A Matter of Circumstance

by Heather Graham

  He gave himself a shake, took both Maria’s hands, smiled and placed them back by her sides. “Chica, I walk here by a slender thread already. You want your cousin to kill me for your honor?”

  “Julio?” She sniffed indelicately. “If Julio were a real man we would not be in this fix. He would have taken the right man, not some puta.”

  “Maria! Bring the food!” Roberto ordered from above.

  She grimaced, but decided not to disobey the order. It seemed that everyone knew Roberto had a streak of meanness in him.

  Maria disappeared above deck. Sean reached beneath the cabinet and started gathering up supplies with one hand while he reached across to the radio with the other, keeping his eyes trained on the ladder and the hatch above it.

  At first he could get nothing. He had to forget the supplies and give his entire attention to the ancient radio. Finally a voice came in—and to Sean’s vast relief and amazement he realized that he’d reached the Coast Guard.

  Quietly he tried to give his location and discovered with little surprise that search parties had been out since they disappeared. He warned the voice over the radio that he might have to cut out quickly. He advised the man as to the number of kidnappers and said that Juan would be coming back in to make their demands, then assured the man that the senator’s wife was fine.

  He was surprised by the silence that followed.

  “Lieutenant Ramiro, the senator’s wife has been dead over a year.”

  “What?” Sean shouted, then realized what he had done. He lowered his voice quickly. “She’s here, with me. They nabbed her, and I came after her!”

  “Oh, you’ve got a Mrs. Blayne all right, but she’s not his wife. She’s his son’s widow. But he’s tearing his heart out over her just the same. Just keep calm, lieutenant. It may take us some time to find you.”

  “I am calm,” Sean retorted dryly. “I’m a ten-year vet with the force. Don’t you come barging in. Garcia is as nervous as a cat.”

  “We’ll tell the FBI. You keep a lookout. You’re out of the U.S., but I’m sure they’ll get complete cooperation from the Bahamian authorities. We’ll advise the senator that his daughter-in-law is doing—”

  Sean heard Roberto yelling at Maria as he approached the ladder. He flicked the radio off and turned back to stacking cans.

  “That’s enough!” Roberto snapped, holding his gun on Sean. Sean knew that Roberto didn’t trust him. The man just wasn’t the trusting sort. They were a strange alliance, Roberto and Julio. Julio the idealist; Roberto the thug.

  Sean stood up, shrugging. Roberto waved the gun at him. “Go up. The boat is back.”

  Sean obediently went up to the deck. Juan was back with the dinghy, and Maria was handing the supplies over the rail to him.

  “I’ll help,” Sean told her.

  “Gracias, Miguel,” she purred softly.

  He took over her work, moving mechanically and grinning despite himself.

  So she wasn’t the senator’s wife. He’d been torturing himself for nothing. She’d been intentionally driving him up a wall, but now…now it was his turn.

  “Miguel! Come aboard!” Roberto ordered.

  Juan was staying on the sailboat so he could return to Miami. He waved to Sean, who crawled down to the dinghy.

  Sean looked at the island before him. It would still be dangerous getting out of this mess; Roberto was a danger all by himself.

  And he was still a cop, and she was still one of the citizens he was sworn to protect. He just couldn’t stop that damn grin.

  Because she was going to pay.

  CHAPTER 6

  It might have been a paradise, one of those quaint little outer islands where only those with their own boats might venture, a little piece of heavenly unaltered nature.

  The island was beautiful, Mandy thought wryly, feeling the pressure of Julio’s hand on her back as he urged her along. There was a stretch of beach so miraculously white it might have been snow rather than sand; to the left of the beach was an outcrop of coral and rock, fantastically entwined with the mangrove roots. To the right a stretch of rock and mangroves jutted out into the sea, creating a natural harbor. It was too small a spit of land to hold a hotel, just a dot on the ocean, but it was one of the loveliest little islands Mandy had ever seen.

  “Señora Blayne, por favor!”

  Julio prodded her once again, and she realized that she was stopping every few feet to look around. He was ushering her toward the structure she had seen between the trees, and she wondered why he should be so insistent. There was nowhere for her to go, and he certainly couldn’t think that she intended to overpower him—especially since he was carrying a gun.

  She shrugged wearily and continued walking. Señora Garcia had already entered the ramshackle place through a screen door; Mandy followed her, curiously surveying her surroundings.

  It was an old frame house, with a kitchen being the first room, and something like a parlor behind it, and two doors at the rear of that parlor. Someone had cleaned the place, and Mandy could only assume that that someone had been Señora Garcia. Even clean, though, it was dismal. There was a double-sided fireplace between the kitchen and the parlor, a rickety old table in the kitchen, and an even more rickety sofa in the parlor. There were two mattresses on the floor lined up against the wall by the left rear door. And there were three pickle-barrel end tables, one by the sofa, one between the mattresses and one near the fireplace. There were no electrical wires—what had she been expecting?—and the only concession to contemporary standards seemed to be a battery-powered icebox next to the counter in the kitchen.

  “Go through,” Julio told her. His mother glanced at her unhappily and started to say something, but Julio interrupted her.

  “She can be trouble! You have seen so!”

  Mandy kept walking. Julio indicated the left door, and she opened it.

  It was a bedroom, or at least it resembled a bedroom. There was a mattress on the floor. And there was another door at the rear.

  “Is that a bathroom? Or am I allowed to ask?” Mandy asked bitterly.

  Julio compressed his lips and nodded. Mandy found herself studying him curiously. He was a young man, handsome, with curling dark hair and a slim, sinewy build. But his dark eyes were full of such a feverish tension! She couldn’t believe that he would really harm her; he seemed such a different type from Roberto.

  A trickling of unease sped along her spine, and for all that she was usually ready to strangle Miguel, she suddenly wished desperately that he was with her.

  “Yes, it is a bathroom. Old and faulty—and the water is brackish. Do not drink it. You understand?”

  She nodded.

  He smiled peculiarly, a little sadly. “This is it, Mrs. Blayne. Make yourself at home. I’m afraid it will take some time to reach your husband and have my demands met.”

  He turned to leave her.

  “Wait a minute!” Mandy cried, not at all sure what she meant to do, but suddenly determined to make the young man with the nice mother go straight.

  “Julio! Señor Garcia! Listen to me. You haven’t harmed me. Not really. I feel that this is all a great misunderstanding. If you were to bring me back now—well, I wouldn’t press charges. I guess you wouldn’t get off scot-free, because you did fire bullets all over the docks. But I don’t think you hit anyone, did you? Really, Julio, you don’t want to be a criminal! You could go for an insanity plea—temporary insanity. Mental duress. Julio, they will straighten your father’s situation out. It just takes time. You don’t want him to be free while you’re forced to be in jail, do you? You can’t get away with this. Think about it. What good is it going to do when you do get hold of Peter? Julio, if we stop this whole thing right now, I’ll do my best to help you. Peter will—”

  “Mrs. Blayne,” Julio interrupted laconically.

  “Yes, Julio?”

  “Shut up.”

  From sheer surprise, she did so. He gave her a rueful smile, turned and left her
. When he closed the door she heard the sharp final sound of a bolt sliding home.

  “Damn you!” Mandy muttered, threading her fingers through her hair in frustration. “Damn you, you idiot!”

  Exasperated and desolate, she sank onto the mattress. For several moments she just sat there, pressing her temples between her palms. Then she lay back on the bed and stared around. There was nothing to see. Nothing but four walls and the door to her primitive bathroom. There was only one window in the room, and that had been boarded over. There was nothing but gloom.

  She wished she could sleep. She wished that they had left her just a square inch of window to look through. Time hung so heavily! Each second seemed like an hour, and her imprisonment had only begun. All she could do was lie there in the gloom with her own thoughts—which were not particularly good company.

  Every once in a while she heard voices from beyond the door. They were faint, and she couldn’t make out a thing, because they were speaking in Spanish.

  Where the hell was Miguel?

  To her irritation, she was longing to see him. Longing desperately to see him, just because she couldn’t stand the shadowed gloom and her own company anymore.

  She tried to think about her work; she tried to think of all the little tedious things she had to do when she got back. She tried to think about the sea, serene and calm. She even tried to imagine sheep jumping over a fence so she could sleep and keep her mind from going a million frustrated miles an hour. Nothing worked. She had never imagined that simple confinement could be so frightening, so wearing. She thought that soon she would go mad; she would race for that bolted door and scream and cry and beat her head against it.

  Just when she felt that she had reached that point, the door suddenly swung open. Mandy blinked against the sudden light, shielding her eyes.

  For a moment she froze; it was Roberto. Roberto, giving her his lascivious white-toothed smile. She shivered inside, going as cold as ice. She was alone in this room with nothing but a white-sheeted mattress, no avenue of escape. No strength, no hope—and fully aware of the man’s feelings regarding her.

  No, no, Julio wouldn’t allow it. Miguel wouldn’t allow it. But where the hell was Miguel?

  “Amanda?”

  She took a deep breath and felt the blood move through her veins once again.

  Miguel stepped past Roberto and stared at her, offering her his hand.

  She didn’t think anything then. She bolted from the mattress, straight toward him, grasping that hand and pressing herself against the strength of his naked chest, her head lowered.

  She felt his free hand on her hair, hesitant, then soothing. He wrapped an arm around her and led her through the tacky parlor, Roberto at their heels.

  Julio sat at the kitchen table, playing cards with Maria. Señora Garcia was standing over a frying pan set on a Sterno stove on the counter. She was cooking hamburgers; it might have been the great American barbecue.

  Miguel started to move away from Mandy; she inched toward him with a little gasp, drawing a snicker from Maria. Mandy stiffened, while Miguel accepted two plates of food from Señora Garcia. He shoved them at Mandy with a curious expression, then turned back to accept two cans of Old Milwaukee.

  “Two hours, no more,” Julio warned Miguel without looking up from his game.

  “Dos horas,” Miguel agreed, and Julio did look up then, but not at them. He stared at Roberto, who insisted on keeping his gun out and trained on Miguel.

  “I’ll spell you soon, amigo,” he said.

  Roberto leered at Mandy and shrugged to Julio. Mandy thought she saw Julio shudder slightly, and she wondered again how these two had come together, an idealist and a…vulture.

  “Come on,” Miguel urged her with his Spanish accent. “Dos horas!”

  She had no idea what he was talking about, but she eagerly followed him outdoors.

  It was late afternoon again. The sea stretched out eternally before them, touched by the reflection of the dying sun, sparkling and rippling like something magical. Even the white beach seemed to shimmer with the colors of the coming evening, gold and pink, delicate mauve and diamond glitter.

  Miguel walked beside her; Roberto followed at a distance. “This way,” Miguel advised, walking toward the part of the beach where the rock and mangroves formed a secretive little haven, shadowed now in dusk.

  She looked back. Roberto had paused. He was sitting on the beach, watching them, but giving them a certain distance. Mandy expelled a long sigh, which drew a sharp gaze from Miguel.

  “He makes me nervous,” she muttered.

  If she’d expected reassurance, she didn’t get it. “He doesn’t thrill me, either,” Miguel agreed. “But forget him for now. I spent hours arguing to get Julio to agree that you would go mad and be far more difficult to handle if you didn’t get out a little.”

  He led her as far away from Roberto as possible, to the place where the roots met the rocks.

  “Have a seat, Mrs. Blayne,” he told her with a grin.

  She sat on a stump, balancing both plates of hamburgers until he settled himself on the sand beside her. He opened both cans of beer, then handed her one as he took his own plate.

  “Thanks,” Mandy muttered, then lowered her head, because she was thinking about him, and she didn’t want him to guess. She was on the stump; he was at her side, the breadth of his bare shoulders and back at her knee, his dark head angled toward her, his rich green eyes looking out to the sea.

  She found herself liking everything about him; his height, his build, those eyes—even his scruffy jaw, strong beneath the beard. He was attractive—and she was attracted. She despised herself for it, because she considered herself sane and mature, and thought she knew enough about the human psyche to keep herself under control. She’d barely known him for forty-eight hours, yet she was desperately glad of his presence, ready to race to the sound of his voice, more than willing to trust herself to him.

  Naturally. She sensed that he was all that stood between her and Roberto. But he was a cop—that was his job. There was no reason she should feel so…quiveringly grateful. Especially when she knew what he really thought of her!

  “Eat,” he told her, and she saw that he was looking at her then, rather than the sea. And that there was a peculiar glint of amusement in his eyes.

  Mechanically and a little warily, she brought her hamburger to her mouth. It seemed to stick against the dryness of her throat, and she sipped the beer to force it down.

  Miguel seemed to have no such problems. He ate his hamburger with a hearty appetite, then leaned back against her legs, very relaxed—like an idle beach bum—while he sipped his beer.

  She stiffened, ready to jerk her legs away. She stopped herself only because she knew that Roberto watched them, not fifty feet away.

  The water, stretching out before them, was magically beautiful, as were the white purity of the sand, the wild and primitive tangle of mangrove and coral, the eternal sky, the twilight….

  And the two of them. He was touching her, relaxed and lazy, as if they were the only two people on earth, a man and a woman.

  She set her half-eaten hamburger down and sipped the beer. She was so glad to be out of that room, away from her own thoughts.

  Yet she was so nervous, so horribly aware of him: of his tanned flesh, so sleek over the rippling muscles of his back and shoulders; his hair, ebony with the coming of the night; his scent, as fresh and salty as the night air, and here, in this wild splendor, so masculine that she felt nearly consumed just by his presence….

  It was all because she had to rely on him, she told herself furiously. Circumstance! At a cocktail party she would have walked away from him.

  But here she couldn’t walk away. Being with him was playing dangerous havoc with her emotions and her senses, and she knew it.

  But what was she afraid of? He assumed that she was married to Peter, and he steered clear of married women; he had told her so with indisputable passion.


  Maybe she should be glad, grateful to learn that her instincts and emotions still functioned. She worked, she laughed, she enjoyed people, but she hadn’t really felt anything in so long. Maybe even the fear and the fury were good; she was reacting, and there had been times when she had felt that anything would be better than the horrible numbness. But this…

  Even Peter had tried to introduce her to a string of young men. She’d never felt the least interest, just the numbness. And now she felt like a traitor, to Paul and—far worse—to herself. How could she possibly be attracted to a man who treated her so poorly?

  He was there; he was a buffer. That was all, absolutely all. And she wasn’t only attracted to him. She was also indignant and outraged by his methods. To top it all off, she still didn’t even know if she should really believe him or not, because he was a fabulous actor, slipping from accent to accent with barely a thought.

  “You really are absolutely beautiful, you know.”

  Mandy started, choking on her beer, staring involuntarily into the heavy-lidded sparkling green eyes that were now resting on her in the most sensual fashion. She swallowed warily. “Thank you,” she muttered. Then she asked, “You really are a cop?”

  He chuckled softly. “Yeah, I really am.”

  Mandy stared out to sea again while confusion overwhelmed her. His voice…the huskiness in his voice. What had happened to him suddenly? The cut-and-dried manner was gone—as was the hard and passionate man who had vowed he didn’t touch married women, who despised her for marrying an old man.

  “Uh…” She cleared her throat, searching for a safe topic of conversation. “What is Julio doing with Roberto? They don’t seem a bit alike.”

  He shrugged. “They’re not. Juan is with him because they’re second cousins or something. I think Roberto is merely in it for the money.”

  “The money?”

  “Mmm. The Garcias still have family in Spain, and a number of wealthy Colombian connections. If I’ve gotten things right, Roberto is a mercenary. He’s been hired for his expertise. That’s why I don’t trust him. God, you’re beautiful.”