His jaw tightened almost imperceptibly before it relaxed. “Were you serious about that? Do you really want a bodyguard against your ex?”
“Rawley would never understand, and I wouldn’t be able to explain. I just don’t feel safe right now.” She struggled to go on, but her fear was nebulous, based only on her old memories of an abusive man. “I wish I knew what Troy wanted.”
“I thought you said it was money.”
“Yes. Money’s the bottom line. But then there’s Rawley …” She shivered and rubbed her arms briskly.
“You said he doesn’t know about Rawley.”
“Not yet, anyway.” She grimaced. “But Troy’s not stupid, and if he decides to invade my life—and it looks like he already has—then he’s bound to run across Rawley.”
“What do you think he would do if he found out he had a son?” Hunter asked, choosing his words carefully.
“I have no idea,” she answered truthfully. “But it would be awful. Truly awful.”
Silence fell between them. Finally, wearily, Hunter responded, “I think a bodyguard might be a good idea, but I don’t think it could be me. I don’t feel—right about it. What you need to do is learn what’s on your ex’s mind. He’s contacted your father once already. Let him do it again.”
“But what should I do if he comes knocking on my door?” she asked, unreasonably hurt by his refusal. “Welcome him with open arms?”
“Call your father. Call the cops. Don’t let him pass the threshold.”
His swift response was cold and direct. It got to her in a way that she couldn’t explain. “You know, you’re not helping!”
“I don’t like what you’ve told me about him. I don’t trust him.”
“But you won’t be my bodyguard?” she asked in a small voice.
“I can’t.”
“Why not?”
He paused for so long she began to doubt that he would ever answer her. Finally he drew a breath and said in a husky voice that got to her way down deep, “Because I feel the wrong way about you, and it wouldn’t be wise.”
Jenny didn’t pretend to misunderstand. “That sounds like an excellent reason to me to take on the job.”
“No. You do need a bodyguard, though. Talk to your father. I bet he’d arrange one in an instant.”
Was that bitterness in his voice? She was getting so many messages, none of them clear. Maybe it was time to get some answers. “So, what do you want from me?”
“I—” He stopped himself, biting off the rest of what he was about to say. He shook his head and she saw his jaw work, as if he couldn’t quite form the words. At last he said, “We’re on borrowed time here in Mexico. It’s hot and intense, and it won’t last past the end of the week.”
“But what do you want?”
“I don’t even want to say.”
“A fling?”
He almost smiled. “You’re not the kind of woman to have a fling with.”
“How do you know?” Jenny lifted her chin, not liking the labels he’d already put on her at all. “I can be hot.”
That broke him up. His white teeth gleamed in a huge smile and the chuckle deep in his throat sent a thrilling little frisson up her spine.
“You think I’m lying,” she suggested.
“No, I don’t think you’re lying.” He sat up and lifted his palms, as if warding off her attack. “I believe you can be … hot.”
“It’s that girl-next-door thing, isn’t it? Everyone wants to be my big brother, or my father, or my surrogate something-or-other. No one ever wants to find out about the rest of me.”
“Have you given many men the chance?”
Hunter had her there and he knew it. How could he know her so well when she felt he was such an enigma? He doled out just enough information to make her feel she was getting somewhere, but truthfully she knew so little. “Oodles of men,” she stated blithely. “Oodles to canoodle with.”
“Uh-huh.”
She smiled, clasping her arms around her knees and giving in to the moment. “Okay, I lie like a rug.”
“What do you want?” he asked with a sudden intensity that caught Jenny unaware.
“I want—something.” She licked dry lips. “Maybe …”
“Maybe?”
“Another kiss?”
His gaze dropped to her mouth and hovered there long enough to heat Jenny’s blood. She was mesmerized by the hard sensuality of his lips.
His eyes were dark and mysterious, on fire with sexual desire. Jenny felt herself lean forward, unconsciously hurrying the invitation. She heard his slight intake of breath and felt the heat of his skin.
At the last moment Hunter caught hold of himself, pulling back sharply. “I don’t know what I’m doing, Geneva, and I have a pretty good idea you don’t either. Let’s get out of here before we both do something we’ll regret.”
The night sky was filled with stars, but the air was oppressive and smelled of exhaust. Troy could feel himself sweating, which really pissed him off. He hated Houston. Hated the humidity and the beastly sun and the hostile ground. He’d grown up in southern California, another place he hated. His parents had eked out a living and then placed him in private schools they couldn’t afford. He could remember his torn clothes, holes that were mended and mended. The snickers of the girls with the slim tan legs and the frosted, glossy smiles. He’d wanted to attack them. Shove them into the dirt and kick their skinny little asses. Instead he’d smiled and practiced his charm and he’d paid them back over and over again, yet they always seemed to rear up and spit in his eye in the end.
Hadn’t that been what Val had done? Sixteen years old and already wise beyond her years. He’d been fifteen. Young and horny and already in and out of enough beds to know what he wanted. Val. He wanted Val. He could still remember the way she smelled and tasted even after all these years. She’d been insatiable. It had been fan-fucking-tastic. But Val had had a roving eye and she soon found a member of the football team she thought might do it better. He could still recall the way she’d laughed when she’d told him about her new stud. Troy had listened in silence, all the while wanting to shove his fist through her teeth to stop the bitch from laughing.
Two nights later he’d waited for her to come home. He’d watched as her football hero dropped her off, one hand halfway up her skirt. She playfully slapped it away as she flounced off in his varsity jacket. Troy grabbed her as soon as the asshole’s car roared around the corner, taillights winking out.
“Hey!” she’d said, but Troy simply grabbed her, ground his teeth against hers and tossed her to the ground. She hadn’t been scared. She’d been pissed. And she’d fought him in silence for a while before finally getting into the mood. Then she’d been hungry for him, talking dirty, egging him on. Then he’d been pissed. So, he pulled up her skirt, ripped off her panties and gave her what she’d been asking for, begging for, and he made sure it hurt. She started crying but he didn’t stop. He wanted her to pay. Pay hard. And she kept on crying and begging him to stop. When he felt himself about to climax, he pulled out and sprayed semen on her boyfriend’s varsity jacket.
She didn’t laugh at him ever again.
When he first saw Jenny Holloway he thought she was Val. Same luscious hair, same smile. It had taken Jenny and her uncanny resemblance to his first love for Troy to finally kick Val out of his system.
And Jenny came with money. Truckloads of the stuff. But she was damned annoying. Wouldn’t get along with her father. Wouldn’t play the game. Didn’t know the first thing about sex and didn’t want to learn. He’d hit her out of sheer frustration and when he’d seen the wounded shock in her eyes, the disbelief as she brought her fingers up to explore her bloody lip, he’d thought, “Fuck you, Val!” It had felt that good.
But then that bastard Allen had come to the aid of his crying princess. Troy wasn’t willing to give up the marriage, especially when he learned that Allen didn’t have all the facts. Jenny, bless her cowardly little heart, h
adn’t told Daddy about her injuries. Still, the fucker had guessed as much. There was just too much in his beady, triumphant eyes to ignore. He knew he had Troy by the short and curlies, and he sure knew how to twist a man’s balls. God, how he hated the bastard.
But he did offer a lot of money. A lot of money for Troy to get lost. Holy shit. Troy had come out on top after all.
Until that whining bitch Michelle Calgary had turned up pregnant. She’d wanted to marry him, and throughout their relationship Troy had been a model boyfriend. She’d been damn cute. And he’d got her to do some really raunchy stuff, even though she pleaded with him to stop. He could remember one night when she tried to crawl away from him and he just let her have it over and over again, pumping and jerking, with her howling an accompaniment Just thinking about it still gave him a hard-on. That’s when he’d had to hit her, just to get her to stop that godawful noise. She’d begged him to stop, screaming that she was pregnant. In his shocked fury, he’d hit her again.
He’d felt bad about it later, of course. She was so sore she could hardly move for days. When she miscarried she got real quiet. He knew she was thinking about telling that brother of hers. He’d really had to lay the charm on thick, but he wasn’t sure she was buying it anymore. She kept going up to the roof to think. Troy knew about women thinking. Anytime it had happened, he’d been shown the door. So, he had to stop her and he had. He hadn’t meant to. Not that way. Not from the roof.
Involuntarily, Troy shuddered. It started at his feet and swept over him like a tidal wave. God, he hated thinking about that. It made him furious! He’d really loved her. Almost as much as he’d loved Jenny. But women were untrustworthy. They got themselves pregnant just to hang onto a man. Look at Jenny. She had a kid now. Lucky he’d skated out of that one before she tried what Michelle had tried.
He’d run through the rest of his money in such record time it amazed him. But it was just bad luck. Bad investments. At one time he’d been up twenty thousand dollars on the blackjack table! Then it had slipped away and he’d had to pay out another thirty thousand to cover his losses later on. He’d felt like pure shit. Life was so unfair.
Down to his last two hundred dollars, he’d had to give up his beachfront rental and start pounding the pavement looking for a new woman. They were everywhere, but none of them had the bank account he was looking for. Married whores sometimes doled out little chunks of money to him to be their stud. He took it and fucked them like it was a damn marathon. They loved it. But they had husbands. Worse luck, Michelle’s thick-skulled brother was an L.A.P.D. detective. He’d wanted revenge after Michelle’s accident, and Troy had had to cry foul to get anyone to listen to him and have the maniac restrained. Thinking about Hunter Calgary turned his bowels to ice water. Troy swore a blue streak in his head, snapping himself back to the merciless selfcontrol that had served him so well over the years.
That, at least, was a closed chapter. Calgary had gotten himself fired from the force. Obsession could do that to a person. Troy had hightailed it out of Los Angeles to lay low in Tucson for a while. But when he learned that Calgary had left the state to work in Nevada, Troy returned to L.A. His luck changed when he met Frederica on his second night in a Sunset Strip bar. She was Latina, all heat and fire with a Beverly Hills mansion and an alimony check to make a man kneel down and weep. Her problem was she was manic-depressive. Bipolar. On or off. And when she went off she would lose interest in everything, right down to bathing and eating. Troy didn’t live with her, the cagey bitch hadn’t let him in that far. So when Frederica went down, he was left dangling, deep in debt and Patricia’s pitiful bank account hadn’t helped pull him to safe ground.
And that’s when he thought about Jenny. Fifteen years had gone by in the wink of an eye. He didn’t know where she was, but he sure as hell knew where her daddy lived. He’d waited outside the man’s mansion, and waited and waited, until one day the great Allen Holloway finally drove over to that restaurant to look up his daughter. It had been a shock for Troy to realize Jenny was working. As a bookkeeper, in a miserable little restaurant, no less, with some dirty Italian bastard who slobbered all over her, undoubtedly looking for a way into her pants. He’d almost laughed, the guy was so desperate. It’s cold down there, Troy had wanted to tell him. What women liked was the rough-stuff, but Jenny had frozen up all the more anytime he’d tried that.
But then he’d seen Jenny for himself and he’d actually stopped his drink on its way to his lips. She’d been little more than a skinny teenager when they’d parted. Now she was a full-fledged woman, and he hadn’t missed her luscious breasts and hips and thighs. Instantly, his plans had changed. He’d originally thought to put the bite on old man Holloway for more money, but seeing how ripe Jenny was, he’d switched tactics, come up with that “making amends” crap. Put right what was wrong. She’d been the ultimate ice princess when he’d known her, but she’d managed to get herself knocked up somehow. Maybe she’d learned a thing or two. Maybe he could teach her another thing or two.
But he had to get into her life. Now. While she was still off gallivanting around. Maybe with some guy. The idea both tantalized and infuriated Troy. He was the guy.
That damn dog was stretched across the threshold again, harmless looking enough but Troy knew better. Animals were tricky. He’d never got on with them.
As if hearing his thoughts, the beast lifted its tawny head. A long, low growl issued from its throat. Troy’s hands curled into fists. He wouldn’t mind strangling it. There was no trusting animals. But he wasn’t fool enough to get in a fight with a dog that size.
Still … tonight was the night. He could hear a clock ticking in his head. Jenny would be back soon. Very soon. That soccer camp was over Sunday. She’d be back for her kid.
The dog scrambled to its four legs, letting out a nasty snarl. “Relax, Fido,” Troy said, knowing it was useless. Instinct sure was a bitch, no pun intended. Dogs sensed his rotten hidden self as if it had an odor they could smell.
More low growling. He should have bought some rat poison and laced a pound of hamburger, but a dead dog would make his breaking and entering seem like something other than random chance and he didn’t want that The screwdriver in his back pocket would help jimmy the lock. His foot banging the door open would finish the job.
And he didn’t want anything except information. Unless there was some cash just lying around, but judging by the evidence of Jenny’s rather meager existence, he doubted it. Vaguely he wondered how he could have it all again, but he didn’t worry too much. Win her over, something like that. Allen Holloway was a heart attack waiting to happen. And he knew the man well enough to know that he’d lost interest in that anorexic wife of his years ago. Sweet little Jenny was all he really cared about. Funny how things turned out.
Why didn’t the mangy mutt go home, for God’s sake? Troy glared down at the dog. It wouldn’t move.
He wanted to lift his own head to the heavens and howl out his frustration. Instead, he concentrated on what he had to do, letting his pulse slow, his brain clear to a single thought. Jenny. Geneva Fucking Holloway.
His.
In control, he stared down at the bristling animal. “Hey, Fido,” he said with a snarl as menacing as the animal’s own. The beast blinked at him, its lips black and pulled back over sharp teeth. “Come over here ….”
CHAPTER SEVEN
Deep-sea fishing had not been her idea. Spending hours on a pitching craft with lines strung off the back, hoping to sink a deadly hook into the mouth of some unsuspecting mega-fish left Jenny cold, cold, cold. But sitting around at the villa, or strolling through downtown Puerto Vallarta past the Hotel Rosa held even less appeal. She hadn’t seen Hunter since Tuesday and now it was Friday, and she’d thought she might go crazy.
How could a couple of chance encounters with a mysterious man, who had rebuffed her, consume her so? She had a life to live that did not include him. A life, moreover, that was going to be jump-started as soon as she left h
ere, packed up her belongings, and drove out of Houston to Santa Fe.
The pitch and roll of the craft sent a green wave of nausea crashing through her stomach. Cuddling up to the inside wall of the boat, she was almost happy to note that Magda and Alicia were in even worse shape than she was.
“Ohhhh …” Magda moaned. “Why didn’t I stay home with Phil?”
“Why did I listen to Tom?” Alicia muttered.
“And Phil was feeling better!” Magda continued. “I could be drinking margaritas with him right now!”
“Don’t make me sick.” Alicia shuddered.
“How much longer?” Jenny asked.
“How can they do it?” Magda lifted her head to glance through the open door to Tom, Matt, Jackie, Lisa, and Sam and Carrie Brickman. They were laughing and drinking Coronas. Sunlight sparkled off the water.
“The women are young,” Alicia groaned. “Way … too … young …” She suddenly lurched off her bench and headed for the teensy bathroom.
“Carrie’s not that young, she’s just … better than we are,” Magda declared, the back of her hand covering her eyes.
Though she was not as sick as her two friends, Jenny chastised herself for this excursion. She’d chosen it as an escape from her own tormenting thoughts. Talk about choosing the wrong way out ….
And it hadn’t worked. Hunter had constantly been in her thoughts. And all her soul-searching had come down to one inescapable truth: she wanted an affair. She deserved an affair. She’d spent way too much time being responsible and serious. It didn’t matter that she hadn’t had any interest in having fun for intervening years, she sure as hell had an interest now.
And why not? Why the hell not? she argued furiously with herself. Some women slept with scores of men. Why, you couldn’t watch television these days without feeling you’d missed out if you hadn’t achieved a body count that was too embarrassing to admit to. All she’d had was one man. One. Her ex-husband. Even then she’d known instinctively that Troy’s rough methods of seduction were not the way it was supposed to be. There was tenderness in the world, and she sensed a night with Hunter would be filled with those kind of moments.
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