Читать книгу Lethal Lover - Laura Gordon - Страница 8

There were no words to express her shock; only his name emerged. “Reed?” It came out a whisper.

“Hello, Tess.”

Her heart was a jackhammer in her chest. “Wh-what—”

“What am I doing here?” he finished the question as he strode past her into the room. “I guess I could ask you the same thing, couldn’t I, Tess? Close the door, why don’t you?”

Numbly, she followed his instructions, the jolt of seeing Reed again, here in Grand Cayman, in her hotel room, had completely dumbfounded her. Rational thought told her he hadn’t materialized simply by her early thoughts of him, but then again, there was nothing rational about the way her heart raced at the sight of him.

“Nice,” he noted as he stepped deeper into the room, picked up the phone that was still lying on the bed and dropped it back onto its base.

Still thunderstruck by his presence, Tess could only stand and stare as he crossed to the balcony and peered outside. Her whole body seemed to be trembling and she couldn’t stop her thoughts from taking a jet-propelled trip back in time.

He’d been the town’s bad boy, the kind of young man mothers warned their daughters about while secretly harboring fantasies of their own involving the darkly handsome, street-smart kid from the proverbial wrong side of the tracks. Quick-witted, handsome, cocky—all these were traits Reed McKenna possessed in abundance, traits that combined to give him that hypnotic magnetism that women couldn’t resist and men couldn’t help but admire.

Seeing him now, dressed in softly faded jeans and a white polo shirt and looking twice as handsome and even sexier, Tess couldn’t help remembering the way he’d stirred her passions. Seeing his faint blue-black beard shadow enhancing his rugged maleness, and his dark brown eyes as intensely seductive and compelling as ever, Tess felt the old familiar attraction drawing her to him again.

Get hold of yourself. You’re a grown woman, not some lovesick teenager! But even as that inner voice scolded, the years melted away and the sweat rose on her palms. Damn you, Reed McKenna! Damn your lean body and your thick, black hair and the wicked brown eyes that always seemed to be looking right into my very soul. And damn that smile of his that curled his perfect lips and drove dimples into his lean, tanned checks.

He turned and sent his smoky gaze sliding leisurely up and down the length of her. “Surprised to see me?” Another smile, and appealing lines winged out from the corners of his eyes.

“Surprised? Believe me, surprised doesn’t even come close. What are you doing here?” she asked him again.

“So that’s all you can say? Not even ‘how’s it going, Reed?’ or ‘Gee, but it’s damn good to see you after all this time’?”

It wasn’t damn good to see him, it was damn disturbing and damn perplexing, exasperating, wonderful and a host of other jumbled and conflicting emotions, all of which Tess despised.

She ran a hand carelessly through her hair, scrambling to collect her wits and raise her guard. “I see you haven’t changed. Still playing word games, still incapable of giving a straight answer.”

His look was one of practiced innocence that she recognized and responded to, despite herself. “Well, you know what they say about teaching old dogs new tricks,” he drawled.

She would not be drawn in, she promised herself, by the patented McKenna charm. “The last I heard you were some kind of federal cop in D.C.,” she said to change the subject.

His thick lashes dipped lazily. “And the last I heard you were back home running some kind of specialty bookstore.”

“Mysteries, Ltd.,” she informed him tersely, realizing too late that he’d deftly avoided answering her question by shifting the focus back on her. Just like the old Reed, she told herself, always a jump ahead of everyone. Always setting the rules.

“Mysteries, huh? Well, what do you know,” his voice held a note of mild indifference as his gaze swept the room before he sauntered toward the bathroom, opened the door and glanced in.

Tess was flabbergasted by his actions and inflamed by his arrogance. “Excuse me, but just what the hell are you doing?” she demanded, coming up behind him with her hands on her hips. He was giving the bathroom such intense scrutiny that she figured if the shower curtain had been drawn he’d have pushed it open to search the tub as well.

He turned away from the bathroom and glanced at the two queen-size beds separated by a standard hotel nightstand. “Nice room.”

“You said that before.”

His gaze wandered back to her and a bemused grin tugged at his mouth, making her feel suddenly exposed in the sundress that had seemed perfectly appropriate until now. “You always were the direct one, weren’t you, Tessa?”

She started at the sound of the pet name no one had called her in almost ten years. “You’re still impossible.”

“And you’re still angry.”

“Angry?” she muttered, detesting the way his mere presence had toppled her emotional equilibrium. “Now, what would give you that impression, McKenna? Let’s see—” Desperate for distance, she turned her back to him and stalked to the other side of the room. “Someone I haven’t laid eyes on in, what? Almost five years—” When she turned around to face him again, he had dropped down into the wicker chair that sat beside the sliding glass doors.

“Four and a half years, at the airport in Denver,” he supplied. “You were on your way to see a sick relative.”

“Am I supposed to be impressed that you remembered?”

He shrugged, but his expression told her he knew she was secretly pleased. Inside she seethed, hating him for knowing her so well and despising the fact that he could still read her emotions so effortlessly.

“Where was I?” she said. “Ah, yes, we were trying to figure out why I should be angry with you for waltzing in without an iota of an explanation. And let’s not forget the part about the wedding you conveniently forgot to attend. When was that, Reed, since you’re the one who’s so good at remembering?”

His smile had disappeared and his mouth was set in a tight line as he studied her.

“I see you can’t remember. Well, let me refresh your memory. It was eight years ago, Reed. June 15th to be exact. Three days before—” Her voice broke and she lowered her eyes to avoid looking at the face that would, if she stared at it long enough, eventually undo her.

He stood and stared out at the beach. “I was sorry to hear about your parents, Tess.”

“I lost my sister, as well,” she reminded him pointedly. Although she was dry-eyed, her heart ached.

“I know,” he said quietly. “And I’m sorry. Meredith was a good kid.”

Tess felt her heart harden at the sound of her sister’s name coming from his lips. How dare he? And how foolish was she to stand here jousting with the man who’d single-handedly destroyed her girlhood innocence and shattered her dreams?

Crossing the room purposefully, she jerked open the door and stood with one hand planted on each hip. “Angry? No, Reed, I’m not angry. But I am a lot wiser than that fawning nineteen-year-old you left standing at he altar.” Her diatribe left her breathless and the flood of heat that rose to her cheeks left her feeling weak. “I don’t know why you’re here, Reed, but I’m vacationing, and I know I’ll enjoy myself a whole lot more if I just throw you out and pretend this little meeting never occurred. Now, if you’ll excuse me,” she finished with a flourish, “I’d appreciate it if you got the hell out of my room and stayed the hell out of the rest of my life!”

He stood staring at her for a long tense moment before he started toward the door. Tess held her breath, hardly daring to believe that he’d actually leave without a fight. The old Reed would never have backed down so easily.

And neither would the new Reed, it seemed, for when he was directly in front of her, he surprised her by taking her hand and pulling her out of the doorway, before pushing the door closed and leaning against it with his arms crossed over his broad chest.

“Where’s Selena?” he asked, all pretense of word games abruptly ended.

“Selena?” Tess asked, unable to conceal her shock.

He nodded. “You asked me what I was looking for. Well, I was looking for your cousin, Selena Elliot.”

Tess blinked. To her knowledge her cousin and her ex-fiancé had never met. When Selena was growing up, she and her parents had lived in Denver, while Tess and Reed had grown up in the small mountain town of Evergreen some thirty miles west. She’d become involved with Reed McKenna her senior year and she had been working the year before starting college when he’d broken their engagement by suddenly, and without telling her, enlisting in the army. It was only later, when she’d inadvertently discovered his betrayal, that Tess had finally learned the real reason Reed had left town.

“Where is she?” he asked, jolting Tess back to the present.

“Why do you want to know?” she shot back defensively. “What connection do you have to Selena?”

“I don’t have any connection, not personally, anyway. I’m only here to take her back to the States. If you care about your cousin, you’ll tell me where she is and stay out of the way so I can do my job.”

“Your job?” Tess realized she was staring at him like an idiot, but the things he’d just said made no sense. “Then you are a cop.”

He didn’t answer.

“And you’re here to arrest Selena? This is unbelievable! What has she done, what’s this all about?” If Selena was in some kind of trouble, wouldn’t she have mentioned it? Or at least canceled this trip?

Reed didn’t answer any of her questions, but his dark-eyed stare continued to bore through her.

“Listen, Reed, whatever you want with my cousin, I know you can’t force her to go anywhere without some kind of warrant or subpoena.”

“I’m not here to arrest her,” he admitted.

Well, at least he’d given her that much. But Tess wasn’t satisfied. All her instincts warned that Reed was concealing far more than he’d revealed.

“All right, so you don’t have a warrant, then why are you looking for her and why should she go anywhere with you?”

His eyes flashed his irritation at being questioned. “Because the U.S. government has requested the honor of her presence at a trial.”

“A trial,” she repeated numbly, feeling slightly light-headed. “What kind of trial? Whose trial? I—I don’t understand. What’s going on and what has my cousin got to do with it?”

“It’s a long story,” he said as he walked across the room to the balcony again. She followed him and watched as his eyes scanned the beach below.

Finally he returned his attention to Tess’s question. “You really don’t know anything about all this, do you? She hasn’t told you?”

“Told me what?” Tess demanded, her patience stretched almost to snapping. “What don’t I know?”

He stood for another long moment without answering, without even looking at her. Exasperated, she reached for his arm, but the minute her fingers made contact with the warm, tanned flesh her heart jumped, and she knew she’d made a mistake. Immediately she pulled her hand back, feeling inexplicably singed.

“Reed, please. Tell me what this is all about. If my cousin is in some kind of trouble, I have a right to know.” And if this is just a bad dream, Tess told herself, she wished to hell someone would wake her!

“Selena is in trouble,” he conceded finally, taking her elbow and ushering her inside the room with him. “She works for a man who’s been indicted on federal charges.”

Tess sat down woodenly on the edge of the bed. “What kind of charges?”

“Racketeering, money laundering and murder, just to name a few.”

Tess felt exactly as she had as a child the time she’d fallen from the monkey bars on the playground and had the wind knocked out of her. “I don’t believe it,” she gasped.

“Believe it,” he said and pulled the bow-shaped wicker chair around to face her before he sat down. “Selena worked as a bookkeeper for Edward Morrell. She was a key figure in his organization.”

Tess could only sit and stare at him, her mind whirling as she tried to make sense of something that made no sense at all.

“Look, I can see how hearing all of this has shocked you, and it’s obvious to me that you know nothing about your cousin’s involvement.” He rose and put the chair back in its place before he added, “I’d like to help you put it all together, but I haven’t got time to explain. And I’m not sure it’s wise to tell you any more than I already have. But I need to know where she is, Tess,” he said, coming back to the bed to stand over her. “I need to find her and get her out of Grand Cayman tonight.”

The unthinkable occurred to Tess in a flash of frightening insight and she rose quickly, oblivious to the precious space that she’d closed between them and the fact that she’d planted her hands on his chest. “Reed, are you trying to tell me that Selena might be in some kind of danger?”

He glanced down at her hands resting on his chest, before his eyes met hers again. “Just tell me where she is, Tess, if you know.”

His dark eyes grew even darker and suddenly every protective instinct went off in a series of screaming alarms inside Tess’s mind. She nearly stumbled, sidestepping away from him. “I won’t tell you anything until you tell me what this is all about.”

“Where is she, Tess?” he demanded, his voice hard-edged and impatient.

“I don’t know,” she insisted. “And even if I did, I wouldn’t tell you. Did you seriously imagine I’d blindly turn my cousin over to you without talking to her first?”

“I’d hoped you would be reasonable.”

“Reasonable or gullible?”

She watched a muscle clench at his jaw and for an uneasy moment she wondered if Selena might be running from him. “You always were too damn stubborn for your own good,” he muttered as he turned and headed for the door.

She was on his heels. “And just when did what’s good for me ever interest you, McKenna?”

His eyes blazed and Tess felt the fire of his anger, but she refused to be cowed, despite his seething temper and his obvious strength advantage—an advantage that by the looks of his lean, hard body was considerable.

“All right,” he relented finally, breaking their staring match. Tess felt a long-overdue twinge of satisfaction. “I guess you have a right to know the circumstances. But when I’ve finished telling you, your stay in Grand Cayman will be over. You’ll have to pack your bags and fly back to the States on the next available flight.”

She rankled at his direct order. “But—”

“No argument,” he said sharply. “From now on you do as I say, Tessa, as though your life depended on it.”

And from the grim expression on his face, Tess believed that it just might.

* * *

ONE FLOOR BELOW Tess Elliot’s room, a naked toddler sitting in a tub of warm water squealed with delight at the spray of water she raised every time she slapped a small, pink, plastic elephant and sent it bobbing. “Doggy, doggy, doggy,” she chanted and giggled and splashed.

The middle-aged woman bent over the tub and laughed and pulled her saturated cotton blouse away from her skin. “Whatever you say, Sweetie.”

“Doggy!” the child responded gleefully, her small pink mouth curled into a delighted grin that revealed four small, shining, front teeth—two on top, two on the bottom.

“Are you trying to drown the kid, Gertie?” a male voice teased from the bathroom door.

“You go on and mind your own business, Jake. Me and little Miss Crissy is having us a great time.”

Jake stuck his bald head in the doorway, and enjoyed the sight of his wife of forty-plus years sitting on the floor, seemingly oblivious to the puddle of water around her or the blouse that stuck to her like a second skin.

“Who’s giving who the bath?” he asked mischievously.

Gertie shook her head and rolled her eyes. “Listen to him, will you, Crissy? The man’s a certified comic, ain’t he?”

The little girl with the big blue eyes and honey gold ringlets tossed her head and giggled at a joke she couldn’t possibly understand. Gertie opened a towel and lifted Crissy out of the tub.

The sight of the child in Gertie’s arms caused Jake’s heart to constrict. The poor little thing had no idea she was being used as a pawn in a game where the rules were being made up as they went along.

“Gertie,” Jake said, his voice low as he edged over to the toilet and sat down on the lid, “do you think we did right by agreeing to do this?”

Gertie wrapped the plush white towel snugly around the child’s chubby middle and swept Crissy into her arms. “Of course we did the right thing. What’s the matter with you, old man?” When the child reached for her glasses, Gertie had to arch her neck to save them. “Besides, how could we have turned him down? After all he’s done for us, and never once asked for anything in return.”

Jake hung his head. “You’re right, hon. It’s just that—”

“It’s just nothing,” Gertie cut him off. “Reed McKenna asked us to take care of this little gal for a few days and that’s what we’re going to do.”

“You’re right, Gert,” Jake said as he stood up and followed her into the bedroom. “I just hope he knows what he’s doing. It don’t seem right for a child to be separated from her—”

Gertie interrupted him again. “Don’t say it,” she snapped, turning on him, “or else you’ll get her to crying all over again.”

Jake sighed and paced to the window to look out at the beach. “Reckon we could take her outside to play when she wakes up? The little thing is so pale. She needs some fresh air.” And so did Jake.

“Probably. Now, go take a walk, will you? You’re making me and the baby nervous with all your pacing.”

Jake Patterson started for the door. “Bring us back some sandwiches and chips,” his wife called after him. “And remember to get a carton of milk and some fruit for Crissy and a couple of them punch drinks for us. We’ll save them for later, and after this little dolly goes to bed, we’ll sit out on the balcony and have us a picnic.”

Jake forced a smile and walked out of his third-floor hotel room, making sure the door closed and locked behind him.

* * *

“I DON’T BELIEVE YOU!” Tess gasped. “Selena could never be involved in something like this. She just couldn’t! For heaven’s sake, Reed, you’re talking about organized crime!”

Reed merely shrugged, but the burning in his gut belied his show of nonchalance. “Whether you believe me or not, your cousin was Edward Morrell’s bookkeeper for almost four years. And that position has put her in deep trouble. You must know this wasn’t her first trip to Grand Cayman.”

She hesitated before she admitted, “Selena did mention that she’d been here before, but that’s hardly an admission of guilt.”

“Oh, she’s been here, all right. Seven different trips in two years. Although no one will ever find any documentation to prove it, she was probably hauling Morrell’s dirty money to the island’s various banks and opening accounts in every one of them.”

He hated the stricken look on her face. He remembered how Tess had always placed a high premium on loyalty, especially when she was championing the cause of an underdog. Unfortunately for her, this time she was attempting to defend someone unworthy of her loyalty, and something in her eyes—the sadness and disillusionment—told Reed she knew it.

“Do you know where she is?” he asked her again.

“No,” she said softly. “I haven’t seen her since she left our table.” She glanced at her watch. “That was almost two hours ago.”

Her face was too pretty to be so drawn with worry, and Reed couldn’t help feeling responsible. “I hope I can count on you to help me convince her to do the right thing. She has to go back, Tess. The only way I can help her is if she agrees to cooperate.”

She walked over to the window and with her back to him she said, “Why didn’t she tell me? How could she be in this much trouble and not tell me?”

Reed felt his heart go out to the woman he’d once loved. There were a dozen good reasons why Selena Elliot hadn’t confided in her cousin, and all of them were life threatening. “She couldn’t tell you,” he explained. “She would have been putting you at risk.”

She spun around to face him. “But if what you’re telling me is true, I’m already at risk, aren’t I?”

Reed didn’t try to dispute her logic, because he couldn’t.

When she strode past him to the door, he caught up with her in two strides and covered her hand with his on the doorknob. They were standing so close he could almost taste her.

“Get out of my way,” she said.

“Not until you tell me where you’re going.”

“I’m going to find my cousin,” she informed him as she jerked her hand from beneath his. “Just as you should be trying to do if you were really interested in helping her.”

He stood in front of the door, blocking her path, his feet braced and his arms folded over his chest. “No way, Tess. I can’t have you poking around in something you know nothing about. There’s too much at stake.”

She scowled at him and flipped her hair over one shoulder with an indignant toss. It was a familiar gesture that sent him into a time warp of remembering.

“I’m not asking your permission, Reed.”

God, but she was sexy. “Sit down, Tessa—”

“And will you please stop calling me that!”

“Sit down,” he repeated firmly, his tone unyielding.

It came as no surprise that she ignored him and remained standing. “Will you please just listen,” he said, working to sound more conciliatory. “Selena probably saw something or someone who spooked her. She’s obviously hiding, and more than likely you’ll be the one she’ll contact when she feels it’s safe.”

He watched her silent and grudging acceptance of his logic.

“Think about it, Tess. If I found Selena, anyone else can.”

He hadn’t meant to scare her, but the alarm he saw spark in her pretty eyes told him he’d made his point.

“Stay here in case she tries to call you. I’ll go take another look around the hotel grounds.”

She sank down on the edge of the bed again, her shoulders slumped with the weight of the load he’d placed there. “If you find her, please call me. I have to talk to her.”

He nodded. “Of course.”

“And after you find her, then what?”

“It’s my job to take her back to testify.” He hoped she wouldn’t ask him again if he was a cop. The thread of trust he’d just established was pathetically thin. If she pushed him to reveal the fact that he was a paid tracker—a bounty hunter—that fragile beginning would disintegrate like smoke in the wind.

“And what if she refuses to go back? What if she won’t go with you?” she pressed him.

The eyes that met his were intelligent and assessing and he knew better than to try and lie. “Well, then I’ll just have to convince her it’s the best thing for her to do, won’t I?”

“Stay here, Tess,” he ordered at the door. “Don’t make me have to go looking for you, as well.”

“Go to hell, McKenna,” she snapped. “And be forewarned that if Selena calls before you get back, I’m not making any promises or waiting around for your approval to talk to her about any of this.”

He nodded, conceding her right to make both declarations.