Impulse (12 page)

Now it was her turn to be on the receiving end of the contempt. He was better at it than she was, and to give herself time, she sent her chin up.

She flicked a fleck of lint from her leotards. “It’s Ms., and braless is very comfortable.”

“I thought as much. Now, if you would excuse us, Ms. Holland—”

He was dismissing her. Just as if she didn’t exist, he was dismissing her. Rafaella supposed she deserved it, but she didn’t like it. Now she had to make her move with him listening. She said quickly, “It was wonderful meeting you, Coco. Could we have lunch perhaps? Tomorrow on the Hibiscus Lanai? I’d appreciate it ever so much, truly. And I do have something specific to speak with you about.”

Coco didn’t know what to do. She shrugged, then smiled. “Tomorrow, then, Miss Holland. Have a good day—”

“Yeah, with the pro of your choice. Given your age and your looks, it shouldn’t cost you all that much.”

“You’re dead wrong,” Rafaella said. “It won’t cost me a dime.”

That was true enough, Marcus thought again. He
nodded to Ms. Holland, took Coco’s arm, and left the gym.

“You were quite horrible to her, Marcus.”

He didn’t want to talk about Ms. Holland, and said, his voice curt, “She’s nothing but a selfish rich—You know the sort, Coco. Both of us have met her type before.”

“Perhaps you’re right, but still, she is a guest. I’ve just never seen you act so dismissive and so edgy with a female guest before. I wonder what she wants.”

“I do too. I don’t like people singling you out like that. It was as if she were just waiting for you to show up.” He shrugged then. “Maybe she’s just a famous-person groupie.”

“She doesn’t look it. Oh, Marcus, I’m scared out of my mind. You’ve got to do something!”

“Keep it down, Coco. Let’s go to my office.”

Callie was at her desk, and she quickly rose when Marcus came into the executive suite. “I’ve got a ton of messages, Marcus, and—”

“In a couple of minutes, Callie,” he said, raising his hand. “Miss Vivrieux and I will be in my office. No interruptions. Hold all calls.”

Callie didn’t like Coco, but she managed to keep her feelings to herself. She wondered if the model was going to seduce her boss on his desk. She wouldn’t put it past her. Callie, whose roots were Sioux City, Iowa, had nonetheless become a thorough sophisticate in a period of two years. Her last lover, a Señor Alvarez of Madrid, had told her of the island resort and, at her insistence, had gotten her a job here. She loved it. She watched now as Marcus quietly closed his office door.

Marcus didn’t like antiques, at least not the three-century-old French sort that abounded in the villas. His office was starkly modern, all glass and chrome and pristine white carpeting and earth-tone leather furniture.

“You want a drink, Coco?”

She shook her head. “No, I don’t want anything. It’s Dominick. Something’s going on, you know that. After the Dutchmen poisoned themselves—I’m just not sure they
did
poison themselves. Are you?”

He looked at her, saying nothing. He didn’t think so either, but it didn’t make sense. Had Dominick had them poisoned? Had he gotten the information he wanted, then ordered them killed? To look like suicide? To keep someone in the dark? Who? Him? Coco? Every damned one of them? It did make some sense, but it was the crookedest road Marcus had ever walked.

“Why do you think that?” he said easily now, pouring himself a cup of rich black Jamaican coffee.

“I heard him on the private blue phone—you know, the one that only he uses, the one locked in his desk drawer.”

“Yeah, I know.”

“I—well, I heard him talking to someone about it. He said, ‘All right, you cretin, whoever you send to kill me, you’ll fail. Look what happened to the Dutchmen and that damned woman.’ That was it. Link was coming and I couldn’t let him think I was eavesdropping.”

“So, it was a different set of Dutchmen who came to the island. Is the deal still on?”

“What deal?”

“Come on, Coco. The arms deal. The Dutchmen were supposed to be the middlemen, here to finalize things.”

“Dominick doesn’t talk business to me, you know that, Marcus. Nor is he one for pillow talk. He goes to sleep.”

“Then there’s someone out to kill him. It was planned, and it was just a first attempt. Well, I think—”

A soft buzzing noise came from his top desk drawer.
Quickly he said, “There’s my damned beeper. Let me mull it over, Coco.” He took her arm and led her toward the office door. “Try not to worry. I’ll speak to Dominick, and, yes, I’ll protect you. Don’t worry.”

Once he’d closed the door again, Marcus locked it and quickly walked back to his desk. He unlocked the drawer and quickly pressed two buttons in rapid succession. He then picked up the phone receiver.

“Devlin here.”

“It’s me, Marcus. Savage. As if it
could
be anyone else. Thank God you’re there.”

“What’s going on? I wasn’t expecting a call from you until the end of the week. Is Mom all right? Is—?”

“Molly’s just fine. Now, slow down a bit. First of all, Molly sends her love and wonders when you’ll get back to Chicago to visit her. Second, the company’s fine and we’ve got no unsolvable problems at present. Now, what happened is this. Hurley called me last night. He was worried, thought you might even be dead. Rumor has it that there was an attempted hit on Giovanni.”

“Yes, there was. Dominick was shot in the arm but he’s fine. I was shot in the back but I’m all right now. Stop worrying. Yes, there was a hit, but who’s behind it, I don’t know yet. Dominick still doesn’t trust me enough to tell me everything. I was trying to discover something before I called you to report to Hurley. This whole arms deal—Tell Hurley that the Dutchmen were decoys, the woman leading them, an assassin. Her name, supposedly, was Tulp. A big woman, large-boned, mid-thirties, dark brown hair and big breasts, quite at home with a nine-millimeter automatic. A professional all the way. Maybe Hurley can I.D. her. As for the Dutchmen, they were the same ones I’d already told you about. When the real deal goes down, I’ll get to you, Savage, then you’ll call Hurley. Now
I’ve got work to do and a puzzle to solve here. Anything else?”

There was a deep sigh. “No, nothing else. You’ll take care of yourself, won’t you, buddy? We survived that last year in Afghanistan—hell, we even survived college and getting our munitions business off the ground.” He gave a mirthless laugh. “We’re honest and we don’t charge the feds sixteen thousand dollars for a screwdriver. And here you are trying to pin a dishonest arms dealer. Oh, shit. Don’t blow it now, O’Sullivan, you’ve got too much going for you. Oh, yeah, Molly’s found a nice little Irish gal for you. I’ll call you on Friday, hopefully with an I.D. on the woman.” Savage rang off.

Marcus gently replaced the receiver, closed and locked the desk drawer.

There was a knock on his office door. “Marcus? I’ve got a Mr. Lindale on line three. There’s a problem with a shipment of beluga caviar, and—”

“I’ll be right there, Callie.”

Rafaella didn’t want to gamble, but that seemed to be the pastime of choice among the guests in the evenings—that and sex—so she at least had to pretend a passion for blackjack and roulette. She’d gone shopping in Boston, wishing she could call her mother and ask her to help select clothes she would need, but her mother was in a coma in Pine Hill Hospital. She’d ended up at a small exclusive boutique near Louisburg Square. Eight thousand dollars later, she looked dressed to kill, at least she hoped so. The evening gown she was wearing was sleek, black, sleeveless, and was held together at the waist by a single button, decorated with a large red silk hibiscus covering the button. With it she wore high strap black sandals and under it only a pair of black bikini panties. The dress folded softly and demurely nearly to the waist, showing the curve of her breasts quite clearly. “This Carolyne
Roehm is wonderful advertising,” the woman had told her. “Men go nuts wanting to slip their hands inside, don’t you agree?” Rafaella had indeed agreed. “It’s so modest and yet so provocative.” Her only jewelry was a pair of large gold hoops. “Nothing more,” the woman had told her. “The style is severe and romantic and must be left alone.”

Rafaella felt somewhat strange in her new plumage. But the first man she saw gave her such a stunned, lustful look that she immediately felt better. She could carry it off.

She’d managed to get her hair to cooperate, and it was piled high on top of her head with tendrils floating about her face. Did she look sophisticated? Look like she belonged? She sure as hell hoped so.

She spotted Marcus Devlin almost immediately. Talk about beautiful, he could rival the women, in his stark black evening clothes. He was busy charming the socks off two older women, who were hanging on his every word. She’d found out, finally, that he managed Porto Bianco. Of course he knew Dominick Giovanni. But was he a criminal too? Did he work with her father? She’d find out. He and Coco were her best leads.

Marcus looked up at that moment and saw Rafaella Holland, looking good enough to eat and good enough to make love to until the point of exhaustion. His reaction surprised him. That gown was a knockout—at least on her it was. His initial encounters with the woman hadn’t given him any sort of sexual punch. He could see her sitting on that rock, her knees drawn up to her chest, her shirt and headband sweated through, her face clean of makeup, crying her eyes out. Hard to reconcile that woman with this one. This one was the woman in the gym, the smart-mouthed woman who’d put the moves on Coco, a woman not to be toyed with or dismissed lightly. He wondered just who
she was. He would check her out first thing in the morning. She was probably just some rich groupie.

In some indefinable way she reminded him of Kathleen, his first wife, a petite Irish girl who’d been all of nineteen and caught up in IRA terrorism, and who’d been killed near Belfast six years ago after she ran away from her stodgy young American husband, Marcus O’Sullivan.

He turned to smile at Mrs. Oscar Dallmartin, a Greek heiress who’d married a Texas oilman. She was twenty-eight and her husband of three months was an octogenarian. She immediately began a recital on the benefits of having Portuguese sailors for her yacht crew. Marcus tuned her out while memory flooded through him. Memory and regret and some guilt, still lingering, coming out at odd moments like this. If only he and Savage hadn’t been working twenty hours a day with the new company, if only he’d spent just a little more time with Kathleen, asked her what she was studying, and listened, really listened—But he hadn’t. He’d been too busy—the business, and graduate school.

He’d kissed her good-bye every morning, made love to her nearly every night, even if he had to wake her up when he got home, and then she’d run away—So long ago. And she’d died, killed by a terrorist bomb set in a Belfast bus.

And he’d gotten the phone call. He’d never told his mom precisely what had happened, just that Kathleen had left him to return to Ireland and she’d died there, by accident. Truths and half-truths. Life was filled with them. Probably Ms. Rafaella Holland, like everyone else, was loaded with half-truths. She was young, but she looked strangely intent, her eyes older than her years would indicate. She looked as if she had to concentrate, had to figure out something, and whatever it was, was very important to her.

Marcus made up his mind at that point that he’d
talk to her, he’d gain her confidence. He’d take her to bed. That vagrant thought—no, now it was a decision, it was something he wanted—surprised him. He told himself it was because in his experience a woman who was well-loved was more open, more spontaneous, more revealing of herself. He had no idea what Rafaella Holland, once pleasured to the best of his abilities, would have to say, but he wanted to find out. This was something new to him—coldly calculating to take a woman to bed. No, he amended to himself. There was nothing cold about his decision at all. And that frightened him because it made his focus blur a bit. No, he wasn’t about to allow this woman to sidetrack him even for the pleasure he’d surely get from her in bed. He couldn’t afford it. He’d be a fool to allow it. If he lost his edge, his concentration, he could be dead. No, he had to keep himself apart—and he could do it.

“Would you like a glass of special champagne?”

Rafaella turned very slowly, her eyes level with the middle of his white-as-snow dress shirt. She didn’t say a thing, just slowly raised her eyes until she was looking at him full-face.

“What’s so special about your champagne?”

“It’s from California.”

She laughed.

“It’s also the cheap—rather, the least dear of the champagnes served at Porto Bianco. The owner likes it—that’s the only reason we carry it.”

“Who’s the owner?”

“A Mr. Dominick Giovanni.” He watched her, smiling easily, as he spoke. Her expression remained one of polite interest, but her eyes—Something had flickered there, some sort of recognition. Well, now he knew what he was going to do. He was also pleased, as well as vastly relieved, that she was responding to him. As he signaled a waiter, he asked, “Do you know Mr. Giovanni?”

“I would say from his name that he’s Italian, that’s about all.”

“He’s really from San Francisco. Born and bred an American.”

“Oh? Why ever did he buy this place?”

“You are full of questions, aren’t you? If you drink that champagne with me, I just might tell you.”

Rafaella shrugged. “Why not?”

“Why not, indeed.” He offered her his arm.

Nice breasts, he thought, very nice. No bra. He could just slip his fingers inside and feel—

Marcus frowned at himself. His brain wasn’t operating smoothly. He mentally set her aside. He didn’t trust her. He wanted to hear it from her own mouth that she was just a celebrity groupie and that that prompted her interest in Coco. But he didn’t believe it. No, she’d been too intense in those few minutes she’d spent with Coco. It was as if it were vitally important to her that Coco cooperate with her. He would find out soon enough all about her. More than anything, he realized now, he wanted to know why she’d been out running at dawn, then crying as if her heart were breaking.