Claire King - Renegade With A Badge

Nothing in this room; not that he’d expected much. Cervantes was unlikely to keep records of his illegal activities in an upstairs guest room. Still, procedure dictated a thorough search. He closed the door behind him and stood absolutely still in the gloomy hallway, listening, waiting.

Rafe cocked his head at a small sound, separate from the cacophony coming from downstairs.

Well, hell. Someone was coming up the second stairway.

He looked quickly around and decided the best he could do on such short notice was try to melt into the wide, darkened doorway behind him. If he tried to get back into the room he’d just left, the damn door would give him away. He cursed old houses and all their charm. Give him a nice, quiet apartment with brand-new vinyl doors any day.

He stood perfectly still and let the person walk past him. A woman. Before he could make out her face or shape, he could hear the seductive swish of a skirt, smell the faint scent of perfume. She had a beautiful scent, this woman. She smelled like the sea.

Lord, it had been a long time since he’d been so close to a woman.

Against his better judgment, Rafe lifted his eyes. He knew that people seemed to sense when they were being watched, and the last thing he needed right now was for one of Cervantes’s snotty dinner guests to start screaming about bandits in the upstairs hallways.

But he couldn’t resist. He was partially aroused from the scent of her alone. Oh, yeah, he thought ruefully, shifting his weight slightly. Way too many months on the job.

The woman passed by him on her way to the bathroom.

Rafe nearly snarled out loud as he recognized her.

The princess. Cervantes’s princess. The woman, he knew from his informants on the inside, that Cervantes planned to marry. Dr. Olivia Galpas. He’d made it a point to find out her name the day Cervantes first visited her on the beach. He’d had her investigated, of course. Anyone Cervantes spent that much time with, American or not, female or male, had to be checked out.

She’d been clean, as far as the DEA was concerned, but that didn’t make her any more likable in Rafe’s mind.

She was a princesa, from one of the oldest and finest Latino families in San Diego. Her mother was some famous artist, her father was a physician. She was a doctor herself, born with a silver spoon in her mouth, and handed every opportunity. While he’d been picking avocados to get through junior college, the princesa had been whiling away her time at Stanford and then MIT.

Apparently, all the expensive education hadn’t made her any smarter, Rafe thought sourly as he watched her flick on the light in the small room and close the door behind her. She was keeping very dangerous company, and seemed to be enjoying herself doing it. Rafe’s eyes narrowed in the darkness. Money and power were vigorous aphrodisiacs to a woman who was accustomed to having both in her life.

Like was always attracted to like.

Olivia Galpas was here in Cervantes’s house, upstairs even, where guests did not usually go. So, there was more to this relationship than he’d thought, was there? He’d have to keep that in mind. Maybe the pretty little doctor knew exactly what kind of dirty drug money paid for the gold-plated fixtures in the bathroom she was using.

Rafe shook his head slightly. Settle down, there, Rafael. A rather intense reaction to one glimpse of a woman in a hallway, he had to admit. And jumping to conclusions was not his style, either. He was a very deliberate sort of cop.

But Olivia Galpas was everything in a woman Rafael Camayo naturally resented, everything he instinctively despised. He liked women with heart, with passion, with guts. He didn’t like pampered, overeducated, rich girls who slept with any drug runner with a woman’s soft hands and a big house. Especially one they’d known just three weeks.

Only, God, she smelled good. It was indefinable, that scent of the beach and woman she left in her wake. He’d never smelled anything like it. Not perfume, but…essence. If he could have dragged enough of it into his lungs, he thought, he could live on it alone for a week. No food, no water—just that smell.

He knew he needed to move on through the house, use every opportunity the party was giving him to find what he could and then get the hell out. But something about the woman behind that powder room door—aside from her scent, he told himself firmly—kept him rooted to the spot. Maybe she’d come back out and he’d give her a little talking-to, American to American. Let her in on the secrets behind Ernesto Cervantes’s “family” wealth. Haul her gorgeous little rear end right out of this house and get her on the next plane Stateside. As any good American law enforcement agent would do.

Only, he couldn’t. And wouldn’t.

Ernesto Cervantes had killed his brother almost twenty years ago. He and Bobby—who in addition to being his partner was his carnal, his blood brother from childhood, his cousin, and the godson of Rafe’s dead brother—had spent those twenty years plotting, planning the kind of revenge that would have made George proud. They’d joined the local police force, then the DEA; had worked their way up the ladder in all the ways that mattered—for this one bust. He wasn’t about to give up those years, those plans, for one amazing-smelling woman, American or not.

Besides, he mused, she may not even want to be saved. His informants had told him how cozy the couple had become. How long the walks, how intense the talks, how delicate and intimate and revolting the whole relationship had become. Maybe Olivia Galpas was in exactly the hot spot she wanted to be in. Maybe she knew everything.

Olivia stepped out into the darkened hallway, flicking off the light behind her. She’d used the facilities, washed her hands, put lotion on, checked her hair, washed her hands again, straightened all the lovely linen guest towels then sat on the edge of the vanity for five minutes, considering the merits of a hot wax treatment to smooth out her sea-coarsened hands. No woman should have rougher hands than her boyfriend, she thought.

But there was no getting around the fact that she had to go back downstairs. Eventually. Even now, Ernesto was probably wondering if she’d eaten some bad shrimp.

She smiled slightly to herself, rolled her eyes. She couldn’t imagine Ernesto Cervantes ever wondering about her digestive health. He was so polished and dignified, she didn’t think he’d be able to bring himself to admit women had digestive systems, much less to talk about them.

She started down the hall, grateful that for the first time since she’d entered the house she wasn’t being stared at by some glowering, khaki-covered baboon. This hallway was obviously in a private portion of the house, where guests were not expected to wander. Well, she’d wandered, and she could hardly see the harm in it. She personally thought Ernesto was carrying the whole protection thing to the limits of high drama. What kind of criminal would break into a man’s house while two hundred people were drinking and dancing downstairs?

She stopped before she reached the stairs. That itch on the back of her neck was really driving her crazy. If she didn’t know herself any better, she’d think she was having some sort of woman’s intuition. But that was ridiculous. She didn’t have woman’s intuition. She was a scientist.

She turned very slowly and looked right into the face of the man watching her.

Olivia felt as though every ounce of blood drained from her head and leaked out her toes. She had never been so unnerved in all her life. The itch at the back of her neck slithered around her throat and clutched at her jugular. Adrenaline pumped through her like a drug. She didn’t know this man, didn’t know why he watched her with such intensity, such malice, but she knew she should be afraid of him. And by God, she was.