Key West (23 page)

Billy’s expression softened a little. “She behaves as if she’s better than me. Holy. But she’s catting around.” She looked at him. “She’s catting around behind Frank’s back.”

He knew she was only pretending she didn’t think Frank had been murdered. “Yeah,” he said. He was convinced Frank was still alive.

“Call this Banyan place and ask to speak to Sonnie. Be sweet, Romano. You’re good at that when you want something. Tell her how worried we are about her and that I’m beside myself. Say Jim had to sedate me again today, and tell her I need her with me.”

“I must have time to think first. We don’t move until we know exactly where we’re going. There can’t be anything messy.”

Billy got up and walked slow circles around him. “Perhaps you’re thinking too much. Perhaps you should do what you’ll do in the end anyway—whatever I decide I’ll allow you to do.” Her arrogance was wearing his nerves to nothing, but she was doing exactly what she wanted to do: turning him on.

He’d ignore her bait. “We’ve got to keep up the image that we are family, Billy. Nothing more than family. Your friend, Dr. Lesley, he is here to help us keep up that little charade, yes? Your current boyfriend happens to be a psychiatrist, but his only interest is in you.”

She began to dance. “I like Jim. He’s not as boring as you think he is. Not nearly as boring. Especially in bed. He’ll do anything to help me.”

“That’s nice.” He grew more heated by the moment. “Let’s go over our plan just one more time. Then you will promise me never to come to me like this again.”

“We’ll go over the plan, lover.”

Always so difficult. “This is simple. As long as we both do our parts. With Sonnie out of the way, I hold the purse strings. I shall be very charming to you and your father—and Sonnie’s mother. They won’t be happy, and you will convince them you are not happy either. After all, they know you are jealous of your little sister. If they get even a hint that you might benefit from the tragedy of Sonnie’s unfortunate mental illness, they will cut you out of their will.”

“That won’t happen…” With her hands on her hips, she continued to dance, but with less abandon. “You will help me make sure it doesn’t.”

“But of course. I’m trying to do just that. After all, my dear, it is bound to be a very big will. So be careful about your
dates.
Or should I say, be careful what you say to your dates. You have a history of becoming drunk rather quickly, and the drunker you are, the more you talk.”

Romano didn’t see the blow coming. She hit his face with the flat of one hand and followed with a slap from the other hand that knocked his head to one side.

He stumbled, but regained his balance.

She breathed hard and squared off to hit him again. “I’m not a drunk. That’s what you’re suggesting. That I’m a drunk. And that I talk too much. I won’t listen to any of this from you. A few words from me and you’re finished. I could talk about what you ship from your warehouses. The way you milk people.”

While she paused and eyed him, Romano worked to keep his anger from erupting. Billy was a strong woman. His face stung.

“You can’t afford to make an enemy out of me,” she said. “I know everything, remember?”

The room grew warmer. Romano took off his jacket. She could sometimes be frightened into submission—if that was a game she wanted to play. He threw the jacket on the bed and unbuttoned his shirt.

“Don’t bother,” she said, her voice flat and hard. “Touch me without permission and I’ll scream. Now that’s a risk you ought to run, don’t you think?”

She was bluffing. He took off his shirt.

“I can get you arrested,” Billy said, and she walked directly at him. When she was close enough, she shot the stiffened fingers of her right hand toward his face. “There’s nothing you can say or do to defend yourself against me.”

The fingers darted toward his eyes, and he flinched, flinched and stepped back. “That’s enough,” he said. “I don’t have time for this.”

“No? But you have time to give orders, and to show me what a big man you are.”

He made a grab for her hand and missed—walked backward some more and thudded into the wall.

“There are people in high places who would love to talk to me about you. You would go to prison until you’re very, very old.”

For an instant he felt disoriented, but only an instant. There was no way she could know everything, was there? “Go to prison because a jealous woman suggests I cheat foreign markets by charging too much for surplus goods?” He laughed, and his jaws ached. “You little fool. Charging what the market will bear has never been a crime.”

“Maybe you’re right. But maybe you’re wrong. Do you want to take that risk?”

This wasn’t going as it should. “Look, Billy, you should go now. Just be careful what you say and everything will be fine.” The look in her eyes actually frightened him.

She shot out her hand again, but this time she went for his throat. Her hard little fingertips pressed into the flesh on either side of his windpipe. “I will go when I’m ready to go.” With her free hand she batted his face lightly, first in one direction, then in the other. “There is always the time for drawing lines in the sand. Isn’t that what they say? Now is the time for our line.”

“Yes. You’re absolutely right.”

“You want to kill me, don’t you, Romano? You could. But that would be the end of everything—for both of us.” Her laugh was an ugly sound.. “You want to kill me so badly you’re afraid even to touch me.”

“You’re sick. Yes, I could kill you, and that ought to warn you to go away, to go away very quickly and quietly.”

“It would warn most people, but I’m not most people. And I know you so well. You and your brother. Neither of you has any guts.”

The feverish light in her eyes was unmistakable. Danger had aroused her. Once more she tapped each side of his face—and she began to pant. Her breasts rose and fell and her stomach sucked in flat.

“You are mad,” he told her.

She tightened her hold on his throat.

Romano stared into her face. “Take your hand away,” he said.

“Not yet. Not until you tell me you’ll do whatever I tell you to do.”

“Never,” he said.

He didn’t see her next move coming until her knee connected with his crotch. Doubling over, he heard his own yell. Too late he remembered the vulnerable back of his neck. Billy’s two fists landed there and sent him slipping and sliding down the wall. The next sounds he heard were from the radio she turned on loudly.

Then she was upon him, shrieking and laughing, pummeling and tearing at him.

They fought, rolled across the carpet landing blows where they could, and the mad ecstasy in Billy’s cries testified to how much she reveled in the violence.

Somewhere in the struggle she lost the bikini. Her delight in her own body showed in the pose she made of each move.

“Tell me what you want now,” she said in a breathy voice, and grew still. Stretched out on her back on the floor, she said, “You can have anything you want.”

Sitting beside her, he inclined his head to see her face and wished he could also look inside her head.

The door slammed so loudly the walls vibrated.

Billy clapped a hand over her mouth, and her eyes opened wide.

Holding still, Romano waited. Slowly he turned his head and saw Cory Bledsoe’s ruddy, grinning face. The man came toward them and dropped to his knees beside Billy’s shoulders.

“Romano,” Billy said softly. “We wouldn’t want to spoil a lovely friendship, would we?”

He didn’t understand but said, “Νο.”

She narrowed her eyes and said, “I’m glad we agree. Let’s invite Cory to join our game. He’s a friend, after all. We believe in sharing with our friends.”

Her deliberate coldness struck at him as fiercely as any of her blows had done. Now he knew what she intended. “Of course we do.” It would be pointless to argue with her.

Billy sat up and shot her hands around Cory’s neck. “This is what you want, isn’t it?”

Swallowing visibly and passing his tongue over his lips, Cory Bledsoe nodded. He looked at her breasts and turned bright red before he touched them.

“That’s right, Cory,” Billy said. “Romano, let’s show Cory how right it is.”

Seventeen

The scent of salt from the ocean had grown stronger. It was hot, hot, hot, and the wind that constantly blew didn’t cool Chris’s skin. Even the locals were staying indoors this morning.

“We should have ridden over,” he said to Sonnie. “You shouldn’t be walking in this heat.”

“I need to walk,” she said. “You don’t have to come.”

So she’d already told him—several times. “I want to come. How can I help you if I’m not with you? It’s time to ask our own questions and demand answers. Why not see if Ena can give us some hints? This Edward can’t be the total mystery the local boys insist he is. The poor devil has to have come from somewhere.”

Sonnie tried not to look at him, but failed. She wanted to tell him she was afraid something would happen to him because of her, but she didn’t dare. Admitting she cared about him that much was too personal.

“What are you thinking?” he asked. The intense colors of the day emphasized his tan, the darkness of his hair, his brows, the sharp hazel of his eyes. A blue-mauve day that tinted him brilliant.

Sonnie turned her face away. “I’m not thinking.” This was a flirtation with an exotic male whose attention she should question. “Except that you ought to have better things to do than hang around with me.”

“I don’t have better things to do.”

“Because you have no ambition? You’re drifting? That ought to bother you.”

He figured she was trying to goad him. “You’ll have to do better than that,” he told her, but the words had stung.

“How long do you think you can hide?” she said. “Don’t you worry about waking up one day and realizing the only one you’ve been fooling is you? What then? You’ll have to stop whining about being washed-up. You’ll have to do something with yourself—with the rest of your life.”

He’d have to face the past again, what he’d caused, then run away from. He stopped walking.

Sonnie carried on.

The distance between them widened.

She felt herself getting farther from him with each step. Tears stung her eyes—and made her mad. She had no right to draw him into her troubles in the first place, and no right to want him so. And she had no right to insult him for his kindness.

She stopped and bowed her head, turned back—stared at him.

Damn him anyway;
he was smiling at her. Not one of his dazzling, color-your-heart-happy smiles, but a smile stripped of any pretense. What she’d said had hurt him; it had actually made him hear what he didn’t want to hear—that while he was following her, he was avoiding himself.

“I’m not ready,” he said, and despite the distance between them she heard him clearly. “My turn will come. For opening all the cupboards. But not now. If I did it now I’d die under everything that fell out. Do you understand?”

“I understand that you play games. You pretend to be something you’re not. You are not a simple man, Chris Talon.”

How did a man live with so much wanting? How did a man who had vowed never to need another soul as he’d once…How did a man forget his vows and allow himself to fall for a woman he’d probably never be able to have?

When she started back toward him, he couldn’t even stand where he was. His feet helped close the space between them, and there was no way he could have done anything else but go to her.

“Are you here because you’re bored and you need something to be interested in?” she said.

“Oh, no.”

“Why then?”

He ran the fingertips of one hand down her bare arm. “I’m here because I want to be with you. You’re a very complicated lady, and I want to know everything about you. And I want to help you. You’re not the hysterical type, but you’re working so hard to hold yourself together. Something caused that, and I want to find out what it was. Or who it was.”

“There could be eyes on the other side of every window on this street, Chris. Maybe I should carry on and see Ena because she needs someone. Later I’ll tell you what she says.”

His fingers hovered over the back of her hand. He’d never known such a need to be able to reach for someone and feel her. “Later? When you’ve run for cover again?”

Was that what she intended, even without thinking what she’d do next? “I don’t know where I should go—where I should be. I was grateful to be at Roy and Bo’s again last night, but it isn’t right for me to take advantage of them.” An urge to cry all but overwhelmed her. She breathed through her mouth and struggled for composure. “I am dangerous. I’m sure of that now. Otherwise why would a man I didn’t even know die in a freak fire in my house? Other than as a nodding acquaintance, I had no idea who he was.”

“That freak fire was started. I don’t know how yet, but I will, and so will you. How could the fact that a disturbed man became fixated on you make you dangerous?”

What did it matter who watched them? She walked into him, clasped his shoulders, and buried her face in his chest.

She made him feel peace in his heart, and happiness, and at the same time she wounded him so deeply he felt disoriented. Her need was huge, yet she fought not to need at all—not to need him. But she wanted him. He wasn’t fooling himself about Sonnie’s feelings; she was at war and he was both ally and enemy.

“Hey, hey, kid, what say we stop asking ourselves all the questions for now?” He would not let her drive him away. “We could just take things an hour at a time. How about that?”

She moved her face and he felt dampness soak through his cotton shirt. She cried. When had her body become familiar? Her scent familiar? The texture of her hair against his palm familiar?

“Okay,” she mumbled. “An hour at a time. But you can’t pull the big-man act on me.”

He almost laughed. “Big-man act? Me?”

“Yes, you. If an hour comes when I decide I’ve got to make you go away, you’ll go.” She raised her face, her unforgettable face, and said, “I won’t want to. It’ll be because it’s the way it has to be. Promise.”