Lazaro's Revenge

“I said, what a nuisance. You don’t want dinner, fine. Stay in your room. But I’m not going to send special trays to you. There is a dining room in this house, and a very nice antique table with matching chairs. If you want to go to bed hungry, that’s your choice. If you want to eat, you know where I—and the food—will be.”

He knew she wouldn’t join him for dinner and he didn’t have dinner held. It didn’t bother him eating alone in the elegant dining room, either. He almost always ate alone, and had ever since his mother died when he was seven.

He used to think it was poverty that killed her. The two of them were always hungry, and despite the fact that she worked every job she could secure, there never seemed to be enough money to get them off the streets.

Luz entered the dining room, reached for his plate, saw that he’d barely made a dent in his dinner. “Not hungry?” she asked sharply, her wrinkled brow doubly lined with concern.

Luz had befriended his mother before she died. Luz had been poorer than his mother, too, and yet she had fire, and a fierce spirit which made her fight back against those who would oppress her. She’d tried to teach his young mother, Sabana, to stand up to the aristocratic Galvаns but his mother was terrified of the powerful Galvаn family.

“I’ll have coffee and something light later,” he said, leaning back so she could clear his place.

Luz held the plate in her hands. “Who is she, the girl?”

“A friend of a friend.”

Luz made a rough clucking sound. “The truth.”

“It’s half truth, and that’s enough for you to know.” Lazaro pushed away from the table. “Thank you for dinner.”

He walked out, headed for the living room and discovered the fire had burned low. Sitting down on the couch, he put his feet on the massive iron and wood coffee table and stared into the glowing embers.

He’d built this house for his mother. Of course she’d been gone nearly twenty-five years when he had the plans drawn and the house finished, but the attention to detail had been for her, in honor of her. He’d insisted on the best of everything. Crystal chandeliers, silk window hangings, marble bathrooms, French antiques.

She’d been a beautiful girl when Count Tino Galvаn took her against her will. Just seventeen. Not even out of high school.

But taking her innocence hadn’t been enough for Count Galvаn. After he’d hurt her, Tino Galvаn had Sabana sent away, exiled to a remote Patagonia village where she delivered her son alone. The Galvаns had hoped the baby wouldn’t survive.

But Lazaro had.

Since his mother died, he lived for but one thing. Revenge. Revenge on those who hurt his mother, and revenge on those who’d shut their doors on him.

Zoe went to bed hungry and woke up ravenous at three in the morning. Between the time change and the growling of her stomach, she couldn’t fall back to sleep. Lying in bed awake, her thoughts quickly turned to Daisy. Daisy would be worried sick and Zoe knew she had to reach her sister as soon as possible and reassure her everything was fine.

She also needed to alert Dante to the danger Lazaro posed, without getting Daisy involved.

Throwing back the bedcovers, Zoe slid out from between the warm sheets and reached for her thin white cotton robe that matched the pink-sprigged nightgown.

It was a girlish set, something she’d had forever and yet refused to part with despite the cotton wearing thin and the rosebuds fading to peach and cream. The sleep set had been a gift from her dad years ago. Daisy got one like it, only hers had been blue.

Opening her bedroom door, she peered down the darkened hall. She wasn’t sure where to begin searching for a phone. She knew there had to be one somewhere, and not just a phone, but a fax, a modem, a cell phone. Lazaro Herrera had to communicate with the outside world somehow.

In the living room, Zoe crept on her hands and knees along the baseboards, searching for a hidden phone jack, running her fingers along the edge of plaster wall and wood base. She worked her way around the living room before moving to the bookcase where she inspected each shelf.

Nothing. At least not yet.

From living room to hall, hall to the cavernous kitchen, around the kitchen islands and huge rough-hewn pillars to the dining room.

She’d just finished circling the circumference of the dark dining room when she heard a cough behind her.

“Lose something, Zoe?”

“No.” She rose and brushed off her hands. It was so dark she could hardly see him but she felt him, felt his energy from ten feet away.

A little bit of moonlight fell through the window, illuminating his profile. “You’re not cleaning, are you? Luz wouldn’t like it.”

“I’m not cleaning.”

“Then what are you doing creeping around the house at three-thirty in the morning?”

A long lock of hair fell forward, brushing her cheek, and she tucked it behind her ear. “You know what I’m doing. You know what I want.”

“You won’t find a phone.”

“Not even a computer jack?”

“I’ve taken precautions. I’ve been quite thorough.”

“Let me go.”

“No.”

“I’ll go back to Kentucky, I’ll call Daisy and tell her I changed my mind about coming out—”

“No.”

She felt dangerously close to losing it, to screaming and crying and begging. “This isn’t fair.”

“But we’ve already discussed this, and we know life isn’t always fair. If life was fair your mother wouldn’t have died after your birth. If life was fair your father wouldn’t have Alzheimer’s. If life was fair your only sister wouldn’t have moved halfway around the world leaving you to take care of your sick father—”

“How…how…do you know all that?”

“This wasn’t a random abduction, Zoe. I made sure I knew what I was doing.” He flicked on the dining room light fixture, a large iron and crystal chandelier. “Now go back to bed and get some sleep. You need it. We both need it.”

In a white T-shirt and loose black cotton pajama pants with his black hair ruffled, he looked incredibly male. And human. He looked like a man that knew all about women. He looked like a man that knew how to use his hands, his body and his mouth.

Heat seeped through Zoe’s limbs, color sweeping her cheeks. She hated that she could find him physically attractive when his character was so appalling. He was awful, cruel, twisted. “I hate you.”

She hadn’t meant to say it. But the words slipped out anyway.

His dark head merely inclined and his beautiful lips shaped into a small shadow of a smile. “I know.”

CHAPTER THREE

THE helicopter that carried Lazaro off just before dawn, leaving Zoe alone with Luz for the next three days, finally returned.

Zoe heard the buzzing of the blades in her sleep, heard the whine grow louder and louder until the helicopter sounded as though it had landed in the middle of Luz’s herb garden.

So he was back.