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She folded her arms across her chest, tense with indignation. ‘I don’t like you now.’
He gave a humourless chuckle.
Iona glared at his back as he walked into the motel office and indulged in a brief fantasy of running off into the night. But as his tall frame stepped into the office—and the lean athletic build rippling under a tan polo shirt and dark trousers became apparent under the harsh strip lighting—she let the fantasy go.
After a ten-minute conversation with Greg, the night clerk, he strolled back towards her, silhouetted by moonlight again. As he approached she became painfully aware of the mile-wide shoulders, narrow hips, long legs and the predatory stride.
Flipping heck.
Whoever this guy was, he was a lot stronger and bigger than she was—and she already knew he didn’t mind using his physical advantage. Which meant she was going to have to wait to make a clean getaway.
He paused next to the car and pulled out a smartphone. As he talked into the device, the blue light from the neon Vacancy sign hit his face.
Iona gasped. Her abductor could make a living as a male supermodel.
A bubble of hysteria built under her breastbone as she stared at the firm sensual lips, the aquiline nose with a slight bump at the bridge, the sculpted angular cheekbones, the olive-toned skin and the shadow of stubble on his jaw. He glanced towards her and her lungs stopped as she absorbed the deep sapphire-blue of his eyes and the unusual dark blue rim around the irises. Was that a trick of the light? Even Daniel Craig’s eyes weren’t that blue. Surely?
He finished the call—not a word of which she’d managed to catch due to the loud buzzing in her ears from a lack of oxygen—and slipped the smartphone back into his pocket.
He settled into the driver’s seat, thankfully casting his stunning face into darkness again.
She looked away and concentrated on breathing. So what if he was better looking than Adonis? He was still a bullying jerk.
She repeated the mantra in her head as he drove off without acknowledging her.
‘If it’s not too much to ask,’ she said as they left the motel’s lot, ‘where exactly are you taking me? Because my purse, my passport and all my worldly goods happen to be in room 108. And I don’t want someone to nick them.’
Not that she had a great deal of money in her purse, or many worldly goods, but her credit card was kind of important, and her passport if she was ever going to get out of this Godforsaken country.
‘That’s cute, coming from you,’ he said as he flipped the indicator and turned onto Morro Bay’s main street.
She bristled. ‘I’m not a thief, if that’s what you’re implying.’
‘Uh-huh. So what were you doing in Demarest’s room? Planning to scrub his john after hours?’
The mention of Brad’s name had her bristling even more. So he knew Demarest? Or knew of him? She tried to decide whether this was good or bad.
‘This is the way it’s gonna work,’ he said, his voice domineering—and deadly calm. ‘Either I report you to the Morro Bay PD and they put you in a cell to keep you out of my way or you do what I say and tell me everything you know about Demarest.’
His thumb tapped rhythmically against the steering wheel as the car drifted out of the small town—taking her farther away from her goal, and her passport.
‘It’s not stealing if someone’s already stolen from you,’ she offered, after considering her options. She didn’t plan to tell this arrogant stranger anything but she didn’t want to end up in a cell either.
His thumb tapped three more times. ‘No, actually, technically it’s still stealing.’
Great, the man wasn’t just a bullying jerk, he was a self-righteous bullying jerk—with eyes bluer than Daniel Craig. Her pulse spiked.
Get over the eyes. Looks can be deceiving—you know that.
‘How much?’
‘How much what?’ she asked, confused by the question.
‘How much did Demarest take you for?’
The toneless enquiry had all the pain and humiliation charging up her throat and threatening to gag her. She swallowed down the bitter taste. So she’d made a mistake. A stupid, selfish mistake by believing in a guy who had never been what he seemed. But she’d spent the last two weeks trying to put that mistake right—that had to count for something.
‘Not me, my father.’ She stared out of the window into the darkness. The car had reached the bluff over Morro Bay and even though she couldn’t see the ocean, she could sense it.
She hit the button to slide down the window, suddenly desperate for the scent of fresh air. The dry ache in her throat caught her unawares as the musty scent of earth, and sea and tree sap brought with it a vivid picture of Kelross Glen. The little Highland town in the foothills of the Cairngorms she’d spent the first twenty-four years of her life trying to escape. And every second of the last two weeks wishing she could return to.
She hit the up switch, sealing out the painful memories. She couldn’t go back, not until she made amends for Brad and the childish wanderlust that had drawn her to him in the first place. She had to get at least some of her father’s money back. And if that meant tracking Brad the Cad through every dive on California’s coastline—and putting up with the arrogant guy seated beside her—she’d do it.
‘How much did he take your father for?’ The sharp question jolted her out of her thoughts.
‘Twenty-five grand,’ she said. Her dad’s life savings. Peter MacCabe had believed he was giving Iona a shot at her dream—but Brad’s promises of setting her up as a wildlife artist in Los Angeles had been as false and shallow as he was.
She pushed out a shaky breath.
Stop being a drama queen.
Once she’d given Detective Sexy the slip and worked out a way to get back into Brad’s room, she’d finally be able to look for her dad’s money.
‘You don’t seriously think he’s got twenty-five grand in Irish bills stashed in his motel room do you?’
The incredulous statement had her head whipping round. And her eyes narrowing.
‘I’m not Irish, I’m Scottish,’ she said, indignation ringing in her voice—how come no one in California knew the difference between a Scottish and an Irish accent—hadn’t any of them ever watched Braveheart? ‘And I don’t see where else he would put the money. He’s not likely to be using a bank account, is he?’
‘When did he hit your old man?’
‘December.’
December the twenty-third, to be precise. What a merry Christmas that had turned out to be. To think she’d actually believed the story he’d told her about popping over to Inverness to get her and her father a Christmas present. Until her father had dropped the bombshell about cashing in all the bonds he owned to ‘give you a chance at happiness with your new young man.’ She hadn’t even had the heart to tell him she and Brad were hardly a love match.
‘That’s three months ago.’ She heard the note of pity in the detective’s voice, and hated him for it. ‘The money’s long gone by now.’
It couldn’t all be gone. Not all twenty-five grand. ‘How? He’s not exactly spending it on his accommodation.’
‘He’s got a cocaine habit. He could lose that much up his nose in a weekend.’
‘But…’ A cocaine habit? Was that why he’d seemed so fragile and vulnerable when he’d walked into The Kelross giftshop?
‘I’m taking it he kept that quiet while he was in…’ The detective paused. ‘Where are you from?’
‘The Scottish Highlands,’ she said absently.
‘So that’s why he disappeared from our radar for a couple of months,’ he murmured more to himself than her. ‘I figured he might have skipped town to avoid his marks, but I didn’t think he had the imagination to skip all the way to Europe.’
‘He has other marks?’ she said dully.
‘Querida, he’s a high-end hustler with a class-A habit—where do you think I come in?’
‘I don’t know, where do you come in?’ she snapped. Did the guy really have to be quite so patronising?
‘My name’s Zane Montoya. I own and operate a private investigations firm based in Carmel. We’ve been investigating Demarest for six months. Gathering evidence, witness statements, establishing a money trail, all on behalf of an insurance company who made the mistake of insuring some of his victims.’ He waited a beat as she struggled to absorb the information.
So her father hadn’t been the only one who’d fallen for Brad’s clever lies? This hadn’t been some arbitrary, opportunistic con? Her stomach pitched at the thought.
Had she really believed this couldn’t get any worse?
She’d got over her ludicrous fantasy that Brad Demarest cared about her and admired her artwork—enough to help her get out of Kelross Glen—months ago. But Montoya’s revelations felt like the final rusty nail in the rotting coffin of her pride and self-respect.
‘A complex, high-level investigation,’ Montoya continued. ‘That your dumb stunt came close to screwing up tonight.’
She ignored Montoya’s irritation. If he expected an apology for her ‘dumb stunt,’ he’d be waiting until they were serving snow cones in hell. She couldn’t care less about him or his anonymous insurance company or his complex, high-level, ‘almost screwed up’ investigation.
All she cared about was her father.
Peter MacCabe was a good man, who’d wanted to give her a dream. A dream she’d destroyed by letting a professional conman into their lives.
They rode in silence for the next few miles. Iona stared into the darkness and tried to get her head around what she was going to do next. It had taken her over two weeks to track Brad this far, in the hope she could get some of the money back. But if all the money was gone, was there even any point in confronting him? The hopelessness of the situation felt debilitating.
The lights of a strip mall shone in the distance as they approached another seaside town, but her mind had gone numb and she simply could not get it to engage.
Even her bones felt tired. She’d been running on adrenaline since she’d got to California, trying to live on as little as possible while she waited for Brad to return to the motel she’d had staked out. Tears of frustration and weariness pricked her eyes. She sucked them up. Crying never solved anything.
The yellow sign of a fast-food franchise flickered on the side of the road. Her stomach protested audibly and the hot flush of shame fired up her neck. Seemed the coffin of her self-respect hadn’t completely rotted away because she’d be mortified if Montoya had heard her hunger pains.
No such luck.
The car bounced across the cracked pavement in the fast-food restaurant’s forecourt, then stopped at the drive-through window.
He slanted a look at her belly. ‘What do you want?’
‘Nothing, I’m good,’ she said, even though she hadn’t eaten since the coffee and doughnut she’d splurged on at breakfast. She’d rather die of starvation than accept charity from this jerk.
‘What’ll it be, sir?’ The teenage girl in the drive-through window blushed profusely before letting out a choked sigh—clearly suffering from the same asphyxiation problem Iona herself had had after her first good look at Detective Sexy.
He glanced at her over his shoulder and she got another unwelcome eyeful of that staggering face. An alarming series of pinpricks shimmered across her nerve endings.
‘You sure?’ he asked.
‘Positive.’ She lifted her chin.
The flat line of Montoya’s lips curved up at one end, sending a dimple into his cheek. The pinpricks gathered and concentrated in all sorts of inappropriate places.
A dimple? Seriously? Give me a break.
The hint of a smile was more rueful than amused, but there was no denying the spectacular blip in Iona’s heart rate—or the loud answering growl of the lion in her stomach still hoping to get fed.
‘Suit yourself.’ He turned back to the blushing teen. ‘I’ll have two double cheeseburgers with a couple of large fries and a chocolate malt, Serena,’ he purred, reading her name off the badge pinned to her heaving bosom.
‘Yes, sir, coming right up.’ The girl jumped to attention. ‘That’ll be six dollars fifty, sir.’
Iona rolled her eyes. What was with the sir? Couldn’t Serena see Detective Sexy already had an ego the size of Mars? Stroking it would turn it into a supernova.
He paid for the food, thanked Serena with what Iona guessed must have been the full dimple effect—because the girl’s face went radioactive—then drove to the pick-up window.
‘Here, hold these.’ he passed her the two grease-spotted paper bags.
The delicious aroma of grilled meat and freshly fried potatoes swirled around Iona as he steered the car to a parking space one-handed while taking a loud slurp of his malt.
A giant chasm opened in her stomach and began to weep as she thrust the bags back as soon as the car was stationary. ‘Why did you get two?’ she snapped, drool pooling under her tongue. ‘I told you I’m not hungry.’
Was he trying to torture her?
‘They’re both for me.’ He patted what appeared to be a washboard-lean stomach, the rueful twist of his lips mocking her. ‘Stake-outs are hungry work and all I’ve had since lunch is ten Twinkies and a gallon of Dr Pepper.’
She glared across the console. ‘My heart bleeds for you.’
The mention of the sugary treats was torturous enough, but then he produced an enormous cheeseburger from one of the takeout bags.
The lurid orange substance that passed for cheese dripped from the sesame-seed bun as the savoury scent filled the car. The chasm in Iona’s stomach yawned as his Adam’s apple bobbed up and down while he demolished the cheeseburger, then made equally fast work of the fries. The crunch of crisp golden potato and the heady fragrance sent her taste buds into overdrive.
He balled up the empty bag and flipped it into a bin outside the car window. She licked her lips as her stomach rolled into her throat.
One down, one to go.
He peered into the second bag, lifted out the last cheeseburger. Wrapping the serviette round one half, he brought it to his lips in slow motion.
‘Wait.’ Her hand shot out to grab hold of one thick wrist as the lion howled.
‘Something you want?’ His tone sounded strangely alluring in the darkness. Her tortured gaze met his mocking one.
‘Yes…I…’ Her tongue swelled, the drool choking her. ‘Please.’
One dark eyebrow lifted. ‘Please, what?’
The bastard was going to make her beg.
‘Could I have a wee bite?’ She begged, ready to sacrifice her pride, her self-respect and anything else he might want for one little nibble.
The intensely blue gaze dipped as her teeth dug into her bottom lip—and the pinpricks radiated up and out from all those inappropriate places. She dismissed her response. It had to be some weird physical reaction brought on by starvation.
She waited, ready for him to torture her some more, but to her relief his lips quirked—making the damn dimple wink at her—and he handed over the precious burger. ‘Knock yourself out.’
She paused for a second as her fingers sank into the spongy bun, then ripped off a huge chunk with her teeth.
