Free A Valentine from Harlequin by Christine Nancy u Bell Catherine u Warren Maggie u Spencer Michele u Shayne Hauf Page B

not going to shoot me, Charlotte. You’re not the kind of woman who could kill a man.”
    “Maybe I didn’t used to be.” She sniffed. “Then again, maybe you never really knew me as well as you thought you did. God knows it’s possible.”
    He shook his head. “I was coming back for you.”
    “Liar. Stop the car.”
    He kept driving. “I know it sounds like a lie. Something any man would say to a woman holding a gun to his head, but it’s the truth. It killed me to leave you the way I did, Charlotte. But I had to.”
    “Why?”
    “Because your father was on to me right at the end. He told the drug lord he was working for that I was a cop, and a hit was put out on me. If I hadn’t “died” on my way to the wedding, Charlotte, I’d have been killed shortly afterward. Your father had it all worked out with Carl Magenta.”
    She lifted her brows. It made him hurt to see her beautiful face so ravaged by emotion. The tears had burned red paths into her cheeks and her eyes were swollen and bloodshot. “Uncle Carl?” she asked. “A drug lord?”
    “Yeah. And unlike your father, he lived to go to trial.”
    “Where he was acquitted of all charges.”
    “A hung jury is not an acquittal. There’s already an investigation into jury tampering underway. Those jurors were threatened, Charlotte. Their lives and their spouses and their kids were threatened. That’s the only reason ‘Uncle Carl’ is still on the streets.”
    “Carl Magenta wouldn’t hurt a fly,” Charlotte whispered.
    “And those men who are chasing us right now—just who do you think they work for? Hmm?”
    While he let that sink in, he gave her a bit more to think about. “You were safe, so long as you believed me dead. Carl assumed you’d been taken in just as he and your father had. But then you came here, to the same city where his spies had already tracked me. You showed up at the same party, were probably even seen talking to me there, and so they have to assume you know. That you were in on the whole plan with me, all along.”
    She blinked slowly. “You’re saying Carl wants me dead? Me, his precious, pregnant, honorary niece?”
    “That’s exactly what I’m saying. I left the way I did, without telling you a thing about any of this, because it was the only way to keep you safe, short of killing the bastard in cold blood. An option I might have taken by now, if I could get close enough to the son of a bitch. And just so you know, the blonde at the party was one of Carl’s associates. I was hoping to get to him through her.”
    “So the blonde meant nothing to you, and you only broke my heart to save my life,” she whispered. “Doesn’t that sound noble?”
    “Yeah, it does. Which is why I feel compelled to ask why you’re still pointing that gun at me.”
    “Because I don’t believe a word of it. Now stop the car.”
    “I’ll stop the car when we get where we’re going. If you still want to shoot me, you can do it there, okay?”
    She blinked, then suddenly closed her eyes and clenched her jaw.
    “Charlotte?” The car swerved as he spent too much time looking at her and not enough looking at the road. “Charlotte, what is it?”
    “Nothing!” She barked the word, keeping the gun on him, though her hand shook badly.
    Finally, she opened her eyes again, lowered the gun to her lap, but kept it clasped tightly in her hands. “How much farther?”
    “Half an hour,” he said. “It’ll be safe there. I promise. I know this has all been a terrible shock to you, Charlotte. I know you don’t want to believe anything bad about your father, and I don’t blame you. If you give me time, I can show you proof that everything I’ve said is true.”
    “That’s not possible.”
    “Of course it’s possible. We have all kinds of evidence.”
    “Really? How do you document that you weren’t just using me all along, Michael? What physical evidence do you have that will convince me that every time we made love, you meant