Luis frowned. He hadn’t thought of that. Yet if he didn’t deliver...no, he had to. He refused to look weak and ineffectual in front of Shontelle Wright. There had to be a way.
“Your Australian friend...he might get through, being a foreigner,” Ramon suggested. “Since he is prepared to risk his tour group in trying to get out of La Paz, tell him to come to the depot and take the bus himself. It will be fully fuelled, ready to go.”
It made sense, but it wasn’t the deal he’d agreed to with Shontelle. Her words, not his, he reasoned. He didn’t have to toe her line. The essence of the deal was the same. The bus would be available for Alan to take. That was all his erstwhile friend had requested.
“Someone will be at the depot to hand over the bus?” he asked.
“Curfew lifts at six. I’ll have a man at the gates at six-thirty.”
“Thank you, Ramon.”
“Your friend is a fool, Luis.”
“His choice.”
“It’s our bus. This could bring trouble kicking back to us.”
“I’ll wear it. You are simply following my orders, Ramon.”
“As you wish.”
Luis slowly lowered the receiver, his mind engaged in hard reappraisal. This whole enterprise was stupid, inviting trouble. Alan’s tour group was safe at their hotel. What was another week or two out of their lives? Better locked away in luxury than dead. It was just as stupid for him to get involved, putting the Martinez reputation for finely balanced political sense on the line.
For what?
A woman who had used him...a woman worth nothing!
Madness to have been tempted into wreaking some sweet vengeance. It was beneath him. He should dismiss her from his suite right now, send her off with a bitter sense of failure. That was vengeance enough.
He turned to do it.
She stood framed by the blackness of the night beyond the window, the twinkling stars of light from the city surrounding her, lending her an air of etherial mystery. Her long hair gleamed like a stream of moonlight and her golden skin glowed, the perfect foil for eyes that shone like emeralds. Her full lips were slightly apart, as he’d left them, waiting it seemed for another kiss, insidiously beckoning him.
He forced his gaze down the long graceful line of her neck to the blood-red T-shirt. She had no heart, he told himself. No heart. But the lush softness of her breasts moved as though to the beat of one, a beat that tugged on him with inexorable and tormenting strength.
How was it possible, he wondered, to feel such desire for a woman...yet hate her with equal ferocity?
“Is the bus assured for tomorrow morning?” she asked, her voice strained.
The conviction swept into Luis’ mind. This was no fun for her. Which was only right and just. She’d had her fun last time. It was his turn tonight. He could send her away right now, defeated, but what satisfaction was there in that? He wanted—needed—the same physical satisfaction she had taken from him, over and over again.
“Yes,” he said. “You’ll get the bus.”
Which put their deal on the line.
Luis watched her take that in, and all it implied. Her gaze dropped from the hard challenge in his. Her hands interlocked in front of her waist, as though testing how much strength she had, fingers flexing...and he craved their touch on him again. Her breasts and shoulders lifted slightly as she drew in a deep breath. He found himself holding his own breath, waiting for her decision, willing her to concede to him, his whole body focusing energy on her, determined on drawing her into the ring with him.
She spoke, still with her eyes downcast. “If you have a wife, Luis, this is a rotten game you’re playing and I won’t be a party to it.”
Luis clenched his teeth. It was because of her he didn’t have a wife, but he’d rot in hell before she dragged that admission from him.
“If I had a wife, you would have had no access to me, Shontelle,” he stated bitingly.
Her lashes slowly lifted, her eyes meeting his with an oddly poignant expression of irony. He caught a sense of fatalism, yet there was no resignation to defeat in it, more a feeling of being ready to ride whatever outcome ensued from the situation. It disturbed him. It wasn’t what he expected from her. Not what he wanted, either.
“What time should I tell Alan the bus will be at our hotel?” she asked. “He’ll want to have the tour group ready to go.”
The hotel! It was on the tip of his tongue to state that Alan would have to collect the bus from the depot. A surge of pride stopped him. If he didn’t win his ground with this woman, he would always feel whipped by her. Which was totally intolerable. No way would he give Shontelle Wright any cause to scorn him again.
It might be sheer madness to risk his own skin to balance the scales, madness to risk blotting the Martinez reputation for steering clear of trouble, but he would get the damned bus himself rather than give Shontelle a loophole out of this deal. She had to be his for this one night. Somehow it was a need that drove to the very core of his manhood.
“Seven o’clock,” he answered tersely. “Given that it’s not stopped by the military. That I cannot control.”
A sigh whispered from her lips. She nodded acceptance. “Fair enough! I’ll ring Alan now.”
Done!
Yet Luis’ triumph had a bittersweet taste. She had wrung more from him than she was worth. But she would pay, he promised himself. He would strip her of every bit of power she had over him before dawn came. Then he would be free of her. Finally free of her.
CHAPTER FIVE
SHONTELLE tried desperately to focus her mind on how to tell Alan she was spending the night with the man who’d stolen her heart two years ago and hadn’t valued it...a man who’d used her for pleasure...and when she’d taken the pleasure away, had vindictively taken out his displeasure on her brother. There was simply no way Alan was going to understand.
One more night...
With any luck she should at least win something from this encounter. It would either set her free of Luis Angel Martinez...or...give her hope of something more from him, more than she had believed possible.
He wanted her...perhaps as badly as she wanted him. It was what she was gambling on. Plus the fact he hadn’t married. The Gallardo heiress hadn’t got him. And maybe—just maybe—Elvira Rosa Martinez didn’t know her son as well as she thought she did.
“The telephone is free for you to use,” Luis dryly reminded her, gesturing to it with a casual grace that belied any tension on his part over her decision to stay.
He looked so arrogantly sure of himself.
But he did want her.
Shontelle pushed her legs into action and a wry smile onto her mouth. “This is not going to be an easy call.”
He returned a derisive look. “Did you think it was easy, looking like a fool for ordering a bus out in this volatile climate?”
He had a point.
Both of them fools.
For some reason, that thought boosted Shontelle’s morale.
Luis did not move away from the telephone to let her speak privately to Alan. He propped himself against the edge of the writing desk, apparently intent on hearing every word. She had no choice but to stand