Lola hated it that her eyes were tearing up over the way Fletch had jerked her strings, but dammit she’d loved the guy! Or thought she did.
“Well, I made it up. He—he left me that note you’re holding, saying he—he’s found a woman with a seaside villa—and—well, I got pissed off and threw his clothes out of the drawers!”
Rio stopped fidgeting with the note. “So you went down to the gangplank area, to see if you could chase after him?” Dressed like that? he almost added.
Lola sighed, yanking the lapels of her robe together. “I was so—so irked that he’d taken off with somebody, when we were supposed to get…married tomorrow….”
“I’m so sorry.”
It was the merest whisper, yet it carried the weight of his concern: the key that opened the innermost room of her heart. A room Dennis had never known, or cared, how to reach. Lola slumped, letting her hair fall like a curtain so DeSilva wouldn’t see how ugly her face got when she bawled.
“Please excuse me, I—”
“There is no excuse for the shabby way he’s treated you,” Rio stated, more fervently than he had a right to. Lola couldn’t know yet just how true that was. Every nerve ending in his body warned him to step away, to get himself out of her room and out from under her spell while there was still time.
Her shoulders shuddered pathetically when she tried not to cry. To keep from pulling her into his arms, Rio skimmed the note.
—found my true soul mate—someone who won’t—boss me around—have the last word—get better acquainted at her seaside villa—
The lying bastard deserved to rot in jail for this! DeSilva looked up from the note before Lola could catch him reading it, and took inspiration from the small safe in the open closet.
“Is his passport—any sort of identification—still here?” he asked in his most official-sounding voice. “It will help the authorities process him. Or help you, if you need to—what’s wrong, Lola?”
She opened the safe, surprised it hadn’t been locked, and then frantically yanked the drawers open below it.
“My cell phone’s gone! I put it in this top drawer when I came back to take my—and my purse!”
My Camels! The bastard took my only pack of—
She scanned the room, her gaze raking the top of the TV, the corner desk and its open shelves, the glass-top coffee table, and the upholstered love seat. “I brought it back from shopping onshore, after lunch, and I put it—if that bastard took—he’s got my credit cards! My checkbook’s in there—and so is my passport!”
Fletch knew damn well I’d get crazy if he took my security smokes!
Rio’s jaw clenched as he watched her desperately search every inch of the stateroom, her expression growing more alarmed by the second. As well it should! Here on board her SeaKey was all she needed, but stepping ashore in any Caribbean port without identification was risky. Not to mention the predicament it would put her in when she went through Customs on her way home.
“Why on earth did he have to take my—it’s not like he’s hurting for money, but God! My cell had all my clients’ numbers, and my appointments, and—”
Lola stopped rummaging around the bed’s comforter and pillows, engulfed in a deep chill. Ah, jeez, now she was shaking like a junkie, just at the thought that he stole her—
“What is it? What else has he taken?” Rio stepped toward her, determined not to touch her because just recalling her soft skin and the fresh scent of that bare body had him reeling.
“Cigarettes,” she finally mewed. Then she screwed up her face, which was already blotchy from crying. “I—I quit, dammit! For good this time! But I carried around one single pack of Camels, still wrapped. With strapping tape around it to remind me not to open them, no matter how jittery and desperate and bitchy I got!”
Lola cast another miserable, futile glance around the ransacked room. “I had them in my purse this morning, when we were shopping onshore!” she rasped. “He must’ve—”
Her insides twisted into a tight knot. She held herself, knowing it made her look like a nympho going into withdrawal, but things were suddenly a whole lot worse than Dennis’s note had led her to believe. What he’d said about his new soul mate was humiliating enough, but what he hadn’t said was that he’d ripped her off, big time, when he jilted her!
“After we got back on board, he went to the casino while I took a shower,” she breathed, shaking her head forlornly. “He had to’ve come to the room…figuring I wouldn’t hear him with the water running. And it matches up with the time that security guy at the gangplank gave me.”
Rio sighed heavily. Gave in to the urge to touch her, just letting his hands rest on her shoulders to reassure her.
She was shaking like a scared rabbit. Frightened out of her mind, on top of being upset because the man she was to marry had backed out on her so crassly. Betrayed her in ways they had yet to discover, if he had access to her clients and her plastic.
“We’d better report this immediately,” he suggested.
Lola nodded, wanting to cry and vomit and curl up in a ball. Hoping someone would tell her this mess had been straightened out—that Fletch had played one of his colossal jokes on her, and was on his way upstairs now to smooth things over.
But that wasn’t going to happen, was it? Fletch had never truly been hers, and she was paying now for refusing to see that.
“You’re right,” she sighed. “Let’s go.”
3
“This is Clive Kingsley, our concierge,” Rio said as he escorted Lola behind a counter and into a small, colorful office.
The man at the glossy walnut desk, stood up with a debonair grin. “So pleased to be of service! And how may I assist you, Miss—”
“Miss Wright has just discovered that her purse, cell phone, and cruise documents are gone,” the security agent filled him in. “Not to mention her passport. And we suspect her fiancé—”
“Ex-fiancé,” Lola muttered.
“—Dennis Fletcher, has taken them ashore and not returned to the ship,” DeSilva finished pointedly.
“Well, isn’t that nasty?” Kingsley exclaimed with a horrified expression.
His face softened when he looked at her, and the way he’d said nah-sty, with a British accent that flowed like hot fudge, would’ve sounded utterly delicious if she weren’t in such a pinch.
“But rest assured, Ms. Wright, we will get to the bottom of this! Mr. DeSilva here is the best security man sailing today, and the Aphrodite is equipped with cutting-edge technology.”
“Perhaps you could file the report and notify the credit card offices of this theft,” the agent went on, “while I check out a few other details.”
“Most certainly,” Kingsley said with a crisp nod. “Put out my sign as you leave, please, so we’ll have no interruptions. This is far more important than passengers wanting to book shore excursions or sign up for ballroom dance lessons. Shall we?”
The concierge, so dapper in his navy blue suit, gestured toward a doorway behind her. Feeling indecently underdressed, Lola preceded him into a cozy little sanctum decorated in brilliant jewel tones, where a flat-screen computer hummed quietly.
“Now, sit yourself down, my dear, and we’ll get you squared away so quickly you’ll still catch the captain’s champagne reception before dinner. Just let me bring up your account…and you’re in which stateroom again, please?”
“7010.