Back in Black

by Lori Foster

  “Are you sure you want us to go?” Her mom looked uncertain.

  “Yes, I’m sure. Megan will stay with me, right?”

  “Of course I will.”

  “See, I’ll be fine.”

  “Of course you will . . . in time.” Gram patted her hand again. “A year or two should do it.”

  When they finally left, Megan looked at her with concern. “Are you okay?”

  “Not yet. But after a few mojitos I will be. Now please help me get out of this damn dress!”

  FAITH woke with a hammering headache and the sound of intense roaring in her ears. Her eyelids didn’t seem to want to open but she was able to sneak a peek through a narrow slit. The limited view was not enough to tell her where she was.

  “This is your captain speaking. We’ll be landing in Naples in about an hour.”

  Her eyes flew open.

  “The flight attendants will be going through the cabin . . .”

  Faith didn’t pay attention to the rest of the announcement as the events of the day and night before came rushing back. Left at the altar. Humiliated, brokenhearted, angry. She and Megan downing several mojitos at a neighborhood bar before heading to Faith’s Streeterville condo only to trip over Faith’s suitcases just inside the door. A matched set of luggage packed with carefully chosen outfits for her dream honeymoon to the Amalfi coast in Italy.

  Alan had wanted them to spend their honeymoon elephant riding in India because his boss at the bank had done that and raved about it. Personally, Faith was not that fond of pachyderms. Had he left her because of that? Because she didn’t want to boogie with the elephants?

  It wasn’t like her choice was dull or boring. Who didn’t like sunny Italy? Faith had longed to go to the Amalfi coast ever since she’d seen the movie Under the Tuscan Sun and watched Diane Lane swept off her feet in the beautiful town of Positano.

  She distinctly remembered shouting at her living room wall the night before. “Alan ruined my wedding, but he’s not going to ruin this, too! I refuse to allow him to mess up any more of my life! I’ll show you exciting and adventurous! I’m going to Italy! Solo! Solo Mio!”

  Faith spent the last two years trying to please Alan. This trip was one of the few times she’d stood her ground and refused to back down. Once he didn’t get his way, Alan had completely lost interest and told her to handle all the arrangements. Gladly, she had—which was why she had possession of the nonrefundable tickets and the rest of the travel reservations.

  Megan had been supportive as always. “Go for it! I’d come with you but I can’t get away from work right now.”

  Sitting on the plane, Faith felt as if she’d just woken up from a long, drugged sleep. Unlike Sleeping Beauty, she hadn’t been brought back to life by a kiss from a handsome prince. Instead she’d been brought back to reality by the handsome prince screwing her over.

  The ironic thing was that Faith was usually a worst-case-scenario specialist, always prepared in case things went wrong. One of her dad’s favorite mottoes, which she’d imbibed, was “Expect the worst, and if it doesn’t happen, you’ll be pleasantly surprised.” Her relationship with Alan was the one time she’d allowed herself to believe . . . and look what happened.

  She ended up on a flight to Italy. Alone. Her first solo trip ever. But it was better than moping in her condo crying her eyes out. She’d taken action. She’d left the mayhem behind in Chicago, calling her dad and telling him she was fleeing the country.

  There was no time to reflect further on her actions as the flight attendants prepared for their landing. Her arrival in Naples went smoothly as she cleared customs with no problem. Two aspirins and a bottle of Pellegrino water took care of the headache. Her rental car was ready . . . and so was she.

  She was ready, right? She wasn’t going to let fear hold her back, right? She could do this. She would do this.

  Faith plugged her iPod into the sound system and moments later the Gnarls Barkley song “Crazy” blared out of the sporty little red Italian convertible’s speakers. She’d had to put her smaller suitcase in the passenger seat next to her since it didn’t fit anywhere else.

  The instant she hit the road, all the other drivers seemed determined to hit her. She refused to let them. She’d handled rush-hour traffic in Vegas, not to mention on the Kennedy Expressway in Chicago during construction season. The crazy Italian drivers didn’t scare her. Being alone on her honeymoon scared her if she thought about it. So she refused to think about it and instead stepped on the gas, cranked up the sound system, and sang along with her favorite Bon Jovi CD, Lost Highway.

  CAINE Hunter had his instructions. Keep an eye on Faith West, keep track of her actions, and report them back to Chicago. He knew a lot about her already—children’s librarian, jilted bride, handy with a gun. Her team from the library in Las Vegas where she’d worked two years ago had come in second place in the city’s Corporate Challenge, an event where organizations compete in various sporting events. She’d aced the shooting event.

  Caine was only mildly impressed. She still seemed liked a spoiled little rich girl to him, with her fancy wedding in one of the most prestigious churches in Chicago, a fancy banker fiancé, and a condo in Chicago’s trendiest Streeterville neighborhood. Not that the wedding or the fiancé had panned out for her in the end. Too bad, so sad.

  No one had ever accused him of being the sentimental type.

  He’d say this for Faith West, she didn’t drive like a librarian . . . more like race car driver Danica Patrick. Driving in Italy, especially around Naples, was not for wimps.

  Yet here she was, weaving in and out of traffic, music blaring. Was she really that reckless or just plain stupid? Hard to tell at this point, but Caine aimed on finding that out . . . among other things.

  FAITH’S knuckles were permanently white by the time she reached the small town of Positano. The infamous “road of a thousand curves” on which she’d been traveling clung precariously to the steep cliffs and was narrower than her parents’ driveway at home. That didn’t stop huge tour buses from barreling around the blind curves, hogging the entire road, and making her fear for her life and her sanity.

  But she’d done it. She’d made it here. Alive. In one piece. Jane Austen would be so proud.

  “Welcome to the Majestic Hotel, Mrs. Anderson.” Huge terra-cotta urns filled with flowers bracketed the reception desk adorned with colorful majolica tiles. The lobby, with its antiques and artwork, was a study of understated elegance. “We have the honeymoon suite all ready for you and your husband.”

  Her stomach clenched. This was no honeymoon and she had no husband. But she did have sunshine, breathtaking views, and the scent of citrus blossoms in the air. “It’s Ms. West. Faith West. Not Mrs. Anything. I called ahead to explain the change . . .”

  “Oh, yes, I see the note here. I’m sorry for the confusion, Ms. West. If you could show me your passport, please.” The concierge raised his hand and a uniformed bellman immediately appeared with her luggage. “Paco will take you to your room.”

  She’d spent hours during the past winter poring over guidebooks and surfing websites trying to decide where to stay—the Grand Hotel in Sorrento or the Capri Palace Hotel on the island of Capri? But Positano had held her under its spell and, while she planned on visiting both Sorrento and Capri during her stay, this was her ultimate destination. The room didn’t disappoint, with its private terrace displaying a colorful bougainvillea-framed view of the pastel sunlit town hugging the rugged cliffs that plunged down to the blue waves of the Mediterranean.

  John Steinbeck was right. This place was a “dream.”

  The dream was interrupted by the sound of her stomach growling. She needed to eat something and fast. The hotel dining room was serving for another hour, Paco the bellman informed her in a sexy Italian accent, his liquid brown eyes gazing at her with Latin approval.

  Faith was starving. But not for male attention. She handed Paco his tip and showed him the door.

 
She barely had time for a fast bathroom stop, where she looked at the thick towels and large tub longingly before hurrying down to eat. Knowing that nearby Naples was the birthplace of pizza, she quickly ordered a pizza margherita.

  And waited. And waited. Other diners were seated on the sunny terrace dining area. Two guys in particular made a point of staring at her sitting all alone. She wasn’t pleased to see their food arrive before hers. They hadn’t even ordered Italian, but steak and fries. The skinnier of the two men gave her a leering look. He poured ketchup onto his plate and then dipped a fry into it, holding it up and taunting her with it before he chomped into it with gusto.

  Normally Faith would have looked away and ignored him, but she wasn’t feeling very generous toward the opposite sex at the moment.

  Faith gave the man her best withering librarian look.

  He responded by smacking his lips at her.

  She made an Ew, yuck face.

  He dipped another fry in the ketchup and waved it at her before sucking it into his mouth in one go. An instant later the man grabbed his throat and started turning red then blue.

  Before she could react, another man smoothly moved past her and gave the choking man the Heimlich.

  Faith sank into her chair. She felt guilty that while trying to impress her, the idiot had ended up choking and nearly killing himself. Was there some kind of Italian curse that was reserved for brides who came to the Amalfi coast without their grooms?

  Then all thought went out of her head as she got her first good look at the rescuer. Dark hair, dark eyes, stubble-darkened cheeks and chin. A dark knight. A man meant to get a woman’s juices flowing.

  He stopped at her table and stared down at her before saying with amusement, “I’ll say this, you sure know how to make an impression on a guy.”

  And now a special excerpt from

  Something About You

  by Julie James

  Coming from Berkley Sensation

  in March 2010!

  THIRTY thousand hotel rooms in the city of Chicago, and Cameron Lynde managed to find one next door to a couple having a sex marathon.

  “Yes! Oh yes! YES!”

  Cameron pulled the pillow over her head, thinking—as she had been thinking for the past hour and a half—that it had to end sometime. It was after three o’clock in the morning, and while she certainly had nothing against a good round of raucous hotel sex, this particular round had gone beyond raucous and into the ridiculous about fourteen “oh-God-oh-God-oh-Gods” ago. More importantly, even with the discounted rate they gave federal employees, overnights at the Peninsula Hotel weren’t typically within the monthly budget of an assistant U.S. attorney, and she was starting to get seriously P.O.’ed that she couldn’t get a little peace and quiet.

  Bam! Bam! Bam! The wall behind the king-size bed shook with enough force to rattle her headboard, and Cameron cursed the hardwood floors that had brought her to such circumstances.

  Earlier in the week, when the contractor had told her that she would need to stay off her refinished floors for twenty-four hours, she had decided to treat herself to some much-needed pampering. Just last week she had finished a grueling three-month racketeering trial against eleven defendants charged with various organized criminal activities including seven murders and three attempted murders. The trial had been mentally exhausting for everyone involved, particularly her and the other assistant U.S. attorney who had prosecuted the case. So when she’d learned that she needed to be out of her house while the floors dried, she had seized on the opportunity and turned it into a weekend getaway.

  Maybe other people would have gone somewhere more distant or exotic than a hotel three miles from home, but all Cameron had cared about was getting an incredibly overpriced but fantastically rejuvenating massage, followed by a tranquil night of R&R, and then a brunch buffet in the morning (again incredibly overpriced) where she could stuff herself to the point where she remembered why she made it a general habit to stay away from brunch buffets. And the perfect place for that was the Peninsula Hotel.

  Or so she had thought.

  “Such a big, bad man! Right there, oh yeah—right there, don’t stop!”

  The pillow over her head did nothing to drown out the woman’s voice. Cameron closed her eyes in a silent plea. Dear Mr. Big and Bad: Whatever the hell you’re doing, don’t you move from that spot until you get the job done. She hadn’t prayed so hard for an orgasm since the first—and last—time she’d slept with Jim, the corporate wine buyer/artist who wanted to “find his way” but who didn’t seem to have a clue how to find his way around the key parts of the female body.

  The moaning that had started around 1:30 A.M. was what had woken her up. In her groggy state, her first thought had been that someone in the room next door was sick. But quickly following those moans had been a second person’s moans, and then came the panting and the wall-banging and the hollering and then that part that sounded suspiciously like a butt cheek being spanked, and somewhere around that point she had clued into the true goings-on of room 1308.

  WhaMA-WhaMA-WhaMA-WhaMA-WhaMA-WhaMA ...

  The bed in the room next door increased its tempo against the wall, and the squeaking of the mattress reached a new, feverish pitch. Despite her annoyance, Cameron had to give the guy credit, whoever he was, for having some serious staying power. Perhaps it was one of those Viagra situations, she mused. She had heard somewhere that one little pill could get a man up and running for more than four hours.

  She yanked the pillow off her head and peered through the darkness at the clock on the nightstand next to the bed. 3:17. If she had to endure another two hours and fifteen minutes of this stuff, she just might have to kill someone—starting with the front desk clerk who had put her in this room in the first place. Weren’t hotels supposed to skip the thirteenth floor, anyway? Right now she was wishing she was a more superstitious person and had asked to be assigned another room.

  In fact, right now she was wishing she’d never come up with the whole weekend getaway idea and instead had just spent the night at Collin’s or Amy’s. At least then she’d be asleep instead of listening to the cacophonous symphony of grunting and squealing—oh yes, the girl was actually squealing now—that was the current soundtrack of her life. Plus, Collin made a mean cheddar-and-tomato egg-white omelet that, while likely not quite the equivalent of the delicacies one might find at the Peninsula Hotel buffet, would’ve reminded her why she’d made it a general habit to let him do all the cooking when the three of them lived together their senior year of college.

  Wheewammawamma-BAM! Wheewammawamma-BAM!

  Cameron sat up in bed and looked at the phone on the nightstand. She didn’t want to be that kind of guest that complained about every little blemish in the hotel’s five-star service. But the noise from the room next door had been going on for a long time now and at a certain point, she felt as though she was entitled to some sleep in her nearly four-hundred-dollar-per-night room. The only reason the hotel hadn’t already received complaints, Cameron guessed, was due to the fact that 1308 was a corner room with no one on the other side.

  She was just about to pick up the phone to call the front desk when, suddenly, she heard the man next door call out the glorious sounds of her salvation.

  Smack! Smack!

  “Oh shit, I’m cooommmminnggg!”

  A loud groan. And then—

  Blessed silence. Finally.

  Cameron fell back onto the bed. Thank you, thank you, Peninsula Hotel gods, for granting me this tiny reprieve.

  I shall never again call your massages incredibly overpriced. Even if we all know it doesn’t cost $195 to rub lotion on someone’s back. Just saying.

  She crawled under the covers and pulled the cream-colored king-size down duvet up to her chin. Her head sank into the pillows and she lay there for a few minutes as she began to drift off. Then she heard another noise next door—the sound of a door shutting.

  Cameron tensed.

 
And then—

  Nothing.

  All remained blissfully still and silent, and her final thought before she fell asleep was on the significance of the sound of the door shutting.

  She had a sneaking suspicion that somebody had just received a five-star booty call.

  BAM!

  Cameron shot up in bed, the sound from next door waking her right out of her sleep. She heard muffled squealing and the bed shook against the wall again—harder and louder than ever—as if its occupants were really going at it this time.

  She looked at the clock. 4:08. She’d been given a whopping thirty-minute reprieve.

  Not wasting another moment—frankly, she’d already given these jokers far too much of her valuable sleep time—she reached over and turned on the lamp next to the bed. She blinked as her eyes adjusted to the sudden burst of light. Then she grabbed the phone off the nightstand and dialed.

  After one ring, a man answered pleasantly on the other end. “Good evening, Ms. Lynde. Thank you for calling Guest Services—how may we be of assistance?”

  Cameron cleared her throat, her voice still hoarse as her words tumbled out. “Look—I don’t want to be a jerk about this, but you guys have got to do something about the people in room 1308. They keep banging against the wall; there’s been all sorts of moaning and shouting and spanking and it’s been going on for, like, the last two hours. I’ve barely slept this entire night, and it sounds like they’re gearing up for round twenty or whatever, which is great for them but not so much for me, and I’m kind of at the point where enough is enough, you know?”

  The voice on the other end was wholly unfazed, as if Guest Services at the Peninsula Hotel handled the fallout from five-star booty calls all the time.

  “Of course, Ms. Lynde. I apologize for the inconvenience. I’ll send up security to take care of the problem right away.”

  “Thanks,” Cameron grumbled, not yet willing to be pacified that easily. She planned to speak to the manager in the morning, but for now all she wanted was a quiet room and some sleep.