Page 63 of South Beach Bodyguards

Besides, I knew who it was—Benito’s men, obviously. They had Olivia in a boat and they were off before I could get two feet in the direction of the house. I tried to call Ricardo but he didn’t answer, most likely still pissed at me for the whole lounge chair incident. Jogging, I made my way through his house to his office, where he had an entire humidor in an adjacent room. He had a cigar out and was smoking it, feet up on his desk.

“You’re fired,” he said.

“Yeah, I figured as much.” That didn’t interest me. “But before you go off on me, Eva’s sister just got kidnapped.”

“Where the fuck is my dog?” he demanded.

Shit. I’d forgotten about the dog. “She’s in the pool house. She’s completely safe.”

“Go get my damned dog and then get the hell out of my house. My wife is very upset that you took advantage of her sister.” Ricardo was wearing a black turtleneck. Who wore a turtleneck in Miami in November? Or a turtleneck at all? He took a pull on his cigar.

I stood my ground. “Did you hear me? Olivia was kidnapped.”

“That is not what I saw on the security camera.”

God, he was so frustrating. Did he think I was making this shit up? “This was after that.”

He dropped his feet to the floor and opened his desk drawer. I was already reaching for my gun, but my shoulder injury had my reflexes slower than normal. He had his gun pointing at me before I could raise my arm with mine. “Get. My. Dog.”

If there was ever any doubt that Ricardo was an asshole it was gone now. He was just going to ignore that Olivia had been snatched by his drug dealer buddy’s henchmen. He seriously thought I was lying.

“Get her yourself.” I dropped my hand without drawing my weapon, confident that Ricardo wouldn’t shoot. “And for the record, I hit on Olivia because I actually thought she was Eva. I wanted to bang your wife in your own house.”

It would have been a great parting line except that Ricardo gave a snort. “That would have been a waste of your time then. My wife has a lot of wonderful qualities, but being good in bed is not one of them.”

I really just wanted to shoot him, but couldn’t justify wasting the bullet. “Maybe she just needs a better partner.”

Spinning on my heel, I left, intent on paying a visit to my old buddy Benito.

three

I wasn’t cut out for this life. I may have just spent the afternoon wishing my life back in Coral Gables was a wee bit more exciting, but after this night, I decided I was never going to complain about dull again. A boat ride at ten pm would have been fun, but considering I had my hands tied behind my back with my own bathrobe tie, the circumstances were less than ideal. I couldn’t even question what the hell was going on because the engine was too loud and neither of the two men present were even looking at me. Which was good, because the way they had me tied caused my breasts to jut forward, escaping the collar of the robe. I was dangerously close to a nip slip.

Sniffling, I kept blinking as my hair repeatedly whipped across my face, poking me in the eye and sticking to my lip. My butt and thigh hurt from my hard landing on the fiberglass seat. I would have given everything I owned for a pair of underwear.

This was all Wester’s fault. If he hadn’t seduced me, I wouldn’t have hid in the pool house. I would have been kidnapped right off the pool deck, where there were lights and cameras and Ricardo’s men would have seen it go down and they would have saved me from whatever was about to happen. So really this was totally his fault for being so ridiculously good-looking and for saying “I want to kiss you.” God, what a line. And I had totally fallen for it.

Now I was on a boat speeding who the hell knew where and I was trying to be optimistic. They wouldn’t kill me. I didn’t think. But then again, I had no idea why they had kidnapped me, so there was so telling. I shivered from the thought and the cool air. The ride was mercifully quick and we were pulling up to the dock of a private home within fifteen minutes. I had no sense of where we were exactly, though downtown Miami was behind us. Which told me exactly nothing. All the islands were in the bay. We could be at any one of them. I wished I had put my cell phone in the pocket of the robe but I’d been too pissed off at Wester to grab it. I’d just run for the pool house as fast as possible.

Rough hands yanked me off the seat and lifted me onto the dock. I gave a light curse when I stumbled a little, desperately trying to cover my breasts. The bigger man glared at me. He was huge. Tall and broad. He was dressed in track pants and a T-shirt but he had a gun in his hand. It made me shiver to see that so close to me. His eyes were too far apart and it only added to the menacing quality he displayed. The other guy, the one who had grabbed me from behind under the window, was slim, wiry, and he was grinning, his eyes on my body, not my face. In a way, he felt more menacing because he was attracted to me. The big guy just found me to be an annoyance.

“Walk up the steps,” the big guy said. “And don’t fuck around.”

I nodded and started dashing up the steps in my bare feet. The house was huge, though substantially smaller than Ricardo’s. It was modern architecture, sheets of glass jutting out over the water. It didn’t look like a bad place to be held against my will. Nor did it look particularly private or secret. Surely Ricardo would know where to find me.

Once in the house, I was pulled down a short flight of stairs and into a room about the size of a hotel room. There were no windows, only a bed, table, and an en-suite bathroom. Something about it instantly felt claustrophobic and I balked in the entryway. The big guy shoved me forward. The second the door closed behind me and I heard it lock, I forgot about not freaking out and started pounding on the door. “Let me out! Please let me out!”

When I was six, I was trapped in a straw maze for almost an hour. It was the kind you had to crawl through, on your stomach, and there was nothing but yellow blocks scratching my arms, my head, the dirt under my gut cool and rough. Every corner turned into more straw and I felt like I couldn’t breathe. I ended up frozen in the middle until an older boy hauled me out by my clammy hands, just dragging me to the end.

This was like that—I couldn’t breathe. The walls were pressing in on me and I panicked. I hauled in a painful breath and screamed at the top of my lungs.

The door opened again and I felt intense relief. Until the thin guy said, “Shut the fuck up,” and punched me so hard I fell straight to the ground.

I banged my hip on the table on the way down and landed hard on my shoulder, but those were nothing compared to the pain in my jaw. Any defiance I might have had evaporated. I realized this was some serious shit, and these men just might be capable of murder.

“Benito, what’s up?” I leaned over and clapped my hand in my old friend’s and gave him a guy shoulder bump. “Long time, my brother.”

“Wester Lewiston. Long time is right. How’s your mom?” Benito gestured for me to sit on his white leather sofa. “Drink?”

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