Authors: Angela Smith
“These flowers are heavenly. There’s nothing better than homegrown.”
As he cooked dinner inside, she set up a small table on the balcony. He was distracted by the way the wind blew her hair, the way her dainty pink shirt tightened against her skin to reveal things she probably didn’t intend to. Her mile-long legs were shapely and graceful, and it was damn near impossible to keep his attention on the food.
He uncorked the wine and poured two glasses to take outside and enjoy with her before dinner was ready, but he was waylaid by a cat darting in front of him. He cursed when he almost tripped trying not to step on the animal.
Rayma rushed in and gathered up the furball. “Sorry about that. This is Beacon, and he thinks if you have anything in your hands it’s for him.”
She disappeared down a hall and Camden heard a door open, shut, and open again.
He’d damn near tripped over a cat.
He set the glasses on the table and wiped a drop of wine from the tile as he listened to Rayma’s soft mutterings. He liked cats, but not enough to get excited over them, and definitely not enough to cajole them with words.
He wondered how much he’d have to sweet talk Rayma before she touched him that way.
She returned and grabbed one of the glasses of wine. “He hates to be locked up.”
“Don’t lock him up. He’s fine. I just thought I was tripping over my own feet. Too interested in the view.” His gaze trailed the length of her to make it obvious what he meant.
She gave a one-shoulder shrug, her head tilting as she rolled her eyes and whirled away. He followed her outside, and they sat at the table. The wind whisked her hair. She pulled at it, twisted it behind her, and placed it under her shirt’s strap.
“So what else do you do besides report on restaurateur improprieties?”
“What else do you do besides pick fights with coworkers?”
He laughed, and the corners of her mouth lifted. He liked her spunk, the way her eyelids flickered before she glanced away.
“You have a beautiful view from your condo,” he said, as he turned his attention to the waves. They crested against the sand and spewed into bubbles on shore.
“Thank you. I enjoy it.”
“How long have you lived here?”
“A year.”
“You’ve been here a year and I’ve never noticed you before?”
“You’ve never gotten into a fight with a coworker before.”
“Damn.” Camden raked his fingers through his hair and thought about how much this assignment had played hell with his social life. “I’ve got to get out more.”
“How long have you been here?”
He reached for his wine. “A little over a year myself.”
“Where are you from?”
“All over. My dad was in the military when I was young, so all I can really remember is moving around a lot. Now I do the same thing.”
“Lucky for you, it must be easy to find a job as a chef.”
“Yeah, it is.” He hated lying to her, but he couldn’t exactly tell her he was a DEA agent, now could he?
“You’re pretty built for a chef,” she said as she eyed him blatantly and sipped her wine.
He nearly choked on his, and set the glass down before he spilled it all over the place. “What’s wrong with a chef being built?”
“I’d think you’d want to sample all your food, and end up fat.”
He flexed his bicep and squeezed. “I work out a lot.”
“A man who works out, tends garden,
and
cooks? Is there anything you can’t do?”
Commit
, he thought.
And most times tell the truth
. “Sure, lots of things.”
“Yeah? What?” She leaned into him as if waiting to hear a dark secret. His hormones jumped, his tongue curling with the longing to taste her.
“I can’t concentrate when a pretty woman like you is this close to me.”
She laughed and sat back in her chair. “That’s a line if I ever heard one.”
He shrugged. “It’s true. Didn’t you see me almost drop the grocery sacks I was carrying?”
“Not at all.”
He enjoyed watching her skin flush a delightful pink. She narrowed her eyes at him as he continued to study her. His gaze roamed over her face in a languid path of appreciation. The seductive tilt of her lips as they watched each other was disrupted by the timer on his phone.
He switched off the buzzer and stood. “I need to check on the food.”
She followed him into the kitchen and watched as he took the food from the oven and retrieved the layered salad from the fridge.
“Okay, I thought of something else I don’t do,” he said.
“What’s that?”
“Dishes.”
“Understandable,” she said as she washed her hands. “As long as you can cook well.”
“Not sure, judging from the review on your blog.”
She snagged a piece of lettuce from the bowl. “Don’t take it too personally. It was a review of the restaurant and the twenty-five dollar salad. No salad is that good. So what are we eating?”
“Beef fillets braised in red wine and tomatoes. It’s ready whenever you are.”
They ate on the balcony. The horizon looked as if someone had thrown a ball of paint and it landed against the end of the earth, bursting forth in orange and blue. It splattered across the water and reached out into the sand, where it drew lines up to Rayma’s condo.
“Oh, wow, this is good.”
“Thank you,” Camden said. She was talking about the food, but he couldn’t taste it. The air was too fresh, too salty, and too splendid. He wasn’t in that damn coffin of a house. Even if it did offer direct access to the beauty of the ocean, it couldn’t compare to this. Freedom. He hadn’t been free in a long time. He wasn’t in that damn restaurant, cooking and baking and smelling those spices that seemed to become part of him. Vin Doux was set against the shore, too, but it was a controlled beauty. This uninhibited and natural beauty was pure heaven. Birds flew, arched in the sky, dove, as if freefalling into the ocean, only to come back up again.
“Where’d you learn to cook like this?”
“School, I suppose. Where did you move from?”
“Austin.”
“No boyfriend?”
“Not at the moment,” she said. “Just my cat and me.”
“Is there a story about his name?”
She finished chewing and took a sip of wine before replying. “I found him almost dead in the sand when I first moved here. I had been feeling like I’d made a horrible and rash decision in relocating, but he was my beacon telling me I didn’t.”
Her closed expression didn’t invite further questions, so he left it at that. They continued their dinner with small talk and bouts of pleasurable silence. She was comfortable to be around, and he didn’t feel like they had to fill every empty space with chatter.
He liked that about her.
He didn’t ask many personal questions and neither did she. He didn’t like to ask when he couldn’t answer his own without lying. He wondered if it was the same with her.
When they finished eating, he helped her carry the dishes inside, and jumped at the sound of a loud mewl.
“Your cat sounds pissed.”
“Yes, I should let him out. Think you can watch where you’re stepping for the next few minutes?”
“Absolutely,” he said. Few minutes? Is that how long she thought he’d stay after dinner?
She opened the door and the cat emerged, his back arching when he spotted Camden studying Rayma’s vinyl record collection.
“He probably hates me now. Thinks it’s my fault he’s locked up.”
She swooped down to pick up the cat and nuzzled her face in his fur. “Come on, Beacon. Camden isn’t so bad. Maybe I’ll even give you a piece of his leftovers if you eat your dinner.”
As she busied herself in the kitchen, feeding the cat and loading the dishwasher, Camden asked, “You collect records?”
“Yes. There’s nothing better.”
“Hip-hop?” he asked. “Rock and jazz?”
“I like a little bit of everything.”
He put on a Miles Davis album and pulled her away from the sink.
They fit well together dancing. She was tall enough not to make him feel like a giant, but even with her heels he was able to rest his chin on the top of her head. He whipped her around the living room, and she laughed but kept up.
“You’re a good dancer,” she said when the song ended.
“So are you.”
They stopped. He admired her and was leaning in for a kiss when she put a hand to his chest. “I don’t do one night stands.”
“Then let’s go out again tomorrow.”
His heart dipped at her smile. He wasn’t used to being wooed, and the unsteady pressure on his chest warned him he should definitely watch out. He reminded himself he was only using her to find out more about Darrell’s accountant and what she might know about the business.
But when she walked him to the door and stood on tiptoe to give him a chaste kiss on the cheek, he almost forgot about his mission.
***
Rayma
Rayma watched the news the next morning with a sick flutter in her stomach. She hadn’t turned it on since she’d been fired, unable to tolerate seeing who they’d found to replace her. She sneered when she noticed Amy, the weekend anchor. Amy had been vying for the weekday morning anchor since being hired three months ago. She should have known.
But none of that mattered now. A man had been found dead on the beach. He’d been identified as Bill Fletcher, and she recognized him as Darrell Weberley’s chauffeur. She’d met him once. It had been a few weeks after she and Mike had started dating, the one and only time besides the night of their breakup that he’d taken her to Vin Doux.
She watched the news again, scrawled a few notes, and then fired up her computer, uncertain what to do next. She wouldn’t blog about this, not until she’d drafted a few of her thoughts and slept on it a day or two. Although she desperately wanted to be back in investigative journalism, she couldn’t afford to be hasty, not anymore. One day soon, she’d need a job again, and she couldn’t go around accusing one of the largest employers of this area for killing his chauffeur.
His other employee crowded her thoughts. Camden had been a perfect date, and she wouldn’t mind going out with him again to discover information about his boss. The problem was he made her forget her goal to expose Vin Doux for its drug operations. She hadn’t asked many questions about his job. Best to wait, not be too desperate, but she couldn’t think when she was near him. The last thing on her mind last night had been the fact he worked for a bad guy—or that he might be one himself.
Maybe she should just pack up her bags and leave. Her friend James would let her stay with him as long as necessary. Her throat closed at the idea. She wasn’t ready to go back to Austin, to the life she left behind. She’d left the job she loved, friends she loved, to transform her life. That transformation was supposed to be about finding serenity, to stop chasing after danger. That’s why the morning anchor job had been so appealing at first.
She checked her website’s email, determined to get busy on her resume as soon as she went through her messages. Her heart dropped when she saw a subject line that said simply “Vin Doux.”
There’s more to Vin Doux than chefs fighting. Pier 18. Drug manufacturing.
Danger always seemed to find her. Her senses were on high alert as she searched for the email address, but nothing came up anywhere online. She pulled up the search engine map and typed in “Pier 18.”
There were many commercial piers in Hammer Bay, but Rayma had never heard of Pier 18. Half of the piers were situated downtown along the banks of the gulf waters, and not all of them were labeled by numbers. The third pier, titled Boater’s Bay Pier, butted against Darrell’s adjoining restaurant.
She zoomed in on an abandoned cargo handling facility several miles out of town, and noticed the number eighteen. A rundown fishing pier, it was a perfect location for illicit drugs with deep enough water for someone to dock there. At least one building was still standing nearby, but she couldn’t zoom in close enough to see much detail on the structure.
Her blood ran cold, and she watched the news again to be sure, but yes, that was near where Bill Fletcher had been found, and only miles from Darrell Weberley’s home.
There was something here, something that needed to be uncovered. Maybe James could help her figure it out. Either that or he’d talk some sense into her.
James Noose had been a family friend for years, and she’d learned most of her investigative skills from him. She’d called him Uncle News until she was thirteen, but now that seemed silly. His coworkers had called him Noose, because he always seemed to have one tied around his neck.
He was a retired police detective who now did private investigations, and had been a part of Rayma’s life from the beginning of time, up until her dad was sent to prison. No one ever told her why Uncle News was no longer welcome in their home, but she’d never lost contact with him. Even though he was a couple hundred miles away, his voice in her ear comforted her.