by Claire King
“Did I? The first time I saw you two together, he was announcing your engagement, for crying out loud!”
She didn’t flinch when he shouted at her. She could not imagine he was any angrier than she was. “That was Friday. This is Sunday. A lot of things have happened since Friday, Rafael,” she said, her meaning clear. “A lot of things.”
Rafe kept his distance, when what he really wanted to do was go to her. He breathed fire and spoke harshly, when what he really wanted to do was beg her forgiveness.
“I was going to tell you at the airport.”
“When you thought I was leaving Baja,” she said.
“Yes.”
She shook her head. “Because you didn’t trust me not to tell Ernesto.”
Rafe swallowed thickly. “I could not endanger the operation,” he repeated. “Or you. If Cervantes got to you, you would talk, whether you wanted to or not, Olivia. There are too many lives at stake here in Mexico, back in the States. It’s a complex, covert operation. If it all fell through now, when we’re so close—”
“Would you have let Ernesto get to me?”
“No.” He would have done anything to keep her safe. Anything but give up his revenge for Cervantes, he thought. And maybe even that. “He would have had to kill me to get to you, Olivia.”
“I know.” Olivia laughed roughly. “Isn’t that funny? I think I knew from the minute I stepped in front of you in that bedroom at Ernesto’s house that you would keep me safe.”
Rafe didn’t say anything, just watched her try to blink back tears, steady her breathing. The struggle nearly broke his heart.
“But you did not have that same faith in me,” she continued after a moment, her voice cracking slightly. “Even though you actually knew who I was, Rafael. Even though I never told you a single lie, or hid who I was. I trusted you in spite of everything you did, in spite of everything you made me believe about you. And you didn’t trust me at all.”
“That’s ridiculous. I didn’t tell you because it would have endangered you as well as everyone else in the operation.”
“So instead you let me believe I was— That this thing between us was—”
“What did you want me to say? It’s okay that you’re attracted to me because I’m not really a criminal?” he yelled, defenses back up.
He was so focused on her, so intent on her every word slicing through him, that he didn’t see the Land Cruiser until it was almost too late. A small flash of movement caught his eye. “Bobby,” he roared. “Start the boat and shove off.”
Olivia turned to stare at the men behind her. She could not imagine why they were here. She heard the boat clamor to life, as the men began to run toward her.
“Olivia!” Rafe shouted, and rushed at her.
She turned back to him just as something icy hot and dreadfully painful exploded through her arm. She fell forward into Rafe’s arms, stunned.
“Oh, God. What—?”
“Olivia!” Rafe shouted as he scooped her into his arms. Blood seeped from her body onto his.
Blood. Good God, Olivia’s blood.
Rafe forced himself to stay calm, to think clearly. He turned and leapt onto the deck of the already moving boat, throwing himself on top of Olivia as he hit the slick surface. Bobby was at the helm, gunning the engine the instant Rafe and Olivia were on board. Manny was hauling in the dock rope hand over hand, yelling obscenities into the warm air.
Rafe lay perfectly still, curled around Olivia’s body. He stopped his breathing for a moment so he could listen to hers, compelling his body to remain inert, a physical protector.
All he wanted to do was return up the dock and exact retribution on the man who had put a bullet in Olivia.
Ernesto Cervantes.
Chapter 10
Bobby steered the fishing boat into the sea. Behind them, on the dock, Cervantes and his men stood helplessly by as the little boat headed into the waters Olivia loved.
“Could you get off me?” Olivia mumbled weakly, her face pressed firmly against the nonslip deck of the boat.
Rafe rolled off her and knelt at her side. “Manny!” he shouted. “Get below and find me a first-aid kit.”
Manny stood with the rope still in his hand. He apparently hadn’t been shot at very often in his small-town police career, and he appeared quite unnerved.
“I don’t know if there’s even one on the boat,” he said.
Rafe tore his attention away from Olivia. “Well,” he said, his lips stretched back from his teeth, “look for one.”
Manny scrambled below with all the haste Rafe’s intimidating visage could instill in a man.
Rafe leaned back over Olivia. “Okay, mi’ja. You’re going to be okay.” Good God, he was shaking like a leaf. Where the hell was Manny with that first-aid kit? “Manny!”
Bobby turned from the helm for a moment. “Is she hit?”
“Yeah.”
Bobby began to swear, too, low and steadily.
Olivia looked up at Rafe’s furious face. She’d heard more cursing on this little boat in the past ninety seconds than she’d heard in five years on ships across the globe.
“I think someone shot me,” she said.
Rafe stroked back her hair with a trembling hand. “Yes, mi’ja. Someone shot you.”
“Am I going to die?”
“No,” Rafe promised fiercely.
Olivia smiled. “Because you keep calling me ‘my dearest.’”
You are my dearest, he wanted to say. “Don’t worry,” he said quietly. “I’m not going to let you die.” He smiled gently. “Princesa.”
“That’s better,” she sighed, her eyes tightly closed. “I don’t think it’s too bad. It kind of hurts, though.”
“I’ll bet it does.” He reared back. “Manny!”
“Yeah, yeah, I found it.”
“What the hell took you so long?” Rafe snarled as he snatched the kit from Manny’s hands and tore into it. “Couldn’t you hear me?”
“The Coast Guard in Long Beach could hear you,” Manny answered. “Is she bad?”
“I don’t know yet, you moron.” He leaned down, kissed Olivia lightly on her mouth. “I’m going to touch you. Try not to move.”
“I’m not moving,” she assured him. “I think when you landed on me you quick-sealed me to the deck, here.”
Rafe took a deep breath, began to carefully palpate Olivia’s chest. Her blood was spattered rather than oozing, and he had no idea where the bullet had entered, or if it had exited.
“Rafael, why are you feeling my breasts?”
“I don’t know where you were shot, Olivia.”
“Well, you could ask me.”
Rafe put his hands on his knees, wiped the sweat from them onto his jeans. He was sick with nerves. Pathetic. He’d seen men with their heads literally blown from their shoulders and he’d never felt this woozy before.
“Where are you hit, Olivia?”
“I’m not sure. Feel around my breasts a little more. Maybe I was wrong.”
Behind Rafe, Manny laughed. Rafe spun around and glowered at him. “Get the hell away from me,” he warned in a low voice. “Olivia, seriously, where are you hit?”
“I think my upper arm, the inside. It hurts like mad there.”
Rafe gently lifted her arm. “I’m going to rip your dress, sweetheart.”
Olivia chuckled back in her throat. “Okay. Only don’t take advantage. Remember how mad I am at you.”
He stared down at her. He was about to throw up with remorse and anxiety, and she was making jokes? If she hadn’t already been shot, he might have strangled her.
“I won’t,” he promised. He slipped his fingers under the sleeve of her dress and tugged. The fabric ripped right along the seam, exposing the bleeding, wounded flesh where Cervantes’s bullet had shot cleanly past her upper arm.
Rafe sucked in air through his teeth.
“Is it that bad?” Olivia asked, and tried to raise her head so she could see it. Ra
fe put his hand on her forehead and pushed her head back down.
“Don’t look at it,” he said weakly.
“Good heavens, it doesn’t feel that bad,” Olivia said. “Are you going to faint?”
Rafe gave her a retiring look. “No,” he said, as though the idea were too absurd to contemplate, when, in fact, he did feel a little light-headed.
He took a deep breath, pulled himself together. “The bullet grazed the back of your arm. I don’t think it went through any muscle, just skin and fat,” he said.
“Fat?”
“I’m just going to clean it out and then bandage it. I’m sure it’ll be fine. We’ll get you to a hospital—” he meticulously poured some rubbing alcohol into the shallow groove the bullet had made and swallowed bile when she blanched “—and they’ll probably look at it and say, oh, it’s practically nothing, and send you on your way.”
“Rafael.”
“Okay, that’s done. All I have in this stupid kit is rubbing alcohol. Dammit, dammit. Dammit, Manny! Why don’t you do something about the conditions on this boat?” he shouted over his shoulder, making Olivia jump.
He turned back to Olivia, practically cooed at her. “But that’ll get it clean enough.” He tore a length of bandage with his teeth. “It’ll be fine. You’ll have a little scar to tell all your friends about at cocktail parties. Just a little scar.” He wanted to lean over and kiss it. “I’m going to wrap this bandage around your arm now, so I’ll have to move it a little.”
“Rafael.”
“It’s going to hurt when I move it, but not as much as the alcohol. I don’t know where Bobby’s heading this heap, but I’m sure there’ll be a hospital there, wherever it is. Don’t worry, Olivia. Don’t worry.”
“Rafael!”
He blinked down at her. “What?”
“Stop blathering. You’ve said more in the past three minutes than the whole time I’ve known you.” She lifted her expertly bandaged arm. It hurt like the fires of hell, but she wasn’t about to tell him that. He already looked green around the gills. She’d never have pegged this fake smuggler as having a weak stomach for blood. “It’s better already. I was just surprised, more than anything. And you knocked the wind out of me when you accidentally fell on me getting in the boat.”
“I didn’t accidentally fall on you,” he said, embarrassed that she’d caught him panicking. He was, after all, very proud of his natural machismo. He’d never before lost it so thoroughly. “I landed on you on purpose because they were shooting at us, princesa.”
“Ah, now I know I’m going to be okay,” Olivia said, sitting up. “You’re sneering at me again.”
“Because you say stupid things. I was not blathering.” The idea of it, now that she wasn’t bleeding any longer, was laughable. He gathered up the medical supplies in something of a huff. “Take an aspirin.”
Olivia obediently took the pills from his hand and swallowed them one at a time, dry. Anything to stop the fire in her arm. Lord, who knew getting shot was so excruciating? In the movies, when someone said they’d been grazed by a bullet, they always acted as if it were nothing at all. This felt like something.
Nevertheless, she smiled up at Rafael. “I’m glad you’re a cop, you know.”
He stopped packing the kit and stared at her. “Why?”
“Because you can arrest Ernesto for shooting me.”
“You saw that, did you?”
“I saw him raise his gun. I couldn’t believe it. Three days ago he was pinching my—”
“I know what he was doing,” Rafe snapped irritably. “You look pale. Will you lie down?”
“I don’t think so. Right this very minute, Ernesto and his boys are probably hopping aboard some sleek little cigarette boat and will be upon us any time. I should stay awake for that, I think.”
That, unfortunately, was all too true. “Bobby?”
“Yeah?”
“Where the hell are we going?”
“South.”
“South, where?”
Bobby stared at the horizon, moved his shoulders. “Damn if I know. I just figure if Cervantes takes off after us, he’ll think we’re headed back up to Aldea Viejo, which is north. That’s why I’m headed south.”
“Uh, Bobby?”
“Yes, Doc?”
“Do you know what you’re doing?”
“As in, can I drive a boat? Very nice. I just saved your life, if you didn’t notice. Again.”
“I did notice. Thank you. But do you know how to read a coastline, a chart? Get to where you need to go on the ocean?”
“Yes.”
Olivia smiled at him.
Bobby lifted his chin defiantly. “Pretty much.”
“Because I can do all that for us.”
“I can do it!” Bobby said.
“You’ve just been shot,” Rafe objected at the same time.
Olivia gave them a patient look. “Okay, listen, boys. You’ve been dragging me all over Baja for three long days. I have gone along without much objection because I realized you knew what you were doing. But Bobby, you’re not headed south, you’re headed east. And Rafael, you look like you’re going to toss your cookies any minute. Now, whether that’s from being shot at or seasickness, it doesn’t really matter.”
“It’s not from being shot at!” Rafe declared, wounded she’d think so little of his courage. “I’ve been shot at a hundred times.”
“Be that as it may, if you two don’t let me help you, you’re going to end up in Mazatlan tomorrow morning trying to find someplace to dock next to the cruise ships. And the little operation you’ve got going here will be completely undone.”
“It’s undone, anyway,” Rafe said. “We’re taking you to Cabo San Lucas to the hospital there, and then getting you on a flight home.”
Olivia put her hands on her hips, forgetting until she felt the searing pain that she had a hole in her arm. Or a very deep scratch, anyway. She lowered them promptly. “What about the shipment of drugs you’re supposed to intercept day after tomorrow?”
“There will be other shipments.”
“All right, that’s probably true. But correct me if I’m wrong. Your whole tweaking of Cervantes’s pride these past couple of months has been leading to this moment, right? He’s chasing you around Baja like a lunatic. According to your friend here, he knows you’re going to try to steal this big shipment on Tuesday, also right?”
“It took him shooting you to stop calling him ‘Ernesto,’ I see,” Rafe said deliberately.
Olivia ignored him. He could narrow his eyes at her all he wanted. He could brood and glower and pout until the sun came up. She was taking charge of this boat. She turned to Bobby. “Also right, Bobby?”
Bobby rolled his lips over his teeth and nodded solemnly. “Sí, Generalissimo.”
“You have him exactly where you want him. It seems to me if he’s willing to risk prison, local censure and embarrassment, and an international incident to shoot at me, he’d be willing to take just about any chance to get you guys.”
“She’s right, Rafe.”
“Shut up, Bobby. Olivia, you don’t know what all this entails.”
“Yes, I do. I’ve spent ten years assessing data presented to me. I may have been a little slow on the uptake with you two, but I was deliberately mislead by all parties, so I can’t really be held accountable for false conclusions.” She glared briefly at Rafael. “But now that I’ve had a few minutes to think about it all while I’m not being shot at, I have to conclude that you haven’t arrested Cervantes before now because he lets his flunkies do all the dirty work. You need to annoy him enough that he’ll take any chance to get rid of you. Including implicating himself by overseeing his own shipment of illegal drugs.”
Rafe scowled at her. “Forget it, princesa. You’re not going anywhere near Aldea Viejo.”
Fine, he was as unreasonable as he always was. The mule. She turned to plead her case with Bobby. “And I figure I have assisted you in this sc
heme by humiliating him by getting myself kidnapped at my own engagement party. From that little murder attempt on the dock back there and the cross-country chase, I would surmise he now suspects I know all about him and the relationship between the three of you. He’s desperate to keep his secret life safe from both Mexican and American authorities, but he’s also furious and wants revenge. It’s the perfect time for you. Right?”
“She’s right,” Bobby said again.
Rafe dug the heels of his hands in his eye sockets. “I cannot believe this.”
“I can get you to Aldea Viejo before Tuesday,” Olivia said.
“What about the sleek little cigarette boat?”
Olivia rubbed her hands together, and winced at the pain. “Oh, I think we can get around that little problem.”
“How?” Manny asked.
Olivia grinned at him. “How long have you lived in Baja, Manny?”
“All my life, señorita.”
“And how many times have you cruised this coastline?”
Manny considered. “Dozens of times, I would suppose,” he said.
“Well, Manny, I have you beat.” Olivia looked at Bobby, then locked her gaze on Rafe’s exasperated face and smiled. “By quite a bit.”
There had to be a hundred fishing boats on the water between La Paz and Aldea Viejo during the spring fishing months, Rafe decided. A hundred fishing boats and maybe half that many whale-watching boats and dive boats, and dozens of people just tooling around for fun.
Olivia didn’t let any of them get within a million miles of them.
She took the helm as if she owned it. Rafe tried very hard to resent her for that—it was, after all, something only a princess would do with such temerity. But she was so impressive he couldn’t have held a grudge if his life depended upon it.
Against his objections, she’d turned the boat north. Bobby had stood behind her until the sun went down, protecting her place at the helm.
Rafe was still a little shaky from watching Cervantes shoot at her, still a little nauseated from the spatter of blood on her awful orange dress. When he closed his eyes, he could see the pattern of it against the cheap fabric. He tried not to close his eyes much.
