Blogger Bundle Volume I: Dear Author Selects Unusual Heroines

by Jo Leigh, Kathleen O'Reilly, Kay David

  “I overheard your conversation—part of it—and your feelings were obvious.”

  He shrugged casually. “We crossed swords over what men usually cross swords over.”

  “A woman?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Was it Wendy, the woman you were with the other night?”

  He looked into her eyes with a steady expression. “No” was all he said.

  Before she could probe any further, Raul turned the tables. “I answered your question, now you answer my mine. What happened to you right before I came to get you tonight? You seemed upset.”

  She reacted with a flinch of pain, then cleared the emotion from her face so quickly he could tell she’d done it a thousand times.

  “C’mon,” he said. “Turnabout’s fair play. I shared with you…”

  She took a long time to answer, then the words came out reluctantly; she had no other choice. “I had a call from the States,” she said finally. “It was my ex-husband. He’s getting remarried.”

  Raul didn’t expect to have a reaction, but it came, anyway. A moment’s disappointment, maybe, a curl of displeasure? He wasn’t sure what to call it, but it didn’t matter. Surely he didn’t care if she was still in love with her ex. “I’m sorry,” he said in a neutral voice.

  “There’s nothing to be sorry about. Those things happen. People move on.”

  “I’m sorry the news hurt you,” he found himself saying. “That’s what I meant.”

  She looked up at him, her eyes full of shadows, the hazel edging into a deeper green color. He got the feeling his words surprised her, but maybe that was because they’d surprised him.

  “We’ve been divorced for more than two years,” she said. “I expected him to have found someone before now.”

  “Why would you think that?” Raul met her gaze, turning so that he faced her fully. “I’d think he’d have a hard time.”

  She frowned. “What do you mean?”

  “You’re a very beautiful woman,” he answered before she could finish. “You’d be a hard act to follow.”

  “Thank you,” she said simply. “That’s a nice thing to say, but Todd didn’t see it that way.”

  “Then he was a fool.”

  Her gaze skittered away from his, then back before she spoke again. “I have my flaws.”

  “We all do.”

  Suddenly the urge came over him to kiss her. Not a simple touch of the lips, either, but a deep kiss that would make them both forget why they were here and what they were doing. The feeling was totally unexpected and caught him by surprise. Would her lips feel as soft as they looked? Would they taste as sweet as he imagined?

  With no further thought, he reached toward her, his fingers drawing a line down her cheek. Her skin was soft and smooth, but before he could pull her nearer, she stepped backward and out of reach, her expression remote, her voice cool.

  “I think it’s time to go back inside.”

  He wanted to disagree, but he couldn’t.

  She was right.

  THEY RETURNED to the party, and Emma found herself glad to be back in the light and confusion. Being outside with Raul had made her even more nervous than being in the middle of the crowd, especially after she’d read the intention in his black eyes. He’d wanted to kiss her, and for just one second, she’d wanted him to. The realization shocked her, but when she thought about it some more, she understood. He’d listened to her and wanted to know more about her. He cared. The unexpected knowledge made her heart thump with something that felt way too much like longing.

  When they stopped at the bar inside, Emma excused herself and made her way to the lounge. She had to have a bit of time alone or she’d never make it through the rest of the evening.

  The quiet moment wasn’t to be. Reina caught up with her just as she entered the powder room. They’d already exchanged a quick hello, and Reina had managed to let Emma know she didn’t approve of her date for the evening. Emma had tried to explain that it wasn’t a date, but Reina hadn’t bought the story.

  “Are you leaving soon?” Reina asked.

  “I hope so,” Emma replied. “I’ve enjoyed this about as much as I can stand.”

  “Let me take you.” Reina’s dark eyes met Emma’s. “I’ve got to go to your side of town, anyway, and we could talk on the way home—”

  Emma interrupted her. “Reina, I can’t abandon Raul. I know you don’t like the man, but he is my guest. I have to ride back with him.”

  “No, you don’t.”

  Emma stared at her curiously. “Are you that worried about this guy? Just because you heard some gossip?”

  “I don’t like the way he looks.” She threw a glance around the room. “And…”

  “And what?”

  A group of women, chattering like the parrots overhead, interrupted them as they swooped past and entered the lounge behind them. Reina pulled Emma to the side, out of their hearing and away from the traffic. “I’ve heard more,” she said mysteriously. “And I like it even less than what I heard before.”

  His compliments still ringing in her ears, his touch under the moonlight still fresh in her mind, Emma asked slowly, “What did you hear?”

  “I can’t tell you right now. I don’t want to risk being overheard, but it came from a reliable source. Very reliable.”

  Emma stared at her friend, then it clicked. “Did William Kelman tell you something?”

  Reina’s eyes widened. “How did you know it was him?”

  Emma explained the confrontation she’d heard between the two men. “There’s bad blood there,” she said. “Tell me what he said. Tell me now.”

  “He said Santos is a crook, that’s what he said!” Reina glanced over her shoulder. “But I don’t want to say more right now. Not here. Just call me when you get home, okay?”

  Feeling uneasy but having no other choice, Emma nodded unhappily. A moment later, as she reentered the open-air room, she spotted Raul. He was standing exactly where she’d left him, near the bar. With the crowd swirling around him in a tangle of noise and exuberance, he was all alone, and she studied his unguarded expression. Wearing expensively tailored clothes and holding a drink, he regarded the room with a certain amount of boredom. Behind the gaze, though, was a sharpness, a kind of on-guard attitude totally at odds with everyone else. He wasn’t there to party, he was there to work. Just like her.

  The knowledge startled her, but there was no mistaking it. She’d worn that same expression herself too many times. So what did he want? Why was he there? His conversation with Kelman was also puzzling. Something was going on there—he’d worked too hard to distract her, she realized now.

  Without any warning, she suddenly remembered her unlocked gate. She had no idea why she’d linked the two thoughts, but it frightened her, frightened her almost as much as her growing attraction to Raul.

  He must have felt her stare. Lifting his eyes to sweep the room, his gaze locked on hers a second later. Like a river current, the connection was swift and strong. It carried her away before she could begin to fight it.

  AS SHE CROSSED the floor to where he waited, Emma looked more worried and upset than she had when he’d picked her up earlier that evening. Despite her expression, in the press of overdressed and over-made-up women, her natural beauty drew his gaze and he felt a corresponding pull of attraction.

  He simply couldn’t figure her out; she was a mass of contradictions and filled him with the same. What he knew about her past didn’t jibe with the obviously smart and together woman approaching him now. And the feelings she produced in him were the exact opposite of the ones he needed if he was going to fulfill his goal. How could he let her get tangled up with Kelman when all he could think about was kissing her? Suddenly the crowd and the noise and the loud music were too much to bear.

  “Are you ready to go?” As she neared him, he put his drink on the bar and tilted his head toward the crowded room. “This is too crazy, even for me.”

  She hesita
ted for a second, then spoke over the din. “You read my mind.”

  A few minutes later, they were outside. The sidewalk was barely visible in the moonlight, the bamboo leaning over it, the cries of the caged monkeys and wild parrots taking over from the raucous rock and roll still pounding—but now more faintly—from inside the club. A cluster of white and purple orchids quivered in a nearby planter, their fragrance heavy and sensual in the velvet night. Raul found himself wondering how he would feel if he was here for a different reason. If he and Emma were actually on a date and he had no ulterior motives. Once, in a different time and place, he had been the kind of man who appreciated a setting like this.

  They reached his truck and Raul helped Emma into it. Moments later they were speeding down the highway. The colorful scenes they’d witnessed on the drive out were gone, swallowed by darkness. Light from a few homes glowed here and there, but for the most part, the road was black, the lack of electricity almost eerie. Raul glanced across the seat at Emma. She was facing the window, her eyes studying the night as if she could find the answers she needed.

  Neither of them spoke, and as the empty miles slipped by, Raul couldn’t help but wonder what she must have thought of the conversation she’d overheard between him and Kelman.

  His hands tightened on the steering wheel. What exactly had Kelman expected Raul to say when he’d confronted him? Hi, I’m here to shake the hand of the man who framed me and put me in prison for five years?

  His knuckles turning white in the darkness, Raul thought back to the woman who’d started it all. He’d had no idea who Denise was when they’d first met. The stunning brunette had come on to him in a bar, and he’d accepted what she’d offered, as would have any man. All he’d seen was a gorgeous woman. He’d had no idea she was living with anyone, much less with William Kelman. Sick of Kelman’s underhanded ways and tired of his overblown ego, she’d used Raul as an excuse. Within days of their meeting in the bar, she’d moved out of Kelman’s place and into a tiny apartment of her own.

  Kelman was well-known in Washington. He was flashy and obvious, and everyone knew he was with the DEA. Raul’s biggest mistake had been to start an affair with Denise, and it’d almost cost him his life. That’s what happens when you think with something other than your brain, Raul told himself now.

  Once William Kelman had found out what his lover had done, Raul’s life had quickly gone down the drain. He’d come home from a trip to the Bahamas, climbed into his car at the airport and started home. Before he’d gone a block, the red and blue lights of a police cruiser were flashing behind him. He’d pulled over and within seconds, a dozen other cops and five guys in windbreakers with “DEA” emblazoned on the pockets were surrounding him. One man in particular he’d never forget. He’d stood in the center of the road and smirked at Raul, a plastic bag of something powdery and white in his beefy hand.

  “And what might this be, Counselor?” He’d pulled the bag from Raul’s trunk, along with a .45. Neither had belonged to Raul and he’d had no idea where they’d come from. The man’s expression was unlike anything Raul had ever seen before, either. It’d taken him five years to figure it out, but finally he’d understood. It’d been gleeful, because he was paying off the devil. The agent was dirty, and Kelman had known. To get Kelman off his back, the agent had agreed to stage the stop, including the planting of the drugs and weapon.

  They’d handcuffed Raul and led him away. Two months later he was in a federal prison in Cumberland, Maryland. There was no parole at this level for drug violations. The half a kilo of cocaine and the gun had netted him a six-year sentence. The cocaine they’d “discovered” in his car later disappeared from the evidence room, but the sentence hadn’t. For five years and two months he’d wondered what had happened, then Denise Murphy had visited him and told him the truth.

  William Kelman had set them both up. She’d gotten out earlier only because they’d planted less in her apartment.

  William Kelman had stolen five years of Raul’s life, and now it was payback time. He would take what meant most to Kelman, and that was his money.

  The SUV had actually been stopped for a second before Raul realized he’d parked the car in front of Emma’s home without even being aware of it. She reached into her purse, removed her keys and looked over at him. Her face was in shadow. “Would you like to come in?” she asked.

  With thoughts of Denise floating around in his head, Raul hesitated. He’d wanted an invitation earlier, but now he realized it was out of character for Emma to ask him in. Then she moved and he saw her expression in the light of a nearby street lamp. She looked lonely, lonely and sad. Seeing that emotion on any other woman, he would have headed the other way. Reading it on Emma’s face, he had only one answer.

  “I’d like that very much.”

  ♥ Uploaded by Coral ♥

  CHAPTER SIX

  AS EMMA USHERED Raul into her living room, she realized too late that it looked exactly like what it was—a place for entertaining that was never used. The maid came every day to sweep and dust, but glancing around the tiny parlor, Emma suddenly felt embarrassed by the sterility. It held no photos, no mementos, nothing to indicate that she had lived there for two days, much less two years. For the first time since she’d come to Santa Cruz, she mentally compared her house to the home from which she’d been expelled. It had been a sanctuary where lemon-polished furniture rested on handmade rag rugs, and oils of her children gleamed from their places on the walls. The image brought a lump to her throat.

  Raul seemed to sense her discomfort. “Do you have a patio or garden where we can sit? The weather’s too nice to ignore.”

  Grateful for his perception, Emma led him toward the back of the house. They had to pass through the kitchen, which was messy, but at least it looked as though someone lived here. Stepping outside to the bricked patio, she held out her hand. “How’s this?”

  He smiled in the darkness. “Perfect.”

  She made her way to the chairs and table that perched on the edge of the patio. More hand-me-downs from the previous tenants. She pulled out a chair and Raul surveyed her yard. It was planted with a riot of tropical plants, and the night air was filled with their fragrance.

  He stood for a moment in silence, then breathed in deeply as she watched, tilting his head to take in the stars overhead. It was the gesture of a man who’d been inside too long, and Leon’s words shot into her head.

  A moment later, Raul stepped to where she sat, taking one of the chairs and moving it closer to hers. Over the scent of the flowers, she caught a suggestion of spice, an aftershave lotion, she realized a moment later. How long had it been since she’d noticed anything like that?

  All at once, she regretted her invitation. It’d been crazy. Impulsive. Totally foreign to her usual behavior. What had she been thinking?

  He started to sit down, then stopped. “Damn! I can’t believe I forgot,” he said, snapping his fingers. “I brought you a little something, but I left it in the truck. I’ll be right back.”

  Emma watched him disappear into the house only to return a few minutes later. He held out a bulky newspaper. “A friend came in last night from the States. I asked him to pick this up for you.”

  Mystified, Emma took the paper and unrolled it. She couldn’t believe her eyes as she took in the banner at the top. “The Times Picayune! Oh, my God, how great!”

  “I thought you might enjoy it. News from home is always nice.”

  She shook her head with delight. “You don’t know,” she said. “It’s been months since I saw one and this is yesterday’s, too!” Impulsively she hugged him, then drew back quickly. “Thank you very much. I’ll read it from cover to cover!”

  He looked pleased by her reaction, a slow smile spreading across his face. Something warm and unexpected rolled down her spine. Trying her best to ignore the feeling, Emma folded the paper carefully and put it to one side of the table.

  He tapped the paper. “Tell me about your home there�
��about yourself.”

  “You know all there is to know,” she said lightly. “I’m divorced, I’ve lived here two years, I’m a banker. That’s it.”

  “That’s not who you are,” he said. “It’s what’s happened to you and where you live, what you do for a living, but it’s not you.”

  When she didn’t answer right away, he prompted her. “Tell me what you do in your free time, what you like to read. How you became a banker.”

  “You don’t really want to know all that stuff, do you? It’s terminally boring, believe me.”

  She couldn’t really see him, but she sensed his movement as he leaned closer to her. “I wouldn’t have asked if I didn’t want to know.”

  His interest was too much. It felt incredible to have someone this intrigued by her, yet how could she answer? She stood up abruptly and moved away from the table toward one of the hibiscus plants. Plucking one of the blossoms, she knew she had to say something, but she didn’t know what.

  His voice floated to her on the humid night air. It was closer than she would have expected, and turning, she saw that he’d followed her to the edge of the patio.

  “What are you so afraid of?” he asked quietly.

  She swallowed hard. “What makes you think I’m afraid of something?”

  “You avoid saying anything about yourself unless I insist, and every time I get close to you—one way or another—you run.”

  In the dim light of an overhead street lamp she saw him raise his hand. Dreamlike, it came toward her face, and with the back of one finger, he brushed her cheek, an echo of his touch earlier that evening. The caress was so soft she could barely feel it.

  “If I didn’t know better, I’d think you were frightened of me.”

  “That’s ridiculous. Why on earth would you frighten me?” She sounded brave on the outside, but inside, she was trembling. Her skin tingled from the simple heated contact.

  He leaned a little closer, and for one panicky second, she thought he was going to kiss her. And she didn’t want to move away, either, she realized.