her breasts.
She retrieved the key and slapped it into his palm, conceding defeat at the unpleasant thought of those long, strong fingers delving under her bottom.
‘There, fine, are you satisfied now?’ she asked, disgusted with herself as well as him. ‘I had to scrub fifty toilets to get that. And believe me, the toilets in this dump need more than their fair share of elbow grease.’
The scoffing sound sent another inappropriate prickle of reaction shooting up her spine.
What the heck was wrong with her? This guy was the opposite of sexy. Clearly a fortnight spent living on a shoestring budget doing dead-end jobs in an alien, unfriendly country had melted her brain cells.
‘Don’t go anywhere,’ he said, getting out of the car. ‘You won’t like me if I have to come get you.’
She folded her arms across her chest, tense with indignation. ‘I don’t like you now.’
He gave a humourless chuckle.
Iona glared at his back as he walked into the motel office and indulged in a brief fantasy of running off into the night. But as his tall frame stepped into the office—and the lean athletic build rippling under a tan polo shirt and dark trousers became apparent under the harsh strip lighting—she let the fantasy go.
After a ten-minute conversation with Greg, the night clerk, he strolled back towards her, silhouetted by moonlight again. As he approached she became painfully aware of the mile-wide shoulders, narrow hips, long legs and the predatory stride.
Flipping heck.
Whoever this guy was, he was a lot stronger and bigger than she was—and she already knew he didn’t mind using his physical advantage. Which meant she was going to have to wait to make a clean getaway.
He paused next to the car and pulled out a smartphone. As he talked into the device, the blue light from the neon Vacancy sign hit his face.
Iona gasped. Her abductor could make a living as a male supermodel.
A bubble of hysteria built under her breastbone as she stared at the firm sensual lips, the aquiline nose with a slight bump at the bridge, the sculpted angular cheekbones, the olive-toned skin and the shadow of stubble on his jaw. He glanced towards her and her lungs stopped as she absorbed the deep sapphire-blue of his eyes and the unusual dark blue rim around the irises. Was that a trick of the light? Even Daniel Craig’s eyes weren’t that blue. Surely?
He finished the call—not a word of which she’d managed to catch due to the loud buzzing in her ears from a lack of oxygen—and slipped the smartphone back into his pocket.
He settled into the driver’s seat, thankfully casting his stunning face into darkness again.
She looked away and concentrated on breathing. So what if he was better looking than Adonis? He was still a bullying jerk.
She repeated the mantra in her head as he drove off without acknowledging her.
‘If it’s not too much to ask,’ she said as they left the motel’s lot, ‘where exactly are you taking me? Because my purse, my passport and all my worldly goods happen to be in room 108. And I don’t want someone to nick them.’
Not that she had a great deal of money in her purse, or many worldly goods, but her credit card was kind of important, and her passport if she was ever going to get out of this Godforsaken country.
‘That’s cute, coming from you,’ he said as he flipped the indicator and turned onto Morro Bay’s main street.
She bristled. ‘I’m not a thief, if that’s what you’re implying.’
‘Uh-huh. So what were you doing in Demarest’s room? Planning to scrub his john after hours?’
The mention of Brad’s name had her bristling even more. So he knew Demarest? Or knew of him? She tried to decide whether this was good or bad.
‘This is the way it’s gonna work,’ he said, his voice domineering—and deadly calm. ‘Either I report you to the Morro Bay PD and they put you in a cell to keep you out of my way or you do what I say and tell me everything you know about Demarest.’
His thumb tapped rhythmically against the steering wheel as the car drifted out of the small town—taking her farther away from her goal, and her passport.
‘It’s not stealing if someone’s already stolen from you,’ she offered, after considering her options. She didn’t plan to tell this arrogant stranger anything but she didn’t want to end up in a cell either.
His thumb tapped three more times. ‘No, actually, technically it’s still stealing.’
Great, the man wasn’t just a bullying jerk, he was a self-righteous bullying jerk—with eyes bluer than Daniel Craig. Her pulse spiked.
Get over the eyes. Looks can be deceiving—you know that.
‘How much?’
‘How much what?’ she asked, confused by the question.
‘How much did Demarest take you for?’
The toneless enquiry had all the pain and humiliation charging up her throat and threatening to gag her. She swallowed down the bitter taste. So she’d made a mistake. A stupid, selfish mistake by believing in a guy who had never been what he seemed. But she’d spent the last two weeks trying to put that mistake right—that had to count for something.
‘Not me, my father.’ She stared out of the window into the darkness. The car had reached the bluff over Morro Bay and even though she couldn’t see the ocean, she could sense it.
She hit the button to slide down the window, suddenly desperate for the scent of fresh air. The dry ache in her throat caught her unawares as the musty scent of earth, and sea and tree sap brought with it a vivid picture of Kelross Glen. The little Highland town in the foothills of the Cairngorms she’d spent the first twenty-four years of her life trying to escape. And every second of the last two weeks wishing she could return to.
She hit the up switch, sealing out the painful memories. She couldn’t go back, not until she made amends for Brad and the childish wanderlust that had drawn her to him in the first place. She had to get at least some of her father’s money back. And if that meant tracking Brad the Cad through every dive on California’s coastline—and putting up with the arrogant guy seated beside her—she’d do it.
‘How much did he take your father for?’ The sharp question jolted her out of her thoughts.
‘Twenty-five grand,’ she said. Her dad’s life savings. Peter MacCabe had believed he was giving Iona a shot at her dream—but Brad’s promises of setting her up as a wildlife artist in Los Angeles had been as false and shallow as he was.
She pushed out a shaky breath.
Stop being a drama queen.
Once she’d given Detective Sexy the slip and worked out a way to get back into Brad’s room, she’d finally be able to look for her dad’s money.
‘You don’t seriously think
