man shot him a question in Spanish which he replied to in the same language—the reply made the other man laugh in surprise. Kate’s hands balled into fists as she gritted her teeth; every natural feeling in her rebelled at the idea of these two sniggering at her Susie’s expense.
‘Do you do this sort of thing for a living, or is it just a hobby?’
He thinks they’re pictures of me! Kate’s jaw dropped. In other circumstances she might have felt flattered to have her body confused with that of her lovely younger sister, but on this occasion it just made her flip. Where moments before she had felt embarrassed and defensively protective of Susie, now she experienced a flash of blazingly hot rage.
If her adversary hadn’t possessed startlingly swift reactions, her closed-fisted blow would have made contact with his lean cheek. Kate, who had never felt the need to resort to anything as crude as brute force in her life experienced a moment of confusion and shock at her actions before the overpowering need to escape overwhelmed her.
‘Let me go!’ she shrieked, landing a kick on his shins before she subsided her eyes flashing, her breath coming in short gasps. Her nostrils quivered; underneath the light expensive male fragrance he wore she could smell the clean-washed, spicy, masculine scent that she’d noticed before she’d even laid eyes on him—it had bothered her then, and it bothered her more now.
‘Now you show your true colours,’ came the disdainful observation. ‘Cool down, little cat. I have no interest in your sleazy snaps; you can have them…’
Kate felt so pathetically relieved by this contemptuous information that she could have wept. Trying to retain a semblance of dignity, still panting from her exertions, she looked pointedly at his dark fingers still encircling her wrist and did her best to ignore the languid contempt in his tone. She couldn’t afford to lose her temper; he had the photos and for Susie’s sake she had to get them, even if this involved a bit of humiliation.
With an unpleasant, sneery sort of smile that made Kate’s fingers itch to remove it from his smug face, he released her hand and mockingly inclined his glossy head. ‘…When I have the information I require,’ he completed the white crocodile smile fading completely.
Kate’s shoulders slumped as her eyes stayed trained on the photos held tantalisingly out of reach. She was fast coming to the conclusion he was playing cat and mouse games with her and, the awful part was, there wasn’t a thing she could do about it.
‘I don’t know anything.’ She sighed wearily as she rubbed her tender wrist; the imprint of those strong brown fingers seemed to be branded into her flesh.
‘Cut the innocent act. You obviously know him, unless you send pornographic pictures of yourself to total strangers…?’ he sneered.
Pink spots of outrage appeared on her smooth cheeks. ‘They are not pornographic, they’re…they’re tasteful,’ she finished, unable to repress a weak grimace at the memory of the photos.
‘Sure they’re art,’ he drawled insultingly. ‘What’s the connection? Is he your lover, or your supplier?’
‘Supplier?’ she exclaimed. Her eyes widened as her frown of incomprehension lifted. ‘Drugs!’ Oh, God, what have I walked into? Had Luis Gonzalez tried to muscle in on the big boys? Were these men here to teach him a lesson, or worse…? ‘This is a m-misunderstanding,’ she stuttered. ‘I know nothing about any drugs.’
‘Of course you don’t.’
Her eyes filled with tears of sheer frustration. She blinked hard to stop them spilling over. If she could weep like Susie—it was one of life’s mysteries how Susie cried so picturesquely—tears might get her somewhere, but she couldn’t see this man being touched by her own blotchy face and runny nose.
‘Why won’t you believe me? Do I look like a drug addict or something?’
‘And what do they look like?’ If he’d been so damned good at spotting the signs, Javier reflected bitterly, his sister would have been spared those agonising months of rehabilitation.
‘You should know. It’s your business, not mine.’
He went rigid. Not a muscle in his face moved, but his eyes blazed like twin points of fury. ‘Women like you are incomprehensible! Why do you protect him?’ he demanded. ‘Is it fear, or some misplaced sense of loyalty? A man like that will pull you down to his level, and when you get there he’ll leave you…’
Without any warning he grabbed her arm and, swiftly rolling up the sleeve of her top, ran one long finger softly over the blue-veined inner aspect of her left wrist and forearm. Under the light his accessory helpfully directed over the area, his keen eyes searched her fair blemishless skin for tell-tale marks.
Kate shivered helplessly as tingling arrows of electricity shot up her arm. Instinctively she started to pull back and then stopped as a strange heavy lethargy stole over her. Her leaden-lidded eyes were riveted on the image of his dark fingers on her skin; heat travelled like a flash-flood, bathing her entire body; the distant buzzing in her head got closer.
She only started breathing again when he released her.
‘Satisfied now?’ With dignity she rolled down her sleeve.
‘Not quite.’
Her stomach muscles clenched as she saw his intention. Her angry dark eyes clashed with his emotionless gaze for several seconds before she conceded defeat.
‘Let me,’ she said sarcastically as she turned back the sleeve that covered her right arm. Chin lifted defiantly, she thrust out her arm in front of him.
She waited for him to look away, embarrassed, shocked or maybe repelled—she’d seen all the reactions which, to her mind, were wildly out of proportion to the small puckered area of skin, pinker than the rest of her skin, that lay along the inside of her arm, just above her elbow joint—there was another, smaller and less prominent area on her shoulderblade which the plastic surgery had not quite been able to conceal.
It was amazing how such a small blemish could throw some people and make them look at you differently. Kate had decided a long time ago that other people’s squeamishness was their problem, not hers, and she didn’t go out of her way to conceal or reveal the childhood scars she still bore from a domestic accident.
This man wasn’t thrown. Neither did he fall into the category of those who politely pretended not to notice the marks. Seb had been one of those—Seb who, despite his protests that it really didn’t matter to him, had never been able to bring himself to touch the scarred area.
This man had no such qualms. He took the arm she defiantly offered between his big hands and turned it slightly sideways, rubbing his thumb lightly over the shiny scar tissue as he did so. Kate shivered and the blue eyes lifted momentarily.
‘A burn?’ There was not a shred of pity in his expression and over the years Kate had become something of an expert at detecting it.
She cleared her throat, it felt raw and achey. ‘Are you always this morbidly curious…?’
‘You are not comfortable discussing it?’
Not just mad, bad and indisputably dangerous, he had to turn out to be into amateur psychology—this just got better and better! ‘Not with homicidal maniacs.’
‘Do
