“That was it-the beginning of Yancy Lavigne, fashion reporter. Again, it came at me faster than I knew how to deal with it. Before I knew it, I’d entered this…this whole new world, filled with beautiful, glamorous, rich, exciting, famous people. I was talking to people whose faces everyone in the world knows-and getting paid for it. Me-poor, homely, awkward Mary Yancy from Nowheresville. It was like some kind of drug, I guess. Intoxicating. And, like drugs do, it really messed up my head. Because the more I was around that world, the more I wanted it for myself-not just to report on, but to
She jumped up from the table and paced restlessly to the window, rubbing at her upper arms. Roan shoved back his chair so he could watch her, his belly clenching with the urge to jump up, drag her away from those windows. Using all his self-control to keep his butt in his chair, he told himself to relax.
Her soft voice drifted back to him; he had to strain to hear it. “I’m not proud of this. But…I knew I’d never be able to enter that world on my own, so I thought-I decided I could marry into it.” She gave her head a little toss that almost…almost made him smile. “I’d never had any trouble attracting men-I just figured I needed to go where I could attract the right kind of man. Someone rich. Maybe even famous.”
“Didn’t you meet enough of that kind on the job?”
She threw him another one of her lopsided little smiles. “Oh, sure, but I was the
“Anyway, I decided on this resort down in Florida-new, very hip, very posh, a very hot destination for the rich and famous. I saved every penny I could scrape up, then I took a couple of weeks vacation time, and off I went- chasing the rainbow. Or a fairy tale, I guess. You know-Prince Charming.”
She turned and came back to the table. Sat down and faced him again, back straight, no longer smiling, the way she’d faced him in his interrogation room…face pale, eyes cold and bleak. It was hard, seeing her that way. Remembering that evening left him with a sour, heavy feeling in his belly.
“And, I found him,” she said. “At least, I thought I had. Diego DelRey was…everything I’d hoped for…dreamed of. He was handsome and charming, of course-very sweet, really, like a little boy, sometimes. A spoiled little boy. He was incredibly rich-or his family was. They actually owned the resort, and Diego managed it for the family. At the time, that’s all I knew about Diego-that he was from some South American country, well-known and liked in the world of the rich, famous and beautiful people. And very, very rich. That, and the fact that he was crazy in love with me.” She paused to glare at him. “And I don’t care who you are,
“Fine with me,” Roan growled, in complete agreement with her on that point, for reasons that had nothing to do with him being sheriff. He cleared his throat-not that it helped much. “Just one question, though. Were you in love with him?”
She smiled, a little sadly. “I wanted to be. You have no idea how much I wanted to be. At the end of my two weeks, when he begged me to stay, asked me to marry him, I said yes. He gave me a hugely expensive ring, and took me to his family’s estate, on this private island.” Her smile vanished-as suddenly as if she’d put her foot down and discovered the ground wasn’t there. So suddenly, Roan had to fight an urge to reach for her. She gulped coffee. “Then…things changed.”
“Changed? How so?” He leaned forward, focused on her, his hands clasped on the table in front of him. Heart quickening.
She waved a hand…frowned. “Oh…it’s hard to remember now. Hard to put my finger on what it was, at first. The atmosphere just felt…wrong. Diego’s father-they called him Senor-and his uncle…they were nice enough to me, I guess, but for some reason they scared me. Maybe it was their eyes…they seemed so hard. The fact that they never smiled. And there were all these dangerous-looking men around-I know they carried guns, I’d seen them-and everywhere I went, one of them seemed to be right there, watching me. I wasn’t allowed to leave the island unless Diego was with me-I didn’t mind that so much; after all, he was my fiance, I didn’t have any reason to go places without him. But then…they wouldn’t let me use the phone, not even to call Joy. I didn’t understand that. I knew she’d be worried about me when I didn’t come home after my vacation. She’d even given me a prepaid phone card to use to call her.” A smile flickered. “That was the way she was.
“Anyway, I began to realize I was pretty much a prisoner on that island. Diego tried to tell me it was just temporary, that the family was getting ready to close down the estate and leave for their home country-just for the summer, he said, and so I’d have a chance to meet the rest of his family. He told me we’d be married down there. I told him I wanted Joy to be there-to be my maid of honor. He promised me that once we got to his family home, I could call Joy and have her come for a visit. I really missed her-and that was another thing; there weren’t any other women on the island-except Anita, the housekeeper.” Her throat rippled, and she continued in a whisper, “She was nice to me. I liked her. She-”
“She was the one they killed-the DelReys?”
Mary nodded. She spoke rapidly, trying to get through it. Her voice shook. “And her husband, Eduardo. He took care of the grounds. They-I think they killed them just to cover their tracks. As if they were
“I didn’t know any of that at the time, of course, except…I knew Anita and Eduardo were unconscious, because I’d seen them-or maybe they were already dead. Anyway, that was when I understood, finally, who-and what-the DelReys were. All I could think about was how I was going to get away from them. How to keep them from getting suspicious of me. I knew they wouldn’t hesitate to kill me too, no matter how Diego felt about me.”
Her eyes focused on something far away, she picked up her coffee cup and took another thoughtless gulp. He could hear her swallow. “That evening a helicopter came for us-all of us. We were flying away in it when the house blew up-the whole island was exploding. It looked like a movie. Senor DelRey said the feds were responsible for it. Meanwhile, I was trying to act like I was so crazy in love with Diego I didn’t care about anything else. Flying away in that helicopter…watching the fire, and the explosions…knowing Anita and Eduardo were down there-” Her voice rose to a squeak. “I didn’t know Joy was there, too-on the island. She’d come looking for me. She was there-she almost got killed-because of
“Easy…” Roan gave up fighting it and reached for her hand.
Chapter 12
His hand might have been the head of a rattlesnake, from the way she shied back from it.
“Mary,” he said in a gravelly voice, “You weren’t responsible for your friend-”
“Yes-yes, I was.” She was on her feet again, pacing the small sunlit room and throwing back quick, furious glances. “Joy came looking for me. She came because I hadn’t called, and then I wasn’t on the plane, and she was worried about me. She came because she loved me. And when she knew I was in trouble, she risked her life for me. Not just then, on the island, but later.” She paused, one hand gripping the back of a chair, the other brushing at her cheeks and nose. “See, the helicopter took us first to one of the DelReys’ manufacturing plants-there was an air strip there, and they were waiting for their plane to come and fly us out of the country. They didn’t know the feds had them under surveillance all the time, that they were just waiting for the plane to land before moving in and arresting everybody. But what the feds didn’t know was that I was there, too. They thought-”
“I got some of this from Cavanaugh,” Roan said in a soothing tone. “The feds had found your purse with the housekeeper’s charred body and assumed you’d been killed in the explosions and fire.”
“But Joy
