Miami Midnight (6 page)

She clutched the receiver to her ear, waiting for 911 to answer, when the next realization hit her.

Just as the storm had put out the lights, the telephone, too, was dead.

Chapter 4

Outside, Jupiter began to bark.

Gaby stood trembling, rooted to the spot. She was a coward, just as her mother had said. She’d run away to Europe when the man she loved had married someone else, and she had fled in one way or another from Paul and Jeannette all her life. But now for the first time, there was nowhere to run. She was trapped!

The dog’s frantic yapping rose to a frenzy over the noise of the storm.
Jupiter
, she thought suddenly. They’d kill him if he tried to protect the house!

She dropped the telephone. It hit the edge of the table and crashed to the floor, but she was already groping through the living room toward the sun porch, not even sure what she was going to do.

Violent cracks of lightning, like flashbulbs going off, booby-trapped the darkened house. One minute it was glaringly bright, the next pitch black. At the door to the sun porch she missed the step and nearly fell. She lurched into the dinner table, her cry of pain lost as a sudden downpour added to the uproar.

She knew it was foolish to panic over Jupiter if the house was being attacked, but she couldn’t abandon her old pet. She threw open the sun porch door. The wind yanked the knob from her hand and slammed the door shut again. Lightning blasted the sky, going to ground somewhere on Palm Island. Beyond the porch the glare of lightning showed the figure of a man picking his way across the littered back lawn, a drenched white shape in the slanting torrent of rain, before the world went dark again.

Frozen with fright, Gaby strained to see through the storm. Had she really seen anything out there? One man? Or a whole gang of burglars with guns in their hands?

Lightning split open the sky once more, and Gaby clapped both hands over her mouth to keep from screaming. The porch door rattled, then flew open in a gust of wind.

Another stroke of lightning hit close by. In the moment’s earsplitting dazzle she saw a man’s white shirt, white trousers, the blur of his face. Then she was being propelled backward by an unseen hand. He slammed the door shut and leaned against it.

They tried to see each other in the dimness, breathing heavily.

“Jupiter!” she croaked. It was the only thing she could think of. “My dog!”

“He ran off.” The voice in the storm-wracked darkness was husky, “Miss Collier?”

She backed away as lightning again crossed the sky. “What have you done with my dog?”

The tall figure straightened away from the door. “He ran off when the lightning hit. This is the right place, isn’t it?” He turned his head, trying to locate her. “Gabrielle Collier?”

Gaby trembled violently. She was sure he was wearing the same clothes—white trousers, white shirt, and dark tie. He seemed only to have discarded the elegant suit jacket. It was the same man she had seen that afternoon, with the Colombian kneeling before him and kissing his hand. She didn’t know what James Santo Marin was doing in her home, but it didn’t matter. There could be a team of robbers from his boat racing for the house at that very moment!

She stumbled backward toward the door to the living room, hands held out to ward him off. Her mind wouldn’t work, it was blank with fear. The crashing of thunder and lightning seemed to have paralyzed her brain.

She heard the shadow that was James Santo Marin move toward her and hit the card table. “Did the storm knock your lights out?” He rubbed his knee. “Miss Collier?”

“W-what are you doing here?” She backed away again, carefully. “How—how did you know where I live?”

“The newspaper.” He ran a hand over his face. “I told them I wanted to talk to the reporter who was at the fashion show today.”

Gaby’s shoulder hit the doorjamb to the living room and she winced. “The newspaper doesn’t give out that information!”

The shadow of his hand lifted to loosen his tie. “They do to me.” He slipped the tie off and pulled his wet shirt away from his body.

His words chilled her. She remembered what Dodd had said about drug dealing in Miami. She looked around for something to use as a weapon. In the dark, there was nothing. “Don’t come one step nearer.” It was a mistake to sound so obviously terrified, but she couldn’t help it. “Stay right there!”

He paused. “God, don’t panic. Look, are you alone in the house?”

Gaby shuddered. With one backward step she would be inside the living room where she could slam the door shut and lock it, leaving him on the sun porch. Another crash of lightning hit the island, bathing them in instant white light.

She lunged for the living room. The shadow moved at the same time, catching the door with his hand. It banged back on its hinges as he stepped after her into the living room.

In the old high-ceilinged
sala
the storm was reflected in the mirrors and on the white walls as a bright, flickering gloom. Gaby backed away from him and the coffee table caught her behind her knees, painfully. If only her mother weren’t unconscious upstairs and could somehow manage to help! If only the neighbors weren’t so far away they couldn’t hear if she screamed! If only—

“Miss Collier?” She could make out the shadowed planes of his face. “Miss Collier, I saw you this afternoon. You were there, standing under the trees.”

She kept backing away, thinking frantically of the kitchen. The front door. A dining room window she could crawl out of.
He had seen her in the garden when he was closing a drug deal
. Oh, God, she supposed she was some sort of a witness! Had he come there now to kill her?

She stumbled into something, a chair, and doubled over it with a gasp. “I wasn’t there, it was someone else!”

“You were there.” He moved toward the sound of her voice. “I saw you come up from the path in the trees and then you—” A tremendous crack of lightning interrupted him. “You ran away before I could stop you.”

“Not me,” she cried. “It wasn’t me!” Her blindly groping hands discovered the obstacle wasn’t a chair. It was the couch. She couldn’t seem to get around it.

She saw his white-sleeved arm lift as he ran his hand through his hair. “Do you have a towel? I’m getting everything wet.”

She clutched the arm of the sofa.
Towel?
He wanted her to bring him a towel! “Get out!” She no longer cared if she sounded frightened. “If you don’t go away, I’m going to call the police!”

“The police?” He stepped forward again. “Look, that’s exactly what I want to talk to you about. I know newspaper people, Miss Collier,” he said urgently, “and how they go after a story. I don’t want you picking up on something that—” He hesitated. “—that means absolutely nothing.”

She pushed hard against the couch, trying to move it out of her way. “I’m not a real reporter, I’m a fashion writer!” She knew now he was there to threaten her. “You’ve got the wrong person,” she went on breathlessly. “I’m not interested in drug deals or any—”

The words died in her throat.

Drug deal
. Oh God, she’d actually said it!

He stood perfectly still. “Jesus,” she heard him say under his breath, “that’s all I need.”

Abruptly, lightning and thunder crashed right over their heads. Gaby had a wild, irrational thought that there was something unnatural in the way the light danced around his dimly outlined body. Her senses screamed that he smelled of rain, wet clothing, expensive cologne. Menacing. Leanly powerful. Inescapable.

There was something else, too, she realized with a fresh burst of terror. He seemed to be staring at the front of her shirt where she’d loosened a few buttons, his gaze traveling downward with an intensity that conveyed other, even more ominous messages.

“I want you out of here,” she said, her voice quavering. “Whatever you have to say to me you can—you can—” What
could
he do? “You can call me at work!”

He didn’t move.

“Look, Miss Collier,” he said finally, “I have to talk to you now. It can’t wait until tomorrow. I’m sorry if this puts you off, my coming in this way, but I can’t help the damned storm.”

She leaned back against the couch to put as much space as possible between them. “I can’t talk to you, didn’t you just hear me? I don’t know what you think you’re doing, bursting in here like this from a—” Her voice rose to a shriek in spite of herself. “—a
boat
! You must be crazy!”

“God, this is impossible,” he muttered. “I’m scaring the hell out of you and getting no place, what you saw this afternoon was a matter of—uh, doing some friends a favor. And not, obviously, what you thought it was.”

Gaby was no longer listening. Inching away, the couch at her back, she saw him move to her. “Stay away from me,” she cried. “Don’t touch me!”

“I’m not doing anything to you. Damn, is it because I’m a
latino
?” He was suddenly angry. “Is that what makes you so afraid?”

At that moment another blue-white explosion struck in one of the trees just outside the house. It was like a bomb detonating; the very walls shook. Gaby shrieked. Once started she couldn’t seem to stop. She gave in to pressures that had been accumulating for weeks.

“Wait!” he shouted. “It’s just lightning. It’ll be all right!”

Still screaming, Gaby lunged at him. In some remote part of her mind she was amazed that she, Gabrielle Collier, even threatened as she was, would attack anyone. But she sprang at James Santo Marin and heard him grunt as her fists pounded his face and chest. “Jupiter!” she screamed. “Police! Help!”

“Christ!” He tried to catch her hands, but it was dark. His wrist knocked her under the chin.

She reeled backward, seeing stars. She tried to save herself by grabbing him, but she still toppled over. He fell with her. In the next instant she found herself pressed down into the musty-smelling sofa cushions, one hand clutching a muscular bicep, her other hand trapped between their bodies.

For a long moment there was no sound except the storm as they lay stunned, trying to get their breath.

“I didn’t mean to hit you.” His low voice was right in her ear. “Are you all right?”

She bucked under him. She wanted to break free, but his body, sprawled over hers, held her down. And, she discovered, her hand was mashed against the lower part of his body, fingers outlining an unmistakable shape under wet cloth.

She felt James Santo Marin go very still.

The rain’s hard, tropical drumming pounded the roof, mingling with the sound of drips falling from the
sala
’s ceiling into the pots and pans. James Santo Marin lifted his head and looked down at her, his face filled with wary discovery.

Gaby felt as though her heart were about to jump out of her chest. They were lying on the old couch in the most intimate of positions, James Santo Marin on top of her, her breasts crushed against his chest, his arm under her, partly embracing her. “Let me up,” she choked.

Shadowed black eyes, inches from hers, gazed down at her with a rather abstracted expression. “Are you hurt?”

“You hit me,” she cried. “Get off of me!”

“I didn’t hit you.” His lower body shifted almost imperceptibly against her hand. “I never hit women.”

Gaby felt dizzy. She had the sudden, surreal sense of being plunged through a dimension of time that had telescoped. They were strangers, lying like this, and yet it was impossible to ignore the intimate reality of that lean, muscular body cradled between her thighs. Trapped in his groin, her hand was telling her he was growing hard.

Gaby’s mind reeled with terrified thoughts. This couldn’t be happening.
Sex. Force.
Her fingers contracted spasmodically.

He jumped. Violently. “Don’t do that,” he said breathily. “Just give me a minute.”

Gaby choked back a helpless whimper. His clothes were wet. The faint aura of soap and musky male sweat tinted the soggy air. But her senses denied all of it. It was a nightmare, she told herself. There was no stranger lying on top of her in her own living room, no storm, no boat at the Collier dock. Because what was taking place was too incredible to be real. In the morning she’d wake up in her own bed and find out all this had been a bad dream.

She closed her eyes quickly, half expecting him not to be there when she opened them.

But he was.

That chiseled face was right over hers. She saw the gleam of his teeth. “You’re so...” he murmured huskily.

His head lowered. Paralyzed, not breathing, Gaby felt the warm touch of his lips.

It was a wary kiss, yet so charged with electricity that her lips parted in amazement.

He made a soft, unexpected sound of passion, then his mouth covered hers, rough, insatiable. He kissed her throat, her temple, the lobe of her ear, as though he would get his fill of her before she made him stop.

It was like being enveloped in flames, an inferno that blazed up between them, taking them both by surprise. Gaby couldn’t get her breath. Was this the famous Latin passion? she wondered crazily. The feel of that tense, powerful body pressing on hers, his ardent mouth, was overwhelming. She was drowning in it! If something terrible was about to happen, she knew she didn’t have the will to resist.