by Maggie Price
“True enough. I had my own reasons for behaving the way I did in college. Then circumstances changed. I did, too. But it’s clear you don’t want to acknowledge that.” She could hear her emotions unraveling in her voice, but there wasn’t anything she could do about it. “The bottom line is, whatever it is I have that someone else wants, it’s not worth losing a life over. Which is what almost happened to you this morning. So whatever its value, I would give it to them.” She snapped her fingers. “Just like that.”
She turned away, intending to join Claire in the showroom. She’d made it as far as the door when Rafe gripped her arm, spun her around and pressed her back against the wall.
He stared down at her, his dark eyes intense. “Who the hell are you?”
“Why ask when you seem to have me all figured out?” she flung back. Just the feel of his hands on her bare arms turned her insides to molten glass.
“I thought I did. Shallow. Spoiled. A party girl used to having men fall at her feet.” He took her hair in his hand. “There are layers now. Contrasts.”
Her heart dropped to her toes, then bounced up again. The dream she’d had of them together paled in the reality of his body brushing against hers. Of the soft caress of his warm breath on her cheek.
His fingers combed through her hair. “You design expensive lingerie and sell it to your rich friends. Then you dress in old clothes and go off to paint houses for abused women.”
“So?” The electricity in the air was getting thick enough to drink. Allie could literally taste it on her tongue.
“So last night at the hotel, I overheard you arranging to donate personal funds to the foundation that match the total the silent auction brought in.”
“It’s rude to eavesdrop.” She tried for a casual tone but only succeeded in sounding breathless.
“Sue me,” he murmured. “At the warehouse, you didn’t give a thought to your own safety when you insisted on helping me drag Slater out of that burning car.”
“Anyone would have done that.”
“Funny, I can’t picture drunken Ellen Bishop putting herself in harm’s way to help someone.” Very slowly, very deliberately, his hand came up to cup her cheek.
Allie watched his eyes darken. Saw his gaze drop to her mouth. So she couldn’t pretend later, even to herself, that she didn’t see the kiss coming.
She tried to think, to remember the consequences if she allowed him to cross that invisible line she’d drawn long ago. But her senses had clouded and all she could do was feel.
“I’m…not sure this is a good idea, considering,” she managed.
“You’re probably right, considering.” He ran the pad of his thumb over her bottom lip. “But I can’t think of a better one right now,” he added, then captured her mouth with his.
Chapter 7
Rafe Diaz kissed like a fallen angel, coaxing and enticing and unrelenting. He didn’t let up; didn’t allow Allie to breathe. He just kissed her, slow and sure and endlessly, until she began to feel faint from the uneasy, exhilarating awareness that no man had ever kissed her this way.
There was nothing soft about him; not the magnificent shoulders her fingers clenched, not his hands that cupped her face, not his lips or tongue. Nothing.
She wanted, as she had never wanted before. Never dreamed of wanting. The ache was so huge it left no room for reason. The rightness of it was so clear that it left no room for doubt. There was only this moment. This man.
A whimpering moan rose in the back of her throat. It wasn’t due to protest or pain, but of no-holds-barred desire.
For Rafe, the sound that seemed to claw up from her throat was every bit as primitive as the need that raged through him. He’d known desire before, but not this gnawing, tearing desperation.
His hands slid from her face, across her shoulders, down her trim, toned body to grip her hips. When she strained against him, center to center, core to core, he was ready to rip off her jeans and feed those hungers. More than willing to take what he craved without a thought for the consequences.
Consequences.
He slapped his palms on the wall on either side of her head to stop himself from touching. From taking. Fighting to regain both his breath and his control, he eased out of the kiss. Stepped back.
What the hell was he doing?
He knew better than anyone that every act carried consequences. He’d walked out of prison and painstakingly rebuilt a life centered around ironclad restraint. It was clear now that this gorgeous, intriguing woman had the power to whisk away every bit of his control as if it were nothing but dust in the wind.
He’d be damned if he let her. Damned if he’d allow himself to be ruled by emotion.
Curling his hands into fists, he studied her while she leaned back against the wall, her blond hair tousled, her eyes closed, the lips that had taken him so close to the edge of reason slightly parted. By the time her lashes fluttered up and her blue eyes focused on his, he had his control snapped back ruthlessly in place.
“You were right,” he said. “That wasn’t a good idea.”
Allie might have flinched from the remark if she hadn’t been braced against the wall. Everything inside her was in a mindless rush—her heart, her blood, her brain—and the man responsible now claimed that kissing her had been a bad idea. Maybe when her senses cleared and reason returned she would agree, but how the hell could he sound so contained and unaffected when the same kiss had pummeled her insides into nuclear meltdown?
She searched the hard planes of his face, trying to find some hint of emotion, a flicker of feeling, but there was none.
Her pride scratched, she forced her mouth to curve. “It’s good we’re in agreement,” she said, infusing her voice with a coolness that contrasted with the fire blazing in her system.
Just then, his cell phone rang. Rafe dug it out of his pocket, checked the display. “I have to take this.”
“Of course.”
On legs that felt like molten glass, Allie stepped to her cluttered desk. Looking down, she stared unseeingly at the sea of papers and file folders covered with a fine dusting of fingerprint powder. It was true that no man had ever driven her to almost complete abandon with just a kiss, but there was something more. Something…
She went very still as emotion delivered a punch to her heart. Shaken, she turned and looked at Rafe. Phone pressed to his ear, he stood with his back to her, all tall and tough-bodied, his deep voice a quiet murmur on the air. For an instant, she was back in his arms, his mouth plundering hers while a closeness that felt utterly foreign from anything she’d experienced with another man swept through her.
She closed her eyes while the wariness with which she lived every day of her life had her breath going shallow. She had no idea what alien emotion had caused that finger-snap connection to Rafe nor did she want to find out. At this point, all she wanted was the safety of distance.
He ended the call, flipped his phone closed and turned. His face was tense, his eyes cheerless in the office’s bright light. “I know I said I’d go to your warehouse with you, but first I’ve got to meet Hank Bishop.”
“I know how it is when a client calls. You have to go,” Allie flicked a wrist toward the office’s door. “I’ll ask Claire to go with me. Maybe Liz can meet us. They’ve both been there before so they might help spot something out of place.” And because the unexpected, unwanted emotions still battered her, Allie added, “You’re definitely not needed.”
“Even so, I want to see what you’ve got inside.”
“It’s mainly three floors of lingerie, sewing areas and offices.”
He walked back toward her, his gaze locked on hers. “Slater needed to know the location of your warehouse because there’s something inside he wanted. Or he at least thought it was there. He’s dead, but if he was working for someone, that person is still after whatever it is.” Rafe checked his watch. “How about I meet you and your friends there in about an hour and a half?”
Allie s
wept her gaze around her ravaged office. He was right. She’d been lured to her warehouse by a man who had tried to kill Rafe. If he could help figure out what Slater was after—and who sent him—they could all get back to their own lives that much sooner.
“Fine,” she said, using the same, void-of-emotion tone she heard in his voice. “See you there.”
In the meantime, because the lust crawling around in her belly seemed to be all one-sided, she would do her damnedest to just get over it.
Rafe stepped onto a freight elevator in a vacant downtown building, jerked the wooden door down and stabbed the button for the top floor. With half its windows boarded up and the other half shut tight, the building was one huge oven.
After a plaintive groan from its motor, the elevator began to rise with a combination of hair-raising metallic squeals and a pronounced shimmy.
He set his jaw. Maybe the damn thing would lock up. Maybe he’d get stuck there and bake to death. If so, he’d have something to think about other than Allie. The feel of her body’s subtle curves and long lines beneath his hands. Her erotic scent that still clouded his lungs. The flicker of withdrawal he’d seen in her eyes when she agreed the kiss had been a bad idea.
“Damn,” he muttered. “Damn. Damn.”
He ought to be glad he’d gotten out of that shop where the very air carried her scent. Happy that he had time to get his system leveled before he saw her again.
And when he did, he needed to focus on his case.
That was, after all, the kind of life he had chosen to live when he walked out of prison, solitary with only business matters to deal with. He didn’t want to be touched emotionally. Didn’t want to open himself to the trouble he knew all too well personal involvement of any kind could bring.
Even so, he wasn’t going to kid himself. It was apparent the grand plan he’d made for his life seemed to pale whenever he got around Allie. Bottom line, he was going to have to be more machine than man in order to keep a grip on control.
The elevator shuddered to a halt. Rafe shoved the door up and stepped into a vast area where all interior walls had been gutted. With only concrete pillars still standing, he had a clear view of Hank Bishop and his partner and brother-in-law, Guy Jones, at the far side of the building near an open window. Another man—tall, lanky and nearly bald—was with them.
When Hank Bishop looked up, he excused himself from the others and headed Rafe’s way.
Dressed in a green golf shirt, tan slacks and loafers without socks, Bishop’s footsteps echoed off the concrete floor. In the time since Rafe had last seen his client, Bishop seemed to have aged ten years. The lines at the corners of his eyes and mouth had deepened, the gray at his temples was more pronounced.
Understandable, with a murder charge hanging over the real estate developer’s head, Rafe thought.
“Thanks for meeting me here instead of my office,” Bishop said as Rafe returned his handshake. “Guy forgot to tell me until the last minute that he’d made an appointment for us with the Realtor who’s trying to dump this monstrosity on an unsuspecting buyer.”
Rafe swept his gaze over the vacant expanse. “What did this building used to be?”
“A department store. Guy thinks renovating it into lofts and apartments will be a for-sure moneymaker.”
“You don’t agree?” Rafe knew this area of downtown was undergoing a massive revitalization. Numerous old buildings had already been converted for housing and retail use.
“It would make a super investment if the foundation wasn’t cracked. And the walls weren’t insulated with asbestos. Then there’s the mold that’s turned the basement fuzzy. Fixing all that will add a couple of mil to the renovation costs.”
Bishop’s gaze focused on the two men who were now deep in conversation. “Since the day he married my baby sister and we became partners, I’ve been telling Guy we’re in a business that requires thinking outside the box. He’s still trying to grasp that concept.”
With a restless move of his shoulders, Bishop looked back at Rafe. “I don’t expect you’re here to talk real estate.”
“No, we need to discuss a couple of things that happened last night.”
Bishop’s expression turned somber. “Guy told me about Ellen getting drunk at the auction and confronting Allie Fielding. It’s hard to believe Ellen did that.”
“It wasn’t pretty.”
Bishop ran a hand down the back of his neck. “Looking back, I was a fool to hook up with Mercedes. All I managed to do was hurt my family. And get arrested for a murder I didn’t commit.”
“The only way to get you clear of that is to find out who the real killer is. Meaning, you need to level with me.”
Bishop looked vaguely surprised. “I have.”
“You told me there was no way your wife could have found out about your affair with Mercedes before she was murdered.”
“I don’t know that Ellen did find out.”
“You don’t know she didn’t. Last night, she had a few drinks too many and got verbally and physically abusive just because a shopkeeper did business with both her and your mistress. Your wife doesn’t strike me as a woman who’d hold back if she found out you’d moved your mistress into a condo and were paying all her bills. That’s a hell of a lot more than a casual affair. Any wife would view that as insulting and threatening, and maybe do something about it.”
“Dammit, I know Ellen. She would have confronted me, not Mercedes.”
“You think you know your wife, but she surprised you by getting in Allie Fielding’s face last night,” Rafe countered. “I need to know if there’s anyone who knew about your affair, who might have told Ellen.” Rafe glanced at Guy Jones, deep in conversation with the Realtor. “What about your brother-in-law? He might have mentioned the affair to his wife.”
“No. I purposely kept Guy in the dark about Mercedes for that very reason. I didn’t want anyone in the family to know.” Bishop looked away, his hands curving into fists. “There’s one person who might have told Ellen.”
“Who?”
“Matt Weber. He was my personal pilot for years. I fired him over a month ago because he showed up at the airport smelling of booze an hour before he was scheduled to fly me to a business conference. He asked me to give him a second chance and got ticked when I said no.”
“You’re sure he knew about you and Mercedes?”
“He’d flown us on trips a couple of times. He also flew Ellen to New York when she wanted to shop. After I fired him, I reported Weber’s drinking to the FAA, which is the kiss of death in this country for a pilot. To get back at me, he could have tipped Ellen off about Mercedes.”
“Do you know where Weber is now?”
“I heard he got a job flying freight from Singapore to Taipei. I have no idea who hired him.”
“I’ll try to track him down,” Rafe said, committing the pilot’s name to memory.
“You said you need to discuss a couple of things about last night. What else?”
For no other reason than he’d had shots in the dark score direct hits before, Rafe asked, “Does the name Joseph Slater ring a bell?”
“Joe Slater?” Bishop’s forehead furrowed in puzzlement. “Don’t tell me he showed up at the silent auction.”
“So you know him?”
“I know of him. He used to be a builder. Got into trouble with the locals over code violations and with the Feds over taxes. After his company went down the tubes, Slater let people in the business know his services were for hire.”
“What sort of services?”
“Undercutting competitors.”
“How?”
Bishop slid a hand into the pocket of his khakis. “Suppose Company A decides to bid on a project but wants to know what its top competitor, Company B, is planning to bid. Company A hires Slater to get the information. Company A submits the lowest bid and wins the contract.”
“How would Slater go about getting the information?”
“Company A
doesn’t care and doesn’t want to know. My guess is it would involve some breaking and entering or computer hacking to get a look at Company B’s files.”
“That sounds like a big risk.”
Bishop lifted a shoulder. “Might be one worth taking if a multimillion dollar contract is up for grabs.”
“Did you ever hire Slater?”
“Hell no. My personal life might be in shambles, but I go by the rules when it comes to business.”
Rafe thought about the burglary at Silk & Secrets. “Would Slater know his way around an alarm system?”
“He’d have had one installed in every place he built. He could have watched the alarm people, asked questions and learned. Why are you asking about Slater?”
“I suspect he disabled the alarm at Allie Fielding’s shop last night and burglarized it. When he didn’t find what he was looking for, he called her, pretending to be a cop and told her someone had broken into her warehouse. When she left to meet him, he followed her there.”
Bishop frowned. “Mercedes sold a line of purses out of Allie’s shop. They’re manufactured at Allie’s warehouse. Are you thinking Slater had something to do with Mercedes’s murder?”
“It’s possible. All I know for sure is that Slater wanted inside the warehouse. That might just be a huge coincidence, but I’m not willing to overlook it. Especially since he tried to run me down.”
Bishop looked stunned. “Slater tried to kill you?”
Rafe nodded. “He’s the one who wound up dead. The fact you knew of him means anyone connected with you—your wife, your son who works for you, your business partner—all might have heard of him, too. And hired him to kill Mercedes.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know. But think about this. Your mistress had recording equipment installed in every room of the condo. The only reason she would do that is to record conversations. Maybe she did that to sell information. Or blackmail someone.”
Bishop scrubbed at his forehead with his fingertips. “Has anyone thought that Mercedes could have been a victim of a random crime? That she just walked in on some burglar and died because she was in the wrong place at the wrong time?”