Intimate Enemies (37 page)

“Not at all. You’ve made fantastic headway with Cassandra, but I know she is difficult and time-consuming. I’m just making sure all the loose ends are tied up.” Saul paused. “You have kept Cassandra sufficiently…satisfied?”

Cassie went still. A chill spread low in her belly. There was no doubt what Saul meant by satisfied. The sexual innuendo lay heavy in the tone behind the word. She stopped breathing, waiting for Rio’s response.

“Believe me, it hasn’t been easy.” His disgruntled response fell like a stone to the bottom of Cassie’s stomach.

Saul’s laugh sounded like those Cassie had heard in movies from the midst of a men’s locker room. “Is the payoff at least worth the hardship? Hard to imagine you wouldn’t get quite a bit of pleasure from such a feisty woman. I always love the opportunity to release pent-up aggressions.”

Cassie’s mouth fell open. She shook her head.
Deny it
, she implored in her head.
Deny it!

When Rio didn’t answer, Saul prodded him. “Don’t leave me in suspense, Rio. What kind of fuck is she? Submissive, angry, boring?”

Shock punched her. She expelled all the air she’d been holding in one whoosh.

“Saul,” Rio said, his voice lowered so Cassie almost couldn’t hear it. “This isn’t appropriate—”

“Is she a good fuck, Rio?” Saul’s voice rose with an unnatural thrill, like something Cassie would expect in a high school boy. She’d heard him do this with Santos when he’d been trying to entice information out of his son as a boy. Cassie willed Rio to see the trap. “That’s all I’m—”

“Amazing, sir.” Rio’s voice ran cold. “She is an amazing fuck. Sir.”

She fisted her hand and pressed it to her throat. Forced herself to take air. Tremors shook her body. Her brain jumped between loyalty and betrayal, love and fear. What in the hell
was
this?

“Really.” Saul’s tone slid back into one she was more familiar with. Cool. Suspicious. “I see. She’s grown awfully fond of you awfully fast.”

No response from Rio.

Saul sighed. “She is beautiful. She can be charming. Amazing in bed, you say. I could see how a man could grow attached—”

“She’s just a job, sir.” Rio’s snap made Cassie flinch. “You told me to keep her busy in bed, to keep her preoccupied. She is preoccupied. I am in no way attached. A good fuck is a good fuck. End of story.”

“Saul told him to
what
?” Cassie whispered, crossing her arms over her belly and leaning into them, counter pressure to the pain. She told herself Rio was talking Saul’s language. Telling Saul what he wanted to hear. He had to be.

Saul’s satisfied chuckle chilled Cassie to the bone. “I knew I could count on you, Rio. Always up to the task. I’m glad she turned out not to be too much of a hardship on you.”

“No, sir.”

“Well, keep doing her however you’ve been doing her. She’s been as well behaved as a kitten with cream on her paws. Reward her so well tonight she sleeps until noon tomorrow, will you? That will keep her out of the way while we finish business.”

“My pleasure, sir.”

The conversation ended, but Cassie didn’t move. Couldn’t move. She was frozen there, hiding with the servants. Her brain was spinning so fast she grew dizzy. When a server offered the tray of champagne, she picked up two glasses, downed them both and returned the crystal before the server continued on.

Two important and opposite pieces of information kept running up against each other—Rio adamant about not being with her because Saul would see it as a betrayal, and Rio being with her at Saul’s instruction.

And suddenly this whole thing looked a lot like one of Saul’s elaborate games—Rio’s slow acquiescence to her advances. His knowledge of her past enabling him to give her just what she needed in bed. Saul never went right for the kill. He always orchestrated an invasive, subversive attack. Always targeted a person’s weaknesses and…

Why do you keep stepping in to do my job?

She’s just a job.

A job.

She gasped aloud. Men were her weakness. Because of Sharpe. And Saul would only know about that weakness if…“Oh my God,” she breathed, her stomach suddenly queasy.

“Cassie.”

Rio’s voice startled her. Fear, pure and painful, hit her heart and crackled through her chest. She jumped and turned.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I didn’t mean to scare you.”

His voice sounded like his own again, the one she knew, not the one that belonged to the man talking to Saul.

“Hey,” he said, tone softening. “Are you feeling alright? You look a little…green.”

He took another step closer, put gentle hands on her shoulders and slid them down her arms. Her throat closed. A shiver shook her body. Reflexively, she stepped out of his reach.

His hands stayed exactly where they’d been on her arms, only now they held air. “Whoa,” he whispered, a frightened, apprehensive look washing his face. “What’s that about?”

God, she wasn’t sure. She’d moved automatically. Instinctively. Her mind felt warped. Her stomach felt sick. She couldn’t process all the information coming together inside her head. Inside her heart. Couldn’t separate good from bad. Couldn’t see into all the shadowed corners.

“Baby?” He dropped his hands, looked like he was about to come closer again, but didn’t. “Talk to me. What happened?”

His quick, seemingly seamless shift from Saul’s employee to the man she cared so much for touched off something in the very depths of her body. A sensation of apprehension that quickly turned to fear. That fear triggered a memory. Of Blake Sharpe’s easy, charming ways, until that night in her kitchen. Of how she’d said no to his advances and he’d pulled a knife from the butcher block on her counter. Of the way he’d turned from magnetic to maniac in the span of mere seconds.

Rio is not Blake
, she told herself.
Rio is
not
Blake.

But…

“Okay, okay…” Rio pushed back his blazer, one hand at his hip, one on his forehead as if he were trying to solve some monumental problem, “This is about the shooting. In town. I knew you’d find out about it eventually. I should have known you’d hear about it tonight.”

“The—” Her mind sharpened. Then reeled again. He wanted to talk about that…
now
?

“Let’s go to your room, baby.”

She sputtered, not quite a laugh, not quite a scoff. “
No
.”

“Cass,” he reached out and closed his hand around her arm. “I really can’t talk about it here.”

“Then I guess you can’t talk about it at all.” She wished her voice sounded stronger. She wished her mind was clearer. She wished she could rewind life seven months and change everything. Cassie looked down at his hand. “You’re hurting me.”

He let go as if she’d burned him. “Shit. Dammit.” He rubbed both hands on his blazer. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean… Shit, I’m sorry.”

Cassie’s heart rose to her throat. The first sign of distress and she was already caving. Aching to wrap him in her arms and soothe. And where would that get her? God, she didn’t know anymore.

He rubbed her arm with both hands as if that would erase the red finger marks still indenting her flesh.

“I didn’t…murder him…like everyone says.” Rio spoke low while casting furtive glances in all directions, still caressing the marks from her arms. “I told you about my friendship with your mother and Santos.”

He paused and looked up. Cassie’s frown intensified, her mind trying to grasp the sudden involvement of her family in this conversation. “What do they…?”

“When our friendship became a problem with Saul, I backed off.” He dropped his gaze to her arm, and stopped caressing to hold her hand. “When I backed off, Santos lost direction. He got caught up with a bad crowd. Toyed with the idea of joining the
Muertos
. There was an incident in town between Santos, one of his
Muertos,
who also happened to be Paco’s little brother, and a
Diablo
.”

Rio glanced up again, checking her attention or her expression, she couldn’t tell. But when he found her rapt, he continued. “I got word about it, but by the time I got there, the confrontation had escalated.” He threaded their fingers. Cleared his throat. “There were weapons and drugs involved. The
Diablo
pulled a gun on Santos and Paco’s brother, and I…”—he flicked another bright-eyed glance at her from beneath those thick, black lashes—“…shot him. Killed him. But it was self-defense, not murder.”

He’d taken a life…to save Santos’s?

Cassie felt like a yo-yo. Everything with this man was one step forward, one step back. One good deed wiped out by one bad.

She thought of Santos. “That’s why he had the tattoo.”

Rio nodded, inspecting her fingers as if he were going to become a palm reader.

“Why Paco feels he owes you,” Cassie said. “Why the
Diablos
hate you.”

He sighed. “There are always two sides to a story, Cass. You have to consider the source when you’re deciding which to believe. The people here don’t know me.”

“But I do?” she asked.

He lifted his head and really looked at her now. “Yes.” His tone was absolute. “You know me.”

His adamant gaze, the confidence in his answer, made her stomach grow tighter. “How can you say that? How can you stand here and say that after…?”

Her breath caught just thinking about the things that had come out of his mouth.

He leaned in. “After what?”

“That,” was all she could get out before lifting her chin toward the lattice, pulling her hand from his and wrapping her arms around herself.

He watched her another long second, then turned slowly and looked at the lattice, his gaze on the spot where he’d been standing with Saul. His whole body went still.

“I heard everything.”

“No,” he said, voice strained. “
God no!
It’s not…”

She waited. Found herself leaning forward, ready to catch and embrace his answer if it was even remotely reasonable. “It’s not…what?”

He dropped his hands and turned toward her, expression defeated, tortured.

But he said nothing.

Anger and disappointment and hurt collided. “It’s not what I think? Is that what you were going to say?” she asked. “I’d like to think you told your boss what he wanted to hear.”

He opened his mouth. His lips tried to form words. Thoughts and emotion zinged across his face.

But still, he said nothing.

“Though even if you did admit it…” Cassie said, crossing her arms tight over her ribs again, trying to physically hold herself together. “That still leaves the question of: Did you sleep with me before or after he gave you the order to keep me busy in bed?”

Rio straightened. His features hardened.

Since he wasn’t talking, Cassie went on, her anger growing with his continued silence. “Because, from my perspective, if it was after, which I’m suspecting it is by your lack of an answer, how can I know if you took me to bed out of desire or duty? It wouldn’t matter if all there was between us was sex. Because a good fuck is a good fuck, right?”

Rio winced. His eyes fell closed. Head dropped.

“But if there’s more between us, where and why we started matters. Trust matters. Honesty matters.” More silence from Rio. Her pain bubble burst and morphed into fury. She stepped toward him and fisted the lapels of his blazer. “Don’t wimp out on me, Rio,” she nearly begged. “I
believe
in you. Give me something,
something
to hold on to here.”

“I told you earlier today,” he said, his tone maddeningly steady. “I’ll tell you when I can, but not yet. I know this looks… You can’t understand…” He blew out a breath. “I can only tell you that…I really, really
do
love you.”

Anger boiled at her core. She released his lapels with a shove, tipping him off-balance. Rio hit the lattice with his shoulder, but the structure held.

“Goddamn you.” She’d meant to rail at him, but the pain had pushed through the rage and now she just felt weak and defeated.

The staff cast nervous glances their way but didn’t dare interrupt.

“Cassie—”

“Don’t. Just listen.” The genuine plea in his voice, the tortured expression on his face, twisted her guts. And even though she hadn’t had time to look over the estates detailed finances yet, she knew with near certainty what she’d find there. “I finally have what I need to put Saul in prison. And when he’s out of the house, I will spend every dime it takes to uncover every other crime he ever committed.

“I don’t want to hurt you, Rio. I don’t know if what I have will implicate you in crimes too, but I’m not going to let Saul go because you refuse to jump from a sinking ship.” She pulled in a shaky breath and tears pushed out over her lashes. “Please, Rio. Please get the hell away from him, from here. Unless you were involved with Mamà’s and Santos’s deaths, I won’t search for you.”

A flash of anger hinted beneath the pain, and he stepped toward her. “You can’t honestly believe—”

Cassie experienced a sharp stab of fear—a flashback to Sharpe flaring with anger in just the same way.
Rio is not Blake.
She slapped a hand against his chest to stop his forward movement, but it was shaking.

“I don’t know what I can or can’t honestly believe right now. But I do know I was wrong about one thing.” She met his gaze. “It wasn’t
possible
for me to love you. I already
do
love you. It took this for me to realize that I’ve loved you for months.”

His anger vanished. His face lifted with hope. And her heart broke.

Before he could say something that would twist the knife, she said, “If you really do care about me, look out for yourself. It would kill me to have to watch you throw your life away.”

She turned to leave.

“Cassie.” He took hold of her arm and turned her back toward him. “Cassie, God…” Enveloped her in his arms, crushed her against his hard, warm body. “Let’s talk about this, baby. I’ll sign out to one of the other men and come to your room. We’ll sit down—”

“No, Rio, I can’t.” She shook her head against his chest and pushed out of his arms. He released her immediately. “I just…I can’t.”