Dark Desires (Dark Romance Boxed Set)

by Cerys du Lys

  Revenge had burned in her heart for long enough. She could do this. She was so close now!

  3

  She felt so close, and yet she felt as if she was making no progress at all.

  She knew Danny and Jeremy had taken orders from someone – the man, as Danny had called him. And everything pointed to that man being responsible for her husband’s death. She’d followed Danny’s telephone number out here to La Taberna, but then everything had dried up.

  In her first few days here, she hardly saw a thing of Rob, but he hardly seemed like... well, the man. He was too laid back, too young. It was hard to believe that all that might just be a clever disguise, camouflage to protect his life here on the Spanish coast.

  But if Rob was not the man, then how was she going to dig any further? And what was she going to do if she did manage to follow the trail back to the man?

  She had come here for revenge, but increasingly she had come to understand that the need that burned deep within was more complicated than that.

  When she had been in prison, that need had worked to reduce everything to black and white simplicity: revenge was something she held out ahead of herself, a desire that helped get her through.

  But now...

  Now, she saw that it was as much a need for answers. She needed to understand what had happened. She needed to know who her husband had really been: that was something she had been starting to do when he was snatched away from her.

  §

  “So, how long have you been here?” she asked Lucy, that first evening when it was just the two of them and the chef Inge on duty.

  Lucy was pale-skinned and petite, her English immaculate and very probably not a first language. “Oh,” she said, “I am into my second week now.”

  She knew very little, beyond the day to day operation of the bar. She told El that Rob was a good guy to work for, and not to be surprised if he made a pass at her within the first few days. He’d had the bar for a year or two now, and she thought it must have been bought for him by rich parents or something. “He acts as if it is just a pastime,” she said, eyes wide. “He is rarely here for long, and no one knows how he makes it profitable.”

  “What about Keira? That’s her name, right? The one who was here before me?”

  Lucy rolled her eyes dismissively. “There were only two reasons Rob hired her,” she said, and then a family group came in asking about food and the chance to dig further had gone.

  §

  You’d probably find bigger kitchens in a caravan. Inge was even smaller than Lucy, but she could stand in one spot and reach almost everything. She was a slight, blonde woman who was probably in her early forties. She’d been here for three months.

  “I travel,” she said, laughing. “I left home when I was twenty-one. A... What? A gap-year, you call it. I am still on my gap-year and I tell you, sweetie, I am no longer twenty-one.”

  “Here: let me do that.” It was past two in the morning, and the last group of customers had just left, reeling off haphazardly along the promenade. Lucy had left immediately, but Inge was still clearing up after that last late serving. She let El take the spray and scourer from her and start cleaning down the food prep area.

  “It’s okay,” said Inge. “You don’t need to impress just because you’re new. And even if you do, it’s not me you need to impress.” She didn’t stop El from helping, though.

  “No? So who do I need to impress?”

  “Rob, of course.” Inge snorted a laugh that sounded almost like she was coughing. “But I tell you, you’ve impressed him already.”

  El raised an eyebrow at the cook, remembering Lucy’s comment about how likely it was that Rob would make a pass. “I heard Keira impressed him, too.”

  That laugh again, and then Inge said, “She got herself noticed.”

  They didn’t say much more before Inge left, and it was only later that El started to wonder about Inge’s words.

  In the back of La Taberna there was a small office. There was room for a stool and a half-sized desk, barely large enough for a laptop; above it on a shelf there was a printer, and a wall-mounted telephone. And then crammed into the remaining space was a two-seater sofa; its cover was threadbare and its foam filling was uneven and thin. It was actually a sofa-bed, she realized, although there was no room to open it out.

  That phone on the wall. That would be the one, the number she had called. The number that called Danny when there was ‘work’ to do. Was it the phone that had been used when the man had decided Jeremy had become too much of a liability?

  She put those thoughts out of her mind.

  She lay there in the dark, her legs tucked up to her chest, not quite believing that she was almost as uncomfortable as she had been the night before on that abandoned building lot.

  It was much later, as she lay there unable to sleep, that she started to think again about Inge’s choice of words.

  She got herself noticed.

  Such an odd choice of phrase. The chef’s English was broken, it was true, but her words seemed very specific. Why not simply say that Rob had noticed her? Did she mean something else, or was El just clutching at anything in her frustration?

  Earlier in that exchange, Inge had told El that she’d impressed Rob already. What did she mean by that? Just an obvious sexual thing, given that it appeared Rob would make a pass at any woman who worked here?

  She thought of him, his silvery blue eyes, his wide smile. And then she drifted into sleep.

  §

  She freshened up in the washroom first thing, then washed through her panties, bra and camisole top from the day before and hung them out of the back window to dry, before putting on her old black t-shirt and skinnies.

  When Inge came in mid-morning to start cooking breakfasts she took one look at the underwear silhouetted against the frosted window and said to El, “You want to shower, you come to my place in the morning, okay?”

  For a moment El could have cried at that unexpected flash of kindness, then she bottled down on her feelings. She smiled and thanked Inge.

  She just had to get through, that was all.

  This second day was manic, and it was just the three of them again, no sign of Rob.

  Neither Lucy nor Inge would give her any more, in response to her gentle nudges about Rob and any other activities he, or anyone else associated with La Taberna, may be involved with.

  She bit back on the desperate need to push harder until she got more information.

  She had to be patient.

  She would only ever have one chance at finding the truth.

  §

  Inge had a room above a pharmacy, four streets up the hill from the beach.

  Early the next morning, El came to the chef’s door, checked the address she had been given again, and then knocked.

  Inge opened the door, wearing just a pair of shorts and a black sport bra.

  The place only consisted of a bedroom and a bathroom. Everything was clean and precise. Potted cacti lined up in the window, a stack of neatly folded clothing and towels sat on a chair waiting to be put away, a set of simple framed photographs of seascapes were evenly spaced along one wall.

  “I don’t have anything,” El said apologetically.

  Inge waved El’s words away. “I put a fresh towel for you,” she said. “Use whatever you need. It’s all just stuff, you know?”

  El remembered that Inge had spent maybe the last twenty years traveling the world. You could only really do that if you never became attached to possessions. ‘Travel light and far’ – who was it who had said that?

  A short time later, she stepped into the shower and tipped her head back, letting the water run over her face, through her hair, down her body. She had rarely ever felt anything more luxurious than that water, soaking everything away.

  After a time, she found shampoo and conditioner, then she used a loofah to scrub. There was a razor. Had Inge really meant to use anything she needed? Was there an etiquette to th
ese things? She was over-thinking everything again, but where she had come from you used whatever was available to you: toiletries, razors, anything. Sometimes it was hard to remember how different the rules were out here, and how sometimes what people said wasn’t what they actually meant.

  She shaved under her arms, and then her legs. After hesitating for a moment, she started to shave the bronze triangle at her groin, wary of nicking herself with the blade.

  When she was done, she looked at that bare, pale skin. It looked so vulnerable. She placed a hand against it, savoring the smoothness. Such an intimate sensation!

  Funny, but it made such a difference to be clean, and so smooth. That very private sense of vulnerability somehow gave her more confidence.

  She had been in here for far too long. Inge must be cursing her.

  She emerged into the main room, wearing the white towel the chef had put out for her, and using another to rub at her hair.

  Inge watched her, and for a moment El thought she had misinterpreted this whole situation.

  What had she walked into here? Why had Inge invited her back?

  Everybody is after something. She knew that well enough.

  No one is simply kind.

  Then the moment had gone. Inge picked up another towel from that stack of clean washing on the chair and stepped past El into the bathroom.

  Pausing in the doorway, she looked back.

  “I do not know what you are here for,” she said. “But believe me, El, it is not worth it. It could never be worth it. Leave now, while you can. There is a whole world out there. You are young and beautiful and intelligent. You have so much ahead of you. So go. You hear me? Just go.”

  4

  Inge would say no more, and El had the distinct impression that the chef felt she had already said too much.

  They walked down to La Taberna together, an awkward silence broken only by generalities about the weather, and how busy the place had been recently.

  When they reached the bar, the cleaner, whose name El still did not know, was rolling up the front awning for the day. El and Inge paused to help with the catches, then with a gentle hand on the small of El’s back the chef guided El through ahead of her into the bar.

  She was trying to be kind, El knew, but hints and veiled warnings were no help at all.

  She didn’t need a stranger to be looking out for her, and she certainly had no need for sympathy.

  She went through to the back office and changed into the black t-shirt that was the informal uniform here. When she came back out the first breakfast customers were waiting and Lucy hadn’t turned up yet, so she went out front with a big smile on her face.

  “Hola,” she said. “Good morning. Can I get you drinks while you choose?”

  §

  Rob showed up late that morning. El didn’t know if he’d been out of town, or simply distracted elsewhere for a few days.

  He came to stand in the entrance, peering around while his eyes adjusted from the bright glare of the sunlight to the relative gloom of the bar’s interior. Then he spotted El and that wide grin split his face in two. “Hey!” he said, striding in through the tables. “Hey, El. So tell me: how’s it going?”

  She thought for a moment that he was going to hug her, but then he paused at the last moment and pulled back. Any kind of intimacy made her flinch, even now. It was a gut reaction. Had he sensed that, or had she simply mis-read him?

  She cut herself off. Over-thinking again.

  She smiled, and said, “It’s good. Thank you. Lucy and Inge have been great.”

  “You’re an old hand now. No, believe me: places like this have a high turnover of staff.”

  She thought of her predecessor, Keira, but said nothing.

  “Listen, you eaten yet? Let’s grab breakfast and you can tell me all about it.” Without waiting for an answer, he stepped past El, dipped his head through the kitchen doorway and said, “Hey, Inge. Two full English with orange juice and coffee out front, okay? You’re an angel. No, really you are: that’s your angel look on your face right now. I’d recognize it anywhere.” He backed away, laughing, and turned to El. “Shall we?”

  §

  They took a table out under the canopy, separated from the promenade only by the line of low, cactus-filled planters that marked the boundary.

  “You sure this is okay?” El said. She peered back into La Taberna but the place was quiet, now they’d hit the lull between breakfast and lunch. Lucy stood at the bar, polishing glasses and reading something on her phone.

  “It’s all good,” he said.

  He seemed content just to sit there, while they waited for the food.

  She should feel uncomfortable, she knew, the way his eyes kept flitting away towards the beach, then back to her, working over her. Somehow, though, it didn’t seem to matter. There was something about the sun and the laid-back atmosphere of this place. Something about Rob, too: he had a way of making you relax in his company.

  She remembered Inge telling her she’d impressed him, that he’d noticed her. She tipped her head back and shook her hair, and his eyes followed her every move.

  “You learning the ropes?” he asked, finally.

  She nodded. “Like I say, Inge and Lucy have been great.”

  “Yeah. I called Inge. She said you were doing well.”

  She made a mental note of that: Inge was the one he turned to when he was away. But it was also Inge who had warned her to get out while she could. The chef clearly knew more than she was letting on.

  Lucy brought their breakfast over, two large plates loaded with sausages, bacon, fried eggs, hash browns, beans and more. Rob tucked in straight away, as if he hadn’t eaten all the time he had been away. After a short time he paused, as if noticing that El was only politely picking at the food.

  “Not your thing?” he asked. “Sorry. I shouldn’t assume.”

  “No, no,” she said. “It’s good. Just a bit... you know, a bit much.”

  “My bad,” he said. Then: “Hey, maybe I’ll take you for that vodka some time instead. What do you say?”

  She smiled. He’d remembered her joke about how, as a wine-drinker this was the kind of bar where you’d drink vodka. She didn’t know what to say. Was he actually asking her out on some kind of date, or was this just him making a casual pass, as Lucy had said he would?

  “Hey, no pressure,” he said. That was the verbal equivalent of when he’d gone to hug her earlier, sensed her hesitancy and moved things on. “So, you okay with sleeping in the back office? That sofa’s not... well, it’s not much of anything, is it?”

  She smiled. “It’s under cover,” she said, and he nodded. “And right now it’s bang in my price range. That’s two things in its favor.”

  He laughed, and she tried not to stare. Rough around the edges, with shaggy, neglected hair and several days’ stubble, dressed in cutaway jeans and a t-shirt so old the design had all but washed away, he was a long way from anything she would ever say was her type, but she had to admit to herself that there was something there. That smile, the silver-blue eyes, the way his whole laid-back demeanor seemed to come through in the way he looked, too.

  The bastard wasn’t supposed to make her feel like this.

  She remembered the conflicted mess of feelings she’d experience that evening with Danny Taylor. How she’d been drawn to him, attracted to all the things she had found so unattractive and irritating before. Was this some kind of damage that had been done to her in the past two years? Had she sunk so low that she would feel pathetically grateful to any man who gave her the time of day?

  Or perhaps worse, was it that experience had chipped away some of her layers to reveal something that had always been there? Did men like Danny and Rob actually have something that connected with her in some way? Was this actual attraction, for God’s sake?

  She really was in a bad way, to be feeling like this.

  He was eating again, stealing the occasional glance up at her as she stared out a
cross the beach.

  She couldn’t allow herself to get like this.

  Her head was messed up. Her feelings screwed up and twisted. She couldn’t let that distract her from the one thing she knew, the need that burned deep inside. She needed answers, and she needed some sort of revenge for all that had happened, all that had been destroyed.

  She had to focus.

  “Have you been out of town?” she asked. “It seems like you just hired me and then vanished.”

  He shrugged. “Yeah, sorry about that,” he said. “Business. You know how it is.”

  “You do more than just run La Taberna?”

  Another shrug, as if he believed he could use that gesture to deflect almost anything. “I keep myself busy,” he said, and returned to his food.

  He was a curious mix, one she didn’t feel she was even close to fathoming. He came across as such an easy-going guy, the typical beach bum who’s found a way to get by in the sun. But then sometimes there would be a chink in his armor, a hint at depths and complications.

  “You own this place?” she asked, nodding towards the bar. “Or are you running it for someone else?”

  “It’s complicated,” he said. “Spanish law, you know. But yeah: La Taberna is mine. I’m the man...”

  The sun was burning down hot now, close to midday. Although they were under the shade of the canopy, the heat rose in waves from the stone slabs of the promenade, the kind of heat that had a brute, physical presence.

  But despite that heat, his words just then turned her cold.

  The man.

  That was what Danny had called him: the one who gave the orders. The one who called from that mysterious Spanish telephone number – La Taberna’s number.

  The one who had been behind Jeremy’s murder.

  The man.

  “So, El,” Rob said, apparently unaware of the effect his words had just had. “I don’t know anything about you, really. I’ve been trying to work you out, but you’re just one great big heap of contradictions.”

  She raised her eyebrows, not trusting her voice, and waited for him to explain.