Lethal Lover
When she’d laughed, the sound had floated to him on a breeze and sparked what few memories hadn’t already been stirred to life by the sudden sight of her. Tess, his mind whispered, what kind of fool would ever let you go?
“Can I get you another beer, sir?” the bartender asked, interrupting Reed’s musings.
He nodded, resisting the temptation to ask the bartender to bring him a pack of Camels.
Out of the corner of his eye, Reed saw the waiter deliver a message to Selena Elliot. When she stood up and walked out of the dining room, Reed hoped that Tess wouldn’t follow.
Selena left the dining room alone, and Reed decided with grim satisfaction that perhaps this wasn’t going to be as difficult as he’d first thought. Maybe he wouldn’t have to inflict himself on Tess after all.
That was the way he wanted it, wasn’t it? Of course, he reminded himself. The memories he’d harbored, the fantasies he’d spun about his young love, were just that: fantasies and nothing more.
But despite that blunt realization, before he left the bar, he couldn’t resist a last look over his shoulder at the woman who’d once held his young heart, before it had turned cold. And captured his imagination, before it had become so jaded.
Her eyes met his for barely a second and he foolishly held his breath, wondering if she recognized him. When it appeared she hadn’t, a strange mix of disappointment and relief settled heavily in his chest.
* * *
WHEN THE SHIMMERING crystal bowl of chilled shrimp arrived, Tess began to wonder what was keeping Selena. After five minutes more, she beckoned their waiter. “Excuse me, but could you direct me to the phone where my cousin took her phone call?”
“Of course,” the young man agreed. “Right this way.”
The bar was beginning to fill and the waiter and Tess had to weave their way past a group gathered around a table where a lively game of dominoes was in progress.
Once in the lobby, the young man pointed to a bank of courtesy phones on the wall. From where she stood, Tess could already see that Selena was not in the lobby.
“Perhaps she had the call transferred to our room,” Tess suggested. “I think I’ll go check. If she comes back before I do, will you tell her where I’ve gone?”
The waiter smiled and nodded.
Crossing the lobby quickly, Tess emerged onto the sidewalk outside the main building that led to the individual guest rooms. A profusion of tropical plants, bay vines and spider lilies, lined the meandering walk that led to three separate buildings. The music and laughter coming from the beach faded as she made her way up the open stairway to the fourth floor of the first building.
At their room, Tess unlocked the door and stepped inside. The large, airy room was empty and Tess saw no obvious sign to suggest that Selena had returned since the two of them had gone down to the dining room for dinner.
With a nagging and growing sense of anxiety, Tess walked back to the lobby, crossed the dining room and sat down at their table alone. She beckoned to the first waiter that passed, but when the young man turned around, she realized he wasn’t the same waiter who’d helped them earlier. “Excuse me, but did the other lady who was sitting here return while I was gone?”
The young man’s expression was blank. “I haven’t seen anyone, ma’am, not since I came on duty a few minutes ago. Can I bring you something to drink, or a menu?”
Tess shook her head. “No thanks,” she muttered distractedly, looking past him, searching the room for Selena. After picking unenthusiastically at the shrimp and sipping the lukewarm punch for ten long minutes, Tess decided to check the lobby again.
Still, there was no sign of Selena. The ladies’ room was Tess’s next stop, but her cousin was not to be found there, either.
Wandering back into the lobby, Tess began to feel stronger stirrings of concern. A noisy group of tourists jostled off a tour bus, into the lobby and crowded around the front desk. Tess tried in vain to pick out her cousin’s face among the group.
A tall, sandy-haired man in a brightly printed floral shirt and baggy white shorts caught Tess’s eye when she realized he was staring at her. But when she made eye contact, he looked away. An uneasy feeling lifted the hair at the nape of her neck, but she dismissed the strange reaction and searched the lobby again for Selena.
Where could she have gone? Tess wondered, walking back to the entrance to the dining room to stand helplessly staring across the room at their empty balcony table as gnawing apprehension bloomed into genuine concern.
“May I help you, miss?” A cocktail waitress in a short, floral wrap skirt and yellow halter top greeted Tess when she stepped into the crowded bar.
“I’m looking for someone....” Tess murmured distractedly, her eyes scanning the crowd. “A woman, about my height, in a pink sundress and a big hat. Have you seen her?”
The young woman attendant’s eyes followed Tess’s around the room. “No, I don’t remember seeing anyone like that. But then, the place has been filling up fast since the last group of dive boats came in,” she explained in perfect, West Indies English. “If I see her, I will be sure to tell her that you’re looking for her.”
Tess thanked the young woman and moved back into the lobby, completely at a loss as to what to do next, or how to explain her cousin’s strange disappearance. As she wandered toward the main door and the circle drive in front of the hotel, a limousine slid to a stop outside and reminded her of the problem with the rental car.
Heartened to have a course of action, Tess walked briskly to the nearest courtesy phone and dialed the number for the rental-car company.
After a short and disjointed explanation to the clerk on the other end of the line, Tess gave up, thanked the woman for her help—which had, in fact, been no help at all—and hung up, feeling even more exasperated. If the call that had pulled Selena away from their table had come from the rental-car company, the person to whom Tess had spoken knew nothing about the matter.
When Tess glanced at the large clock on the wall behind the registration desk, she saw that it was nearly four-thirty. Selena had left their table almost forty-five minutes ago. Where was she?
Feeling someone’s eyes on her, Tess spun around, hoping to see Selena, only to find the man in the gaudy shirt staring at her again. She glared at the tourist and the man actually smiled, causing Tess to feel even more peevish as she pushed her way to the front desk.
After leaving a message for Selena, Tess left the lobby quickly with the eerie feeling that gaudy-shirt-man’s eyes were still on her back.
Once inside their room again, Tess set her mind to the task of unpacking and tried to tell herself that any moment Selena would come bursting through the door, smiling and apologetic with a breathless explanation for her strange disappearance. But soon another fifteen minutes had ticked by, and Selena hadn’t returned.
After her things were put away, Tess paced out onto the balcony and scanned the beach and squinted to see as far as she could in each direction.
Tess figured Selena’s bright pink dress and big floppy hat would have been easy to spot if she had been among the people wandering along the beach. But there was no pink dress. No floppy hat. No Selena. Something was dreadfully wrong, she was nearly certain.
When the phone finally rang, it startled her. Her heart pounded and she banged her knee on the nightstand hurrying back inside. The receiver was halfway to her ear when someone knocked on the door. “Just a minute,” she called out.
“Hello,” she answered hopefully into the receiver. “Hold on!” she shouted to the persistent knocker on the other side of the door. “Hello!” she said again into the phone.
“Miss Elliot, this is Guy from Premium Car Rental. I understand you’re having a problem with your car?”
“No, no, there’s nothing wrong with the car!” Tess felt her heart sink. “Yes, I did call earlier, but—” The knocking grew louder.
“Hang on a minute,” she told the car-rental clerk, dropping the phone on the bed and hurrying across the room to open the door.
Reaching for the door, Tess just knew it would be Selena’s pretty face she’d see on the other side.
She jerked the door open and every teasing word she’d prepared to fling at her cousin for losing her keys or forgetting the time or whatever froze on Tess’s lips as she stood staring and speechless at Reed McKenna, as tall, dark and startlingly handsome as ever, standing in her doorway.
With just one look, Tess knew her life was about to change forever.
Chapter Three
There were no words to express her shock; only his name emerged. “Reed?” It came out a whisper.
“Hello, Tess.”
Her heart was a jackhammer in her chest. “Wh-what—”
“What am I doing here?” he finished the question as he strode past her into the room. “I guess I could ask you the same thing, couldn’t I, Tess? Close the door, why don’t you?”
Numbly, she followed his instructions, the jolt of seeing Reed again, here in Grand Cayman, in her hotel room, had completely dumbfounded her. Rational thought told her he hadn’t materialized simply by her early thoughts of him, but then again, there was nothing rational about the way her heart raced at the sight of him.
“Nice,” he noted as he stepped deeper into the room, picked up the phone that was still lying on the bed and dropped it back onto its base.
Still thunderstruck by his presence, Tess could only stand and stare as he crossed to the balcony and peered outside. Her whole body seemed to be trembling and she couldn’t stop her thoughts from taking a jet-propelled trip back in time.
He’d been the town’s bad boy, the kind of young man mothers warned their daughters about while secretly harboring fantasies of their own involving the darkly handsome, street-smart kid from the proverbial wrong side of the tracks. Quick-witted, handsome, cocky—all these were traits Reed McKenna possessed in abundance, traits that combined to give him that hypnotic magnetism that women couldn’t resist and men couldn’t help but admire.
Seeing him now, dressed in softly faded jeans and a white polo shirt and looking twice as handsome and even sexier, Tess couldn’t help remembering the way he’d stirred her passions. Seeing his faint blue-black beard shadow enhancing his rugged maleness, and his dark brown eyes as intensely seductive and compelling as ever, Tess felt the old familiar attraction drawing her to him again.
Get hold of yourself. You’re a grown woman, not some lovesick teenager! But even as that inner voice scolded, the years melted away and the sweat rose on her palms. Damn you, Reed McKenna! Damn your lean body and your thick, black hair and the wicked brown eyes that always seemed to be looking right into my very soul. And damn that smile of his that curled his perfect lips and drove dimples into his lean, tanned checks.
He turned and sent his smoky gaze sliding leisurely up and down the length of her. “Surprised to see me?” Another smile, and appealing lines winged out from the corners of his eyes.
“Surprised? Believe me, surprised doesn’t even come close. What are you doing here?” she asked him again.
“So that’s all you can say? Not even ‘how’s it going, Reed?’ or ‘Gee, but it’s damn good to see you after all this time’?”
It wasn’t damn good to see him, it was damn disturbing and damn perplexing, exasperating, wonderful and a host of other jumbled and conflicting emotions, all of which Tess despised.
She ran a hand carelessly through her hair, scrambling to collect her wits and raise her guard. “I see you haven’t changed. Still playing word games, still incapable of giving a straight answer.”
His look was one of practiced innocence that she recognized and responded to, despite herself. “Well, you know what they say about teaching old dogs new tricks,” he drawled.
She would not be drawn in, she promised herself, by the patented McKenna charm. “The last I heard you were some kind of federal cop in D.C.,” she said to change the subject.
His thick lashes dipped lazily. “And the last I heard you were back home running some kind of specialty bookstore.”
“Mysteries, Ltd.,” she informed him tersely, realizing too late that he’d deftly avoided answering her question by shifting the focus back on her. Just like the old Reed, she told herself, always a jump ahead of everyone. Always setting the rules.
“Mysteries, huh? Well, what do you know,” his voice held a note of mild indifference as his gaze swept the room before he sauntered toward the bathroom, opened the door and glanced in.
Tess was flabbergasted by his actions and inflamed by his arrogance. “Excuse me, but just what the hell are you doing?” she demanded, coming up behind him with her hands on her hips. He was giving the bathroom such intense scrutiny that she figured if the shower curtain had been drawn he’d have pushed it open to search the tub as well.
He turned away from the bathroom and glanced at the two queen-size beds separated by a standard hotel nightstand. “Nice room.”
“You said that before.”
His gaze wandered back to her and a bemused grin tugged at his mouth, making her feel suddenly exposed in the sundress that had seemed perfectly appropriate until now. “You always were the direct one, weren’t you, Tessa?”
She started at the sound of the pet name no one had called her in almost ten years. “You’re still impossible.”
“And you’re still angry.”
“Angry?” she muttered, detesting the way his mere presence had toppled her emotional equilibrium. “Now, what would give you that impression, McKenna? Let’s see—” Desperate for distance, she turned her back to him and stalked to the other side of the room. “Someone I haven’t laid eyes on in, what? Almost five years—” When she turned around to face him again, he had dropped down into the wicker chair that sat beside the sliding glass doors.
“Four and a half years, at the airport in Denver,” he supplied. “You were on your way to see a sick relative.”
“Am I supposed to be impressed that you remembered?”
He shrugged, but his expression told her he knew she was secretly pleased. Inside she seethed, hating him for knowing her so well and despising the fact that he could still read her emotions so effortlessly.
“Where was I?” she said. “Ah, yes, we were trying to figure out why I should be angry with you for waltzing in without an iota of an explanation. And let’s not forget the part about the wedding you conveniently forgot to attend. When was that, Reed, since you’re the one who’s so good at remembering?”
His smile had disappeared and his mouth was set in a tight line as he studied her.
“I see you can’t remember. Well, let me refresh your memory. It was eight years ago, Reed. June 15th to be exact. Three days before—” Her voice broke and she lowered her eyes to avoid looking at the face that would, if she stared at it long enough, eventually undo her.
He stood and stared out at the beach. “I was sorry to hear about your parents, Tess.”
“I lost my sister, as well,” she reminded him pointedly. Although she was dry-eyed, her heart ached.
“I know,” he said quietly. “And I’m sorry. Meredith was a good kid.”
Tess felt her heart harden at the sound of her sister’s name coming from his lips. How dare he? And how foolish was she to stand here jousting with the man who’d single-handedly destroyed her girlhood innocence and shattered her dreams?
Crossing the room purposefully, she jerked open the door and stood with one hand planted on each hip. “Angry? No, Reed, I’m not angry. But I am a lot wiser than that fawning nineteen-year-old you left standing at he altar.” Her diatribe left her breathless and the flood of heat that rose to her cheeks left her feeling weak. “I don’t know why you’re here, Reed, but I’m vacationing, and I know I’ll enjoy myself a whole lot more if I just throw you out and pretend this little meeting never occurred. Now, if you’ll excuse me,” she finished with a flourish, “I’d appreciate it if you got the hell out of my room and stayed the hell out of the rest of my life!”
He stood staring at her for a long tense moment before he started toward the door. Tess held her breath, hardly daring to believe that he’d actually leave without a fight. The old Reed would never have backed down so easily.
And neither would the new Reed, it seemed, for when he was directly in front of her, he surprised her by taking her hand and pulling her out of the doorway, before pushing the door closed and leaning against it with his arms crossed over his broad chest.
“Where’s Selena?” he asked, all pretense of word games abruptly ended.
“Selena?” Tess asked, unable to conceal her shock.
He nodded. “You asked me what I was looking for. Well, I was looking for your cousin, Selena Elliot.”
Tess blinked. To her knowledge her cousin and her ex-fiancé had never met. When Selena was growing up, she and her parents had lived in Denver, while Tess and Reed had grown up in the small mountain town of Evergreen some thirty miles west. She’d become involved with Reed McKenna her senior year and she had been working the year before starting college when he’d broken their engagement by suddenly, and without telling her, enlisting in the army. It was only later, when she’d inadvertently discovered his betrayal, that Tess had finally learned the real reason Reed had left town.
“Where is she?” he asked, jolting Tess back to the present.
“Why do you want to know?” she shot back defensively. “What connection do you have to Selena?”
“I don’t have any connection, not personally, anyway. I’m only here to take her back to the States. If you care about your cousin, you’ll tell me where she is and stay out of the way so I can do my job.”
“Your job?” Tess realized she was staring at him like an idiot, but the things he’d just said made no sense. “Then you are a cop.”
He didn’t answer.
“And you’re here to arrest Selena? This is unbelievable! What has she done, what’s this all about?” If Selena was in some kind of trouble, wouldn’t she have mentioned it? Or at least canceled this trip?
Reed didn’t answer any of her questions, but his dark-eyed stare continued to bore through her.
“Listen, Reed, whatever you want with my cousin, I know you can’t force her to go anywhere without some kind of warrant or subpoena.”
“I’m not here to arrest her,” he admitted.
Well, at least he’d given her that much. But Tess wasn’t satisfied. All her instincts warned that Reed was concealing far more than he’d revealed.
“All right, so you don’t have a warrant, then why are you looking for her and why should she go anywhere with you?”
His eyes flashed his irritation at being questioned. “Because the U.S. government has requested the honor of her presence at a trial.”
“A trial,” she repeated numbly, feeling slightly light-headed. “What kind of trial? Whose trial? I—I don’t understand. What’s going on and what has my cousin got to do with it?”
“It’s a long story,” he said as he walked across the room to the balcony again. She followed him and watched as his eyes scanned the beach below.
Finally he returned his attention to Tess’s question. “You really don’t know anything about all this, do you? She hasn’t told you?”
“Told me what?” Tess demanded, her patience stretched almost to snapping. “What don’t I know?”
He stood for another long moment without answering, without even looking at her. Exasperated, she reached for his arm, but the minute her fingers made contact with the warm, tanned flesh her heart jumped, and she knew she’d made a mistake. Immediately she pulled her hand back, feeling inexplicably singed.
“Reed, please. Tell me what this is all about. If my cousin is in some kind of trouble, I have a right to know.” And if this is just a bad dream, Tess told herself, she wished to hell someone would wake her!
“Selena is in trouble,” he conceded finally, taking her elbow and ushering her inside the room with him. “She works for a man who’s been indicted on federal charges.”
Tess sat down woodenly on the edge of the bed. “What kind of charges?”
“Racketeering, money laundering and murder, just to name a few.”
Tess felt exactly as she had as a child the time she’d fallen from the monkey bars on the playground and had the wind knocked out of her. “I don’t believe it,” she gasped.
“Believe it,” he said and pulled the bow-shaped wicker chair around to face her before he sat down. “Selena worked as a bookkeeper for Edward Morrell. She was a key figure in his organization.”
Tess could only sit and stare at him, her mind whirling as she tried to make sense of something that made no sense at all.
“Look, I can see how hearing all of this has shocked you, and it’s obvious to me that you know nothing about your cousin’s involvement.” He rose and put the chair back in its place before he added, “I’d like to help you put it all together, but I haven’t got time to explain. And I’m not sure it’s wise to tell you any more than I already have. But I need to know where she is, Tess,” he said, coming back to the bed to stand over her. “I need to find her and get her out of Grand Cayman tonight.”
The unthinkable occurred to Tess in a flash of frightening insight and she rose quickly, oblivious to the precious space that she’d closed between them and the fact that she’d planted her hands on his chest. “Reed, are you trying to tell me that Selena might be in some kind of danger?”
He glanced down at her hands resting on his chest, before his eyes met hers again. “Just tell me where she is, Tess, if you know.”
His dark eyes grew even darker and suddenly every protective instinct went off in a series of screaming alarms inside Tess’s mind. She nearly stumbled, sidestepping away from him. “I won’t tell you anything until you tell me what this is all about.”
“Where is she, Tess?” he demanded, his voice hard-edged and impatient.
“I don’t know,” she insisted. “And even if I did, I wouldn’t tell you. Did you seriously imagine I’d blindly turn my cousin over to you without talking to her first?”
“I’d hoped you would be reasonable.”
“Reasonable or gullible?”
She watched a muscle clench at his jaw and for an uneasy moment she wondered if Selena might be running from him. “You always were too damn stubborn for your own good,” he muttered as he turned and headed for the door.
She was on his heels. “And just when did what’s good for me ever interest you, McKenna?”
His eyes blazed and Tess felt the fire of his anger, but she refused to be cowed, despite his seething temper and his obvious strength advantage—an advantage that by the looks of his lean, hard body was considerable.
“All right,” he relented finally, breaking their staring match. Tess felt a long-overdue twinge of satisfaction. “I guess you have a right to know the circumstances. But when I’ve finished telling you, your stay in Grand Cayman will be over. You’ll have to pack your bags and fly back to the States on the next available flight.”
She rankled at his direct order. “But—”
“No argument,” he said sharply. “From now on you do as I say, Tessa, as though your life depended on it.”
And from the grim expression on his face, Tess believed that it just might.
* * *
ONE FLOOR BELOW Tess Elliot’s room, a naked toddler sitting in a tub of warm water squealed with delight at the spray of water she raised every time she slapped a small, pink, plastic elephant and sent it bobbing. “Doggy, doggy, doggy,” she chanted and giggled and splashed.
The middle-aged woman bent over the tub and laughed and pulled her saturated cotton blouse away from her skin. “Whatever you say, Sweetie.”
“Doggy!” the child responded gleefully, her small pink mouth curled into a delighted grin that revealed four small, shining, front teeth—two on top, two on the bottom.