“Which is not exactly news to me,” she said impatiently, “considering I know way more about that raid than I care to remember.”
“Did you also know the DEA thought at first that you were the one who planted it?” Being nobody’s fool, he kept his own early suspicions to himself.
“What?” She surged up off the far side of the chaise and turned to look down at him, her hands planted militantly on her hips, her face a study in righteous indignation.
“As far as they knew, you were the only other person besides myself in that hut. So when they found you gone—” He shrugged. “They ran your prints and your name through all the databases. When that didn’t garner any hits, they concluded you were just in the wrong place at the wrong time. Then when a woman answering to your general description left for the States a few days later, they didn’t pursue it any further.” Something that he’d just said niggled at him, but the disgusted look Tasha gave him drove it underground.
“Yeah, heaven forbid anyone should take time to find out I was being detained in a Bahamian jail and spring me,” she said bitterly.
“I’m not sure how my people could have known you were in jail if the DEU didn’t bother to mention they’d arrested you. That doesn’t mean that I’m not sincerely sorry about the hell you went through.” He looked at her. “Or that I’m not gonna find out what happened.”
He didn’t mention that he’d been pretty damn mad at her himself. He might not have been falsely arrested, but she’d told him she’d wait for him, and he’d believed all these years that she’d instead turned right around and bailed on him mere minutes after he’d left.
But he was just marginally smart enough not to say that out loud. He didn’t doubt for an instant that as someone who’d been arrested because of heroin she’d believed all these years was his, she wasn’t ready to give a great big rip for his emotional pain.
He rubbed a hand over his jaw, then dropped it to his side and merely said quietly, “Despite what you think, that night mattered to me and so did you. I’m sorrier than I can say it all turned to shit.”
Tasha rubbed polish-free fingertips at the furrow between her brows. She blew out a sigh and simply looked at him for an instant. “Look,” she finally said, dropping her hand to her side. “Intellectually I appreciate your apology, because it sounds as if you didn’t have much more control over your destiny that night than I did.”
Heartened by her first civil words to him since he’d come to Razor Bay, he rose to his feet and stepped over the chaise to face her. “No, I didn’t. And I found myself thinking a lot about—”
“The thing is, though,” she interrupted, taking a sizable step back that made him realize he’d moved in maybe a little too close, “while my imprisonment is obviously all new to you, I’ve been doing my damnedest to shake my memories of it. That was hands down the worst forty-eight hours in my life. And it might not be fair, Luc, but I don’t want to be friends with you. How can I forget that awful time if you’re always around? You’re just too strongly linked to that night.”
“Part of which was killer good.”
“Yeah.” A corner of those do-me-daddy lips quirked up. Then the tiny smile dropped away. “Unfortunately, the arrest part overshadows it, and that was so horrendous I can barely remember what came before.”
Irritation that the memories he’d never quite been able to shake meant less than nothing to her made him crowd her and slide his palms around her cool nape. He tipped her head up. “Then let me remind you.”
And even as her gray-blue eyes went from wary to don’t-even-go-there-buster, he lowered his head and rocked his mouth over hers.
Anger—and maybe a bit of hurt pride, too—made his kiss rough. But the way Tasha’s back stiffened and the sweetness of the soft, cushiony lips he hadn’t tasted in over seven years promptly drove him to lighten up. Loosening his grip on the back of her neck, he cupped her head with an easy touch, his thumbs tenderly framing her face and stroking little circles into the supple skin just below her cheekbones. He dialed back on his too-aggressive demand for entrance to her mouth and instead gently sipped at her lips, first catching her luscious top-heavy upper one between his own, then letting it slide free to do the same to its almost-but-not-quite-as-full counterpart. Finally he opened his mouth over hers, then dragged it slowly closed with soft suction.
And groaned when her lips parted.
Stepping in closer to align their bodies until they pressed from chest to breast, belly to belly and thigh to thigh, he eased his tongue into her mouth and absorbed flavors that were both brand-new and yet more familiar than he might’ve expected from somebody with whom he’d spent only a couple of days years ago. He slid his tongue over hers, and she made a soft murmur of surrender and slicked her own along his in return.
Something about that sound accessed the Latin pride with which his grandfather had indoctrinated him the first seven years of his life, and he raised his head. Took a step back. It mattered a little too much that a woman who wanted nothing to do with him was every bit as turned on as he was. Possessiveness and satisfaction rolled through him, but he had just enough sense not to let on.
He merely brushed a curl out of her eyes and said gently, “I hope that when all is said and done, mi reina, you’ll remember this. Because you and me? We were—no, we are—really good together.”
Stepping back, he admired her flushed skin and kiss-swollen lips for an instant. Then he turned on his heel and strode around the end of the plant barrier to head back to his apartment.
CHAPTER SEVEN
IT IRKED TASHA no end that she couldn’t get Luc’s kiss out of her head. Not Sunday night and not yesterday, either. Even today—all right, this very minute if she were to be honest—as she and Jenny and Harper began looking through racks of dresses at La Belle Michelle’s Bridal Shoppe, a montage of resurrected sensations kept popping up to distract her. She knew she ought to be paying more attention to their search for the perfect bridesmaids’ dresses and a lot less to reliving a stupid kiss that never should have happened in the first place. Jenny had only a little over four months to pull her wedding together, a goal with which Tasha fully intended to help her. The very last thing she needed yanking her focus from the job at hand was...that.
That damn hot, wet, thigh-clenching—
“Oh, Tasha, look!” Jenny’s sudden exclamation made her start in the midst of remembering that moment she’d parted her lips to Luc’s insistent tongue and the feel of it sliding across them to enter her mouth. “I do believe I’ve found the perfect maid-of-honor dress for you.”
Blinking, still lost in the kiss that would not go away, she glanced at the dress her best friend held against her petite frame—and didn’t absorb a single detail. “Uh-huh,” she murmured with agreeable vacancy.
Then the near-pea-green color that the garment turned Jenny’s complexion belatedly sank in and she truly focused on the gown. Her eyes widened.
The thing was a revolting more-baby-puke-green than the shade it turned Jenny’s face, and it was all gathers, ruffles and balloon sleeves, trimmed to within an inch of its life in stiff, itchy-looking black lace and droopy black satin bows.
“There’s a stunning little hair ornament that goes with it,” her BFF said and held an explosion of color-coordinated netting and black bows to the side of her head.
“Omigawd, that is me.” Tasha grinned and reached for the gown. “Lemme see that.” When Jenny relinquished it, she held it up to herself and watched in the triple mirror as her own complexion promptly turned green. “Let’s buy it. It’ll go with Jake’s eyes.”
Jenny snorted.
“Where’s La Belle Michelle?” Tasha asked, glancing around guiltily. The shop owner was an easygoing, no-pressure saleswoman, and Tasha would truly hate if her words hurt the woman’s feelings.
“She went to sign for some deliveries.” Harper reached out for the dress. “My turn.”
Tasha handed it over, then shook her head in faux
disgust when Harper held it up to herself. “Oh, for pity’s sake. Is there a color you don’t look good in?” Her friend’s creamy brown skin merely glowed creamier. “God, that thing is hideous.”
“Yeah, like you even saw that when you first looked at it,” Jenny said. “You’ve been distracted all morning, and I gotta tell you, it’s not helping my fight to not start panicking a little here. I’ve got my own dress and the cake ordered, and that’s about it. And my wedding is only a hundred and sixteen days away.”
“I know, sweetie. I was just thinking that I should be concentrating on helping you instead of thinking about Luc kissing me—”
Oh.
Crap.
Useless as that old horse-and-the-barn-door adage, her hand slapped to her mouth too late to help a blessed thing. All she could do was mentally kick herself as Harper stared at her, the ugly dress sliding unnoticed from her hands. Jenny gaped at her, as well.
The latter didn’t last long, unfortunately, since Tasha’s best friend almost immediately drew herself up to her full barely five foot three inches and sternly said, “Tasha Renee Riordan. You’ve been holding out on us. You know that violates every code of BFFdom.”
Making a rude noise, she dropped her ineffectual hand to her side. “Please. Like you told me everything when you and Jake were carrying on.”
Clearly considering that neither here nor there, Jenny waved the rebuke aside. “Luc kissed you? And you’ve been holding out on us? When did that happen?”
There was no use trying to dodge the question. She knew Jennifer Salazar far too well to ever believe her friend would let her get away with it. “Sunday night. And it wasn’t much of a kiss.” She shifted uncomfortably, because really: liar, liar. “Well, it wasn’t a very long kiss, anyhow.”
“Did you kiss him back?”
“No!” The friend who knew her better than anyone merely looked at her, and she amended, “Okay, fine, I might’ve started to. But it ended before I actually did much more than lift my tongue off the floor of my mouth, so I’m gonna go with no.”
“I’m voting yes,” Harper murmured, and Jenny nodded her agreement.
“Yeah, well, you two weren’t there. It wasn’t a lovey-dovey-type kiss. He was P-Oed because I’d agreed he probably was the DEA agent he said he was, but I still didn’t want to be friends.”
“He got rough?” Jenny demanded, her expression going all commando. “Did he hurt you? I’ll have Jake beat the crap out of him if he hurt you!”
“No, no,” she said in alarm. “No Jake, no beating! For a second it was all hard hands, hard mouth, but I have to admit he gentled pretty quickly. And I swear, Jen, he never hurt me. You know me better than to think I’d put up with that.”
Her friend’s combative posture relaxed, and she gave her a puzzled look. “But if he didn’t get all rough with you, what’s the harm in at least being friends?”
“Omigawd,” the shop owner, Michelle, said as she sailed up, pulling a rolling rack full of dresses in both cocktail and gown lengths. She gave them a dazzling smile and bent to pick up the dress Harper had dropped on the floor. “Where on earth did you find this?”
“It was in with the gowns on the hanging rod across the back wall,” Jenny said.
“Of course. Now I remember. I had it out the day a huge wedding party came in looking for attendants’ dresses. They tried on a lot of styles and I must have racked it with all the dresses I put away after they left.” She gave them all a big grin. “I’ve been searching for it to enter in the Top Ten Ugliest Bridesmaids’ Dresses contest that the Bridal Association holds every year.”
“Oh, thank goodness—you do know it’s hideous,” Tasha said, then could have smacked herself. Because, seriously? She’d had more social finesse when she was thirteen.
The attractive sixtysomething woman’s immaculately groomed eyebrows disappeared beneath her feathered salt-and-pepper bangs. “Have you looked at my inventory, dear? I know taste differs, and not all gowns are going to appeal to everyone. But, honey, none of them approach this level of awful.”
Tasha grinned. “You’re absolutely right, and I sincerely apologize for inferring otherwise. I have no idea where that question even came from. Jenny got me all riled up while you were away, so I think we should blame it on her.”
“Oh, now, we never blame the bride.” She turned to Jenny. “You said you were leaning toward the richer blues, greens and purples, but weren’t yet wedded to any particular color, right?”
“Yes. I can’t seem to make up my mind. Tash looks best in the stronger colors, and we’ve determined that Harper looks good in just about everything.”
“Okay, good. I brought a range of colors. Now, there are several options when it comes to picking your party’s gowns. You can select a color and let your attendants pick whatever style they want within that shade. You can pick a style and either select identical gowns or mix and match the colors within the style. Or you can just plain have eclectic colors and styles. It all comes down to what suits you best, as you can always pull everything together with your flowers.” Turning back to the rack, she pulled two full-length gowns off it. “Going with the same style but different colors, I picked these two to start. I thought the deep grape would look good with your maid of honor’s coloring and the orange sherbet with your bridesmaid’s, while the style should suit both their body types.”
She displayed them side by side, two strapless gowns with finely gathered chiffon that crisscrossed the empire bodice and wrapped around the ribs to the back. “What do you think?”
“I like them—and I actually like that orange. It never would have occurred to me to select it, but it looks wonderful next to the deep purple.” She looked at Tasha and Harper and raised her eyebrows inquiringly.
“They’re lovely,” Harper said, admiring the heart-shaped cut of the strapless neckline.
“They are,” Tasha agreed. “I like the style. It’s killer attractive without being fussy.” She nudged Harper. “Let’s try them on.”
They came out of the dressing rooms a moment later and crossed to stand side by side in front of the triple mirror. “Whoa,” Tasha said, turning side to side, checking her image from all angles. “How elegant are we? You’re already a classy woman,” she informed Harper cheerfully. “But for the first time, I look like one.”
Jenny grinned at her. “You do. I love the contrasts, not only between the dress colors but between you two, as well.”
Tasha had to agree. She and Harper were both tall but very different in build from the waist down. Harper had more hourglass curves to her lower half. Then, of course, there was their coloring.
As if reading her mind, Jenny said, “The gray undertone in that deep purple makes your skin look really creamy.”
“I know!” She laughed in delight. “And isn’t that a nice change from my usual skimmed-milk look? That pale orange does the same thing for Harper.” She butted her friend’s bare shoulder with her own. “Of course, your skin always looks gorgeous. I so envy that.”
They tried on several other options from Michelle’s rack, but in the end all three agreed that the first choice was the one they loved best. “You’re good,” Tasha said to the shop owner. “You knew exactly which ones we’d pick, didn’t you?”
“Oh, dear, no, I never know for sure. But I have been in this business for a long time. Long enough to have an instinctual feel for what looks good on whom.” She essayed an elegant shrug. “It didn’t hurt that Jenny walked in here without a hard-and-fast palette in mind. Sometimes a bride’s preferred colors and styles aren’t particularly bridesmaid-friendly.” She gathered the gowns. “You two don’t even need alterations, except for hemming. And if you bring your shoes in sometime this month we can get that done handily.”
Michelle left them to tag the dresses and start the paperwork, and Jenny turned to her and Harper. “Speaking of hemming, could I ask you both a favor?” she said. “Would you consider wearing flats or a really small heel with yo
ur dresses?”
“Sure,” Tasha promptly agreed.
Harper gave her an earnest smile. “Of course.”
“Aw, you guys are the best. There’s no getting around the fact that any way we cut it, I’m going to look like the Tacoma Dome between two skyscrapers. But if I put on my tallest heels and you two wear sandals, I’ll be a little less dwarfed.”
“Please,” Tasha scoffed. “There’s a big ole hole in your metaphor or whatever. Number one—you’re more in that gorgeous Seattle green-glass-domed building’s league than the Aroma Dome’s. Green-Glass might be smaller than its neighbors, but it more than holds its own among the surrounding skyscrapers. And two, you’ve got nothing, but nothing, to worry about.” Tasha pulled Jenny in for a quick hug. “You, my friend, are going to be the silky-haired beauty in the gorgeous wedding dress. Harper and I will be lucky if we’re spared so much as a glance on your wedding day. I bet if you ask Jake what Harper and I are wearing that day, he’ll be hard-pressed to tell you. And you know Jake knows his clothing.”
Jenny tilted her head against Tasha’s jaw. “Aw, this is one of the many reasons you’re my bestie.” Then she gave her a stern look. “But don’t think for a minute that I’ve forgotten what we were talking about before Michelle showed up with the gowns. Why don’t you want to be friends with Luc?”
Tasha pulled back and blew out a put-upon sigh. “Really?”
“Yeah, really,” Jenny said firmly even as Harper said, “Yes.”
“Okay, fine. I don’t want to be his friend because even though I believed him when he said he didn’t know about my arrest, he’s still linked to it, which makes him a constant reminder of those awful days in jail.”
“That was a long time ago,” Harper said.
She looked at the other woman. “Yes. It was. But have you ever spent time in a four-by-six dark-as-death room, with only a narrow cot and a bucket for a toilet?”
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