A Killing Kind of Love: A Dark, Standalone Romantic Suspense (27 page)

She didn’t move, continued to sit there looking . . . studious, so he got out and went around to her door and opened it fully. “You coming?”

She got out of the car, squared off on him. “Only a man can say food, sex, and inevitability in one breath
—and
get pushy about them at the same time.”

“It’s a gift.” He took her by the elbow and steered her toward the restaurant door. “Makes up for God taking away our clubs and animal skins.”

When they were settled at the table and had ordered their lunch, Dan the burger he craved, and Camryn a chicken Caesar, she took her cell phone from her bag.

Dan sat back in his chair, idly rotated his water glass, and cocked his head in question.

“I’m calling Gina,” she said, “to tell her I’ll be later.” “Didn’t know you’d called her to set up a time.” He frowned. “Have you considered our purpose in going there would have been better served by surprise?” He took a drink of his water and set hot, questioning eyes on her.

His eyes were intelligent, warm, and even in daylight disturbingly sexy. Camryn refused to think deeply about last night, refused to deal with the bizarre sense of disloyalty she felt about sleeping with her best friend’s husband. God, she hoped it hadn’t been some Freudian, adolescent maneuver to get back at Holly for Adam. She wouldn’t think about that, wouldn’t think about any of it until her head was clear, which, thanks to a shooting, accusations about Gina, and a bout of wildly exciting lovemaking, it definitely was not.

“You arriving on the Solari doorstep will be shocking enough, trust me,” she said. “But, as it turns out, I didn’t call. Gina called me—before we left for Paul’s. She said she and Adam wanted to talk to me that she had a big surprise for me.” Camryn keyed in the telephone number but didn’t hit SEND. “But if she hadn’t called, I would have had to anyway, because you
do not
drop in at the Solari house.” Camryn had a pretty good idea the surprise Gina mentioned had to do with her and Adam’s relationship.
Oh, God, Gina, you can’t be that stupid. You can’t.

“Why not?”

“The house runs by Delores Solari’s rules. And one of them is visits by appointment only.”

“She won’t be there, so why does it matter?”

She looked at him, blinked. “I forgot. She’ll be with Paul.”

“I’m curious, though, what happens if you break the rule?”

Camryn clicked SEND. “You could be Prince Charles and you wouldn’t get past the front gate, let alone in the house.”

“You’re kidding.”

“Nope. And so you know, if Delores was there, my sneaking you in would get me banned for life. Inhospitable and eccentric don’t begin to describe the venerable Delores Solari.”

“She sounds charming.”

“If there’s an antonym for that word, you’ve got it.” And throw in whacko and narcissistic, she thought, as well as bone-mean and more than a little freaky. Camryn was relieved she wouldn’t be there, for her sake and Dan’s. Every man Delores met was judged as if he were raw meat, and every woman—even her own daughter—was considered competition. Delores was unadulterated ego, pure and uncut. A woman impossible to like. There’d been a time when Gina stood up to her, but not anymore. Not since she’d come home, a ghost of the woman she once was.

The Solaris were a complicated family.

Still holding the phone to her ear, Camryn heard someone pick up. “Gina? . . . Uh huh . . . Me too . . . But, I can’t do it now . . . It’ll be better for me after Kylie’s in bed,” she lied and grimaced. “I was thinking tonight, say nine-ish?” She listened, then shot a glance at Dan, who was listening intently to her side of the conversation. “Wine? Sure, I can bring a bottle . . . All right, see you then.”

She clicked off the phone and slipped it back in her bag.

“Everything set?”

“Hm-m.” She picked up her napkin. Gina had sounded cheerful, almost jovial.
Because she’s having sex with Adam. That makes most women cheerful.
The thought soured her mood.

“You okay?”

“She’s my friend. It doesn’t feel right, not telling her about your coming.” She looked up in time to see the waiter bearing down on them, lunches in hand, and she welcomed the interruption. The business with Gina was complicated, lunch was not. So she decided to concentrate on her salad.

As if Dan sensed her unease, he remained silent, but midway through lunch, he leaned forward. “Look, chances are your friend had nothing to do with the shooting, but she’s playing host, and maybe a whole lot more, to the man who might have been involved. A man who wants to take Kylie away from you—and me.”

“If that was an attempt to make me feel better about duping Gina, it didn’t work.” She gave him a level stare. “I don’t like game-playing for any reason. I’m no good at it.” She dug into her salad, then just as quickly put her fork down and added, “Besides, if anyone’s in danger here, it’s Gina. If she’s playing with Adam Dunn, she’ll get hurt. It’s what he does. He uses people and he hurts people.”

“Not to split hairs, but he uses
women.
And they let him.” His face was hard. And a brief flash of pain—or anger—showed in his eyes.

“I didn’t mean …” Camryn knew he was thinking about Holly, that she’d opened a wound.
Damn.

Dan sat back, looked seriously puzzled. “What the hell has that guy got, anyway?”

“Let’s drop it.” No way on earth could she explain Adam to a man like Dan. They were polar opposites—except in bed.

“Let’s not.” He leaned forward, and something shifted in his eyes, making them the eyes of an interrogator. “I’d like to know why a man who made love to three best friends, and went on to screw half the female population of Miami, is welcomed back to a woman’s bed as if his screwing around on her was no more than a brief and well-earned holiday.” He sat back, his hard question resting between them like a headless snake. “Is he that good in bed?”

When the hand holding the fork started to shake, Camryn lowered it to the table and met his gaze. “Yes. He’s that good.”

He drew in a breath, and his jaw hardened.

“You want to know about Adam,” she said. “I’ll tell you. There wasn’t a girl in college who didn’t lust after him, not because he was brilliantly handsome—which he was, and is—but because he had what we called the s-e-X
factor,
a kind of magnetism, indescribable really. But it worked every time. You could almost call it a gift.”

“Most men would,” he said, his tone ironic.

She looked away from him a moment, faintly embarrassed at telling such an intimate truth. But he wanted to know, so she’d tell him. “Whatever it was, Adam smiled into your eyes and he had you. It was . . . primal. As if he were elementally sexual in nature.” She shrugged. “Back then, which is when Adam and I were . . . together, he had something else. A complete lack of ego. If you complimented him, he actually blushed. It was as if he didn’t know how good-looking he was, the power he had over women.” She paused, ran her finger along the handle of her fork.

“I’m guessing he figured it out.”

“Yes, and when he did, he cheated on me with Holly, on Holly with Gina, on Gina with her mother—and I don’t know how many others.” She looked at him again. “And most all of them would take him back. Time and again.” She paused, a touch of regret softening her words. “Even Holly, I guess.”

“Jesus.”

Dan looked disgusted and confused; neither reaction surprised her.

“I honestly believed Gina would be the exception,” she said. “I mean it’s one thing when a man cheats on you with another woman, but with your own mother…” She wanted to defend her friend, but didn’t know how. She certainly couldn’t dispute the fact that Adam was in the Solari house again despite all the pain he’d caused.

“They took up with each other a year or so ago. It seems he took a short break from my wife to mess with your other ‘best friend,’ Gina.

Camryn looked up, shocked. “No. I don’t believe you. She’d have told me.”

“That’s where you’re wrong, Camryn. You’d be the last person either Gina or Holly would talk to about Dunn.” He paused. “They knew how you felt about him, that you were the only one who saw through him—and the only one who walked away from him and never looked back—or worse yet, took him back.” He smiled, but it contained no mirth. “Neither my wife, nor your friend Gina were that smart. My guess? What self-respect they had stopped them from telling you how vulnerable they were to Dunn.” He stopped. “Something else Gina might not want you to know was that Dunn left her about the time she was facing charges for poaching funds—considerable funds—from her firm’s trust accounts, most of which probably ended up in his wallet.”

Camryn covered her mouth, her heart aching.
Oh, Gina, this can’t be true. It can’t. Not for Adam.

“She also miscarried. About a month before she came back here.”

“Adam’s baby?”
Stupid words.

“Did I run DNA? No. But they’d been tight for months. From what I learned, she wasn’t seeing anyone else.”

Camryn closed her eyes, remembered their long-ago Barbie vow, three twenty-something women vowing never to let a man—any man—come between them, particularly Adam Dunn. She let out a slow breath. Yet another lesson learned; your friends might not lie to you, but they did withhold. While it hurt to admit it, she knew Dan was right when he said neither Holly nor Gina would have told her they were seeing Adam again. She’d have reeked with disapproval and concern, and they’d have hated that. Knowing all this, she was more afraid for Gina than ever. She had to talk to her. Had to.

“And you know all this how?” she asked after a long silence.

“Like I said, my business is security. I have my connections. And whether we like the idea or not, our world, our lives
and lies
are accessible—if you know where to look. You might say we’re all in the cloud.”

She nodded, picked up her fork, and poked at her half-eaten salad, all trace of appetite gone. She looked around the increasingly crowded restaurant. “Let’s get out of here.” She reached for her bag.

Dan gripped her arm. “There’s more.”

“It can wait.” She took another breath, stood and headed for the door. She had to get out of here, get some clean air. She was aware of Dan tossing some bills on the table but was at the car before he caught up with her. He gripped her upper arms, held her, and forced her to look at him.

“You think I’m going after Dunn because of Holly.” His fingers tightened. “That might have been true in the beginning, but now it’s about you and Kylie. Dunn is desperate, and desperate means dangerous. He’s in trouble, Camryn. Big trouble.”

“Adam’s not new to trouble.” She was tired of defending him. If Dan wanted to believe he’d killed Holly, there was nothing she could do about it. Or him. That would be up to the Boston Police.

“It was a woman—” he started.

“Surprise, surprise.”

“A widow, maybe twice his age. He took her for a lot of money, then skipped. Turns out the woman was somebody’s mother, a guy named Lando, one of the biggest and most ruthless drug dealers on the southeast coast. Lando, very unhappy that his mother was ripped off, is on Dunn’s ass.”

“To pay back the money.”

“Still think he’s a lover, not a fighter, Camryn?” Dan’s question was straight, his tone wry.

“I don’t know what to think. Can’t think.” And it was true. Carefree Holly, serious Gina, even Adam—once a shy charmer—they were all new to her, as if she were meeting them, uncovering them, for the first time—and not liking what she found.

“Dunn was your first, wasn’t he?”

She felt the heat rise over the skin of her throat. She ignored it. “Yes. College. I was what you’d call a late bloomer.”

He ran his hands down her arms to her elbows, then reached behind her to open the car door. His face was so close she could feel his breath over her cheek. When his mouth touched her ear, he said. “They say a woman never forgets her first lover, that she compares every man that comes after to that first hot taste.” He pressed his lips, lightly, quickly, against her ear. “I guess I’ve got my work cut out for me.”

Adam closed his bedroom door behind him, quietly, then glanced at his watch. Almost four, and he’d been in the sack with Gina since noon, when she’d poured herself into his bed and started working him up. Generally, he’d say that was one hell of a way to spend an afternoon, but . . .

He rubbed his face with one hand, clutched his running sweats and shoes in the other.

He was exhausted. If anyone had told him there was such a thing as too much sex, he’d have said they were nuts. Gina put the lie to that. The woman was a nonstop sex machine. Rubber Betty on hormones. Hell, if he didn’t get out of the house for a while, give his overworked dick a break, it’d never forgive him. He needed a shower, fresh air, and a good, long run.

And in that order. No way was he hitting the running trail sex-slicked and reeking of that perfume Gina doused herself in. He wanted the smell of his own sweat.

But if he wanted to escape without Gina’s bat ears hearing him and her plying him with a million questions, he’d best use the downstairs shower. He listened. There was music coming from Delores’s room, so downstairs would definitely be his best bet.

He also needed to think, because he was having one hell of a time recasting himself as a murderer—or an accomplice to one. He wasn’t a fan of violence. He’d done a lot of crap in his life, but, hell, he’d never so much as hit a woman, let alone killed one.

He’d come here prepared to make Gina happy and get some free legal advice in return. Fair trade, he figured, and a long way from pointing a gun and blowing someone’s heart apart.
Camryn’s heart.
At that thought, his own heart thumped fast and hard. The thing was, he had to admit Gina’s way would cut down the waiting time to get the money. Camryn dead created a direct chute to the cash.

It wasn’t as if she gave a damn about him. She’d made that plain enough. And there was Lando out there, waiting, tracking.

A half a mil. I need a half a mil
—
yesterday—or I’m a dead man.

Even having said it over and over in his mind, the amount staggered him, paralyzed his thinking. He’d counted on Holly and lost. Now there was only Gina.