Extreme Bachelor (34 page)

“Yeah,” Jack said, and shrugged a little
sheepishly when Michael narrowed his gaze.

“But Leah? I don’t see it,” Trudy
reiterated.

While a regular guy might take a small
measure of comfort hearing that the woman he loved did not sleep
around, it didn’t give Michael any comfort at all. It just filled
him with sick dread.

“Why don’t you get dressed and ready for
rafting, and we’ll have a look around,” Jack suggested.

“But she’s not here, I already looked—”

“Right, but we’ll look, too, and one of us
will run into town and have a look around. In the meantime, you
need to eat something and get ready,” he said, ushering Trudy out
the door.

“Maybe I should go with you,” she suggested,
but Jack already had her outside.

“You don’t want to miss rafting, do you?
Don’t worry. It’s a Podunk little town. It won’t take more than
half an hour.”

“Okay,” Trudy said, sounding very reluctant
to let them go without her. “Just start at the Italian
restaurant.”

“We will,” Jack promised her, and gestured
her to go on. With one last look back at Michael, Trudy left.

When Jack closed the door behind her, he
turned around to Michael. “You know something.”

“No. Well, maybe. Not really, it’s just . .
. hell, I don’t know,” he said with a sigh of exasperation.

“What’s going on?”

“I can’t really say,” Michael said, hands on
hips. “A friend of mine from Washington let me know that a guy I
put away a few years ago—a Spaniard—was out and looking for me.
They know he is in the States. They don’t know exactly where, but
they were fairly confident he wasn’t on the West coast. At least
not yet.”

“What does this guy want with you?” Jack
asked.

Michael’s laugh was sour. “He wants me
dead.”

Jack’s brows rose. “No shit? What’d you do,
steal his girlfriend?”

Michael shook his head, thinking back to
Spain, to those nights in Costa del Sol, to Barcelona, to Madrid,
where he had lived and worked. “Worse. I slept with his wife, took
his livelihood, and set up a sting that sent him to prison for what
was supposed to be the rest of his life.”

Jack whistled. “That’s not good. How is he
out?”

“Money, drugs, who knows?” Michael said with
a shrug. “It happens.” He rubbed the nape of his neck. “But how
does he know about Leah? How could he have found her?”

“My guess is he found you,” Jack opined.
“And once he found you, it wouldn’t take a genius to figure out
she’s important to you.”

That was exactly what Michael feared. He
picked up his cell phone. “Where can I get reception? I need to
call a couple of people.”

“Bellingham.”

Michael picked up keys. “Go on without us.
When I find her, we’ll meet you back at camp.”

“Are you sure?” Jack asked, following him to
the door.

“No, I’m not sure about anything. But I
don’t know what else to do,” he admitted honestly, and walked out,
headed for one of the Jeeps they had rented. He had a sinking
feeling there wasn’t a moment to waste.

THIS was an absolute nightmare, the worst
thing that could happen, other than maybe a serious burst of
cellulite—but Leah felt just that hopeless.

Adolfo had moved from orange to bread and
cheese, which she wouldn’t have any of, either, and refused to
cooperate with her by telling her what time it was. He seemed to be
enjoying her massive hangover.

She was sitting in the bed, her arms around
her legs, pressing her forehead to her knees. “Shit,” she said into
her knees. “I cannot believe I did this.”

“Spanish wine is very powerful,” he said, as
if it was a proven, scientific fact.

“It was California wine,
and I’m not talking about that,” Leah moaned, and gestured wildly
to the bed. “But
that
!”

“That?” Adolfo asked pleasantly.

Why did he have to be so
obtuse now? “Yes. You know . . .
that
.”

Adolfo blinked, and then
he laughed. “You’re a beautiful woman,
mi
amor
. But I do not take advantage of
sleeping beauties.”

Now Leah blinked at him several times. She
could hardly see him her head hurt so badly. “Then why . . . ?” she
asked, looking down at her underwear.

“You seemed to be not in comfort.”

Oh dear God, that was
a
huge
relief.
Somehow, being a drunk was preferable to being a drunk and a skank.
“Thank God,” she breathed. “Oh thank God.”

“Poor girl,” Adolfo said sympathetically.
“You want orange juice? We have orange and papaya juices.”

No, she didn’t want orange juice, she wanted
to be dragged outside and shot. “No thanks. I think I just need to
get my clothes and go, okay, Adolfo? I think our little flirtation
thing,” she said, gesturing at the two of them, “is over.”

“As you wish,” he said genially. But he
didn’t move.

She frowned at him. “Come on, what time is
it?”

Adolfo smiled
sympathetically. “It is as I said,
mi
amor
. Time makes no difference to us
now.”

It did to her. Time would tell her, for
example, how long she had been living this horrible drunk, and if
she had any prayer of making the all-call for the rafting trip, or
had to show up later when everyone would know—or guess—why she
hadn’t been on the raft in the first place.

She hated that. She wasn’t like that, didn’t
go home with guys she didn’t know. Frankly, she wasn’t the type to
go home with guys at all, and especially not drunk. Leah put her
head down again and closed her eyes. Her head was spinning, her
mouth incredibly dry.

“Have some orange juice, Leah,” Adolfo said
again. His voice startled her—it was suddenly very close. She
looked up and instantly swayed backward. The man was standing over
her with a glass of OJ shoved in her face. She recoiled at the
sight of it. “Thanks . . . but I don’t know if I can keep it
down.”

“You must try.”

Leah shook her head and rolled away from
him, to the edge of the bed. “Okay, all kidding aside now, Adolfo.
Where are my clothes?”

“You don’t need them here.”

“I beg to differ.” She needed them even
worse than she needed liposuction on her thighs, and speaking of
which, she had never intended to show those puppies to anyone. “I
really need my clothes. I have to get back to camp or they will
leave without me.” And really, did she have to justify needing her
clothes? Didn’t everyone, eventually, get up and dress after they’d
recovered from a dead drunk?

“Let them leave without you,” Adolfo said
cavalierly.

Clearly, Adolfo was not getting the message
that she was regretting the whole thing, so she grabbed a sheet and
stood up, testing her weight on her legs. When it looked as if they
would hold, she turned around to look at Adolfo through the haze of
a remarkably bad headache.

He was so relaxed. He was sitting in a
threadbare upholstered chair, his feet propped on the end of the
bed, sipping from one of two glasses of orange juice and casually
checking Leah out. He was, she noticed through her haze, rather
bold in his checking her out, nodding approvingly at her shape in
that awful sheet, a wolfish grin spreading across his face.

Leah really did not care for that look—it
was a little predatory for her tastes, and if he thought anything
was happening now that she was conscious, he had another think
coming. “Where are my clothes?” she demanded, a lot less nicely
this time.

He shrugged. “Here. There.
Everywhere. Come then,
mi
amor
, have some orange juice,” he said,
and held up a glass. “Trust me, you will feel much better once you
have had the orange juice.”

What was it with him and the orange
juice?

He was really beginning to annoy the hell
out of her. So they’d had a fling that stopped short of completion
due to her inebriation. Okay, she could accept it. Well, not accept
it, really, but at least swallow the awful lump that accompanied
the realization of how close she’d come. She could get used to the
facts and maybe even believe that life would go on again after this
spectacular mistake if she could only get the hell out of here.
“Listen, I don’t want any orange juice,” she said sternly. “I just
want my clothes, and I want to go home. Or at least to camp. So
please show me where my clothes are, so I can get dressed.”

Adolfo shrugged and nodded in the direction
of what looked like a bathroom.

Leah stumbled in that direction, managed to
make it inside and shut the door. She let the sheet fall away from
her body, grabbed the edge of the chipped tile countertop, turned
on the cold water, and stuck her face beneath the cold stream. A
few minutes of that went a long way toward making her feel less
foggy.

She stood up, glanced around the small
bathroom, looking for a towel. Seeing none, she used the sheet. She
noticed that the cute pale blue dress she had worn last night was
draped over the edge of a pink tub. She grabbed it, pulled it on
over her head, and struggled to zip it. But the thing wouldn’t zip,
and upon further examination, she saw that the zipper had been
mangled.

Fabulous. It looked like it had been yanked
apart. “Don’t go there,” she muttered to herself, unwilling to
think of how that might have happened. Whatever, the damn thing was
unwearable, unless she wanted the whole world to glimpse just how
badly she wore a thong as she walked down the street and tried to
hail a cab.

With a sigh of exhaustion, Leah fell against
the door of the bathroom and slid down to her haunches. Where was
this place? She glanced up at the ceiling—stained and peeling in
here, too, she noted. The rest of the bathroom looked like a seedy
hotel. The linoleum on the floor was cracked, the mirror was
tarnished, and a dark, rusty stain around the edge of the toilet
made her shudder with revulsion.

She pushed herself up and looked around for
something to put on. Finding nothing, she donned her dress with the
ruined zipper—a dress she’d paid very good money for instead of
buying it at a discount barn like she normally did. That really
pissed her off. What sort of guy was Adolfo, anyway, that he’d ruin
a dress someone worked to pay for?

She yanked open the bathroom door and
marched into the small bedroom with the intent of giving Adolfo a
piece of her mind. Except that Adolfo wasn’t in the bedroom— she
could hear him banging around in another room.

There was, however, a bag next to the chair
in which he’d been sitting, and she bent over, peering inside. It
was full of men’s clothes. Apparently Adolfo was thinking of making
a weekend of it. She squatted down, picked up a shirt lying on top,
and stabbed her arms into it, tied the ends around her waist,
looked around for her fabulous shoes, which were, thankfully, at
the end of the bed, and picked them up before marching into the
adjoining room.

Adolfo had donned a pair of jeans and a polo
shirt and was at the kitchen sink, such that it was, cutting up an
apple, munching as he went along.

There were a couple of brown paper bags on a
counter cluttered with pots and pans and dishes, as if he’d just
gone to the grocery store. “Ah,” he said with a bright smile when
she stomped in. “You found your dress. And my shirt.”

“Yes. I’m sorry that I looked in your bag,
but since my dress was ruined” —she paused there to glare at him
for a moment— “I had to have something to cover it.”

“Yes, that was regrettable, but necessary,”
he said. “Orange juice?”

What is with the orange
juice
? she screamed in her mind. And what
the hell did he mean, it was necessary? Since when was ripping
clothes off a comatose woman necessary? “Adolfo . . . we need to
talk.”

“Please,” he said, gesturing to a scarred
kitchen table.

Leah ignored that, and ignored him as he
passed by and set two glasses of orange juice on the table. “I am
having an apple. Would you like?”

“No! I don’t want any orange juice, or
apples. Adolfo, please listen to me. I don’t remember anything from
last night,” she said gesturing wildly.

Adolfo laughed, as if fooling around with a
woman who didn’t remember it was funny somehow.

“It’s not funny,” she snapped. “Regardless
of how we ended up here—and where is here, by the way?” she asked,
looking around the dilapidated kitchen.

For some reason, Adolfo looked around, too,
as if he had just noticed he was in a strange cabin. “A cabin of
some sort,” he said. “Perhaps it is for the holidays, although I
cannot imagine who would want to holiday in such a place.”

“Huh?” Leah asked,
confused by his answer, but quickly shook her head. “Never mind. I
guess what I am trying to say is that whatever happened, it
happened, although I don’t know
how
it happened, but the thing is, I never intended
for it to happen in the first place, and I’m sorry, but I guess I
got really drunk, and you know how it is, you never know what
you’re doing when you drink, and who are we kidding—I especially
didn’t know it last night. But at any rate, I can’t let it happen
again. I mean, my head’s not into it, and while it’s been a lot of
fun flirting with you, Adolfo, it should never have gone this far.
Do you understand what I mean?” She paused to take a
breath.

Interestingly, Adolfo did
not seem upset. He seemed to mull over what she said and nodded
thoughtfully. “
Si
, if this is what you want.” He smiled again. “Have some
orange juice to feel better.”

“That’s it?” she cried,
incredulous. “Have some orange juice? And will you
stop
with the orange
juice already?” She fell into a chair at the table. “I’m glad you
understand, Adolfo, but I thought there might be a little more
reaction than that.”