Hell on Heels

by Carla Cassidy

  She removed her makeup and washed her face, still vaguely surprised by the brown hair that now covered her head. She undressed and pulled her nightgown over her head, grateful that she’d packed a plain cotton gown instead of one of her silky, flimsy ones.

  The one thing she had no intention of doing was getting all breathless and prissy about sharing the bed with Luke. They were both rational adults.

  The bed was a king-size, there was plenty of room for both of them and despite the fact that his kisses had been pretty awesome, she had no intention of sharing anything else more intimate with him.

  She knew Luke Coleman was a man accustomed to being in control, that in both his professional and his personal life he didn’t abdicate control for anything or anyone. From what little he’d told her about himself, it was also obvious he was a man who didn’t get close to people, gave nothing of himself.

  She left the bathroom to find Luke stretched out on the bed clad only in his slacks. He’d taken off his shirt and the sight of his broad bare chest kicked her hormones into overdrive and her stomach clenched with what she now recognized as sexual tension.

  This would be much easier if he’d had a concave chest and love handles. It would also be easier if she had a man in her life, if it hadn’t been months since she’d had sex and if she’d decided to become a nun once Willowby was behind bars.

  She had a definite feeling that no matter how strongly she lusted for him, getting personally involved with Luke Coleman would only be a study in pain.

  If she was interested in that she’d get a Brazilian wax. It would probably be as painful, but a lot less complicated.

  Chapter 10

  She awakened only once during the night to find that she was no longer on her own side of the bed but rather on Luke’s. His arm was slung around her waist and his warm body was pressed against her back.

  Somewhere in the back of her sleep-fogged brain she knew she should pull away, crawl back to her own space, but it was obvious Luke was sound asleep.

  She was warm and comfortable and instead of moving she closed her eyes and went back to sleep.

  When she awakened the second time she was alone in the bed. In fact, she heard no sounds coming from the bathroom and suspected she was alone in the room.

  She rolled over on her back and stared up at the ceiling. Today was the day they got serious about finding Marcus. What if he wasn’t here in Tamillo? What if all of this was wasted effort on their part?

  She refused to entertain her doubts for more than a minute. She wondered where Luke had gone. Maybe he’d already begun the hunt. She wouldn’t put it past him to find Willowby, take him into custody then send her a note bragging about his success.

  A vision of Belinda filled her head. Not a picture of the woman she’d said goodbye to yesterday, but rather an image of Belinda on that night so long ago.

  Her face had been so deathly pale and her eyes…the emptiness in her dark eyes would haunt Chantal for the rest of her life.

  “We have to leave now,” Belinda had said, her voice a faint almost sing-song whisper. Her blank eyes had stared at Chantal.

  Chantal jerked herself up and out of the bed. She grabbed what she intended to wear that day then padded into the bathroom.

  A few minutes later she stood beneath the spray of a hot shower. She had to tell Luke he was right. She was taking this particular case very personally. She had to make him see how important it was, how much she wanted to be the one to clap the handcuffs on Marcus Willowby’s wrists.

  She needed to look Willowby in the eyes and let him know that Belinda sent her regards and hoped he endured his own brand of hell in prison. At the moment it was the most important thing in her life.

  A half hour later, showered and dressed, with make-up and hair done the way she liked them, she left the bathroom to see Luke sitting at the table with his laptop computer powered up in front of him.

  He looked up as she entered. “I was beginning to wonder if you intended to sleep the day away.”

  “I’m not much of a morning person,” she replied. Once again he looked casually elegant in a pair of blue slacks and a blue-and-silver short-sleeved shirt.

  “And you’re definitely a bed hog.” He grinned. “Every time I woke up in the night you were wrapped around me like duct tape.”

  She wanted to protest, but recognized he might be right. She shrugged. “You can’t hold it against me, I was unconscious.”

  “Are you conscious enough now to get some breakfast? I’m starving.” He shut down the computer and closed the lid.

  “Sounds good,” she agreed.

  Minutes later they entered the Hacienda Café just off the hotel lobby. Luke indicated he wanted a table near the back, then took the chair that faced the entrance. “This way I can see who comes in,” he said as Chantal took the chair across from him.

  A waitress appeared immediately to take their orders, then poured them each a cup of coffee and left. “I figured we’d spend the day sightseeing,” Luke said.

  “There’s only one sight I want to see,” she replied. She took a drink of her coffee, then unfolded her napkin in her lap. “Luke, you told me yesterday you thought I was making this case too personal. You were right. It is very personal.”

  He took a sip of his coffee and said nothing, as if waiting for her to explain.

  “Ten years ago my best friend and I went to a party at Marcus’s parents’ house. We weren’t really friends with him, but a ton of kids were going and we thought it would be fun. We arrived at the party and it was a bit wilder than we had expected. A lot of drinking, a lot of drugs and kids in every room.”

  She paused a moment to take another sip of her coffee, a chill sweeping over her as it always did when she revisited that night. “We’d agreed we’d stick together, but I saw some girls I knew and before I knew it my friend and I had gotten separated. She found me about thirty or forty minutes later and I could tell by her expression that something bad had happened. She said we needed to leave and it wasn’t until we were in the car and driving away that she told me Willowby had pulled her into the bathroom and raped her.”

  Luke leaned back in his chair and frowned. “She didn’t report it?” he asked.

  “No. She was young and afraid and he’d said terrible things to her. I couldn’t talk her into going to the authorities. But Marcus Willowby destroyed her life. She’s never been the same.”

  Her hand clenched around her coffee cup. “Willowby took her virginity, now she’s promiscuous and incapable of forming any real commitment to a man.”

  “Has she had therapy?”

  Chantal sighed. “Not really. She sees a couple of psychiatrists who prescribe pills that she pops like candy. She drinks too much, she medicates herself into a stupor.”

  Luke leaned forward, his gaze softer than she’d ever seen it. “Sounds like she doesn’t need just a good friend, she needs a rehab center as well.”

  “She needs Marcus Willowby to be behind bars and I need to be the one to accomplish that.” She was interrupted by the arrival of the waitress with their orders.

  Once the waitress had departed, Chantal held Luke’s gaze intently. “I need you to promise me something, Luke. Promise me that you won’t steal this one from me. I don’t care about the fee. You can have it all, but I want to be the one to handcuff Willowby, I need to see the look in his eyes when he realizes he’s busted.”

  Luke’s frown deepened. “I can’t promise you that. You know there are no guarantees in this business. I can’t control the conditions. What I can tell you is that I have no intention of stealing this one from you. If it’s at all possible then you can be the one to get him into custody, but that’s the best I can do.”

  She nodded, not happy but satisfied. A promise was easy to make, lip service to keep her pacified. She respected the fact that he hadn’t taken the easy way out and made a promise he had no intention of keeping.

  “You know, this case reminds me of another one,” he
said as they began to eat.

  “Andrew Luster,” she replied. He looked at her in surprise. “One of the first news stories that broke the day that Marcus disappeared mentioned the Luster case and I remembered vaguely that there were some similarities and looked up the old case.”

  “Both men are wealthy, both used GHB to render their victims unconscious,” Luke said.

  “And both of them made videotapes. But Luster was charged with something like eighty-six counts of kidnapping and rape. Willowby was only charged with two counts of rape. Although I have a feeling there are a lot more victims out there who don’t even know what happened to them.”

  “But, if we’re right and he’s fled to Mexico, then he’s following Luster’s lead. Luster fled jurisdiction and wound up being captured in Puerto Vallarta.”

  Chantal smiled. “He was captured by a bounty hunter who got his own reality show. Just think, if we’re successful, when this is all over maybe you can be a television star.”

  He laughed and somewhere on another level she recognized that she liked the sound of his deep laughter. “I’m not interested in being a television star,” he said.

  “I just don’t understand why men would want to drug a woman into unconciousness to have sex with them,” she added.

  “I suppose it could be considered the ultimate sex without commitment.”

  She shot him a dirty look. “That’s awful.”

  “I didn’t say I understood it,” he protested. “I’ll tell you this, GHB has become a lot of college-aged kids’ wet dream. It can be mixed up in a dorm room and in most cases the victim doesn’t even know it’s been consumed.”

  “Sex without commitment, is that what you’re into?” she asked.

  His gaze slid down the front of her in a lazy, heated trail. “Why? You offering?”

  “In your dreams,” she replied, appalled to recognize that with just the power of his gaze he’d managed to make her sexually aware of him. “But it’s a new century, there’s nothing wrong with women enjoying sex without commitment the way men have done for years.”

  “Amen to that.” He drained his coffee cup and motioned the waitress for a refill.

  “I’ll bet we’re the only couple in here talking about drugs, rape and sex,” she said when the waitress had filled their cups once again and left.

  Luke looked around, amusement crinkling the corners of his eyes. There were several couples at tables in the café. “Oh, I don’t know. Maybe all of them are talking about the amazing sex they shared last night. I’m probably the only schmuck in here who didn’t get lucky last night.”

  He leaned forward, his eyes glittering. “You better hope I never get the opportunity to handcuff you to a bed because if that happens I’m not leaving the room to have a drink in the bar.”

  For just a brief moment her mind filled with a vision of herself handcuffed to the bed while a naked Luke slid his lips all over her body. She was way too young to suffer hot flashes, but at that moment she felt as if she was in a menopausal moment. She felt light-headed and far too warm and she grabbed her coffee cup hoping another jolt of caffeine would banish the image.

  “I think we need to finish breakfast and get to work,” she finally managed to say. “I didn’t come all the way to Mexico to indulge in foreplay with you.”

  “You’re absolutely right. I think we should skip the foreplay altogether.”

  Chantal sat up straighter in her chair. “What are you doing, Luke?”

  He looked at her innocently. “I’m sitting here having breakfast.”

  “You know what I’m talking about,” she replied.

  He opened his mouth as if to give another flip answer, then closed it and hesitated before finally replying. “I think what I’m doing is attempting to seduce you. Since you had to ask, I must not be doing a very good job of it.”

  Oh, you’re doing just fine, she thought. Although his seduction might not be as smooth, as subtle as other men, it was all the more effective because it was up front and in her face. She was almost relieved that it was now on the table between them instead of simmering under the surface. “Why?”

  “Why?” One of his eyebrows raised slightly. He leaned back in his chair and frowned thoughtfully. “Because from the moment you walked into Big Joey’s with that short red skirt and those spike high heels, I wanted you. I can’t explain it. Hell, I’m not even sure I like it. But, it’s there.”

  Chantal folded and refolded her napkin in her lap, for a moment lost for words. It amazed her that he remembered what she’d worn the first time she’d gone into Big Joey’s. But, what amazed her even more was that she remembered what he’d been wearing the first time she’d seen him.

  He’d had on a pair of worn jeans that had hugged his hips and legs as if they’d been sewn specifically for him. He’d also worn a black turtleneck that had molded to his muscled shoulders and broad chest.

  “I just think it would be better if we kept things strictly business between us,” she said. Even though she was flattered and very, very tempted, she still didn’t trust him.

  More than that, she realized she didn’t trust herself where he was concerned. It was one thing to talk about sex without commitment and certainly there had been a few times in her life when she’d enjoyed having sex with a man without any kind of emotional tie. But for some reason Luke scared her just a little. She had a feeling he would be harder to forget than the other men who had drifted in and out of her life.

  “All right,” he agreed, then smiled. “But, that doesn’t mean I’m not going to try to change your mind.”

  “I hope you like a challenge.”

  His grin widened. “Honey, there’s nothing I love better.”

  She balled up her napkin and placed it on the table. “I think we need to focus on the real challenge here, and that’s finding Willowby.”

  “Then let’s get to it.”

  Minutes later they hit the streets of Tamillo. Even though Chantal tried to put their conversation in the back of her mind, as they wandered through an open-air marketplace, she couldn’t stop wondering about what sex would be like with Luke.

  Damn the man anyway. She didn’t need the distraction. All she wanted to do was get Willowby, save Belinda and get back home to her life.

  The open-air marketplace was huge and clogged with tourists and natives. Exotic scents rode the breeze. Vendors called to them to buy a silk scarf, admire the beauty of a beaded serape or pick a plump chicken, but neither of them paid any attention. They weren’t shopping for anything other than a certain man and they kept their gazes on the crowd.

  Bright-eyed children begged for coins from passersby, often chased away by screaming vendors. The entire scene was one of controlled chaos.

  They wandered the area for about an hour and a half and finally stopped at a booth to buy a bottle of water and sit on a nearby bench.

  “It looks like everyone in town is here except for who we’re looking for.” She unscrewed the top of her water bottle.

  “Nobody said it was going to be easy,” Luke replied, still observing the people passing by.

  She took a long swallow of the lukewarm water, then lowered the bottle from her lips. “You know, this all might be a wild-goose chase. For all we know, Willowby could be in China or Switzerland or any other place on earth.”

  He directed his gaze to her. “It was a good lead that brought you here?”

  She nodded. “One of his closest friends told me that Willowby came to Tamillo four or five times a year for a week or two each time, that he considered it his own little haven away from everyone.”

  “That’s a good lead,” Luke said. “Most fugitives flee to somewhere familiar.”

  “What lead did you get that brought you here?” she asked curiously. He had to have developed some leads on where Willowby might be hiding.

  “The only lead I had was the sight of your plane ticket on your kitchen counter,” he confessed with a grin. “I’d never even heard of Tamillo
before that night.”

  She laughed and shook her head. “You are some piece of work, Luke Coleman. If it wasn’t for me you would have no idea where to start hunting for Willowby.”

  He took a deep drink of his water and she watched his throat work as he swallowed. Wow, even his throat looked sexy to her. “Why are you doing this, Chantal?” he asked when he’d finished with the water.

  “What? Hunting Willowby? I told you why, because of my friend.”

  He shook his head. “No, I’m talking about bounty hunting in general. Why are you in this business?”

  “I’d bought all the baubles I wanted, dated all the men who were acceptable and was just bored out of my silly little socialite head.”

  “Knock it off,” he said roughly.

  “Well, isn’t that what you thought about me?”

  He took another swallow from the water bottle, then gazed out among the crowd. “Yeah, initially that’s what I thought. I thought you were a bubble-headed heiress slumming for some excitement.”

  She’d always believed that’s what he’d thought of her and it was why she’d disliked him so much. She’d sensed his lack of respect, a vague contempt that had simmered just beneath the surface whenever he spoke to her, whenever he looked at her. That was one of the reasons why it had been important to her that none of the bounty hunters knew her real identity.

  “And now?” she asked, unsure why she cared so much what he thought of her.

  He studied her for a long moment and she felt his intense gaze someplace deep inside her. “Now I know you’re intelligent, mentally stronger than I’d imagined and, I suspect, hard-headed to a fault. And I still don’t know why you’re bounty hunting.”

  She stared toward the booth across from them where the vendor was selling shell jewelry. “To be perfectly honest, I’m not sure why I’m doing this. I kind of fell into it accidentally, but at least for right now it feels right. In fact, it’s the first thing that’s felt right for a very long time.”

  She turned and looked at him. “Why do you bounty hunt? With a degree in criminology you could be doing all kinds of things.”