This Year's Black (5 page)

The jet bounced in midair. Ryder’s muffled groan as she sank further into her seat settled him firmly back into the present.

“I promise, this will help.” He popped his knuckles and flexed his fingers.

Trying his best to ignore the feel of her smooth skin under his finger or the firmness of her calf where she’d rested her leg on top of his, he unhooked the black ankle strap of her Calvin Klein sandals. The brand suited her. Unfussy. Confident. Straightforward.

Dylan
’
s Department Store had carried the sandals two springs ago. The shoe stuck out because the buyer had over purchased and the extras had to be shipped out to other stores under the corporate umbrella that offered past year styles at a discount. The whole process had been a logistical nightmare.

“What are you doing?” Her skin tone remained less than healthy, but her voice had regained some of her signature Waterberg toughness.

“Giving you a foot massage.” He slipped off the sandal and laid her bare foot on his thigh, which warmed upon contact with her skin.

“Forget it.” She squirmed against his grip.

He pressed his thumbs beneath the ball of her foot, making sure to deliver just enough pressure to signal to her nerves that he meant business. “Just give it a chance.” Circling his thumbs in small half-moons, he worked his way back and forth across the bottom of her foot. “It’s the least I can do to help.”

Her shoulders drooped and the lines around her mouth relaxed. “Oh, my God, where did you learn that? It’s magic.” Her eyes fluttered closed.

The reaction puffed him up on a primal level, like a caveman who’d just killed a saber-toothed tiger and had guaranteed his family’s survival for another day. “Benefits of an ex-girlfriend who was a massage therapist.”

Ryder cracked her eyelids open. “Ex?”

“
Uh-huh
. She was less than pleased when I returned to my WASP-y roots, as she put it.” Another bit of turbulence jostled her foot out of his hand, but before she could react, he reclaimed it,
rotating
her ankle and smoothing his palm across the top of her foot. “We got our first tattoos together. I got a dragon. She got Che Guevara’s face on her…uh…breast. I should have known then that it wasn’t going to work out.”

“Yeah, I don’t see the hipster and Mister Corporate lasting.” She laughed.

“Not by a long shot.” He slid his thumbs to opposite sides of her sole, then pushed them together again before repeating the motion vertically.

Ryder sighed and all the worry in her face melted away. “I could marry you right now.”

“Is that a proposal from the woman who wouldn’t return my calls?”

She flinched and every muscle in her foot tensed.

He stopped rubbing her arch. “Just a joke. I didn’t mean it the way it came out.”
Shit. Nice one, Harris.

“You’re not my type. Not anymore. Anyway, I just can’t do relationships right now. I’m in the middle of a year of no commitments.”

The news annoyed him, and he renewed his massage with more vigor. “You’re sure about that?”

She winced. “
Whoa
, go easy.”

“Sorry.” He paused at her smooth heel and interlaced his fingers, resting them on top of her foot. It was the first time he
’
d really looked at her feet. Her toenails were a bright cherry red. Seeing the single dash of color was like getting a glimpse of his first girlfriend’s bra in eighth grade.

“Did you kill the nail technician after your pedicure?”

“What do you mean?”

“Your girly toenails.”

She wriggled her ruby-tipped toes. “Don’t rat me out. I have a black color only rep to maintain.”

“Your secret’s safe with me.” He glided his hands up and down her foot, rubbing her arch with his thumbs. “What
is
your secret?” He lowered her foot and reached for her other one. She didn’t argue this time when he unsnapped the thin ankle strap and slid the sandal off her foot.

“If I told you, it wouldn’t be a secret.”

He held her foot aloft. “Patient confidentiality.”

She gave him an assessing look, her jaw rigid, then shrugged. “Have you ever heard of a catfish scam?”

“It sounds vaguely familiar.” He glided his fingers up her calf to massage the suddenly tense muscle.

“It’s when someone pretends to be someone else online in order to lure in people who think they
’
re developing an actual relationship, when in reality, it’s just a scam to get money.”

To him, that sounded like almost everything on the Internet. “Who would fall for that?”

“Me.” She crossed her arms and yanked her foot out of his grasp.

But Devin swiped it and pulled it close again. He refused to relinquish the bodily contact, wanting the touch as much as she needed the massage. And, despite her tough-chick exterior, she did. He traced his thumbs across her instep and sixty percent of the aggression seeped out of her shoulders.

“My mom, in a typical case of Italian over-involvement after I’d broken up with the latest in a long string of loser boyfriends, signed me up for a dating website without me knowing about it.”

“What made them losers?”

“My type runs…” She paused. “I mean
ran
to guys who thought straight jobs were poison, or that cheating was totally acceptable, or that my checking account should be their checking account. You get the idea. They were beautiful on the outside and empty on the inside.”

“So your mom took things into her own hands.”

“By the time I found out, she’d already added five potential boyfriends to a list. One was Heath.”

Devin returned his thumbs to the ball of her foot and increased the pressure, slowing down his speed to combat the increased tension.

Ryder sighed. It was quickly becoming one of his favorite sounds. Damn, he liked touching her. It relaxed him…and got him harder than an oak tree at the same time.

“I wasn’t about to go on a date with a complete stranger. Not without finding out more about them. Which is exactly what I told the guys on my mom’s list. Some got mad. Others acted all offended. A few didn’t even respond. Heath was the only one who came back with a plausible history and enough real life facts to bypass my natural skepticism.”

“Like what?” Unease staked a path up Devin
’
s spine.

“The name of a local dry cleaner he used. A picture of a Golden Retriever at a Waterberg dog park. Stuff like that. Everything seemed legit. He traveled a lot for work, so we chatted online, then we met in person and started dating for real and after about six months, I thought he was the real deal. Then he invited me to come with him on a business trip.”

Devin’s stomach twisted with dread. He didn
’
t like where this was going. “What happened?”

She chewed on her bottom lip, which was already starting to swell from the abuse. “He worked for a tour company and said he could get me a great deal on the flight and hotel, but I had to give him my credit card number so he could book everything for me through the company system.”

Clearly agitated, she went back to twirling a long strand of hair around a finger as she stared out the plane’s small window. “I told him I’d think about it. That’s when he started turning the screws. The more I hedged, the more insistent he became. I
’
m not an idiot. I did a little more research, using Maltese’s security software. Heath had a Social Security Number, a significant online presence with photos, a blog, there was even a driver’s license.” She paused. “He also had a death certificate. The guy—whoever he is—had scraped the personal records of a guy from Waterburg who’d had a heart attack five years ago, to create a false identity.” Her voice took on a clipped, just-the-facts tone that failed to cover the pain threading through her words. “I confronted him. He lost it, became violent. I fought back. He ran off, but not before inflicting damage. I ended up in the hospital with a broken wrist and a black eye.”

Devin had smashed a lot of faces when he’d been training to be an MMA fighter. The broken noses, bloody gashes, and general destruction would be nothing next to what he’d do to the man who’d harm a woman. That the prick had hurt Ryder made Devin’s vision blacken around the edges.

“Did you tell the police?”

“Hell, yes. But he disappeared like a ghost. I contacted the dating website and reported him. They flagged his file and connected him with complaints from other women. Turns out he’d been making a pretty penny fleecing women—and some men—who thought they were getting a hell of a bargain on a vacation with a too-good-to-be-true boyfriend. I’m the only one to have confronted him face-to-face.”

Devin paid special attention to the pressure points in her foot. “What did your mom say?”

“I never told her or anyone else in the family.”

He almost dropped her foot. “Why not? I thought you were close.”

“My mom had picked him out. She’d feel responsible. I couldn’t do that to her. Add to that the fact that my history of dating Grade A assholes, and that I work as an investigator at Maltese Security, so I should know better than to let a con artist into my life. How would it look to them if they realized I’d gotten mixed up with a guy like Heath?”

“Like you’re human?”

“No.” She shook her head. “Like a naive little girl with crappy taste in men who can’t be trusted to do her job.”

Devin was about to retort when the fasten-your-seat belt sign
ping
ed.

…

Ryder’s stomach floated up and bounced against her diaphragm at the same time as the captain’s voice boomed over the intercom.

“We’re making our descent into The Andol Republic,” the pilot said over the intercom. “Please take your seats and buckle your safety belts. According to the tower, it’s seventy-two degrees and sunny today. We’ll be touching down in about twenty minutes. The car is already waiting for you, Mr. Harris.”

Nothing like a little reality to make her realize what an idiot she’d just been, spilling her guts to a client, leaving her as open and vulnerable as a baby pig from a kid’s movie. She pulled her foot out of his warm grasp. “I’d appreciate it if you didn’t mention what I told you to anyone. I should never have told you.”

Straightening her spine, she braced for Devin’s mockery. As the youngest of five loud Italian kids and the only woman employed by the testosterone-soaked Maltese Security, she could take it.

Devin quirked an eyebrow at her. “No one will hear it from me.”

She met his light brown gaze, searching for any sign of disgust at what she’d revealed, or amusement at her expense, but all she saw was understanding. For some reason, that made the whole situation worse.

The jet swooped through a cloud bank, enveloping it in a world of thick, fluffy white that created a floating wall. They broke through it into a sky so brilliantly blue, she had to blink to adjust to the light differential. Under the cloud-dotted horizon, the deep blue ocean stretched uninterrupted as far as she could see.

The total isolation unnerved her. If they dropped out of the air right now and plummeted to a watery grave, the authorities would have a better chance of finding Amelia Earhart’s remains than the jet’s wreckage. All the nervous energy she’d managed to tuck away during the nine-hour flight came screaming to the surface, twisting her lungs into circus balloon animals.

“It’s going to be fine.” Devin’s leather-rich voice pierced her panic. “No need to be afraid.”

Falling back into an emotional defensive posture, she glared at him and his lopsided smirk. “I
’
m not. I like flying just fine.”

“Really?” His gaze dropped to her hands curled into talons around the armrests. “Is that why you’re about to scar the leather?”

With supreme effort, she unpeeled her fingers from the armrest and folded her hands in her lap, just as her Nonni swore a lady should. Out of the corner of her eye, she noted ten crescents carved into the tan leather.

Devin flashed a wicked grin that did crazy things to her already turbulent insides. “The Andol Republic is a chain of five islands about one thousand miles off the coast of Chile, with Andol being the largest. That’s where we’ll land. In a few minutes, you’ll be able to see Andol on the right side of the plane. There are three dormant volcanoes and two large craters that have become big tourist attractions. You can even have a picnic on the edge of the biggest crater.”

Mesmerized by his calm, tourist-guide tone, Ryder relaxed back into the seat and gazed out the window. This time the ocean below failed to pluck her nerves. The jet made a wide turn and an island appeared, a triangle of light green in the vast blue.

“Most of the main island is grassland. Early explorers’ journals reported short palm trees across Andol, but by the eighteen-hundreds, most had disappeared. No one’s sure why the trees vanished, but it had a huge effect on the local population who
’
d been fishermen up to that point. The lack of wood for boats meant no deep-sea fishing. There was a famine and even cannibalism—lucky for us, that’s not the case anymore. The islanders have done a lot to revive the palm tree population and celebrate their past history. There’s even a huge festival in a few days, honoring the De Mis Promesas volcano. People dress up in traditional clothes and carve intricate designs into pineapples to mark the occasion.”

The island grew larger in her window, and the floor beneath her vibrated as the pilot engaged the landing gear.

She rubbed her fingers across the indentions she’d made earlier, hoping to smooth away any residual evidence of her fear. “How many times have you been here?”

“This is my first time.” Devin gazed out the window, his face a blank mask as he contemplated the endless blue. “I don’t like surprises.”

Chapter Five

“
I think there is beauty in everything.”

— Alexander McQueen

Devin turned on his cell phone and grimaced at the email from George that popped up demanding an update. Too bad he didn’t have one to give. Based on his research, Sarah should be in Andol City, either at the family farm or her favorite niece’s tea shop. Their best hope now was finding her at one of the fashion shows, but those wouldn
’
t start until tomorrow. Maybe, with a little luck, they’d track her down today, haul her onto the jet, and be back home first thing in the morning, but he wasn
’
t going to hold his breath.

And first they had to get out of the damn airport.

Tourist season was in full throttle in The Andol Republic, with extra traffic for fashion week and the volcano festival. The customs line in the small airport, weaving along through a maze of roped-off lanes, seemed as long as the one for the newest roller coaster at an amusement park. Standing behind a young couple who were having trouble keeping their hands off each other, Devin shoved his phone back into his pocket and groaned inwardly.

“Honey, I want you to keep those shoes on tonight. I can’t wait to—” The man leaned in and whispered the rest of his plans in her ear, his voice too low for Devin to catch the words. However, considering the pink flush on the blonde’s cheeks, he didn’t have to use much imagination to figure it out.

“I don’t think you can do that to your brand-new wife.” She giggled.

“Mrs. Fitzsimmons, I promise I can and will do that, and so much more.” His hand rubbed the curve of her ass. “I booked the honeymoon suite at the Palm Inn so we’d have plenty of privacy.”

“Next!” The customs inspector’s clipped command stopped the couple before they could move into the soft-core-porn zone, and they walked to the clerk’s window.

Ryder shifted beside Devin, rebalancing the weight of her overstuffed bag with its stressed zipper. Looking at her wrist, anger tightened his gut. What he wouldn’t do for five minutes alone with her ex-boyfriend. He hated bullies. Growing up the son of one did that to a person.

He reached out. “Here, let me hold that for you.”

She gave him the side eye. “I have more than enough muscle to heft one little bag.”

He eyeballed the toned lines of her arms exposed by her filmy black tank top. His horn dog id flashed back to their night together and the way her biceps had glistened as she’d pressed her hands against his chest and ridden him. “I know very well how strong you are.”

Something in his tone must have tipped her off about his mental movie, and she blushed, turning her tanned, high-boned cheeks a rosy pink. She blinked twice and the blush deepened.

Devin wasn’t a betting man—at least not anymore—but he’d wager his Rolex that Ryder Falcon wasn’t a woman who blushed often. Being the man who accomplished that rare feat did something weird to his insides, as though he’d just guzzled a cheap beer on an empty stomach.

Before he could think about the why behind that reaction, the newly-minted Mrs. Fitzsimmons started squawking at the customs clerk. The blonde flung her arms in the air and her husband jabbed his finger against the glass box housing the uniformed agent, who only raised an eyebrow at the tirade.

“It’s our
honeymoon
, I just left the prescription bottle at home and brought the pills in the Ziploc baggie. I’m not a smuggler!” Mrs. Fitzsimmons wailed. “Carl, baby,
do
something.”

Responding to his bride’s call to arms, Carl slammed his open palm against the glass with a
thwack
and proceeded to try to yank the door open. Security had him kissing the linoleum and cuffed in ten efficient seconds. As they hauled Carl away, Mrs. Fitzsimmons trailing behind, Devin made a note to connect Dylan’s Department Store’s head of security with whoever trained the airport police.

“Next!”

…

Half an hour later, Devin tossed their bags into the back of a Jeep Wrangler painted a shade of hot pink that was liable to blind anyone except an eight-year-old girl. Ryder stood next to the car rental agent, chatting him up. She wasn’t flirting, but judging by the way the agent stalled her with detailed explanations of how to read a map, the poor deluded fool was still keeping the faith.

“So, we’re hoping to run into a friend while we’re here for fashion week.” Ryder said. “She’s local and just returned home a day or two ago.”

“Perhaps I can help you find her.” The agent puffed up his chest like a peacock—as if the guy had a candle’s luck in a windstorm. “What is her name? I may know her family. It
’
s a small island.”

Devin deposited himself next to Ryder, close enough to touch her shoulder, and smiled down at the agent. Not to intimidate—well, not completely. “Sarah Molina.”

The man’s smile evaporated and his chest caved. “No, I don’t know her.”

“Are you sure?” Ryder asked, digging her elbow into Devin’s side to push him away.

The man looked over his shoulder at the small tarmac behind him, deserted except for a baggage crew working at the other end. Maybe it was because of his years dealing with MMA fighters, but he could practically smell the fear rolling off the agent. It was enough to make Devin check the perimeter for trouble.

“She is your friend?” The agent crumpled the map he
’
d been showing her.

“More of a work associate.”
Ryder said, apparently sensing the man’s tension, too.

“You seem like nice people,” the agent whispered. “You should stay away from that family. They are dangerous.”

“What do you mean dangerous?” she asked, feigning a na
ïve look.

“Many have come looking for Molina family members, and not all have returned.” The agent backed up a few steps.

“But we need to ask her some questions,” Devin said. He pulled out his wallet and took out a hundred dollar bill.

The agent
’
s gaze locked on the greenback. “
Questions?
”

“She has something of mine.” He held out the money.

“I see you speak our native tongue.” The agent swiped the bill and glanced over his shoulder. “
Find Borja at The Palm Inn.
” Without another word, he jogged back to the terminal.

“Please tell me The Palm Inn is the hotel where we
’
re staying,”
Ryder said.

Devin pulled out his cell phone and texted a travel change request to George
’
s executive assistant, Suzie,
so she could make the reservation change, then he climbed into the Jeep
’
s driver
’
s seat. “It is now.”

“So, it seems Sarah was hiding more than just her embezzlement scheme.” She slid into the passenger’s seat and slammed the door. “If her family is the local badass clan, this whole operation just kicked it up a notch.”

With that thought hanging in the wind, he hit the highway for the ten-mile drive to Andol City proper. As they drove, he rolled the idea of a Molina crime family around in his mind, and the best way to go after her, if it was true.

“I see the wheels turning in your head.” Ryder twisted in her seat to face him. She wore sunglasses, but he could still feel the weight of her glare. “You can forget about it. George hired Maltese because we’re good. I’m in charge of this case because I’m good. You
’
re going to have to relax and let me take the lead.”

“So, in your imagination”—he put a full slathering of prep school snob into his voice—“
I’m just your driver?
”

She raised her sunglasses to her forehead. “If it makes you feel better, you can add arm candy to your list of duties.” She winked, and lowered her glasses.

“That doesn’t fly. I’m the client, and whatever the client says, goes.”

“When we set up base camp, go through that list of files on your laptop and look for the Maltese contract. You’ll see it in black and white. When George signed the dotted line, he ceded primary decision-making on the case to Maltese—ergo, me.” She grabbed her long, thick hair and whipped the wavy mass into a braid that fell between her shoulder blades.

“I’m not George.” He flexed his fingers on the steering wheel before he bent the damn thing. “And I
’
m not the assistant.”

“Pity. I think this case would go a lot smoother if you were.” She scrolled through her notes on her tablet. “We need to hit the tea shop first.” Wisps of the wavy strands whirled around her face, a few sticking to the shiny gloss of her full lips.

How could such a hot woman be so fucking annoying?

He pulled his gaze from her in time to see a beat up van that was coming toward them drift into their lane. Heart racing, he slammed his hand on the horn.

The van continued straight for them, the driver either too out of it or not giving a shit that he was about to ram another vehicle head on. Considering the horror stories Devin had heard about drivers here, it could be either one.

Devin swerved off the road, the dirt shoulder rumbling beneath the tires, and hit the gas. The Jeep bolted forward, avoiding the van by inches before leaving the bucket of bolts in the dust.

“Shit. Tell me everyone around here doesn
’
t drive like that.”
Ryder tested her seat belt.

“I sure as hell hope not.” Adrenaline sailed through his veins.

The first brightly-colored, single-story buildings of Andol City appeared around the bend. Something about the cheerfulness of it all calmed Devin
’
s jittery pulse. He kept his gaze locked on the unlined blacktop road and the rolling hills beyond it. “You sure we should hit the tea shop first and not Sarah
’
s family farm?”

If he were hiding out, he’d pick a huge tract of land to get lost on, instead of a tiny store in the heart of downtown Andol City. But it wasn’t like Sarah gave a flying fuck about getting caught. Everything she’d done so far had been thrown straight in George’s face, like a woman scorned.

“I went through the pictures of her office and the written inventory of her stuff.” Ryder tapped her stylus on the screen and brought up a photo. “There are teapots from the same Andol City shop everywhere. This is a woman with a serious kettle addiction and almost five million dollars burning a hole in her pocket. Trust me, if she’s not at the shop now, it’s only because she’s already been there.”

He hated to admit it, but her plan made sense.

“Sarah
’
s niece, Dominga, manages the place, so I
’
m guessing the staff probably won’t be open to telling us if they’ve seen Sarah,”
she said.

“It’s a small island. We’ll find her.” He turned the corner. “Anyway, it’s not like she’s been inconspicuous so far.”

Andol City was home to fifty thousand residents and several thousand tourists every season—enough to make finding Sarah a challenge, but not impossible. Especially when she wasn’t trying to hide her tracks.

Tea Time was located in a teal blue building that sat on the north corner of the tourist-clogged downtown square. Everywhere he looked, the distinctive ring-tipped Andol cats roamed the streets, free and unafraid of humans, much like the monkeys in India.

Devin parked the hot pink monstrosity of a vehicle in front of the store. The six-feet-high windows showcased shelf after shelf of delicate china teapots painted in island colors.

“I didn’t realize tea was so big here.” Ryder’s seat belt zipped across her high breasts as it rewound into the Jeep’s frame.

Devin fought to make his brain process her words, while his body processed something else entirely. “It’s not, but a majority of the tourists are British, so the teapots make sense.”

“Is there anything your research didn’t turn up?”

Such a smartass.

He grinned despite himself. “Sarah’s exact GPS coordinates.”

They got out of the Jeep and crossed the raised boardwalk to Tea Time’s display windows. Ryder peeked in. There was no way the woman could pass as a tourist. Dressed in head-to-toe, tight-fitting black, she looked one hundred percent badass business and zero percent vacation. What he wouldn’t give to strip her out of those clothes and talk her into making it a naked vacation. His cock certainly liked the idea.

She eyeballed his reflection. “So, if this is such an open-and-shut, grab-and-bag case, why did you need Maltese Security’s help?”

Guilt’s strong fingers squeezed his chest like a stress ball, and he considered taking the chicken’s way out. He could make up an excuse. He opened his mouth, but his tongue refused to form the lie. “You’re here for the same reason that I’ll go down if the merger fails.”

A warm island breeze teased loose a long strand of dark brown hair from her braid. The strand batted against her locked jaw as she thinned her full lips. “Maltese is the scapegoat.”

“If George has taught me anything, it’s always to have a backup plan.”

“Sweet guy.”

Devin grunted. What could he say? It wasn’t like he could deny it. George might look like a slightly slimmer, beardless Santa, but when it came to business, the man was as cold and calculating as Jack Frost—something Devin had learned firsthand as the old man’s protégé.

George had taught Devin everything he knew about surviving in the ultra-competitive fashion merchandising world. He thought he’d seen cut-throat players when he played tight end at Stanford, but Dylan’s Department Store’s pocket-sized head buyer, Betty Webster, would have made the three hundred pound linebackers quake in their cleats. And the number one lesson George had taught him was: always watch his back. Always.

“Come on.” He rested his palm against the small of her back to guide her into the tea shop. Electricity, strong and sure, surged up his arm and straight down to his dick. “Let’s see if anyone inside knows where Sarah is.”

Ignoring the world-weary sigh Ryder let out, he pushed open the door and marched after her. A blast of arctic-level air conditioning and the trill of a bell welcomed him into the Earl Grey-scented store. A pair of elderly women in flower-print dresses puttered around the teapot displays, while the men he assumed were their husbands loitered by the door. Each held four shopping bags in his
liver-spotted hands.