Intimate Enemies (45 page)

The pain in her voice turned him inside out. “Cassie, honey…don’t do that to yourself. I was there, and I didn’t see it.” He took a deep breath and dove in. “I told you that when Alejandra and Saul started to fight over my friendship with her and Santos, I backed off. When I backed off, the dynamics of the relationships changed. The atmosphere of the house changed. I hadn’t realized until then that we all leaned on each other in different ways. Together, we had a certain stability and strength, like a triangle. But with me gone, Alejandra lost security. Santos lost direction. I lost…shit, I lost myself.”

He stared across the room. Didn’t allow himself to look at Cassie, though he saw her watching him from the corner of his eye. He had to get through this, and he didn’t know if he could do it while he was looking into her eyes.

“Alejandra and Santos spent more time together because they were trying to figure out what to do about Saul. Santos wanted her to divorce him. Alejandra was afraid of him. Of what he would do if she divorced him—to her reputation in the community, to the estate, to her finances, to Santos, and to her. That’s why Lorena said they were whispering and taking long walks on the beach. That’s why they were in the cabin on the yacht. It’s the only place they felt safe to talk. The only place they could be sure wasn’t bugged or monitored. They weren’t…” He shook his head. “They would never have an affair.”

“Thank you,” Cassie whispered.

Those simple words made Rio’s heart swell, but he couldn’t absorb the good feelings, because thoughts of Alejandra’s and Santos’s deaths plagued him with guilt.

“If I hadn’t pulled away, if I’d kept a finger on the pulse between Alejandra and Santos and Saul, maybe I would have seen…maybe I could have prevented…”

“God, you took a lot of stupid,
stupid
chances,” she muttered. “To keep me in the dark. To keep me from uncovering the truth.”

“Maybe.” He turned to look at her now. Studied her beautiful profile. She was alive. Safe. “But I wouldn’t change a thing.”

She met his gaze, and in that single look, they shared a deep understanding. One that touched his soul.

“What about…me?” she asked, her gaze never wavering. “Don’t even think about lying. Did you sleep with me—even initially—because you were ordered to? Did you seduce me in an effort to control me?”

A sound scraped his throat. Humor, sarcasm…self-ridicule. “As if I had that power. I knew the minute you walked into the estate that you were way out of my league. I fought Saul on the idea, even though I wanted it. Had wanted it from the moment I held you in the cemetery.” He slid his gaze over her body—could almost still feel her beneath his hands. Heat built between his chest and his groin. “You pushed me over the edge, past my pathetic resistance. I never had a chance.
You
seduced
me
, Cass. Don’t even try to claim otherwise. We both know better.”

She looked out the window. Clenched and unclenched her good hand. Took a deep breath. “Are you going back?”

“Where? Mexico?” He huffed a laugh. “No.”

She turned her head and hit him with a stone-hard gaze. “Undercover.”

He shook his head. “No. Falling in love with you was…” Ah, shit. He’d gone and opened that door. “I’ve transferred to Investigations. I’m homebound from now on.”

She turned and moved toward him. His heart kicked up. Out of fear or excitement, he wasn’t sure. “So there will be no more stupid chances.”

He wasn’t sure what to say to that. Wasn’t sure of that look in her eyes. But really liked the way she walked toward him and set a knee on the sofa at his hip.

“Because I can’t live with someone who takes stupid chances like that.” She lifted her other knee over his lap and sat on his thighs. “And since I’m fond of living, and I’m fond of you…that’s going to have to stop.”

Rio let go of the leash on his hope and slid his hands up her legs. “I…can live with that.”

“Good.” She took a deep breath, then let it out, and he swore he watched all her walls drop. “Because I thought I’d lost you,” she whispered, sliding her hand up and over his jaw, her gaze scouring his face as if she’d never seen him before. “And I didn’t know what I was going to do. How I was going to live.” She leaned in, kissed him, so slow, so sweet. And, Lord, she felt so good whispering against his lips, “I love you, Rio. I need you.”

Everything inside him softened and shifted. He tightened his arms around her hips, pulled her into him, and held her as close as he dared, her body a dream against his. “I love you more. Need you more.”

She pulled back, combed the fingers of her good hand through his hair. Tears filled her eyes, making them shine like caramel. “How about a place to live? Still need that?”

“Depends. I’m kinda picky.” He smiled, his heart fuller than it had ever been. “Is the invitation at Casa de Christo still open?”

“I don’t take in strangers. I’d need to get your real last name first.”

“Oh God.” He cringed. “They didn’t—”

She shook her head. “They wouldn’t tell me
anything
.”

“I’m sorry.” It seemed inconceivable after all they’d been through she didn’t even know something as basic as his real last name. “Cordova. It’s Cordova.”

“Oooh.” She grinned. “That’s sexy.”

He laughed, his heart filling with so much love he was sure it would have to grow to hold it all. “I think it sounds especially nice with Cassie.” He kissed her gently, then whispered against her lips, “Cassie Cordova.”

“Hmm. You’re right.” She pressed her forehead against his and smiled. “But be careful, Cordova. I like that.”

Rio laughed. Winced at the twinge in his gut.

“Good.” He slid his hand behind her neck. Eased his fingers into her hair. Said a silent prayer of thanks. And kissed her again. “Because I plan to make it stick for a long, long time.”

Read on for a sneak peek of

FEVER

Book 1 in the Phoenix Rising Series

ISBN: 9780758266385

Dr. Alyssa Foster will admit to a bad boy fetish…

But when she finds herself face to face with a convicted murderer with a determination for freedom and an eye on her as his get out of jail free card, Alyssa knows she’s in deep trouble…. Not just because Teague Creek is a prisoner desperate for freedom, but because his every touch makes her desperate for more.

A man with a life sentence has nothing to lose…

Teague Creek has one shot at freedom, but his plan to escape with a hostage develops a fatal flaw: Alyssa. On the run from both the law and deadly undercover operatives who know of his strange abilities, he needs to avoid trouble, but every heated kiss tells him the fire between them could be just as devastating as the flames that changed him forever.

Chapter One

The
clank-clank-clank
of shackles echoed off the hospital’s linoleum floors, rippling across Doctor Alyssa Foster’s shoulders.

She headed toward the source, her muscles tense despite her fatigue. Normally, she didn’t mind taking on additional duties when the department was short staffed like this. She didn’t even mind carrying the everyday load for her attending physicians. And sure as hell didn’t complain about it like her sorry-assed excuse of a rival, Greg Dyne, but this… This was the worst of the mundane chores. She’d rather perform the toughest procedure on the nastiest patient than be forced to interact with prisoners.

Before facing the hardened, violent psychopaths waiting at the end of the hall, Alyssa ducked into the restroom and took a minute to splash water on her face. Then she made the mistake of looking in the mirror.

Pale skin, bruise-colored shadows beneath her eyes, frown lines marring her forehead. She almost didn’t recognize the person staring back. Her twelfth day in a row of twenty-fours didn’t look so good in this light, and the unsavory chore awaiting didn’t help.

“Fourteen more days,” she murmured to her reflection. Her year-long fellowship would end in just two weeks. Had it really only been a year? She felt like she’d been at St. Jude’s for a decade already. “And if you want to stay here, you’d better learn to live with the jailbirds.”

The hospital had contracts with five neighboring prisons and the forensic patients had prompted the budget increase, which in turn opened this new attending radiologist’s position, one either she or Dyne would fill.

No. The one
she
would fill.

Alyssa yanked at the elastic band in her hair and smoothed the messy strands back into a ponytail with a damp hand. After stretching her back and popping her neck, she dragged herself through the closed double doors hiding the forensic wing from the general public.

She’d be the first to admit to a bit of a badboy fetish. Certainly had made her share of mistakes choosing men in the past. But her definition of badboys encompassed independent men who pushed the limits and lived by their own rules, not murderers, rapists and drug pushers.

The angle of sunlight spilling through the glass on the single exterior door at the end of the hall told her it was getting late. She still had patients in the intensive care units in need of procedures, the day’s studies to read out and…oh, yeah, food. She hadn’t stopped to eat anything all day.

Her teeth met and her jaw muscle flexed. She didn’t have time to be doing other people’s work, but if she didn’t, Dyne would. And she damn well wasn’t going to lose this position to that cocky, substandard excuse for a rival.

Alyssa paused at the doorway to the already darkened exam room and nodded to the officer standing in the hallway. The one with a weapon. The one who kept a safe distance from the inmate so the prisoner wouldn’t have an opportunity to steal a gun. One sweep of his twenty-something, clean-shaven, open, eager, sweet Midwestern face, and Alyssa knew this was the perfect place for him—well out of the felon’s reach.

“Ma’am.” Farmboy shifted to allow her past the partially curtained opening. “Sorry we’re so late. The transportation sergeant screwed up.”

She couldn’t quite muster the words,
that’s okay
, because it was really messing with her day and her mood. But it also wasn’t his fault. She nodded acknowledgement. “What facility are you from?”

“San Quentin, ma’am.”

Alyssa resisted the urge to close her eyes and slump her shoulders. Quentin: death row capital of the California state prison system. Home to the most notorious serial killers and mass murderers of the decade. Definitely an apropos ending to this two-week hellacious shift.

With a slow breath directed deep into her chest, Alyssa prepared her emotional shields then passed the guard and scanned the prisoner’s paperwork:
Teague Creek, thirty-four, right upper quadrant pain. Abdomen ultrasound.
Piece of cake. It would take her ten minutes, tops.

She surveyed the prisoner from shoulders to toes. He was tall, but little else stood out. His periwinkle blue prison uniform was too similar to hospital scrubs for Alyssa’s taste. Probably because they made her wonder if she was a prisoner of sorts as well. Especially on days like this.

The second officer—this one inside the room and without the weapon—was older, maybe fifty, also Caucasian.

She nodded a greeting. “Officer. I’ll need his shirt off and his hands uncuffed from the waist chain.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

Alyssa pulled the curtain halfway closed and set the papers on a fold-out desk. Her gaze paused on the box labeled
release date
where the word
life
had been scribbled. Her lips pursed with a slight involuntary shake of her head.
So young. What a waste.

She slipped on a glove, picked up a bottle of warm gel and turned to find the prisoner leaning on the edge of the gurney. Something dark caught her eye and her gaze passed over his face without seeing it, honing in on the coal black tattoos covering a wide muscled chest.

A swastika the size of a basketball stamped the left side of his torso. The right side of his abdomen flaunted an eagle holding a shield engraved with the letters A B and two swords crossed in the background. Barbed wire spiraled his biceps. All classic insignia of the Aryan Brotherhood.

Apprehension clutched her belly in a tight, hot fist. Her eyes darted to his face, looking for something—disgust, venom, condescension—some reaction to her ethnicity. Anyone with two eyes could tell she wasn’t a hundred percent lily white. But he’d tilted his chin down, his gaze now cast to the floor, and Alyssa found herself looking at the top of his head, shaved nearly to the skin. And—surprise, surprise—another swastika centered on the dome of his cranium.

In a last ditch effort to quell her growing anxiety, she cast a quick look at his hands. They’d been released from the waist chain and another set of regular cuffs secured around his wrists, standard procedure for high-risk prisoners. Suspicion confirmed. This guy had trouble written all over him. Capital T. And Alyssa already had all the trouble she could handle. She already felt brittle enough to shatter. This would be the fastest scan she’d ever performed. The typical ten minute exam just dropped to three.