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Her father still considered it a tragic waste of her talents.
While her mind raced, she watched her father settle on the chaise and stare off at the resort spread below.
Rico had built something amazing here, she thought, but that didn’t surprise her. He was a man who never settled for less than the best, no matter the circumstances. She’d learned that when she first met him so long ago in Cancún.
At his hotel, Castello de King—King’s Castle—Teresa had been one of the innumerable chefs in the immense hotel kitchens. In her first real job after culinary school, she was excited simply to be a part of the hustle that took place in that amazing kitchen. Teresa had believed that working in that hotel was the best thing that had ever happened to her—until she met Rico himself.
She’d worked late one night and before heading to her apartment, Teresa had treated herself to a little relaxation. She’d carried a glass of wine out to one of the beach lounge chairs and sat to enjoy the night, the moon on the water and the lovely sensation of being absolutely alone.
Then he had appeared, walking along the water’s edge, moonlight shining on his dark hair and making the white shirt he wore seem to glow. He’d worn tan slacks and his bare feet had kicked through the water with every step. She couldn’t seem to look away from him. He was tall and dark and as he came closer, she realized he was gorgeous. He was also her employer. Rico King, playboy, gazillionaire, hotelier and at the moment, as alone as she.
In an instant, her mind replayed that scene.
He glanced up as if sensing her gaze on him and when he saw her, he smiled and headed for her. “I thought I was alone on the beach.”
“So did I,” she managed to say.
“Shall we be alone together?”
Teresa still remembered that faintest hint of an accent coloring his words. His eyes were a piercing blue, his hair as black as the night and his smile was temptation personified. She couldn’t have said no to him even if she had tried—which she hadn’t. Rico had sat on the sand beside her and they’d shared her glass of wine and spent the next couple of hours talking.
Teresa came out of the memory and mentally warned herself to stop reliving the past. To stop indulging in thoughts of him and what might have been. She was here on Tesoro—in Rico’s hotel—for one reason only: to get her family out of there before Rico discovered them. If only her father had listened to her. But Nick Coretti was a force of nature and when the prize was rich, no risk was too much.
Rico would find them. Teresa knew that man too well to think that he would allow jewel thieves to operate freely in his place. It was only a matter of time. Which meant that she had to get the Coretti family off Tesoro. Fast.
Teresa followed her father to the terrace. The sunlight was bright, the sky a brilliant blue and a soft breeze carried the scent of tropical flowers as it lifted her hair off her neck.
“Papa, you don’t know Rico like I do. He will catch you.”
Her father snorted, then shook his head and chuckled. “Bellissima, no Coretti has ever been caught. We are too good at what we do.”
True, she thought, but the Corettis had never come up against an adversary like Rico before, either. Yes, various police forces from several countries had tried and failed to pin a crime on the Corettis. But their interest in the family of thieves had been purely professional.
For Rico, this would be personal.
“Papa, you have to trust me on this.” She laid one hand on his arm. “Please, let’s get off the island while we still can.”
He clucked his tongue at her. “You have made far too much of this man you once cared for. Always you believe he is searching for you. Searching for us.”
“He did search for me, remember?”
Nick waved that away. “You pricked his pride when you left him, my darling. It is understandable. No man would care for losing such a lovely woman from his life. But it’s now five years. I believe it’s time you stop worrying about this man.”
Five years or five minutes. Rico was the kind of man who never left a woman’s thoughts.
Besides, her father didn’t know everything that had happened between her and Rico. Some things she hadn’t been able to share, not even with her family.
Watching her father now, looking like the lord of the manor as he stared out over the luxurious view spread below him, she thought that under any other circumstances, he and Rico might have been friends. They were two of the most stubborn, willful men she had ever known.
And realizing that meant she had to admit she was fighting a losing battle. Dominick Coretti would never leave a job half-finished. And now that he had begun to infiltrate the guests at the Castle, he wouldn’t leave until he was good and ready.
Which made him a sitting duck for Rico. Every hotelier in the world knew the Corettis. They weren’t invisible. They were simply so good at what they did, there was never any evidence against them. They were high profile, wealthy and they didn’t hide in out-of-the-way spots. Nick Coretti, like all of those who came before him, believed in living his life to the fullest. The fact that he did it with other people’s money didn’t change anything.
Ordinarily Teresa might have worried that coming here herself would give up the game because Rico would notice her. But her family was here. In plain sight. And now diamonds were missing. Rico would put the two together.
Her father stood, poured more champagne and stepped to the wrought-iron lace of the balcony railing. He might have been enjoying the view, but Teresa knew him well enough to know that he was looking not at the resort, but at its guests. He would be scoping them out, looking for his next target—assuming he hadn’t already chosen one.
For all his charm, Dominick wasn’t a man to be crossed. As head of the Coretti family, he might as well have been a general ordering his troops around. When he made a plan, that was it. The rest of the family fell in line.
Except for Teresa. As a kid, she’d been intrigued by the Coretti family legacy. As a teenager, she’d begun wishing that they could stay put in their house outside Naples. That she could belong, instead of traipsing all over Europe. They never stayed in one place more than a month and only came back to their home base occasionally, so it was impossible to make friends. Teresa and her brothers had been homeschooled and along with the usual—history, math and such—had taken classes on lock picking, safecracking and forgery. By the time the Coretti children were adults, they were each prepared to carry on the family dynasty.
That was when Teresa had taken her stand. Her father had raged and argued, her mother had wept and her brothers hadn’t really believed she would do it. But in the end, Teresa had become the one Coretti in generations who hadn’t joined the family business. Which made her a puzzle to her brothers and an irritation to her father.
“You’re making too much of this, Teresa,” he chided now with a sad shake of his head. “This is no different from any other job, and when we have finished, we will be gone. With no one the wiser.”
“You’re wrong, Papa,” she argued again. “You don’t know Rico as I do. He’s a dangerous man.”
Dangerous to her, anyway.
That got Nick’s attention. “Did this man harm you in some way? If he did—”
“No.” She interrupted him quickly. The problem, she thought, was that the Coretti family had a history with Rico that her father knew nothing about. And now wasn’t the time to tell the story. “He didn’t hurt me. But Papa, he won’t allow thieves to operate in his place. He’ll find you and when he does...”
“What can he do?” Nick laughed a little and sipped at his champagne. “He will have no proof of anything. You should know better, Teresa. The Coretti family is not so easy to catch.”
“Obviously it is not as difficult as you might wish.” A deep, familiar voice spoke up from directly behind her.
Teresa went absolutely still.
She would know that voice anywhere.
With a weird mixture of dread and anticipation, she slowly turned and looked into the eyes of Rico King.
Two
“What’s the meaning of this?” the older man in the room demanded, striding in from the terrace to face Rico. “Who are you? What are you doing in my suite?”
“Papa,” Teresa said, rising from her chair, “this is Rico King.”
“Ah,” Nick mused with a half smile. “Our host. Still, this doesn’t give you the right to intrude uninvited.”
Rico steamed silently and hated the fact that he had to force his gaze away from Teresa’s to meet her father’s. The glint in the other man’s eyes told Rico the older Coretti had known exactly who Rico was. This was all part of the game. “The fact that you’re a thief on my property gives me all of the rights I need.”
“Thief?” The older man bristled and puffed up until his chest was so full of air, Rico wouldn’t have been surprised to see him lift off the floor and float about the room.
“Papa, please.” Teresa stepped in between the two men like a referee interrupting a prizefight. Facing Rico, she said, “We’ll leave. Right away.”
“You’re not going anywhere,” he told her and felt that bubble of righteous anger fuel him again.
Five years, he told himself. Five long years wondering where the hell she was. If she was dead or injured. If she was laughing at him from some other man’s bed. No. She wasn’t leaving. Not until he was good and ready for her to be gone. And at the moment, he didn’t know just when that might be.
She went pale and her brown eyes shone with too many banked emotions to identify. If he had cared to try. Which he didn’t, he assured himself. Instead, Rico dismissed her and focused his gaze on the other man in the room.
Dominick Coretti was stylish, confident and even now Rico could see the gleam of exhilaration in his eyes. He was already trying to think of a way out. A way to salvage a situation that had turned on him unexpectedly. Well, there was no way out for him—unless he did exactly as Rico wanted.
“I am insulted that you would think me a thief,” Nick began, clearly sticking to his routine of outraged guest. “And I will not stay where I am clearly unwelcome. My family and I will book passage off the island by this evening.”
“Your family will not be allowed to leave until the jewelry you’ve taken has been returned.”
“I beg your pardon—”
“There is no pardon here,” Rico told him flatly. Oh, he had to hand it to the man. He was pulling off the insulted-guest routine so well that if Rico hadn’t been sure of his facts, he might have believed him. Problem was, there was no doubt in Rico’s mind just who the Coretti family really was.
“Once the jewelry is returned,” he said with a knowing smile, “you and your son can leave. My wife will remain with me.”
“Wife?” Nick echoed.
“Wife?” Teresa yelped.
Finally, Rico looked to her again and was pleased to see stunned shock on her beautiful features. Her eyes were wide, her mouth open and color had rushed in to fill her pale, honey-toned cheeks.
“That’s crazy.”
“It’s true.”
“You said nothing to me of marrying this man,” her father accused.
“It wasn’t important,” she argued without even glancing at the other man.
Those three words slapped at Rico and only served to fan the flames of his anger. Not important. Their marriage. Her running out on him. Her family stealing what was his. Not important. Anger was rife inside him and he struggled to keep his tone and his expression from revealing his feelings. “That’s not what you said at the time.”
“How is it I was not told of this marriage?” The accusatory tone in her father’s voice singed the air.
“Papa—”
Rico didn’t believe the other man’s outrage for a second. He knew all about the Corettis. He’d done his research over the last several years. And though the private investigators he’d hired hadn’t been able to locate Teresa, they’d come up with quite a bit of very interesting information. Enough to see the whole damn family locked away, if he wished.
So, no, he didn’t believe Nick’s performance. He knew that thieving had been a way of life for the family for generations. Lying was their stock in trade.
“I’m not playing this game,” he said simply, quietly.
“Game?”
He glanced at the older man, then shifted his gaze back to the woman who haunted him. “As I said, return the jewelry you stole and you and your son can leave the island. Teresa will stay here. With me, until you bring me the gold dagger that was taken from me five years ago.”
“You cannot hold my daughter here against her will,” Nick said, the steel in his voice telling Rico this was a man accustomed to being obeyed.
“It’s that,” Rico said, staring at the other man now, “or I go to Interpol.”
Nick waved that threat away with a negligent, well-manicured hand. “Interpol doesn’t worry me.”
“Once I hand over the information I have gathered on your family over the years, I think you’ll feel differently.”
Dark brown eyes narrowed. “What information?”
“Enough to end you,” Rico promised, ignoring Teresa’s soft gasp.
“Impossible,” Nick blustered, but concern glinted in his eyes. “There has never been evidence found against my family.”
“Until now.” Rico gave him a smile. “Private investigators can go where the police can’t. And if the law should receive this information from an anonymous source...”
Nick Coretti—or Candello, as he was registered here—looked as if he’d been cornered. And he had.
Now the years of hiring the best private investigators in the world and collecting data and evidence were finally paying off—just as he’d known it would one day. Rico had been methodical as only a King could be when faced with an enemy. Add to that heritage the Latin blood that swam in his veins and revenge tasted sweeter than he had even imagined.
“Your sons are not always as careful as their father,” he said, watching suspicion and then a cautious wariness shine in Dominick Coretti’s eyes.
“You’re bluffing.”
Rico smiled slightly and, without taking his gaze from Nick’s, said, “Teresa, tell your father I don’t bluff.”
“He doesn’t, Papa,” she whispered and the sound seemed to echo in the plush suite. “If he says he has evidence, he does.”
A frown crossed Nick’s face then and Rico knew he had the man’s attention.
“What is it you want?”
“I’ve already told you. I want what your family stole from me five years ago.”
Nick shot a look at his daughter. “I think you stole something from me, as well.”
He hadn’t stolen Teresa, Rico thought. He’d let his heart rule his head for the first and last time in his life. And just look where that had gotten him.
“Fine, then,” he said. “Call it an exchange. You return my property and I will return yours.”
He knew he was being insulting and he just didn’t give a royal damn.
“Property?” Teresa hissed the word as her back went poker straight and her shoulders squared as if for battle. She lifted her chin and looked up at Rico. “I’m no one’s property. Least of all yours.”
He inclined his head in a nod. “Don’t bother being offended. I’m not interested in keeping you.”
She reacted as if she’d been slapped.
Rico ignored her. “You can go as soon as I have the Aztec dagger back in my possession.”
Not only had Teresa used him and then vanished, she’d done her disappearing act right after the centuries-old dagger had gone missing from Rico’s collection. He knew, thanks to information his P.I.s had gathered, that Teresa’s brother had stolen it from him. And he wanted that dagger. It was a ceremonial dagger, used in the Aztecs’ religious sacrifices, that Rico’s great-great-however-many-greats-grandfather had found in an archaeological dig more than two hundred years ago. Not only was it ancient and a piece of history—it had been handed down in his father’s family for longer than anyone could remember—and Rico would have it returned.
Once he had that—and his personal revenge on Teresa—he could be done with her and the past.
