Читать книгу Renegade With A Badge - Claire King - Страница 9

Olivia Galpas hated parties.

She frowned into the dimly lit motel bathroom mirror and tucked a disobedient strand of dark hair back into the tidy, wide braid at her back. Her thick hair was objecting to the first freshwater washing it had had in three weeks. It was better accustomed to saltwater and dish soap.

The frown lines between her flashing eyes deepened further. Stupid parties. Stupid hair. She considered hacking off the offending piece with the scissors in her Swiss Army knife, but decided that would be shortsighted, and worked it more carefully into the braid. Where it stayed. For ten seconds. She finally routed a hairpin from her backpack and shoved it in, capturing the wayward strand.

It wasn’t that she was unsociable, she thought, turning her attention to inspecting her teeth for remains of the tacos she’d just finished. She sucked a bit of cilantro from between her perfect front incisors and reached for her toothbrush.

No, she wasn’t unsociable at all. She loved people, considered herself adept with them, despite a certain natural reserve she’d inherited from her proud Latino father. She’d just finished a three-week assignment in this little village in Baja California—or, more accurately, on the village’s nearby beach—cheek by jowl most days with her team of three fellow oceanographers and one marine biologist on loan from Sea World who were studying the effects of current on winter whale migration. And she hadn’t suffered at all from it. And marine biologists were notoriously difficult to get along with. Obsessive, whale-loving creatures.

But parties.

She spit toothpaste into the sink and rinsed her mouth. “Eeh,” she said to the mirror.

Olivia studied the paltry array of cosmetics on the bathroom counter, delaying the inevitable. She’d happily come to Baja three weeks ago without so much as a lipstick. Who knew she’d become the object of the town bigwig’s affection and be required to tart herself up for a going-away party?

But she had, inexplicably—and so had had to go shopping this afternoon, another chore of which she was insufficiently fond. And not just shopping for the makeup, but for the pretty Mexican peasant skirt and blouse she wore, and the impractical, adorable sandals that even now were beginning to make her feet ache.

Olivia sighed. Three weeks in a bathing suit, a pair of quick-dry shorts and rubber sandals spoiled a girl.

“Eeh,” she said again, this time sticking out her tongue.

She’d been trotted out to a hundred parties since she’d joined the senior staff at Scripps Institute of Oceanography in San Diego two years earlier. As one of the few female oceanographers at the university—and the youngest—she’d endured more Cajun shrimp and mini-quiches and cocktail chatter than one person should have to in a lifetime. But this party was different.

The host was Ernesto Cervantes.

Very interesting person, this handsome Mexican man. Rich beyond what seemed reasonable in the small Baja village, smartly dressed in a sharply pressed khaki uniform that marked him as the chief of the local law enforcement agency; courtly, attentive, well-spoken.

And decidedly captivated by Olivia Galpas.

The chief, everyone in Aldea Viejo called him. Hefe. The sheriff and the wealthiest man between the border and La Paz. Ernesto wore the title with all the importance it implied, used his family’s money to do good in his poor community, and had enough free time left over to spend almost every day for three weeks at the beach camp set up by the institute, courting the lovely Dr. Galpas.

She was flattered—but Olivia, practical to a fault, suspected Ernesto would have fallen madly in love with any woman who’d met his criteria. He seemed rather more enamored with the courtship than he actually was with her.

He’d been at camp the first day she’d arrived, along with a phalanx of similarly uniformed men, to welcome them. As team leader, Olivia had accepted the formal welcome with all the equanimity of a woman well-accustomed to the stately and ceremonious rituals of the Mexican aristocracy.

He’d come to camp the next day, too. And the next. Each time on some pretext of duty. But the pretext fell away soon enough, and he began taking Olivia, alone, on walks along the beach. Well, not quite alone, Olivia recalled. Every step had been monitored, oddly enough, by at least one or two of his deputies. Nevertheless, Olivia got the gist.

Ernesto Cervantes was fast approaching fifty and had not yet found a wife. Olivia, with her education and genteel manners and impeccable Mexican heritage—Ernesto would kindly overlook that her family had been in San Diego for a hundred years—fit the bill exactly, it seemed.

Olivia had to admit she was more than a little interested in his oblique suggestions of a future together. She may have been preoccupied with her job, but she wasn’t immune to perfect breeding and a handsome face. And given time and Ernesto’s proper introduction to her family and an assurance that she could continue her work, she’d probably agree to marry. That little biological clock she’d been ignoring wouldn’t tick forever.

But Olivia was a woman of science by education and of prudence by nature, and three weeks’ worth of walks on the beach were not enough to convince her of anything.

So tonight, wearing makeup and a decent outfit and with her hair forced into place, dammit, she’d attend the going-away party Ernesto had planned and eat shrimp and make cocktail-party conversation. Tomorrow, she’d follow her colleagues back home.

And after that? Well, prudently, she’d just wait and see what happened.

She left the motel and walked through the quaint, quiet streets of Aldea Viejo. She knew where the hacienda was, of course. One could catch a glimpse of it from almost any vantage point in town.

The house was all that Ernesto had said it was, Olivia thought as she walked through the open iron front gates several minutes later and strolled across the manicured front lawn, which looked bizarrely green in its desert surroundings. It was grand, ancient and graceful, as every old Mexican mansion should be. Olivia was terribly impressed.

She smoothed her hair, grateful the wind hadn’t whipped it from its pins on the short walk up the hill from the village, and pressed her lips together to make certain she’d remembered to put on that hastily purchased lipstick.

She was glad she’d bought the long skirt and matching blouse. It was made of inexpensive cotton, but it was of a traditional style that suited the house, and it was certainly better than her other “best” outfit—chinos and a camp shirt.

Olivia took a last, deep breath before she entered the wide-open doors of the front entrance to the hacienda. The double doors were made of solid oak, she noticed, and reinforced with beautiful flat iron scrollwork.

If she was going to have to attend a stupid party, this was certainly a nice place to do it. She doubted she’d find a single mini-quiche in this gorgeous house.

“Olivia,” Ernesto said, as she entered the foyer. He disengaged himself from a small, attentive group of people to come to her. Candles glowed everywhere, giving off the scent of Mexican jasmine and the aura of old-world elegance. Ernesto was dressed impeccably and he, too, smelled slightly of jasmine. Olivia had to struggle not to fuss with her dress.

“Ernesto,” Olivia said, and let him kiss her on the mouth. He had to bend slightly to do so; his elegant, lean frame towered by several inches over her smaller one. “Your home is more beautiful than you described it.”

He smiled graciously. “It seems, Olivia, that my father built it just so that beautiful women would be impressed by it.” His deep brown eyes glowed with sincerity and the reflection of a hundred candles. Olivia flushed at the compliment.

“I’m sure they are, then,” she said.

“Your team?” He made a show of looking around. “They have not come with you?”

The invitation had been for all of Olivia’s team, but their work had been finished the day before, and as none of them were being courted by the local hefe they’d decided to pack up camp and leave this morning.

“No, and you should be grateful. They’d have eaten you out of house and home,” Olivia said.

Ernesto smiled indulgently. “That, as you can see, would be difficult to do.” He led her into the main salon, where people appeared to be waiting for her arrival. “I have some people here I would like to introduce you to.”

Every eye turned to her as Ernesto introduced her to the room at large. He made careful mention of her position at Scripps in the introduction, Olivia observed.

“I’m only an assistant department head, Ernesto,” she whispered to him after the introduction was complete and she had been greeted like a queen. “There are four of those in my department alone. You made it sound as though I was running the whole place.”

He handed her a flute of champagne. “I am proud of you,” he said gently. “That is not such a bad thing, is it?”

“No,” Olivia admitted, taking a sip of champagne. “Oh! Dom Pérignon.”

Ernesto laughed. “I knew you were a woman of breeding, Olivia. But a wine connoisseur, as well? You will be a blessing at my table.” He kissed the hand he’d been holding. “Most of my friends, though I love them like family, don’t know a Dom Pérignon from a cheap Chablis.”

“Oh,” she said into her glass. “Well, thank you for inviting me.”

“No, Olivia,” Ernesto said, gazing meaningfully into her eyes. “Thank you for being here. It means so much to me.”

Olivia smiled and took another quick sip of champagne.

She had no idea what the intent, mysterious gleam in his eye was all about, but she would have bet that it didn’t have anything to do with identifying wine.

“I’d like you to meet some of my friends,” Ernesto said, taking her arm.

“Some of your friends?” Olivia said, looking around the crowded room.

Ernesto laughed again, and Olivia couldn’t help but smile. Oh, the man was in his element.

Olivia allowed him to guide her through the crowd. They made it just one or two steps forward at a time, as everyone wanted some attention from the hefe. Ernesto skillfully worked the crowd, while Olivia smiled and spoke easily with his guests, slipping automatically into Spanish, the language of her childhood home. But she had the oddest itch at the back of her neck, and it wasn’t until nearly an hour after she arrived that she figured out why. Everywhere she looked, there were uniformed men standing guard. Armed with unsmiling, intimidating faces and big, scary guns.

“Uh, Ernesto?”

Ernesto turned at once at the small tug on his sleeve. He covered Olivia’s rough, sea-weathered hand with his own smooth, manicured one and smiled deferentially down at her. Oh, yes, Olivia thought, distracted for a moment. This man could run Mexico from this hacienda. He had all the charm and old-world refinement of a Don.

“Yes, Olivia?”

She blinked up at him. “Pardon?”

Ernesto brought her hand to his lips. Olivia wanted to snatch it back; it looked like a sea hag’s gnarled fist against his full, beautiful mouth.

“You are tired of all this inane conversation, my dear?”

“What? No, of course not,” she protested, though, in truth, she would have given her right arm for a cold Mexican beer, her laptop and her narrow cot in her beach camp tent right about now. “I was just wondering about all the men here.”

Ernesto lifted one graceful brow. “The men here?” he said.

Olivia felt a little chill slide right past the itch at the back of her neck, but decided she must have imagined the slight menace in Ernesto’s perfectly modulated tone.

“I mean the men you have in uniform. Your deputies. Why are they here, at a party?”

“Ah, that. To protect my guests, of course,” he said, relaxing visibly. He swept his arm in an unmistakably urbane gesture. He smiled again, that charming flash of teeth. “They are unobtrusive, though, are they not? I believe it’s your American sensibilities that made you notice them at all.”

“Why do your guests need protection?”

Ernesto sighed, then turned away for a moment to greet yet another supplicant. Olivia did a quick count of Ernesto’s not-so-unobtrusive pack of gun-toters. Fifteen!

“I’m sorry, Olivia,” Ernesto said when he returned his attention to her. “You were saying?”

“Why do you have so many men posted here at the hacienda? Have you had trouble? Are you expecting trouble?”

Ernesto’s lips compressed ever so briefly, then he took Olivia’s arm again and led her to a relatively quiet corner. “Olivia,” he began patiently. “I am the sheriff of Aldea Viejo, as well as a very wealthy man.”

“Yes, I know, Ernesto.”

“And as such, I face many dangers, every day. We have criminals here in this small village, just as you have in your large American cities.”

“But at a party?”

Ernesto shrugged, his broad shoulders enhanced by the fine cut of his suit.

“Have you been robbed here at the hacienda?”

Ernesto’s eyes darkened. “Certainly not.”

“Are your guests in the habit of walking off with the family silver?”

“Olivia,” Ernesto admonished, offended.

Olivia smiled, but rubbed at the back of her neck all the same. “I’m teasing, Ernesto.”

He watched her carefully for a moment, then leaned to kiss her lightly on her mouth. “I should hope so. Do not concern yourself with these questions, Olivia. I have my men here to protect my guests.” He smiled gently. “Most especially my guest of honor. It is my duty to protect you, Olivia. And it is my pleasure.”

“I don’t need protection, Ernesto,” Olivia said meaningfully. Best to begin as you mean to go on, she thought. “I have been taking excellent care of myself for several years now.”

Ernesto wrapped her hand around his forearm, scanning the crowd of guests absently. “Another thing I admire about you, Olivia.” He brought her hand to his mouth again and kissed it. “But in all your travels, I cannot imagine you have come across the kind of men I am dealing with now.”

“The smugglers?” He’d mentioned it before, on one of their walks. Drug shipments had been coming through Aldea Viejo, out of range of the Mexican Federal Police, the federales, in La Paz. Ernesto was determined to bring the smugglers to justice, but they’d been as slippery as reef eels so far.

“They are very dangerous, these men,” Ernesto said.

“But not stupid. I doubt very much they’d crash this party.”

Ernesto’s eyes narrowed fractionally. “One never knows what the criminal mind will think of doing.” Ernesto smiled, nabbed another glass of champagne from a passing tray and toasted Olivia cordially before taking a sip. “Does one?”

Rafael Camayo crept through the house, using the clamor of the party on the floor below to cover what little noise he made. Though his mother would be shocked to know it, this was hardly the first time he’d broken into someone’s home and searched through every room like a bandit.

It was, however, the first time it had ever been so important to him.

Rafe skirted a lighted doorway. A fussy little powder room, he noted with disdain, wondering how many of the ladies and gentlemen using the elaborate, gold-plated facilities knew how Cervantes had paid for them.

He smiled grimly. Probably more than a few. Rafe knew from years of tracking Cervantes that many of the man’s friends were actually more like associates; partners in crime, so to speak. Not that Rafe’s employers—the United States Drug Enforcement Agency—or their associates in the Mexican government had ever been able to get the goods on any of them. Lesser men fell, swept up in routine drug raids, while Cervantes and his swanky pals held lavish dinner parties and toasted each other’s cleverness.

He and his partner, Bobby, had been in Baja California for months now, trying to change all that. They’d been methodically stealing drug shipments from Cervantes’s men and slipping them surreptitiously into the hands of DEA agents across the border in Mexico. They made no arrests, busted neither the men at the drop site nor the runners who brought the stuff over from mainland Mexico. They simply swept in—or snuck in, depending upon the situation and the likelihood one of them would be shot through the head—and stole what Ernesto Cervantes firmly believed was his.

It was a last-ditch effort, a plan devised by Rafe and Bobby alone, and one that neither the federales nor Rafe’s superior officers at the DEA thought likely to succeed. But Rafe and Bobby were determined.

They knew Cervantes—knew him inside and out—though neither of them had ever been within fifty feet of the man. They knew he could outwait the authorities and their traditional methods forever, keeping his minions on the front line while he led his respectable, lawful life.

But he would never tolerate being ripped off by a couple of filthy, low-class bandidos.

It was driving the big man crazy, Rafe thought with an unprofessional smirk, just as they’d hoped it would. Cervantes was a canny kingpin, but a kingpin nonetheless, and with the ego to go along with the title. It wouldn’t be long—couldn’t be long, according to Rafe’s superiors back in San Diego—before he showed up at one of the shipment sites himself. Rafe could almost smell Cervantes’s frustration, could almost touch it.

It was certainly evident by all the thugs he had posted at this little soiree.

Rafe had easily slipped past them all, of course. Another thing that would have shocked his mother. Ten years as an undercover DEA agent was excellent training, but it was nothing to the years in the San Diego barrio of his youth. A boy who spoke no English learned how to fade into any background in the border towns of San Diego, or he risked being picked up by cruising immigration officers looking for his illegally “immigrated” parents.

Rafe searched the next room he came to, wincing slightly as the heavy carved door creaked atmospherically on its iron hinges. The four men the Mexican federales had inside Cervantes’s organization had already been through every scrap of paper in Cervantes’s office, but had yet to find anything incriminating. The party tonight had given Rafe the first opportunity since he’d come to Baja to get inside the rest of the house and do a little snooping of his own.

Nothing in this room; not that he’d expected much. Cervantes was unlikely to keep records of his illegal activities in an upstairs guest room. Still, procedure dictated a thorough search. He closed the door behind him and stood absolutely still in the gloomy hallway, listening, waiting.

Rafe cocked his head at a small sound, separate from the cacophony coming from downstairs.

Well, hell. Someone was coming up the second stairway.

He looked quickly around and decided the best he could do on such short notice was try to melt into the wide, darkened doorway behind him. If he tried to get back into the room he’d just left, the damn door would give him away. He cursed old houses and all their charm. Give him a nice, quiet apartment with brand-new vinyl doors any day.

He stood perfectly still and let the person walk past him. A woman. Before he could make out her face or shape, he could hear the seductive swish of a skirt, smell the faint scent of perfume. She had a beautiful scent, this woman. She smelled like the sea.

Lord, it had been a long time since he’d been so close to a woman.

Against his better judgment, Rafe lifted his eyes. He knew that people seemed to sense when they were being watched, and the last thing he needed right now was for one of Cervantes’s snotty dinner guests to start screaming about bandits in the upstairs hallways.

But he couldn’t resist. He was partially aroused from the scent of her alone. Oh, yeah, he thought ruefully, shifting his weight slightly. Way too many months on the job.

The woman passed by him on her way to the bathroom.

Rafe nearly snarled out loud as he recognized her.

The princess. Cervantes’s princess. The woman, he knew from his informants on the inside, that Cervantes planned to marry. Dr. Olivia Galpas. He’d made it a point to find out her name the day Cervantes first visited her on the beach. He’d had her investigated, of course. Anyone Cervantes spent that much time with, American or not, female or male, had to be checked out.

She’d been clean, as far as the DEA was concerned, but that didn’t make her any more likable in Rafe’s mind.

She was a princesa, from one of the oldest and finest Latino families in San Diego. Her mother was some famous artist, her father was a physician. She was a doctor herself, born with a silver spoon in her mouth, and handed every opportunity. While he’d been picking avocados to get through junior college, the princesa had been whiling away her time at Stanford and then MIT.

Apparently, all the expensive education hadn’t made her any smarter, Rafe thought sourly as he watched her flick on the light in the small room and close the door behind her. She was keeping very dangerous company, and seemed to be enjoying herself doing it. Rafe’s eyes narrowed in the darkness. Money and power were vigorous aphrodisiacs to a woman who was accustomed to having both in her life.

Like was always attracted to like.

Olivia Galpas was here in Cervantes’s house, upstairs even, where guests did not usually go. So, there was more to this relationship than he’d thought, was there? He’d have to keep that in mind. Maybe the pretty little doctor knew exactly what kind of dirty drug money paid for the gold-plated fixtures in the bathroom she was using.

Rafe shook his head slightly. Settle down, there, Rafael. A rather intense reaction to one glimpse of a woman in a hallway, he had to admit. And jumping to conclusions was not his style, either. He was a very deliberate sort of cop.

But Olivia Galpas was everything in a woman Rafael Camayo naturally resented, everything he instinctively despised. He liked women with heart, with passion, with guts. He didn’t like pampered, overeducated, rich girls who slept with any drug runner with a woman’s soft hands and a big house. Especially one they’d known just three weeks.

Only, God, she smelled good. It was indefinable, that scent of the beach and woman she left in her wake. He’d never smelled anything like it. Not perfume, but…essence. If he could have dragged enough of it into his lungs, he thought, he could live on it alone for a week. No food, no water—just that smell.

He knew he needed to move on through the house, use every opportunity the party was giving him to find what he could and then get the hell out. But something about the woman behind that powder room door—aside from her scent, he told himself firmly—kept him rooted to the spot. Maybe she’d come back out and he’d give her a little talking-to, American to American. Let her in on the secrets behind Ernesto Cervantes’s “family” wealth. Haul her gorgeous little rear end right out of this house and get her on the next plane Stateside. As any good American law enforcement agent would do.

Only, he couldn’t. And wouldn’t.

Ernesto Cervantes had killed his brother almost twenty years ago. He and Bobby—who in addition to being his partner was his carnal, his blood brother from childhood, his cousin, and the godson of Rafe’s dead brother—had spent those twenty years plotting, planning the kind of revenge that would have made George proud. They’d joined the local police force, then the DEA; had worked their way up the ladder in all the ways that mattered—for this one bust. He wasn’t about to give up those years, those plans, for one amazing-smelling woman, American or not.

Besides, he mused, she may not even want to be saved. His informants had told him how cozy the couple had become. How long the walks, how intense the talks, how delicate and intimate and revolting the whole relationship had become. Maybe Olivia Galpas was in exactly the hot spot she wanted to be in. Maybe she knew everything.

Olivia stepped out into the darkened hallway, flicking off the light behind her. She’d used the facilities, washed her hands, put lotion on, checked her hair, washed her hands again, straightened all the lovely linen guest towels then sat on the edge of the vanity for five minutes, considering the merits of a hot wax treatment to smooth out her sea-coarsened hands. No woman should have rougher hands than her boyfriend, she thought.

But there was no getting around the fact that she had to go back downstairs. Eventually. Even now, Ernesto was probably wondering if she’d eaten some bad shrimp.

She smiled slightly to herself, rolled her eyes. She couldn’t imagine Ernesto Cervantes ever wondering about her digestive health. He was so polished and dignified, she didn’t think he’d be able to bring himself to admit women had digestive systems, much less to talk about them.

She started down the hall, grateful that for the first time since she’d entered the house she wasn’t being stared at by some glowering, khaki-covered baboon. This hallway was obviously in a private portion of the house, where guests were not expected to wander. Well, she’d wandered, and she could hardly see the harm in it. She personally thought Ernesto was carrying the whole protection thing to the limits of high drama. What kind of criminal would break into a man’s house while two hundred people were drinking and dancing downstairs?

She stopped before she reached the stairs. That itch on the back of her neck was really driving her crazy. If she didn’t know herself any better, she’d think she was having some sort of woman’s intuition. But that was ridiculous. She didn’t have woman’s intuition. She was a scientist.

She turned very slowly and looked right into the face of the man watching her.

Olivia felt as though every ounce of blood drained from her head and leaked out her toes. She had never been so unnerved in all her life. The itch at the back of her neck slithered around her throat and clutched at her jugular. Adrenaline pumped through her like a drug. She didn’t know this man, didn’t know why he watched her with such intensity, such malice, but she knew she should be afraid of him. And by God, she was.

They stared at each other for what seemed to Olivia like hours, though, of course, it couldn’t have been more than a few seconds. He was partially shadowed, but Olivia glimpsed a rough, unshaved Latino face, all planes and angles, with cheekbones that looked sharp enough to cut glass. He had a starved look to him, as though he’d never quite had enough to eat. She sucked in a reflexive breath, unaware she’d stopped breathing.

Rafe’s heart thundered in his chest at the sound of that deep breath. He was ready to bolt if she screamed. He’d be no good to this operation—or to George’s memory—with a bullet through his heart.

But she didn’t scream. She just watched him, calm except for the breathlessness. He respected that even as it occurred to him that perhaps she didn’t scream because she was a princesa and thought herself impervious to strange men in dark hallways. He ought to disabuse her of that notion, Rafe thought. He worked up a sneer but could manage nothing more menacing than that. Olivia Galpas was the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen. And frankly, he’d never had much stomach for threatening women, pretty or not.

She was small, no more than five foot four. Rafe was taller than most of the men in his family by several inches, and this woman’s head would hit below his chin. Her hair was plaited down her straight spine in a heavy braid that reached the curve of her bottom. He wondered about the texture of all that braided hair, wondered what it would feel like if he ran his thumb down the length of it.

Her breasts were discreetly camouflaged by the peasant blouse she wore, but they looked small enough for each to fit whole into his mouth. Rafe swallowed hard at that ridiculous idea. This was Cervantes’s woman. He no more wanted to touch her than he wanted to put his hand in a basket of rattlesnakes.

Her face was flushed from fear or the sun—he could see the color high on her classic cheekbones even in the dim light of the hallway. She had a small, full mouth that she’d set into a brave and stubborn line he had to admire.

And her eyes. Her eyes.

They were dark, those eyes, with whites like snow and thick lashes Rafe thought she probably used to hide the truth. Her pupils dilated, until he imagined every spark of light in the hallway had been swallowed up by them.

Her eyes flashed at him, and Rafe found his knees weak. An absurd reaction for a man such as Rafael Camayo, he thought. But what could he do? Like a green boy, he was weak-kneed after one look from Ernesto Cervantes’s American lover.

Olivia was experiencing the very same sensation in her knees, but for an entirely different reason.

“Who are you?” she said. She’d meant to sound authoritative, barking out a question to be answered at once. But her voice sounded much more like a mewl than a bark, and she could have kicked herself for it. Of course, the man didn’t answer such a pathetic little question. Olivia cleared her throat and tried again. “Señor Cervantes has men all over this house, whoever you are,” she said, sounding stronger. “If you’re not a guest here, I suggest you leave.”

Oh, did she? Rafe almost smiled. “I don’t take orders from you, princesa,” he said, speaking in Spanish, as she had.

“Who are you?” she snapped. Though, of course, she already knew. The drug smuggler, or at least one of them. A man this frightening could only be a pirate, a smuggler, a thief.

She took a step forward, in exactly the opposite direction her prudent, cautious brain was telling her to go. Typical. First her hair and now her feet. Her body was being very disobedient tonight, and if she got out of this little confrontation alive, she intended to have a stern chat with all her various parts.

“Answer me,” she said.

Answer me? Rafe’s mouth moved back into a sneer. Good grief. Every word out of her mouth was a command. She certainly spoke like a princesa.

The man clearly was not going to answer, even though she’d finally worked up a decent bark. Olivia pulled her lips through her teeth, swallowed the lump of fear in her throat, clamped down on the trembling that was beginning to make her hands shake and her mouth quiver. Demanding answers wasn’t going to work, and she clearly was incapable of doing anything as judicious as hiking up her skirt and fleeing down the stairs, screaming bloody murder. Still, this man was invading Ernesto’s beautiful home. What kind of friend would she be if she did nothing about that?

“If you don’t leave right now,” she said calmly, firmly, “I will alert the guards.”

Rafe smiled, a flash of white teeth in the shadows. “You won’t alert the guards,” he said.

Olivia blinked, unnerved by that fierce, confident smile. Weren’t smugglers supposed to be furtive? This one was cool as a cucumber. “I won’t?”

“No.”

“Why won’t I?”

“Because you’re a woman, Dr. Galpas, and women are more practical than men.”

He knew who she was. Olivia felt the impact of her name on his smirking lips shiver all the way down to the backs of her thighs, raising the fine hairs there.

“How do you know me?” she whispered.

Rafe shrugged. “It’s a small village. You’re a beautiful woman. And a smart one,” he reminded her pointedly.

Obviously not, Olivia thought wildly. Smart women did not converse with bandidos in dark upstairs hallways while their almost-fiancés waited downstairs with fifteen armed men. Smart women screamed in situations like these, or at least fainted so they wouldn’t be held responsible afterward. Olivia considered both options.

Rafe watched her carefully, saw her eyes dart toward the stairs, measuring for the first time the distance between herself and safety. About time, he thought. Stupid woman, to be standing here talking to him.

“Too late, señorita,” he whispered, stepping from the deep doorway and taking her arm.

He moved so quickly that Olivia had no time to choose between screaming or fainting. One instant he was a shadowy figure several safe feet away, the next his hand was wrapped hard over her biceps and she was deftly turned and pressed back against his body. Her breath left her again.

Rafe slid his free hand to her throat. Stomach for it or not, he had to keep this woman from exposing him, at least until he got out of the house. After that, let her scream until she turned purple. It would only serve to further pique Cervantes’s pride and temper, having had the bandit who had been stealing from him invade his very own hacienda.

The operation was what mattered, and damn his weak knees. And whatever else was reacting to Olivia Galpas.

“Stop struggling,” he hissed in her ear, “and listen.” He ran his thumb along the base of her throat and let it rest in the hollow there, for his own pleasure. He felt the woman shudder in his arms and wondered briefly what it would be like to make her shudder from something other than fear. He shifted again, hoping she didn’t feel his arousal at her backside. “You can scream, you can run, you can alert every man in the building, and I will not leave this house tonight alive. That’s true.”

Olivia felt him shift behind her once more, prayed he’d moved far enough away that she wouldn’t have to feel his lower body against her again. She’d been shocked by his obvious excitement, terrified that he intended more harm to her than she’d assumed.

But he was clearly trying to spare…one of them, anyway, from whatever that arousal implied.

“But I won’t die alone,” he continued softly at her ear. “Do you really want to take the chance with the lives of your lover and his friends?”

Olivia thought to correct him on that count; Ernesto was not her lover. But then, she thought as his hand reached up to clamp gently around her throat, she had more important things than semantics to worry about right now.

“Do you?” he repeated harshly.

“No,” Olivia whispered.

“I thought not. I will leave when I’m finished, and no one will be hurt. Unless you make a mistake, señorita. The fate of these people are now in your hands. I urge you to make the right decision. Do you understand?”

Olivia caught a whiff of something as he breathed on her. Peppermint? Had this desperado brushed his teeth before breaking into the local sheriff’s house and crashing her going-away party? What the hell kind of bandit was this?

“When you’re finished?” she blurted with uncharacteristic indiscretion. “Finished with what? Are you robbing Ernesto? Are you the smuggler?”

Nosy, reckless woman. Rafe shook her slightly. “Do you understand?” he repeated, sounding dangerously provoked.

“Well, can you tell me how long you’ll be?”

Rafe nearly burst out laughing. “Doctor.”

Olivia nodded briskly. “Yes, yes, I understand.”

“And Doctor?”

“Yes.”

“I will kill him first. I want you to remember that.”

Olivia nodded again, swallowed hard. “Yes, I will,” she said in a strangled voice.

Rafael let her go, almost reluctantly. His head was buzzing from the contact of her body against his, his blood was running hot through his lower body, his fingers itched to touch the smooth skin of her neck a second time.

“One thing more,” he said through gritted teeth, suddenly as furious with himself as he was with her. For lingering, for getting caught, for finding Cervantes’s lover more arousing, more attractive, than any woman he’d met in years. For caring what happened to her.

Olivia’s chest was heaving, her body beginning to shake in reaction. She’d been in grave danger there for the briefest moment, but she was unsure exactly what the threat had been.

“What?” she breathed, her eyes locked on his.

“Get out of here as soon as you can. Get back to the States on the next plane or bus or vegetable wagon.” He reached out, gave a gentle tug on the long braid that had come to rest on her shoulder, running his thumb along the broad length of it. “I don’t know how much you know,” he said, almost to himself, “and I don’t care. Just get out.”

And while Olivia stood, trembling, wondering, the man disappeared without a sound down the dark hallway.