“It has,” he interrupted confidently. “Believe me, it has.”

She stopped on the sidewalk and slowly disentangled her hand from his. They were standing in front of a store, and the light from the window display was all the illumination he had. But he needed nothing else. She didn’t believe him, and that much was very clear.

“I don’t think you understand the depth of this problem,” she said slowly. “Your bank in El Paso is refusing to pay on your check. They’re saying there are no funds in that account. I think-”

“I know exactly what you think.” He paused.

“But you’re wrong.”

They stared at each other in the darkness. In the silence.

He took a step closer to her. In her expression he saw the need to increase the space between them, but she held herself still. He moved even nearer.

“You don’t trust me at all, do you?” he asked softly.

“Trust has nothing to do with this. It’s business.”

“Everything involves trust, Emma. It doesn’t matter if it’s between banker and client, parent and child…or two new lovers.” He raised his hand and drew a finger down her throat. The skin beneath his touch was as silken and soft as it had been the last time he’d caressed her. “We all depend on trust. Our instincts are made out of it, and yours are telling you to run right now. But you’d be wrong if you did.”

She stood frozen on the sidewalk, a look of confusion on her face that pulled at his sympathies, even as he told himself it shouldn’t. Betting he’d made the right guess about Kelman’s earlier visit, Raul steeled himself and baited the trap.

“I want to be your friend.” His voice was a whisper in the darkness. “Couldn’t you use one?”

Her eyes jerked to his.

Bingo, he thought.

“Wh-what do you mean?”

“You know what I mean.”

“I don’t think I do.”

“I can help you, Emma.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about. I don’t need any help.”

She was going to make it difficult, and he wasn’t surprised. “Let’s go to your office,” he answered. “I’ll prove to you the money is there. And then we’ll talk.”

She wanted to say no to his suggestion. He could read her answer as clearly as he’d read her tension a moment before. She couldn’t refuse him, though, and if she tried to, he would have to do something. And it wouldn’t be something she’d like.

She looked into his eyes and interpreted the unspoken warning.

“All right,” she said faintly. “Let’s go.”


THEY WALKED QUICKLY down the sidewalk until they came to Raul’s rented SUV. The wind had picked up since they’d left the bar, and it raged around the corner, greedily snatching at Emma’s skirt as she climbed inside. Straight off the Andean foothills, the gust was hot and gritty.

Still, the feeling it left wasn’t nearly as searing as the lingering trace of Raul’s hand on her skin. Her reaction to the simple caress far outweighed what it deserved, and she knew why. It was her anticipation of what might come next.

For God’s sake, what on earth was she doing? Things were spinning out of control, and she was thinking about kissing-No, tell the truth. She was thinking about making love with a man who was practically a stranger, and a dangerous one at that. She should have been worried about the problem at the bank, but instead, the thoughts flooding her mind were purely sensual. The light on his skin, the look in his eyes, the heat in her body…

I want to be your friend, Emma.

There was no way he could know about Kelman’s offer. Absolutely no way. If she’d ever needed a friend, though, it was now. She thought back to the argument she’d heard between the two men. The fight had been over a woman, but there could have been more to it than Raul had told her. If he really knew Kelman, knew the kind of man he was, Raul could help her. She wouldn’t have to do this all by herself… The idea was so tempting she turned to study him, to see if she could somehow read the truth she sought so badly in his expression.

The headlights of a passing car illuminated his profile as she stared. His cheekbone was a blade, high and prominent, his jaw a dark shadow with a midnight stubble. Above his brow, a single lock of thick black hair fell heavily across his forehead. She wanted to touch him, to lay her fingers on his face and feel its roughness and contours. She could almost imagine the strength there, the energy, the intensity. Abruptly she forced herself to look the other way. She was acting insane, absolutely nuts. This man was not the kind she needed anywhere in her life, much less in her bed.

They reached the bank a few minutes later, and with the wind building to a crescendo around them, they hurried from the truck to the porte cochere beside her office. The angry drafts whipped against her as she found her keys in the bottom of her purse. With trembling fingers, she finally managed to unlock the door.

They were swallowed instantly by darkness and a tomblike silence.

“I need to catch the alarm.” Emma shook out her hair, the strands tangled and twisted from the wind’s touch. “Wait here.”

He nodded as she walked quickly to a closet on the other side of Felicity’s desk. The panel to the security system was hidden inside. Opening the door, she punched the number into the keypad. The code was a personal one, and in the morning, Christopher would know she’d been in. He teased her a lot when she worked odd hours; he’d think nothing of seeing her name on the printout.

By the time she finished and stepped out of the closet, the bank’s security guard was at the door that separated the main lobby from hers. She crossed to the window set in the center of the mahogany panel. “Everything’s fine, Jorge,” she said. “It’s just me.”

Through the beveled glass, the older man looked sleepy, and unhappy that she’d disturbed his rest. Adjusting his uniform, he ambled off, back to the chair where he spent his nights. Security here was not what it would have been in the States. At home, depending on the bank, she might not have even been allowed to come in like this, especially with a client at her side.

Unlocking the inner door to her office, Emma crossed the marble floor and switched on the desk lamp. She turned to call Raul only to find him already there; he’d slipped inside behind her, a silent shadow.

In a matter of minutes she had her computer booted up and had logged on to the bank’s database. Opening the center drawer of her desk, she consulted a small notebook and figured out the daily code. She tapped it in and looked up at Raul as the system processed the numbers.

“I’m very doubtful that anything has changed.”

“I understand.”

The screen in front of her flickered, the terminal bright in the otherwise dark office. Typing quickly, she opened the file that recorded money transfers, and at the bottom of the screen, a new figure had been posted. Surprise rippled over her in an unexpected wave.

“It’s there, isn’t it?”

She raised her gaze to his. “Yes, it is.”

“I told you to trust me.” Rising from the chair, he walked slowly around her desk to look down at the screen. She started to stop him, then realized it didn’t matter. It was his account. If he wanted to see the numbers, he could.

He leaned over her shoulder and began to trail his finger over the monitor as he followed the figures. She stopped breathing at his closeness, but she reacted too late. His aftershave reached her, the same one she’d smelled earlier. Her stomach tightened at the masculine fragrance, and she tried to concentrate on something else. Her eyes went to his right hand as it rested on the screen. One of his knuckles on his ring finger was misshapen. It’d obviously been broken and never set years before.

“What happened to your finger?” The words slipped out before she could hold them back.

He glanced at her, then at his hand, his gaze switching back to her as he spoke. “I had a summer job one year in a canning plant. I caught my high-school ring on a piece of machinery. It kept going and my finger didn’t. My dad popped it back in place, but I never saw a doctor and it healed like that.”

“A cannery sounds like a dangerous place for a teenager to work.”

“It was. But where I came from, a job was a job and I felt lucky to have it. My parents were migrant workers along the border between Mexico and Texas. We went from town to town and they picked vegetables for a living. My steady job was a real step up.”

“And now you have this.” Emma tilted her head to the terminal. “You’ve come a long way.”

“Yes, I have,” he said. He waited a moment, then leaned back and stared at her. “How far have you come?”

He’d asked about her past before, and she’d avoided the question. Now, in the darkened office with the wind howling outside, she was too exhausted and drained to think up another lie. Even more importantly, though, something was happening between them. Something that was drawing them closer and closer. She had fought the sensation as long as she could. But no more.

“Not that far,” she said, glancing at the screen.

“I grew up in Louisiana in a little place called Kenner. My parents divorced when I was just a kid, and I never saw my dad again. My mom raised me.”

“And sent you to LSU, where you earned a degree.” He raised his eyes to her diploma hanging on the wall.

“I got a scholarship, or it would never have happened. I majored in finance.”

“Then you got married…”

She nodded slowly and stayed quiet. What was there to say about that that mattered?

He went on, “…and then you divorced.”

She nodded again.

He waited a few seconds. “But you didn’t have any children,” he said finally. Quietly. “So that photograph you’re hiding in your desk drawer means nothing to you. The one of that beautiful little girl, and the boy who looks exactly like you.”