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Zoe stared at his hand, felt the heat and the ripple of delicious sensation surge through her, hand to heart, heart to belly, belly to legs.
Her heart slowed, her body felt liquid, bones melting, even as her senses became quivery and alert.
“Daisy’s everything to me,” she said, mesmerized by the back of his hand, with the burnished-gold skin and the wide strong bones of his wrist. “She practically raised me. She gave up college for me—”
Suddenly he leaned forward, his dark head blocking light and she knew he was going to kiss her. It was as though she’d known from the very first moment she’d met him that this would happen, that this kiss was destined to happen.
His mouth brushed hers. It was a fleeting kiss, a kiss so light her heart ached and tears pricked the backs of her eyes all over again. She could feel his breath against her cheek, smell the sweetness and subtle spice of his cologne. He was big and strong and dark, and yet he smelled of light, sunshine, like meadow grass and flowers after an early summer rain.
His lips barely grazed hers a second time. His mouth slid over her lips to the corner of her mouth. “I will try my best to protect your sister from this, too.”
It wasn’t the same promise he’d made her. She was afraid to ask, but she had to. “What about Dante?”
Lazaro stiffened. “What about Dante?”
His voice had hardened, the tone turning cold. He didn’t like Dante. “This is about Dante.”
“Yes.”
This was about Dante.
Zoe rushed from beneath his arm, fled to the far side of the red marble bathroom.
This was about Dante. He’d kidnapped her to hurt Dante. He’d done this to make Dante suffer.
But she adored Dante. He was the big brother she’d never had. He’d saved their farm, fallen in love with Daisy, had taken care of their father. Dante was the answer to the Collingsworths’s prayers.
She felt sick, and cold again, deeply cold, as though fear and pain had settled all the way into the marrow of her bones. Pointing to the door, Zoe ordered Lazaro out. “Go.”
He slowly stood, rising to his full height. In the dimmed light his cheekbones looked like angular slashes above his full mouth. His broken nose shadowed his blunt chin. “Someday you will understand.”
“I will never understand. Dante is a good man. He’s the most generous man I know.”
“You don’t know the full story.”
“Get out.” She turned her back on him, wrapped her arms across her chest.
He crossed to the door. “No matter what happens, I will keep my promise to you.”
In the bath Zoe soaped and scrubbed, feeling sullied after the trip, the abduction, the kiss. She didn’t understand how she could feel so many intensely conflicting emotions. She was afraid of Lazaro Herrera and yet intrigued.
Toweling off, Zoe knew she had to act to get word to Dante and Daisy, knew time was of the essence. She’d look for that phone as soon as she could.
Dry and wrapped in a robe, she faced the open closet in her adjoining bedroom. Someone had unpacked for her. She couldn’t imagine it was Lazaro.
Zoe didn’t like feeling naked in this strange house and dressed quickly, putting on comfortable jeans and a well-washed yellow sweatshirt. She’d just started to put on socks and sneakers when a knock sounded at the door.
Opening the door, Zoe discovered a tiny old woman, no taller than five feet, with gray-streaked hair and an extremely wrinkled olive-complexioned face. “Hello.”
“?Vamanos!” The unsmiling old woman crossed her hands over her stomach. Her voice sounded sharp. “La cena.”
Definitely not a warm welcome. “I’m sorry, I don’t understand,” Zoe answered slowly in English. “I don’t speak Spanish.”
“La cena. La comida.”
“I’m sorry, I don’t understand.”
The older woman exhaled noisily, tossed up her hands. “?Que dice?”
“I…I don’t know what you want me to do. I don’t speak Spanish.”
“?Que?”
“Se?or Herrera. Ask Se?or Herrera, s??”
The elderly woman muttered something beneath her breath and stalked off. She made it halfway down the hall before turning around.
With short, curt gestures she motioned to her mouth, and opened and shut her mouth in an exaggerated chewing motion. “La comida. La cena. La cena.”
Understanding dawned. “La cena.” Food, dinner, Zoe finally got it. But that didn’t mean she was going to rush on out and eat. Who wanted to be invited to dinner like that?
Zoe shut her door and it slammed closed far harder than she intended. Wincing, she climbed on her bed, grabbed a pillow and buried her face in the pillow where she let out a muffled scream of frustration.
This was a nightmare.
She couldn’t stay here. Nothing made sense. Everything was off kilter, from the brandy to the marble bathroom to the kiss. She felt lost…confused.
Her door banged open less than two minutes after she’d slammed it shut.
“?Por Dios! What happened?” Lazaro demanded from the doorway. “I’ve never seen Luz so upset.”
“Luz?”
“My housekeeper.” He braced his hands on his hips, indignation written all over his hard, dark features. “What did you say to her?”
“Nothing.”
“Yet clearly you’ve offended her.”
Zoe mashed the pillow between her hands, squeezing the pillow into a ball. “You’ve got to be joking.”
“No. She said you spit in her face and slammed the door. I heard the door slam, too.”
Zoe flushed. “I didn’t spit. I wouldn’t spit. That’s rude.” She swallowed hard. “And I didn’t mean to slam the door. It closed harder than I expected.”
He stared at her for a long moment, his jaw tight, his mouth compressed. He seemed to be considering her, the situation, Luz’s version of events. “Que joda,” he ground out after a moment.
“What did you say?”
“I said, what a nuisance. You don’t want dinner, fine. Stay in your room. But I’m not going to send special trays to you. There is a dining room in this house, and a very nice antique table with matching chairs. If you want to go to bed hungry, that’s your choice. If you want to eat, you know where I—and the food—will be.”
He knew she wouldn’t join him for dinner and he didn’t have dinner held. It didn’t bother him eating alone in the elegant dining room, either. He almost always ate alone, and had ever since his mother died when he was seven.
He used to think it was poverty that killed her. The two of them were always hungry, and despite the fact that she worked every job she could secure, there never seemed to be enough money to get them off the streets.
Luz entered the dining room, reached for his plate, saw that he’d barely made a dent in his dinner. “Not hungry?” she asked sharply, her wrinkled brow doubly lined with concern.
Luz had befriended his mother before she died. Luz had been poorer than his mother, too, and yet she had fire, and a fierce spirit which made her fight back against those who would oppress her. She’d tried to teach his young mother, Sabana, to stand up to the aristocratic Galvаns but his mother was terrified of the powerful Galvаn family.
“I’ll have coffee and something light later,” he said, leaning back so she could clear his place.
Luz held the plate in her hands. “Who is she, the girl?”
“A friend of a friend.”
Luz made a rough clucking sound. “The truth.”
“It’s half truth, and that’s enough for you to know.” Lazaro pushed away from the table. “Thank you for dinner.”
He walked out, headed for the living room and discovered the fire had burned low. Sitting down on the couch, he put his feet on the massive iron and wood coffee table and stared into the glowing embers.
He’d built this house for his mother. Of course she’d been gone nearly twenty-five years when he had the plans drawn and the house finished, but the attention to detail had been for her, in honor of her. He’d insisted on the best of everything. Crystal chandeliers, silk window hangings, marble bathrooms, French antiques.
She’d been a beautiful girl when Count Tino Galvаn took her against her will. Just seventeen. Not even out of high school.
But taking her innocence hadn’t been enough for Count Galvаn. After he’d hurt her, Tino Galvаn had Sabana sent away, exiled to a remote Patagonia village where she delivered her son alone. The Galvаns had hoped the baby wouldn’t survive.
But Lazaro had.
Since his mother died, he lived for but one thing. Revenge. Revenge on those who hurt his mother, and revenge on those who’d shut their doors on him.
Zoe went to bed hungry and woke up ravenous at three in the morning. Between the time change and the growling of her stomach, she couldn’t fall back to sleep. Lying in bed awake, her thoughts quickly turned to Daisy. Daisy would be worried sick and Zoe knew she had to reach her sister as soon as possible and reassure her everything was fine.
She also needed to alert Dante to the danger Lazaro posed, without getting Daisy involved.
Throwing back the bedcovers, Zoe slid out from between the warm sheets and reached for her thin white cotton robe that matched the pink-sprigged nightgown.
It was a girlish set, something she’d had forever and yet refused to part with despite the cotton wearing thin and the rosebuds fading to peach and cream. The sleep set had been a gift from her dad years ago. Daisy got one like it, only hers had been blue.
Opening her bedroom door, she peered down the darkened hall. She wasn’t sure where to begin searching for a phone. She knew there had to be one somewhere, and not just a phone, but a fax, a modem, a cell phone. Lazaro Herrera had to communicate with the outside world somehow.
In the living room, Zoe crept on her hands and knees along the baseboards, searching for a hidden phone jack, running her fingers along the edge of plaster wall and wood base. She worked her way around the living room before moving to the bookcase where she inspected each shelf.
Nothing. At least not yet.
From living room to hall, hall to the cavernous kitchen, around the kitchen islands and huge rough-hewn pillars to the dining room.
She’d just finished circling the circumference of the dark dining room when she heard a cough behind her.
“Lose something, Zoe?”
“No.” She rose and brushed off her hands. It was so dark she could hardly see him but she felt him, felt his energy from ten feet away.
A little bit of moonlight fell through the window, illuminating his profile. “You’re not cleaning, are you? Luz wouldn’t like it.”
“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.
