Dangerous Embrace

by Nora Roberts

  “Are you Liz Palmer?”

  “I saw you.” She heard her own voice rise with nerves but couldn’t take her eyes from his face. The cocky good looks, the cleft chin, the smoky eyes under thick dark brows. It was a face that appealed to a woman’s need to risk, or to her dreams of risking. “Who are you?”

  “Jonas Sharpe. Jerry was my brother. My twin brother.”

  When she discovered her knees were shaking, she sat down quickly. No, not Jerry, she told herself as her heartbeat leveled. The hair was just as dark, just as full, but it lacked Jerry’s unkempt shagginess. The face was just as attractive, just as ruggedly hewn, but she’d never seen Jerry’s eyes so hard, so cold. And this man wore a suit as though he’d been born in one. His stance was one of restrained passion and impatience. It took her a moment, only a moment, before anger struck.

  “You did that on purpose.” Because her palms were damp she rubbed them against her knees. “It was a hideous thing to do. You knew what I’d think when I opened the door.”

  “I needed a reaction.”

  She sat back and took a deep, steadying breath. “You’re a bastard, Mr. Sharpe.”

  For the first time in hours, his mouth curved…only slightly. “May I sit down?”

  She gestured to a chair. “What do you want?”

  “I came to get Jerry’s things. And to talk to you.”

  As he sat, Jonas took a long look around. His was not the polite, casual glance a stranger indulges himself in when he walks into someone else’s home, but a sharp-eyed, intense study of what belonged to Liz Palmer. It was a small living area, hardly bigger than his office. While he preferred muted colors and clean lines, Liz chose bright, contrasting shades and odd knickknacks. Several Mayan masks hung on the walls, and rugs of different sizes and hues were scattered over the floor. The sunlight, fading now, came in slats through red window blinds. There was a big blue pottery vase on a woven mat on the table, but the butter-yellow flowers in it were losing their petals. The table itself didn’t gleam with polish, but was covered with a thin layer of dust.

  The shock that had had her stomach muscles jumping had eased. She said nothing as he looked around the room because she was looking at him. A mirror image of Jerry, she thought. And weren’t mirror images something like negatives? She didn’t think he’d be fun to have around. She had a frantic need to order him out, to pitch him out quickly and finally. Ridiculous, she told herself. He was just a man, and nothing to her. And he had lost his brother.

  “I’m sorry, Mr. Sharpe. This is a very difficult time for you.”

  His gaze locked on hers so quickly that she tensed again. She’d barely been aware of his inch-by-inch study of her room, but she couldn’t remain unmoved by his study of her.

  She wasn’t what he’d expected. Her face was all angles—wide cheekbones, a long narrow nose and a chin that came to a suggestion of a point. She wasn’t beautiful, but stunning in an almost uncomfortable way. It might have been the eyes, a deep haunted brown, that rose a bit exotically at the outer edge. It might have been the mouth, full and vulnerable. The shirt overwhelmed her body with its yards of material, leaving only long, tanned legs bare. Her hands, resting on the arms of her chair, were small, narrow and ringless. Jonas had thought he knew his brother’s taste as well as his own. Liz Palmer didn’t suit Jerry’s penchant for the loud and flamboyant, or his own for the discreet sophisticate.

  Still, Jerry had lived with her. Jonas thought grimly that she was taking the murder of her lover very well. “And a difficult time for you.”

  His long study had left her shaken. It had gone beyond natural curiosity and made her feel like a specimen, filed and labeled for further research. She tried to remember that grief took different forms in different people. “Jerry was a nice man. It isn’t easy to—”

  “How did you meet him?”

  Words of sympathy cut off, Liz straightened in her chair. She never extended friendliness where it wasn’t likely to be accepted. If he wanted facts only, she’d give him facts. “He came by my shop a few weeks ago. He was interested in diving.”

  Jonas’s brow lifted as in polite interest but his eyes remained cold. “In diving.”

  “I own a dive shop on the beach—rent equipment, boat rides, lessons, day trips. Jerry was looking for work. Since he knew what he was doing, I gave it to him. He crewed on the dive boat, gave some of the tourists lessons, that sort of thing.”

  Showing tourists how to use a regulator didn’t fit with Jonas’s last conversation with his brother. Jerry had talked about cooking up a big deal. Big money, big time. “He didn’t buy in as your partner?”

  Something came into her face—pride, disdain, amusement. Jonas couldn’t be sure. “I don’t take partners, Mr. Sharpe. Jerry worked for me, that’s all.”

  “All?” The brow came up again. “He was living here.”

  She caught the meaning, had dealt with it from the police. Liz decided she’d answered all the questions she cared to and that she’d given Jonas Sharpe more than enough of her time. “Jerry’s things are in here.” Rising, she walked out of the room. Liz waited at the doorway to her daughter’s room until Jonas joined her. “I was just beginning to pack his clothes. You’d probably prefer to do that yourself. Take as much time as you need.”

  When she started to turn away, Jonas took her arm. He wasn’t looking at her, but into the room with the shelves of dolls, the pink walls and lacy curtains. And at his brother’s clothes tossed negligently over the back of a painted white chair and onto a flowered spread. It hurt, Jonas discovered, all over again.

  “Is this all?” It seemed so little.

  “I haven’t been through the drawers or the closet yet. The police have.” Suddenly weary, she pulled the towel from her head. Dark blond hair, still damp, tumbled around her face and shoulders. Somehow her face seemed even more vulnerable. “I don’t know anything about Jerry’s personal life, his personal belongings. This is my daughter’s room.” She turned her head until their eyes met. “She’s away at school. This is where Jerry slept.” She left him alone.

  Twenty minutes was all he needed. His brother had traveled light. Leaving the suitcase in the living room, Jonas walked through the house. It wasn’t large. The next bedroom was dim in the early evening light, but he could see a splash of orange over a rattan bed and a desk cluttered with files and papers. It smelled lightly of spice and talcum powder. Turning away, he walked toward the back and found the kitchen. And Liz.

  It was when he smelled the coffee that Jonas remembered he hadn’t eaten since morning. Without turning around, Liz poured a second cup. She didn’t need him to speak to know he was there. She doubted he was a man who ever had to announce his presence. “Cream?”

  Jonas ran a hand through his hair. He felt as though he were walking through someone else’s dream. “No, black.”

  When Liz turned to offer the cup, he saw the quick jolt. “I’m sorry,” she murmured, taking up her own cup. “You look so much like him.”

  “Does that bother you?”

  “It unnerves me.”

  He sipped the coffee, finding it cleared some of the mists of unreality. “You weren’t in love with Jerry.”

  Liz sent him a look of mild surprise. She realized he’d thought she’d been his brother’s lover, but she hadn’t thought he’d have taken the next step. “I only knew him a few weeks.” Then she laughed, remembering another time, another life. “No, I wasn’t in love with him. We had a business relationship, but I liked him. He was cocky and well aware of his own charms. I had a lot of repeat female customers over the past couple of weeks. Jerry was quite an operator,” she murmured, then looked up, horrified. “I’m sorry.”

  “No.” Interested, Jonas stepped closer. She was a tall woman, so their eyes stayed level easily. She smelled of the talcum powder and wore no cosmetics. Not Jerry’s type, he thought again. But there was something about the eyes. “That’s what he was, only most people never caught on.”

 
“I’ve known others.” And her voice was flat. “Not so harmless, not so kind. Your brother was a nice man, Mr. Sharpe. And I hope whoever… I hope they’re found.”

  She watched the gray eyes ice over. The little tremor in her stomach reminded her that cold was often more dangerous than heat. “They will be. I may need to talk with you again.”

  It seemed a simple enough request, but she backed away from it. She didn’t want to talk to him again, she didn’t want to be involved in any way. “There’s nothing else I can tell you.”

  “Jerry was living in your house, working for you.”

  “I don’t know anything.” Her voice rose as she spun away to stare out the window. She was tired of the questions, tired of people pointing her out on the beach as the woman who’d found the body. She was tired of having her life turned upside down by the death of a man she had hardly known. And she was nervous, she admitted, because Jonas Sharpe struck her as a man who could keep her life turned upside down as long as it suited him. “I’ve talked to the police again and again. He worked for me. I saw him a few hours out of the day. I don’t know where he went at night, who he saw, what he did. It wasn’t my business as long as he paid for the room and showed up to work.” When she looked back, her face was set. “I’m sorry for your brother, I’m sorry for you. But it’s not my business.”

  He saw the nerves as her hands unclenched but interpreted them in his own way. “We disagree, Mrs. Palmer.”

  “Miss Palmer,” she said deliberately, and watched his slow, acknowledging nod. “I can’t help you.”

  “You don’t know that until we talk.”

  “All right. I won’t help you.”

  He inclined his head and reached for his wallet. “Did Jerry owe you anything on the room?”

  She felt the insult like a slap. Her eyes, usually soft, usually sad, blazed. “He owed me nothing, and neither do you. If you’ve finished your coffee…”

  Jonas set the cup on the table. “I’ve finished. For now.” He gave her a final study. Not Jerry’s type, he thought again, or his. But she had to know something. If he had to use her to find out, he would. “Good night.”

  Liz stayed where she was until the sound of the front door closing echoed back at her. Then she shut her eyes. None of her business, she reminded herself. But she could still see Jerry under her boat. And now, she could see Jonas Sharpe with grief hard in his eyes.

  CHAPTER 2

  Liz considered working in the dive shop the next thing to taking a day off. Taking a day off, actually staying away from the shop and the boats, was a luxury she allowed herself rarely, and only when Faith was home on holiday. Today, she’d indulged herself by sending the boats out without her so that she could manage the shop alone. Be alone. By noon, all the serious divers had already rented their tanks so that business at the shop would be sporadic. It gave Liz a chance to spend a few hours checking equipment and listing inventory.

  The shop was a basic cinder-block unit. Now and again, she toyed with the idea of having the outside painted, but could never justify the extra expense. There was a cubbyhole she wryly referred to as an office where she’d crammed an old gray steel desk and one swivel chair. The rest of the room was crowded with equipment that lined the floor, was stacked on shelves or hung from hooks. Her desk had a dent in it the size of a man’s foot, but her equipment was top grade and flawless.

  Masks, flippers, tanks, snorkels could be rented individually or in any number of combinations. Liz had learned that the wider the choice, the easier it was to move items out and draw the customer back. The equipment was the backbone of her business. Prominent next to the wide square opening that was only closed at night with a heavy wooden shutter was a list, in English and Spanish, of her equipment, her services and the price.

  When she’d started eight years before, Liz had stocked enough tanks and gear to outfit twelve divers. It had taken every penny she’d saved—every penny Marcus had given a young, dewy-eyed girl pregnant with his child. The girl had become a woman quickly, and that woman now had a business that could accommodate fifty divers from the skin out, dozens of snorkelers, underwater photographers, tourists who wanted an easy day on the water or gung-ho deep-sea fishermen.

  The first boat she’d gambled on, a dive boat, had been christened Faith, for her daughter. She’d made a vow when she’d been eighteen, alone and frightened, that the child she carried would have the best. Ten years later, Liz could look around her shop and know she’d kept her promise.

  More, the island she’d fled to for escape had become home. She was settled there, respected, depended on. She no longer looked over the expanses of white sand, blue water, longing for Houston or a pretty house with a flowing green lawn. She no longer looked back at the education she’d barely begun, or what she might have been. She’d stopped pining for a man who didn’t want her or the child they’d made. She’d never go back. But Faith could. Faith could learn how to speak French, wear silk dresses and discuss wine and music. One day Faith would go back and mingle unknowingly with her cousins on their own level.

  That was her dream, Liz thought as she carefully filled tanks. To see her daughter accepted as easily as she herself had been rejected. Not for revenge, Liz mused, but for justice.

  “Howdy there, missy.”

  Crouched near the back wall, Liz turned and squinted against the sun. She saw a portly figure stuffed into a black-and-red wet suit, topped by a chubby face with a fat cigar stuck in the mouth.

  “Mr. Ambuckle. I didn’t know you were still on the island.”

  “Scooted over to Cancun for a few days. Diving’s better here.”

  With a smile, she rose to go to her side of the opening. Ambuckle was a steady client who came to Cozumel two or three times a year and always rented plenty of tanks. “I could’ve told you that. See any of the ruins?”

  “Wife dragged me to Tulum.” He shrugged and grinned at her with popping blue eyes. “Rather be thirty feet down than climbing over rocks all day. Did get some snorkeling in. But a man doesn’t fly all the way from Dallas just to paddle around. Thought I’d do some night diving.”

  Her smile came easily, adding something soft and approachable to eyes that were usually wary. “Fix you right up. How much longer are you staying?” she asked as she checked an underwater flash.

  “Two more weeks. Man’s got to get away from his desk.”

  “Absolutely.” Liz had often been grateful so many people from Texas, Louisiana and Florida felt the need to get away.

  “Heard you had some excitement while we were on the other side.”

  Liz supposed she should be used to the comment by now, but a shiver ran up her spine. The smile faded, leaving her face remote. “You mean the American who was murdered?”

  “Put the wife in a spin. Almost couldn’t talk her into coming back over. Did you know him?”

  No, she thought, not as well as she should have. To keep her hands busy, she reached for a rental form and began to fill it out. “As a matter of fact, he worked here a little while.”

  “You don’t say?” Ambuckle’s small blue eyes sparkled a bit. But Liz supposed she should be used to that, as well.

  “You might remember him. He crewed the dive boat the last time you and your wife went out.”

  “No kidding?” Ambuckle’s brow creased as he chewed on the cigar. “Not that good-looking young man—Johnny, Jerry,” he remembered. “Had the wife in stitches.”

  “Yes, that was him.”

  “Shame,” Ambuckle murmured, but looked rather pleased to have known the victim. “Had a lot of zip.”

  “Yes, I thought so, too.” Liz lugged the tanks through the door and set them on the stoop. “That should take care of it, Mr. Ambuckle.”

  “Add a camera on, missy. Want to get me a picture of one of those squids. Ugly things.”

  Amazed, Liz plucked one from the shelf and added it to the list on a printed form. She checked her watch, noted down the time and turned the form for Ambuckle
’s signature. After signing, he handed her bills for the deposit. She appreciated the fact that Ambuckle always paid in cash, American. “Thanks. Glad to see you back, Mr. Ambuckle.”

  “Can’t keep me away, missy.” With a whoosh and a grunt, he hefted the tanks on his shoulders. Liz watched him cross to the walkway before she filed the receipt. Unlocking her cash box, she stored the money.

  “Business is good.”

  She jolted at the voice and looking up again stared at Jonas Sharpe.

  She’d never again mistake him for Jerry, though his eyes were almost hidden this time with tinted glasses, and he wore shorts and an open shirt in lieu of a suit. There was a long gold chain around his neck with a small coin dangling. She recalled Jerry had worn one. But something in the way Jonas stood, something in the set of his mouth made him look taller and tougher than the man she’d known.

  Because she didn’t believe in polite fencing, Liz finished relocking the cash box and began to check the straps and fasteners on a shelf of masks. No faulty equipment went out of her shop. “I didn’t expect to see you again.”

  “You should have.” Jonas watched her move down the shelf. She seemed stronger, less vulnerable than she had when he’d seen her a week ago. Her eyes were cool, her voice remote. It made it easier to do what he’d come for. “You have quite a reputation on the island.”

  She paused long enough to look over her shoulder. “Really?”

  “I checked,” he said easily. “You’ve lived here for ten years. Built this place from the first brick and have one of the most successful businesses on the island.”

  She examined the mask in her hand meticulously. “Are you interested in renting some equipment, Mr. Sharpe? I can recommend the snorkeling right off this reef.”

  “Maybe. But I think I’d prefer to scuba.”

  “Fine. I can give you whatever you need.” She set the mask down and chose another. “It isn’t necessary to be certified to dive in Mexico; however, I’d recommend a few basic lessons before you go down. We offer two different courses—individual or group.”