Laura Gordon - Lethal Lover

“I see you can’t remember. Well, let me refresh your memory. It was eight years ago, Reed. June 15th to be exact. Three days before—” Her voice broke and she lowered her eyes to avoid looking at the face that would, if she stared at it long enough, eventually undo her.

He stood and stared out at the beach. “I was sorry to hear about your parents, Tess.”

“I lost my sister, as well,” she reminded him pointedly. Although she was dry-eyed, her heart ached.

“I know,” he said quietly. “And I’m sorry. Meredith was a good kid.”

Tess felt her heart harden at the sound of her sister’s name coming from his lips. How dare he? And how foolish was she to stand here jousting with the man who’d single-handedly destroyed her girlhood innocence and shattered her dreams?

Crossing the room purposefully, she jerked open the door and stood with one hand planted on each hip. “Angry? No, Reed, I’m not angry. But I am a lot wiser than that fawning nineteen-year-old you left standing at he altar.” Her diatribe left her breathless and the flood of heat that rose to her cheeks left her feeling weak. “I don’t know why you’re here, Reed, but I’m vacationing, and I know I’ll enjoy myself a whole lot more if I just throw you out and pretend this little meeting never occurred. Now, if you’ll excuse me,” she finished with a flourish, “I’d appreciate it if you got the hell out of my room and stayed the hell out of the rest of my life!”

He stood staring at her for a long tense moment before he started toward the door. Tess held her breath, hardly daring to believe that he’d actually leave without a fight. The old Reed would never have backed down so easily.

And neither would the new Reed, it seemed, for when he was directly in front of her, he surprised her by taking her hand and pulling her out of the doorway, before pushing the door closed and leaning against it with his arms crossed over his broad chest.

“Where’s Selena?” he asked, all pretense of word games abruptly ended.

“Selena?” Tess asked, unable to conceal her shock.

He nodded. “You asked me what I was looking for. Well, I was looking for your cousin, Selena Elliot.”

Tess blinked. To her knowledge her cousin and her ex-fiancé had never met. When Selena was growing up, she and her parents had lived in Denver, while Tess and Reed had grown up in the small mountain town of Evergreen some thirty miles west. She’d become involved with Reed McKenna her senior year and she had been working the year before starting college when he’d broken their engagement by suddenly, and without telling her, enlisting in the army. It was only later, when she’d inadvertently discovered his betrayal, that Tess had finally learned the real reason Reed had left town.

“Where is she?” he asked, jolting Tess back to the present.

“Why do you want to know?” she shot back defensively. “What connection do you have to Selena?”

“I don’t have any connection, not personally, anyway. I’m only here to take her back to the States. If you care about your cousin, you’ll tell me where she is and stay out of the way so I can do my job.”

“Your job?” Tess realized she was staring at him like an idiot, but the things he’d just said made no sense. “Then you are a cop.”

He didn’t answer.

“And you’re here to arrest Selena? This is unbelievable! What has she done, what’s this all about?” If Selena was in some kind of trouble, wouldn’t she have mentioned it? Or at least canceled this trip?

Reed didn’t answer any of her questions, but his dark-eyed stare continued to bore through her.

“Listen, Reed, whatever you want with my cousin, I know you can’t force her to go anywhere without some kind of warrant or subpoena.”

“I’m not here to arrest her,” he admitted.

Well, at least he’d given her that much. But Tess wasn’t satisfied. All her instincts warned that Reed was concealing far more than he’d revealed.

“All right, so you don’t have a warrant, then why are you looking for her and why should she go anywhere with you?”

His eyes flashed his irritation at being questioned. “Because the U.S. government has requested the honor of her presence at a trial.”

“A trial,” she repeated numbly, feeling slightly light-headed. “What kind of trial? Whose trial? I—I don’t understand. What’s going on and what has my cousin got to do with it?”

“It’s a long story,” he said as he walked across the room to the balcony again. She followed him and watched as his eyes scanned the beach below.

Finally he returned his attention to Tess’s question. “You really don’t know anything about all this, do you? She hasn’t told you?”

“Told me what?” Tess demanded, her patience stretched almost to snapping. “What don’t I know?”

He stood for another long moment without answering, without even looking at her. Exasperated, she reached for his arm, but the minute her fingers made contact with the warm, tanned flesh her heart jumped, and she knew she’d made a mistake. Immediately she pulled her hand back, feeling inexplicably singed.

“Reed, please. Tell me what this is all about. If my cousin is in some kind of trouble, I have a right to know.” And if this is just a bad dream, Tess told herself, she wished to hell someone would wake her!

“Selena is in trouble,” he conceded finally, taking her elbow and ushering her inside the room with him. “She works for a man who’s been indicted on federal charges.”

Tess sat down woodenly on the edge of the bed. “What kind of charges?”

“Racketeering, money laundering and murder, just to name a few.”

Tess felt exactly as she had as a child the time she’d fallen from the monkey bars on the playground and had the wind knocked out of her. “I don’t believe it,” she gasped.

“Believe it,” he said and pulled the bow-shaped wicker chair around to face her before he sat down. “Selena worked as a bookkeeper for Edward Morrell. She was a key figure in his organization.”

Tess could only sit and stare at him, her mind whirling as she tried to make sense of something that made no sense at all.

“Look, I can see how hearing all of this has shocked you, and it’s obvious to me that you know nothing about your cousin’s involvement.” He rose and put the chair back in its place before he added, “I’d like to help you put it all together, but I haven’t got time to explain. And I’m not sure it’s wise to tell you any more than I already have. But I need to know where she is, Tess,” he said, coming back to the bed to stand over her. “I need to find her and get her out of Grand Cayman tonight.”

The unthinkable occurred to Tess in a flash of frightening insight and she rose quickly, oblivious to the precious space that she’d closed between them and the fact that she’d planted her hands on his chest. “Reed, are you trying to tell me that Selena might be in some kind of danger?”

He glanced down at her hands resting on his chest, before his eyes met hers again. “Just tell me where she is, Tess, if you know.”

His dark eyes grew even darker and suddenly every protective instinct went off in a series of screaming alarms inside Tess’s mind. She nearly stumbled, sidestepping away from him. “I won’t tell you anything until you tell me what this is all about.”

“Where is she, Tess?” he demanded, his voice hard-edged and impatient.

“I don’t know,” she insisted. “And even if I did, I wouldn’t tell you. Did you seriously imagine I’d blindly turn my cousin over to you without talking to her first?”

“I’d hoped you would be reasonable.”

“Reasonable or gullible?”