A Matter of Circumstance

by Heather Graham

  He laughed and gave her a mocking sneer. She kicked away from him swimming strenuously in the opposite direction, only to collide with another body.

  Sean.

  He pulled her back against his chest, but he didn’t look at her. Instead he stared over her head at Roberto, who shrugged, then swam away.

  Still Sean didn’t release her shoulders. The water was cool, but she could feel his body heat like an inferno. She could feel his body, every part of it, pressed against her.

  She was furious; she wanted to jerk away from him. At the same time she felt as if all his heat was seeping into her, turning her muscles to liquid. Making her wish ridiculously that they were longtime friends and lovers. That they could laugh like guilty children, that under the cover of water they could shed their cutoffs and fit together….

  Roberto swam toward Maria. Señora Garcia had gone back into the house. Only Julio was on the shore, leaning against the house.

  It might have been a scene from a resort brochure—except for the Magnum that Julio was holding.

  Mandy wanted to break the silence, to tell Sean that she hated him, that she wanted him to get away from her—now! But his whisper touched her ear, soft, silky, sensual. So raspy and exciting that her mind might have been swept completely clear of all thought, except for…except for that all-encompassing excitement. It raced through her; it took control of her.

  “Don’t move,” he implored raggedly. “Don’t move at all.”

  His arms tightened around her as he started backing into deeper water. She was weightless; her feet didn’t touch the sand. She just drifted along with him, his arms around her keeping her hips level with his.

  And then they were in deeper water. So cool, when they were so hot. She didn’t move; she didn’t try to speak. His hands moved slightly, cupping her breasts, his thumbs grazing her nipples. A sound caught in her throat as he pressed his lips against her neck.

  Then he moved so deftly that she was filled all over again with a quaking desire that was so physical it overrode even the sensation of the sun. She felt his hand near her midriff, and then his fingers were sweeping beneath the waistband of her cutoffs before sliding the zipper down. The pressure of his palm against her abdomen made her breath come too quickly, made her heart race. She thought that she was mad, then she felt that she had reached the clouds, because his mind held the same thought as hers. That simple touch, body to body, had brought this. The need…the desire…despite all else… It seemed somehow illicit, and therefore all the more fascinating. She should have been shocked; she should have hated him; she should have turned him away—she should have been screaming bloody murder.

  And instead she couldn’t wait to feel him inside her.

  Her cutoffs fell, but he caught them. Beneath the water she was nude. He wrapped one arm around her waist and let his free hand play over her buttocks. Then, swiftly, he lifted her until her legs locked around his hips.

  She couldn’t stare into his eyes, so she rested her head against his shoulder. She stifled the cry that rose to her lips when he thrust into her, pressing her teeth lightly into his flesh.

  “Look at me!” he warned her harshly. “Laugh, as if we’re talking.”

  “I—I can’t!” she gasped.

  He was filling her. She burned; she ached; she needed more.

  “Mandy…do it. Oh, Mandy.”

  He jerked, forcing her head back, forcing her to lace her fingers behind his neck and stare into his eyes. His smile was so wicked that once again it was as if the fact that they could get caught made every motion more thrilling. The friction of the water, the wonder of him, the pulsing of tension rose in her swiftly. Wonderfully. Suddenly she knew that she was going to burst, and that she would scream with the joy of it all.

  But she didn’t. He caught her lips in a kiss, and her animal cry of awe and shuddering satiation was caught between them. He held her tight, moving hard against her one last time, a part of her. She went lax, incapable of movement in the aftermath. Thank God he held her. Thank God that he groaned softly, crushing her against him. She couldn’t have stood; she might well have drowned in reality, rather than just drowning in his arms.

  The water rippled around them and actually began to grow cold.

  “You’ve got to get these back on,” he told her huskily.

  “I can’t move.”

  “You have to.”

  “You got them off, you get them back on.”

  She was so drowsy; his answering chuckle was so husky. She wanted to forget everything. She wanted to remain against his shoulder and fall asleep.

  “All right,” he said agreeably.

  And then he let her go and dove beneath the water. But what he did to her there had nothing to do with getting her pants back on, and everything to do with getting her excited again. She started to protest, swallowed water, then wrenched the cutoffs back from him and struggled back into them.

  When she finished, he was still laughing. “Not fair!” she cried.

  Suddenly he wasn’t laughing anymore. He pulled her close to him, against his heart. His whisper touched her ear. “I’m sorry. Do you forgive me?”

  “I guess I just did.”

  “No, that was sex, not forgiveness. Do you forgive me?”

  She couldn’t say anything. She didn’t know if she did or didn’t; she just knew that she didn’t want him to let her go.

  “Damn it, Julio is waving that stinking gun of his around. Come on. We’ve got to go in. Night must be coming.”

  It was. And with the night came a horrendous argument between Julio and Roberto.

  Mandy didn’t understand any of it; it was all in Spanish. She was in the kitchen when it began, eating a sausage sandwich for dinner. Señora Garcia decided that Mandy shouldn’t be a part of it. She hurried Mandy into her room, made her wait, then returned with shampoo and soap. Mandy knew that though her suggestion that Mandy might want a shower seemed casual, the older woman was very upset.

  It also frightened her that Sean had seemed upset by the argument. He hadn’t protested at all when Señora Garcia led Mandy out. He had remained at the table, listening tensely.

  Mandy ambled restlessly around the room for a while as the argument went on. Finally she decided that she would take a shower; it would kill time.

  When she came back into the bedroom Sean was there, lying under the blanket on the mattress, eyes open, staring up at the ceiling. He turned to her quickly, though, and flashed her a smile in the lantern light.

  “What—?” she began.

  But he didn’t let her finish. He sprang up and she saw that he was naked. He walked quickly to her, then began unwinding the towel from her body. And then he began to kiss her shoulders, breasts, ribs.

  She caught his shoulders. “Sean, wait. What—what was that all about? What’s going on?”

  “Later,” he murmured.

  His hands were on her hips, his lips pressed to her belly. His breath was against her flesh, and her flesh was responding.

  She dug her fingers into his hair. “Sean…”

  He nudged her legs farther apart, and his mouth rubbed over her until she thought she would fall.

  She forgot the question she had asked. She forgot everything. She gasped and hung on to his hair, because she had to remain standing.

  She came near to weeping, so vital was the sensation. She twisted and whimpered and gave herself gloriously to him. And only then did he stand to collect her weak form, carry her to the mattress and find his own reward.

  The wonderful heat of the night wrapped itself around Mandy so completely that the island might in truth have been their own. Yet finally, when they had lain quietly together for some time, Sean turned to her, smoothing back her still-damp hair.

  “We have to do something—tomorrow morning.”

  Her heart pitched and thudded; reality cut her like a knife. “Why? What happened?”

  “Juan hasn’t returned. Roberto thinks that he’s been caught. He w
ants to take the skiff out tomorrow and go back.”

  In the darkness Mandy frowned. “I don’t understand.”

  Sean hesitated for a long time.

  “He wants to take one of your fingers with him. He called Julio a coward with no convictions and told him that his father will die in prison.”

  “Oh, God!” Mandy gasped.

  Sean’s fingers grabbed painfully at her hair. “You are to do nothing! Do you understand? Stay in here when you find me gone. Don’t move, and I mean it. I won’t be able to follow through with my plan if I have to worry about you, too. I mean it! Now go to sleep.”

  “Go to sleep?”

  “Yes!”

  She would never sleep. And that night she didn’t.

  CHAPTER 10

  Sean didn’t sleep, either; he lay awake, forming his plan.

  There were certain things he had learned, and certain things that he had been taught. Individual heroics were seldom a part of police work. Shoot-outs were not day-to-day occurrences; not even the narcotics department ran around with their guns constantly blazing.

  The basics of the job were to do your damnedest to see that the victim wasn’t hurt in a hostage situation. If this had been a normal kidnapping, if Amanda had been stashed somewhere in the city without a resident cop, he and his partner and the team set up to investigate would have worked with the FBI, since kidnapping was a federal offense. As it was, he hadn’t done any of the normal things. No paperwork in triplicate. No hours in his cubicle on the fifth floor. No arguments with the FBI.

  But then, this situation was one in a million. He’d gotten to swim in the surf with a beautiful blond bombshell. What a lark. He’d even made love to her. God, wouldn’t the guys at the station be green with envy?

  Yeah, oh, yeah. Except that, like some green idiot, he’d gone and gotten involved. It couldn’t last; it couldn’t be. He and Miss DAR just weren’t cut out to make a go of things.

  But face it, he had a chip on his shoulder. And she didn’t deserve his anger. So until she was taken away from him, for more reasons than one, she was his, and they would touch one hair on her head only over his dead body.

  No joke there, he warned himself. So far he’d played the lackey because every fool knew what one bullet from a .357 Magnum could do to the human body. If one entered his body, there wouldn’t be a prayer in hell that he could ever do anything for her again. But now…

  Damn the FBI! They should have been here by now.

  Divide and conquer—the saying was as old as time, but as true. He had to surprise one of them, get the gun and, if necessary, shoot the other.

  Despite it all, he didn’t hate Julio Garcia. Julio was just a dreamer, out of sync with the times, believing that he could change the world. This wasn’t the way to do it, but Julio was no desperado. Sean just didn’t know how far he would go.

  Still, Julio would be the one he had to disarm. It would be risky, but it had to be done. Roberto was a hard-core criminal. He would slice off Mandy’s finger without a second thought. Given half an opportunity, he would have raped her until she was half-dead—with no thought whatsoever.

  Sean didn’t think that Señora Garcia would interfere. She seemed to know that her son was diving straight for jail. She would just wait stoically for him.

  And Maria? Maria was the long shot. Given a chance, she might well be dangerous. But then, she wouldn’t want any of her precious beauty destroyed, either.

  “Sean?”

  Mandy whispered his name softly with the coming of morning, touching his arm, well aware that he was awake.

  He shook her hand off. The last thing he wanted now was her touch. He couldn’t waver; he couldn’t think of her. He touched a finger to her lips in the darkness. “No words, no movement, no sound! Do you hear me?”

  “Hey, it’s my finger they’re after!”

  “Shut up. I mean it! Do you want to get me killed?” he asked angrily.

  He thought he saw her eyes flash, even in the darkness. “No! I’d rather kill you myself!”

  He chuckled softly, squeezed her hand and groped for his cutoffs. Then he stood quickly before she could say anything else and headed for the door.

  As he’d expected, both Julio and Roberto were sleeping on mats outside the door. Roberto stirred slightly, gazing at Sean with wary contempt. Then Julio roused himself, so Roberto went back to sleep.

  It was curious that Julio followed Sean so quickly, but it was to his advantage, and Sean was glad. He didn’t look back, just hunched his shoulders instinctively and walked out the kitchen door and toward the beach. He paused just before the surf.

  “You’re upset, my friend?” Julio inquired from behind.

  Sean shrugged, needing to get him to come closer.

  “She won’t be hurt, not really. She’ll survive. What is one little finger, eh? They must know that I mean business.”

  Sean kept looking out to sea. “One little finger? Julio, I ask you, what is one little finger to you? And think about this—what if they catch you? So far you haven’t hurt her. Perhaps she’ll testify in your defense. She likes you.”

  Julio made an ugly sound. “The Americana testify for me? No, I do not think so. Her husband will not let an innocent man go free. Why should she bother with a guilty one?”

  “Don’t maim her, Julio.”

  “What? Maim?” Julio asked with annoyance, moving closer. “Will I touch her eyes? Her hair? Her legs? The things you cherish? I will leave plenty to love. It will one day be a brand of her courage for her.”

  “She’ll probably die out here!” Sean replied bitterly. “Your dirty knives will give her tetanus. She’ll bleed to death.”

  “Men have survived far worse things.”

  Julio was there—right where Sean wanted him. He never got a chance to say anything more. Sean smashed his elbow into Julio’s ribs with such force that the man doubled over, unable to do more than gasp for breath.

  Sean couldn’t afford to show him any mercy. He brought his knee up into Julio’s chin, sending him keeling over backward.

  The Magnum fell into the sand without a shot being fired, nothing but harmless metal.

  Sean scooped it up and tucked it into his pants, then reached down to Julio. “Sorry, amigo, but you’re not touching her finger.”

  Julio, his mouth bloodied, still unable to stand without clutching his middle, grasped Sean’s hand and stared at him heatedly. “Roberto was right!” he gasped. “I should have killed you at the very beginning.”

  “I think you’ve got a few broken ribs,” Sean said flatly.

  “I will scream. I will shout that Roberto should kill her.”

  “You don’t want her dead, and you know it. Nor do you want to face a murder charge. Besides, I don’t think you could shout that loud right now.”

  Julio winced, and Sean knew that his ribs were hurting him. “Let’s go,” he said. “To the door. You will call to Roberto to come outside. You will not sound alarmed, or I will put a bullet through your eyes. Got it?”

  Morosely, Julio let himself be dragged back to the door of the shack.

  “Do it!” Sean demanded, shaking him.

  “All right! All right!” He hesitated just a second longer, then called, “Roberto! Roberto! Ven aquí!”

  They waited, Sean using Julio as his shield. He listened, and he heard footsteps. The door opened, and though Julio had not sounded alarmed, Roberto was wary. He looked around the corner of the door—and instantly took a shot at Sean.

  Sean ducked his head without a second to spare. He fired a quick shot back; he had no other choice.

  He winced as he heard Roberto scream. That was followed by another scream, then another. Maria was up, along with Señora Garcia, and everyone was screaming.

  Sean shoved Julio ahead of him once again and entered the cabin, searching for Roberto.

  The man was on the ground, slumped against the wall, a trail of blood trickling down the wood. Sean saw that only his arm had been hit,
but blood was spouting everywhere.

  Roberto was keening with pain. Maria was standing by the back door, arms up, shaking and screaming hysterically. Señora Garcia just stood there, white-faced.

  Sean inclined his head toward the wounded man. “Tend to him,” he said briefly, then he carefully reached over Roberto to retrieve the other gun.

  He barely noticed when Maria disappeared back into her room. He ordered Julio to sit beside his wounded friend.

  “You’ve killed him,” Julio said reproachfully.

  “I have not. He’ll live.”

  “What are you?” Julio demanded, narrowing his eyes. “You’re no gardener.”

  Sean sighed. “I’m Lieutenant Ramiro, Homicide Division.”

  “Eh, Roberto, his name was real at least, eh?” Julio tried to joke to the still-suffering man. Señora Garcia was bending over him by then, trying to do something with the wound.

  “Drop it—cop!”

  His eyes shot immediately to Maria, who was holding a small Smith & Wesson with a pearl handle. He trained the Magnum on her in return. “Sweetie, you’re not going to use that. Drop it.”

  Maria smiled and raised the muzzle just above his head, letting off a shot that splintered wood.

  “Don’t bet on that, lieutenant,” she said calmly, adding a very explicit threat in Spanish.

  He was just about to call her bluff and fire back when the other bedroom door suddenly flew open, and there was Amanda Blayne, in all her blond glory and rage. To Sean’s astonishment she was wielding a switchblade, which she instantly pressed into the small of Maria’s back.

  “You drop it, brat. I’ve just about had it with you!”

  As meekly as a lamb, Maria dropped her gun.

  “Get it!” Sean warned Amanda, and she instantly did so. “You two—Julio, Maria—into the bedroom. Señora, can you help Roberto?”

  Señora Garcia looked imploringly at Sean. “He needs treatment. He needs medicine,” she begged in Spanish.

  “I’m sorry. He should have thought of that before he shot at me.”