He waited for an explanation, but instead of giving him one she scrunched her face into a look of irritation and snapped, “I really wish you’d stop calling me sister. Sounds like a bad Humphrey Bogart impression.”

That surprised him. He gave a snort of laughter, then threw her a measuring look. “What do you know? You’re way too young to remember Bogie.”

She met his eyes for one fleeting moment. “And you’re not?” She shrugged and faced forward again. “I used to watch old movies on satellite TV with my Aunt Gwen when I was a kid.”

He wanted to leave it there, he really did. There wasn’t anything he wanted to know about this lady except what it was she’d gotten him mixed up in that was likely to land him in a Mexican jail. Still, he heard himself say, “Yeah? Where was it you grew up that you needed a satellite dish to watch old movies on TV?”

“Iowa.” Her exhalation had almost a wistful sound. “On a farm.”

A farm… “Figures,” he muttered sourly. But he kept hearing that sigh.

It was a few minutes later when she said softly, just as if she’d read his mind, “It’s not drugs or anything like that. If that’s what you’re worried about.”

He could only hope she was telling him the truth. He glanced at her but didn’t say anything more as he guided the Beetle, jerking and wheezing, through streets slowly returning to life after the midday siesta. She didn’t say anything either, though she seemed restless and edgy, as if she sure did want to.

Impulsively, he pulled into a sandy parking area overlooking the playa and shut off the motor. When he did that she straightened up in a hurry, peering through the windshield.

“Why are we stopping here?”

McCall was busy cranking down his window and lighting up a new cigarette, making himself comfortable. Leaning back, he gestured toward the vista spread out before them-aquamarine water, blue sky brushed with the first of Tropical Storm Paulette’s cloudy fingers…white sandy beach sheltered on the right by brown cliffs topped with Mayan ruins, where tourists without sense enough to get out of the midday sun could be seen scurrying about in it like ants, and on the left, by a point furry with the palm trees that marked the beginnings of the tourist hotels.

“What,” he said with exaggerated innocence, “you don’t like the view?”

She just looked at him, studiously ignoring it.

And he looked back at her, this time holding those hot golden eyes of hers for a lot longer than a moment. Until he felt himself running short of breath. Then he shrugged and nodded toward the beach, the other cars parked nearby. “This is a safe enough part of town-probably farther from that cruise ship pier of yours than you’d care to walk in this heat-” he glanced at her running shoes “-even in those.” He took a drag from his cigarette while she waited silently. “This is as far as you go, sister. Unless you care to tell me exactly what it is you’ve got me mixed up in. And why.”

Chapter 4

Ellie was caught, as her mom might have said, between a rock and a hard place. The man deserved an explanation, he really did. But how much could she tell him?

What did she really know about him, after all?

As far as she could tell he was just some kind of expatriate American beach bum who scratched out a living selling dreadful paintings to gullible tourists. A beach bum who, for some reason, kept showing up just in time to bail her out of trouble. Three times, now. Three.

That made her think of something she’d read once, she couldn’t recall where. Something like…once is happenstance, twice is coincidence and the third time is enemy action.

Though, unpleasant as he tried to be, he seemed like anything but an enemy. Could he possibly be another undercover agent? One of General Reyes’s men, perhaps? He was certainly fluent enough in Spanish.

She blurted out before she could stop herself. “Who are you?”

Her rescuer seemed startled by the question at first, then more like…uncomfortable with it. “Just a guy,” he growled, shifting his shoulders against the back of the seat as if they itched. “A guy trying to mind his own business. And make a living-” he jabbed a finger angrily in her direction “-which you aren’t making easy to do, sister.”

Ellie sat back with an exhalation, suddenly feeling deflated, flattened by the weight of guilt. “I’m sorry about the paintings,” she said, her eyes on the beach, crowded at this hour with sunbathers. “I really am. I-I’ll pay you for them.” Well, the government would, probably. But she would feel better knowing they had. “It’s the least-”

“No. That’s not the least, sister, not by a long shot. The least you can do is tell me what the hell’s-”

But at that point Ellie jerked straight up in her seat, her brain belatedly registering what she’d been staring at. “Is this-” she croaked, “-is this beach topless?”

The man beside her turned his head to glare wickedly at her, lips stretched in a mirthless grin around the cigarette clamped between his teeth. “Yeah, it is-why?” Before she could answer he gave a bark of laughter and tossed the cigarette out the window in a gesture of pure frustration. “Lady, I can’t figure you out, I really can’t. One minute there you are, involved in business transactions with thugs in a slum dive I wouldn’t take my worst enemy-or my ex-wife-to, and the next you’re doing this little Miss-Goody-Two-Shoes-from-Iowa number and expecting me to buy it.”

“I’m not expecting you to buy anything,” she shot back, both stung and embarrassed. It had been a long time since she’d felt like such a little hick. “It’s just that-I thought-well, isn’t it illegal here?”

Staring straight ahead, he lifted an indifferent shoulder. “Technically, I suppose. This is a pretty laid-back town. Who’s going to file a complaint?” He shot her a glance that was half challenge, half contempt. “You?”

“Of course not.” Ooh, she was really starting to dislike this guy-rescuer or not. Temper simmered, then exploded. “Oh wait-I get it. You brought me here on purpose, didn’t you? Just to make me uncomfortable. To get me to talk, I suppose. What-I’m supposed to get so flustered I’ll spill all my dirty little secrets?”

He let his gaze drop slowly, appraisingly to her chest. Inexplicably and in spite of her anger, she felt her nipples contract. Then he looked away again, with that shrug of indifference that to Ellie was more incendiary than a slap. “Never occurred to me. Frankly, my dear, I didn’t even think about it. It was just a good place to park.”

“Well, it’s not going to work,” Ellie snapped, ignoring that. “I grew up on a farm. I’ve lived on fishing boats and in tents. You think I’m going to go all wimpy at the sight of a few bare boobs? Listen, I’ve probably seen more stuff than you have, buster.”

He was looking at her again, this time with eyebrows raised and blue eyes glinting in what appeared, unbelievably, to be amusement. A fan of laugh lines had deepened at their corners. Something about those eyes made Ellie’s anger evaporate as quickly as it had come, like the rain puddles back home on a hot summer’s day.

“Besides,” she said on a grudging exhalation, settling back in her seat, “it wouldn’t have been necessary. I was going to explain.”

“So…explain,” he said softly.

So…explain. But it came back to the same question: How much could she say? How far could she trust him? She couldn’t possibly tell him everything. Where should she begin?

It was getting warm in the car. She pulled off her sun visor and laid it carefully in her lap, lifted her arms and raked her fingers through her hair, then rolled down her window and closed her eyes as a damp ocean breeze stirred the hair on her temples. She could feel it tightening into corkscrew curls. When she opened her eyes again, she saw that the man-beach bum, artist, rescuer, whoever he was-was gazing in fascination at her hair, at those very same curls.

What was the matter with the man, she wondered? With all those naked bodies out there, right in front of him, he was looking at her…at her hair, yet? A moment ago he’d been gazing at her breasts, erect nipples and all, with complete boredom. Just now, the look in his eyes had been that of a starving man at a banquet-hall window.

It suddenly struck her how small the car was…how close to him she was sitting. She felt much too warm. Claustrophobic. Her heart was beating much too fast-faster even than in the cantina, facing those three smugglers.

She half turned in her seat and pulled up a knee, making a little more space between them. “First,” she said, clearing her throat, “I just want to remind you that I did not ask you to show up in that cantina today.” She narrowed her eyes and fired the question, much like a cat pouncing. “Why did you, by the way?” He didn’t answer immediately, just shifted his gaze slightly to meet hers. Uncomfortable again, she mumbled, “Not that I’m sorry you did, you understand. I’d just like to know what you were doing there. It is kind of odd…”

He waved that off with a grimmace. “Coincidence. Heard you talking to the taxi driver.” And now it was he who seemed uncomfortable.

“And you just…decided to follow me?”

He muttered defensively under his breath, shifting in that irritable way he had. “Well, hell, I thought I’d better. You were heading for a dangerous part of town.” He halted to stare fixedly through the windshield, eyes narrowed in an angry squint.

But for some reason Ellie found herself remembering how blue those eyes were…how clear and clean. Remembering a look she’d caught in them once or twice. Now she wondered if the look could possibly have been…compassion.