Jane Porter - Lazaro's Revenge

She also needed to alert Dante to the danger Lazaro posed, without getting Daisy involved.

Throwing back the bedcovers, Zoe slid out from between the warm sheets and reached for her thin white cotton robe that matched the pink-sprigged nightgown.

It was a girlish set, something she’d had forever and yet refused to part with despite the cotton wearing thin and the rosebuds fading to peach and cream. The sleep set had been a gift from her dad years ago. Daisy got one like it, only hers had been blue.

Opening her bedroom door, she peered down the darkened hall. She wasn’t sure where to begin searching for a phone. She knew there had to be one somewhere, and not just a phone, but a fax, a modem, a cell phone. Lazaro Herrera had to communicate with the outside world somehow.

In the living room, Zoe crept on her hands and knees along the baseboards, searching for a hidden phone jack, running her fingers along the edge of plaster wall and wood base. She worked her way around the living room before moving to the bookcase where she inspected each shelf.

Nothing. At least not yet.

From living room to hall, hall to the cavernous kitchen, around the kitchen islands and huge rough-hewn pillars to the dining room.

She’d just finished circling the circumference of the dark dining room when she heard a cough behind her.

“Lose something, Zoe?”

“No.” She rose and brushed off her hands. It was so dark she could hardly see him but she felt him, felt his energy from ten feet away.

A little bit of moonlight fell through the window, illuminating his profile. “You’re not cleaning, are you? Luz wouldn’t like it.”

“I’m not cleaning.”

“Then what are you doing creeping around the house at three-thirty in the morning?”

A long lock of hair fell forward, brushing her cheek, and she tucked it behind her ear. “You know what I’m doing. You know what I want.”

“You won’t find a phone.”

“Not even a computer jack?”

“I’ve taken precautions. I’ve been quite thorough.”

“Let me go.”

“No.”

“I’ll go back to Kentucky, I’ll call Daisy and tell her I changed my mind about coming out—”

“No.”

She felt dangerously close to losing it, to screaming and crying and begging. “This isn’t fair.”

“But we’ve already discussed this, and we know life isn’t always fair. If life was fair your mother wouldn’t have died after your birth. If life was fair your father wouldn’t have Alzheimer’s. If life was fair your only sister wouldn’t have moved halfway around the world leaving you to take care of your sick father—”

“How…how…do you know all that?”

“This wasn’t a random abduction, Zoe. I made sure I knew what I was doing.” He flicked on the dining room light fixture, a large iron and crystal chandelier. “Now go back to bed and get some sleep. You need it. We both need it.”

In a white T-shirt and loose black cotton pajama pants with his black hair ruffled, he looked incredibly male. And human. He looked like a man that knew all about women. He looked like a man that knew how to use his hands, his body and his mouth.

Heat seeped through Zoe’s limbs, color sweeping her cheeks. She hated that she could find him physically attractive when his character was so appalling. He was awful, cruel, twisted. “I hate you.”

She hadn’t meant to say it. But the words slipped out anyway.

His dark head merely inclined and his beautiful lips shaped into a small shadow of a smile. “I know.”

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