Renegade with a Badge

by Claire King

  He knew who she was. Olivia felt the impact of her name on his smirking lips shiver all the way down to the backs of her thighs, raising the fine hairs there.

  “How do you know me?” she whispered.

  Rafe shrugged. “It’s a small village. You’re a beautiful woman. And a smart one,” he reminded her pointedly.

  Obviously not, Olivia thought wildly. Smart women did not converse with bandidos in dark upstairs hallways while their almost-fiancés waited downstairs with fifteen armed men. Smart women screamed in situations like these, or at least fainted so they wouldn’t be held responsible afterward. Olivia considered both options.

  Rafe watched her carefully, saw her eyes dart toward the stairs, measuring for the first time the distance between herself and safety. About time, he thought. Stupid woman, to be standing here talking to him.

  “Too late, señorita,” he whispered, stepping from the deep doorway and taking her arm.

  He moved so quickly that Olivia had no time to choose between screaming or fainting. One instant he was a shadowy figure several safe feet away, the next his hand was wrapped hard over her biceps and she was deftly turned and pressed back against his body. Her breath left her again.

  Rafe slid his free hand to her throat. Stomach for it or not, he had to keep this woman from exposing him, at least until he got out of the house. After that, let her scream until she turned purple. It would only serve to further pique Cervantes’s pride and temper, having had the bandit who had been stealing from him invade his very own hacienda.

  The operation was what mattered, and damn his weak knees. And whatever else was reacting to Olivia Galpas.

  “Stop struggling,” he hissed in her ear, “and listen.” He ran his thumb along the base of her throat and let it rest in the hollow there, for his own pleasure. He felt the woman shudder in his arms and wondered briefly what it would be like to make her shudder from something other than fear. He shifted again, hoping she didn’t feel his arousal at her backside. “You can scream, you can run, you can alert every man in the building, and I will not leave this house tonight alive. That’s true.”

  Olivia felt him shift behind her once more, prayed he’d moved far enough away that she wouldn’t have to feel his lower body against her again. She’d been shocked by his obvious excitement, terrified that he intended more harm to her than she’d assumed.

  But he was clearly trying to spare…one of them, anyway, from whatever that arousal implied.

  “But I won’t die alone,” he continued softly at her ear. “Do you really want to take the chance with the lives of your lover and his friends?”

  Olivia thought to correct him on that count; Ernesto was not her lover. But then, she thought as his hand reached up to clamp gently around her throat, she had more important things than semantics to worry about right now.

  “Do you?” he repeated harshly.

  “No,” Olivia whispered.

  “I thought not. I will leave when I’m finished, and no one will be hurt. Unless you make a mistake, señorita. The fate of these people are now in your hands. I urge you to make the right decision. Do you understand?”

  Olivia caught a whiff of something as he breathed on her. Peppermint? Had this desperado brushed his teeth before breaking into the local sheriff’s house and crashing her going-away party? What the hell kind of bandit was this?

  “When you’re finished?” she blurted with uncharacteristic indiscretion. “Finished with what? Are you robbing Ernesto? Are you the smuggler?”

  Nosy, reckless woman. Rafe shook her slightly. “Do you understand?” he repeated, sounding dangerously provoked.

  “Well, can you tell me how long you’ll be?”

  Rafe nearly burst out laughing. “Doctor.”

  Olivia nodded briskly. “Yes, yes, I understand.”

  “And Doctor?”

  “Yes.”

  “I will kill him first. I want you to remember that.”

  Olivia nodded again, swallowed hard. “Yes, I will,” she said in a strangled voice.

  Rafael let her go, almost reluctantly. His head was buzzing from the contact of her body against his, his blood was running hot through his lower body, his fingers itched to touch the smooth skin of her neck a second time.

  “One thing more,” he said through gritted teeth, suddenly as furious with himself as he was with her. For lingering, for getting caught, for finding Cervantes’s lover more arousing, more attractive, than any woman he’d met in years. For caring what happened to her.

  Olivia’s chest was heaving, her body beginning to shake in reaction. She’d been in grave danger there for the briefest moment, but she was unsure exactly what the threat had been.

  “What?” she breathed, her eyes locked on his.

  “Get out of here as soon as you can. Get back to the States on the next plane or bus or vegetable wagon.” He reached out, gave a gentle tug on the long braid that had come to rest on her shoulder, running his thumb along the broad length of it. “I don’t know how much you know,” he said, almost to himself, “and I don’t care. Just get out.”

  And while Olivia stood, trembling, wondering, the man disappeared without a sound down the dark hallway.

  Chapter 2

  Olivia endured. That was the most she could say about the remainder of Ernesto’s lavish party, his expansive hospitality, his determined and public attentions.

  It had been a terrible mistake coming back downstairs. She should have taken the advice of the smuggler and fled the house, Aldea Viejo, the country. Let Ernesto think his shrimp had actually killed her. Oh, God. She clamped a hand over her mouth to keep from bursting into hysterical laughter.

  She’d still been shaking when she’d stumbled down the stairs, even after spending another five minutes back in the powder room, splashing water on her face and muttering recriminations to herself in the mirror. But she knew what she had to do if she wanted to keep Ernesto and his friends from being splattered across the beautiful old plaster walls of the hacienda, so she pasted a smile on her face like a prudent little scientist would when faced with empirical data.

  The lanky man with the smirk on his mouth and the hunger in his eyes was very probably taking a bead on Ernesto right this minute, waiting for Olivia to come to her senses and fall into a crying, squalling heap on the floor. Something she very much felt like doing, as a matter of fact.

  It was midnight now, and Ernesto was calling for a toast. Thank heavens. After that was finished, she’d go straight back to the motel, wait sleepless until morning, when she would take a taxi—or a bus or a vegetable wagon—to La Paz, and then the first plane home.

  A flute of champagne was pressed into one hand, while Ernesto pulled her gently to his side by taking the other. Olivia went willingly. No point fighting the inevitable. She would smile at the sure-to-be elaborate toast—then get the hell out of Dodge. She’d had enough Mexican hospitality to last her a lifetime.

  Ernesto launched into his toast with full vigor. She listened with half attention and smiled politely at the beaming crowd. Where was the criminal, while these people quaffed expensive champagne? Slitting throats? Stealing silver? Pressing up against some other unsuspecting female with that steely body and that shocking arousal? She took a gulp of champagne and choked on it.

  “And if she will do me the very great—” Ernesto paused for effect here, and Olivia smiled gamely up at him, her face beet red from suppressed coughing, trying desperately hard not to spew Dom Pérignon onto his silk suit, “very great honor of becoming my wife, and the mistress of this house and the mother of this humble village, I will be the happiest man on God’s earth.”

  The crowd erupted. Olivia let go with a spasm of coughing that had Ernesto patting her on the back. When she was finished gagging on her hundred-dollar champagne, she looked blankly around at the people crushing in on her, then, stupefied, up at Ernesto.

  “What?” she whispered.

  Ernesto bent his head to kiss her. “Say yes, my dar
ling,” he said rather fervidly into her ear.

  “To what?” she asked, spilling champagne on her clothes as someone jostled her from behind. She barely noticed. She had no idea what he was talking about. Had he just proposed? To whom? To her? In front of hundreds of people? With a sexually excited smuggler loose in his house?

  Impossible.

  Ernesto’s smile went a little stiff. “You are shocked.” He laughed heartily, though it sounded forced to Olivia’s ears. “I am shocked myself. I have been a bachelor for almost fifty years.”

  “Ernesto, you can’t possibly—”

  He cut her off sharply. “But I had never met a woman who could share my house and my life before now, Olivia Magdalena Rosanna deRuiz Galpas.”

  Olivia almost groaned aloud. Not the whole name. He must be pretty damn serious if he was using her full name.

  “You are a prize,” Ernesto continued in his beautiful voice. “A woman of education and family. The great-granddaughter of Don Ricardo Galpas of Chiapas,” he said loudly, though Olivia was sure he’d already mentioned that at least three times during the toast. “You will be the perfect wife for Ernesto Cervantes.”

  At this show of bravado, the crowd erupted into cheers again. Olivia looked around, nearly bursting once more into hysterical laughter. The entire evening had been thoroughly surreal.

  “Ernesto, we have to talk.”

  He kissed her lavishly, his tongue breaching for the first time the seam of her lips. The man had just proposed marriage, Olivia thought, dazed, and he’d never even kissed her properly. She’d had a bandit pressed against her more intimately just an hour ago than this man had ever been. She’d never so much as tasted Ernesto Cervantes, who now fully intended to become her husband.

  Olivia touched Ernesto’s shoulder to break the kiss.

  He smiled down into her face, glowing with triumph. “I must attend to my guests, now, love.”

  “We need to talk, Ernesto,” Olivia insisted. She needed far more time than three weeks to decide on a husband for the rest of her life, no matter how perfect the man appeared to be. And there remained the small matter of how she was going to explain to him that she’d had a friendly little conversation in his upstairs hallway with a drug smuggler but had neglected to tell him.

  “We will.” He kissed the hand he’d been clutching. “We will.”

  But they didn’t. Olivia wandered around in a daze for half an hour more, caught up in a bizarre frenzy of congratulation and speculation, while Ernesto seemed to carefully avoid her.

  Fine, she thought. Their discussion of this bizarre public proposal would be better conducted when they were alone, anyway. Two hundred complete strangers and one smuggler whom she practically knew in the biblical sense were not conducive to a quiet chat about the future.

  She looked at her watch. Almost one. Surely the smuggler or thief or whatever he was would be gone by now. Surely. Unless he’d been caught and was even now being beaten to a pulp by an enthusiastic deputy. Olivia shuddered slightly. The man had terrified her, but she didn’t want anyone beaten. Jailed would be fine. Where he could face punishment for his crimes and still get three meals a day to fill out those hollows under his cheekbones.

  She slipped back upstairs while the mariachis played and the wine and tequila flowed. No one, she knew, would miss her. Ernesto was very busy being the host, the bridegroom-to-be, and the rest of the guests were having far too good a time to notice that the bride-to-be had absconded. She’d wait upstairs until the melee died down, and then have that little talk with Ernesto. Might as well, she thought. There was no way she’d sleep a wink tonight. No boring party she’d been to in the past two years had offered both an intimate moment with a criminal and a marriage proposal.

  Just as she reached the second floor, she heard a heavy tread on the stairs behind her. She froze for a moment, panicked, expectant. Then it occurred to her that the bandit she’d met had not moved with such plodding thumps of feet and weight. Olivia doubted he made any sound at all, unless he wanted to.

  A guest, then. Eeh. She looked around for a hiding place. She did not want to be caught in this dim hallway with one of Ernesto’s rowdy revelers. There was far too much clear thinking to be done to waltz through the niceties with a stranger. She opened the closest door and slipped inside.

  The room was dark. Even the moon was shut out by gloomy, thick draperies. Olivia leaned against the door for a moment to catch her breath, then peeked carefully out into the hallway again. Wonderful. There was not one man, but three, all waiting for the bathroom. She closed the door again quietly.

  “That was a very touching proposal.”

  Olivia spun around. She could see nothing, not even shadows, but she knew the voice. Would recognize it until the day she died, she realized.

  “Ay, Dios,” she whispered.

  Rafe did not turn on any lights. He knew he couldn’t be seen from outside—he’d closed the drapes himself—but he’d neglected to eye the distance between the bottom of the door and the threshold and didn’t want to take any chances. He was sure he couldn’t stand to look into her eyes, anyway.

  “Have you come up to his bedroom, then, as a small treat before the wedding?”

  “You said you were leaving!” she whispered furiously.

  “I said, when I was finished.”

  “My God, how long does it take?”

  “How long does what take?” Rafe asked, almost as amused with her as he was infuriated. Engaged, was she? To that murdering scum?

  “I don’t know! Whatever you were doing. Stealing. Smuggling.”

  “Smuggling?” Now she’d surprised him. What the hell did this woman know?

  Olivia could have kicked herself. “Or killing people, whatever you do. Where are you?” she whispered hoarsely. “I can’t see you.”

  “It’s better, I think, if you meet him in the dark, princesa.”

  He heard her small gasp, relished it. It made him mad, knowing she had come up here to meet Cervantes, after that nauseating public proposal. Unreasonable that Rafe should suffer over something that did not concern him in the least. But he did. And he wanted her to suffer a little, as well.

  Olivia felt the whirling in her head subside to a manageable spin, felt her stomach settle from the shock of his voice. She’d been certain he’d be gone from the hacienda by now. It had been hours. “Why are you still here? If Ernesto catches you in his house—”

  “Don’t worry, I’m leaving. You came up the stairs just as I was about to go down them.”

  “Down them? Are you insane? Anyone could have seen you.”

  “It’s past midnight, Doctor. By my estimation, most of the people downstairs were too drunk an hour ago to notice if an elephant walked through the room.”

  “You promised me. You said no one would be hurt. Ernesto—”

  His hand shot out from the darkness, startling her. She’d never even heard him move. His strong fingers clamped around her wrist.

  “Stop calling him that,” he said. “Do not call him Ernesto, as though you know him. You know nothing about him.”

  “No. You’re right. It doesn’t matter.” She was frantic. If anyone caught them together, all hell would break loose. She knew this man would do what he’d threatened, and innocent people would be hurt. Maybe even Ernesto. Most likely Ernesto.

  Olivia squared her shoulders. “Okay, now you listen to me. You have to go before he finds you here.”

  “And you will stay,” he said flatly, coldly.

  “What? Yes.” Olivia shook her head to try to clear it. “What is the matter with you?”

  “Why didn’t you leave today with your people?” She was so close. So close. He bowed his head a fraction of an inch, breathed in the smell of her hair. He loved the faint scent of the sea on her, as though she never really left the water, as though it ran through her veins. “Why did you come here tonight for this farce of a proposal?”

  “My people? How do you know about my people? And what
do you mean, this farce of a—? Are you nuts?” she whispered fiercely, coming up on her toes to hiss at him. “Mentally deficient in some manner? You’re a drug runner. He’s the sheriff of Aldea Viejo. And you have the nerve to call my perfectly good marriage proposal a farce?”

  “I told you, princesa, that he’s not what he seems, and you’d be better off back in your little office at Scripps than down here, playing with men you know nothing about.”

  Olivia’s eyes widened. “How do you know where I work?”

  “I know everything about you. Including your obvious proclivity for madmen.”

  Olivia blinked into the blackness. She could feel his breath hot on her face, and looked up. Her eyes had become just enough accustomed to the stygian darkness that she was able to see the sharp outline of his uncompromising jawline, the white around his shadowy pupils. “He is not the madman,” she said.

  Rafe leaned forward again, ruthlessly ignoring the scent of her, the nearness. His physical reaction to both. “You think I am?”

  No. She instinctively knew that whatever else dishonorable and desperate this man was, he was not mad. Not in any sense of the word. “Of course I do,” she whispered.

  The catch in her voice undid him. How dare she fear him, when it was Cervantes, with his elegant manners and his elegant mansion, who lived so well off the suffering of drug-hungry Americans? Rafe was the good guy. It didn’t occur to him how ludicrous it was to be so indignant that his cover was working well enough to fool even this brilliant, beautiful scientist.

  He advanced on her, deliberately brushing his lean body against hers. She retreated step for step, until she was backed against the door. He pressed mercilessly into her and reveled in the small trembling her body made against him. He was undeniably aroused. “Maybe I am a madman,” he muttered darkly.

  He caught her mouth with his, was elated when it parted for him, even though he knew her lips had fallen open in shock and not arousal. He swept his tongue seductively inside. It didn’t matter. Didn’t matter.

  Olivia thought her head had been spinning before. Good heavens. She was being kissed—and quite skillfully—by a criminal! She knew what a prudent woman would do in this kind of absurd situation. A prudent woman would ignore whatever excitement insane danger evidently stirred in her blood, knowing it for the temporary, stress-induced mania it was. A prudent woman would not give in to weak knees and shocking, reckless, sudden arousal. A prudent woman would fight.