She ignored the question. “Why are you calling?”
“To tell you that chasing me down won’t do you a bit of good. I’m safe.”
“In the Caymans?” she asked.
From the other room she heard Rafe groan. She realized she had just given away their tactical advantage in finding Bobby.
“Why would you think I’m in the Caymans?” Bobby asked suspiciously. “You’ve got someone following me, haven’t you?”
“Well, what did you expect?” she retorted, losing patience with him, with all of it. “You took off with the company money, ripped off our suppliers and investors. Of course you’re being followed. If you have a grain of sense left in that pea brain of yours, you’ll come home on your own and face the music before this gets any worse.”
“It can’t get any worse,” he said. “Not back there, anyway. Down here I can live like a king.”
She figured that was the final admission that they’d guessed right about where he was.
“Only if you can ignore your conscience,” she said.
He laughed at that. “Not a problem.”
“Just tell me one thing,” she said. “Why did you do it? I thought we were friends.”
“We were, doll. But friendship has its limits. In the end you have to look out for number one.”
“That’s a terrible way to live.”
“No, that’s the only way to live. Survival,” he said succinctly. “That’s what it’s all about. Now, do me a favor.”
“What? After everything you’ve done, you expect me to do you a favor?”
“Let’s just say it’s in your own best interests.”
“Why is that?”
“If you call off whoever’s tailing me, then I’ll send you a little something to help pay off the debts. If business is still booming, you ought to be able to survive this little bump in the road. One day you might even thank me for turning a thriving business over to you.”
“And if I don’t?”
“You won’t get a dime, and whoever shows up looking for me will run into some serious trouble down here. Gotta go, girl. You take care of yourself,” he said, then laughed. “And I mean that sincerely. Nobody else will do it for you.”
He hung up before she could respond. She was trembling when Rafe appeared and took the receiver from her hand. He replaced it, then took her in his arms.
“Are you okay? Come back to bed.”
She went with him. “He threatened to do something to your investigator.” She stared at Rafe, still struggling with shock at Bobby’s cool demeanor and menacing threat. “He meant it, too. I could hear it in his voice. You need to call your man back.”
“Flynn can take care of himself. He’s dealt with bigger threats than Rinaldi. Did he confirm that he’s in the Caymans?”
She nodded. “I had no idea he could be so cold, that he could be so totally self-involved.”
“What else did he say?”
“That if I called off whoever was tailing him, he’d send me money to pay off some of the debts. He sounded as if that were such a magnanimous gesture on his part. He owes those people. He owes me.”
Rafe chuckled.
“What’s so damned funny?”
“It’s good to see you getting angry,” he said.
“I’ve been angry,” she retorted.
“But not at Bobby,” he suggested mildly.
“Of course I’ve been mad at Bobby,” she said, confused by the suggestion.
Rafe shook his head. “Most of the time you’ve been mad at me.”
She started to argue, then realized he was right. She’d been furious at Rafe for following her to Wyoming, for being suspicious of her, when it was Bobby who’d put her in that position.
She hadn’t wanted to be mad at Bobby. She’d wanted to understand why her friend had done something so irresponsible, so criminal. She’d been upset by Rafe’s distrust, because a part of her recognized that she should have been more suspicious of Bobby from the beginning. She’d seen how glib he could be, how little he took seriously. Maybe she should even have seen all of this coming.
“I was wrong,” she said eventually. “You had no choice but to come after me, to keep an eye on me. I used terrible judgment, about Bobby, about running away, about everything.”
He tucked a finger under her chin. “Hey, don’t be so hard on yourself. The man’s a con artist. He took you in, the same as he did everyone else.”
Rafe’s reassurances didn’t soothe her at all. The only thing that helped when her mind was whirling was work. She left the warmth of Rafe’s bed.
“I have to go.”
“Where?”
“To Tony’s. If you need me, you’ll find me there.”
“In the middle of the night?”
She shrugged as if the hour were unimportant. “I’ll get some baking done for tomorrow.”
To her relief, beyond that initial token protest, he didn’t try to stop her.
Funny, she thought, as she raced through her shower, dressed and went to work. She was beginning to think that maybe Rafe understood her better after a few weeks than she understood herself after twenty-eight years.
Chapter Thirteen
“So, boss, are you ever coming back here?” Lydia inquired, her voice threaded with that superior amusement that Rafe found so annoying. “Not that I’m complaining, mind you. It’s been really, really peaceful with you away, but the partners are beginning to ask whether you still work here. Your billable hours lately are the pits.”
“Not so,” Rafe protested, his gaze drifting to the bed with its tangle of sheets. Gina had left it far too soon last night, though after her conversation with Rinaldi, Rafe had understood her need to be alone, to bury herself in the kind of work that gave her solace.
“Then where are your billing records?” Lydia asked, snapping his attention back to the harsh reality of dollars and cents that for years now had controlled way too much of how he spent his time.
“I’ll pull them together and fax them later today.”
“They were due yesterday,” she pointed out. “You’re never late. Or at least you never were before you found a distraction like Gina Petrillo.”
“I
