“Did you tell her to forget it?”
Bobby nodded. “But she’s stubborn under all that girly hair and those big eyes. You can see how she made it to the top of her profession. I’ll bet those guys at Scripps never knew what hit them.”
“I’ll bet they did,” Rafe said. “Okay.”
“Okay, what?”
Rafe didn’t answer, just stalked to where Olivia was standing, mutinous and terrified.
“You can’t leave the room,” Rafe said curtly.
“I won’t,” she promised.
“There are no phones inside.”
She narrowed her eyes. “I told you. I’m not going to call anyone. I’m not an idiot. Whatever else Cervantes is, and I’m by no means convinced of anything,
amigo,
he’s also a sheriff, and I assume he will have called his cronies in La Paz by now. If I call the police, the likelihood is I’ll be held in Mexico until all this is straightened out, right?”
“Yes,” he said slowly, “but I meant that you can’t call from room to room. If someone comes to your door, you won’t be able to call me.”
She lifted one small, dirty fist to his face. “I can pound on the wall.”
That little hand, raised so bravely, just about broke through his anger.
“Fine,” he said, his jaw working. He started toward their adjoining rooms. “We’ll get you clean clothes in the morning when the shops open.”
“It’ll be Sunday,” she reminded him. It had only just occurred to her.
“Then we’ll get you clothes when the shops don’t open,” he muttered.
They reached the door to her room. Rafael opened it and went inside. Olivia followed him, turning on the wall light.
“You’re going to steal clothes for me?”
He went into the bathroom, placed the shampoo and soap he’d bought from the desk clerk on the counter. “Would you rather go home looking like a street hag?” he called.
“A street hag? Listen, Mr. Charm, I don’t want you to steal for me.”
He came back into the room. “What difference does it make, Olivia? You know what I am—or you think you do.” He wrenched open the closet door, checked inside. “What’s one more crime?” he said, seething inside. He closed the closet door ever so carefully. He wanted to rip it off its hinges.
“You can’t steal from these people. It’s not the same as what you do with the…other thing. You can’t go into some woman’s little shop and take a dress that she needs to sell to put food in her children’s mouths.”
Nor would he have. Ever. He was not opposed to a little breaking and entering, of course, but he would have left money for whatever he’d taken. Enough and then some. Did she really think he was so anesthetized to the plight of the poor in Mexico?
He shook his head slightly. Well, of course she did. She thought him guilty of far more serious crimes than insensitivity.
Better that she did, actually. Better for everyone involved.
He squared his shoulders, summoned up a sneer. “You should have become a judge instead of a doctor, Olivia.”
Olivia narrowed her eyes at him. He wanted a fight, did he? She was just fed up enough to oblige him.
“A judge! Look who’s talking. You were pretty quick to judge me for what happened in that cave back there.” She’d worked up a good head of steam over it, too. It was better than being miserable. “You’ve been furious with me ever since, as if you have any right!”
Rafe stared at her. “Me? Judging you?”
Olivia widened her eyes and bobbed her head. “Who do you think? It was just the two of us in there. I don’t remember anyone else accusing me of having ‘experience’!”
“You were crying!” he accused.
“So what? Excuse me for being a little overwhelmed. I’ve never made love to a criminal before,” Olivia shouted.
You still haven’t,
Rafe wanted to yell back at her. Unless she counted the kisses she shared with Cervantes. But he kept his mouth clamped shut. He knew she wasn’t in league with Cervantes, had known it since she’d thrown herself in front of him at the
hacienda.
But until she was safely on a plane to the States, it was too great a risk telling her the truth about his and Bobby’s assignment, their quest. God only knew what the bastard would do to her if he somehow got hold of her again.
Not that he would, Rafe vowed silently.
“Well, life is full of surprises,
princesa,
” Rafe said tightly.
“It certainly has been lately,” Olivia conceded. “What happened in the cave…if you want me to say I’m sorry for something, you can forget it. This isn’t 1850s Spain, you know. I don’t have to apologize for a perfectly natural physical reaction. Besides, it was just as much you as me. More,” she finished defiantly.
“Natural physical reaction?”
“Yes. I can’t seem to help how my body responds to you. It doesn’t make any sense,” Olivia said. “So, too bad for me and too bad for you, chemically speaking, because we obviously have nothing else going on here.”
“Wait a minute.” Rafe shook his head to clear it. “Let me get this straight. You were crying because you were embarrassed by how you responded to my kissing you?”
“Not embarrassed!” Olivia protested vehemently. “Appalled! My head knows what a colossal mistake it is, being attracted to you. My body just seems to be taking a little more time to figure it out.”
Oh, he couldn’t hold out. Couldn’t resist. The smirk he wore slid away. How could she be so honest about it? How could she reveal so much? He felt the same about her; his body craved her like a drug, even though his head told him how utterly hopeless it all was.
His entire life was about concealment, and her simple candor undid him.
Giving in to his own body, giving in to his heart, he placed his palms flat against the wall on either side of her, leaned in. “Listen to your body, Olivia,” he urged. “Forget what your head tells you. It’s wrong, anyway,” he murmured. He didn’t dare take her mouth. Her blouse had drooped below her collarbone, exposing soft, tanned skin. He kissed her there. “I’ll never see you again after tonight,” he said against her body.
The thought of that made his throat close curiously. Even if he did see her, by some odd chance, it would never be the same. She would be back in her ivory tower, among the swells of San Diego Latino society. Dr. Olivia Galpas. And he would still be a peasant. A law-abiding peasant, but a peasant nonetheless. Never again would she be weak in his arms, her lashes soft on her cheek, her breath coming unsteadily.
“Olivia,” he whispered, and kissed her where her lashes lay.
“No.”
He heard that
no.
Perfectly. He pushed against the wall until he could look into her dark, flashing eyes. “Don’t say no.”
Was it only sexual desperation she saw in his eyes? she wondered fleetingly. She thought she saw more. Yearning, perhaps. Loneliness. She shook off the sensation, steeled herself. How could a man so criminal, so corrupt, touch her so deeply? What was wrong with her?
“I have to.”
After a minute, he closed his eyes, sighed.
“Okay,” he said finally.
She wanted to weep. In relief, and regret.
He stood back, looking everywhere but at her. “Don’t go outside. For any reason.”
Olivia shook her head. “I won’t.”
“Okay,” he said again, stalling for time. He hated to leave her here. He heard Bobby rattling around in their shared room. A shower awaited him in there—and a soft bed, the first he’d slept in for weeks. But he couldn’t bring himself to leave her alone. “Will you be all right?” he asked roughly.
“I’ll be fine. I’ve spent a lot of time in little motel rooms at the ends of the earth.”
He nodded. Of course she had. She was a well-traveled, well-respected scientist, a woman with all the experience in the world. It was ridiculous that he should be feeling so protective.
Only, she’d been in his care for too long now. In his care, in his head, definitely in his libido. Working slowly and inexorably into his heart—brave, smart, beautiful woman.
“Rafael,” she said.
“I’m going,” he said, and walked toward the door. It was better this way. He didn’t deserve a woman like her, any more than Cervantes did. She stood at the light switch, watching him. He stopped next to her, but kept his eyes on the door. “I’m sorry, Olivia. For everything.”
Then he was gone, leaving her with her breath stopped in her lungs and her heart beating like a wild bird against her chest.
It was hot in her room when Olivia woke the next morning. And bright. She sat straight up in her narrow, sagging bed and blinked in the direction of the thinly curtained window.
“Oh, no.”
It had to be mid-morning, at least. She could hear the sounds of street life outside her door; of men and women long awake and going about their business. She was supposed to be on the first flight out of La Paz this morning—that was the plan.
Apparently, she’d slept through the plan.
She whipped the worn sheet from her legs and scooted out of bed. She took another quick shower just to make up for the two or three she’d missed, and combed out her hair. It had dried on her pillow during the night and one side was flat while the other puffed out in a wavy mass, but she hardly noticed. She began to plait it tightly to her head, smoothing out the odd bumps as she went. She’d wash and dry it again when she got home.
Her fingers fumbled in her braid.
Home.
It seemed impossible she’d be home today. Had it only been three weeks since she’d arrived in Mexico, three weeks since she’d met Ernesto? Less than three days since she’d met Rafael?
Both men had changed her life profoundly.
Home seemed almost unreal to her now. Oh, she could picture it perfectly: the bougainvillea that swept along the iron railing on the second story; the view of both the ocean and the eucalyptus trees of Balboa Park; the sound of her brothers and sisters running across the tile floors toward some mischief that she, as the eldest sister, was bound to disapprove of. She loved the house almost as much as she loved the people in it. It was why she’d allowed her parents to convince her to stay there when she wasn’t on a tiny boat in the middle of some ocean somewhere. It was convenient, beautiful, and the only place she’d ever really wanted to live.
But it wasn’t real anymore—not the way it had always been when she’d come back to it after a long assignment.
This seemed real, she thought, looking into the mirror. It was insanity, and she told herself she couldn’t wait to see it end, but this was real. Being with Rafael was real. The tense conversations and whispered words and powerful kisses—those were real. They scared her, and they had to stop—today—but they were more intense, more stirring, than anything she’d ever had with any other man.
It was only the danger, she knew. The thrill of the unknown. The circumstances. She
knew
it. Her excellent brain, which had never failed her, told her. But it simply didn’t seem to matter.
She scrubbed her teeth with her finger and dried her mouth. There was no sense even thinking about it. The fact was, it was nearly over. This morning she’d get on a plane and leave Mexico. And Rafael and Ernesto—bad guys, good guys, whichever they were—would be nothing but an ache of regret in her heart and a stab of shame in her gut.
She padded back into the tiny room to gather up her filthy clothes and put them, reluctantly, back on her clean body.
Her dirty clothes were gone.
On the bed, where she wouldn’t be able to miss it, was a bag. Attached to the bag with a staple was a handwritten receipt for one dress, a pair of panties and a bra, and one pair of white socks.
Olivia sat down on the edge of the bed, clutched the bag to her naked chest and told herself under no circumstances was she to cry.
Chapter 8
R
afael and Bobby were already dressed and waiting for her, when she left the motel room, dressed in the not-stolen clothes. They looked dreadfully uncomfortable in their own starchy new clothing, and they smelled faintly of chemical dyes and mothballs. But Bobby no longer looked like a reprobate from clown college, and Rafael looked cooler, dressed in a white cowboy shirt and denims instead of a black turtleneck and black jeans.
Her own dress was plainly fashioned and of an unappetizing orange color, but it felt marvelously clean against her skin. She wished Rafael had thought to buy her a little makeup, but she decided she could get around having to explain to her mother why she had left the house without mascara by having someone pick her up in Tijuana and take her by her office first.
She was willing to take just about any precaution to keep her mother from knowing about the past three weeks.
She spread out her arms. “Ready?” she asked.
She looked beautiful, Rafe thought. Pretty and bright as any American tourist, in that silly dress.
He’d pounded on the door of a small shop in the heart of La Paz early this morning, until someone had come out of the back and opened the door. He’d flashed a fistful of American cash through the window first, to make the decision to open up on a Sunday morning a little easier for the shopkeeper.
The man had had a miserable selection of mostly ancient, mostly dusty, mostly men’s work clothes. The dress Olivia wore was the single article of women’s clothing he could find that he thought might fit her. It was a terrible color, but she looked wonderful in it. Her hair gleamed, her face glowed. She looked as she had when he’d first seen her.
“It fits,” he said.
She looked down. “Yes. Thank you. And for…for the other thing.”
He nodded.
The receipt.
It had been a little gift. Maybe it would help to ease the shame he knew she felt about being with him.
He glanced down at her feet. “What about your socks?”
Olivia held out the balled socks. “My feet aren’t swollen anymore. The sandals are fine.”
“That’s because it’s first thing in the morning. They’re bound to hurt by this afternoon. Keep the socks.”
“I don’t have anywhere to carry them. Besides, I’ll be home by this afternoon.”
Right.
Why did he keep forgetting that? She wouldn’t be with him by this afternoon. She’d be hundreds of miles away, laughing about her adventures over margaritas in some San Diego hot spot, most likely. Rafe took the socks and stuffed them in the front pocket of his jeans.
The sun was already beating down on them, and the dust from the unpaved side streets was a haze that would only get worse as the day progressed. Rafe scanned the street briefly.
“We’d better get going. We need to get through town and to the airport before
siesta.
We want to be as inconspicuous as possible.”
“Lucky she’s wearing that orange dress, then,” Bobby observed.
“It was the only one they had in her size,” Rafe said sharply.
Olivia looked down, fingered the fabric. “It’s bright,” she conceded. She looked up at Rafe. “I don’t have to put the other clothes back on, though, do I?”
“No. It’s fine.” He glared at Bobby, who snickered. Rafe suspected it was becoming Bobby’s mission in this situation to appear as obnoxious as possible. Rafe, as his superior officer by one grade, would have to tell him later what a damn good job he was doing of it.
“How are we getting there?” Olivia asked.
“We’ll have to take a taxi.”
There were plenty around. March was a good month for tourists in La Paz. Sun worshippers from the north were still chasing the Baja desert sunshine.
Rafe jerked his head toward the main plaza, and Bobby loped obediently off to flag down one of the taxis that cruised for sightseeing or shopping tourists.
Olivia looked around, pretending interest in everything but the man in front of her. “I’ve always liked La Paz,” she mused quietly. Rafe watched her. It was his last chance to memorize her delicate features, her exotic, almond eyes, the creamy tint of her skin. He’d had such a short time with her, and he wanted to remember everything.
“You can’t come back here, Olivia,” he said after a minute.
She gazed up at him, the sun and the statement making her blink. “What do you mean, I can’t come back here?”
“Until Cervantes is dead or behind bars, you can’t come back to La Paz. He’ll know you’ve been with me. He’ll know I’ve told you about him. You can’t come back to Baja at all.”
Olivia’s heart dropped like a brick in her chest. She felt suddenly as though she’d been running again and couldn’t catch her breath. “I have to come back,” she choked out. “I…I have to come back next fall for a follow-up study.”
Rafe shook his head. “Unless Cervantes is in jail, or someone’s killed him, it won’t be safe.”
“Rafael,” she said urgently, “you don’t understand. I’m in Baja all the time. For the next six years I have to be here twice a year. We’re doing current studies in the gulf. Data has to be taken on a regular basis.”
“Someone else will have to take it.”
“No one else can take my data,” she cried, feeling desperate. Rafe seemed to look around to ensure she’d attracted no attention, but Olivia ignored the significance of the look. “That would mean giving up my promotion, my team.”
Rafael’s expression hardened. “Then give them up, Olivia. If you come back here before he’s put in jail, he’ll kill you.”
“No.” She shook her head frantically, as though if she denied his words forcefully enough, they would not be true. “He won’t. Even if what you’ve told me is true, I’m an American citizen.”
He gave her a scornful look. “Don’t be stupid.”
Olivia stared up at him. “This is insane. I have to come back to Baja in just a few months. It’s my job.”
“Is your job more important than your life?”
“Yes! No, I mean, that’s not a question I can even answer.”
Not a question she could answer? Rafe thought he detected the slightest red haze in his normally clear vision. Not a question she could answer?
“Are you out of your mind?” he whispered furiously. “Your life cannot be separated from your job?”
“My job is my life. It’s my whole identity. It’s everything I’ve worked for since I was a child.” She gripped his arm. “Rafael, you can’t understand. I have worked so hard for credibility. It has taken me years to make people understand how serious I am. How smart I am. And still I get trotted out to press conferences and cocktail parties as the token Latina.
“This was my first team, my first assignment in charge. Not as the assistant scientist, but as the boss. I know it was mostly because of my Spanish, my connection with Mexico and the fact that my name opens some doors here. But I earned it, too, with long days on a thousand different boats in a dozen different waters. If I have to tell my colleagues that I can’t go back to my job in Baja because I got mixed up with a bunch of drug-running Mexican bandits, I will never get another team or another assignment of my own again.”
He glared at her, putting every ounce of menace into the look. If she wouldn’t listen to reason, maybe she’d respond to good old-fashioned intimidation. He understood what she was saying, of course. He, too, had dedicated his life to a very specific goal. He’d earned every promotion, when often the brass had thought of him as just another
barrio
boy who could translate for the border patrol.
If, after all that work, someone had tried to tell him he couldn’t come to Mexico, couldn’t come after Cervantes, he would have told them to go to hell—and he’d have come, anyway.
But this wasn’t him. This was Olivia. And the thought of Cervantes finding her, hurting her, made him nuts.
“I don’t care if you never get another assignment,” he said, wearing his fierce, implacable stare. “I don’t care if you never take another current reading in your life. I don’t care if you get fired, if you have to wash dishes to make a living. You are not coming back to Mexico until Cervantes is behind bars.” He poked her in the chest with his middle finger. “And
then
only if I call you personally and tell you it’s safe to come back.”
She stared at him, dumbfounded. “What are you talking about?”
He realized too late what he’d said. He straightened, raked his fingers through his hair, buying time. “What am I talking about?” he bluffed. “I’m talking about your life, Olivia.”
“No.” She frowned up at him. “I mean, why would you know when it was safe for me to come back? Why would you call me? Why would Ernesto go to jail, and not you or Bobby? What did you mean by that?”
He looked around for their taxi. Where the hell was Bobby? “I only meant that you have to take this as seriously as I do. You don’t know what Cervantes is like, Olivia. You’ve only seen that smarmy charm of his.”
Olivia’s brows snapped together. “Smarmy?” He’d never spoken a word of English to her, but he tossed words like
smarmy
around?
“He’s insane, Olivia. And not just the regular kind of insane. I’m talking about a man who kills people without a second thought. Who terrorizes his little town until they’re afraid to so much as talk to the police or the drug agents out of fear for their families. He’s not like the rest of us,” he added, intentionally including himself in the rundown of moral degenerates, if only to erase that dangerously considering look from her face. “He’s not in it just for the money, although he makes more of that than most small countries. He’s in it for the power. If he finds out you know about him, or if he even suspects it, which I imagine he already does, your American citizenship and your PhD and your family name aren’t going to mean anything. He’ll put you on a little boat and set you on your precious gulf—and you’ll never be seen again.”
“I am just as dangerous to you, Rafael. Why haven’t you put me on a boat and set me adrift? Why are you helping me? I could just as easily turn you in, make the police suspicious of you.”
Rafael couldn’t possibly answer that question. He didn’t have a clue. Even if he had been the kind of man she thought he was, even if she had posed that kind of threat to him, he would still be sneaking her out of the country, would still be keeping her safe. He couldn’t imagine doing anything else.
So he didn’t answer. He only looked down at her, at her hair and how it gleamed in the sunlight, at her lovely face and the brilliance in her eyes and the strong, stubborn set of her chin.
He lifted a hand, brushed back a strand of thick hair that had escaped its ruthless braid.
“Princesa,”
he said. “If anyone has been set adrift, it is me, I think.”
A horn blasted, making them both jump.
Rafe broke eye contact first, watched the taxi Bobby hired pull to the curb, while Olivia watched Rafe.
The man quite simply devastated her. Just when she had him pegged—a desperado, a drifter, a ruthless smuggler—he turned out to be something entirely different. He pushed her and bossed her and dragged her around, scaring her out of her wits most of the time. Then he tipped up her chin or brushed back her hair, and he’d be someone else. Someone who moved her.
He was moving her, now. In more ways than one.
“Hey!” Olivia snapped, as Rafe practically tossed her into the back of the cab beside Bobby, giving curt instructions to the driver as he scooted in next to her.
They drove in silence out to the airport, which was really not much more than a single runway and a tiny terminal.
The taxi dropped them off, as Rafe had instructed, at the entrance to the terminal parking lot. After the driver gave them all a curious once-over, he circled around and parked behind several other taxicabs to wait for the next wave of American tourists to come filing out of the terminal, eyes blinking in the sun.
Rafe, Olivia and Bobby stood on the asphalt in a small knot, Olivia sandwiched carefully between the men. Bobby and Rafe faced outward, surveying the parking lot.
They nodded at one another briefly, and Bobby faded into the low-growing windbreak trees that ringed the lot.
“Where is he going?” Olivia asked.
“To the terminal.”
“Is this all necessary? I mean, Ernesto doesn’t seem to be the kind of man who could or would operate covertly. If he were here, wouldn’t he be here with some of those Land Cruisers he likes and fifty men?”
“Probably,” Rafe grunted. “And if you don’t stop calling him ‘Ernesto,’ I’m going to have to gag you.”
Olivia ignored the threat. She’d found, over the past few days, that his threats held no real peril for her. “Then why do all this?”
“Because Cervantes isn’t the only sheriff in Baja, Olivia.” And except for a handful of Mexican federal agents, no one knew he and Bobby were not actually drug runners. He didn’t particularly care to be shot down in the line of duty while trying to buy Olivia a plane ticket. Not much glory in that for his family, Rafe thought.
“Oh,” Olivia said. She watched him as he followed Bobby’s wary progress through the trees toward the terminal. Every few seconds he would focus on the taxi drivers, who were out of their cars now, smoking and chatting. His beautiful black eyes were never still.
“How can you live like this?” she said, almost to herself.
He didn’t look at her. “You get used to it,” he said.
“I couldn’t get used to it.”
He flicked his gaze over her. “You’ve had a choice,
señorita.
”
Ah, the other Rafael, now. The snide, irritable Rafael. She wanted to be angry with him, but she suspected he was trying to provoke her. She didn’t have the heart to rise to the bait.
“Everyone has a choice, really.”
Rafe didn’t respond to that. Mostly because he wasn’t sure he believed it was true.
“Come on.” He grabbed her hand and started walking toward the terminal.
Olivia looked around for Rafael’s partner. “Where’s Bobby?”
“He’s inside. Everything checks out all right. We can go in.”
“How can you tell?”
“Because Bobby told me.”
“How? I can’t even see him.”