Dark Nights Dangerous Men

by Elisabeth Naughton, Cynthia Eden, Katie Reus, Alexandra Ivy, Laura Wright, Joan Swan

  “We’re going to the Bahamas?”

  “Yep. You and me, Querida. First thing tomorrow.” He leaned over and kissed her, smelling like fresh roasted peanuts. When he pulled back, his face was set in a serious line. “You got a bikini?”

  Good God, she was having trouble following him. “We’re on the verge of finding Tisiphone, and you’re worried about my having a bikini?”

  “Don’t worry. I’ll get you one.” He grabbed a pen from the counter and jotted a number on a scrap of paper. “If you think of anything you need, call me. I’ll be back in a few hours.”

  He was gone before she had a chance to digest all the information.

  When she heard the front door click shut, she turned back to the notebook in front of her.

  The Bahamas. Tisiphone was in the Bahamas. Less than one hundred and fifty miles away. Somewhere in Doug’s journal was the exact location where Sophia had hidden the goddess. Could it really be that easy?

  Something in her gut said No way.

  ***

  “He sure has a thing for that boat.”

  Cleaning the kitchen after dinner, Lisa lifted her head at Hailey’s words and looked out the window above the sink. Rafe was hauling supplies onto the boat moored at the private dock just off the beach, chiseled muscles flexing in his shoulders beneath a thin blue T-shirt as he moved.

  It was just a little strange. Having dinner with her new lover and his ex, listening to the way the two joked like they’d known each other forever, watching the way Hailey darted looks between her and Rafe as if she knew something Lisa didn’t. She wasn’t sure she’d ever get used to the relaxed relationship between Rafe and Hailey. Certainly didn’t understand it.

  She glanced down at the pan she was drying and turned to place it in a cupboard. “How long has he had it?”

  Dressed in denim shorts and a white T-shirt, Hailey sat at the kitchen table studying the maps Lisa had pieced together. Her curly blond ponytail swayed behind her as she propped an elbow on the smooth surface and rested her chin on her hand. “A few months. He had an older boat he sold. With that and what he had left over after budgeting Teresa’s care, he bought this one.”

  Lisa’s hand paused in the act of drying. He’d sold his share of Odyssey for his mother. Why hadn’t she realized that before?

  Her heart slammed against her ribs, and she swallowed hard. More surprises. More reinforcement she’d pegged him wrong from the very beginning.

  Forcing herself to keep working, she finished drying the dish in her hand and put it away. “You get along well. You and Teresa?”

  “Yeah. She’s like the mother I wish I’d always had. It’ll be hard on him when she goes.”

  Lisa stared out at the white sailboat shimmering in the evening light and the man on deck, who had more heart than she’d ever expected.

  “I have a feeling he’ll be okay, though. You’re a good distraction for him.”

  “What?” Barely catching Hailey’s words, Lisa turned.

  “No ‘what’ about it. I’ve seen the way he looks at you. Teresa did too. We’re not blind.” She glanced back at the map.

  Looked at her like what? Lisa’s pulse kicked up. “He only wants me because of Tisiphone.”

  Hailey rolled her eyes. “That’s not the only reason he wants you. Trust me, I know the man. And I can’t tell you how many times I wished he would have looked at me like that. Just once.”

  Reality formed a lump in Lisa’s throat. She set her dish towel on the black granite counter. “You loved him.”

  An uncomfortable silence spread over the kitchen. Hailey pushed away from the table. “I feel like some wine. Don’t you?” Without waiting for an answer, she found a bottle of cabernet in the wine cabinet. After uncorking the top, she poured two generous glasses and handed Lisa one. “Did he tell you how we met?”

  Lisa took the glass, knowing a diversionary tactic when she saw one. Hell, she was a pro at the same exact thing. “No.”

  “My father’s loaded. Runs a chain of five-star hotels up and down the East Coast. He also has an insatiable art-collecting habit. Buys junk all the time and never looks at it again. Pete had a client who was in the market for an abstract painting by some unknown artist out on the West Coast. Rafe tracked it down and found my father had bought it. The thing was in an attic collecting dust. It had never been hung, and I’m willing to bet my father forgot he even had it. Anyway, to make a long story short, being the generous man my father is, when Rafe approached him about selling, he said no.”

  “So Rafe stole it,” Lisa guessed.

  “Yep.” Hailey lifted her wine and sipped again. “I showed up at my parents’ estate in Palm Beach unexpected the night he went after it, and I caught him.”

  Lisa couldn’t help smiling. The smart international art thief had been caught by a small-town cop. Just like that. “I bet that was a surprise for him.”

  “It was. And my father, even though he never liked my career choice in the first place, made a big deal about me making the arrest and getting the credit.”

  “Which, I’m guessing, you didn’t want.”

  “No. And when I found out what had really happened, I made sure the evidence got buried. Just to spite him.”

  Lisa lifted her wine to her lips. “I take it you don’t get along so well with your parents.”

  “That’s an understatement.” Hailey shrugged. “Anyway, Rafe was grateful, took me out to dinner to say thanks, and one thing led to another from there. When my father heard through the grapevine who I’d been seen around town with, he blew his stack.”

  “And that made the two of you go out again.”

  “Bingo.” Hailey glanced out the window at the boat. “My parents pretty much disowned me when they found out I was dating a thief.” Her voice softened. “But then he’s not your normal run-of-the-mill criminal, is he?”

  “No,” Lisa said, gaze following. “He’s not.” And every day she got to know him, he was turning into more.

  “He’s easy to be around, and he’s got a big heart. He’d do anything for the people he cares about, even if that means sacrificing something he wants in the process. I realized that pretty fast, and I thought it would be enough, but it wasn’t.”

  “Why didn’t you ever tell him how you felt?”

  Hailey turned away from the window. “It wouldn’t have made a difference.”

  “You don’t know that.”

  “I do.” Her voice softened. “I’m not stupid. I knew after we got home from that trip to Vegas he wanted out, but he was too honorable to ask for it. And I let it go on longer than it should have, using Teresa as an excuse. It upset him to have to ask for the divorce, because he thought he was letting everyone down, but it was the right thing for both of us.” She smiled. “Besides, I got over it, which tells me it wasn’t meant to be in the first place.”

  Lisa looked down into her wine. Fifteen years later and she still hadn’t gotten over what had happened with Doug. They were obviously never meant to be together either, so why was it so hard for her? If she could go back and change the past, would she want to be with Doug right now?

  No.

  That reality slammed into her. What she wanted was what she already had. For so long, she’d been using the past to keep from feeling anything for anyone else. And now, because of the Furies, that was slowly changing.

  Because of Rafe.

  “Do me a favor.”

  Wide-eyed, Lisa glanced up at a woman she didn’t want to like, but did. “What?”

  “No matter what happens with Tisiphone, promise me you won’t break his heart. He’s not as tough as he looks.”

  Lisa closed her eyes. Oh, crap. She didn’t need to hear that.

  Hailey chuckled. “Well, I think I’ve done enough damage here. I’m going to retire to one of the guest rooms, fall asleep in a big comfy bed and dream about a tall, dark stranger. You guys just pretend like I’m not even here.”

  When Lisa pulled her eyes open, Hail
ey was already gone. She turned and looked out the window again. Darkness had settled in. Stars twinkled in the night sky, and moonlight spilled across the water. A light shone in the cabin of the boat, interrupted now and then as Rafe moved around inside.

  Lisa’s chest tightened. If she were smart, she’d go upstairs, lock herself in a room and go straight to sleep. Because what she was feeling now was dangerous. She’d been here before, on the edge of taking a chance on a man she shouldn’t trust. And as stupid as she knew it was, she was still thinking about doing it.

  “You’re certifiable,” she mumbled to herself. “How many times do you have to be kicked in the gut to get it?”

  Not enough, apparently. Because her gut was telling her this time was different.

  Nerves humming, she flipped off the kitchen lights and stood in the dark while she counted slowly to ten. When she finished, her pep talk still hadn’t gotten through her thick skull.

  Dumb, dumb, dumb. Shaking her head, she took a step toward the door and a man that scared her more than any loaded gun.

  ***

  The echo of footsteps on the deck above brought Rafe’s head up where he sat at the chart table in the cabin of the boat. Bare feet eased down the companionway, followed by two of the sexiest legs he’d ever seen.

  Lisa slipped her hands into the back pockets of her short shorts. “Hi there.”

  He smiled, a familiar warmth building in his belly at her presence. “Hey.”

  When she took a step closer, gardenia wafted toward his nose. “What are you working on?”

  He glanced at the charts in front of him. “Plotting out our course. There’s a shipping channel between here and Bimini.”

  “Oh. Big ships, huh?”

  “Yeah. Just trying to figure out the fastest and safest route.”

  She turned to glance around the salon. Her hair looked redder against the teak walls, her skin softer in the low light. She ran one hand over the shiny table to her left as she moved through the small room, her eyes taking everything in. “This is nicer than I expected.”

  “Thanks.” He tried to imagine what she saw when she looked at it. He saw years of hard work and the only weakness he had. She probably imagined it was just a toy. Part of him didn’t want to know what she thought. Another part wanted to prove to her he wasn’t just a petty thief.

  He pushed aside the thought. “You two done talking about me in there?”

  She shot him a wry look over her shoulder. “Yes. Hailey went to bed.”

  He leaned back against the curved navigator’s seat. “Let me guess. She told you what an ass I am.”

  Lisa peeked through the small window to the darkness beyond. “I already know what an ass you are, Slick.” A smile curled her sensuous lips. “Actually, if you want to know the truth, she made you sound like the perfect guy.”

  He laughed and crossed his arms over his chest, knowing better than to believe that one.

  She glanced around the galley before moving across the space, looked up at the skylights and the moonlight slanting through the cabin. “So, you never asked me how I ended up with Doug’s research.”

  Surprise shot through him.

  “Not curious at all?”

  Hell, yeah, he was curious. He had a thousand questions he was too afraid to ask.

  And he sensed she was on the verge of telling him. Without his prodding. If he started hounding her for answers, she might just clam up.

  Trying not to let his eagerness show, he propped one foot on the shelf under the chart table. “I figured you’d tell me if it was important.”

  “Hmm.” She turned away and ran her hand over the white upholstered settee along the wall in front of him. “Did you ever do anything stupid you wished you could go back and undo?”

  “Are you talking about regret?” When she didn’t immediately answer, he shrugged. “Sure. Everyone has things they wish they’d done differently.” He wished he’d had a stronger relationship with his father, had been a better role model for Billy, had caught his mother’s symptoms sooner. He had a lifetime of things he wished he could change.

  “Regret’s a pretty mild word,” she said, looking out the window. “I regret not going after the Furies sooner, not that it would have made a difference. But I’m talking about the really big stuff. The things that change your life.”

  He didn’t know how to answer, and he couldn’t quite read her mood, so he waited and hoped she’d go on.

  She picked up a pen on the small side table. “Doug was fixated on the Furies long before I met him. He had a theory. Being an art-history major, I’m sure you’ve heard it before.”

  “Is this the one about the Spartan queen commissioning Kalamis in the fifth century B.C. to create the Furies, thinking they would protect the Spartans in battle and ensure their victory over the Athenians? Yeah, I’ve heard it. Pretty farfetched.”

  One side of Lisa’s mouth curved. “Doug didn’t think so. He was convinced the Athenians stole the reliefs from Sparta, and that their disappearance was a major, albeit overlooked, contributor to the Peloponnesian War.”

  Rafe lifted his brows.

  She smiled a little more at his expression. “Yeah. That’s the same thing most scholars thought of his ideas. Mostly because no one believed the Furies actually existed. But there are some historical annals that support his theory. Doug thought finding the Furies would ultimately prove him right and would thereby solidify his status in the world of academia once and for all.”

  Rafe thought back to Maria’s warning. He didn’t care all that much about the academic repercussions finding the Furies would have in the world, but Lisa obviously did. He looked down at the table top. “How did you meet him?”

  She sighed and glanced at the pen in her hand. “He taught a class I took one spring semester when I was in grad school. At the time, I thought his theory had some validity. I wanted to know more. But he never noticed me.”

  She shifted away, set the pen down and touched the smooth walls as she wandered around the room. “I applied for a dig he was heading up in Ecuador over the summer, and once I was there, made sure he took notice of me. It was a good summer.”

  Jealousy twisted like a knife in his chest at the softness he heard in her voice.

  “Didn’t last though,” she said, turning back and glancing his way. Something unsettling passed over her eyes, but it disappeared as she continued to move around the room. “When we got back to Chicago, he didn’t want anyone to know about us. Even though I wasn’t taking any of his classes, he thought it wouldn’t look good. I was twenty-three, he was thirty-six. The university frowned big-time on student-teacher relationships.”

  “I bet.” What else was he going to say? That knife was scraping away at his insides at just the thought of her with someone else. A childish reaction, considering his ex-wife was yards away in the house.

  “Anyway,” she went on, fiddling with the port blinds over the settee as if it hurt to stand still, “I was pretty stupid. Went along with what he wanted, even though I didn’t like it. In public I acted like nothing was happening, but in private it was a completely different story. Until I wound up pregnant.”

  She finally looked his direction with big, green, unreadable eyes.

  And he didn’t know what to say.

  “I’m guessing by your reaction, that’s not a surprise.”

  He pulled open the top drawer of the chart table and handed her the photo he’d swiped.

  She glanced from the picture to his face. “Where’d you get this?”

  “Your parents’ attic.”

  He waited for her to lay into him for taking it, but she only bit her lip and looked down at the picture, her expression guarded. “Look at that long hair. Used to drive me nuts. It was always getting in my way.”

  “I like it.”

  There was disbelief in those shimmering emeralds when she looked up. She handed him the photo. “Doug didn’t.”

  Doug was a prick. But he wasn’t about
to say that. Not yet.

  “He never said, but he thought I got pregnant on purpose to trap him. He couldn’t have been more wrong.” She let out a short laugh that held no humor. “Biggest shock of my life.”

  Then it started to make sense.

  “He didn’t want the baby,” Rafe said quietly, fingering the edge of the photo.

  Lisa moved across the room to the settee where she lifted a throw pillow. “Nope. And things changed between us, then. He dove into his work, got really obsessed with the Furies. Said he couldn’t settle down with me—with us,” she corrected, “until he’d gone after the one thing that mattered.”

  “Marble,” Rafe muttered. The man had tossed Lisa away for a goddamn piece of rock.

  “Yep.” She said the word with no hint of feeling. “No one knew I’d been seeing him, and I never told anyone but Shane who the father was. And even though it was really stupid and unlikely, I held onto the belief that after he got back from his little treasure hunt, we’d settle down and have the perfect life. Do it all,” she said, turning toward him. “Have the career and the family and the house in the suburbs. Everything. I was six months’ pregnant when he left.”

  When he died. She didn’t say it, but the reality hung between them like thick smoke.

  “What happened to the baby?” he asked softly.

  The first hint of pain reflected in her eyes. She tossed the pillow on the settee. “I heard from him once, a brief phone call after he’d been gone a few weeks, then nothing. I didn’t find out about the plane crash until a week after it happened, when it was announced by the university. And I didn’t handle the news so well, especially when no one would give me details. Three days later I lost the baby. The doctor said it wasn’t related to the stress, but”—she shrugged—“I’m not so sure. Until then, things had been fine.”

  Jesus.

  He closed his eyes, knowing then why she didn’t believe in love. “I’m sorry.” He opened his eyes and stepped toward her. “Lisa—”