Crash Into Me (16 page)

That
query went unanswered, so James asked another. “You think he killed that girl?”

Stephen
didn’t look at him. Couldn’t look at him. The next logical question, the one
about their mother, remained unspoken.

Carly didn’t have any trouble choosing
Christmas presents for James.

With
Ben’s help, she selected a handsome diver’s watch, the same kind he used, of
such stellar quality it boasted a lifetime guarantee even under the brutal wear
and tear of salt water. She also chose a midnight blue cable-knit sweater,
claiming it matched James’ eyes.

Ben
rolled his.

Carly
would have bought out the whole store if he hadn’t stepped in. He didn’t care
about the money, but he had to draw the line somewhere. “You’ll embarrass him,
Carly. He doesn’t want to be thought of as a charity case.”

“I
guess you’re right,” she sighed. “What should we get for Summer?”

Ben
shrugged.

“Jewelry?”

He
pictured the tiny silver cross she’d had around her neck last night. “No. Too
personal. We don’t know each other that well.”

“What
does she like?”

“I’m
not sure.”

“Don’t
you ask her about herself?”

“No.”

“You
are so clueless.”

Actually,
he wasn’t. He knew better than to encourage a woman into thinking they were
embarking upon a long-term relationship.

“Lingerie,
then?” she teased.

“Even
I’m not that obvious.”

“Good.
Perfume?”

“She
doesn’t wear it.”

“How
do you know?”

He
knew because he’d smelled and touched and tasted her skin at most of the places
women put perfume. Although he could think of a few more spots he’d like to
introduce himself to. “I just do.”

They
came back to jewelry, having exhausted all other options. Carly found an
unusual pale blue stone pendant, hanging from a platinum chain. It was smoky
and ethereal, like Summer’s eyes.

“Why
don’t you say it’s from you?” he asked when Carly insisted that he buy it. It
was too expensive, too lovely, and too fitting to be an offhand gift.

“You
have major issues,” she sighed, but agreed.

In
the car, on the way home, she said, “She’s been dead a long time. When will you
let her go?”

Never,
he thought.

He
couldn’t let her go any more than he could forgive himself for killing her.

As usual, Sonny had difficulty deciding on
an outfit to match her assumed role and the occasion. She finally settled on a
calf-length skirt and soft leather boots, both vintage, and her own. The black
cashmere sweater was new, bought with federal funding, and it had a neckline
low enough to show off Carly’s silver cross.

She
figured she may as well wear it again, especially since it was Christmas Eve.

Sonny
Vasquez wasn’t fond of religious accoutrements. Summer Moore, she decided,
could wear one without overanalyzing its symbolism. Besides, the necklace drew
the eye to her cleavage, and although she wasn’t planning on letting Ben round
second base again, she wasn’t above making him wish he could.

When
he opened the door, he didn’t say anything about her appearance. Gone was the
simple charmer who’d told her she looked delicious.

“Come
in,” he said, very formally.

He
was wearing gray suit pants and a white dress shirt. A black-and-gray-striped
silk tie hung loose at his neck, and his toes were covered by black socks. He
had sexy feet, she recalled, missing the sight of them bare.

“Do
you know how to do a Windsor?”

“Yes,”
she said, following him upstairs. Sonny had knotted ties for her brother every
time he’d gone to court, so she’d had a lot of practice.

While
he sat to put on his shoes, she studied the room. On the wall to her left, a
framed portrait of a nude Hawaiian girl stood against a backdrop of brilliant
green palm fronds. A strategically placed hibiscus—giant, luscious, and
gorgeously red—made the full-length picture more artistic than erotic.

The
rest of the room was austere in comparison. White walls, sand-colored carpet,
and white crown molding. The bed was huge, but low to the ground, its white
down comforter and fluffy white pillows blending in with the surroundings
rather than dominating the room. A black mahogany dresser had a pair of cuff
links on top, nothing else. Across from the bed, there was a fireplace, its
hearth cold and unlit.

Beyond
a half-wall partition, a pale green love seat and matching chair faced a
smart-looking plasma screen TV. The weather channel was on mute. Mahogany
bookshelves, filled with scholarly-looking volumes, completed the room.

The
space was visually striking, modern, and sterile. The shock of red hibiscus in
the framed photo and the green leaves in the background, a motif that was
repeated on the designer couch as well as the floor-to-ceiling curtains, were
the only splashes of color.

The
focal point, however, was not the floating bed, flat screen TV, or naked island
nymph. It was the view. The west-facing wall was all glass, with windows so
tall and wide Sonny felt as though she could step right out into the Pacific.

She
shivered, wrapping her arms around herself tightly.

Ben
ducked into the master bath, probably to make himself even more devastatingly
handsome, so she browsed his book collection while she waited. Jean-Paul Sartre.
Karl Marx. Dostoyevsky. Immanuel Kant.

He
liked philosophy. Ew.

“You
read this stuff?” she asked, raising her voice.

He
reentered the bedroom, crossing it to stand in front of his dresser drawers.

“Uh,
yeah. Some of it.”

She
pulled a book off the shelf. Sigmund Freud:
Civilization and Its
Discontents.
“You believe in this crap?”

“What
crap?”

“Penis
envy.”

He
glanced at the book she held and fastened his cuff links. “That one’s not about
penis envy. But no, I’m not a fan of that particular theory.”

“Oh?
Explain why.”

“Well,
oversimplified—”

“By
all means, oversimplify. Otherwise, my penis-deprived brain will explode.”

He
laughed. “I’ve never met a woman who wasn’t delighted with what she had. Are we
in agreement?”

“Yes,”
she said, replacing the book, disappointed that she hadn’t been able to start
an argument.

“Are
you going to knot this tie for me?”

She
walked up to him, looking into his deep brown eyes. He was so controlled today,
so reserved. It made her want to mess up his hair and unbutton his shirt. Instead,
she formed a nice Windsor knot, taking longer than was necessary, standing
closer than she had to, smoothing the tie down over his sternum and her hands
across the impressive breadth of his shoulders when she was finished. “Done,”
she whispered, pressing her stocking-covered knee to his thigh.

“Thanks,”
he said tersely, stepping away from her.

“I
didn’t know this was such a formal affair. I would have worn my ball gown.”

His
eyes raked over her, lingering on the swells of her breasts. “You look fine,”
he said in a low voice, then lifted his gaze to the doorway.

Sonny
didn’t have to look over her shoulder to know Carly was standing there,
eavesdropping. In over five years as an agent, and a lifetime of
hyper-awareness, she’d never been snuck up on.

Nor
had she ever lost herself so completely in a role.

Sonny
bit her lower lip, on the cusp of madness. Here she was, old enough to know
better, dumb enough to do it anyway, in danger of falling for a man who wasn’t
even bothering to pretend he was interested in a real relationship. On the job,
no less.

She
turned toward Carly, vowing to stay focused on her assignment, not Ben
Fortune’s bedroom eyes, for the remainder of the evening.

Before crossing the border from San Diego
to Tijuana, Ben explained that Carly’s grandparents had been married on
Christmas Eve fifty years before. They’d hired a professional photographer to
mark the occasion, and invited Ben and Carly to be part of the family photo,
hence the more formal attire.

Over
a hundred friends and family members were in attendance, also decked out in
their finest, most of whom didn’t speak a word of English. While Ben and Carly
posed for the photo, Sonny sat out the festivities at a long table in the
banquet hall.

When
Ben found her again, she was chatting with several other revelers and enjoying
some delicious holiday fare.

“I
didn’t know you spoke Spanish,” he said.

“You
don’t know much about me.”

He
couldn’t argue that. “What are you?”

She
finished off her tamale with a smile. “A woman. What are you? A space alien?”

“You
know what I mean.”

“My
mother is Guatemalan.”

He
raised an eyebrow in surprise, and Sonny reacted defensively, having
encountered this reaction many times. Her mother was of Spanish descent, but
the majority of Guatemalans were native Mayans, marginalized to coffee
plantations in their homeland, often used as farmhands in the United States. In
San Diego, Guatemalan heritage was synonymous with cheap labor and dark skin.

“There
are light-skinned Hispanics in Guatemala, just like any other Latin-American
country,” she explained.

He
held his hands up, claiming innocence. “I didn’t say there weren’t. I’ve just
never met a blue-eyed Guatemalan.”

“And
how many Guatemalans do you know?”

He
smiled. “One. My gardener.”

“You
have a gardener? You don’t even have a yard.”

“What
I do have, he’s done an excellent job with.”

She
smiled back at him, shaking her head at the extravagancies of the disgustingly
wealthy.

“You
take after your mom?”

“No.
People tell me I look like her, but I don’t see it. She’s very pretty.”

“So
are you.”

She
just shrugged, not bothering to disagree. In her experience, when she tried to
deflect a compliment, it was assumed that she was fishing for more. “She and my
brother have dark hair. When I was a kid, everyone called me
guera
.”

“What
does that mean?”

She
couldn’t believe he didn’t know. Several of Carly’s relatives had been calling
him the masculine equivalent of the word all evening. “It means light hair or
skin. Or, in your case,” she added, for his hair was dark and his skin
sun-browned, “white boy.”

“Oh.
I wondered about that.”

“Why
didn’t you ask Carly?”

“I
don’t trust her translations.”

“That’s
probably wise. She told her grandmother I was your fiancée.”

He
rubbed a hand over his eyes. “I knew it.”

“She’s
made quite the turnaround. Was it less than a week ago she was warning me away
from you?”

He glanced
at his daughter, smiling and beautiful, posing for photographs with her
grandparents. “Just wait. When she has her first fight with James, she’ll be
cursing you to hell and lighting herself on fire.”

“You
have a morbid sense of humor.”

“I’m
not joking.”

“Maybe
James is good for her. She looks happy.”

“He’s
a fucking martyr,” he said sullenly. “If he were just some dumb jock, or a
spoiled rich kid, like she is, I wouldn’t worry half as much.”

“You
may be right. I think he cares about her, though.”

He
didn’t dispute her. Instead, he brought her back to his original question. “So
where’d you get the blue eyes, my little Guatemalan princess?”

“My
dad, I guess.”

“You
don’t know?”

“I
don’t even know his name.”

“Isn’t
it Moore?”

“No.
That’s my stepdad.” She felt a twinge of guilt for deceiving him with the phony
name, but she was telling the truth. Everett Moore had been her stepfather, and
the thought of him made a darkness pass over her, like a cloud occluding the
sun.

Ben
must have seen it on her face. “Is he the guy?”

She
didn’t have to ask what he meant, but she did. “The guy who what?”

“Who
made you afraid.”

“He
was one of them.”

Ben’s
mouth made a thin, hard line. “Where is he now?”

“Why?
So you can find him and beat him up?” She laughed, shaking her head.

“I
feel protective of you, and you think it’s funny?”

“No.
What’s funny is that you assume I need a protector. That tough-guy avenger crap
is more about you than me, and it’s insulting. You want to make him pay for
ruining your good-girl fantasy, for turning me into a real person with a lot of
sexual hang-ups.”