by Julia London
“I know this will come as a big shock to you, since you obviously do this sort of thing all the time, but I don’t want any wine,” Leah said. “You don’t have the best track record when it comes to serving drinks.”
“But you must. It would not do to let your host drink alone, si?”
“You’re not exactly my host, pal. That would imply that I came here of my own free will instead of being drugged and dragged here.”
“You drugged her?”
Michael’s voice startled Juan Carlo. He whirled around and laughed tightly as Michael slowly lifted himself up.
“Sleeping beauty has joined us,” he said, and made a grand sweeping bow. “Welcome to the last place on this earth you will ever see.”
“If you wanted me, why not just come after me?” Michael asked. “Why involve her?”
“It is true; I could very easily have killed you on the streets of Los Angeles. But you know the answer, my friend. You know you have something I want.”
“Is this about Maribel?” Michael asked genially. “Because she was with everyone, not just me. Ricardo, Modesto, Pa—”
Juan Carlo roared, surged forward, and kicked Michael in the back. “Do not be coy, señor. You forget that I know you well. Just give it to me, and perhaps I will let your whore go.”
“Hey!” Leah shouted.
“I don’t know what you want, Juan Carlo,” Michael said. “It’s a mystery to me what you’re talking about.”
Juan Carlo frowned darkly. “Now you are estúpido. I want the key.”
“A key? I don’t have any key,” Michael said, smiling. “And even if I did, do you think I would carry it on me to remind me of old times?”
“What key?” Leah asked, but both men ignored her.
“You are barking up the wrong tree.”
Juan Carlo sighed, put his hands to his waist, and walked to the window. “Tell me where I will find it, and you will live another hour.” He turned around, looked at Michael. “Play this silly game with me, and you will not live to even drink your wine.”
Michael laughed as if that amused him. “I’m saying I don’t know where it is. Maybe you should ask Maribel?”
At the mention of that name, Juan Carlo’s face darkened and his smile faded into a sneer. He strolled back to where Leah sat—she froze, dropped her fingers from the working of the knot. Juan Carlo removed his gun from the back of his pants and casually held it up to Leah’s head.
“Oh shit,” she whimpered, and closed her eyes. This was it. This was the end. She was never going to be a real actress, she was going to die in some mouse-infested stupid cabin because he didn’t know anything about guns, and it was all Michael’s fault.
“Juan Carlo, come on,” Michael said, reading her fear. “You hate guns. Ironic for an arms dealer, I know, but true.”
“Be careful, Michael Raney. You play with fire.”
“Put the gun down. I don’t have your damn key,” Michael said again. “The last person to have it was Maribel.”
Juan Carlo sighed and lowered his gun. Leah opened her eyes. Juan Carlo had moved to lean against the bureau, his legs crossed at the ankles, his arms folded across his chest, and the gun dangling from one hand. He was studying Michael closely.
Leah took the opportunity to ask, “Who is Maribel? Is that your wife?” Neither man so much as looked at her. “Listen, you two, you dragged me into this—the least you can do is tell me what the deal is with this key and who Maribel is and what is going on!”
Juan Carlo shifted his gaze to her and regarded her curiously. “Women,” he said, shaking his head. “At the door of death, and still, she would have the gossip.”
Okay, that was it. Leah started fidgeting with the knot at her back with a vengeance and looked at Michael, who actually scowled at her, as if she was bothering him with her questions. “Just relax, Leah. I’d rather not get into it right now.”
“Of course not!” Juan Carlo bellowed, and suddenly stomped out of the room, into the kitchen, the gun swinging wildly with his gait. “You cannot admit to her the sort of man you really are,” he shouted from the kitchen as Leah frantically worked at the knot. “You would have her think you are a decent man, but you are not.” He reappeared in the bedroom, holding the wine, a gun, and three wineglasses. “That is the beginning of your problem, si?” he said to Michael. “You cannot be entirely honest with those you love.”
The truth in that statement made Leah snort, and both men turned to look at her. “What?” she asked, and looked at Michael. “Well? It’s true. You’re not very good at telling the whole story.”
“You’re kidding me, right?” he asked incredulously. “We’re not going to sit here and have a discussion about our relationship now, are we?”
“I’m just saying,” Leah said.
Michael groaned, then inched his way into an almost sitting position and looked at Leah intently. “Putting aside, for a moment, that everything coming out of this asshole’s mouth is a load of shit, Leah—let’s keep it real here. Sometimes you don’t make it very easy for me to be completely and totally honest.”
“Me?”
“Ah, and the words coming from your mouth are pure, no?” Juan Carlo interjected with a snort of incredulity. “You are a liar and a thief.”
“Jesus, Juan Carlo, will you stop taking everything so personally?” Michael demanded. “Think about it—terrorists like you tend to have agents like me on your ass. That’s our world. It’s what we call business.”
“You fuck my wife and call it business?” Juan Carlo bellowed.
Leah stretched her fingers wide for a moment. “See? You slept with his wife!”
“He took my wife to his bed many times to get close to me,” Juan Carlo said with a wave of his hand. “She gave him all our money—” He suddenly whipped around and glared at Michael. “And she gave you a key. Where is the key, señor? Give me the key, and this one shall walk free, I give you my word.”
“A key to what? Her heart?” Leah asked acidly, her own heart perilously close to sinking.
But Juan Carlo and Michael surprised her by snorting simultaneously. “Maribel doesn’t actually have a heart,” Michael added.
Surprisingly, Juan Carlo nodded in agreement. “She is a hard woman, this is true.”
“So what key?” Leah shrieked with frustration.
“A key to a safe,” Juan Carlo clarified.
“What’s in the safe?”
“None of your concern!” Juan Carlo cried. “But the key belongs to me.”
Michael shrugged and lay down. “Ask your wife.”
“I have asked her and she told me you took it!” he roared, his face getting very red, the veins popping out. “You had no right to take it from me!”
“I had no right?” Michael shot back. “You were arming terrorists whose aim was to use those missiles to hit the United States. That gave me the right. Your own government gave me the goddam right!”
Juan Carlo clucked his tongue as if Michael was being petulant and smiled at Leah. “That is what he says. But who knows the truth? He is not honest even with you, and you do not sell arms.”
Michael groaned and closed his eyes. “We’re really going to do this, aren’t we? We are going to use this opportunity to psychoanalyze me. Good torture technique, Juan Carlo. I give—let’s just cut to the chase, okay?”
“I am a man who has had many relationships,” Juan Carlo calmly explained. “Perhaps I can help you.”
“Go ahead and put a bullet in me. I prefer that to any advice from you.”
“But it’s true,” Leah said, because it was true. “You’ve never been entirely honest with me. In New York you weren’t honest, and then in L.A. you haven’t been completely honest. He’s right—I haven’t sold any arms to terrorists, so why can’t you be honest with me?”
“He cannot,” Juan Carlo opined. “He is not able to be honest. It is what we call a defect in the . . .” He gestured toward his torso.
“
Character,” Leah suggested, her fingers aching from working the knot.
“Character,” Juan Carlo agreed.
“No, seriously. Just shoot me,” Michael said, and fell on his side, looking entirely frustrated.
Great, Leah thought. When the going got tough, Mikey folded like a house of cards.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
MICHAEL hadn’t folded, but he’d definitely had enough. He didn’t know if Leah was stringing Juan Carlo along, but he really was in no mood to examine their relationship with that asshole in the room, and when she said, “Excuse me, but I thought I deserved a little honesty in my final hour,” he lost it.
“Excuse me, Leah,” Michael said, struggling to sit up again, “but I was painfully honest when I saw you in L.A. I told you I’d made a huge mistake. I begged you to take me back. I laid it all out for you, bared my soul, and you couldn’t handle it. You couldn’t handle the fact that I had a past.”
“Which past are we talking about, Michael? The past that earned you the name of the Extreme Bachelor? Or the past you failed to mention that involved guys like Adolfo, Juan Carlo, whatever his name is!”
“It is Juan Carlo,” Juan Carlo, informed her. “Regrettably, also I am not a completely honest man.”
Leah glared at him, and then glared at Michael, who all but had his tie undone. It was a shame, really. Juan Carlo was the son of a fisherman and should have been able to tie a better knot than this.
“You told me you weren’t seeing anyone when you were,” Leah was saying, ticking off all his sins. “You told me you pushed papers around when you were in the CIA, when you were obviously sleeping with other men’s wives, and you made promises you couldn’t keep!”
Promises? Granted, he’d made his mistakes, but he hadn’t broken any promises. “What promises?” he insisted. “I keep my promises. I have kept every promise to you. You are the one who keeps dredging up the past, because you are suspicious and jealous and insecure. How can you not see all that I am trying to prove to you is real?”
“But that is your mistake, Michael Raney. You are trying to make her see this too hard,” Juan Carlo calmly offered.
That certainly gave Michael pause—he looked at Juan Carlo curiously. “What? How do you know?”
“Leah has told me everything,” he said cheerfully.
When they got out of here, he and Leah were definitely going to have a little chat. “Great,” he drawled, turning a murderous look to her. “Thanks, Leah.”
“Hey, I didn’t know he was your enemy. You failed to mention that important piece of info, remember?”
“Why can’t you just believe me?” he demanded. “Why can’t you just accept that I love you and no one else?”
“I have tried to believe you,” Leah protested, looking dangerously close to tears all of a sudden. “But every time I do believe you, another woman shows up out of the clear blue, or I see you flirting with several of them, or a guy like Juan Carlo wants to kill me because you slept with his wife, and then there is Nicole Redding, who acts like she practically owns you—”
“She is this way,” Juan Carlo said sagely.
“Wait . . . what?” Leah demanded.
Juan Carlo shrugged and held out his hand to study his cuticles. “I see it in the Star magazine. It has all of the informations about the movie stars. She is what you would call a slut.”
Michael actually laughed at that as he worked the ties at his back.
“It doesn’t matter,” Leah snapped. “What I am trying to say is that I want to trust you, but you won’t tell me everything, so how can I trust you?”
“Wait,” Juan Carlo said, holding up his hand. “This is what is the problem. I see it very clearly.” He paused for dramatic effect and to sip his wine. “Ah . . .” he said with a smile. “An excellent vintage.” He put the wineglass down and looked thoughtfully at Leah. “You,” he said, pointing at her, “are too suspicious. A man does not like this distrust and accusations whirling about him,” he said, making a whirling motion with his hand.
“When a man declares his love of a woman, he honors it. Does this mean he no longer looks at the other women? No,” he scoffed. “Does it mean he does not occasionally sample the other women? No! Of course not! Men are creatures of the body. They must sample many women to be healthy. But that does not mean he loves another woman. It means only that he puts his love for her above all the other women and will honor her until the day he dies, and this, she must accept,” he said, putting up his hand to stop any argument before it began.
“What he said,” Michael quickly cut in. “But minus the sampling. On my life, I would never sample,” he avowed. “That’s a promise, Leah.”
Leah rolled her eyes at him.
“Now you,” Juan Carlo said, pointing to Michael. “You must be completely honest. It is how they say . . .” He paused, then said in Spanish, “That the women are the weaker sex and must be cared for properly.”
“What?” Leah asked. “What did he say?”
Michael frowned. “That women are the weaker sex and can’t take care of themselves.”
Juan Carlo inclined his head. Leah gasped indignantly.
“This is exact,” Juan Carlo said, waving her off. “I will not give you half-truths.” He looked at Michael. “You must bare your soul to the woman you love. It is what they want, and you must give them what they want in order to have what you want.”
“Well . . . in spite of the fact that we are getting advice from an international terrorist—and one who wasn’t exactly faithful to his wife,” Leah added, frowning at Juan Carlo. “I have to agree.”
Oh, for the love of Christ. Juan Carlo was a fucking idiot, and she was agreeing with him.
This time, Michael managed to get completely upright and on his knees. “I am honest. I didn’t intentionally keep anything from you,” he argued to Leah. “Besides, we are focusing on the wrong thing here—you have no faith.”
“What?” she screeched, almost coming out of her chair. “I have no faith? Ohmigod, I can-not believe you just said that! I had faith in you five years ago, and you dumped me!”
“Here we go,” Michael said, his head lolling back, his hands free now, needing only the right moment. “Same song, same verse. You dumped me, and therefore I must make everything as difficult as I possibly can.”
“How can you say that?” Leah cried, incredulous and so furious that she was hopping forward in her chair until Juan Carlo stopped her with a hand to her shoulder.
“He says this because he is estúpido,” Juan Carlo said soothingly. “He is a man who—pardon for my language— thinks with his cock. Not his heart. A Spaniard thinks with his heart.”
“Thanks for your help, Juan Carlo, but I think I can handle this,” Michael said irritably.
“My friend, you do not understand the mind of a woman,” Juan Carlo pointed out as he strolled forward to look Michael in the eye. “A woman does not need the perfume and the expensive flowers. She needs to know how you feel,” he said, tapping his fingers against his heart.
Leah made a little sound of surprise at that, and both Juan Carlo and Michael looked at her. “He’s right,” she chirped, but her eyes were suddenly as big as saucers. Michael didn’t like the look of her wide eyes at all. She was up to something.
Juan Carlo smiled triumphantly and turned back to Michael. “You see?” he said proudly to Michael. “You must tell her how you feel with the small things. There is time for the big things later,” he added, just as Leah pulled her hand free and waved it at Michael, grinning broadly, clearly pleased with herself.
He didn’t so much as blink, but his whole body seized with fear. If she did something stupid, they would both be dead. Juan Carlo might not like guns, but he certainly wouldn’t hesitate to use one. He barely spared her a glance.
“You must have a care for the heart,” Juan Carlo said, continuing to advise. “You are too careless with the feelings of others, amigo. As with me,” he said, gesturing grandly t
o himself. “We were friends. Compadres. I was very hurt by the spying and the seduction of my wife.”
“Whatever,” Michael said.
Juan Carlo abruptly turned around to Leah, who, thank God, had stuck her hand behind her back. “And you,” he said sternly, “must open your heart and learn to accept his mistakes. Yes, this is very wise. Perhaps I should write it,” he mused, and pulled the gun from his waistband and laid the nozzle thoughtfully alongside his nose, rubbing absently, considering it.
Michael noticed the rope was starting to slacken around Leah and made a slight motion with his head. She looked down and blinked, but grabbed it behind her back and made it taut again.
“I think,” Juan Carlo said, his eyes getting all squinty as he thought hard about it, “that you have been hurt in this life, Leah. Your heart has been broken, and it is not so easy to mend.”
Leah forgot the rope a moment. “That’s true.”
Oh. God. Michael was now in danger of vomiting.
Juan Carlo went down on his haunches before her. “If you were not to die, I would urge you to trust more,” he said, and put his palm on her cheek. “You cannot know great joy until you have known great pain.”
“Oh, Ado—I mean, Juan Carlo. That’s really profound.”
“Si, it is very wise. But hear this,” he added. “You are too stubborn.”
“Excuse me? Why does everyone think I should just blindly accept what Michael says?”
“You should not,” Juan Carlo said. “But when he tells you things, it is not attractive to be stubborn. You look. . .” He glanced at Michael over his shoulder and said in Spanish, “like a bull.”
“Bullheaded,” Michael helpfully supplied.
“Oh!” Leah cried indignantly.
“Remember this.” Juan Carlo smiled, patted her cheek, and stood up, tapping the nozzle of the gun against his arm as he turned toward Michael. “But it does not matter now, does it? Come now, Michael Raney. Give me the key.”
Michael laughed. “The key won’t do you any good, Juan Carlo. The safe is empty. It’s all sitting in Swiss bank accounts with my name on it.”