Risky Engagement Read online

  She was fair about it, though. She held herself to the same strict standards. She dressed well, if conservatively, and worked out regularly to maintain both her health and her trim figure. She was conservative in her makeup, too. A few swipes of mascara was all she needed to enhance her brown eyes. Peach lip gloss did the trick for her mouth—which she now forced into a polite smile.

  “Thanks for the assistance,” she said as the kid who’d dogged her footsteps scampered away. “The boy was nothing, if not persistent.”

  “You have to learn how to shake ’em off. Must be your first time in Cabo.”

  It was a statement, not a question, but she answered it anyway. “Yes, it is.”

  Those blue eyes made a slow descent from her wide-brimmed straw hat to her designer sunglasses to the lips her ex-fiancé had described as all too kissable.

  That was before she’d handed the conniving rat his walking papers, of course. During their last, somewhat less than cordial meeting, Kevin had flung other descriptive phrases at her. “Hard” and “stubborn” and “a real ball-buster” came immediately to mind.

  “I was just going to have a beer.” The dark-haired stranger hooked a thumb at the open-air bar behind him. “Care to join me?”

  Thirst battled with common sense. If Nina hadn’t been thinking of Kevin, odds were she would have turned down this casual invitation, just as she had that of the silver-maned hacienda owner. She never cruised bars, much less let strange men pick her up. But her parched throat and the remembered sting of Kevin’s insults overcame caution.

  “Sure. Why not?”

  The Purple Parrot looked much like the dozens of other bars in the harbor area. Square tables topped by chipped formica crowded its railed-in veranda. Red and green-plastic chairs added a colorful air, as did the plastic pennants strung from corner to corner. Inside the bar itself were shelves lined with a staggering array of bottles. “Over there.”

  Grasping Nina’s elbow, the stranger steered her toward a just-vacated table with an unobstructed view of the marina. The sudden and totally unexpected sizzle that radiated up her bare arm flustered her so much she barely took in the sea of gleaming white sailboats.

  “I’m Rafe,” he said by way of introduction. “Rafe Blackstone.”

  “Nina. Uh, Grant.”

  Oh, for pity’s sake! The heat must have gotten to her more than she’d realized. Bad enough she’d given in to the impulse to have a drink with a man who looked like a cross between a movie stud and a hood. One touch, and said stud came close to finishing what the sun had started. She was practically melting under her linen sundress.

  It had to be that dark stubble on his cheeks and chin. Or the way his black T-shirt stretched across a taut, flat belly when he leaned back in his chair and unfolded his long legs. Or the slow, considering look he gave her through a screen of ridiculously thick lashes that any woman would have killed for.

  Whatever it was, Nina responded in a way she’d never responded before to any male, Kevin included. A delicious spark of heat licked at her veins, and she could feel the muscles low in her belly tighten. Surprised and not a little flustered by her reaction, she removed her sunglasses and tipped the man seated across from her another polite smile.

  “Where’s home, Rafe?”

  “Here and there. Mostly San Diego these days. You?”

  “Albuquerque.”

  “What do you do there?”

  Before she could answer, a waiter materialized at their table. She ordered a margarita on the rocks, her companion a Dos Equis.

  “I own and operate a company that digitizes medical data,” she said when the waiter retreated.

  “That so?” He arched a brow. “Given the president’s push to computerize the medical profession, your business must be thriving.”

  “It is…now. We had some lean years when we first started out,” she admitted wryly. “Hospitals weren’t exactly anxious to share patient data. Plus, we had to make sure we didn’t violate privacy laws. We got our foot in the door by trending data from local sources and providing it to medical facilities and research facilities across the state.” A touch of pride crept into her voice. “We now harvest information from more than three thousand sources, analyze the input, and supply trends to a host of private and governmental medical research centers across the U.S.”

  “Only the U.S.?”

  His slouch was the epitome of lazy relaxation, but his obvious interest reassured Nina. She always worried about boring folks with her passion for what she did. Or worse, lapsing into so much technical jargon that she lost her listeners completely.

  “We still have to work within privacy laws,” she said, “but I’m hoping to go international soon.”

  The seemingly casual comment put a sudden kink in Wolf’s gut. The woman wanted to go international, did she? With the help of Sebastian Cordell, aka Stephen Caulder, aka a half-dozen other aliases?

  Or was she after the sensitive, top-secret information Cordell had stolen and intended to auction to the highest bidder? Had she staged her vehicle’s breakdown? Used it as an entree into Cordell’s heavily guarded compound? Was she that good?

  Wolf was still trying to decide when the waiter delivered their drinks. The man placed two frosted glasses in front of Grant and earned a surprised look.

  “I didn’t order two drinks.”

  “This is happy hour, señorita. You order one, I bring two.”

  “But…”

  “Same price. No problem.”

  She gave in with a shrug and a smile.

  Wolf had to give her credit. She had that polite half smile down pat. Friendly, but with just enough reserve in it to keep a man at a proper distance.

  Nina Grant didn’t know it yet, he thought grimly, but the two of them were about to get up close and very personal.

  The muscles low in his belly tightened at the prospect. This is what he did. What he’d done now for almost ten years. Why he kept to himself and trusted no one outside his immediate circle of friends and fellow agents. Over the years, he’d locked horns with too many men and women who’d crossed the line. In more than one instance, it was kill or be killed.

  In this one…

  He didn’t have a fix on Nina Grant yet, and the uncertainty scraped on his nerves. Extracting the lime wedge from the neck of his beer, he tipped the bottle in her direction.

  “Here’s to international cooperation.”

  She clinked her frosted glass against the bottle. “I’ll drink to that.”

  He let the lager slide down his throat, watching while she licked some salt from the rim before taking a sip of her drink. The small act was completely natural, the way most people tasted a margarita—and disturbingly provocative. Wolf’s belly tightened another notch as he followed the movement of her tongue.

  Come on, he urged silently. Drink the damn thing.

  He knew from experience that two-for-one happy hour drinks at most Cabo San Lucas dives were usually so watered down you couldn’t even taste the booze in them. The Purple Parrot, however, had a reputation to maintain. That’s why he’d chosen it. Another double round, and he’d have Nina Grant singing like a tanked-up canary.

  “How long have you lived in Albuquerque?” he asked to get the ball rolling.

  “I got a job there after grad school and decided to stay. I love the climate. The people. The mountains. The incredible sunsets. Seems I’ve spent almost as much time traveling recently as I have at home, though. I almost cringe when I have to get on a plane these days.”

  Wolf pumped her for information, subtly, smoothly, and hid a smile of satisfaction when she took another taste of her drink.

  “Whew! This is potent.”

  “Not that potent. It goes down easier after the first few sips.”

  “I’ll bet.” Her nose wrinkling, she set the glass aside. “It’s hitting my empty stomach like a sledgehammer. I’d better stop with this one and head to my hotel.”

  So much for his plan to get her s
loshed. No matter. He wasn’t about to let her wiggle out of his net now.

  “So let me buy you dinner.”

  Chapter 2

  Nina blinked at Blackstone’s unexpected invitation. An automatic refusal formed on her lips. Before she could voice it, his cell phone emitted a low, vibrating hum.

  “’Scuse me.” He slipped a sleek little jobbie out of his pocket and held it at an angle. “Sorry, I need to read this text message.”

  “No problem.”

  His face remained impassive as he scrolled the screen. She couldn’t tell if the news was good or bad, but the brief interruption gave Nina time to reconsider his surprising offer of dinner.

  She had to admit it was tempting. Extremely tempting. She didn’t need her string of degrees—or the intent look in this sexy stranger’s eyes—to make the leap from drinks to dinner to a quick tumble into bed.

  The mere thought made her throat go tight. It affected other parts of her, too. Parts that hadn’t felt this sudden sizzle in way too long.

  No surprise there. She was a biologist by training and a medical researcher by profession. She knew she possessed a normal, healthy sex drive. One that she and Kevin had made the most of. At first.

  In the later stages of their engagement, their lovemaking had been less adventurous. It went decidedly flat when she began to suspect he’d courted her more for what she could do for him in the business arena than in the bedroom.

  Maybe… Maybe this was just what she needed. An hour or two or three of hot, sweaty, completely mindless sex. What better way to get over the humiliation of Kevin’s lies? How better to revalidate herself as a woman?

  Ha! Who was she kidding? Inviting Blackstone back to her hotel had nothing whatsoever to do with validation, and a whole lot to do with his impact on her pulmonary system. The mere thought of peeling off his T-shirt and popping the snap on those wrinkled khaki’s constricted her lungs and put a lump the size of Rhode Island in her throat.

  Unfortunately, the biologist in her didn’t have to delve very deep to compile a comprehensive list of diseases she could pick up by exchanging bodily fluids with a total stranger. Even one as hot as Rafe Blackstone. Especially one as hot as Blackstone. With a stab of real regret, she groped for the tote bag hooked over the back of her chair.

  “Thanks, but I’ll pass on dinner, too. Let me pay for the drinks.”

  “I’ll get them.”

  “Really, I want to. I’ve enjoyed our—”

  “I’ve got it covered.”

  Oooh-kay. She dropped her wallet back into her tote. That was twice today she’d stepped on it: first with the guys who’d fixed the fuel line on her rental, now with Blackstone. Guess she shouldn’t have let his bristles and rumpled shirt mislead her into thinking he would appreciate a woman who preferred to pay her own way.

  “I’ll walk you to your car.”

  She started to decline the offer. The vendors milling outside the bar, waiting to pounce, changed her mind. With the sun gone down and the crowds of tourists thinning out, they would swarm all over her. Why not let this lean, tough-looking gringo deal with them?

  Which he did, with a few well-chosen words. He also took her arm to weave a path for her through the grumbling souvenir hawkers. His hold was loose but oddly possessive. To Nina’s consternation, the feel of his callused palm raised goose bumps over every exposed inch of skin.

  She covered her involuntary reaction with a nod toward the rapidly darkening sky. “Cools off fast when the sun goes down, doesn’t it?”

  “It does,” he replied, and promptly tucked her closer into his side.

  His scent enveloped her. The seductive blend of sun-warmed skin and healthy male sweat retriggered the erotic sensations Nina was so determined to repress. Gulping, she tried to focus on the dramatic red-and-gold streaks in the dark sky, the raucous beat of music coming from the restaurants, anything but the man beside her.

  She failed miserably and breathed a distinct sigh of relief when they reached the parking garage. Easing free of his hold, she punched the button for the fourth floor.

  “Thanks again for the drinks.”

  “I’ll ride up with you.”

  She turned to him with a polite but firm no on her lips. He spiked it with a shrug and casual remark.

  “This part of town is usually pretty safe, but a couple of tourists were mugged in this garage a few days ago.”

  Common sense prevailed. Parking garages in any part of the world could be risky. No sense tempting fate.

  Which was exactly what she was doing by prolonging her brief association with Blackstone. She wasn’t fooling anyone, herself included. The tingling awareness of his proximity, the delicious feeling of temptation rode all the way up to the fourth floor with her.

  They stepped out into cavernous gloom. Their footsteps echoed as Nina led the way up the ramp, glad now that she’d accepted Blackstone’s escort. The garage had emptied considerably since her arrival. Probably because most of the businesses in town that didn’t cater exclusively to the tourist trade had closed for the day. Her rental now sat by itself at the end of the row.

  Digging the keys out of her tote, she clicked the remote. The lights flashed, the locks popped, and she turned to her escort once more. He was close. A little too close. She put on a cool smile.

  “Thanks again. I enjoyed—”

  “Let me have the keys.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Give me the keys. I’ll drive you back to your hotel.”

  Okay, enough is enough. Lifting her chin, Nina shook her head.

  “Look, I don’t know what signals you think I sent there at the bar, but you read them wrong.”

  “Give me the keys.”

  When he took a step closer, crowding her against the car, fright exploded in her chest. How stupid was this? How stupid was she?

  She threw a wild glance down the ramp. Nothing moved. Not a single person walked to or from a car. No headlights stabbed through the gloom. She was on her own here.

  Her throat clogged with fear, she tried to recall any of the moves from the self-defense courses she’d taken over the years. All she could remember, all she could think of was to yell her head off and gouge her attacker’s eyes with her car keys.

  She fumbled the pointed ends between her fingers, balled her fist, and screamed for help. Or tried to. She didn’t emit much more than a squeak before Blackwater clapped a hard hand over her mouth. His other hand batted away the arm she’d brought up in a vicious arc.

  She fought him, using every bit of her strength, but he was too big, too strong. Reaching behind her, he ripped open the car door and shoved her inside.

  Her heart hammering in terror, Nina landed in a sprawl across the driver’s seat. Pure instinct brought her knee up and her foot lashing out. Blackstone dodged the kick aimed at his groin, and took it on the outside of his thigh instead.

  “Calm down!” he got out with a grunt of pain. “I’m not going to hurt you.”

  Right. Uh-huh. Sure.

  She wasn’t about to take his word for it. With his unyielding presence blocking the exit, she scrambled over the center console and made a desperate lunge for the passenger door. Cursing, he dropped into the driver’s seat and wrapped fingers of steel around her upper arm. A swift yank jerked her back down.

  “Listen to me. I’m not going to hurt you.”

  “Then let me go!”

  “Not yet. And not here.” He kept her in place with an iron fist. “We need to talk, Dr. Grant.”

  Dr. Grant?

  The title penetrated her wild fear. She hadn’t used the honorific in conversation. She was sure she hadn’t. She rarely did, and then only in professional circles. So how did he know?

  “Who are you?” she panted. “What do you want to talk to me about?”

  “I’ll tell you at the Mayan Princess.”

  Oh, Lord! He knew where she was staying. Had he followed her from the resort? Been following her the entire day?

&nbs
p; He couldn’t have! She would have spotted him out on that winding, dusty road before her rental broke down. If it had broken down. What if he’d sabotaged her car? Anticipated that she’d be stranded out there in the middle of nowhere? Which she would have been, if she hadn’t trudged a mile through the hot sun to Sebastian Cordell’s hacienda. Or was that part of his diabolical plan, too?

  The questions hammered at her as he eased his brutal grip, but she decided not to stick around for the answers. She made another grab for the door handle, only to hear the door locks snick.

  “Child protective locks,” he commented laconically as she tugged futilely on the handle.

  Grinding her teeth in frustration, she sank back against the seat. Her cell phone was in her tote, she remembered. With a dead battery. Her last hope she thought as her abductor keyed the ignition, was the garage attendant.

  Except there wasn’t one. The booth where she’d forked over a fee when she’d entered was now empty. Apparently, anyone who drove in after the main businesses and shops closed got to park free.

  Nor was there a police officer anywhere in sight when they pulled out of the garage and hit the streets. Nina seriously considered hammering on the window to attract the attention of the people out for a late evening stroll. A return of her common sense—and gradual subsiding of panic—subdued the impulse.

  Blackstone said he didn’t intend to hurt her. He also said he’d tell her what he wanted from her at the Mayan. That meant he had to pull up at the entrance to the posh resort, where the extremely well-trained parking valet, doorman and desk clerks all knew her by name. Blackstone could hardly waltz into the resort with her and waltz out again, leaving behind her dead and/or mutilated body and a small army of people who could ID him. Could he?

  She’d more or less reassured herself on that point by the time the resort appeared in the distance. She’d also worked up as much reluctant curiosity as distrust. What the heck did this man want with her? She was pretty sure now it wasn’t sex, and was shocked by the contradictory feelings that realization generated.