Hunt Her Down

by Roxanne St Claire

  Dropping down, she wrapped her arms around her legs. “Isn’t this pretty?”

  He scanned the entire deserted area. “Pretty out in the open.”

  She reached up and tugged his hand to pull him next to her. “This is much safer than, say, my living-room sofa, where we both know the conversation would end in five minutes.”

  The conversation might end in five minutes anyway. Talking wouldn’t do a damn thing to address the low, burning need he’d been feeling since he’d seen her again.

  “Is Lena short for something?”

  “Magdalena.”

  “Beautiful name,” he said, leaning back on both hands, studying her. “For a beautiful girl.”

  She smiled thanks. “It’s my grandmother’s name.”

  He knew all about her ‘Baba,’ who’d raised her after her mother disappeared with a nameless boyfriend. He knew that when her grandmother died, sixteen-year-old Maggie had run away to Florida to look for her mother but found only Ramon Jimenez in a turnpike restaurant. That’s where their personal histories intertwined for almost a year. Along with their bodies, after a few months of secret flirting.

  “Where’s your grandmother?” he said, treading carefully over ground he’d covered years ago.

  “In that great big fortune teller’s tent in the sky.”

  He’d even heard her use that line before. “Sorry to hear that.”

  “It’s okay, now. I get messages from her all the time.”

  He remembered that, too. “What does she say?”

  She shrugged. “She warns me. She coaxes me. She uses the universe to send me advice and guidance.”

  “And how does she do that?”

  “Can the patronizing voice, will you? I know you don’t believe me, but you wanted to get to know me, and this is me. I notice words and numbers and phrases and song lyrics and… signs. Baba used to say ‘Follow the signs the universe sends you, Maggie.’ “

  He glommed onto the name, the first time she’d used it. “She called you Maggie?”

  “Everyone called me Maggie when I was young. I think of myself as Maggie.”

  “I like it.” So much better than Lena. Maggie was the spirited, wild girl who made him nuts with her mouth and her fingers and her bracelets. “I’m going to call you Maggie.” That way, when he screwed up and used the wrong name, she’d never notice.

  “Call me anything you want,” she said with a nudge. “Just call me. Ha-ha.”

  “Why’d you change it?”

  “Smitty called me Lena, and it stuck.”

  “How long were you married?”

  “Aw, Dan.” She leaned closer. “You really want to talk about my husband?”

  He turned his head, which put them face-to-face. “Do you?”

  “I don’t …” She inched to him. “Really . . .” A little closer. “Want to talk at all.”

  He could feel her breath on his mouth, see her eyes shutter close. “One more centimeter, Maggie, and it’s gonna be all over.”

  “No, it’s gonna start.”

  Closing the space, he let his lips brush hers, and just that little contact tightened his groin and made his hands itch to touch her.

  If she had any earthly idea who he was . . .

  She pressed her lips to his and branded him with silky smooth gloss and the tip of her tongue.

  Soft. Sweet. Wet. Warm.

  He relaxed into the heat of her lips. Her cool, dry palm on his cheek, guiding his mouth into the right place. After about thirty seconds, he took them both to the grass without breaking the kiss, pulling a soft moan of consent from her throat. Partially on top of her, he slid his thigh over hers, turned her into his body, and deepened the kiss.

  This was all he wanted—one more time with Maggie.

  He was transported back to the smell of sticky Miami nights and sweaty clandestine trysts. The burning, insistent desire to be inside her. Anywhere. Anytime.

  Her legs wrapped around him, her crotch molded to his hard-on.

  “Another life, huh?” Her words against his lips pulled him back to reality. Had she figured it out? Remembered him from just one kiss?

  “I really don’t believe in all that,” he said, sliding a hand over the curve of her hip and headed for the sweet rise of her backside.

  “But you feel familiar,” she said, rolling against him again. “And trust me, I don’t do this that often.”

  “Then why me?”

  “I don’t know.” She inched back, considering him. “Something about you made me feel . . . adventurous.”

  “Everything about you makes me feel . . .” He opened his hand over her backside, pulling her into him a little. “Good.”

  She smiled as she kissed him, sucking in his tongue and flattening her hands on his chest, then sliding them up to his shoulders. In one easy move she wrapped a leg around his, so that his erection had nowhere to go but between her legs.

  She was right. All so familiar.

  He squeezed her buttocks and pushed her hips against his, the sound of their breathing, their gentle groans, and his thundering pulse drowning out the distant surf and surrounding hum of a million insects living in every tree. Like old times.

  She arched into him and let him put her completely on her back, rolling on top of her to mimic sex with all their clothes on.

  Exactly like the first time he’d seduced her.

  In the shed. Late at night. A long, hot, dry hump that left him painfully hard and gave her what she called the best orgasm she’d ever had with her jeans on.

  They were headed right back there. Fast.

  “Touch me,” she whispered, pressing her breasts against his chest. “Here. Please.”

  “Maggie . . . are you sure?”

  “I’m sure,” she said, rolling against his cock, “that when you call me that name, in that voice, with that . . . pressure . . . right there . . . that I’m going to . . .” She breathed into his ear. Then licked it. “Come.”

  Exactly like the first time.

  He knew precisely how to make this woman lose it. Her nipples were little grenade pins. One touch. One tweak. One bite. That’s all it took.

  He eased under the tank top, sliding up her warm, tight belly, loving how her muscles clenched in anticipation. He closed a hand over her sweet, small breast, letting out a slow exhale of pleasure. He palmed her nipple and pulled it to a peak. “Beautiful, sexy Maggie.”

  He breathed her name, grateful she’d given him the reason to use it as he kissed his way down her throat, over her top and lifted the material up to her chin.

  “Yes,” she whispered. “Please, kiss me there. Kiss me.”

  He closed his mouth over the dark brown bud and instantly she reacted, rocking and rolling against his erection, mixing ecstasy and madness down there, making him so hard his balls felt like they could explode.

  Sucking one breast and kneading the other, he rode her again and again, sliding his cock up and down her crotch, his zipper scraping her denim, knowing it was hollow intimacy but not caring because she wanted this release.

  Her skin was moist and smooth, her hips were slow and hungry, her fingers dug into his hair as she guided him between her breasts to kiss and lick and curl his tongue over the peaks. She whispered his name, moaned with gratitude, whimpered with need.

  Under his mouth, her heart hammered. In his ear, her breath whooshed. She writhed and squeezed and bit down on his shoulder. And then she rocked with a vicious little fury that bruised his blood-stiffened cock, giving in to her climax.

  “Oh my God.” She fought for steady breaths, but didn’t quite find them. “I have to tell you, I can’t remember the last time I did something like this.”

  He could.

  She pushed him off her a little, scrutinizing his expression, reading it wrong. “Oh, I’m sorry. I guess that was awfully one-sided.”

  “Nothing was awful,” he said, rolling on to the grass next to her. “Two-sided isn’t going to happen in the middle of a state p
ark.”

  She opened her mouth to protest, then closed it. “You want to go back to my house?”

  “I am going back to your house.” He ran his finger along her lower lip, plumper from the kissing. “But seven miles of bridge is going to give you plenty of time to change your mind and let me leave you at the door.”

  If she didn’t, he’d gratefully spend the night with her. But he’d disappear before she woke up.

  Because too many more instant replays of the past, and Maggie Varcek was going to realize that Michael Scott didn’t really die that night, and the “other life” she knew him from was in Miami fourteen years ago. No cover was that good.

  “Then I’ll have time to think about it,” she said.

  He cupped her face, kissed her again, then helped her up. “Let’s go then.”

  He’d done this before—slept with her under false pretenses, used her for pleasure and purpose. He wrecked her life once, and sex with Maggie again could not—

  The sudden screech of a car alarm screamed through the night. For a second they froze; then Dan reached down and snagged his gun, and automatically thrust Maggie behind him.

  “They’re all in Key West, huh?” He bolted forward, pulling her with him. “Stay behind me,” he called out over the deafening wail of the alarm.

  “My bag is in that car,” she reminded him breathlessly.

  The bag with her little .22. He ran faster, rounding the concession stand and keeping them both low as they reached the car. In the shadow, he could see a man at the passenger side, crouched over.

  He took a warning shot over the car and over his head.

  The thief pivoted away from the car and took off.

  “Is he alone?” Maggie whispered in Dan’s ear.

  He squinted into the dim moonlight, the waning quarter giving him enough of a shadowy glimpse to sense a familiarity in the clothes and the muscular build and crisp moves of a highly trained runner.

  That was no street thug breaking into a Porsche in an empty lot.

  That was the Greek fortune hunter.

  CHAPTER THREE

  “I NEVER TOLD him about Quinn.” Maggie slumped on her sofa, the move fluttering the credit card receipts Brandy had laid on the coffee table while she completed her Saturday morning accounting. “Does that make me a liar, on top of a slut?”

  “First of all, you didn’t sleep with him, you made out on a beach. Little wild, but not bona fide slutty. Second, you didn’t lie, you just didn’t tell him your entire life history.” Brandy tapped the calculator. “Honey, we kicked ass last week.”

  No one knew her entire life history, Maggie thought as she lifted a mug and powered down more coffee. Only Smitty, and he was gone. “Good thing we kicked ass, since I sent the rich guy packing before he got through the front door. I just didn’t want to tell him I have a son. It’s such a mood-killer.”

  “Mood-killer? Who are you kidding? You use that kid as a freaking shield.” She held up her hands in front of her face. “ ‘Back away from my body. I have a child. Do not try to get close. I have a child!’ “

  Maggie smiled and tucked her bare feet under her, smoothing the sleep pants she still wore and imagining what she’d have on, or not, if she hadn’t sent that man away last night. “Very funny, but I told you the real reason I changed my mind about sleeping with him.”

  “Uh-huh.” Brandy fought a smile. “That would be the ‘stop before you do something you seriously regret’ message from the great beyond, in the form of an attempted carjacking.”

  “It wasn’t a carjacking. But don’t you think it’s completely weird that Dan is certain the guy who did it was the same one who was in the bar chatting you up all night?”

  Brandy cleared the calculator. “As much as it pains me to admit it, the chatting was about you. Sorry, I don’t buy his theory. They were just two alpha dogs growling over you, and he just wants you to think he’s some superpowered bodyguard so you’ll have sex with him and not the other dog.”

  “Except we were already on our way to having sex when that happened, and he was dead certain it was the same guy.”

  “Right. Some customer followed you to Bahía Honda to steal the Porsche? Then what was he doing while you were doing the horizontal hoo-ha up on the hill?”

  Maggie sipped her coffee. “And, if he wanted to steal the Porsche, why would he have been on the passenger’s side?”

  “To steal your purse. Or maybe he was going to hide in the back and attack when you got in,” Brandy suggested as she tapped the receipts into a neat pile. “Now, would you like to know exactly how much money we made last week? Another year of weeks like this and you can pay off the second mortgage. Then one more year and we can start the renovation.”

  Maggie dropped back on the sofa with a groan. Years of debt, followed by years of renovations, followed by years of more debt before they ever saw a real profit. That wasn’t going to get the money in her bank account soon enough to pay for Quinn’s college. And speaking of Quinn… Regret took another stab at her chest.

  “What kind of mother am I, hiding my son? Now how do I tell him? ‘Oh, by the way, when we were “talking” last night and I shut you up with the total maneater kiss? I didn’t want to come clean about my son.’ “

  Her gaze moved to Quinn’s seventh-grade school picture on the table, filling her with love. “I live for the kid, and I would die for him. It’s just that . . . I don’t know. Last night, I wanted to be . . .”

  “Screwed?”

  She pulled her legs up and hugged. “Loved.”

  “From a bar hook-up?”

  “I know. It’s just that there was something about that man. He even said it. It was like I knew him in another life.”

  “Oh, please. He was smokin’ hot and smooth as silk. Another life? What a line.”

  “Hey, it worked. But I just don’t think a man like that would be remotely interested in a woman who has a teenager.”

  “I’ll go file these.” Brandy stood up and cracked her back with a groan. “Look, what’s to be interested? He lives in New York, not Miami. Use him for what he’s offering, get your rocks off a few times, and kiss him good-bye. You’ve got one more night of maternal freedom. Who cares if he knows you have a son or not?”

  “He might not come back tonight.”

  Brandy snorted as she headed to the office. “Oh, he’ll be back.”

  Alone, Maggie picked up the other picture on the end table, taken their last Christmas as a whole family. Smitty with his insanely wide smile and shiny bald head, one arm around Maggie, the other around a skinny nine-year-old, glowing like he’d found buried treasure and was keeping it all for himself.

  Except if Smitty had found treasure, he’d have bought a bigger boat and spent the rest on live bait, and told Maggie it was securely in the bank.

  “Uh, Lena. You been cleaning?”

  “No.”

  “Then you better come in here.”

  Maggie pushed off the couch and headed toward the third bedroom she used as an office, where Brandy stood with one hand out to a completely empty file drawer. “Any chance Quinn had the sudden burning need to go through the last twenty years of bar tabs? Because this puppy’s been wiped out.”

  For a moment, she just stared, unable to comprehend. Then she slowly turned and took in the rest of the office. Nothing looked touched. She pulled open another file drawer. Empty. And the top desk drawer. Still full of junk, but the red folder where she kept unpaid bills was gone.

  “Someone’s been in here—oh God. The strongbox!” Maggie dropped to her knees to her hiding place under the desk where she kept their most important papers. The deed to the bar, passports. Quinn’s birth certificate.

  “Brandy, call Deputy Nusbaum. Someone robbed us.”

  “What about your jewelry? Anything else?”

  Maggie darted down the hall to her room. She yanked open the top drawer of her dresser and let out a groan. The pink cloth–covered jewelry box was moved to the lef
t. She flipped the top, and the tiny diamond ring that had been Smitty’s mother’s was still there. Along with Baba’s tarot cards. Next to the box, the tarnished silver container that said Baby’s First lay open; a single yellowed tooth lay in a lock of flaxen hair.

  She put her hand on her stomach, the violation so intense she almost gagged. Someone had broken into her house and touched her personal treasures.

  “Nusbaum’s on his way,” Brandy said from the doorway, snapping her phone closed. “Goddamn teenagers looking for drug money.”

  “They were neat, then. I never even noticed when I came home. I just went to bed.” Maggie closed her eyes, the realization hitting hard. “I’m so glad Quinn wasn’t home last night.”

  Lola James strode across the expanse of her office, her three-inch heels snapping to the rhythm that propelled her forward. The familiar beat of the way she lived her life: fast, steady, ferocious.

  She picked up the ringing PDA, not bothering to look at the ID. She knew who it was. Instead, she glanced at her reflection in the corner window, which was far nicer than the view of downtown Miami. She smoothed the hip-hugging skirt and lifted her chin to admire the strong lines of her jaw. Then her eyes focused on the view outside the offices of Omnibus Transport, LLC. It beat the last place she had, in South Miami, and the hellhole before that in Hialeah.

  But she could do so much better.

  That’s what she’d done with her private real estate, and what she’d do with her company. Always, always moving up. Getting better. Getting more and more attractive. She’d done it to her body, her face, her home, and her business was next.

  “Just come up the elevator and knock,” she said as she answered the phone on the fourth ring. No need to seem anxious. “I left the main door open, and there’s no one else here on a Saturday.”

  No one but her, and she’d work eight days a week if she could. Not that she didn’t enjoy her weekend nights. She’d certainly enjoyed last night. She brushed her palms over her breasts, remembering how they’d been admired and attended to. Yes, she’d enjoyed that man a lot.