Renegade With A Badge

Rafe cocked his head at a small sound, separate from the cacophony coming from downstairs.

Well, hell. Someone was coming up the second stairway.

He looked quickly around and decided the best he could do on such short notice was try to melt into the wide, darkened doorway behind him. If he tried to get back into the room he’d just left, the damn door would give him away. He cursed old houses and all their charm. Give him a nice, quiet apartment with brand-new vinyl doors any day.

He stood perfectly still and let the person walk past him. A woman. Before he could make out her face or shape, he could hear the seductive swish of a skirt, smell the faint scent of perfume. She had a beautiful scent, this woman. She smelled like the sea.

Lord, it had been a long time since he’d been so close to a woman.

Against his better judgment, Rafe lifted his eyes. He knew that people seemed to sense when they were being watched, and the last thing he needed right now was for one of Cervantes’s snotty dinner guests to start screaming about bandits in the upstairs hallways.

But he couldn’t resist. He was partially aroused from the scent of her alone. Oh, yeah, he thought ruefully, shifting his weight slightly. Way too many months on the job.

The woman passed by him on her way to the bathroom.

Rafe nearly snarled out loud as he recognized her.

The princess. Cervantes’s princess. The woman, he knew from his informants on the inside, that Cervantes planned to marry. Dr. Olivia Galpas. He’d made it a point to find out her name the day Cervantes first visited her on the beach. He’d had her investigated, of course. Anyone Cervantes spent that much time with, American or not, female or male, had to be checked out.

She’d been clean, as far as the DEA was concerned, but that didn’t make her any more likable in Rafe’s mind.

She was a princesa, from one of the oldest and finest Latino families in San Diego. Her mother was some famous artist, her father was a physician. She was a doctor herself, born with a silver spoon in her mouth, and handed every opportunity. While he’d been picking avocados to get through junior college, the princesa had been whiling away her time at Stanford and then MIT.

Apparently, all the expensive education hadn’t made her any smarter, Rafe thought sourly as he watched her flick on the light in the small room and close the door behind her. She was keeping very dangerous company, and seemed to be enjoying herself doing it. Rafe’s eyes narrowed in the darkness. Money and power were vigorous aphrodisiacs to a woman who was accustomed to having both in her life.

Like was always attracted to like.

Olivia Galpas was here in Cervantes’s house, upstairs even, where guests did not usually go. So, there was more to this relationship than he’d thought, was there? He’d have to keep that in mind. Maybe the pretty little doctor knew exactly what kind of dirty drug money paid for the gold-plated fixtures in the bathroom she was using.

Rafe shook his head slightly. Settle down, there, Rafael. A rather intense reaction to one glimpse of a woman in a hallway, he had to admit. And jumping to conclusions was not his style, either. He was a very deliberate sort of cop.

But Olivia Galpas was everything in a woman Rafael Camayo naturally resented, everything he instinctively despised. He liked women with heart, with passion, with guts. He didn’t like pampered, overeducated, rich girls who slept with any drug runner with a woman’s soft hands and a big house. Especially one they’d known just three weeks.

Only, God, she smelled good. It was indefinable, that scent of the beach and woman she left in her wake. He’d never smelled anything like it. Not perfume, but…essence. If he could have dragged enough of it into his lungs, he thought, he could live on it alone for a week. No food, no water—just that smell.

He knew he needed to move on through the house, use every opportunity the party was giving him to find what he could and then get the hell out. But something about the woman behind that powder room door—aside from her scent, he told himself firmly—kept him rooted to the spot. Maybe she’d come back out and he’d give her a little talking-to, American to American. Let her in on the secrets behind Ernesto Cervantes’s “family” wealth. Haul her gorgeous little rear end right out of this house and get her on the next plane Stateside. As any good American law enforcement agent would do.

Only, he couldn’t. And wouldn’t.

Ernesto Cervantes had killed his brother almost twenty years ago. He and Bobby—who in addition to being his partner was his carnal, his blood brother from childhood, his cousin, and the godson of Rafe’s dead brother—had spent those twenty years plotting, planning the kind of revenge that would have made George proud. They’d joined the local police force, then the DEA; had worked their way up the ladder in all the ways that mattered—for this one bust. He wasn’t about to give up those years, those plans, for one amazing-smelling woman, American or not.

Besides, he mused, she may not even want to be saved. His informants had told him how cozy the couple had become. How long the walks, how intense the talks, how delicate and intimate and revolting the whole relationship had become. Maybe Olivia Galpas was in exactly the hot spot she wanted to be in. Maybe she knew everything.

Olivia stepped out into the darkened hallway, flicking off the light behind her. She’d used the facilities, washed her hands, put lotion on, checked her hair, washed her hands again, straightened all the lovely linen guest towels then sat on the edge of the vanity for five minutes, considering the merits of a hot wax treatment to smooth out her sea-coarsened hands. No woman should have rougher hands than her boyfriend, she thought.

But there was no getting around the fact that she had to go back downstairs. Eventually. Even now, Ernesto was probably wondering if she’d eaten some bad shrimp.

She smiled slightly to herself, rolled her eyes. She couldn’t imagine Ernesto Cervantes ever wondering about her digestive health. He was so polished and dignified, she didn’t think he’d be able to bring himself to admit women had digestive systems, much less to talk about them.

She started down the hall, grateful that for the first time since she’d entered the house she wasn’t being stared at by some glowering, khaki-covered baboon. This hallway was obviously in a private portion of the house, where guests were not expected to wander. Well, she’d wandered, and she could hardly see the harm in it. She personally thought Ernesto was carrying the whole protection thing to the limits of high drama. What kind of criminal would break into a man’s house while two hundred people were drinking and dancing downstairs?

She stopped before she reached the stairs. That itch on the back of her neck was really driving her crazy. If she didn’t know herself any better, she’d think she was having some sort of woman’s intuition. But that was ridiculous. She didn’t have woman’s intuition. She was a scientist.

She turned very slowly and looked right into the face of the man watching her.

Olivia felt as though every ounce of blood drained from her head and leaked out her toes. She had never been so unnerved in all her life. The itch at the back of her neck slithered around her throat and clutched at her jugular. Adrenaline pumped through her like a drug. She didn’t know this man, didn’t know why he watched her with such intensity, such malice, but she knew she should be afraid of him. And by God, she was.

They stared at each other for what seemed to Olivia like hours, though, of course, it couldn’t have been more than a few seconds. He was partially shadowed, but Olivia glimpsed a rough, unshaved Latino face, all planes and angles, with cheekbones that looked sharp enough to cut glass. He had a starved look to him, as though he’d never quite had enough to eat. She sucked in a reflexive breath, unaware she’d stopped breathing.

Rafe’s heart thundered in his chest at the sound of that deep breath. He was ready to bolt if she screamed. He’d be no good to this operation—or to George’s memory—with a bullet through his heart.

But she didn’t scream. She just watched him, calm except for the breathlessness. He respected that even as it occurred to him that perhaps she didn’t scream because she was a princesa and thought herself impervious to strange men in dark hallways. He ought to disabuse her of that notion, Rafe thought. He worked up a sneer but could manage nothing more menacing than that. Olivia Galpas was the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen. And frankly, he’d never had much stomach for threatening women, pretty or not.

She was small, no more than five foot four. Rafe was taller than most of the men in his family by several inches, and this woman’s head would hit below his chin. Her hair was plaited down her straight spine in a heavy braid that reached the curve of her bottom. He wondered about the texture of all that braided hair, wondered what it would feel like if he ran his thumb down the length of it.

Her breasts were discreetly camouflaged by the peasant blouse she wore, but they looked small enough for each to fit whole into his mouth. Rafe swallowed hard at that ridiculous idea. This was Cervantes’s woman. He no more wanted to touch her than he wanted to put his hand in a basket of rattlesnakes.

Her face was flushed from fear or the sun—he could see the color high on her classic cheekbones even in the dim light of the hallway. She had a small, full mouth that she’d set into a brave and stubborn line he had to admire.

And her eyes. Her eyes.

They were dark, those eyes, with whites like snow and thick lashes Rafe thought she probably used to hide the truth. Her pupils dilated, until he imagined every spark of light in the hallway had been swallowed up by them.

Her eyes flashed at him, and Rafe found his knees weak. An absurd reaction for a man such as Rafael Camayo, he thought. But what could he do? Like a green boy, he was weak-kneed after one look from Ernesto Cervantes’s American lover.

Olivia was experiencing the very same sensation in her knees, but for an entirely different reason.

“Who are you?” she said. She’d meant to sound authoritative, barking out a question to be answered at once. But her voice sounded much more like a mewl than a bark, and she could have kicked herself for it. Of course, the man didn’t answer such a pathetic little question. Olivia cleared her throat and tried again. “Señor Cervantes has men all over this house, whoever you are,” she said, sounding stronger. “If you’re not a guest here, I suggest you leave.”

Oh, did she? Rafe almost smiled. “I don’t take orders from you, princesa,” he said, speaking in Spanish, as she had.

“Who are you?” she snapped. Though, of course, she already knew. The drug smuggler, or at least one of them. A man this frightening could only be a pirate, a smuggler, a thief.

She took a step forward, in exactly the opposite direction her prudent, cautious brain was telling her to go. Typical. First her hair and now her feet. Her body was being very disobedient tonight, and if she got out of this little confrontation alive, she intended to have a stern chat with all her various parts.

“Answer me,” she said.

Answer me? Rafe’s mouth moved back into a sneer. Good grief. Every word out of her mouth was a command. She certainly spoke like a princesa.

The man clearly was not going to answer, even though she’d finally worked up a decent bark. Olivia pulled her lips through her teeth, swallowed the lump of fear in her throat, clamped down on the trembling that was beginning to make her hands shake and her mouth quiver. Demanding answers wasn’t going to work, and she clearly was incapable of doing anything as judicious as hiking up her skirt and fleeing down the stairs, screaming bloody murder. Still, this man was invading Ernesto’s beautiful home. What kind of friend would she be if she did nothing about that?

“If you don’t leave right now,” she said calmly, firmly, “I will alert the guards.”

Rafe smiled, a flash of white teeth in the shadows. “You won’t alert the guards,” he said.

Olivia blinked, unnerved by that fierce, confident smile. Weren’t smugglers supposed to be furtive? This one was cool as a cucumber. “I won’t?”

“No.”

“Why won’t I?”

“Because you’re a woman, Dr. Galpas, and women are more practical than men.”

He knew who she was. Olivia felt the impact of her name on his smirking lips shiver all the way down to the backs of her thighs, raising the fine hairs there.

“How do you know me?” she whispered.

Rafe shrugged. “It’s a small village. You’re a beautiful woman. And a smart one,” he reminded her pointedly.

Obviously not, Olivia thought wildly. Smart women did not converse with bandidos in dark upstairs hallways while their almost-fiancés waited downstairs with fifteen armed men. Smart women screamed in situations like these, or at least fainted so they wouldn’t be held responsible afterward. Olivia considered both options.

Rafe watched her carefully, saw her eyes dart toward the stairs, measuring for the first time the distance between herself and safety. About time, he thought. Stupid woman, to be standing here talking to him.

“Too late, señorita,” he whispered, stepping from the deep doorway and taking her arm.

He moved so quickly that Olivia had no time to choose between screaming or fainting. One instant he was a shadowy figure several safe feet away, the next his hand was wrapped hard over her biceps and she was deftly turned and pressed back against his body. Her breath left her again.

Rafe slid his free hand to her throat. Stomach for it or not, he had to keep this woman from exposing him, at least until he got out of the house. After that, let her scream until she turned purple. It would only serve to further pique Cervantes’s pride and temper, having had the bandit who had been stealing from him invade his very own hacienda.

The operation was what mattered, and damn his weak knees. And whatever else was reacting to Olivia Galpas.

“Stop struggling,” he hissed in her ear, “and listen.” He ran his thumb along the base of her throat and let it rest in the hollow there, for his own pleasure. He felt the woman shudder in his arms and wondered briefly what it would be like to make her shudder from something other than fear. He shifted again, hoping she didn’t feel his arousal at her backside. “You can scream, you can run, you can alert every man in the building, and I will not leave this house tonight alive. That’s true.”

Olivia felt him shift behind her once more, prayed he’d moved far enough away that she wouldn’t have to feel his lower body against her again. She’d been shocked by his obvious excitement, terrified that he intended more harm to her than she’d assumed.

But he was clearly trying to spare…one of them, anyway, from whatever that arousal implied.

“But I won’t die alone,” he continued softly at her ear. “Do you really want to take the chance with the lives of your lover and his friends?”

Olivia thought to correct him on that count; Ernesto was not her lover. But then, she thought as his hand reached up to clamp gently around her throat, she had more important things than semantics to worry about right now.

“Do you?” he repeated harshly.

“No,” Olivia whispered.

“I thought not. I will leave when I’m finished, and no one will be hurt. Unless you make a mistake, señorita. The fate of these people are now in your hands. I urge you to make the right decision. Do you understand?”

Olivia caught a whiff of something as he breathed on her. Peppermint? Had this desperado brushed his teeth before breaking into the local sheriff’s house and crashing her going-away party? What the hell kind of bandit was this?

“When you’re finished?” she blurted with uncharacteristic indiscretion. “Finished with what? Are you robbing Ernesto? Are you the smuggler?”

Nosy, reckless woman. Rafe shook her slightly. “Do you understand?” he repeated, sounding dangerously provoked.

“Well, can you tell me how long you’ll be?”

Rafe nearly burst out laughing. “Doctor.”

Olivia nodded briskly. “Yes, yes, I understand.”

“And Doctor?”

“Yes.”

“I will kill him first. I want you to remember that.”

Olivia nodded again, swallowed hard. “Yes, I will,” she said in a strangled voice.

Rafael let her go, almost reluctantly. His head was buzzing from the contact of her body against his, his blood was running hot through his lower body, his fingers itched to touch the smooth skin of her neck a second time.

“One thing more,” he said through gritted teeth, suddenly as furious with himself as he was with her. For lingering, for getting caught, for finding Cervantes’s lover more arousing, more attractive, than any woman he’d met in years. For caring what happened to her.

Olivia’s chest was heaving, her body beginning to shake in reaction. She’d been in grave danger there for the briefest moment, but she was unsure exactly what the threat had been.

“What?” she breathed, her eyes locked on his.

“Get out of here as soon as you can. Get back to the States on the next plane or bus or vegetable wagon.” He reached out, gave a gentle tug on the long braid that had come to rest on her shoulder, running his thumb along the broad length of it. “I don’t know how much you know,” he said, almost to himself, “and I don’t care. Just get out.”

And while Olivia stood, trembling, wondering, the man disappeared without a sound down the dark hallway.

Chapter 2

Olivia endured. That was the most she could say about the remainder of Ernesto’s lavish party, his expansive hospitality, his determined and public attentions.

It had been a terrible mistake coming back downstairs. She should have taken the advice of the smuggler and fled the house, Aldea Viejo, the country. Let Ernesto think his shrimp had actually killed her. Oh, God. She clamped a hand over her mouth to keep from bursting into hysterical laughter.

She’d still been shaking when she’d stumbled down the stairs, even after spending another five minutes back in the powder room, splashing water on her face and muttering recriminations to herself in the mirror. But she knew what she had to do if she wanted to keep Ernesto and his friends from being splattered across the beautiful old plaster walls of the hacienda, so she pasted a smile on her face like a prudent little scientist would when faced with empirical data.

The lanky man with the smirk on his mouth and the hunger in his eyes was very probably taking a bead on Ernesto right this minute, waiting for Olivia to come to her senses and fall into a crying, squalling heap on the floor. Something she very much felt like doing, as a matter of fact.

It was midnight now, and Ernesto was calling for a toast. Thank heavens. After that was finished, she’d go straight back to the motel, wait sleepless until morning, when she would take a taxi—or a bus or a vegetable wagon—to La Paz, and then the first plane home.

A flute of champagne was pressed into one hand, while Ernesto pulled her gently to his side by taking the other. Olivia went willingly. No point fighting the inevitable. She would smile at the sure-to-be elaborate toast—then get the hell out of Dodge. She’d had enough Mexican hospitality to last her a lifetime.

Ernesto launched into his toast with full vigor. She listened with half attention and smiled politely at the beaming crowd. Where was the criminal, while these people quaffed expensive champagne? Slitting throats? Stealing silver? Pressing up against some other unsuspecting female with that steely body and that shocking arousal? She took a gulp of champagne and choked on it.

“And if she will do me the very great—” Ernesto paused for effect here, and Olivia smiled gamely up at him, her face beet red from suppressed coughing, trying desperately hard not to spew Dom Pérignon onto his silk suit, “very great honor of becoming my wife, and the mistress of this house and the mother of this humble village, I will be the happiest man on God’s earth.”

The crowd erupted. Olivia let go with a spasm of coughing that had Ernesto patting her on the back. When she was finished gagging on her hundred-dollar champagne, she looked blankly around at the people crushing in on her, then, stupefied, up at Ernesto.

“What?” she whispered.

Ernesto bent his head to kiss her. “Say yes, my darling,” he said rather fervidly into her ear.

“To what?” she asked, spilling champagne on her clothes as someone jostled her from behind. She barely noticed. She had no idea what he was talking about. Had he just proposed? To whom? To her? In front of hundreds of people? With a sexually excited smuggler loose in his house?

Impossible.

Ernesto’s smile went a little stiff. “You are shocked.” He laughed heartily, though it sounded forced to Olivia’s ears. “I am shocked myself. I have been a bachelor for almost fifty years.”

“Ernesto, you can’t possibly—”

He cut her off sharply. “But I had never met a woman who could share my house and my life before now, Olivia Magdalena Rosanna deRuiz Galpas.”

Olivia almost groaned aloud. Not the whole name. He must be pretty damn serious if he was using her full name.

“You are a prize,” Ernesto continued in his beautiful voice. “A woman of education and family. The great-granddaughter of Don Ricardo Galpas of Chiapas,” he said loudly, though Olivia was sure he’d already mentioned that at least three times during the toast. “You will be the perfect wife for Ernesto Cervantes.”

At this show of bravado, the crowd erupted into cheers again. Olivia looked around, nearly bursting once more into hysterical laughter. The entire evening had been thoroughly surreal.

“Ernesto, we have to talk.”

He kissed her lavishly, his tongue breaching for the first time the seam of her lips. The man had just proposed marriage, Olivia thought, dazed, and he’d never even kissed her properly. She’d had a bandit pressed against her more intimately just an hour ago than this man had ever been. She’d never so much as tasted Ernesto Cervantes, who now fully intended to become her husband.

Olivia touched Ernesto’s shoulder to break the kiss.

He smiled down into her face, glowing with triumph. “I must attend to my guests, now, love.”

“We need to talk, Ernesto,” Olivia insisted. She needed far more time than three weeks to decide on a husband for the rest of her life, no matter how perfect the man appeared to be. And there remained the small matter of how she was going to explain to him that she’d had a friendly little conversation in his upstairs hallway with a drug smuggler but had neglected to tell him.

“We will.” He kissed the hand he’d been clutching. “We will.”

But they didn’t. Olivia wandered around in a daze for half an hour more, caught up in a bizarre frenzy of congratulation and speculation, while Ernesto seemed to carefully avoid her.

Fine, she thought. Their discussion of this bizarre public proposal would be better conducted when they were alone, anyway. Two hundred complete strangers and one smuggler whom she practically knew in the biblical sense were not conducive to a quiet chat about the future.

She looked at her watch. Almost one. Surely the smuggler or thief or whatever he was would be gone by now. Surely. Unless he’d been caught and was even now being beaten to a pulp by an enthusiastic deputy. Olivia shuddered slightly. The man had terrified her, but she didn’t want anyone beaten. Jailed would be fine. Where he could face punishment for his crimes and still get three meals a day to fill out those hollows under his cheekbones.

She slipped back upstairs while the mariachis played and the wine and tequila flowed. No one, she knew, would miss her. Ernesto was very busy being the host, the bridegroom-to-be, and the rest of the guests were having far too good a time to notice that the bride-to-be had absconded. She’d wait upstairs until the melee died down, and then have that little talk with Ernesto. Might as well, she thought. There was no way she’d sleep a wink tonight. No boring party she’d been to in the past two years had offered both an intimate moment with a criminal and a marriage proposal.