by Diana Palmer
“Yeah, and look what I got, S—mmmmffg.” Kurt’s “Sis” was cut off in midstream by Janine’s hand across his mouth.
She grinned at him. “That’s fine, son,” she emphasized, her eyes daring him to contradict her. “You know, you shouldn’t really scare your poor old mother this way,” she added, in case he hadn’t gotten the point.
Kurt was intrigued. Obviously his big sister wanted this rather formidable-looking man to think he was her son. Okay. He could go along with a gag. Just in case, he stared at Karie until she got the idea, too, and nodded to let him know that she understood.
“I’m sorry…Mom,” Kurt added with an apologetic smile. “But Karie and I were having so much fun, we just forgot the time. And then when we tried to get back, neither of us knew any Spanish, so we couldn’t call a cab. We had to find someone who spoke English to get us a cab.”
“All the cabdrivers speak enough English to get by,” Karie’s father said coldly.
“We didn’t know that, Dad,” Karie defended. “This is my friend Kurt. He lives next door.”
Karie’s dad didn’t seem very impressed with Kurt, either. He stared at his daughter. “I have to stop Josñae before he gets the police out here on a wild-goose chase. And then we have to leave,” he told her. “We’re having dinner with the Elligers and their daughter.”
“Oh, gosh, not them again,” she groaned. “Missy wants to marry you.”
“Karie,” he said warningly.
She sighed. “Oh, all right. Kurt, I guess I’ll see you tomorrow.”
“Sure thing, Karie.”
“Maybe we can find that garden hose,” she added in a conspiratorial tone.
He brightened. “Great idea!”
“What the hell do you want with a hose?” Karie’s father asked as they walked back up the beach, totally ignoring the two people he’d just left.
“Whew!” Kurt huffed. “Gosh, he’s scary!”
“No, he isn’t,” Janine said irritably. “He’s just pompous and irritating! And he thinks he’s an emperor or something. I told him we lived in a commune and you’re my son and I don’t know who your father is. Don’t you tell him any differently,” she added when he tried to speak. “I want to live down to his image of me!”
He chuckled. “Boy, are you mad,” he said. “You don’t have fights with anybody.”
“Wait,” she promised, glaring after the man.
“He reminds me of somebody,” he said.
“Probably the devil,” she muttered. “I hear he’s got blue eyes. Somebody wrote a song about it a few years ago.”
“No,” he mumbled, still thinking. “Didn’t he seem familiar to you?”
“Yes, he did,” she admitted. “I don’t know why. I’ve never seen him before.”
“Are you kidding? You don’t know who he is? Haven’t you recognized him? He’s famous enough as he is. But just think, Janie, think if he had gray makeup on.”
“He could pass for a sand crab,” she muttered absently.
“That’s not what I meant,” he muttered. “Listen, they call this guy Mr. Software. Good grief, don’t you ever read the newspapers or watch the news?”
“No. It depresses me,” she said, glowering.
He sighed. “Mr. Software just lost everything. For the past year, he’s been involved in a lawsuit to prevent a merger that would have saved his empire. He just lost the suit, and a fortune with it. Now he can’t merge his software company with a major computer chain. He’s down here avoiding the media so he can get himself back together before he starts over again. He’s already promised his stockholders that he’ll recoup every penny he lost. I bet he will, too. He’s a tiger.”
She scowled. “He, who?”
“Him. Canton Rourke,” he emphasized. “Third generation American, grandson of Irish immigrants. His mother was Spanish, can’t you tell it in his bearing? He made billions designing and selling computer programs, and now he’s moving into computer production. The company he was trying to acquire made the computer you use. And the software word processing program you use was one he designed himself.”
“That’s Canton Rourke?” she asked, turning to stare at the already dim figure in the distance. “I thought he was much older than that.”
“He’s old enough, I guess. He’s divorced. Karie said her mother ran for the hills when it looked like he was going to risk everything in that merger attempt. She likes jewelry and real estate and high living. She found herself another rich man and remarried within a month of the divorce becoming final. She moved to Greece. Just as well, probably. Her parents were never together, anyway. He was always working on a program and her mother was at some party, living it up. What a mismatch!”
“I guess so.” She shook her head. “He didn’t look like a billionaire.”
“He isn’t, now. All he has is his savings, from what they say on TV, and that’s not a whole lot.”
“That sort of man will make it all back,” she said thoughtfully. “Workaholics make money because they love to work. Most of them don’t care much about the money, though. That’s just how they keep score.”
His eyes narrowed. “You still haven’t guessed why he looks familiar.”
She turned and scowled at him. “You said something about gray makeup?”
“Sure. Think,” he added impatiently. “Those eyes. That deep, smooth voice. Where do you hear them every fourth or fifth week?”
“On the news?”
He chuckled. “Only if they had aliens doing it.”
His rambling was beginning to make sense. Every fourth or fifth week, there was a guest star on her favorite science fiction show. Her heartbeat increased alarmingly. Her breath caught in her throat. She put a hand there, to make sure she was still breathing.
“Oh, no.” She shook her head. She smiled nervously. “No, he doesn’t look like him!”
“He most certainly does,” Kurt said confidently. “Same height, build, eyes, bone structure, even the same deep sort of voice.” He nodded contemplatively. “What a coincidence, huh? We came here to Mexico to get you away from the television so you could write without being distracted by your favorite villain. And his doppelgñuanger turns up here on the beach!”
Chapter Two
“I don’t like having you around that boy,” Canton told his daughter when they were back in their beach house. “His mother is a flake.”
Karie had to bite her tongue to keep from blurting out the truth. Obviously the Curtis duo didn’t want it known that they were little brother and big sister, not son and mother. Karie would keep her new friend’s secret, but it wasn’t going to be easy.
Her eyes went to the new hardcover murder mystery on the coffee table. There was a neat brown leather bookmark holding Canton’s place in it. On the cover in huge red block letters were the title, “CATACOMB,” and the author’s name—Diane Woody.
There was a photo in the back of the book, on the slick jacket, but it was of a woman with long hair and dark glasses wearing a hat with a big brim. It didn’t even look like their neighbor. But it was. Karie knew because Kurt had told her, with some pride, who his sister was. She was thrilled to know, even secondhand, a big-time mystery writer like Diane Woody. Her father was one of the biggest fans of the bestselling mystery author, but he wouldn’t recognize her from that book jacket. Maybe it was a good thing. Apparently she didn’t want to be recognized.
“Kurt’s nice,” she told her father. “He’s twelve. He likes people. He’s honest and kind. And Janine’s nice, too.”
His eyebrows lifted as he glanced at her over his shoulder. “Janine?” he murmured, involuntarily liking the sound of the name on his lips.
“His…mother.”
“You learned all that about him in one day?”
She shrugged. “Actions speak louder than words, isn’t that what you always say?”
His face softened, just a little. He loved his daughter. “Just don’t go wandering off with him again, okay?”
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“Okay.”
“And don’t go to his home,” he added through his teeth. “Because even if he can’t help what he’s got for a mother, I don’t want you associating with her. Is that clear?”
“Oh, yes, sir!”
“Good. Get dressed. We don’t have much time.”
In the days that followed, Kurt and Karie were inseparable. Karie, as usual, agreed with whatever her father told her to do and then did what she pleased. He was so busy trying to regroup that he usually forgot his orders five minutes after he gave them, anyway.
So Karie and Kurt concocted their “sea serpent,” piece by painstaking piece, concealing it under the Rourke beach house for safety. Meanwhile, they watched World War III develop between their respective relatives.
The first salvo came suddenly and without warning. Kurt had gone out to play baseball with Karie. This was something new for him. His parents were studious and bookwormish, not athletic. And even though Janine was more than willing to share the occasional game of ball toss, she wasn’t a baseball fanatic. Kurt had grown to his present age without much tutoring in sports, except what he played at the private school where his parents sent him. And that was precious little, because the owners were too wary of lawsuits to let the children do much rough-and-tumble stuff.
Karie had no hang-ups at all about playing tackle football on the beach or smacking a hardball with her regulation bat. She gave the bat to Kurt and told him to do his best. Unfortunately, he did, on the very first try.
Canton Rourke came storming up onto the porch of the beach house and right onto the open patio without a knock. Janine, lost in the fifth chapter of her new book, was so foggy that she saw him without really seeing him. She was in the middle of a chase scene, locked into character and time and place, totally mindless and floating in the computer screen. She stared at him blankly.
He looked furious. The blue eyes under that jutting brow were blazing from his lean face. He had a hardball in one hand. He stuck it under her nose.
“It’s a baseball,” she said helpfully.
“I know what the damned thing is,” he said in a tone that would have affected her if she hadn’t been deep in concentration. “I just picked it up off my living-room floor. It went through the bay window.”
“You shouldn’t let the kids play baseball in the house,” she instructed.
“They weren’t playing in the damned house! Your son slammed it through the window!”
Her eyebrows rose. Things were beginning to focus in the real world. Her mind lost the last thread of connection with her plot. Before she lost her bearings too far, she saved the file before she swung her chair back to face her angry neighbor.
“Nonsense,” she said. “Kurt doesn’t have a baseball. Come to think of it, I don’t think he knows how to use a bat, either.”
He threw the ball up and caught it, deliberately.
“All right, what do you want me to do about it?” she asked wearily.
“I want you to teach him not to hit balls through people’s windows,” he said shortly. “It’s a damned nuisance trying to find a glass company down here, especially one that can get a repair done quickly.”
“Put some plastic over the hole with tape,” she suggested.
“Your son did the damage,” he continued with a mocking smile. “The repair is going to be up to you, not me.”
“Me?”
“You.” He put the ball down firmly on her desk, noticing the computer and printer for the first time. His eyes narrowed. “What are you doing?”
“I’m writing a bestselling novel,” she said honestly.
He laughed without humor. “Sure.”
“It’s going to be great,” she continued with building anger. “It’s all about a—”
He held up a big, lean hand. “Spare me,” he said. “I don’t really want to hear the sordid details. No doubt you can draw plenty of material from your years in the commune.”
“Why, yes, I can,” she agreed with a vacant smile. “But I was going to say that this book is about a pompous businessman with delusions of grandeur.”
His eyebrows lifted. “How interesting.” He stuck his hands into his pockets and she fought a growing attraction to him. He really did have an extraordinary build for a man his age, which looked to be late thirties. He was lean and muscular and sensuous. He didn’t have a male-model sort of look, but there was something in the very set of his head, in the way he looked at her, that made her knees go weak.
His eye had been caught by an autographed photo peering out from under her mousepad. She’d hidden it there so that Kurt wouldn’t see it and tease her about her infatuation with her television hero. Sadly when she’d moved the mouse to save her file, she’d shifted the pad and revealed the photo.
His lean hand reached out and tugged at the corner. He didn’t wear jewelry of any kind, she noticed, and his fingernails were neatly trimmed and immaculate. He had beautiful hands, lightly tanned and strong.
“I like to watch the television series he’s in,” she said defensively, because he was staring intently at the photo.
His gaze lifted and he laughed softly. “Do you?” He handed it back and in the process, leaned close to her. “It’s one of my favorite shows, too,” he said, his voice dropping an octave, soft and deep and sensuous. “But this is the villain, you know, not the hero.”
She cleared her throat. He was close enough to make her uncomfortable. “So what?”
“He looks familiar, doesn’t he?” he murmured dryly.
She glared up at him. He really was far too close. Her heart skipped. “Does he?” she asked. Her voice sounded absolutely squeaky.
He stood up again, his hands back in his pockets, his smile so damned arrogant and knowing that she could have kicked him.
“Don’t you have a business empire to save or something?” she asked irritably.
“I suppose so. You can’t get that show down here, at least not in English,” he added.
“Yes. I know. That was the whole purpose of coming here,” she murmured absently.
“Ah, I see. Drying out, are we?”
She stood up. “You listen here…!”
He chuckled. “I have things to do. You’ll see to the window, of course.”
She took a steadying breath. “Of course.”
His eyes slid up and down her slender body with more than a little interest. “Odd.”
“What?”
“Do you mind if I test a theory?”
Her eyes were wary. “What sort of theory?”
He took his hands out of his pockets and moved close, very deliberately, his eyes staring straight into hers the whole while. When he was right up against her, almost touching her, he stopped. His hands remained at his side. He never touched her. But his eyes, his beautiful blue eyes, stared right down into hers and suddenly slipped to her mouth, tracing it with such sensuality that her lips parted on a shaky breath.
He moved again. His chest was touching her breasts now. She could smell the clean, sexy scent he wore. She could feel his warm, coffee-scented breath on her mouth as he breathed.
“How old are you?” he asked in a deep, sultry tone.
“Twenty-four,” she said in a strangled voice.
“Twenty-four.” He bent his head, so that his mouth was poised just above hers, tantalizing but not invasive, not aggressive at all. His breath made little patterns on her parted lips. “And you’ve had more than a handful of lovers?”
She wasn’t listening. Her eyes were on his mouth. It looked firm and hard and very capable. She wondered how it tasted. She wondered. She wished. She…wanted!
“Janine.”
The sound of her voice on his lips brought her wide, curious eyes up to meet his. They looked stunned, mesmerized.
His own eyes crinkled, as if he were smiling. All she saw was the warmth in them.
“If you’re the mother of a twelve-year-old,” he whispered deeply, “I’m a cactus plant.”
He lifted his head, gave her an amused, indulgent smile, turned and walked away without a single word or a backward glance, leaving her holding the ball. In more ways than one.
She got the glass fixed. It wasn’t easy, but she managed. However, she did dare Kurt to pick up a bat again.
“You don’t like him, do you?” he queried the day after the glass was repaired. “Why not? He seems to be good to Karie, and he isn’t exactly Mr. Nasty to me, either.”
She moved restlessly. “I’m trying to work,” she said evasively. She didn’t like to remember her last encounter with their neighbor. Weakness was dangerous around that tiger.
“He’s gone to California,” Kurt added.
Her fingers jumped on the keyboard, scattering letters across the screen. “Oh. Has he?”
“He’s going to talk to some people in Silicon Valley. I’ll bet he’ll make it right back to where he was before he’s through. His wife is going to be real sorry that she ran out on him when he lost it all.”
“No foresight,” she agreed. She saved the file. There was no sense working while Kurt was chattering away. She got up and stretched, moving to the patio window. She paused there, staring curiously. Karie was sitting on the beach on a towel. Nearby, a man stood watching her; a very dark man with sunglasses on and a suspicious look about him.
“Who’s that? Have you seen him before?” she asked Kurt.
He glanced out. “Yes. He was out there yesterday.”
“Who’s watching Karie while her father’s gone?”
“I think there’s a housekeeper who cooks for them,” he said. “He’s only away for the day, though.”
“That’s long enough for a kidnapper,” she said quietly. “He was very wealthy. Maybe someone wouldn’t know that, would make a try for Karie.”
“You mystery writers,” Kurt scoffed, “always looking on the dark side.”
“Dark side or not, he isn’t hurting Karie while I’m around!” She went right out the patio door and down the steps.
She walked toward the man. He saw her coming, and stepped back, looking as if he wasn’t sure what to do.