Cherry Adair - T-flac 03 (17 page)

Oh damn. She should have been more insistent that Lauren live at home with her. She should never have let her go off alone.

"Keep going."

"Lauren called me on a Thursday night, hysterical. She insisted I fly down to Vegas and help her. I couldn't understand half of what she said."

Delanie glanced up to find Kyle watching her intently. She swallowed roughly, staring at a spot on the far wall. "My mom is—flighty, for want of a better word, and Lauren takes after her. In spades. They're both beautiful and vivacious and attract men like honey draws flies. And Lauren is so trusting, so emotionally… needy. She's always in some sort of emotional crisis or another. Our little drama queen.

Oh, God, it never occured to me before she disappeared that the time might come when I would be powerless to make things all right for her."

"She's an adult. She made her own choices."

"Usually bad ones." Delanie rubbed her nose with the palm of her hand. "I never know what's fact and what's fiction with Lauren. But suddenly she became totally paranoid. Every time she called, she was being watched or followed or chased by someone. I didn't know this time was any different. I thought I'd calmed her down. I waited ten days till school was out," Delanie said bitterly. "Ten days to get the lowest airfare I could.

"Lauren paid dearly for my being so conscientious and tightfisted." Her breath shuddered in her tight
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chest. "I should have said to hell with the last week of school and the cost, and left right away. I failed her when she needed me the most."

"Where were your parents while all this was going on?"

"My mother lives in L.A."
With the latest "love of her life," twenty-four-year-old Jason
. "My father's with his family. They live in D.C. I believe."

"You don't know where your father lives?"

"I've never met him. I guess
father
isn't the right word for him. 'Sperm donor'? He and my mother had a hot, tempestuous affair for ten years. And while my mother had Lauren and me in Sacramento, his
wife
was busy going to the PTA for his three sons and daughter in D.C. Not that we cared. We did just fine without him.

"Anyway, because Lauren is extremely headstrong, and Mom is usually… distracted and can't handle her anyway, I'm the one who deals with her dramas."

Kyle mulled that over for several long seconds. What was there for him to say? The situation wasn't all that uncommon.

"What did you find when you got to Vegas?"

"I went straight to Lauren's apartment. She wasn't there. I asked her neighbors. They knew she had a rich boyfriend, and several of them had seen her leave with a man they described as Ramon—"

"
She's
headstrong?" Kyle shook his head. "So,
she
disappears and
you
decide to do exactly the same damn thing?" He rolled his eyes and rubbed a large hand over his mouth. "You should have gone to the cops."

"Do I look like a moron? Of course I went to the police. They put out an APB on her. But there was no sign of a struggle at her apartment; her passport was missing, as was a suitcase and half her wardrobe.

They said wherever she'd gone it was obvious she'd gone willingly.

"All I had to go on was that phone call. And knowing my sister. While the LVPD did their thing, I went and applied at the Cobra to see what I could find out.

Kyle shook his head again, obviously in disgust. "What the hell did you hope to do? Hold Montero at gunpoint with that peashooter of yours and demand he produce your sister?"

"That son of a bitch took Lauren." There wasn't a doubt in her mind. "Call it gut instinct or whatever.

He's got her up there. I don't know
why
he was her, but I'm going to find her and take her home. Do you understand me? Damn it, I'm going to take my b… baby sister home."

To her alarm and disgust, tears welled in her eyes. Impatiently she brushed them away. "I don't care if I have to hitchhike my way back up that mountain. I'm going to—" She stopped to give him a challenging look.

"The only thing that can stop me is if I'm stone cold dead. If you have any comments, save them till morning. I'm tired, hot, and cranky. I want a cold shower and peace and quiet."

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He didn't move so much as a muscle as he observed her. "That's it?"

"No." Anger shot to the surface like foam on beer. "This is the last damn time you threaten to kill me, Wright. If you're going to do it," she said furiously, "get it over with."

"Why is it," he asked coolly, "Montero and company find my threats believable enough to keep a healthy distance, and you don't?"

"I don't believe you'd hurt a woman." Not with physical violence anyway.

"Is that so? Based on what assumption?"

"Based on the
fact
that I'm still alive."

"You have no idea who I am, jungle girl. No idea at all." He flexed his hands. "I'm not some tame boy from Sacramento that will do your bidding. Remember that."

She would.

Suddenly, what he'd just said dawned on her. "How do you know I live in Sacramento?" she asked suspiciously.

"I have ways of knowing things you're better off not knowing about."

"Bullshit, tell the truth."

"Sometimes the truth is a danger in itself, isn't it?"

"Only to people like you."

He rubbed a large hand over his jaw. "Jesus, woman, you sure as hell know how to ruin a party."

"Oh, excuse me for inconveniencing you."

"Yeah, well that can't be helped."

"I was being sarcastic."

"I wasn't." He pushed himself away from the door. "I'll find your sister.
Now
will you go back home?"

"No."

"No?" he parroted. "Do you trust
anyone
, Delanie?"

"There's only one person I'd trust with my sister's life." She stared him in the eye. "Myself."

"Are you basing your assumption that Lauren's on Izquierdo on anything concrete?"

"I told you. Her neighbors saw her leave in a black limo the same night she called me."

"Las Vegas is filled with black limos."

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"Not ones that have COBRA 1 as a license plate."

He stood staring at her. Did she imagine a flicker of admiration in his eyes? She couldn't be certain. It disappeared so fast, leaving his expression unreadable in the dim sixty-watt lighting.

"You're one tough cookie, aren't you, jungle girl?" He stepped right in front of her before she could evade him, and reached out, touching her gently on the cheek. "All right. We'll get her together."

And pigs will fly, Delanie thought, not believing him for a nanosecond.

She gave him a mild look, and after a moment he dropped his hand, tucking it into the front pocket of his jeans. "If we're going to find Lauren, you're going to have to believe I know what I'm doing and let me set the ground rules."

She knew all about men setting ground rules. And all about women foolish enough to trust them at their word. Delanie sized him up. Believing their BS was what got women hurt and left them spending the rest of their lives trying to fill the gaping holes in their hearts the men left behind.

But she wasn't stupid. If she was going to find her sister, she was going to have to go through the motions of accepting Kyle's help.
Pride
wasn't going to find Lauren.

But outright trusting him to take her back up the mountain with him would be downright stupid. She'd have to stick to him like glue not to be left behind.

Not that she was going to let on that she knew what he intended. "All right," she said quietly, and thought she saw his shoulders relax. It must have been a trick of the light. "I admit, I might need you."

"To find your sister."

"Of course, what else?" For the first time she noticed he looked as exhausted as she felt. Relieved to have a pause, however brief, in the hostilities, she flopped onto her back. Limp as a rag doll she covered her eyes with a bent arm, leaving her feet to dangle to the floor. At least she wasn't randy as a she-goat anymore, which was an enormous relief.

"Describe her to me."

"She's twenty-four. Five foot seven, angelically beautiful, shoulder-length strawberry-blonde hair, and blue eyes."

"She looks like you."

"Our coloring is nothing alike, and she's gorgeous. And a lot less determined. And more inclined to forgive." Delanie opened an eye. "She's
nicer
than I am." She blocked him out behind her eyelids again.

"Under normal circumstances I wouldn't want you anywhere
near
her, Wright."

"These are hardly normal circumstances, are they?" Kyle said shortly.

"She's smart. Really bright." Another long pause before she said determinedly, "Smart enough to
do
something with her life. I was disappointed she didn't want to go to college." She gave a choking laugh.

"Now I'd just be grateful if she's alive."

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She realized how bitter she sounded and didn't care. She should have put her foot down and forbidden Lauren to—

"So you're a kindergarten teacher, huh?"

"They probably fired me when I disappeared for two months. But, yes, I am."

"And what," Kyle asked dangerously, "was a
kindergarten
teacher doing picking up a strange man in a San Francisco hotel bar?"

"I was lonely," Delanie said offhandedly.

"Bullshit. Where was Anthony-baby that night?"

Horrified, Delanie sat up. "Who told—? How did you—?"

"What happened, jungle girl? Anthony said you weren't woman enough for him, and when you arrived at his hotel to disprove it, he was busy with someone else?"

She swallowed roughly. "Something like that. Yes."

"So you decided to toss away your virginity on a total stranger. I'm flattered and honored."

"There were eleven men in the bar that night. You were closest to the door."

Kyle smiled. "No, I wasn't."

She shrugged. "I wanted to know what all the hoopla was about."

"And I was the lucky guy." Kyle moved to the bed and sat beside her. His weight tilted her body against his. Lord, but he was strong and solid. She shifted away from him slightly.

His eyes crinkled at the corners. "We connected in those seventy-two hours, though, didn't we?" He touched her cheek with his thumb. "We connected on a level you never experienced with anyone.

Including good old Anthony-baby-the-jerking-son-of-a-bitch."

"The sex was great," she admitted. Overwhelming. Terrifying. She'd been consumed by him. Totally and irrevocably. She was, after all,
not
that different than her mom and Lauren. The thought had terrified her.

"You're a lousy liar, Delanie Eastman. There's a hell of a lot more we need to discuss, but this is neither the time, nor the place." With a last brush to her cheek he rose from the bed. "I have to go out. Want Gil to send up something to eat?"

"No thanks." She just wanted to be left alone. "Are you coming back?" she asked suddenly, opening her eyes.

There was a momentary silence. "Yeah."

She gave that a moment's thought. If he were lying she'd deal with the problem in the morning. She was so drained and exhausted he could go out and do the macarena all night for all she cared. She waited for
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him to open the door.

"Tell me something," Kyle said. "If Montero'd been straight, would you have slept with him to find your sister?"

"In a heartbeat," she said flatly. "I'd've done
whatever
it took to find Lauren."

«^»

Dim and smoky, the cantina, filled with lowlifes and twelve-year-old whores of both sexes, proved anything could be had for a price in San Cristobal. Kyle felt the brooding malevolence of Montero's influence.

Delanie's words rang in his ears.

Whatever it takes.

Or whoever? he thought darkly as he nursed his beer.

Damn.

He'd cherished the memory of their brief time together for four years. Years when even a drift of familiar perfume could cause his heart to ache. The memory of her sweetness, her generosity of spirit, as well as her sensuality, had sustained him in some pretty bleak days between then and now.

He'd been in San Francisco for the weekend before hooking up with Montero on a journey into the dark side. Kyle had suddenly yearned for normalcy before the murky depths swallowed him whole.

He'd flown into San Francisco from Europe for some much needed R and R, with plans to meet his father for dinner his first night in town. And while he couldn't tell his dad exactly what was going down, Geoffrey Wright was a smart man and had three other sons with secrets. He'd read between the lines.

If his father had known what his youngest son was about to embark on, he wouldn't have been
mildly
worried when he wished him Godspeed and hugged him good-bye that night.

They'd lingered over coffee after dinner in Kyle's downtown hotel. But his father'd had to get back to San Jose to fly out on a business trip the next day. Kyle had finally walked him outside to his car, then, not wanting to go back to the impersonal hotel room, stopped into the sports bar for a leisurely nightcap.

He took a swig of warm beer and grimaced, remembering the chilled brew he'd been drinking when Delanie walked into the hotel sports bar that night.

The first thing he'd noticed was her air of vulnerability. This was not a woman accustomed to sashaying into a bar unescorted. He remembered glancing behind her to see who the lucky guy was.

She'd been alone.

All the men in the bar had turned to give her the onceover. She'd been quite a sight to see in that
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