by Anne Stuart
He looked at her for long moment. “Interesting emphasis on the word I. If not you then someone else? Someone you know and are covering for?”
Stupid, stupid, stupid! She was going to get Billy killed with her own carelessness. She took a breath, thanking God it wasn’t as shaky as she felt. “Don’t be ridiculous. Anyone involved in human trafficking should be shot.” The words came out instinctively, and she almost wished she could bite them back. Everyone should be shot but her baby brother, who had simply made a terrible mistake.
“I’m more for gutting them and letting them suffer, along with child molesters, but the end result is the same.” He was still watching her carefully. “Are you going to eat your sandwich?”
She would choke on it. “I think I lost my appetite.”
For a long moment he said nothing, and his dark blue eyes turned even deeper, almost black, in the shadowy kitchen. He set down his own plate and started toward her, and instinctively she tried to back up, only to come up hard against the kitchen island, the wooden countertop digging into her back. He put his hands on either side of her, trapping her inside the prison of his arms, and he was too damned close to her. She could feel the warmth of his skin, his soft breath on her hair, and she wondered if she stood any chance of shoving him away.
Not likely. She had to be calm, matter-of-fact, not let him know how much he unnerved her. “Would you back off?” she said caustically.
“No.”
Damn, why was he so close? And why did she care? He was just a man, albeit a dangerous one, and if there was one thing she was certain of, it was that he had no sexual interest in her whatsoever. The threat of his barely clothed, masculine body had nothing to do with the peculiar heat that flooded her at his proximity. “What is it you want from me?” she said, her voice edgy with frustration.
“This,” he said, and put his mouth on hers.
Chapter Eleven
She tasted like sin, and Ryder moved in closer, pressing his hips against her. He could feel the quiver that ran through her body when he kissed her, and he wondered whether it was fear or something else. It didn’t really matter, as long as he could siphon the truth from her. Her mouth was soft beneath his, vulnerable, and he ran his tongue across her full lower lip before taking it in his teeth, tugging gently. He heard the surprised sound she made, and for a brief moment he forgot about prying secrets from her and concentrated on the ripe promise of her mouth.
He pushed his tongue past her teeth, and she shuddered in response. At some point her hands had come up from her sides and landed on his shoulders, but instead of pushing him away, which she no doubt would have wanted to do, she was digging her fingers in, pulling him closer to that delicious body of hers.
He wanted to fuck her. It would be easy enough to hoist her onto the butcher-block countertop, yank down that baggy pair of boxers, and thrust inside her. She’d like it—he’d make sure of that—but horny as he was, she wasn’t worth the trouble it would bring.
And then she made a little moaning noise in the back of her throat, and he slid his hands down to her hips and lifted her up anyway, stepping between her legs so that he could push against her.
He deepened the kiss. He knew how to kiss—he’d long ago perfected the art, and he put all his expertise into it, coaxing her, inviting her, teasing her, so that she would forget where she was and whom she was with. She pushed against him, her arms sliding around his neck.
She was so soft, and she tasted so damned good that he knew a moment’s regret. But this was a job, and he needed to remember that.
He pulled away, looking down into her slightly glazed eyes. They were a golden brown, somewhere between dark honey and amber, and he let his mouth quirk in a cool smile. “So are you ready to tell me what you’re hiding?”
It was as effective as throwing a bucket of cold water over her. She shoved him, hard, but he wasn’t about to go anywhere, and he gripped the counter on either side of her hips, imprisoning her there. “I don’t buy your innocent act, and I don’t believe a damned thing you’ve been saying. You’re holding something back, something important, and I intend to find out what it is.”
Fear flashed across those eyes, for just a moment, then was gone. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Of course you don’t,” he said, and kissed her again.
She hit him then, but he caught her arms in his hands and held her still, and she wasn’t putting up that much of a fight. She had every reason to despise him, and yet he felt her soften beneath him, and he wondered just how far he could justify going. Her hands were pushing at him but her mouth was kissing him back, and he could have sunk into the heat of their kiss.
Instead, he stepped back, releasing her, and she rubbed her mouth across her arm. “It won’t be that easy,” he said. “You can’t wipe the taste of me away.”
She slid off the counter, and if she stumbled for a moment she regained her footing before he could reach out to steady her. He found himself wondering if it was his kisses that made her so shaky, or the barely healing wound on her leg.
“Do you have any idea how much I hate you?” she said in a small, sharp voice.
“Why don’t you tell me what you’re hiding, and then I’ll be glad to listen to a list of my failings as a human being.”
“I don’t think you are human.” And then she took a nervous step back from his predatory smile. “Leave me the fuck alone.”
She was trying not to cower. He suspected Jennifer Parker, Esquire, didn’t cower easily. He watched her steadily, saying nothing, knowing his very stillness could rattle her. He could have his answers with just the right amount of pain, and it wouldn’t take long, but for some reason he was loath to do it. It was a weakness of his—he didn’t like hurting women. Then again, he didn’t like hurting men; it was simply his job. When the task became pleasurable that would be the time to stop.
He waited, knowing she’d fill the uneasy silence. “I’m not hiding anything,” she said finally. “I have no idea why you think I am, but there’s nothing you can do to make me tell you something that doesn’t exist. I don’t know any more about human trafficking than you do.”
Any temporary softness vanished. She was lying to him, and part of him was ready to force the truth from her.
But as far as he could tell, there was no hurry. She might know more than she admitted to, but the people responsible for the trafficking weren’t fools, which was how they’d managed to elude the long reach of the Committee for years. There were signs, rumblings, that someone was still out there, and it would take time to hunt him down. There was no need to get that information right this minute. Not when he wasn’t sure his motivations weren’t a little too personal.
“Take your sandwich and go back to bed, Parker,” he said wearily. “I don’t like liars and I don’t like people who aid other criminals and still think they’re innocent.”
It was a shot in the dark and it hit its target. She looked as if she might throw up. It wasn’t her, then, but he’d never really thought it could be. She was covering up for someone, and with Remy searching her room and Jack looking into things from that angle, it wouldn’t take long to isolate the person she cared enough about to risk her career and possibly her life. A lover, maybe, though for some reason he disliked that possibility. She didn’t kiss like someone who had a lover.
“There’s no one . . .” she began again, but he turned his back on her.
“Get the fuck out of here, Parker, unless you want to continue what we started.”
She didn’t take the sandwich. He wasn’t going to take it up to her—he was on the razor’s edge of good behavior and it wouldn’t take much to tip him over. He simply covered it with a paper towel and headed back upstairs to the computer room. Remy should have had time to do a discreet toss of her room. It was time to find out what she’d been hiding.
There was no sign of Ryder when Jenny came downstairs the next morning. A man she didn’t know was stationed
in the front hallway, but he simply nodded to her as she headed back to the kitchen. It was empty, but someone had made a fresh pot of coffee, and she found bagels, pastries, and beignets under a domed lid.
The last thing she needed was a surfeit of sugar, but there were eggs in the massive refrigerator and frying pans by the stove. Half defiantly she made herself an omelet seasoned with filé powder and headed toward one of the stools set up at the counter, when the previous night came back full force. Jerking away, she moved to a far corner of the kitchen and propped herself against a row of cabinets. She didn’t want to think about those few minutes in the kitchen, with his hard body between her legs, his erection pressing against her. And it had been an erection—there was no doubt about that. What she couldn’t understand was why he had kissed her. No, scratch that, she knew why he’d kissed her. He’d done it simply to rattle her, to get her to tell him what he wanted to know. It hadn’t been done because he was attracted to her but because he’d figured out she was attracted to him. He’d used sex as a weapon, and it had worked. At least enough to demoralize her, enough to wipe away her defenses so that she made the colossal error of kissing him back, of putting her arms around his sleek, warm skin, of clinging to him.
That was probably why he was hard—not in reaction to her, but the sheer triumph of winning. She knew as well as anyone that he had no sexual interest in her; he simply made a judgment as to what would break her the quickest, and he’d been right. If he’d kept on she would have spread her legs for him and told him anything he wanted to know. He was that good.
And she was that pathetically needy. It disgusted her—she’d decided after her disastrous marriage that she was going to do without men for as long as she could stand it, and that time shouldn’t have been up. But it turned out she was only human after all, and the feel of a warm male body up against hers was irresistible, even if it was the very last man on Earth she should want.
Fortunately the moment he stepped back, sanity reared its ugly head. She shouldn’t want him—he frankly terrified her. He was a man who killed, and she’d lied to him and tricked him. There was no guarantee that his need to exact revenge would be limited to her baby brother.
She’d lose her license if it came out. That was the least of her worries. She did a lot of good, trying to make up for her family’s sins, but she could still accomplish a lot if she were disbarred. No, it was Billy she was afraid for, Billy with his innocent smile and his stupid impulsive mistakes. She knew that once he really understood what he’d been involved in he’d be as horrified as she was. He didn’t deserve to die for one mistake, but she had no doubt Ryder would kill him. Because no Gauthier brother would ever allow himself to be taken into custody—again with the stupid male pride.
Her omelet was beginning to taste like sawdust, but she dutifully finished it, following it up with the peanut butter sandwich that lay neatly covered on the countertop. She would need fuel if she were going to hold out against Ryder, whether she liked it or not.
The sooner she got away from him, the better. In fact, there was no real reason why she had to be there—they could hardly force her to stay. She had friends who would always offer her a bed, and she had plenty of disposable income to afford a hotel until she could find some kind of apartment, but it was dirty money, family money, and she didn’t want to touch it. At that point the very thought of putting her love and energy into another house was impossible.
When she’d first dressed she’d poked her head into Soledad’s room, hoping she’d come downstairs with her and serve as some kind of buffer between her and Ryder, but Soledad had simply mumbled sleepily and turned over in bed. Could she dare leave Soledad behind, or should she take her with her? She didn’t have the wherewithal to push a green card through, nor could she come up with the results the American Committee for the Preservation of Democracy could. But Ryder seemed to be the one man immune to Soledad’s charms, and she wouldn’t put it past him to use her as a way to get Jenny to tell him what he wanted to know.
He’d come so damned close last night! The thought that he might find out terrified her, but she seemed to be the only naïve idiot her father had raised. Billy, no matter how deluded he might be, wouldn’t leave a trail of bread crumbs behind for Ryder to follow. If Ryder decided she was covering up for a member of her family, there was still no way that he could prove which one it was, because all of them had been raised as world champion paranoids. “Leave no trace” didn’t just refer to wilderness camping.
It was still early morning, but Jenny didn’t feel like lingering around the kitchen until Ryder made an appearance. She couldn’t even look at the counter where he’d placed her without feeling heat rise in her face, and she intended to do everything she could to make sure she wasn’t caught alone with him again. Soledad would simply have to stir herself and keep her company.
Her progress on the stairs was slow and silent—she still had no shoes or clothing other than what she’d raided from the closet of mismatched clothes, and if she could have worn anything else she would have. It was unnerving to have his oversized flannel shirt around her—it was as if she were imprisoned in his arms. Or simply being held.
The landing was empty, and Jenny went straight to Soledad’s room. “Wake up, sleepyhead,” she called softly, opening the door a crack. “We’re getting out of here.” If the Committee declined to help Soledad, then she’d simply find someone who would. At this point she wasn’t even against asking her father to pull a few strings.
There was no answering sound, and Jenny pushed the door open further, taking a step inside. The bed was empty, and Soledad was standing across the room, looking at her with an unreadable expression. “Soledad?” she said again, when she felt someone behind her. She was about to turn when pain and light exploded inside her head, and everything went black.
Soledad looked down at the woman lying sprawled on the carpet, then up at Manolo. “Don’t worry, you didn’t kill her. Nothing can kill that bitch.” She gave Jenny’s body a vicious kick, but she didn’t move. “I should have known she would come back for me too quickly.”
“Maybe you played the part of the helpless victim a little too well,” Manolo suggested.
Soledad shrugged. “Chances were she would have interrupted us anyway.”
“She’s not going to wake up anytime soon—I hit her hard enough to knock her out for a good long time.”
“Do not be so cocky. She has got a head of iron, this one. I say we tie her up and put her in the closet so she won’t interfere. I cannot find that fucking phone yet, and it is going to take time. I do not want to risk her waking up and causing a fuss.”
“Are you sure we’re not too late already? Maybe she turned it over to the Committee?”
Soledad gave Manolo a sour look. “She does not trust them and the feeling is mutual. She is not risking having anything happen to her baby brother, and we can use that, but it will only go so far. We have got to get the hell out of here and back to Calliveria before she can alert anyone. Chances are she will not admit to anything even after they find her, because she’ll know it will be too late, but I do not take chances. We find the phone and get out of here before anyone notices she and I are gone. Fortunately Ryder dislikes her so much he will not make any special effort to come near her, and my bodyguard thinks I have a headache and am staying in bed. But I say we have only half an hour before we run the risk of getting caught. You go ahead into her room while I tie her up.”
“Don’t kill her,” Manolo said dispassionately. “If she’s that devoted to El Jefe then he might feel the same way about her.”
Soledad laughed. “You’re as stupid as she is. El Jefe doesn’t care about anyone but himself. And, on rare occasions, me. After all, he was the one who told you to shoot at her and to set the charges at her house. There was a good chance she could have died in either incident. He knows how to take risks and accept collateral damage.”
“¿Qué?” Manolo said.
“Mov
e. I am going to enjoy doing a little damage to Miss Parker in return for her hovering over me.”
She didn’t bother to wait until Manolo had disappeared. Manolo might not be the sharpest of men, but he was thorough, and if the phone were anywhere hidden in Jenny’s room, then he would find it. In the meantime Soledad took the duct tape and began wrapping it around Jenny’s ankles and wrists, not caring how tight the bindings were. By the time she reached her head, she was swathing her eyes and mouth with the stuff, not paying much attention to whether she covered her nose or not. If Miss Jennifer Parker suffocated it would probably make everything easier, and no one would care enough to come after Soledad. No one would even guess she had done it—she’d set things up very neatly. It would look as if she’d been kidnapped, and in the long run they wouldn’t consider her an important-enough hostage to go after. If they knew her real role she’d have half the police forces in the world on her tail, but men were always so stupid. They assumed a woman, particularly a pretty one, couldn’t do such things. And Soledad knew she was very pretty indeed.
Hadn’t it been her stock-in-trade her entire life, from the age of eight onward? Hadn’t she led men around by their dicks, starting with her own father, since before she began to bleed? No, no one would guess what she’d done, and they wouldn’t care enough to “save” her again. She would be considered one more victim of human trafficking, when instead she was the triumphant provider of merchandise.
She hooked her hands under the shirt Jenny was wearing and dragged her across the floor, banging her body against the solid bed Soledad had been sleeping in. Despite the fact that Jenny was a good four inches taller and twenty pounds heavier, Soledad had worked hard all her life, and she could lift many things that were heavier than she was. She grunted and shoved Jenny into the back of the closet, pulling her boring clothes in front of her limp body. That was another thing Soledad could blame Jenny for, and she gave her another hard kick. She’d taken Soledad out and paid for the most God-awful wardrobe, perfect for a cleaning woman or a grocery store clerk, or even a low-level secretary. Boring, ugly clothes that would cover up Soledad’s beauty. She knew why too. Women were always jealous of her, and Parker wouldn’t want men to look at Soledad with lust in their eyes, ignoring the lawyer. She shut the door and locked it, closing her away.
