Miami Midnight Read online

  She pushed hard against the couch, trying to move it out of her way. “I’m not a real reporter, I’m a fashion writer!” She knew now he was there to threaten her. “You’ve got the wrong person,” she went on breathlessly. “I’m not interested in drug deals or any—”

  The words died in her throat.

  Drug deal. Oh God, she’d actually said it!

  He stood perfectly still. “Jesus,” she heard him say under his breath, “that’s all I need.”

  Abruptly, lightning and thunder crashed right over their heads. Gaby had a wild, irrational thought that there was something unnatural in the way the light danced around his dimly outlined body. Her senses screamed that he smelled of rain, wet clothing, expensive cologne. Menacing. Leanly powerful. Inescapable.

  There was something else, too, she realized with a fresh burst of terror. He seemed to be staring at the front of her shirt where she’d loosened a few buttons, his gaze traveling downward with an intensity that conveyed other, even more ominous messages.

  “I want you out of here,” she said, her voice quavering. “Whatever you have to say to me you can—you can—” What could he do? “You can call me at work!”

  He didn’t move.

  “Look, Miss Collier,” he said finally, “I have to talk to you now. It can’t wait until tomorrow. I’m sorry if this puts you off, my coming in this way, but I can’t help the damned storm.”

  She leaned back against the couch to put as much space as possible between them. “I can’t talk to you, didn’t you just hear me? I don’t know what you think you’re doing, bursting in here like this from a—” Her voice rose to a shriek in spite of herself. “—a boat! You must be crazy!”

  “God, this is impossible,” he muttered. “I’m scaring the hell out of you and getting no place, what you saw this afternoon was a matter of—uh, doing some friends a favor. And not, obviously, what you thought it was.”

  Gaby was no longer listening. Inching away, the couch at her back, she saw him move to her. “Stay away from me,” she cried. “Don’t touch me!”

  “I’m not doing anything to you. Damn, is it because I’m a latino?” He was suddenly angry. “Is that what makes you so afraid?”

  At that moment another blue-white explosion struck in one of the trees just outside the house. It was like a bomb detonating; the very walls shook. Gaby shrieked. Once started she couldn’t seem to stop. She gave in to pressures that had been accumulating for weeks.

  “Wait!” he shouted. “It’s just lightning. It’ll be all right!”

  Still screaming, Gaby lunged at him. In some remote part of her mind she was amazed that she, Gabrielle Collier, even threatened as she was, would attack anyone. But she sprang at James Santo Marin and heard him grunt as her fists pounded his face and chest. “Jupiter!” she screamed. “Police! Help!”

  “Christ!” He tried to catch her hands, but it was dark. His wrist knocked her under the chin.

  She reeled backward, seeing stars. She tried to save herself by grabbing him, but she still toppled over. He fell with her. In the next instant she found herself pressed down into the musty-smelling sofa cushions, one hand clutching a muscular bicep, her other hand trapped between their bodies.

  For a long moment there was no sound except the storm as they lay stunned, trying to get their breath.

  “I didn’t mean to hit you.” His low voice was right in her ear. “Are you all right?”

  She bucked under him. She wanted to break free, but his body, sprawled over hers, held her down. And, she discovered, her hand was mashed against the lower part of his body, fingers outlining an unmistakable shape under wet cloth.

  She felt James Santo Marin go very still.

  The rain’s hard, tropical drumming pounded the roof, mingling with the sound of drips falling from the sala’s ceiling into the pots and pans. James Santo Marin lifted his head and looked down at her, his face filled with wary discovery.

  Gaby felt as though her heart were about to jump out of her chest. They were lying on the old couch in the most intimate of positions, James Santo Marin on top of her, her breasts crushed against his chest, his arm under her, partly embracing her. “Let me up,” she choked.

  Shadowed black eyes, inches from hers, gazed down at her with a rather abstracted expression. “Are you hurt?”

  “You hit me,” she cried. “Get off of me!”

  “I didn’t hit you.” His lower body shifted almost imperceptibly against her hand. “I never hit women.”

  Gaby felt dizzy. She had the sudden, surreal sense of being plunged through a dimension of time that had telescoped. They were strangers, lying like this, and yet it was impossible to ignore the intimate reality of that lean, muscular body cradled between her thighs. Trapped in his groin, her hand was telling her he was growing hard.

  Gaby’s mind reeled with terrified thoughts. This couldn’t be happening. Sex. Force. Her fingers contracted spasmodically.

  He jumped. Violently. “Don’t do that,” he said breathily. “Just give me a minute.”

  Gaby choked back a helpless whimper. His clothes were wet. The faint aura of soap and musky male sweat tinted the soggy air. But her senses denied all of it. It was a nightmare, she told herself. There was no stranger lying on top of her in her own living room, no storm, no boat at the Collier dock. Because what was taking place was too incredible to be real. In the morning she’d wake up in her own bed and find out all this had been a bad dream.

  She closed her eyes quickly, half expecting him not to be there when she opened them.

  But he was.

  That chiseled face was right over hers. She saw the gleam of his teeth. “You’re so...” he murmured huskily.

  His head lowered. Paralyzed, not breathing, Gaby felt the warm touch of his lips.

  It was a wary kiss, yet so charged with electricity that her lips parted in amazement.

  He made a soft, unexpected sound of passion, then his mouth covered hers, rough, insatiable. He kissed her throat, her temple, the lobe of her ear, as though he would get his fill of her before she made him stop.

  It was like being enveloped in flames, an inferno that blazed up between them, taking them both by surprise. Gaby couldn’t get her breath. Was this the famous Latin passion? she wondered crazily. The feel of that tense, powerful body pressing on hers, his ardent mouth, was overwhelming. She was drowning in it! If something terrible was about to happen, she knew she didn’t have the will to resist.

  He was the one who broke the moment’s dark spell. He pulled back and looked down at her. “I must be crazy,” he muttered, incredulous. “Jesus, I must be totally crazy, doing this!”

  Gaby was dimly aware of their wet clothes, the musty smell of the old couch, her mother drunkenly asleep upstairs. She felt as though she had never been kissed, or touched, before. How could anyone put so much passion, so much tenderness into just one kiss? Every inch of her skin was sensitized—her swollen, tingling breasts, her arm that had crept around his shoulders to hold him, the bared expanse of her thighs that cradled him tightly. She knew he was fully aroused, her trapped fingers were telling her so.

  Desperately, she tried to make her mind work. She told herself this powerful, too-good-looking man was dangerous, probably violent, probably just one step ahead of the police. But her body was going wild, she thought with a sob, actually aching for him! She was the one who was crazy. In this darkness, she was under some sort of spell. Yet she couldn’t help the strange feeling that he was caught just as off guard by it as she.

  His fingers were unbuttoning her cotton shirt. “Let me,” he murmured when she stirred. The softest of touches stroked her throat, the ridge of her collarbone, then dropped to the curve of her breast. “You’re so cool and lovely.” His voice shook as he eased the shirt down over her shoulders. “Like moonlight.” His thumb brushed the soft bud of her nipple through her satiny bra, and she moaned.

  She had the most curious sensation of being frighteningly, erotically naked in
the smothering darkness, even though she was clothed. And she didn’t want him to stop. His gypsy black eyes, cloaked by a thick sweep of lashes, studied her intently. His mouth curved, with deep indents at the corners. She stared at him, fascinated, thinking he had a beautiful mouth. She wanted him to kiss her, and was alarmed at her own desire. The feel of his hands stroking her breasts, pushing damp clothes out of the way to press his own smooth, cool skin against her, generated a flash fire of passion between them that was unbelievable in its intensity.

  She felt his damp, firm mouth touch her shoulder, then it descended to nuzzle her lace-edged bra.

  In the back of her mind she realized she was going to let him make love to her. It was insane. It was inevitable. He murmured something in her ear as his fingers slid under her brassiere. Then he pulled it aside and his mouth was on her bare flesh.

  Gaby’s mind reeled. She wanted this beautiful man who smelled of rain and night and storm to touch her everywhere. His lips tugged at her nipples and she writhed, lifting her hips against him, a soft, throaty sound on her lips. She wanted him to hurry. She wanted to pull his clothes away, take in his hard body, his shaking, fiery hunger. Her exploring hand pressed boldly between them, outlining his sex under the damp fabric. A groan broke from him, his control stretched to the limit.

  There was the sudden rasp of a zipper. Then his hand was guiding hers. “Don’t say no,” he whispered hoarsely. “I want you. God, how I want you!”

  Gaby was beyond denying him anything. His hand closed hers around hard flesh, hot to the touch. She couldn’t believe the power, the size of him. His clenched, shadowy face was right above her. She saw him as he responded to her touch with an expression of almost helpless ecstasy.

  Then his mouth was on hers, claiming her in such a blazingly exultant kiss that when he stopped, she clung to him wide-eyed, breathless for more.

  “Are you all right?” he gasped. He was trembling with passion. “Tell me I’m not making you do this against your will.”

  She stared up at him with her lips parted, not sure what he’d said.

  Whatever this strange dream was about, this mad sensual fantasy there in the lightning-wracked darkness, she didn’t want it to stop. Against her will? She was beyond everything except her own body’s clamoring wildness!

  When she didn’t answer, his arms tightened around her. He lowered his head and pressed his forehead to hers. Several long moments passed. “Oh damn.” He groaned. “Oh damn.”

  His lean frame was still tense with desire, yet he lay motionless. What was wrong? she wondered desperately. Why had he stopped ... when she didn’t want him to?

  “I can’t,” he murmured, as if to himself. “Not like this.”

  She heard his harsh, indrawn breath, felt his body strain even more tightly against her. His narrow hips moved against her hand once, convulsively, then stilled.

  Instinctively, she lifted her free hand to touch the side of his face. He lowered his head and pressed his mouth to her throat. Every muscle of his body tensed as she took his weight, his heavy, dragging gasps, for long moments. He had stopped. Passion had stopped. Everything had stopped.

  She heard him sigh. Then he lifted her hand away.

  In a lithe movement, he stood up by the couch, a white shadow in shirt and the trousers he hastily zipped up. He gazed at her without speaking, the expression on his handsome face indistinct. Then, abruptly, he turned away.

  Slowly, Gaby raised herself on one elbow. The storm was moving off, lightning no longer lit the room. She was aware of her own open shirt, her exposed breasts, her loosened hair drifting over her bare shoulders. What in the world had happened? Her eyes strained into the darkness. Should she be glad they had stopped? But why hadn’t this powerful, virile man made love to her?

  James Santo Marin, she realized slowly, was leaving. Halfway across the dark sala his feet encountered a water-filled pan and he shied, cursed, then gave it a ferocious kick. It clattered away across the tile floor. He strode out onto the sun porch and she heard him curse again, fervently.

  Then the door slammed and he was gone.

  Gaby lay where she was, listening to a last low growl of thunder receding across Biscayne Bay. Her whole body still throbbed with interrupted, unsatisfied desire. And she was light-headed with tiredness. It threatened to drag her into sleep right there on the couch. Gingerly, she touched her hands to her face. Her skin felt as though she were burning with fever.

  Good Lord, what had happened? She wasn’t quite sure.

  The pressure of the last twelve hours—the fashion show with its drugged-out model, the bizarre scene in the woods, dinner with her mother and Dodd, the even stranger fantasy of James Santo Marin arriving in a huge power cruiser at her back door—had combined to make her sanity tilt a little. What was it Alicia Fernandez had said only that afternoon in Coral Gables? Life in Miami is like one of those music videos kids watch on television.

  Gaby closed her eyes. She wasn’t going to believe that for the past few minutes she’d lost her mind there in the darkness and that she, Gabrielle Collier, had turned into a wild, sex-driven wanton. Who had let a dangerous man, a stranger, undoubtedly a drug dealer, almost make love to her.

  It was a dream. That was the only thing that made sense. For if it had been real, James Santo Marin would certainly have made love to her. If he’d been real, all those lean, rippling muscles, that glittering sensuality wouldn’t have just faded away into the night. No, she’d made some breathtakingly handsome man she’d seen into an erotic fantasy, that was all. She’d fallen asleep right there on the couch and dreamed the whole thing.

  A familiar sound from the sun porch jarred her fully awake. Jupiter was back now that the storm was fading, whining and scratching to get in.

  So there, Gaby told herself, even Jupiter was all right. Nothing had happened. Nothing at all.

  She sat up and swung her feet over the side of the couch. As she did so her foot touched something soggy and unresisting on the floor, and she bent to pick it up.

  It was cold, soaking wet, this thing she held in her hand, a long, dark, narrow length of sodden silk.

  It was no dream, she thought, staring at it. James Santo Marin had left his tie.

  Let him fast who has no bread,

  And sleep in the moonlight

  Who has no bed.

  SPANISH FOLK SONG

  Chapter 5

  “Now, the lead on your story,” Jack Carty said as he took a pencil and slashed through the first sentence, “should match Crissette’s shot of the guy hauling the model out of the pool. So change the whole thing.”

  In the space above Gaby’s fashion show copy he wrote: “Even a spectacular, if non-life-threatening, tumble into an ornamental pool by one of the models could not diminish the luster of the celebrity-packed Coral Gables Hispanic Cultural Society’s annual fashion event.”

  Gaby stared down at the opening he’d just written. Was that supposed to be good? she wondered. She didn’t like it at all. But she’d already learned that newspaper work wasn’t at all like writing synopses for art museum catalogues in Italy. Some days she felt as though she would never figure out the rules. If there were rules. The whole thing still eluded her.

  “Are you with me?” The feature editor’s freckled face wore an expression of weary patience.

  Gaby nodded, fighting down the almost irrational dread that swept over her when Jack critiqued her stories.

  “Now the reason,” he went on, you change the lead is that we’re going to use the pool photograph as a four-column blowup on the first page of the section.” He used the tip of his pencil to point out the rewritten line slowly, word by word, as though Gaby had as much trouble reading as she did writing. She had noticed Jack almost never looked directly at her. He kept his head down, speaking in a laconic monotone in the classic style of newsroom conversation. “All this stuff,” he said brusquely, referring to Gaby’s original sentence, “you dump. And change the rest of the copy accordingly.”<
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  Gaby still didn’t believe the Coral Gables fashion show story was scheduled for the desirable Sunday edition on the Modern Living section’s first page. Whenever she was at the feature editor’s desk, everyone in the city room, hunched down behind their computer terminals, usually followed their conversations with barely hidden enjoyment. So far, she’d never done anything right. Only this time, incredibly enough, she had.

  Crissette’s pictures had been the deciding factor, Gaby knew. And not her terrible prose.

  Jack took the topmost glossy print from the stack of photographs on his desk. “Nice shot. Redhead in a wading pool. Good-looking dude in a Palm Beach suit trying to keep her from drowning. Looks like a scene from Miami Vice.”

  Gaby took the eight-by-ten print, deliberately not looking at it. She wanted James Santo Marin to go away, disappear in a puff of smoke, because she had tried, almost successfully, to forget that humiliating storm-wracked night a few days ago when she’d acted like a sex-crazed wild woman. She knew if she looked at the photograph it would set off inside her shock waves of embarrassment, fear, even inexplicable guilt, all over again.

  Stop it, Gaby told herself. If she couldn’t face James Santo Marin’s photograph, she couldn’t get any of her work done.

  She held up the picture. It was a marvelous shot, even she could tell that much. Crissette’s camera had caught the tall, broad-shouldered man at the moment he’d lifted the model to her feet. Drops of water, suspended in air, added a sense of action and drama. James Santo Marin had heard the telltale szznick-szznick of the Nikon and he’d turned, looking straight into the lens. Crissette had caught all the vivid intensity of his taut, scowling features.

  He looked as real, Gaby thought, as fiercely sexy and irresistible, as when he had fallen on top of her in her half-dark living room. Oh Lord, how she wished she could forget it! That had been the worst, the most stupid episode in her whole life.