Dying for You

“Why are you doing this?” he had asked her. “Why can’t you leave well enough alone and stay out of my life?”

“Because I love you,” she’d told him. Straightforward and to the point. “And I believe that deep down under all the pain and guilt you feel, you still love me.”

She’d been wrong. He didn’t love her. He had never loved her.

Sawyer set the glass on his desk, flopped down in his leather chair and huffed out a deep, exasperated breath. He loosened his silk tie and undid the top button of his linen shirt.

If he knew Lucie, she didn’t have a nest egg socked away for a rainy day. She lived in the moment. Always had. She was generous to her friends and a sucker for every sob story she heard. She gave away too much of her hard-earned money to charities she believed in, those for women, children and animals.

He’d see to it that she received a generous bonus from Dundee’s. He could also shred her letter of resignation and have Daisy report that she was laid off, that way she could at least draw unemployment.

You can do better than that. You can give her a glowing recommendation. Or he could make a phone call and get her a new job.

“That’s it.” When he tried to snap his fingers, he realized he was drunker than he’d thought. He couldn’t seem to make his fingers cooperate.

He picked up the interoffice phone and hit the office manager’s number. When she answered on the second ring, he said, “Daisy, look up Cara Bedell’s phone number for me. Her office number. She should still be there.”

He waited while Daisy found the information he had requested. When she recited the number, he jotted it down quickly. After taking a steadying breath, he dialed Cara’s number. Her secretary answered.

“This is Sawyer McNamara from the Dundee Agency. I’d like to speak to Ms. Bedell.”

“Just a moment, sir.”

A couple of minutes later, Cara came on the line. “Mr. McNamara, what can I do for you?”

“You can tell your new security chief to hire one of my former employees.”

“I take it that you didn’t fire this person, otherwise you’d hardly be recommending him to me.”

“Her. It’s Lucie Evans. You remember Ms. Evans, don’t you?”

“Yes, I remember her.”

“Lucie needs a job. I thought perhaps as a favor to Dundee’s, you might consider hiring her.”

“Fax her resume first thing in the morning. Send it directly to me and I’ll hand deliver it to Deke.”

“Thank you.” He swallowed. “Just one more thing.”

“Yes?”

“I’d prefer that Ms. Evans not know that I had anything to do with her being offered the job.”

“All right. I’ll have Deke fabricate a white lie to cover for you, if necessary.”

“I’d appreciate that.”

Sawyer hung up the receiver. There, that was done. Lucie had a job. She’d be moving two hours away, from Atlanta to Chattanooga. Two hours, twenty miles, a hundred miles or a thousand, it was all the same. It meant that, if he were lucky, he’d never have to see Lucie Evans again as long as he lived.

TOMAS CASTILLO met privately with his friend, President Emilio Ortega, to discuss Cara Bedell’s upcoming visit to Ameca. He and Emilio had known each other for quite some time and he had contributed generously to his friend’s campaign for reelection against the opposition leader, Naldo Salazar. Salazar was a man of the people who wanted all kinds of ridiculous government reforms. Felipe Delgado, Tomas’s rival in the oil business, had campaigned for Salazar.

“Ms. Bedell is set to arrive in San Luis in three weeks,” Emilio said. “I plan to host a dinner here at the palace for our American friend and hopefully your new business partner.”

“I understand she has been invited to stay with Delgado and his family while she is here. Perhaps you should make a counteroffer. After all, if she refused the president’s request for her to stay at the palace…” Tomas smiled. “Ms. Bedell is unmarried, I believe. It would be my great pleasure to be her devoted servant while she is in my country.”

Emilio laughed. “Ah, Tomas, you wicked devil. You intend to seduce the American senorita, no? She may have great respect for Delgado and like his ideas of returning a portion of the profits from any deal they make to the people of Ameca, but I would lay odds that once you romance Ms. Bedell, she will sing whatever tune you want to hear.”

“Indeed. I admit that I do have a way with the ladies. But if Ms. Bedell can’t be charmed, then all is not lost. There is more than one means of persuasion, is there not?”

“Enough.” Emilio held up a hand in a stop signal. “What other plans you may have, I do not want to know them.”

“Of course, my old friend, the less you know, the better. But be assured that I will not fail. I intend for Bedell, Inc. and Castillo, Inc. to become partners in a lucrative deal that will benefit both parties. I am prepared to do whatever it takes to secure that bargain.”

Chapter Three

LUCIE SLEPT UNTIL ten o’clock that Saturday morning. After glancing at the clock on her nightstand, she rolled over into the center of the bed and sprawled out on her stomach. Yesterday, after lugging five boxes of personal stuff from her office to her car and then from her car to her apartment, she had dropped onto her comfy old sofa, slip-covered in a stain-resistant cream fabric, and sat there for nearly an hour. Most of that time had been spent staring out the southwest windows directly across the room as the afternoon sun slowly sank lower and lower. The harder she had tried not to think about what she’d done, naturally, the more her mind had focused on the fact that she had resigned from the Dundee Private Security and Investigation Agency. The rest of the evening she had simply gone through the motions: eaten a salad for supper, taken a long soak in the bathtub, brushed her teeth, watched the late night news, and gone to bed. The only problem was, she hadn’t slept more than two hours straight and not more than four and a half all night. That might be enough sleep for some people, but not for Lucie. She was an eight-hour-a-night kind of gal.

Groaning at the thought of getting out of bed this morning and facing her first full day of unemployment, she lifted her arms, balled her hands into fists and beat furiously against the two stacked feather pillows. When she wore herself out pummeling her grandmother’s old pillows, she picked up one of them, covered her face with it and screamed. She had learned at an early age what great sound buffers feather pillows made. After tossing the pillow aside, she took a deep breath and got out of bed. Standing there on the wooden floor in her bare feet, she squared her shoulders.

There, she felt better. A mini-hissy fit had done the trick. Whenever she tried to control her emotions instead of releasing them, she wound up making herself sick. If Lucie had learned anything about herself, it was that she should never try to repress her emotions. She just wasn’t geared to calm internalizing. No sirree, in order to function, she needed frenzied externalizing.

Five minutes later, as she emerged from the bathroom, face washed and hair brushed, she heard her doorbell ring. Who on earth? It was ten fifteen on a Saturday morning.

She made her way out of the bedroom and through her combination living room/dining room. When she reached the front door, she peered through the view-finder, then grinned broadly and unlocked the door.

Daisy Holbrook held a drink caddy in one hand and a small white sack in the other. “I come bearing gifts. White chocolate lattes and sinfully decadent cream-filled doughnuts, two for each of us.”

“Well, get in here, girl.” Lucie issued the invitation with a sweep of her hand. “Put the goodies on the coffee table and we’ll dig in.”

Lucie smiled at her next thought. Daisy looked fresh as a daisy. But then she always did. Dundee’s Ms. Efficiency had the wholesome good looks of a healthy farm girl, bred for marriage and birthing babies. Young, pretty, slightly plump, Daisy dressed in classic clothes. Sweater sets, pearls, tailored slacks. Today, away from the office, she wore jeans and a cotton sweater. But the jeans weren’t low-cut, faded, or ragged-hemmed; instead they were pale blue stone-washed, neatly pressed, and accented with a small pink belt that matched her sweater. She had her long, chestnut-brown hair pulled back in a ponytail and her only makeup consisted of light blush and lip gloss.

Lucie curled up on the sofa. Daisy lifted each of the coffee cups from the carrier and placed them on hand-painted metal coasters atop the coffee table. Then she removed several large paper napkins from the sack and put two sugar-glazed doughnuts on the napkins.

“You do realize that after we consume this sinful food, our hips will expand at least half an inch and we’ll have gained no less than three or four pounds,” Lucie said, as Daisy sat down beside her.

“I’m willing to make the ultimate sacrifice for a friend.” Daisy grinned. “After all, I couldn’t think of anything else that might cheer you up this morning.”

“Just seeing you cheers me up.”

“But seeing me with lattes and doughnuts makes my visit even better, doesn’t it?”

Lucie reached for the latte. “I can certainly use a little caffeine and sugar this morning, something to perk me up as well as wake me up.”

“Rough night?” Daisy lifted her doughnut, napkin and all, from the table.

“I spent most of the night arguing with myself, part of me convinced I’d done the only thing I could possibly have done by resigning and another part of me convinced that quitting one job before I have another is a definite sign of mental instability.”

“You’ll get another job without any trouble.”