Heat Of Passion

by Alice Orr

  “What would that be?”

  “I may not mind admitting what Ms. Farraday managed to do, but I cannot allow anyone else to think they might do the same without the strongest of consequences.”

  “What specific consequences would those be?” Slater asked.

  “I may want you to kill her.”

  Slater felt the muscle in his cheek do a little number. He hoped it wasn’t as visible as it felt. He had to look as if he were the kind of guy who didn’t bat an eye at the thought of bumping off a woman, or anybody else, either. His assignment was to do whatever was necessary to work his way into Laurent’s confidence. Of course, that would fall short of murder. He’d have to figure out how to avoid that requirement later on. Meanwhile, he didn’t say a word. The particular word he didn’t say was “No.”

  Chapter One

  In Phoenix Farraday’s opinion, the Hotel de La Escarpadura was Mexico at its best—red tile roofs, pink-washed walls, terra cotta floors, rough stone walkways—all draped in the profusion of flora and fauna that made this part of the country a wonderland for tourists from all over the world. Acapulcans were famous for their glorious gardens. They knew how to tame wildness without stifling its lush green and brilliant color in the process. That kind of tamed wildness surrounded La Escarpadura, climbed its terraces, bordered its roof and might have buried it in leaves and blossoms had skilled hands not subdued the growth.

  Phoenix felt a special appreciation for this ability to trim back, tone down and keep control. She’d made a profession out of doing pretty much the same thing herself. Except she did it with people instead of with flowers. She might have called herself a gardener of the personality, but that would look a bit too strange on a business card even for her. Potential clients had enough trouble getting used to what was already printed there, or used to be, anyway.

  Image Enhancement was the name she’d come up with for the business she invented for herself back in New York City five years ago. She hired out to people who needed what she thought of as a perception makeover. They were perceived one way by the world around them when it was in their best interest, and also more accurate, for them to be perceived another. She taught her clients how to narrow the gap of that discrepancy, maybe even to eliminate it altogether, and she was good at it. She thought of herself as helping people to let the light inside them come shining through for everyone to see.

  Then, she’d found herself working for Beldon Laurent. At first, she’d thought it would be an assignment like the rest. He was a reclusive businessman now interested in becoming more social, possibly even political. He was enthusiastic when she suggested philanthropy as the way into the circles he wished to enter. She’d liked that, advising Mr. Laurent on how he might use his considerable assets to do good. Then, she began to suspect that her client wasn’t what he claimed to be, that the light inside him might be more dark than bright. That suspicion was the beginning of a deeper questioning for Phoenix, of the work she’d chosen to do and whether it was truly the path she should be on. She had come to Mexico to seek the answer to that for and in herself.

  She’d looked up from her desk one day, back there in Manhattan, and realized that maybe she needed some image enhancement of her own. Not so much a brand-new start as a change of direction. After all, she’d worked what amounted to magic for other people in the past five years. She’d even made a silk purse out of a sow’s ear, as her grandfather would have called it, on occasion. She might have kept on doing exactly that if one of those sow’s ears hadn’t turned out to belong to a man she’d begun to see as piggish. Just the thought of Beldon Laurent and how wrong she’d been about him made Phoenix uncomfortable. She forced her attention back to the flowers. What had she been thinking about the flowers, anyway? That’s right. She was admiring those people who had the ability to subdue the natural tendency to return to jungle.

  There was actually very little else, besides the disciplined gardens, that Phoenix would call subdued about La Escarpadura. At the heat of midday, of course, things quieted down to the slow-moving torpor of a sun-baked plaza, as they did throughout much of Acapulco. The rest of the time, on the other hand, especially beginning at sunset, this little cliff-side hotel was a lively place with music and laughter drifting on the breeze. When Phoenix came to the restaurant for dinner at sunset, she always asked for the same table. She was at that table tonight, facing out over the cliff onto the ocean as the sun made a silver-blue track straight toward her across the shimmering water. Tonight, just as on previous nights, the sight was so beautiful it made her eyes sting.

  She wasn’t always here in the restaurant at sunset. Some evenings she stayed in her room two buildings away down this same ocean side of the hotel. She’d sit in the dimming light of her terrace and listen to the waves hit the rocks at the bottom of the cliff far below. She’d breathe in the scent of the pink tumble of bougainvillea along the terrace edge until the memory of exhaust fumes in Times Square had disappeared almost entirely on the soft tropical breeze. There was peace and quiet on her terrace, something she’d found precious little of back in Manhattan.

  She’d chosen La Escarpadura over the fancier tourist hotels outside of town because this had been her grandfather’s favorite haunt when he lived in Acapulco back in the fifties. She’d come here in part because she needed to find out how much truth there was in the stories he’d told her about his life back then. Her grandfather was, after all, known for being one of the all-time great image enhancers when it came to his yarns about himself, and she had been his most avid audience. His Acapulco stories fed her childhood fantasies and her adolescent ones, too. Now, she wanted to know which of those fantasies had some basis in truth and which were purely figments of her grandfather’s very active imagination. On those ocean-breeze-swept terrace evenings, she could see, maybe more clearly than at other times, that she’d not only come to Mexico in search of the truth about her grandfather. She’d also come here in search of herself. The first step in that quest had been to go back to using her real name.

  For years, mainly because of business, she’d been calling herself Matty, as in Matilda, after her mother. In one of those silly strokes of irony, Phoenix, her true name, sounded so much like a pseudonym it put people off. Her grandfather had given her the name Phoenix when she was born. He’d said it was a hopeful name. More recently, she’d come to think of it as promising a rebirth from the life that had begun to feel false into something more authentic, more in tune with her true nature, whatever that might turn out to be. Coming here to Mexico, uprooting herself from everything familiar, was essential in her mind to discovering that authenticity, or maybe rediscovering it. Her intention was to put a renewed foot forward in this different place. That suited her reclaimed name to a T—Phoenix rising out of the ashes of the past.

  Then the loneliness would set in. She’d been here for three weeks, after all, in a place where she didn’t know a soul. Sometimes, like tonight, she even felt alone in a crowd. A tableful of people laughed and joked only a few feet away in La Escarpadura’s open air dining room, but those few feet suddenly felt to Phoenix like the distance across the universe. The sound of their laughter echoed around her, closing her more deeply into her isolation. She could hardly have been more relieved when a voice broke through her separateness. She looked up eagerly before she’d had time to put up her usual guard against strange men.

  “Señorita, may I be so bold as to invite you for a dance?”

  She’d seen him in here before. He was dark and handsome in a slick sort of way that didn’t really appeal to her. The dark waves of his hair were streaked with silver sheen, and his wide smile shone white against the burnished bronze of his skin. He usually sat on a stool at the far end of the bar on the opposite side of the restaurant near the archway into the courtyard. She’d seen him watching her many times. He’d even tried to talk to her, and once she’d thought she saw him following her from the restaurant toward her room.

  “No, thank you,” she
said, turning her former eagerness instantly cool.

  “I dislike to see a lovely lady like yourself sitting so all alone on a beautiful night like this.” His voice was slippery smooth. Phoenix could picture him using this same tone every time he wanted to bring a woman under the spell of his charm. The sound of it was having the directly opposite effect on her.

  “I’ve told you before that I don’t want company,” she said, letting her exasperation be heard.

  Being a woman alone in Mexico took some getting used to, even for Phoenix. Back in New York City she wouldn’t have thought anything of stopping at a street café on her own for supper or a glass of wine. Sometimes she’d have a book with her or a magazine, but other evenings she might simply sit by herself and watch the people passing by. She’d get looks from men, of course. Occasionally, one of them might come right up and start talking to her. All she had to do then was give him a quick brush-off line like, “I’d really rather be by myself just now,” and he’d go away. Acapulco wasn’t quite like that. The men here weren’t so easy to discourage. Phoenix taught herself to say “I’d really rather be by myself” in Spanish, but it didn’t do much good. Most Acapulco gentlemen, who usually spoke English anyway, turned that response into an opportunity to comment on her being una americana and praise her adorable accent. She either had to be firm with them or leave. She wasn’t about to leave tonight. The prospect of returning to her room, even to her lovely terrace in the moonlight, appealed to her even less than this man’s unwelcome attentions.

  “Señorita, I have heard you say that you want to be alone, but the sadness of your eyes tells me that is not true.”

  His own eyes were dark and flashing down at her. She stared straight and hard back into them.

  “What are my eyes telling you now?”

  She’d said that as coldly as she could manage, but instead of being put off he took a step closer.

  “I see tu corazón, mi señorita,” he crooned. “Your heart is telling me you want me to sit down here with you and speak what is in mi corazón for you.”

  He grasped the back of the chair next to hers and began to slide it away from the table.

  “My name is Porfiro, and I already know who you are.”

  “Do not sit down,” Phoenix said firmly as she clutched her napkin, making a fist in her lap. She was ready to stand up and cause a scene if he persisted further.

  “Now, señorita,” he answered more syrupy than ever. “You know you don’t mean that.”

  “I think she does.”

  The man’s words were anything but syrupy. His tone was more reminiscent of the rough bark of the tree that sweet sap originated from. He’d come up fast behind Porfiro to tower over him by at least half a foot. Phoenix hadn’t seen this man in here before. She was sure she’d remember him if she had. His size was what struck her first, imposing on her consciousness the same way he imposed upon the room. The top of his head would barely clear the archway at the restaurant entrance. His shoulders were broad as well. He was lean and spare. She could imagine his skin close to the bone and muscle all over, taut and strong. His face was handsome but wary, with skepticism etched into every line, especially those around his dark—or could they be green?—eyes. His hair was black and thick, brushed back on the sides probably to tame its unruliness. His stance and profile reminded Phoenix of ancient Aztec warrior images carved in stone.

  Porfiro turned toward the craggy voice. “Do I know you, señor?”

  “Slater McCain’s the name. No, you don’t know me, and I’d just as soon keep it that way. What I heard from over there at the bar gives me the feeling this young lady may feel the same.”

  Porfiro didn’t move. A single step forward would put him smack up against the wall of Mr. McCain’s chest The only way around that barrier would be to sidestep in obvious retreat. From what Phoenix had observed of the Mexican male ego, that would be a very difficult move for Porfiro to make even to escape a mountain of a man like this Slater McCain, especially since the laughter had faded away at the nearby table while everyone turned to watch the drama unfolding around Phoenix. She wondered if Porfiro might go so far as to start a fistfight to save face. She was about to stand up and intervene before any such violence could begin when McCain stepped backward a rangy pace giving Porfiro plenty of room to pass.

  “Let’s you and me talk about this another time, just the two of us, hombre a hombre,” McCain said in a tone with less challenge to it than before.

  Phoenix could see that he was giving Porfiro a way to salvage his ego in front of this roomful of people. Porfiro rocked back with a hand on one hip in a self-assured pose that made less pointed the distance he had to stare upward to meet McCain’s eyes. Both men held that stance for a long moment while Phoenix held her breath.

  “Sí, mi amigo,” Porfiro said at last. “Hombre a hombre.”

  Phoenix breathed more easily then. She half expected them to clasp hands in an internationally recognized symbol of masculine solidarity, but apparently neither man wanted to carry their truce that far. Porfiro let go of the chair, and McCain took another step backward. Porfiro nodded once and turned sharply from the table. Still, he didn’t leave immediately. He looked back at Phoenix one more time.

  “I will see you again, señorita,” he said, his wide smile restored.

  He walked away then. Phoenix couldn’t help chuckling to herself as she watched his back recede, military straight, through the archway that led from the restaurant to the courtyard and the exit from the hotel grounds. When he was out of sight at last, she breathed a sigh of relief.

  “Some men find it hard to take no for an answer.” Slater McCain’s voice had lost some of its cragginess.

  Phoenix looked up at him, craning her neck as Porfiro had so obviously not wanted to do.

  “That’s true,” she said.

  She was trembling a little, and she knew that wasn’t happening solely because of the tense scene Mr. McCain had just now so ably defused. His presence added an extra pulse of heat to the tropical night for her. He was a very attractive man with hair and eyes as dark as Porfiro’s. Otherwise, McCain impressed her as being as earthy solid as Porfiro was slick and artful.

  “If you’re all right now,” McCain said, “I’ll leave you to enjoy your meal in peace.”

  “Don’t go.”

  Phoenix responded so quickly she didn’t have time to realize she was going to say that. She took a breath to compose herself. What she had here tonight was not peace but solitariness. Suddenly, she felt as if she’d always been alone, with never many friends and no family to speak of since her grandparents died. She’d worked so hard building up her business there’d been little time for friends or anything else particularly personal. That was one of the things she hoped to change, a major way she intended the new Phoenix here in Mexico to be different from the old Matty back in New York. She’d tried to make at least one connection here, with her grandfather’s former sidekick, Citrone Blue. He turned out to be out of town and no one knew when he’d be back so she’d ended up alone again. Most of the time her solitude didn’t really bother her, but tonight wasn’t one of those times. Otherwise, she’d be back on her terrace right now instead of gazing up at Slater McCain.

  Her heart tripped faster just looking at him, and she could feel her breath rising high and shallow in her throat. Her still rational mind comprehended that she hadn’t been with a man for a very long time. This, combined with her protracted solitariness and restless mood, made for a potentially powerful brew. She should consider her reaction to this man in light of that heady mix. She shouldn’t let her good judgment be jeopardized by what was most likely a momentary aberration of her senses. She’d be foolish to do that.

  Warm laughter rippled from the surrounding tables once more. Phoenix could pick out phrases of companionable talk in English, Spanish and even German. The brilliant blooms just outside the open window wall next to her table began to release their perfume most provocatively at this hour
. Her glass of mineral water sat unsipped and sweating moisture on the table in front of her. In that instant, it dawned on Phoenix that the last thing she wanted on this particular evening was to sip at anything. Mineral water and surrounding voices would not be enough to satisfy her tonight. She could feel herself filling up, like a fiesta balloon, her restlessness roaring more loudly through her veins by the moment.

  “Won’t you sit down and let me buy you a drink?” she said to Slater McCain. “That’s the least I can do to thank you for such a dramatic rescue.”

  He gazed down at her. For a breathless second, Phoenix wondered what she would do if he brushed her off as she’d done so many times to so many men in response to approaches not much different from this one. Then, he smiled. That smile ended far short of the breadth Porfiro would have managed. Still, the change in Slater’s expression all but took her breath away once more. The curving of his lips emphasized the hollows beneath his cheekbones and deepened his dark eyes into shadow in the flickering light from the white candle inside the glass hurricane lamp on the table.

  “I’ll get the drinks,” he said. “What’ll you have?”

  Phoenix was about to ask for mineral water as usual when another impulsive response leapt from her lips.

  “I’ll have a margarita,” she said, then couldn’t help but add, “easy on the tequila, please.”

  She might call herself Phoenix Farraday, but part of her was still Matty after all.

  Chapter Two

  In a way she was what Slater expected, and in a way she wasn’t First of all, she was even more beautiful in person than in the photograph he’d seen back in Beldon Laurent’s office. Looking into those big blue eyes of hers, Slater had no doubt she could con an Eskimo out of his mittens. She was a spellbinder for sure, and that kind of talent came in very handy to a thief. Too bad she’d misjudged how far her looks and charm could get her when she took up with guys as evil as Beldon Laurent and SideMan Sax. Slater told himself he didn’t feel sorry for her for doing that. All that sweetness of hers had to be mostly an act. He thought maybe some of it was sincere. He could tell she really didn’t like being hit on by slippery types like that character back at her table. Speaking of whom, who was he, anyway? Slater believed in checking out everybody who got in his way. The bartender had just taken Slater’s order when he slipped a hundred-peso note across the highly polished surface.