Jane Porter - Lazaro's Revenge

Zoe stood where he’d left her, turned to face the cement pad, felt the night air surround her. The land was flat and open, with only a cluster of trees in the distance. Nothing loomed on the horizon. No mountains. No lights from a town. Just flat, empty space.

The pampas, she whispered to herself, remembering the postcards Daisy had sent her.

The Galván estancia was on the pampas, too. Perhaps she was close to Daisy, closer than either of them knew.

She turned back to face the house with the glow of yellow light. What to do now?

He was waiting for her at the door. She started toward him then stopped. She could feel his impatience and it frightened her. What would happen once she entered the house?

He waited another moment before shrugging and disappearing from view. After a long moment Zoe forced herself to continue.

Climbing the front steps, she arrived at the front door. The dark wood door remained open. The man reappeared.

He’d removed his coat and unbuttoned his dark shirt. A muscle in his jaw jumped as her eyes met his. His eyes were lighter than she’d thought, his eyebrows straight and very black, but it was his nose that dominated his face. His nose was bent, beaked in two places. There was a small scar at the bridge, and another scar at the edge of his square chin. His face looked as though it’d been smashed silly a half dozen times.

A street boxer. A thug.

Zoe’s throat constricted. She swallowed hard, terror making her limbs feel like thin splinters of glass.

“You’re coming in then?” he said.

Her throat worked and she dug her fists against her ribs to stop her shaking. It nearly killed her to force sound through her throat. “You don’t care if I stay outside?”

“You can do whatever you want now that you’re here.”

“I can?”

“There’s no phone line here, no outside communication at all. No visitors, no roads, no disturbances, no interruptions. You’re safe.”

Hot tears pricked her eyes and she ground her teeth together. “I’m safe?”

He reached out to touch the side of her neck, just below her jawbone, his fingers trailing across the soft skin left exposed by her turtleneck. “Perfectly safe.”

She quivered and jerked at the hot painful touch. “Is there no one else here?”

“Just an elderly servant, but she doesn’t speak English and won’t bother you.”

He lifted his finger from her neck and she felt as though he’d split her in two. The touch had been light and yet he’d lit a bomb inside her skin, heat exploding in her middle, fire racing through her veins. It was the most shocking touch and she wanted to cry out loud, overwhelmed by the intensity of her response.

“Come inside. You’re tired.”

“I’m afraid.”

His dark head tilted. “Of?”

His deep voice was pitched so low that it throbbed within her, a soft but distinct vibration that left her humming. She hated him, feared him, and yet he was strangely charismatic, too. Of everything that could happen, she wanted to answer, but she didn’t say it. Wouldn’t say it.

He must have read her thoughts because he smiled faintly. “Think of it as an adventure.” Then he moved aside, stepping back to allow her to pass.

An adventure? He must be mad.

Yet his peculiar dark-light eyes held hers, and he waited, neither speaking nor rushing her. He was going to let her choose. He was going to put the next move on her.

What should she do? Stay outside in the darkness, on the endless pampas, or go into the warm yellow glow of the house?

With her heart thudding, she stepped inside.

Lazaro spotted Zoe Collingsworth the moment she stepped from the jet-way at the airport earlier in the afternoon. Young, blond, beautiful, she was the epitome of Argentine beauty. His narrowed gaze had followed her movements as she rummaged in her leather handbag for dark sunglasses.

Her hand had shook as she’d propped the tortoiseshell glasses on her small, straight nose. She could have been a Hollywood starlet. Her sweater’s high funnel neck stopped just short of her chin, accenting her smooth, creamy jaw and the long tumble of golden hair.

Lazaro could see that the men in the airport waiting area were already projecting their fantasies onto her. They saw what they wanted to see, the full breasts beneath the thin black sweater and the very feminine hips in wool trousers the color of rich caramel. They were admiring her hair, too, wondering if the glorious color was natural.

It was natural. Her hair was like her sister Daisy’s, only more golden. In fact, the two of them looked remarkably similar.

Only two years after marrying Count Dante Galván, Daisy was already considered a great beauty in Argentina’s elite social circles, but Zoe had a different beauty than Daisy’s…a softer beauty.

Lazaro shut the door to the ranch house but didn’t bother locking it. No point in locks. There was nowhere for Zoe to go.

He watched her now as she took a step into the hall, her blue eyes wide, and apprehensive, the irises more lavender than sapphire. She scanned the interior, as if searching for a hidden door or a secret torture chamber.

“There’s nothing sinister here,” he said calmly. “No knives, guns, whips, chains. Just a simple ranch house.”

Her chin lifted, her full lips trembled, but she pressed them together. “Have you sent a ransom note already?”

“No.”

She blinked, long black lashes sweeping down, brushing the high elegant curve of her cheekbone before looking up again. She was so young. Nearly twelve years younger than he. A lifetime between them.

The age difference should have killed his attraction. It didn’t.

Ever since she’d stepped from the jet-way this afternoon, his gut had ached, his body throbbing. His response to her stunned him. It was such a primitive reaction, so fiercely and purely physical that he felt raw on the inside. Barely controlled.

The desire was there even now and his body tightened yet again, his black wool slacks growing snug, confining.

He felt hungry. Like a prehistoric creature brought back from the dead. Something about her made him crave her, made him feel ravenous. Ruthless.

He wanted to feel her, taste her, possess her. And in a distant part of his brain he knew he would. Someday.

When he’d crushed the Galváns.

When he’d had his revenge.

But this wasn’t the time. Right now she was exhausted and afraid, and she was a guest in his house.

“Let me take your coat,” he said, softening the edge to his voice, knowing he had a hard voice, and a brusque manner. He wasn’t known for his sensitivity, or civility.

He extended a hand for her coat but she took a frightened step back.

Zoe nearly screamed when his hand reached out. She couldn’t let him touch her again. She couldn’t let him anywhere near her, feeling trapped, helpless, far too vulnerable. Again she was reminded of his height, his size. There was something about him that exuded strength, not just in terms of muscle, but control…power.

She pressed her thin coat more tightly to her body. “I’d like to keep my coat.”

His heavy eyebrows lifted. “You’ll get it back.”

He was making fun of her. Heat banded across her cheekbones and she lifted her chin. “I’m cold.”

“Come closer to the fire then. It should warm you.”

He led her from the wide high-ceiling hall into a surprisingly spacious sitting room, the dark-beamed ceiling as rustic as the floor-to-ceiling stone fireplace. Yet the furnishings were luxurious, from the vibrant scarlet and gold rug covering the wood-planked floor to the deep plush sofas and chairs clustered in small groupings. The artwork on the walls were all massive canvases, oversize oil paintings in vivid brush-strokes—electric blue, blood red, hot yellow.

This was no simple ranch house.

Zoe moved past the wrought-iron and leather coffee table with its stacks of books toward the fire. Her legs felt brittle, her muscles taut.

With a fleeting glance at the bookcases behind her, she reached out to the stone hearth, trembling fingers spread wide to capture the fire’s heat.

Kidnapped, she repeated silently, she’d been kidnapped. It still hadn’t completely sunk in. Would it ever?

She remembered disembarking the plane, remembered filing out of the jet-way with the other passengers and entering the gate area to discover a waiting throng.

She remembered scanning the crowd, looking for Dante, or a driver. Dante had promised someone would be there to meet her. But she didn’t see Dante, or anyone holding a sign. There were mothers and young children, businessmen in suits on cell phones, elderly seniors in wheelchairs but no one for her.

Her eyes had suddenly watered as she felt a pang of loss. Normally something like this wouldn’t upset her, but it hadn’t been a normal month. Her father was getting so much worse. He seemed to have forgotten everything now and it was awful watching him fade before her eyes. He’d been a smart man, and a loving man, always generous with others.

Her eyes continued to well with tears and she dug in her shoulder bag for her sunglasses. She’d cried most of the flight, and the oversize black sunglasses had come in handy then, too. The truth was, she’d cried so much in the last month she should be out of tears, but somehow the tears just kept coming.

Sunglasses in place she felt better. She took a deep breath and tried to focus on the positives. She was here to see Daisy. Soon she’d be reunited with her sister. Things would be better once they were together.

It was at that very moment when he approached her, the man in the black coat and shirt, the unsmiling man with a piercing gaze and a strong beaked nose.

“Miss Collingsworth?” he’d said, his voice impossibly deep, so deep she’d blinked behind her sunglasses as she let his voice sink into her, tangible and real.

Zoe recalled that her travel guide said Argentine men—a blend of Latin passion and European sophistication—were lethally attractive and while she wouldn’t call this man classically handsome, he was arresting…no, intriguing, in a primitive sort of way.

“I’m Zoe,” she’d answered, her heart doing a strange double beat. She’d been up all night and was overly tired. She’d never traveled out of Kentucky before and had felt ambivalent emotions about the trip to Argentina. She wanted to see Daisy, yet she hated putting her father in a nursing home. True, he wouldn’t stay there long, just the two weeks she was in Argentina, but it had been awful driving him there, awful leaving him there.

“Do you have any bags?” the man asked.

“Just one,” she answered. “It’s a large case so I checked it through.”

His dark head inclined, his glossy blue-black hair cut short. “If you give me your tag, I’ll get it for you.”

His hand stretched toward her, his palm wide, fingers long, well-shaped. He fit his skin somehow. He looked comfortable with himself and she’d given him the tag. They went to baggage claim and he lifted the heavy case off the carousel as though it weighed nothing. A limousine was waiting for them outside baggage claim and they drove straight to the helicopter pad.

It wasn’t until they were in midair and she’d begun to ask questions about Daisy and her pregnancy, about the Galván estancia, about life on the pampas that he’d told her to stop talking.

Actually, what he’d said was, Be quiet, do as you’re told, and everything will be fine.

Zoe drew a deep breath and stared at the fire with its red and gold dancing flames.

She was shaking again, more violently now than earlier, and with each uneven breath she could smell the acrid scent of burning wood and smoke, yet the heat wasn’t enough. She couldn’t stop shivering. Couldn’t control her nerves.