Страница 7 из 8
“I’m not cleaning.”
“Then what are you doing creeping around the house at three-thirty in the morning?”
A long lock of hair fell forward, brushing her cheek, and she tucked it behind her ear. “You know what I’m doing. You know what I want.”
“You won’t find a phone.”
“Not even a computer jack?”
“I’ve taken precautions. I’ve been quite thorough.”
“Let me go.”
“No.”
“I’ll go back to Kentucky, I’ll call Daisy and tell her I changed my mind about coming out—”
“No.”
She felt dangerously close to losing it, to screaming and crying and begging. “This isn’t fair.”
“But we’ve already discussed this, and we know life isn’t always fair. If life was fair your mother wouldn’t have died after your birth. If life was fair your father wouldn’t have Alzheimer’s. If life was fair your only sister wouldn’t have moved halfway around the world leaving you to take care of your sick father—”
“How…how…do you know all that?”
“This wasn’t a random abduction, Zoe. I made sure I knew what I was doing.” He flicked on the dining room light fixture, a large iron and crystal chandelier. “Now go back to bed and get some sleep. You need it. We both need it.”
In a white T-shirt and loose black cotton pajama pants with his black hair ruffled, he looked incredibly male. And human. He looked like a man that knew all about women. He looked like a man that knew how to use his hands, his body and his mouth.
Heat seeped through Zoe’s limbs, color sweeping her cheeks. She hated that she could find him physically attractive when his character was so appalling. He was awful, cruel, twisted. “I hate you.”
She hadn’t meant to say it. But the words slipped out anyway.
His dark head merely inclined and his beautiful lips shaped into a small shadow of a smile. “I know.”
CHAPTER THREE
THE helicopter that carried Lazaro off just before dawn, leaving Zoe alone with Luz for the next three days, finally returned.
Zoe heard the buzzing of the blades in her sleep, heard the whine grow louder and louder until the helicopter sounded as though it had landed in the middle of Luz’s herb garden.
So he was back.
She squeezed her eyes more tightly closed, wishing her heart wasn’t flopping around inside her.
She was glad. How could she be glad? She hated him.
I do, she firmly told herself, opening her eyes and staring at the dark-beamed ceiling. She’d grown to like the yellow plaster walls in her bedroom that contrasted with the dark beams. The tapestry cover on her bed was woven in shades of yellow, deep rose and green.
Everything was so different in this house, so different from the way she’d grown up. Four days after arriving here, she still felt completely alien.
Luz didn’t help much, either. The housekeeper-cook was less than hospitable, taking every possible opportunity to shut a door in Zoe’s face, serve cold food, ignore Zoe’s halting questions.
A knock sounded on the door just seconds before the door opened. Luz entered the bedroom with a tray and her now familiar glare of disapproval. No, Zoe thought, sitting up in bed, relations hadn’t exactly warmed up between the two of them.
“Café,” Luz a
Somehow Zoe knew the coffee would be lukewarm, too. “Thank you,” she answered stiffly.
“You might try ‘gracias,’” a voice said from the doorway. “Luz would at least understand your thanks.”
And here he was, freshly returned from battle. Or civilization. Or wherever he’d gone. Her temper grew to near bursting point, and she dragged the covers higher against her chest as if she could control her anger. “You’re back.”
“Happy to see me?”
“No.”
His cool silver eyes flashed and she saw a hint of amusement and something else in the pewter depths. He moved to the foot of her bed and stood, arms folded, eyes narrowed in appraisal. “You’re still in bed. It’s almost noon.”
He made her feel difficult, unreasonable. “I didn’t know I had social obligations,” she answered tersely. But this was his problem, not hers. He was the one who kidnapped her. He was the one who dumped her here and flew away, back to Buenos Aires, because that’s where she suspected he’d gone.
Back to work.
With Dante.
“Did you see him?” she asked, fingers tightly stretching the linen.
“See who?”
Lazaro was playing dumb. He knew perfectly well who she meant. Zoe’s chest hurt as she drew a deep breath, fighting for patience as well as control. “Dante.”
“Oh.” Lazaro smiled lazily, and walking around the foot of the bed, approached her side. “Yes. I did see him, but then as I’ve already told you, I work with him. Closely.”
The word closely hung there between them, strange, rather sinister. The word implied trust, intimacy, safety.
It still stu
Like Iago and Othello, she thought, and she knew the tragic outcome there. Zoe suppressed a shiver. “Does he know I’m here?”
“Yes.”
Lazaro stood so close to the bed that he could touch Zoe with the tips of his fingers if he wanted.
And he wanted to. He wanted her more than he’d ever wanted anyone and he didn’t know why, or how. It just was. Something about her made him hungry to touch her. From those brief caresses he knew he liked the feel of her and in the past three days he found himself craving her, craving to know her skin, her smell, her taste.
He’d thought she’d looked beautiful in the black turtleneck and sunglasses, and yet now, virtually stripped bare, long blond hair tousled, her delicate features scrubbed of all makeup, she looked even more astonishing. Beautiful and sweet. Heartbreakingly i
He watched her eyes close, her cheeks pale. She took a deep, shuddering breath before opening her eyes again. “What do you want from him?”
“I’ve already told you.”
“Revenge,” she spit back, as if unable to stomach such a word, much less the concept.
“Exactly.”
Her face lifted, her lavender eyes wide, incomprehensible. “But for what? Revenge against what?”
“The Galváns.”
She drew the sheet higher, tighter, so that it pressed against her breasts, outlining the rise and swell, the delicate ridge of nipple. “But you work for the Galváns, you are president of their corporation.”
“Yes.”
“You must have spent years working to get where you are.”
“Nearly thirteen.”
“So…why hurt them? Why destroy your career?”
He slid the tray over and sat down on the mattress next to her. She shuddered as he sat down. But she wasn’t afraid of him. She was afraid of the attraction.
Good girl. Smart girl. She should be afraid. He’d never felt anything so powerful in his life.
“My career,” he said carefully, placing a hand on the bed, near her thigh, drawing the cover taut across the tone muscle, “has but one focus, and one purpose. To destroy the Galváns.”
Zoe had never punched anyone in her life. She’d never raised a hand, made a fist, used physical violence of any sort. But suddenly she’d closed her fingers, wrapped her thumb over her knuckles and slammed her fist into his chest, in the hollow at his breastbone. It hurt when she struck him and it wasn’t even a fierce blow, more pathetic than anything, and he, she noticed through the tears filling her eyes, didn’t even flinch.
“How can you be so cruel?” she choked. “How can you care so little about other people?”
He shrugged. “Habit.”
“That’s a lousy excuse!”
“Blame it on my family then.”
“Your family?” Zoe flung her head back, unshed tears glittering in her eyes. “And just who is your family?”
“The Galváns.”