. Even his relationship with his mother was coolly polite, rather than loving. He’d grown too jaded over the years, first by watching his parents’ marriage disintegrate, later by watching criminals—and yes, his colleagues, too—manipulate the legal system.

But when he thought of the way Lauren had rushed to Gina’s defense while knowing none of the facts, when he considered how Emma was prepared to staunchly defend Gina, he could see that there were people in the world to whom loyalty and friendship were more than mere words.

A part of him wanted that kind of closeness to another human being—to Gina—but he was afraid to risk it. People who made commitments risked betrayal and hurt. He had only to look at what Bobby had done to Gina to see that.

And yet never, not even once, had he had the sense that Gina regretted her friendship with Rinaldi, only that it had
come to this tragic end. Though she had never said the words, he realized that was also why she had been so slow to join forces with him, so reluctant to leap to her own defense and throw Bobby to the wolves. She hadn’t been ready to give up on her friend.

Rafe wondered wistfully what it would be like to be deserving of that kind of loyalty. Bobby certainly wasn’t. Was Rafe? He thought of what could still happen to take Café Tuscany away from Gina. He had set those wheels in motion with his suit against the restaurant and Rinaldi. Would Gina ultimately blame him for that, especially if it cost her the business she had poured her heart and soul into? Would she hate him for it? Or would she understand and forgive?

Time would tell, he supposed, then he shuddered at the thought. It implied far more patience than he had. But what choice did he have? None. Professionally and personally, he was going to have to see this through on whatever timetable it took. He tried to see beyond that to the future, but to his frustration it was disturbingly blank.

“Sorry I took so long,” Gina said, sliding a plate of steaming lasagna in front of him. “This is Francesca’s favorite, and it took a while to get all the ingredients together. I sent some home to her with Tony.”

“Did he tell you about her homesickness?” he asked, amazingly unsurprised that Gina had thought of preparing Francesca’s favorite dish.

She nodded. “I told him to take her to Italy, that I would cover for him.”

Rafe grinned, pleased that his estimation of her reaction had been proved right. “I told him you would do that.”

She regarded him with surprise. “Did you? Do you approve, especially since it means another delay in getting back to New York?”

“You weren’t prepared to go anytime soon, anyway. I’d accepted that.”

“But you’re not happy about it, are you?”

He lifted her hand and pressed a kiss to her knuckles. “Sticking around here for the time being is who you are. Since I seem to like who you are more and more, how can I possibly argue with your decision?”

“A wise man,” she said approvingly.

“Not so wise,” he said, tucking her hand against his thigh. “But I’m getting there.”

There were a half dozen messages for Rafe when he returned to his hotel room. He checked them while Gina retreated to her own room next door, the room she had insisted on booking even after he’d said she could stay with him.

“Not here, where my parents will hear about it,” she had told him.

“Do you honestly think being next door will be much of an improvement? People will draw whatever conclusions they want anyway.”

“Maybe so, but at least I can tell them that we are not living together in plain sight of all their neighbors.”

He’d been forced to accept her reasoning. At the moment he was grateful since two of the messages were from Lydia, who sounded increasingly amused by the fact that he was still in Winding River. Calling her back with Gina in the room would have been a test of his ability to lie with a straight face.

Another message was from his paralegal, Joan Lansing, and one was from his investigator reporting that there was a trail suggesting Bobby Rinaldi might be in the Cayman Islands.

“Let me know what you want me to do,” the man
concluded. “I could use a free trip down there. I have some scuba gear I’ve been dying to try out.”

Rafe glanced up at the end of the message and saw Gina staring at him, her expression frozen.

“Bobby’s in the Cayman Islands?” she asked, looking oddly shaken.

“Could be.”

“Are you sending that man after him?”

Rafe couldn’t read her tone at all. “What do you want me to do?”

She blinked in surprise. “You’re asking me?”

“That’s what it sounded like,” he said lightly. “What do you want, Gina? Do you want him caught? Do you want all of this resolved once and for all?”

“Of course I want him caught,” she snapped, then sighed. “Then again, a part of me keeps trying to pretend he’s down there on some impromptu vacation and that he’ll come back on his own.”

“You know him better than I do,” Rafe said. “Is there a chance of that?”

For a long time he thought she might not answer. There was no mistaking the misery in her eyes, the uncertainty.

“I don’t know,” she whispered at last. “I honestly don’t think I ever knew him at all.”

Thinking of what Tony had said earlier, Rafe told her, “I know I accused you of lousy judgment in going into a partnership with him, but what happened isn’t your fault. You saw what he wanted you to see, a charming man who was good at getting people to trust him, good at finding backers for the restaurant. You’re not the only person he took in, sweetheart. My mother is older and should be wiser, but she trusted him. So did many others, many of them supposedly savvy businessmen.”

His words didn’t seem to console her. She stared at him bleakly. “What do I do, Rafe?”

“Do you want Café Tuscany?”

“Yes,” she said at once.

“Enough to go back right now and fight for it?”

Her expression faltered at that. “I can’t. Karen, Tony, they’re depending on me.”

“They would understand,” he said, knowing it was true of Tony and just as certain that Karen, whom he barely knew, would feel the same way because she loved Gina, as did all her other friends.

“I suppose. But this trip is so important to Francesca. I can’t go back on my word.”

He studied her intently. “And there’s a part of you that’s happy here, isn’t there?” he asked with sudden insight. “There’s a part of you that is glad to have the chance to cook for friends and family, rather than anonymous strangers.”

“I hadn’t really thought about it, but yes,” she said slowly. “I’m looking forward to being back in Tony’s kitchen, to having time, even on a busy night, to sit for a minute with my friends while they try some recipe I’ve been experimenting with.”

“Do you think that feeling is just temporary?” he asked with an astonishing sense of dread.

“I honestly don’t know. I only know that right now this is where I want to be, where I
have
to be.”

“And Rinaldi?”

“Tell your man to find him. No matter what I decide for myself, the investors and our vendors need to be paid. We owe them that.”

Rafe nodded. “I’ll call the investigator right now.”

He woke the man from a sound sleep, told him to book that trip to the Cayman Islands, but to leave his scuba
gear at home. “You won’t have time for it. Find Rinaldi. See if he still has any of the money. Then we’ll see where we go next.”

“If Bobby is there, can you force him to come back?” Gina asked after he’d hung up. “Isn’t that one of the places with no extradition agreement with the United States?”

“Yes, but I’m sure he can be
enticed
back, one way or another. First things first. Let’s make sure that’s where he is.”