LITMIR.BIZ

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them both here. She wouldn’t waste the effort.

      All she had to do was get them to fall in love. Unfortunately, she knew little about that particular emotion. Desperate, she’d just gotten off the phone with Mel, figuring since her aunt had a new boyfriend every other day, she’d have lots of ideas. Emily had explained she was asking for a friend, but Mel had laughed and said she and her friends were too young for love.

      Thanks, Aunt Mel.

      Far below her in the living room, her father pushed her mother’s wheelchair. His face, now that he thought no one was looking at him, had lost some of that easygoing, laid-back attitude that was so innately him, replaced by a tenseness that shook her.

      What was the matter? Well, besides everything?

      Her mother’s expression, tight and angry, didn’t surprise her in the least. Emily had some serious kissing up to do. Probably dishes for a month, maybe more. She’d probably lost TV privileges too. Losing her beloved reality shows and MTV seemed like a small price to pay if they fell in love again.

      When they were gone from view, she slid down the fireman’s pole and dropped to the middle of the living room, trying to ignore that tingling of guilt in the pit of her belly. Because, darn it, if she was as special as everyone said, then she knew what was best for her parents. And what was best for them was to be together, on the same continent for a change. That’s why she’d done it, blabbed about her mother’s situation to her father. Told Aunt Mel that they’d hired a nurse. Let her mother think Mel had gotten them that nurse.

      Because now that everyone had done what she’d wanted, things could fall into place. All she had to do was make it happen.

      MANUEL ASADA crawled through the Brazilian jungle for days upon days, and finally came out at his compound. Exhaustion and unaccustomed lack of even the most basic luxury had him weaving with weakness. He’d been on the move for too long, and could barely think, but the sight of his old fortress gave him a surge of energy.

      It’d been searched and pillaged, of course, because thanks to Ben Asher, the authorities were hunting him down like an animal. Damn them all, his home was now barely a shell of what it had once been. Windows gone, inside gutted, dirtied…trashed. Disgusting. They’d pay for that, too.

      That he’d gotten here at all was a miracle. He’d made it by the skin of his teeth, bribing when he’d had to, pulling from his dwindling stash of cash as it had been necessary. And it had been, several times. The entire experience—jail, the escape, being on the run—had sent him reeling with memories of his penniless, loveless, thankless childhood.

      He could kill for that alone, that he’d relived being a professional beggar by the time he was four…but first things first.

      His compound, once hopping with activity, mocked him with silence in the growing night, making him shudder. God, he really hated silent and dark.

      Most of his minions had fled or been taken to jail, which left slim pickings. Two were still in the States, quaking in their boots, awaiting his further instructions after screwing up the murder of Rachel Wellers. He’d had some time to think about that now. By all accounts via his laptop, which he’d plugged in at various villages when he could, the woman had suffered greatly and continued to do so. Asada liked that; he liked that a lot. He intended for them all to suffer even more. Soon as he got himself reorganized. “Carlos, the place is filthy.”

      “Yes, but you’ve been gone a long time.” The man’s voice wobbled with fear.

      As it should. Everyone knew how Asada felt about dirt, how crazy it made him. Being treated like a parasite in a filthy jail cell hadn’t helped. Nor had being on the run ever since.

      They couldn’t go inside; there’d be men around, looking for him to do that very thing. But beneath the compound lay a secret underground bunker. They’d once used it as a supply container but now it would become his home.

      Carlos raced ahead of him as they made their way toward the hidden door that would lead to a set of stairs. Manuel waited while the trembling Carlos used his own shirt on the dusty door handle. They stepped inside but didn’t turn on the light—they couldn’t, not while he was still being hunted like a dog, and besides, there was no electricity. It was unthinkable that after all these years of building his empire, amassing fortune upon fortune, that this could happen. But it had.

      He had been brought back to zero. Back to the old days, when he’d begged for money, sold himself, whatever it took. With a deep breath, he strode inside the dark, damp cellar and lit a single small oil lantern. Then he very carefully pulled out his small laptop from his pack, blew a speck of dust off the top. He didn’t turn it on, not yet. He wanted to conserve the gas in the generator. But he’d go online later, to check on the progress of what was happening in the States.

      Once upon a time, just above him had been the center of his universe. Now, on top of this Brazilian mountain, hunkered beneath his multimillion dollar compound that gave him his multimillion dollar view, and he didn’t even dare go up there to survey his domain.

      The fact that he couldn’t so much as show his face anywhere without possible retribution filled him with an unholy fury for which he had no outlet. He stalked over to a box of office supplies and pulled out a sheet of stationery. “You’re going to hike back into the city—preferably without getting yourself killed—and get this mailed,” he told Carlos.

      “Sir, the others and I, we were wondering when we were going to get paid—”

      The others were a handful of equally pathetic, worthless minions who deserved to be hung for letting this happen to him, their savior. “Go away until I’m ready for you.”

      “Yes, but—”

      “Go away and don’t come back until the entire cellar is spotless, not one speck of dust left.”

      “Sí.”

      Alone again, Manuel begun to write. “Dear Ben…”

      CHAPTER FIVE

      BEN PUSHED Rachel’s chair forward, then hesitated at the base of the spiral staircase in her living room. “Where’s your bedroom?”

      Rachel hesitated, too. It just seemed too surreal, having him right here, behind her, his hands so close to touching her where they rested on the wheelchair grips by her shoulders. Plus, he’d leaned down to hear her answer, which meant she could smell him, feel his heat, his strength…

      “Rachel? Your bedroom?”

      How had this happened? How was he standing here, in control, in her house?

      Because she’d been outsmarted by her own child, that’s how! All those years of successfully avoiding him, and here he was. Unbelievable. “This is so not necessary.”

      “Your bedroom, Rach. Or, if you’d rather, I can take you to mine.” He shifted her chair around to look at her, so that she couldn’t avoid his dark eyes that had already managed to see past her carefully erected defenses.

      She stared at the silver stud in his ear and did her best to ignore the blatant sexuality that rolled off him in waves. “Mine will do,” she said primly.

      His sigh brushed over the cap she’d shoved back on her head. Then he straightened, his hands on his hips. His shirt pulled taut over his chest that she remembered being lean, almost too lean.

      But he’d filled out. He was still rangy, still tough, but his young body had grown into a man’s.

      Not that she was noticing.

      “Someone else could help me,” she said desperately. “Anyone else. It doesn’t have to be you.”

      “Where is your bedroom?”

      She sighed. “Upstairs.”

      He eyed the firefighter’s pole, then the spiral staircase. “I don’t think the stairs are going to work.”

      “The

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