“Compensated?” she said, confused, yet mesmerized by his coldness and his unmitigated gall.

  “The boy,” he said impatiently. “Surely you know how much it cost Logan to ensure custody went to you.”

  Her heart jumped to her throat. “What are you talking about?”

  “Now that’s intriguing,” he said, eyeing her with renewed interest when he recognized that her shock was real. “Logan hasn’t told you, has he?”

  “Told me what?”

  “He’s yours, Ms. Rodriquez. The little deaf child. Logan arranged it.”

  A growing unease outdistanced her outrage. “The hearing isn’t until next week.”

  “The hearing will be canceled when the judge is advised that the mother no longer wishes to maintain custody of her son and that her wish is for custody to be granted to you.” He smiled again. Again without warmth. Again without compassion. “Money does have its advantages—but then, you’ve already recognized that fact, haven’t you?”

  She felt suddenly cold inside. Cold and at the same time elated that Juan’s future with her was secure. But at what cost? To know that he’d been bought and paid for like a piece of furniture or a shiny new toy—could she live with that kind of guilt? Could she live with herself knowing that money paid on her behalf took advantage of Juan’s mother’s ignorance and poverty?

  Numb, she closed her eyes and turned away from the man she was having increasing difficulty believing was Logan’s father. He was heartless. Calculating. As much as she felt pity for Juan’s mother, in this moment she felt even more pity for Logan. And more disgust for his father.

  “Please leave, Mr. Prince,” she said in the suddenly quiet room.

  His footsteps fell heavily, then stopped behind her. He slid a sealed envelope onto the top of an end table.

  “You’re an intelligent woman. I’m hoping threats won’t be necessary.” He paused when she turned to face him, angry at herself for allowing a degree of fear to rattle her.

  “There’s a good deal of cash inside that envelope, Ms. Rodriquez,” he continued as if he’d never uttered the word threat. “Enough for you and the boy to live on comfortably. Enough for you to relocate to a place where all this can be left behind you. To a place where Logan won’t be reminded of this” —he paused as if searching for the right word— “infatuation he feels for you.”

  She faced him grimly, ice in her voice and her eyes. “Logan is a man, Mr. Prince. Infatuation seems a bit inappropriate, wouldn’t you say?”

  “I was trying to be kind, my dear,” he said, no trace of kindness in his voice or in his expression. “But if you insist, let me rephrase. When Logan comes to his senses and realizes it’s not love but lust drawing him to you, you’ll be far enough away that he’ll be able to seek his diversions elsewhere.”

  She shivered, despite the heated anger pulsing through her. “You are disgusting.”

  Unflinching, he leveled her with a look both superior and intimidating. “Take the money, Ms. Rodriquez. Take the money and leave. If you don’t, I’ll see to it that you never see the boy again. And I’ll guarantee you that Logan will know every detail of your past, from your illegitimacy to your mother’s unfortunate addiction.”

  She took a step back, the ruthless intent in his eyes frightening her.

  “Oh, and just so there’s no confusion on this issue, my son is never to know of this visit or the deal is off. Surely you can see the monetary advantages of keeping your silence. And given your special charms” — his gaze raked over her insultingly— “I’m sure you’ll be able to convince him that the decision to break it off was entirely yours.”

  His eyes were hard and piercing. Without another word, he turned and walked out the door.

  Carmen sat on the sill of her open bedroom window, breathing in the scent and the sounds of a rare and welcome rain. The heat of the streets and the dust in the air mingled with the downpour. A faint and oddly cleansing breeze gently stirred the curtains at her open window and cooled her skin.

  Midnight was a time for reflection for her. For Rico, it was a time to prowl. She smiled when she thought of her hotheaded brother. She loved him fiercely. He loved her, too, even though he couldn’t see past his anger at the moment. She knew that in time it would pass. And she smiled to herself, feeling a distant sympathy for some unknown and unfortunate woman whose heart Rico would toy with tonight in an attempt to forget his anger.

  She heard the soft click of a key in her lock—a sound she’d been expecting. A man she’d been expecting. And an end she was determined to live with.

  Logan’s steps never faltered as he walked directly to Carmen’s bedroom. He stopped in the doorway when he saw her silhouetted against the window frame.

  “It’s beautiful, isn’t it?” she said softly, her head turned toward the rain and the night.

  The light from the neon sign flashed familiarly and threw a rainbow of colors over her lustrous hair. She was beautiful. As vibrant as the night. As luminous as the sky lit by streaks of lightning. And as unsettled and as volatile as the storm.

  As much as he wanted to go to her and take her in his arms, something kept him from it. Something in her voice. Something in the tense set of her shoulders. Something in his gut that warned him away.

  “Beautiful? I guess that depends on your perspective,” he said cautiously. “Now that I’m on the ground, I can feel a bit more benevolent toward the wind and the lightning.”

  She turned to face him then. “Odd you should use that word. I was thinking in terms of your father’s benevolence.”

  Ignoring the dampness seeping through his jacket, he walked slowly toward her. “My father?”

  Her dark eyes searched his face in the storm glow. A stark, black stillness came over him. Numb with foreboding, he forced himself to ask, “What does my father have to do with anything?”

  Her eyes were glistening as she looked at him in that moment before she slowly rose. Without a word, she walked to the small table by her bed, removed an envelope from the top drawer, and handed it to him.

  He stared at the envelope, opened it, and thumbed through the cash inside.

  “You should be pleased.” Her voice, like her gaze, was as cool as the wind, as distant as the rumbling thunder. “He places a high value on preserving your freedom.”

  He closed his eyes, battling a rage unlike anything he’d ever known. “The bastard.”

  “You judge him, yet you employ his methods.”

  He snapped his gaze to hers.

  “Juan,” she said simply, answering the question in his eyes.

  He didn’t bother to deny it. “You know about that. How?”

  “Does it matter?”

  He watched her carefully. Accusation, anger, and disappointment showed on her face.

  “What matters,” he said, countering her anger, “is your happiness. And Juan’s.”

  “At his mother’s expense?” Her voice was quietly cutting.

  “At his mother’s request,” he replied finally.

  “But that’s implying she had a choice.”

  “Carmen,” he said, easing a hip onto the windowsill opposite her and facing her squarely. “I thought I’d made an arrangement that would be beneficial to everyone.”

  She shook her head sadly. “How can you talk so calmly about arranging people’s lives? You took her son away from her. You bought and paid for him, the same way you bought and paid for Johnny’s cooperation. How does that make you better than your father, who thinks he can buy and pay for me?”

  He searched her eyes and found nothing but anger there. Anger and disgust and a coldly distant judgment he was suddenly very weary of fighting.

  “Well,” he said, feeling himself withdraw his emotions behind the wall he’d erected long before he’d met her. “It would appear that my father, at least, was on target. In the end, it came down to what it always comes down to. Money. Obviously you had no qualms about keeping it.”

  But the defense wasn’t working. He was still feeling. And he reacted to the pain in her eyes and to his own feeling of betrayal like an animal whose wounds were raw and bleeding. Bottom line, she’d taken the money. Bottom line, she was no different than all the others.

  Reaching for her, he drew her forcefully into his arms, wanting to lash out and hurt her in return. “Since your price was so high, let’s see you deliver on what my father paid for.”

  Ignoring her wounded eyes, he drew her roughly into his kiss. He wanted nothing more than to hurt her the way her lack of trust and her ultimate betrayal had hurt him.

  But the taste of her sweet mouth, the sound of her desperate plea, the gentle warmth of her body struggling against him as he forced her down on her bed broke through the rage.

  “Damn you,” he swore, wrenching himself away from her. “Damn you,” he repeated, anguished that the hate boiling up inside him ran in such close tandem to love.

  Why did she have to come into his sterile, uncomplicated life and make him want to believe in something he’d known all along was a lie? And why, once he’d crossed over the line, couldn’t she simply have believed in him?

  She’d been right from the beginning. The differences were too vast. The obstacles were too many. Her brother, his father, a lifetime of conditioning himself not to care.

  “I can’t fight them all,” he mumbled tiredly, then realizing he’d spoken out loud, pulled himself together.

  “Enjoy the money, Carmen,” he said, one last parting barb a necessity for his pride as he made his way toward the door. “You earned it—even though the price was high.”

  CHARADE

  Cindy Gerard

  ELEVEN

  “Misery loves company, you know,” Barb reminded Carmen as they left Ben Taub together at the end of a double shift. “It would do you good to talk about it. And I’ve got to tell you, if I have to look at that long face of yours many more nights, you’re going to have me crying. Big crocodile tears. We’re talking flood here. Load the ark. Then my mascara will run. And you know how I hate it when that happens.

  “Come on,” Barb chided gently when she won the grin she’d been playing for. “Do us both a favor. I’ll buy the beer.”

  “All right already.” Agreeing reluctantly but realizing that putting up with two weeks of her moping around was above and beyond the call—even for a friend like Barb—Carmen gave in.

  Two hours and a pitcher later Barb had heard enough—she’d also drunk enough, polishing off almost all the beer.

  “I really can’t figure you out,” Barb said. “You are the most compassionate, empathetic person I know, yet you’ve tried this man, led him to the gallows, and all but pulled the trapdoor without ever hearing his side of the story.”

  Difficult as it was to admit it, Carmen knew Barb was right. And it wasn’t a conclusion she’d reached in the past few hours. She’d had two weeks of solitude to face the prospect of life without Logan. Two lonely, miserable weeks to help her assess what she’d done to him. And what she’d done was unforgivable. She’d drawn conclusions on incomplete information. And she hadn’t been within a stone’s throw of fair.

  When she’d recovered from Preston Prince’s revelations, she’d paid Juan’s mother a visit. Only then did she realize how right Logan had been. The girl was so young. Juan’s deafness frightened her. She truly wanted what was best for her son and could not ever see herself providing it. She cared about him, but in a detached, distant way a stranger might feel about some poor unfortunate orphan. And she didn’t want the responsibility of taking care of him.

  Logan’s only crime had been to arrange the best possible solution for everyone. Juan’s mother would be provided with educational and financial opportunities to assist her in breaking out of her bonds of poverty. Juan would be raised in a loving home, the best Carmen could provide.

  Carmen had repaid Logan for his compassion with accusations. She’d likened his actions to the deal Preston Prince had tried to cut with her. God forgive her, she’d compared him with his father.

  But Logan wasn’t anything like Preston Prince. Logan was kind and caring. A private and achingly vulnerable man. He’d exposed his inner weakness to her. He’d laid bare his soul. None of those confidences had been easy for him. For her to have let something other than his feelings and his actions sway her was unforgivable.

  And even before this heart-to-heart with Barb, she knew she had to find a way to fix what she’d broken— if, in fact, it was fixable.

  “And since when do you let other people rule your life?” Barb asked. “Pay attention,” she ordered, pounding her fist on the table, drawing a measuring look from a barmaid who passed by.

  Impervious to that look, more vocal even than usual from a little too much beer, Barb was just getting revved up. “First you let your brother interfere, then Logan’s father. Lord, you’re a dolt. Haven’t you figured out yet that you two were doing fine until everybody else decided to put their fingers in the proverbial taco?”

  Carmen grinned. “Barb, don’t you think it’s time to go home?”

  “I’m not through with you yet,” Barb insisted. She slumped back against the booth with a defeated snort. “Oh, what’s the use. You’re too damn stubborn. And too damn proud. Go home. Get out of my face. You disgust me.”

  “I love you, too, buddy,” Carmen said.

  Barb waved the words away as if they were pesky mosquitoes. “Love, shmuv. You wouldn’t know love if it bit you on your better judgment. Face it, Rodriquez. You blew it. And if you had any backbone at all, you’d go do something to fix it. Oh, and Carmen?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Help me to the bathroom, would you? I think I’m going to be sick.”

  PRINCE ENTERPRISES. The gold lettering on the double plate-glass doors of the corporate stronghold reeked of attitude and opulence; both attested to standards that had made the business the success it was today.

  Carmen gripped the brass handle, pulled the door open, and strode through without looking back. Ignoring the raised eyebrows of the elegantly groomed guardian of the inner office, she swept her braid back over her shoulder and met the secretary’s condescending glance without flinching.

  “I’m here to see Logan Prince.”

  A slow, measured blink of an eye, a long, judgmental look later, the secretary smiled tightly. “Without an appointment, I’m afraid that won’t be possible.”

  As she’d suspected, arranging a meeting with Logan Prince was the equivalent of requesting an audience with the pope.

  “Please inform him that Carmen Rodriquez is here. He’ll see me.”

  With that, she turned, walked on legs she hoped didn’t give away her lack of confidence, and deposited herself regally on the chrome-and-leather chair closest to the secretary’s desk. With as much pomp as she could muster, and ignoring the fact that the secretary’s hairdo in all probability cost more than her jeans and T-shirt put together, she crossed her legs, folded her hands on her lap, and stared a hole through the woman’s forehead.

  Recognizing that she was outstubborned, if not outclassed, the woman picked up the phone and punched out Ben Crenshaw’s extension. Though she was shocked at Ben’s immediate and explicit expression of relief, it didn’t show on her face as she hung up the phone.

  “Mr. Prince is unavailable, but Mr. Crenshaw will see you,” she stated, grudgingly admiring the pretty, dark-haired woman, even a little envious of her apparent power over Logan Prince’s right-hand man.

  “Thank you,” Carmen said as she rose, and on the same shaky legs that had brought her there, walked directly to the door.

  Ben Crenshaw’s name had come up frequently when she and Logan had been together. She recognized him on sight from Logan’s description, and she recognized that the concern in his eyes had more to do with his friendship for Logan than with their business association.

  “You wanted to see Logan,” he stated flatly.

  She nodded and looked around the tasteful but elaborately decorated office. “I had no idea his privacy would be so heavily guarded.”

  He considered her for a long moment. “It’s not his privacy that concerns me,” he said finally.

  She recognized a gauntlet when it was thrown and knew immediately that she liked this man, if for no other reason than that he was Logan’s friend and determined to protect him. “Then we both have Logan’s best interests in mind,” she replied honestly. “I need to see him. Can you arrange it?”

  Whether he was extremely perceptive or just a hopeless romantic, when he’d taken her measure and decided she wasn’t here to hurt Logan, he became her ally too.

  “What’s going on, Ben?”

  Racing to keep pace with Logan’s long, impatient strides, Ben clamped a hand on his arm to stop him. “Will you cool off, please? It’s not my fault the old men decided to call an emergency board meeting. And for the last time I don’t know what they want. They just insisted you show up at the boardroom at three o’clock sharp. Don’t kill the messenger, man,” he added when Logan’s dark scowl swung to his, murder in his eyes. “I was just told to make sure you showed.”

  “This had damn well better be good,” Logan muttered. “And where the hell are you going?”

  “Hey.” Ben raised his hands, palms open in supplication. “The request was for you not me. Good luck, and good-bye. I’ve got a hot date with a fax machine that as we speak is in the midst of a transmission.”

  Scowling as Ben hurried back down the hall, Logan yanked open the boardroom door and stalked inside.

  He was met by silence and an empty room. No blue suits. No stern scowls from the corporate fathers. No stale cigar smoke hanging in the air.

  Instead a fragrance that was lightly intoxicating, guilelessly provocative, drifted gently into his black mood. The first time he’d encountered that scent he’d known he would never forget it—or the woman who wore it.