Читать книгу All Night Long - Melissa MacNeal - Страница 8

“That goddamn double-crossing sonuva bitch!”

Lola crumpled the note and threw it at the bed, but that didn’t nearly relieve her anger. Who did he think he was, saying he’d met somebody else—his true soul mate, for chrissakes! Dennis Fletcher wouldn’t know a soul mate if she slapped him in the face!

She threw open the closet door, slamming it hard against the jamb. What if he’d been planning this all along? Just said he’d get married to shut her up, so he could abandon her on this swanky ship and not have to pay his bar tab and casino—

But his clothes were still hanging there. The blazers she’d chosen to make him look wider across the shoulders. The slacks that hugged his sexy ass and played up the bulge in front.

Lola yanked out the top drawer, still muttering.

“Must not’ve thought he’d need underwear, either, to go sashaying off to some rich bitch’s seaside villa. Some bitch from Aruba, no less!” she jeered, hurling his undershirts across the room. “Probably met her in that onshore casino we walked through this morning. In the time it took me to pee, no less!”

Still pissed, Lola flung his socks at the picture window, wondering why any moron would roll them up into such bulky balls. “Well, I hope she’s loaded, cause Fletch’ll let on like he’s so the Caribbean stud—and then go through her cash faster than Tarzan’s chimp can swing through the jungle!”

Dennis did bring to mind a monkey, come to think of it. An albino monkey, with his close-cropped blonde hair curving around his temples into a widow’s peak. She should call and tell him exactly what she thought of him right now! Make monkey noises in his ear—

But no. He’d see her name and number on his cell screen and ignore her. And she certainly didn’t want to interrupt whatever he and his soul mate were doing!

“You can’t call him,” she muttered, throwing his skimpy swimsuits to the floor. “No cell signal, remember?”

But she could play detective.

Lola grabbed the Aphrodite Ahoy! newsletter that listed today’s schedule and events. Since they didn’t sail until six, she had forty-five minutes to run ashore and—if he thought for one minute she’d let him dump her for some—

Lola sucked in a shuddery breath. That’s exactly what Fletch had done. He’d dumped her, for some sleazy broad with a villa on Aruba…a woman who wouldn’t put him in his place, or suggest that his tightie-whities were shot—or too tacky for a guy marrying a—a woman who advised high-level execs about dressing for…success.

Dammit, I did NOT say his name like he was a dog fetching something!

Lola fondled the silk bikinis she’d bought him, but the rainbow they made in his drawer taunted her like his note had.

She would not cry over this jerk! Instead, she grabbed the closest thing—her swishy silk robe from Victoria’s Secret—and stepped into her kitten-heel sandals with the rhinestone vamps. She snatched her SeaKey from on top of the TV, where Captain Scandalous was once again assuring her he was about to make her wildest dreams come true.

And Lola headed out. A bitch on a mission!

Down the narrow hallway she rushed—around the corner, to race down the stairs—no time to wait for elevators!—until she reached the gangplank on Deck One. Sweaty, overbaked passengers were swarming aboard, their Sea Key cards making a steady ding! ding! as they passed through the security checkpoints. Uniformed crewmen watched their x-ray monitors, while other men in whites handed out antiseptic wipes as guests reclaimed their bags from the conveyor belt. A sense of urgency filled the bustling room, where everyone was thinking about squeezing into their formal wear in time to guzzle free champagne at the Captain’s reception.

But not Lola. She surveyed the scene, and then trotted up behind a Filipino watching a monitor off to the side of the incoming lines.

“Please, can you tell me if a Dennis Fletcher has come back on board?” she asked breathlessly. “I was expecting him hours ago, and I’m afraid something awful must’ve happened if—”

The agent flicked his gaze her way. “Sorry, ma’am. Can’t give out that information.”

“But he’s my husband!” she pleaded, widening her eyes as she gripped the front of her filmy robe. “He went back ashore to get me a—”

The man in whites refocused on his screen. “Stateroom number?” he murmured.

“7010, Promenade Deck,” Lola wheezed. Then she realized he’d ask for her SeaKey next. “I—when I saw it was getting so late, I rushed down here with just my key—”

He plucked it from her hand. Ding! went the scanner. Up came her registration info, and that lousy photo they took when she first boarded the ship. Then he keyed in a few other numbers.

“Sorry, Miss Wright. He’s not back y—”

“What time did he leave the ship?” she demanded, but then she exhaled plaintively. Better to sound like a worried wife than a diva who’s been dumped.

“I’m so sorry,” Lola wheezed, swiping at her eyes, “but Dennis gets shaky in this heat and—the ship won’t really leave before we find him, will it? I’m worried sick about him!”

Mr. Efficiency raised an eyebrow, as though he saw through her little story. He handed back her SeaKey. “Mr. Fletcher disembarked at 3:09 PM. And yes, ma’am, the Aphrodite pulls away at six o’clock sharp. The gangplank closes in five minutes, however, so don’t even think about going after him. We’d have to leave without both of you, ma’am. It’s cruise line policy.”

Lola’s mouth snapped shut. Fletch left hours ago! All this time she’d assumed he was parked at a poker table in the ship’s casino! She’d spent the afternoon anointing herself for the biggest night of his life, while he’d been galavanting around with some floozy from Aruba! Was probably naked in her jacuzzi by now, laughing his ass off about the clueless, bossy broad who thought she’d have him roped and branded by tomorrow.

Flummoxed, she strode to the open doors to scan the pier area, where the last stragglers were hurrying up the gangplank.

Like he’d really be there, she chided herself. You should’ve known he’d never change! You should’ve taken a clue from all those times he walked out before. But no, you had to wheedle and coax and spread your legs to keep him coming back for—

“Pardon me, Mrs. Fletcher?”

“I don’t think so!” she spat, wheeling around to face the crewman who’d dared to interrupt her inner rant.

Lola’s jaw dropped. Golden-brown eyes drank her in. Sun-kissed, sandy hair framed a slender Mediterranean face. A wicked little mustache curled around lush—very kissable—lips that curved in a polite smile.

Then she realized her arms were crossed so hard she was hanging out the front of her robe. “I—sorry—”

He bowed slightly, graciously maintaining eye contact while she tucked herself in. “Rio Benito DeSilva, Chief of Security, at your service, Miss—”

You can service me any time, honey.

“—Wright,” he crooned. “I understand we’re about to leave a passenger behind, and that you’re concerned about your husband’s—

Not any more, he’s not.

“—weakness in this heat.”

“So it’s not just me?” Lola breathed. “It really is hot in here?”

Rio clenched his teeth to keep from chuckling. In an ivory silk wrap that left little to his imagination, with her wavy red hair drifting in disarray around her heart-shaped face, Lola Wright looked like she’d jumped out of one man’s bed in search of another. Never mind those crimson nipples.

He hoped his instincts were right, about Miss Wright being brassy on the outside but far too…naive to be involved in Mr. Fletcher’s situation. He couldn’t discuss it right now; didn’t want to upset her more than she already was, or speak before he had the facts. Rio felt the overwhelming urge to tuck this lovely woman into a hug and protect her from the cruel truth, but he mentally stepped away.

“While we must maintain our schedule,” he continued quietly, gazing into eyes as deep and green as a primeval forest, “we will do everything possible to contact Mr. Fletcher and instruct him on how to meet us at the next port of call. This probably seems terribly inconvenient—”

The ship lurched, pulling away from the pier. Lola gasped, shifting to keep her balance—or was it because DeSilva had grasped her shoulders to steady her? She couldn’t decide if his mustache belonged on Don Quixote or Zorro, but she wanted to keep him talking so that low, Spanish accent would caress her ear again. So she could watch his lips move.

“—but I assure you that the staff of the Aphrodite will do all in our power to put your vacation back on track,” he continued. He glanced at the crewmen securing the exits, and at the passengers in the hallway impatiently awaiting the glass elevators.

“This way, please,” he said, gesturing around the corner, toward double doors painted the same beige as the walls. “If you can describe Mr. Fletcher for me—if his cruise documents are in your stateroom—this will expedite finding him onshore. And it will prevent the local authorities from detaining him, if he’s fallen ill and doesn’t have his passport with him.”

Cruise documents? Passport? It would serve Dennis right if the cops hauled him in! But then, his soul mate wouldn’t have required a photo I.D., would she?

The doors slid open, and Lola stepped into a staff elevator, which was very plain, compared to those glitzy glass ones for the passengers. She hugged the back wall, feeling the cool stainless steel through her silk robe. When she shivered, her nipples seemed determined to show off, just when she needed to behave herself. She’d been in such a hurry to get back at Dennis, and now this robe she’d thrown on in the heat of the moment had probably made her the talk of the boys in white.

Her escort pushed the 7 button. He smiled like he was trying not to notice what she wasn’t wearing, even though the fit of his zipper hinted otherwise.

This ride might become extremely…intimate, if Mr. DeSilva took two steps toward her. His eyes were soft and sympathetic, like a golden retriever’s, and with his hair feathered back from his suntanned face, rakishly brushing the top of his collar, he looked like anything but a security agent.

But if he was escorting her to her room, to see Dennis’s cruise docs…Lord, were they even there? DeSilva had probably heard her sob story from the Filipino at the monitor, so the little lie she’d set into motion to get Fletch’s departure time would unravel pretty fast if she didn’t—

“Are you all right, Miss Wright?”

“Please—call me Lola,” she blurted, suddenly undone by this man’s debonair kindness. Cop or not, he seemed sincerely concerned about her predicament. “I—I’m just upset. Thank you for asking.”

“Understandably so. You’re quite welcome.”

You’re quite welcome. How long since she’d heard that phrase? These days people said “no problem!”—as though her thanking them was one.

When the elevator stopped on the Promenade level, she walked ahead of him nervously, SeaKey in hand. Lola felt like a little girl being herded to the office for lying to the teacher. Or for not wearing panties to school. The nuns would’ve fainted—or gotten out the paddle—at that sin!

“I’ll wait right here. Take your time,” DeSilva said as she slid the key card into the lock.

“Ah. So it was only my fantasy that you’d come into my room,” she quipped, and then her cheeks flared with embarrassment. “I’m so—that was inexcusably rude, to—”

Rio sucked in his breath. Here in the dimmed lights of the corridor, with her ivory face flushed and her robe clinging to curves that called out to his hands, it was a fantasy he certainly shared. He looked through her open door to rein in his runaway thoughts, and then grabbed her by the shoulders.

“Wait! Someone’s been in here, rifling through your room! You’d better stay right here while I check for an intruder.”

Pulse pounding—from the thought of intruders, and from the heat of his skin through her robe—Lola grabbed the door jamb as Rio stepped into her stateroom.

“Anybody here?” he demanded, throwing open the bathroom door. He was bristling with business now—not a burly man, but not one she’d want to get crossways with, either. Rio DeSilva’s angles looked sharp enough to slice like a saber.

As she peeked in after him, Lola let out a long sigh. With Fletch’s undershirts and socks strewn everywhere, the place did look ransacked. And when DeSilva leaned down to pick up a crumpled piece of paper, she knew she had to come clean.

Lola stepped inside. Leaned against the door to close it. “I have a confession,” she breathed.

Rio’s heart skipped a couple of beats. He felt like anything but a priest. Lola’s robe had fallen open again, enough to tease him with her pale pink cleavage…round and firm and sweet. His tongue flicked the roof of his mouth, wondering how those painted points would feel—and taste.

He cleared his throat. This was an adult cruise, yes—the fantasy Captain Skandalis alluded to in his welcome spiel—but he was strictly forbidden to be in a passenger’s room while she was in it, too.

“Yes? I’m listening,” he replied. He was uncrumpling the paper he’d picked up out of sheer habit—searching for clues, about a possible intruder or Dennis Fletcher’s situation, he would say if the captain quizzed him about this breach of behavior.

“That story about Dennis going ashore to—and maybe being too sick to come back?”

Lola hated it that her eyes were tearing up over the way Fletch had jerked her strings, but dammit she’d loved the guy! Or thought she did.

“Well, I made it up. He—he left me that note you’re holding, saying he—he’s found a woman with a seaside villa—and—well, I got pissed off and threw his clothes out of the drawers!”

Rio stopped fidgeting with the note. “So you went down to the gangplank area, to see if you could chase after him?” Dressed like that? he almost added.

Lola sighed, yanking the lapels of her robe together. “I was so—so irked that he’d taken off with somebody, when we were supposed to get…married tomorrow….”

“I’m so sorry.”

It was the merest whisper, yet it carried the weight of his concern: the key that opened the innermost room of her heart. A room Dennis had never known, or cared, how to reach. Lola slumped, letting her hair fall like a curtain so DeSilva wouldn’t see how ugly her face got when she bawled.

“Please excuse me, I—”

“There is no excuse for the shabby way he’s treated you,” Rio stated, more fervently than he had a right to. Lola couldn’t know yet just how true that was. Every nerve ending in his body warned him to step away, to get himself out of her room and out from under her spell while there was still time.

Her shoulders shuddered pathetically when she tried not to cry. To keep from pulling her into his arms, Rio skimmed the note.

—found my true soul mate—someone who won’t—boss me around—have the last word—get better acquainted at her seaside villa—

The lying bastard deserved to rot in jail for this! DeSilva looked up from the note before Lola could catch him reading it, and took inspiration from the small safe in the open closet.

“Is his passport—any sort of identification—still here?” he asked in his most official-sounding voice. “It will help the authorities process him. Or help you, if you need to—what’s wrong, Lola?”

She opened the safe, surprised it hadn’t been locked, and then frantically yanked the drawers open below it.

“My cell phone’s gone! I put it in this top drawer when I came back to take my—and my purse!”

My Camels! The bastard took my only pack of—

She scanned the room, her gaze raking the top of the TV, the corner desk and its open shelves, the glass-top coffee table, and the upholstered love seat. “I brought it back from shopping onshore, after lunch, and I put it—if that bastard took—he’s got my credit cards! My checkbook’s in there—and so is my passport!”

Fletch knew damn well I’d get crazy if he took my security smokes!

Rio’s jaw clenched as he watched her desperately search every inch of the stateroom, her expression growing more alarmed by the second. As well it should! Here on board her SeaKey was all she needed, but stepping ashore in any Caribbean port without identification was risky. Not to mention the predicament it would put her in when she went through Customs on her way home.

“Why on earth did he have to take my—it’s not like he’s hurting for money, but God! My cell had all my clients’ numbers, and my appointments, and—”

Lola stopped rummaging around the bed’s comforter and pillows, engulfed in a deep chill. Ah, jeez, now she was shaking like a junkie, just at the thought that he stole her—

“What is it? What else has he taken?” Rio stepped toward her, determined not to touch her because just recalling her soft skin and the fresh scent of that bare body had him reeling.

“Cigarettes,” she finally mewed. Then she screwed up her face, which was already blotchy from crying. “I—I quit, dammit! For good this time! But I carried around one single pack of Camels, still wrapped. With strapping tape around it to remind me not to open them, no matter how jittery and desperate and bitchy I got!”

Lola cast another miserable, futile glance around the ransacked room. “I had them in my purse this morning, when we were shopping onshore!” she rasped. “He must’ve—”

Her insides twisted into a tight knot. She held herself, knowing it made her look like a nympho going into withdrawal, but things were suddenly a whole lot worse than Dennis’s note had led her to believe. What he’d said about his new soul mate was humiliating enough, but what he hadn’t said was that he’d ripped her off, big time, when he jilted her!

“After we got back on board, he went to the casino while I took a shower,” she breathed, shaking her head forlornly. “He had to’ve come to the room…figuring I wouldn’t hear him with the water running. And it matches up with the time that security guy at the gangplank gave me.”

Rio sighed heavily. Gave in to the urge to touch her, just letting his hands rest on her shoulders to reassure her.

She was shaking like a scared rabbit. Frightened out of her mind, on top of being upset because the man she was to marry had backed out on her so crassly. Betrayed her in ways they had yet to discover, if he had access to her clients and her plastic.

“We’d better report this immediately,” he suggested.

Lola nodded, wanting to cry and vomit and curl up in a ball. Hoping someone would tell her this mess had been straightened out—that Fletch had played one of his colossal jokes on her, and was on his way upstairs now to smooth things over.

But that wasn’t going to happen, was it? Fletch had never truly been hers, and she was paying now for refusing to see that.

“You’re right,” she sighed. “Let’s go.”