Black Satin (LS 675) Read online

  “I know boys love to exaggerate. But when P.J. turned up missing over a week ago, I didn’t know what to do. I hoped I could get him back on my own, but that’s not possible. I need help. A special kind of help. I remembered Miller’s endless tales and thought of you.”

  “Miller said I was a sax player. He’s right. What gave you the impression I could give you this ‘special help’?”

  “I need someone who can guide a boat through the reefs and waterways around the Keys at night.”

  “You need someone who—” He bit off the words with an oath. Jesus, the woman could teach guerrillas a few things about the element of surprise. Between clenched teeth, he said, “So?”

  “I heard you might know something about that.”

  “From who?”

  “Locals. Some of the older conches.”

  Cole knew the conches, as the longtime Key West residents were called, could have spread some tales about him, but he also knew they didn’t know anything that represented a threat to him. “Doesn’t this P.J. have parents to look out for him? Why are you doing this?” Another thought struck him, and he leaned forward. “Is he your son?”

  “No,” she answered quickly. “P.J.’s parents … aren’t around. He was … is, in my care.”

  Cole leaned back again. Instinct told him she was lying—or at least not telling the entire truth. He believed the kid wasn’t hers, but too many things didn’t add up.

  Definitely time to bail out.

  Kira Douglass wasn’t some shadow from his past come forth to threaten him. She was no threat at all. He resisted the urge to scratch the back of his neck.

  “Then I suggest you get the police to help you out.”

  He stood and walked away, vowing nothing short of a bullet through his heart would stop him this time. He’d gone a few feet when he thought he heard her say something. He kept right on moving, telling himself he was too far away to have heard her soft voice.

  It must have been his imagination, otherwise he’d have sworn she’d said, “If I call the police, they’ll kill P.J.”

  Kira pressed her palms against the small cocktail table, the scratched surface biting at her skin. She watched Cole walk away without so much as a glance or good-bye. Her immediate reaction was to drop her head to her arms and cry. She fought it down.

  What had she been thinking? She should have had more patience, been less defensive. A man like Cole, all dark looks and rough edges, was probably used to women begging for the honor of falling at his feet, and she’d all but told him to go bark at the moon. So what if the man was a Neanderthal? Right now, P.J. was more important than her misguided pride or even her integrity. She’d blown it big time.

  For the first time in hours she became keenly aware of just how exhausted she was. Another sleepless night had been followed by one of her most emotionally draining days ever. Then she’d driven several hours in bumper-to-bumper U.S. 1 traffic from Marathon to Key West. It had been after nine by the time she’d started her hunt. She’d traipsed through five other backstreet bars and waded through proposals so slimy her skin had crawled. Repo’s had been the last bar on her list. The abundance of motorcycles clustered in the side lot had done little to fire up her sorely depleted confidence.

  She squinted at the neon clock cleverly encased in a Lucite beer label behind the bar. It was almost one o’clock in the morning. She had to be back at the institute in less than six hours.

  She allowed herself a heavy sigh. Cole Sinclair, when she’d finally found him, was even more dangerous than she could have possibly imagined. Dark, lethal, ruthless. Those were the words that had come to mind when she’d first spotted the solitary figure sitting by the stage. She hadn’t exactly known what to expect. A musician who happened to be a retired smuggler? Or a renegade who happened to play the sax? One glance at him—from his long hair, all loose and wild, the same black shade as the stubble shadowing his razor-edge jaw, to the latent power of the rangy physique sprawled with deceptive laziness in the small chair—and she’d known she’d found her man. Her man.

  She shivered as she recalled the way he’d raked his midnight gaze over her, his manner as casual and lazy as his posture. But she knew he hadn’t missed a thing. And he had an attitude that suggested he’d as soon shoot her as talk.

  She’d reminded herself that she’d counted on him having those very traits. What she hadn’t counted on was the sensual impact that particular package could have when combined in the form of Cole Sinclair. She preferred safe and secure. Dark and dangerous never turned her on. “Never say never,” she muttered ruefully.

  She was startled from her thoughts by the sound of a microphone being adjusted. She looked up to see Cole slide onto a wooden stool and drop a heavy leather strap over his head and shoulder. Her breath caught in her throat, and she found herself watching helplessly as his big hands made adjustments to the burnished sax and fiddled with the mouthpiece. She wished fervently she’d ordered a drink. Her throat was suddenly parched.

  He looked even more forbidding two feet higher off the ground. A cynical smile lit the corners of her mouth. He probably enjoyed making people look up to him. He leaned over and blew into the microphone. Lord, but the man even breathed with raw sex appeal.

  “Evenin’,” he muttered. His gaze stayed focused on his fingers, which rubbed back and forth over the keys of the sax. He didn’t seem to care what the audience, such as it was, thought. And a quick scan of the motley crowd told her the feeling was apparently mutual. Was he that bad a musician?

  Kira felt the tension coil tighter in her stomach as the moment of silence stretched out. Then he wet his lips and inserted the mouthpiece. She gripped the edge of the table. It surprised her how badly she wanted to hear him play.

  Leave, her brain commanded. Just get up and walk out.

  Two things kept her in that wobbly vinyl chair.

  The first was the realization that she had no alternative. Without Cole, P.J. was as good as dead, and everything she’d worked so hard to achieve would come to an end. But the second reason was even more compelling.

  He began to play.

  For the next twenty minutes Kira listened to him empty his heart and soul into that sax. She hadn’t thought he had that much of either to give. Raw and vital, his music shocked her with its depth and power. He tugged emotions from so deep inside of her, she wasn’t aware she had them. His compelling eyes were hidden behind tightly closed eyelids fringed with thick black lashes, his face contorted as much with emotion as with the effort of forcing air into the sax. Her throat tightened as she heard the unspoken words to his music play clearly in her head. Words expressing unbearable pain and gut-wrenching sorrow. She’d never felt so connected to someone, as if he alone understood what it had been like for her to suffer such a devastating loss.

  She squeezed her eyes shut, as if removing him from sight would erase the bond that his music forged with her. The last note hung in the air for what seemed like eternity.

  When Kira managed to fight the burning sensation in her eyes long enough to chance looking at him without tears spilling down her cheeks, he was gone.

  No one clapped or even seemed to notice he’d played, but she didn’t care. She was too busy scanning the room, hoping to see his shaggy black head and broad shoulders pop through the crowd. But he was nowhere to be found. Surely he would come back to his table. She glanced toward the speaker where she’d spied his sax case earlier.

  It was gone.

  The strength she’d been fighting to sustain for the last several hours finally took their toll, and she let her head drop to rest in her folded arms.

  How could she have become so caught up in his music that she’d forgotten her reason for being here? P.J. was out there somewhere, alone, scared, and disoriented. Her whole program was ready to self-destruct, and she’d spent the last of her energy fighting back tears over the haunting pain expressed in an outlaw’s music.

  No! She couldn’t let Cole Sinclair just walk a
way. She pushed her head off her arms, determination flowing through her again.

  She forced her tired brain to think logically. Repo had to have hired Sinclair. He would know where Cole lived. She’d simply harangue him until he told her, or, worst case, she’d pay the man for the information. She mentally calculated how much cash she was carrying, then glanced behind the bar at the imposing dark-skinned bartender. She’d seen him respond earlier when someone had shouted, “Repo.” He more closely resembled the bikers on the other side of the bar than an entrepreneur. She pushed her chair back. It was either face Repo or lose P.J. forever.

  Not much of a choice, but in the end, an easy one.

  She walked as nonchalantly to the bar as she could, choosing a spot in the rear corner where the lone waitress—when she could be bothered—picked up her drinks. She’d purposely picked it in hopes that she wouldn’t attract anyone’s attention other than Repo’s.

  She quickly found out she was wrong.

  TWO

  Her first hint was the foul smell of old whiskey being breathed against her cheek. Her second clue was the iguana.

  “Hey.”

  She swallowed hard. A chirping sound reached her ears, and she steadfastly ignored it. But morbid curiosity being what it was, she darted a quick peek from the corner of her eye. Her lunch rose up in her throat. The man next to her had just dangled a live cricket over the darting tongue of a two-foot-long iguana presently making itself right at home on top of the bar.

  “Buy you a beer?”

  She’d avoided him earlier but knew her luck had just run out. Struggling to maintain a calm facade, she suddenly realized that Iguana Man, as the tattoo on his neck proudly proclaimed him to be, might be able to answer a few questions about Cole.

  “No, thank you,” she said, proud of her polite tone.

  “Cricket?” With yellowed fingertips the man dangled the shiny creature directly in front of Kira’s mouth.

  She couldn’t hide her revulsion and had to clutch the bar to keep from screaming. She wasn’t afraid of insects; at least as long as she didn’t have to get up close and personal with one. Realizing he was enjoying her reaction, she ground her teeth into a smile. “Thanks, but I’m trying to cut down. Aren’t they supposed to be plant-eaters, anyway?”

  The man hooted, revealing rotting brown teeth—what there were of them—almost as nauseating as the idea of crickets for bar munchies. Summoning her control, she turned to him, but her question about Cole died on her lips when he shoved the iguana in her face.

  “This here’s Elvis. And he don’t eat no sissy food. I trained him to like his meals alive and kicking … like me.” The man cackled, the sound chillingly unbalanced. “Give the lady a kiss.”

  On command, the iguana’s serpentine tongue darted out and lashed the corner of her mouth. That did it. She shoved it away, stumbling off of her stool. “Get that … that thing, out of my face!”

  She instantly realized her mistake.

  Iguana Man turned on her, his tiny brown eyes narrowing further in his fury. “Nobody insults Elvis.”

  He scooped up his pet, then reached out and snagged her arm as neatly as Elvis had the cricket. He dragged her from the bar, his grip amazingly strong for such a skinny man.

  “Stop! I’m sorry. Let me go!”

  He kicked a few chairs out of the way in front of the ancient jukebox and yanked her arm hard enough to make her stumble against him. She had to force herself not to gag. What had she gotten herself into? she thought dazedly. It wasn’t until he pushed her head against his foul-smelling shirt that she collected her wits enough to struggle.

  “Yeah, baby, rub on me.” He laughed coarsely and clamped her even tighter against his bony chest. He’d draped the iguana around her neck, the beast’s tongue darting repeatedly in front of her face.

  It became too much. She might have lost control of her fate where P.J. or the institute were concerned, but she damn well didn’t have to endure another second of this lunatic and his reptilian sidekick pawing and licking at her.

  She shifted her weight onto one foot as much as possible, then yanked her other knee up as hard as she could. It connected with air. How had she missed? In the next instant Iguana Man’s arms spun away from her, sending her reeling across a nearby table. She sprawled across a half-full ashtray and some wadded-up napkins. She had no idea what had happened to Elvis. All thoughts of the reptile’s fate fled when she heard a low growl followed by the sickening thud of flesh connecting with flesh. Someone groaned, and she managed to roll over in time to see her dance partner sink to the floor in a boneless heap.

  She barely had time to absorb the scene before she found her arm again imprisoned in an iron fist. Reacting on instinct, she lashed out with her free hand, intending to claw and scratch her way out of there if necessary. A big fist trapped her hand in midswing, and she was hauled up against a chest that was neither foul smelling nor grimy. In fact, it was warm and hard and felt amazingly reassuring, like a safe port in a storm that had become suddenly violent.

  Her sigh of relief quickly became a gasp of shock as she looked up into the gleaming black eyes of Cole Sinclair. She had to wonder if she hadn’t just jumped from a sinking ship into the jaws of a hungry shark.

  “I guess we do this the hard way,” he said against her ear. “I’m going to let go of your hand, then we’re going to walk out of here. Don’t fight me. Don’t even think about running away.” He was so close, she could feel the tension in his jaw as clearly as she could see it. “And whatever you do, sweet lips,” he whispered against her ear, “don’t scream for help. Because I’m it.”

  His breath was hot on her neck, and she felt a strange sensation attack her knees, turning them to the consistency of overcooked pasta. She told herself it was a normal reaction to being threatened. He dropped the hand in his fist and quickly pushed his fingers through hers, gripping her hand just hard enough to control her direction. He pushed through the crowd, pulling her along behind him. She stumbled, and he immediately stopped, which resulted in her rushing right up against his back. And his backside. A moan escaped her lips that she didn’t even attempt to interpret.

  “You can faint when we get outside,” he tossed over his shoulder. “Let’s move.” He tugged her tightly against him and pushed on before she could come up with a suitable retort.

  Focusing on keeping her balance, she only dimly registered the groan that came from the floor behind her. Cole must have heard it because he turned abruptly, tucking her against his chest as if it were the most natural thing in the world. More likely he was just trying to see over her head. She forced her attention to the events about to unfold behind her, and not how pleasant and secure she felt with her face squashed against his very firm chest.

  “Don’t try it, Iggy,” he warned, his voice loud enough and hard enough to be heard over the blasting music.

  “Sinclair, you son of a bi—”

  Cole didn’t wait to hear the verdict on his parentage; he just scooped her up in his arms and kicked open the door to the parking lot. He crossed the alley to the small lot where she’d parked her car. He knew it was hers. She was the only person presently at Repo’s whose mode of transportation would have more than two wheels.

  Kira had barely realized her predicament when he released her legs, letting her feet drop to the sandy lot. His arm behind her waist was the only thing that kept her from falling in a heap on his boots.

  Instinct told her she was safe, at least from the leather-clad moron in the bar, but fatigue made it difficult to curb her temper at Cole’s cavalier treatment of her. So what if he’d probably saved her life? That was no excuse to manhandle her out of there like a sack of potatoes.

  As she pulled away from him she noticed the white ashes smeared across his black T-shirt. She looked down at herself. “Yuck,” she muttered, and ineffectually brushed at the mess on her jacket. The ground-in ashtray scum only fired her anger, and she lifted her chin, intending to give him a piece of her m
ind. Her defiant chin became an instant captive of his large hand.

  He pushed his face close to hers until they were almost nose-to-nose and growled so fiercely, she took a tiny step back, honestly considering running back into the bar.

  “Do you have a death wish?”

  Her eyes widened as he exerted enough pressure on her chin to turn it back and forth in a negative motion.

  “Good. But I gotta tell you, for someone with brains enough to run a school, you sure as hell pull some dumb stunts. I swear I’m almost tempted to send you back to Iggy.”

  She yanked her chin from his hand and backed up another step. “No! Don’t. Thank you for your help. I truly do appreciate it. And don’t worry, nothing could make me go back in that place.”

  If her fervent response mollified him, she couldn’t tell by looking at him. His chest was moving visibly, though he wasn’t short of breath. And he was staring at her in a way that was starting to make her very uncomfortable. She backed up another step until her rear end bumped against her car. Nervously stuffing her hands in the pockets of her windbreaker, she encountered her keys and a crumpled piece of paper that she’d used to scribble down the list of bars.

  She knew she’d been given another opportunity to plead her case, but it was hard to think coherently with him glaring at her like that. She fought the urge to tear her gaze from his to collect her wits, afraid if she even blinked, he’d disappear again.

  “Your music is incredible,” she blurted, nerves making her say the first thing she could think of. Apparently that caught him off guard, because for a split second, he forgot to glare at her. Taking this as a good sign, she pursued the unlikely conversational gambit. “You really surprised me,” she said honestly. Afraid she’d insulted him, she added, “I don’t think I’ve ever been so … so …” She lost her train of thought at the sudden flash of interest that blinked out of his midnight eyes before his expression once again became a shuttered mask.