Take It Down (22 page)

“Yeah. Why? We have all night. I need to talk to you.”

She dipped and spun out of his grasp. “You have all night. I have somewhere to be. And whatever you have to say will have to wait until later. I’m going to be late.” With some clothes on, she had a slightly better chance of getting him out of her room than she’d had minutes before.

“What? Where?”

“Not that it’s any of your business, but I’m meeting someone.”

His eyes turned a stormy, angry, sickly green that reminded her of the sky just before the only tornado she’d ever seen had ripped across her hometown.

Neither event had heralded anything good.

“Meeting someone.”

She knew exactly what he was thinking. And had no intention of disabusing him of the notion that she was meeting a man. It was probably better this way. Cleaner. He wouldn’t feel the need to say things he didn’t mean when she left and she wouldn’t feel the need to bawl hysterically like a ninny.

Win-win. All right, win-lose. But she was going to lose either way.

“Who?”

Turning her back on him, Elle rummaged around in the mess atop her dresser, ostensibly looking for a piece of jewelry. Really, she couldn’t look him in the eye and lie to him. Not anymore.

“None of your business.”

His hands wrapped around her body and spun her to face him. “What we just did makes it my business.”

His stormy eyes sparked off her own temper. That and the fear still coiling inside her stomach like a snake eating its own tail…and her happiness with it.

“You’re wrong. What we just did makes you my lover, not my keeper.”

His fingers dug into her upper arms, holding her in place. The edge of the dresser bit the small of her back. And an ache started directly in the center of her chest.

“Who?” The single word was as intimidating as the expression on his face. It was quiet and deadly, just as she knew he would be when looking down the business end of a gun.

“None of your business,” Elle bit out between her teeth. She was so tired of dealing with controlling men who needed to know her every move.

Ripping his hands from her body, Zane threw his arms wide. “I thought you were done keeping secrets from me, Elle. I thought you were done being evasive. Done lying.”

He didn’t say another word. And she didn’t respond. She couldn’t, not with a lump lodged in her throat.

Instead, she watched in agonizing silence as he yanked his clothes on and stalked out of the room, slamming the door behind him. The reverberation echoed through her, amplifying the already painful ache. She slid to the ground. Her back pressed against the dresser and she drew her knees tight to her chest.

Why had she ever opened that magazine?

IT HAD TAKEN HER THIRTY minutes to pull herself back together. Marcy gave her a hard look, but didn’t say anything about the red tinge to her face. Instead, she’d led her into the back of the resort. Elle expected the rooms here to be less somehow. Less expensive. Less plush. More institutional. She’d been wrong.

Simon hadn’t skimped on anything in the back of the house. In fact, the area felt even more like a home than the rest of the resort. Warm tones, rich woods, expensive furniture and colorful accessories greeted her everywhere.

Even the few offices that they passed had a homey feel. Family photographs, knickknacks and purposely eclectic furniture gave them that personal touch. She supposed when you lived and worked on the same island, it couldn’t be helped. Work and life got tangled up when you were on call 24/7.

“Simon’s the only one of the staff who lives in the main building.” Elle heard the slight pause as the word
staff
tripped out of her mouth. She wondered what was behind the hesitation, but realized it was none of her business. “Everyone else either lives in private bungalows at the back of the property or in mini apartments near their job quarters.”

“You mean, like the cook lives close to the kitchens?”

“Exactly.”

“Sounds very…” She thought about it for a moment before the right word popped into her head. “Stressful. I love my career, but when I had a nine-to-five job, I needed those hours away from it for my sanity. Sounds like it’s difficult to find distance here.”

Marcy laughed and her lips twisted. “You have no idea. But there are benefits.”

“Like a five-star chef at your beck and call and the Caribbean outside your front door?”

“Yeah, those.”

Still, Elle could see tension tightening Marcy’s shoulders as they approached Simon’s quarters. She had no idea what was going on between the two of them, but whatever it was had stress whipping through the other woman. And Marcy didn’t strike her as the kind of person who let stress get to her very often.

She was extremely competent. She could handle anything, in the middle of a hurricane if she had to.

Stepping off the elevator, they continued to the only door on the left side of the hallway. Marcy had barely inserted her key card before the phone at her hip chirped insistently. Lifting a finger and apologizing with her eyes, Marcy moved to the side to answer it, taking the key with her.

Elle couldn’t hear any of Marcy’s end of the conversation, although the way her shoulders stiffened told Elle it wasn’t good.

“You have got to be kidding me,” Marcy said, heading for the elevator before she’d even hung up.

She was standing inside the elevator before she remembered Elle. Whatever it was really had her in a tizzy. Slapping her hand onto the closing doors, Marcy frowned back down the hallway at her.

“I’m sorry, Elle. One of the kitchen staff cut herself. It sounds pretty bad. Our on-staff doctor’s called the hospital in St. Lucia to request a rescue helicopter. We’re going to have to do this later. Can you see yourself back downstairs?” The doors were already closing before Marcy was even finished talking. “I’ll call your room when I’m sure she’s taken care of.”

The mechanical hum of the elevator dropping five floors filled the quiet hallway. Elle’s eyes were drawn to the door, the only thing separating her from the painting she’d longed to see just once more.

She was leaving tomorrow. She could get inside. Easily. She knew how to open that door. For a minute her conscience tweaked, but she immediately squashed it. There was a difference between what she was doing now and what she’d originally come here to do. She had no intention of walking out this door with the painting in her hands. All she wanted was to see it.

And she didn’t think that was too much to ask.

Elle made quick work of the lock. The door shut behind her, wrapping her in darkness. It took her several seconds patting down the wall to find the light switch. Her eyes were immediately drawn to the walls. She couldn’t fight the anticipation that made her hands shake.

From her memory of the photograph, she knew instantly that the painting wasn’t in the front room. The only option was the last room, which would have a view of the water.

She made herself walk slowly through the suite, like a chocoholic doling out one square of Hershey’s chocolate at a time. She was certain the view of the moon over the water was gorgeous, but she didn’t see it. The moment she walked through the doorway into the office, her gaze landing on the painting that had meant so much to her.

A single shaft of moonlight poured across the painting, giving it an edge of mystery, as if it that were the only way it should be viewed. Considering the subject and the location of the painting, Elle could almost believe that was the truth.

She stopped three steps away, close enough to reach out and touch the face of the woman who had meant so much to her.

Tears pricked the back of her eyes. She hadn’t expected to feel this well of emotion. Nana was gone and had been for a very long time. When the painting was stolen, it was as if her grandmother had died a second time, leaving her alone again.

That loss hadn’t been any easier to deal with at twenty-three than it had been at sixteen. It’d hurt.

Seeing the painting again should have brought nothing but happiness. Instead, a stab of pain shot through her chest, an echo of what she’d felt downstairs when she’d told Zane to leave.

“Oh, Nana. I’ve really screwed up everything, haven’t I?”

She reached for the frame. She was going to have to walk away and leave the painting behind, but just for a little while she could have Nana close again.

The metal line anchoring it to the wall resisted her efforts to pull it down. Elle worried that they’d attached some sort of alarm to it. But after several seconds, something gave and the heavy canvas fell into her arms. The weight of it surprised her and had her toppling backward.

A sharp spike of pain lanced through Elle’s hip as she hit the hardwood. Her legs sprawled at awkward angles beneath the straight edge of the frame. But her fingers stayed wrapped tightly around the edges, refusing to let it go.

She sat there, stunned, for several seconds. The accelerated pump of her heart thumped erratically inside her skull. Her vision began to gray and suddenly she realized she’d been holding her breath. Letting it out in a single whoosh, Elle wrapped her arms snugly around the painting and just hugged it to her body.

Relief washed through her. Unfortunately, it was short-lived.

Zane’s voice cut through the peace she’d been hoping to find. “What the hell are you doing?”

Elle whipped her head around, surprise quickly crowded out by dread. She could only imagine what this looked like.

Zane’s eyes blazed at her, accusing and unforgiving. “You really are a thief.”

13

WELL, SHE’D COME FULL circle. Was it only five days since she’d been here before, handcuffed to a spindly chair in the middle of a closet? It sure felt longer than that.

Elle supposed a lot could happen in less than a week.

She rattled the handcuffs against the slats at her back, hoping the noise would convince Zane to actually come into the room and talk to her.

He’d been like a wounded bear ousted from his den way before spring. Growling. Snapping. Biting at her with words that cut straight to the bone. Unfortunately, his tirade meant he hadn’t heard a single word she’d said.

Elle knew sooner or later this would all get resolved, but until then, her shoulders were really aching. It was like when your nose itched because your hands were covered in paint and you couldn’t scratch it… She desperately felt she needed to move her arms, because she couldn’t.

Suddenly she got her wish. And as she craned her neck around to look at Zane standing in the open doorway to the closet, she wished she hadn’t.

He was pissed off. No, that wasn’t entirely true. Oh, he was angry, but beneath that was a layer of hurt that made her heart ache and gave her a spurt of hope she truly didn’t need. Because it wouldn’t make any difference.

She’d seen that same belligerent expression on her father’s face more times than she could count. Zane wasn’t in the mood to listen to anything she had to say. He might have stopped yelling at her, but his ears still weren’t open.

He’d question every word that came out of her mouth.

It hurt that he didn’t know her well enough by now to realize there had to be a perfectly good explanation.

She suddenly had plenty of anger of her own to deal with.

He shut the door behind him, closing them into the cramped room together. Desire unfurled inside her, sweet and slow. Her traitorous body could remember only the way he’d made her feel and not that he currently had her handcuffed.

Zane walked around her, leaning against a shelf that held cleaning supplies, toilet paper and enough paper towels to supply the entire resort for months.

His eyes flashed dangerously and his arms crossed over his chest. She tried not to notice how the position strained the sleeves of his T-shirt against his biceps. It wasn’t exactly the right time, but apparently her libido wasn’t listening.

She expected him to start asking her questions, to try to dig into her psyche. Instead, he stood there staring at her.

She didn’t appreciate the silent treatment. Unwilling to wait patiently for his next onslaught, she decided to start one of her own.

“Why are you here?”