Convincing Jamey

  “Serenity Streets a dangerous place, Karen.

  Letter to Reader

  Title Page

  Books by Marilyn Pappano

  About the Author

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Copyright

  “Serenity Streets a dangerous place, Karen.

  “No one chooses to be here,” Jamey said.

  “Except you,” she observed. “You choose to be here.”

  For a moment he was silent. She was right. It had been a long, long time since he’d had to live here. But the simple fact was that Serenity was his home. He might not have family or much in the way of friends, but he still had neighbors. Somebody had to look out for them, and for the past eight or ten years, that somebody had been him.

  But damned if he wanted to look after Karen Montez, too.

  Karen spoke softly. “Why do you find it so hard to believe that I choose that, too?”

  “It’s my home.”

  “I intend to make it my home. I intend to spend the rest of my life here.”

  “Darlin’,” Jamey said cynically, “let’s hope it’s a long one.”

  Dear Reader,

  Any month with a new Nora Roberts book has to be special, and this month is extra special, because this book is the first of a wonderful new trilogy. Hidden Star begins THE STARS OF MITHRA. three stories about strong heroines, wonderful heroes—and three gems destined to bring them together. The adventure begins for Bailey James with the loss of her memory—and the entrance of coolheaded (well, until he sees her) private eye Cade Parris into her life. He wants to believe in her—not to mention love her—but what is she doing with a sackful of cash and a diamond the size of a baby’s fist?

  It’s a month for miniseries, with Marilyn Pappano revisiting her popular SOUTHERN KNIGHTS with Convincing Jamey, and Alicia Scott continuing MAXIMILLIAN’S CHILDREN with MacNamara’s Woman. Not to mention the final installment of Beverly Bird’s THE WEDDING RING, Saving Susannah, and the second book of Marilyn Tracy’s ALMOST, TEXAS miniseries, Almost a Family.

  Finally, welcome Intimate Moments’ newest author, Maggie Price. She’s part of our WOMEN TO WATCH cross-line promotion, with each line introducing a brand-new author to you. In Prime Suspect, Maggie spins an irresistible tale about a by-the-book detective falling for a suspect, a beautiful criminal profiler who just may be in over her head. As an aside, you might like to know that Maggie herself once worked as a crime analyst for the Oklahoma City police department.

  So enjoy all these novels—and then be sure to come back next month for more of the best romance reading around, right here in Silhouette Intimate Moments.

  Yours,

  Senior Editor and Editorial Coordinator

  Please address questions and book requests to:

  Silhouette Reader Service

  U.S.: 3010 Walden Ave., P.O. Box 1325, Buffalo, NY 14269

  Canadian: P.O. Box 609, Fort Erie, Ont. L2A 5X3

  Marilyn Pappano

  CONVINCING JAMEY

  Books by Marilyn Pappano

  Silhouette Intimate Moments

  Within Reach #182

  The Lights of Home #214

  Guilt by Association #233

  Cody Daniels’ Return #258

  Room at the Inn #268

  Something of Heaven #294

  Somebody’s Baby #310

  Not Without Honor #338

  Safe Haven #363

  A Dangerous Man #381

  Probable Cause #405

  Operation Homefront #424

  Somebody’s Lady #437

  No Retreat #469

  Memories of Laura #486

  Sweet Annie’s Pass #512

  Finally a Father #542

  *Michael’s Gift #583

  *Regarding Remy #609

  *A Man Like Smith #626

  Survive the Night #703

  †Discovered: Daddy #746

  *Convincing Jamey #812

  Silhouette Books

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  *Southern Knights

  †Daddy Knows Last

  MARILYN PAPPANO

  After following her career navy husband around the country for sixteen years, Marilyn Pappano now makes her home high on a hill overlooking her hometown. With acreage, an orchard and the best view in the state, she’s not planning on pulling out the moving boxes ever again. When not writing, she makes apple butter from their own apples (when the thieves don’t get to them first), putts around the pond in the boat and tends a yard that she thinks would look better as a wildflower field, if the dam things would just grow there.

  You can write to Marilyn by snail mail at P.O. Box 643, Sapulpa, OK 74067-0643.

  Chapter 1

  Not much happened on Serenity Street that Jamey O‘Shea wasn’t well-informed about, but the activity across the street on a lazy August Monday came as a surprise. Leaving the bar with the twenty-four-hour news channel droning on the TV, he made his way around the tables to one of four sets of French doors that spread across the front of O’Shea’s, braced one shoulder against peeling white paint and watched.

  One rusted iron gate leading to the house across the street was propped open and a car was parked in the driveway. A moving van was in the process of backing into the driveway, the driver concentrating on a figure in the rearview mirror as he inched back closer to the car. A glance at the fence showed that the For Sale sign still hung there. It had been there so long that its words were obliterated by rust and graffiti. Jamey vaguely remembered when the sign had appeared, when the last owner had moved out some ten or twelve years ago. No one had wanted to buy a beat-up old house in a beat-up part of town. He had always figured it would stay empty until it fell in on itself or until one or another of the kids who hung out there got careless with a cigarette and sent it up in flames. He had never figured that someone would actually buy the place, that anyone would ever move in.

  Satisfied with his position, the driver shut off the engine of the truck and climbed out, taking a look around him as he did. He didn’t look impressed with the neighborhood, Jamey noted with perverse humor. Serenity wasn’t a place for good impressions. It was the sort of place the Chamber of Commerce wished didn’t exist. The sort of place the surrounding neighborhoods were, at the same time, scornful of and grateful for. No one wanted to live close to a dump like this, but at the same time, since gangs and thugs found such easy going on Serenity, they tended to gather there instead of elsewhere.

  Hell, even the cops hated the fourteen-block district. Call them for anything less than murder, and you weren’t likely to get a response. Even on murder calls, they waited until they could come in force. You never saw a lone police car on Serenity Street.

  You didn’t often see a lone woman.

  She came around from behind the truck, carrying something large, light and wrapped in paper. After talking to the driver for a moment, she started toward the walk. The ornate gate that led out of the yard and onto the sidewalk fronting the street hung askew on its hinges, one end resting on the cracked concrete, the top corner wedged at an angle between two iron bars. That didn’t stop her from trying the gate, from tugging on it, trying to lift it up and into proper alignment. She almost managed, but it slipped from her hands and fell with a dull clang, wedging even tighter.

  With a shrug, she turned to the side, set her package down and climbed onto the crumbling bricks that supported the fence. She had to
stretch onto the tips of her toes to reach the For Sale sign that was hung by thin wire loops over the top of two iron rails, had to stretch even higher to slide the wires free of the rails; then, sign in hand, she jumped backwards from the brick, landing lightly on the dirt where grass had once grown. She dropped the sign, retrieved her package, tore the paper loose and climbed onto the bricks again.

  It was another sign, a big, rectangular one. Jamey could make out a painting of a house, an elaborate Victorian that looked much like the one in front of him must have eighty years ago. Underneath it in graceful script was a name, Kathy’s something-or-other. A yellow-and-red banner across the upper left corner proclaimed Opening Soon.

  He shook his head in amused disbelief. A business? This redheaded stranger intended to open some sort of business on Serenity Street? She must be crazy. She only had to look down the street to see shop after empty shop. The markets were gone, the five-and-dime, the barber shops, the Laundromats, the restaurants, the doctors. The only retail businesses left on the entire six blocks of Serenity were the bars, including O’Shea’s, and one lone liquor store. There wasn’t any money on Serenity. His own pathetic business records attested to that.

  She was stretching onto her toes again, trying to slide the plastic loops on her sign over the iron bars. Impulsively Jamey stepped out onto the sidewalk, crossed the street without looking in either direction and stopped in front of her. He reached over the fence, took the sign and slid it into place. Kathy’s House, it said, and the house in the picture bore more than just a resemblance to the old house in front of him. It was exactly the same place, as it must once have looked. As she hoped to make it look again?

  “Thanks,” the redhead said, jumping to the ground once again, wiping rust from her hands to her jeans. “Hello. I’m Karen Montez.”

  He corrected the angle of the sign before looking at her, automatically assessing her. She wasn’t any great beauty. Redheads weren’t his type, especially redheads with skin as delicate and pale as milk glass. Petite wasn’t his type, either, and sure as hell neither was foolish. And this woman had to be foolish.

  “Jamey O’Shea,” he responded at last.

  Her smile was the slightest bit uneasy. “From O’Shea’s, I assume.” She gestured toward the bar behind him, but he didn’t waste time looking. He knew exactly what she was facing: a run-down, narrow, two-story building that hadn’t been much brand-new and was nothing now. The brick was old and crumbled in places. A broken pane at the bottom of one of the French doors, courtesy of old Thomas’s overindulgence and size-thirteen shoes, had been repaired with a piece of plywood and nails. The sign was faded and hard to read, the screens over the upstairs windows rusted and torn.

  It was a shabby place on a shabby street. Her place was also shabby, but while he belonged in his place, she obviously didn’t. She looked too hopeful. Too well-bred. Too comfortable. She was as middle-class as they came, so what was she doing slumming?

  “Yeah, from O’Shea’s.” He glanced toward the van. A helper had materialized from somewhere, and he and the driver were carrying a wood sofa with brightly striped cushions onto the veranda. “You’re not moving in here,” he said, as if saying it could make it not true. She didn’t belong here, and he didn’t want her here. No one would want her here.

  She looked around, too, and smiled in that nervous way again. “I am. I bought the place.”

  He gave the house a brief visual exam. Peeling paint, broken windows, rotting wood, piles of debris, years of neglect. It made his place look downright homey. “And no one tried to have you committed?”

  The smile came again, more natural this time. Almost dazzling...if he were the sort of man to be dazzled. “My family considered it. They wanted me to stay in Landry. The real estate agent was appalled when I told her I wanted to look at this place. And the bank...” She laughed and simply shook her head.

  He could well imagine what the bank’s response had been. They weren’t in the business of throwing away their investors’ money. They didn’t believe in taking risks—and counting on this place to be standing another year was a risk. Investing money in any way on Serenity was most definitely a risk. Moving into one of the roughest, toughest neighborhoods in the city of New Orleans was more than a risk. It was outright lunacy.

  Gesturing to the sign, he asked, “What is Kathy’s House?” It sounded like a cutesy shop, one that would sell locally made crafts, stale pralines, postcards and other souvenirs of New Orleans to tourists. Or a bed-and-breakfast, meticulously refurbished in true Victorian style, providing those same tourists an alternative to big, impersonal hotels. Or maybe a restaurant, some sort of upscale, designed-toappeal-to-society-class-matrons —

  “It’s a women’s center,” she replied, interrupting his thoughts. “At least, it will be once I get it open.” His expression must have been blank, because after a moment’s hesitation, she explained, “You know, a place where women can get help—if their husbands are abusing them, if the system is taking advantage of them, if they need medical care or legal advice or just a safe place to stay. We’ll be their advocates.”

  That told him more about her than he needed to know. She was a do-gooder, an idealist—and a nosy one at that. She was naive, unrealistic, gullible and foolish enough to be dangerous, to herself if no one else. She thought she could come down here and solve problems that had been taking shape for generations. She thought she could teach these poor ignorant women—these nobodies who were obviously inferior to her, or else they would never have wound up on Serenity Street—how to resolve their troubles and run their lives. She—Ms. Middle-class-small-town-never-had-a-trouble-in-her-life—thought she could make a difference, hallelujah!

  “There aren’t many husbands on Serenity Street,” he said, allowing only a shade of sarcasm to creep into his voice.

  “Excuse me?” She looked a little puzzled until she remembered her own words:... if their husbands are abusing them... “Husbands, boyfriends, pimps, strangers on the street—whoever. The point is it doesn’t have to happen. We’ll help them make it stop.”

  “We,” he repeated. “Who is in this besides you?”

  “I’ve lined up a number of volunteers—nurses, teachers, a psychologist, a nutritionist.”

  “No social worker?”

  She smiled. “I’m the social worker.”

  Of course. How could he not have guessed?

  The smile slowly faded. “You seem skeptical.”

  “Darlin’, I’ve lived on Serenity Street since I was born. I’ve seen people like you come and go. They don’t make a difference. They don’t solve any problems. They don’t do anything but waste their time and their money. They stay a few weeks, maybe a few months, and if they’re lucky, they leave with only a little less than they came in with. If they’re not lucky...” He shrugged expressively. “The last one died trying to save the soul of a fifteen-year-old punk whose only concern was finding where she kept her money.”

  He expected fear to come into her clear blue eyes, but it didn’t. Obviously she’d heard about the failed mission down the street and had convinced herself that it didn’t concern her. She wasn’t force-feeding religion the way that woman had been. She didn’t intend to be caught late at night in an empty storefront with a vicious little bastard like that kid. She would reach the kids, would earn their respect along with their mothers’ respect. She would be different.

  To these kids, these people, there was no difference among outsiders. There was no respect and no reaching them. Those were lessons she would have to learn.

  “I’m sorry you feel that way, Mr. O’Shea.”

  “Doesn’t matter how I feel, Ms. Montez. I’m not one of the souls that you’ve come to save.”

  “Don’t underestimate me. I’ll start with the women and the children. I’ll move on to the others,” she said, with a smile that was at once innocent and full of promise. “So...you’ve lived here all your life. Any advice for Serenity Street’s newest resident?”<
br />
  “Yeah. Get out while you can.”

  “I’m serious, Mr. O’Shea.”

  “So am I...but until you go, you can call me Jamey.”

  She acknowledged his grudgingly offered concession with a nod. “I’m Karen. Seriously, what does it take to live on Serenity Street?”

  “Despair. Having no place else to go. No common sense. A death wish.” He gestured down the street with a sweeping movement. “Look around. It’s the middle of the day. School doesn’t start for two more weeks. It’s hot, humid and miserable in all these unairconditioned houses and apartments, but there’s no one out. There’s no one on this street but you, me and your movers, who are paid to be here. The park’s empty. The porches are empty. Look.” He pointed to a house across the street and down thirty feet. Once a single-family home, it had long since been converted to apartments, two per floor, each with its own small porch. “The doors are closed. The windows are closed. People are scared to death around here. They’d rather swelter inside than risk their lives for a cool breeze.”

  She looked—not only at that house, but at all of them within her field of vision. Then she fixed her gaze on him again. “And your point is?”

  “Serenity Street is a dangerous place. People born here work long and hard to get out. No one chooses to be here.”