“No.” The woman shook her head, adding that the man was very handsome and Ana had seemed happy to see him and had gone willingly.
Chance’s despair must have been evident on his face as the woman patted his arm and rattled something off in Spanish about how it happened to the best of men.
Chance thanked her briefly and walked back to the middle of the aisle. Airline passengers, police, workers milled around him, going about their business as he tried to decide what to do.
Why would Ana leave without telling him? What if she had been under duress?
It was the only explanation. She may not like having a bodyguard, and she had tried to give him the slip that morning, but he couldn’t imagine she would do it again.
Ana had been kidnapped. He’d known it was a possibility, but he hadn’t expected it here, right under his nose.
Chance opened his phone, calling his brother.
“Garrett?”
“Yeah? You on the ground?”
“I am, yeah. Easy flight, but I lost Ana.”
“Excuse me?”
“I was doing the paperwork to store the plane while I’m here. She was sitting right there, not six feet away from me, but when I turned around, she was gone. A travel clerk said that she saw Ana leave with a handsome man, likely Mexican, maybe local, in casual clothes. The clerk said she looked happy to see the man, but he must have had a gun on her or was telling her to cooperate.”
“Shit, Chance, really? You lost our client?” Garrett said, cursing again, and Chance winced. He was good at his job, but somehow, when he did mess up, even a little, he felt about five years old. Always the irresponsible baby brother.
But he couldn’t focus on that; time was of the essence if they were going to find Ana. He’d broken a cardinal rule and let her out of his sight. He’d dropped his guard, and this was the price. Stupid.
“Any ideas how to proceed?” he asked, his self-
disgust clear in his tone.
“I have a friend in the American embassy down there. He might be able to tell me what he’s hearing regarding any kidnappings and if any news or ransom demands are being made. You should go to her town, to her family, and see if they can help. They might have local contacts who might know something.”
Chance breathed for the first time in the past twenty minutes, nodding. “On it. Thanks, Gar.”
“Don’t beat yourself, up, bud. It happens to the best of us. Let’s just find her,” Garrett said, and Chance appreciated the support, though nothing would make him feel better until he found Ana and knew that she was safe.
“Thanks. I’ll call when I know something. You, too.”
“Definitely.”
Chance went to the rental desk and was in a Jeep fifteen minutes later, finding his way to Hatsutsil, about fifty miles from the airport. Luckily most of the distance was highway, though the past fifteen miles or so was back roads into some coastal jungle that would have been awesomely gorgeous if he had noticed it at all.
A wooden sign announced that he had entered the small village, and Chance pulled to the side, scattering a bunch of chickens that had congregated by the side of the road. Hearing laughter, Chance looked up to see a group of young girls, teenagers, standing together on the porch of a small business, a grocery by the looks of it, watching him. When he made eye contact with one of them, more giggles.
Chance was hard-pressed not to smile back at the charming group, though their dark hair and pretty eyes made him think of how pretty Ana must have been at their age, and how they all would be beauties like her one day. Thinking about Ana at the hands of some kidnapper made something twist in his chest, and he waved the girls over, hoping they could help.
They shook their heads no, however, apparently versed in the ways of strangers, and knowing better. Chance understood, and turned the gas off, getting out of the Jeep and walking up to them, instead, keeping a distance that would make them feel safe.
“Olá. Me llamo Chance,”
he said with a smile. They watched with big eyes and said shy hellos back.
“I’m looking for the family of Ana Perez. I am a friend from the States,” he added, showing them a picture of Ana that had them nodding. One of the older girls, maybe sixteen, came forward.
“You know Ana?”
“Yes. We flew down here together, but then we got separated at the airport. I need to talk to her family, to make sure she’s okay. Can you tell me where to find them?”
Chance’s Spanish might be a tad rusty, but it was coming back to him, and the girl nodded, apparently deciding he could be trusted.
Minutes later, he was pulling up in front of a lovely adobe home, gardens gracing almost every corner along the stone-covered drive that led to the house.
Getting out, Chance stopped before reaching the door, unsure how he was going to explain to Ana’s family that he had been in charge of protecting her and yet had allowed her to be kidnapped. That wouldn’t earn him any points, for sure.
He knew from the file that Ana’s father had passed away several years before and her mother lived here with one of Ana’s aunts and a few cousins. Lucia, Ana’s sister, as she had mentioned, was traveling a lot. Chance had known that from her file, but enjoyed hearing her talk about her family; clearly, they were close.
He knocked a few times. Maybe no one was home? The heat of the afternoon was getting thick, and he swatted at a bug that was trying to bite.
The door opened just as he cursed and swatted at the thing again, and he found himself looking at a man about his own age, who was watching him questioningly.
“May I help you?” he asked in softly accented English. The guy was built and looked like a Latino movie star in his beige cargo pants and black shirt. Work boots showed dirt and scuffing—one of Ana’s cousins maybe?
“My name is Chance, Chance Berringer. I’m a friend of Ana Perez’s from the States. We flew down here together, but I’m afraid I have bad news,” Chance said. “I was at the airport with Ana, and she disappeared. I think she may have been kidnapped,” Chance said, waiting on the other man’s reaction.
He smiled, shaking his head.
“Ana is safe. She has not been kidnapped.”
Chance’s eyebrows lifted. “I don’t mean to argue, but—”
“Ana is here,” he said simply and turned to call her name.
To say Chance was surprised was an understatement, and he was even more so when Ana appeared in the door. Only a slight flicker in her eyes showed that she was surprised to see him.
What did she think he would do? Just leave when he found her gone? Anger welled inside him.
“Ana? How come you left and you didn’t let me know? My brother is in contact with the Mexican authorities, and I’ve been crazed thinking you were taken. What the hell is going on?”
Chance had stepped forward, his anger apparent, and the other man stepped forward, as well, blocking Ana from Chance’s view. In the mood he was in right now, Chance was ready for anything, including a fight, and he met the man’s eyes.
“Move.”
“I don’t think so, Mr. Berringer.”
“I
will
move you, so—”
“You can try,
gringo,
” the man said with equal derision and stubbornness. “But you will apologize to Ana for speaking to her like you did, and then you will leave.”
“Yeah? And who are you?”
The man puffed up, never blinking. “I am Marco Espinoza, Ana’s intended.”
“Intended? Intended to what?”
Ana pushed forward, squeezing past Marco and meeting Chance’s eyes, though not completely.
“Marco, stop. Chance is just doing his... He’s a friend, like he said, and I was...rude. I left without thinking. I meant to call on the way but got caught up in conversation,” Ana said. She was covering up. She smiled at him a little too brightly.
“Chance, I’m sorry. I just... Well, I can explain later. This is Marco Espinoza, my, um, fiancé.”
Chance thought he couldn’t be surprised one more time that day, but as he stared at her, and then back at Marco, he was wrong.
5
“I
DON
’
T
BLAME
YOU
for being angry,” Ana said, biting her lip so hard it hurt. “I panicked. I didn’t expect to see Marco, and when he showed up, I just...”
“Left? Nice one,” he said, clearly disgusted. He faced the house, away from her.
Ana threw her arms up in the air as she and Chance talked alone in the garden behind her family home. Everything was in bloom, the flowers bursting with color around them, and there was a cool breeze in the shade of the large banyan and palm trees.
None of it soothed her as she took in the tension in Chance’s shoulders and back, and the look in his eyes when she’d told him who Marco was—disappointment?
She felt ashamed of herself for handling it all so badly. No doubt Marco was wondering what was going on, as well. She’d told him to go and that everything was fine. Ana was having a harder time convincing herself of that. She’d wanted to avoid all of this, to handle it quietly and on the sidelines, but now it had blown up in her face.
Luckily, her mother was out shopping, and no one else was home yet from the workday.
“How could you be surprised? You called him. Your fiancé,” Chance said.
“I called my aunt to let her know I was coming and that I was safe. I didn’t ask them to send Marco. He just showed up. They must have sent him after I got off the phone.”
Chance rotated his neck to loosen tension, grimacing as he looked up at the tall trees around them. Then, finally, he looked at her. His gaze was still accusatory.
“How could you not expect your fiancé to pick you up at the airport? Why aren’t you wearing a ring, and why isn’t there anything about this in your file?”
Ana blinked. “How detailed is this file you’ve mentioned? Apparently you don’t know everything about my life, which is a comfort,” she spat.
“We have client files on everyone we protect. Your studio presented us with a lot of it, and then we did some background checks and other research on our own. It’s routine. And there was nothing in there about a fiancé.”
“You have no right to have intruded in my life that way,” she said hotly, her cheeks warm from more than the late-afternoon temperature.
“I had every right. It helps me keep you safe. You had no right to just take off without a word.”
“I can do what I like. You are
not
my keeper,” she argued back, digging in. He was infuriating!
“I guess not. That job would apparently be Marco’s,” Chance said. “But as it turns out, I’m the one being paid to do it, and I’m the one who will be held responsible if something happens to you. I thought we were clear on that.”
“I told you I never wanted a bodyguard,” she said.
“You did, but we don’t always get what we want,” he retorted, and Ana blinked as she heard more disappointment in his tone.
Chance crossed the distance between them, standing close.
“I don’t like being lied to, Ana, and I really don’t like being made to look foolish or incompetent, and that’s what happened because of your silly stunt today.”
Ana caught her breath. He was a chameleon, changing from moment to moment. At once, he was disarming and easygoing, or intense and focused. Now he was very, very angry. She could feel it radiating off of him, though not in a threatening way. He hadn’t been angry about her trying to sneak off the first time, but this time was different. If anything, it created conflicting urges inside of her. She wanted to soothe him, and simultaneously felt desire spike, her own passionate nature sparked by his.
“Why do you care so much? Why does this matter so much to you?” she asked, unsure what else to say.
“I have a job to do, and I take pride in that. What I do reflects on all of my brothers and our business. I had to call them and confess that I’d messed up, and then I had to call them back to let them know I’d only been duped,” he said, shoving his hands in his pockets and turning away from her again. “I don’t know which is worse.”
Ana’s anger and self-righteousness dissolved instantly. He’d been embarrassed. Because of her. He’d also been truly concerned she’d been kidnapped, and he had put his own pride on the line in order to do what had to be done to save her. She hadn’t taken the protection order seriously, or that this man had a job and a responsibility: her.
From behind him, she put a hand on his shoulder, trying to make a connection. He stiffened under her touch, and she took her hand away.
“I’m sorry,” she said sincerely this time. “I panicked. I was trying to make things easier for myself, and I not only failed at that, but I put you, and Marco, for that matter, in a terrible, awkward position,” she said, feeling more miserable by the minute. “I didn’t mean to put you in that situation with your job or to make you worry. I never thought you would think I was kidnapped, but now I see how that would be the logical conclusion. I just wanted to...escape.”
Chance turned, facing her. “From me?”
Now it was Ana’s turn to look up at the treetops in frustration. For whatever reason, she couldn’t look at him.
“You, at least as my bodyguard. I’m watched all the time, Chance. All day long, my life belongs to everyone, and there is no privacy. I accept that. It’s the trade-off for my success. But this was supposed to be
my
time,” she said, knowing still how selfish it all was. “And I wasn’t ready for anyone to know about Marco.”
“Me, you mean.”
She nodded. “I wanted to escape it all. The show, the stalking, everything. All of it. Even this mess with Marco,” she said, shaking her head. “But I didn’t mean for you to be stuck in the middle of it, either. I should have dealt with him a long time ago, as well, but I kept putting it off, saying I was too busy.”
Chance’s expression became curious. “What mess?”
Ana shook her head, but his hands landed on her shoulders. It felt good, his touch. Maybe too good.
“Tell me, Ana. I need to know everything if I’m going to be able to do my job,” he said, his gaze intent on hers.
Ana’s mind blanked as her eyes fell to his mouth. They’d come so close on the plane...even closer in her dream. She swallowed her disappointment that he only seemed interested in terms of his job.
“Ana?”
When she looked back up, she caught her breath, saw the flicker of desire in his eyes, too. Maybe her disappointment was unfounded?
“Yes, okay, yes. I owe you that much, the truth,” she said with a sigh, stepping back to break away from his touch so that she could think.
“Marco is my fiancé, though I never really accepted the engagement. When we were both young, our parents had decided we would marry,” she explained, knowing how incredibly antiquated it all sounded.
“An arranged marriage?” Chance said in surprise. “They still do that?”
“Not generally, though you can still find the custom active in smaller villages. Marco’s family is very old-fashioned, conservative, you might say. His parents held to the old ways out of respect for the grandparents, who insisted on an arranged marriage for the grandson. My father was his friend and wanted to help, so they made an agreement when we were only twelve that we would marry.”
“Twelve?” Chance repeated, his eyes wide.
“Decades ago, we would have been married by the time I was fourteen. Marco and I grew up together—to be honest, he’s more like a brother than anything else.”
Chance snorted. “Yeah, right. I didn’t get that impression.”
“It’s true. Marco has changed. He’s not the boy I grew up with. I never really took any of this seriously. I figured they only made the arrangement to placate the elders, but then I left for college and my career, and no more was said about it. Marco has made his life, too, helping with his family business. He became an agricultural expert, and he travels the continent, helping local farmers improve their crops. But his grandfather is still living—he’ll turn one hundred and two next month. Marco has come home and plans to make our engagement official before then, to honor his grandfather’s wishes. I received a message to that effect a month ago, and I was as shocked as anyone.”
“So you don’t want to marry him?”
She shook her head vehemently. “No, of course not. And down deep, I don’t believe he really wants to marry me. But now it’s all so much more complicated.”
“How so?”
“Well, our people have become quite modernized, but it would still be an embarrassment for me to just reject him—an insult—especially in his grandfather’s eyes. And my family’s reputation is at stake, as well. They have to live here after I go back to the States, and I also don’t want to hurt an old friend. And then...well, there’s you.”
“Me? How do I fit into this?”
She looked at him pointedly. “I’m here, home, with another man. A man that I...desire,” Ana said hesitantly.
Chance went still and his expression didn’t change.
Ana had promised him the whole truth, so she delivered on that promise, whatever the consequences. “It makes everything more complicated, because while I know you are here only for a job, when we were on the plane, I felt something. A connection. I had thought that you felt it, too, and perhaps that there would be...more.”
“More?” he echoed, his voice low and rougher in a way that rubbed over her skin.
She smiled a little. “I’m a modern woman, Chance, in spite of this strange situation with Marco. I’ve had lovers. I have a career. I don’t intend on getting married or settling down, not anytime soon. But I’d hoped there could be more between us, at least while we were here.”
They were closer now, standing only inches away in the deep shade of the trees, and everything was quiet around them except for the sounds of the birds and water flowing from the fountain at the edge of the garden.
She smiled again, with another self-effacing shake of her head. “So there you have it, the whole truth.”
Chance seemed to consider what she’d told him and then stepped even closer.
“Thank you, Ana, for the truth. Here’s mine,” he said softly, lowering his head and taking her mouth in an unexpected kiss that wiped everything else from her mind.
His mouth was warm, hard and demanding, but he offered a kiss so perfect that it made her sigh, opening her lips so that they could explore each other further.
Chance’s hands were on her back, pressing her close as he pressed her back against the broad trunk of a tree in the garden, trapping her against it as the kiss deepened and became even more...truthful. She wanted him, more than she had known, and now she knew that he wanted her, too.
Ana decided not to worry about how impossible that made everything as the kiss went on, losing herself in the moment.
* * *
C
HANCE
HAD
BEEN
CAUGHT
off guard so many times in the past twelve hours that he wasn’t sure which way was up, and feeling Ana’s mouth on his, that sweet body pliant against him, made up for all of it. She might be playing him, manipulating him—it had occurred to him that he couldn’t exactly trust her just then, given her actions—but he did trust her kiss. She didn’t hold back, and neither did he.
“I knew you’d be delicious,” he murmured against her mouth, returning for another kiss as his hand moved from her back to her waist and then upward to cover the swell of her breast. If she were merely trying to placate him, how far would she go?
But his doubts and suspicions were erased when he looked into her face and saw nothing but arousal and need. Her heart slammed against his palm as he touched her and swallowed her moan in a kiss as she arched against him.
He couldn’t get enough of her, and anything else from the day evaporated in a mist of sheer need. There was nothing for Chance in that instant other than Ana’s mouth, Ana’s soft skin, Ana’s sigh, Ana’s hip pressing into his hardness.
Chance wanted only to push up her skirt and take her now, if not for what she’d just told him.
Ana was, technically, engaged.
She was also, very likely, still in danger.
He wanted to take her up against a tree in her family’s backyard, anyway.
As if reinforcing his thoughts, she pulled back, murmured something and broke the kiss as the sound of a door echoed somewhere behind them.
“We...can’t. Not here. Someone is home,” she said, pushing him away more firmly as she ran a hand over her hair and smoothed her skirt.
Chance couldn’t stop looking at her. “When?”
He shouldn’t ask. Shouldn’t even consider it, but he couldn’t help himself.
“Shh,” she shushed him with a sexy smile and passion-smudged eyes.
Then he saw why as she smiled widely and ran past him toward something—someone—else.
The woman in the courtyard who dropped her bags and opened her arms joyously could only be Ana’s mother. Chance took a second to cool his jets as the two women embraced and said their hellos.
“And who is this?” Chance heard the older woman ask, glancing in his direction.
Both women turned to face him, and Chance saw where Ana got her beauty—her mother was striking, dressed in what he thought was likely a traditional, colorful sweep of fabric, with long, dark, shining hair and an older version of Ana’s face. She was a bit taller than Ana and studied him with sharp, inquisitive eyes. The arm she draped around her daughter’s shoulders was affectionate—and protective.
Ana led her mother across the courtyard to meet him, and he straightened up, smiling as he tried to clear his lust-fogged brain.
“Mama, this is Chance Berringer. He is a friend from the States. My plane was canceled, and Chance was good enough to use his personal plane to fly me home so that I would make it on time,” she said, the lie falling from her lips so easily it bothered Chance a bit.
Then again, she couldn’t tell her mother who he really was—he’d asked her not to do that, with anyone.
But worry that she’d been lying to him, too, still tightened his gut.
Was she lying about Marco, too? Playing some kind of game?
At the end of the day, Chance didn’t know this woman at all. Still, he lived by his instincts. They had saved his life more than once, and he didn’t really think Ana was lying to him.