Carrera's Bride
Autore
Diana Palmer
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CHAPTER ONE
It was a hectic evening at the Bow Tie casino on Paradise Island. Marcus Carrera was standing on the balcony smoking a cigar. He had a lot on his mind. A few years ago, he’d been a shady businessman with some unsavory contacts and a reputation that could send even tough guys running. He was still tough, of course. But his reputation as a gangster was something he’d hoped to leave behind him.
He owned hotels and casinos both in the States and in the Bahamas, although he was a silent partner in most of them. The Bow Tie was a combination hotel and casino, and his favorite of all his holdings. Here, he catered to an exclusive clientele, which included movie stars, rock stars, millionaires and even a couple of scalawags. He was a millionaire several times over. But even though his operations had all become legitimate, he had to hold on to his vicious reputation for just a while longer. The worst of it was that he couldn’t tell anyone.
Well, that wasn’t entirely true. He could tell Smith. The bodyguard was a really tough customer, an ex-everything military, who kept a six-foot iguana named Tiny for a pet. The two of them were becoming a landmark on Paradise Island. Marcus sometimes thought his guests were showing up as much to see the mysterious Mr. Smith as to gamble and lounge on the sugar-sand beach behind the hotel.
He stretched hugely. He was tired. His life, never calm even at the best of times, was more stressful lately than it had ever been. He felt like a split personality. But when he remembered the reason for the stress, he couldn’t regret his decision. His only brother was lying in a lonely, ornate grave back in Chicago, the victim of a merciless drug lord who was using a dummy corporation in the Bahamas to launder his illegal fortune. Carlo was only twenty-eight. He had a wife and two little kids. Marcus was providing for them, but that didn’t bring back their husband and father. It was a damned shame to die over money, he thought furiously. Worst of all, the money-laundering banker who had set Carlo up for the hit was still running around loose and trying to help a renegade Miami gangster buy up casinos on Paradise Island. They wouldn’t be run cleanly, as Marcus’s were.
He took a draw from the cigar. It was a Havana cigar, one of the very best available. Smith had friends in the CIA who traveled to Cuba on assignment. They could buy the cigars legally and give them as gifts to whomever they pleased. Smith passed them on to his boss. Smith didn’t smoke or drink, and he rarely swore. Marcus shook his head, chuckling to himself. What a conundrum the man was. Sort of like himself, he had to admit.
He lifted his leonine head to the breeze that blew eternally off the ocean. It ruffled his thick, wavy black hair. There were threads of silver in it now. He was in his late thirties, and he looked it. But he was an elegant man, despite his enormous height and build. He was well over six feet tall, as graceful as a panther, and just as quick when he needed to be. He had huge hands, devoid of jewelry except for a Rolex on his left wrist and a ruby ring on his left pinky finger. His skin was olive tan. It was set off stunningly by the spotless crisp white shirt he wore with his black dinner jacket and bow tie. The crease in his black slacks was knife-straight. His wing-tipped black leather shoes were so shiny that they reflected the palm trees on the balcony where he was standing, and the pale moon overhead. His fingernails were flat, immaculately clean. He was close-shaven and polished, never with a hair out of place. He was obsessive about grooming.
Perhaps, he thought, it was because he was so damned poor as a child. One of two sons of immigrant parents, he and Carlo had gone to work at an early age helping their father in the small automotive repair shop he owned with two other partners. The work ethic had been drilled into them, so that they knew that work was the only way out of poverty.
Their father had run afoul of a small-time local hood. He was beaten almost to death in his garage after he’d refused to let the hood use it for a chop shop, to process parts from stolen cars.
Marcus had been twelve at the time, not even old enough to hold a legitimate job. His mother worked as a cleaning lady for a local business in their neighborhood. Carlo was still in grammar school, four years behind Marcus. With their father unable to work, only what their mother brought home kept food on the table. But soon they couldn’t pay rent anymore. They ended up in the street. Both of the elder Carrera’s partners claimed that they had no obligation to him, since their agreement was only verbal. There was no money to hire attorneys.
It had been a bleak existence. Forced to ask for welfare, Marcus had seen his mother humbled and broken, while his father lay mindless in a bed from the massive concussion, unable to recognize his family, even to speak. A blood clot finished him a few months after the beating, leaving Marcus and Carlo and their mother alone.
When her health began to fail, Marcus was faced with seeing his brother and himself end up in foster care, wards of the court. He couldn’t allow them to be separated. There was no family in the States to appeal to, not even any friends who had the means to help them.
With dogged determination, Marcus got a name from one of his tough friends and he went to see the local crime boss. His grit convinced the man that he was worth taking a chance on. Marcus became a courier for the mob, making huge amounts of money almost overnight. He had enough to get a good apartment for his mother and brother, and even managed health insurance for them.
His mother knew what he was doing and tried to discourage him, but he was mature for his age, and he convinced her that what he was doing wasn’t really illegal. Besides, he asked her, did she want to see the family broken up and her kids made wards of the court?
The prospect horrified her. But she started going to mass every morning, to pray for her wayward son.
By the time Marcus was in his early twenties, he was firmly on the wrong side of the law and getting richer by the day. Along the way, he caught up with the drug boss who’d had his father beaten, and he settled the score. Later, he bought the garage out from under his father’s two former partners and kicked them out into the street. Revenge, he found, was sweet.
His mother never approved of what he was doing. She died before he made his first million, still praying for him every day. He had a twinge of regret for disappointing her, but time took care of that. He put Carlo in a private school and made sure that he had the education Marcus lacked. He never looked back.
Women came and went in his life infrequently. His lifestyle precluded a family. He was happy for Carlo when the young man graduated from college with a law degree and married his childhood sweetheart, Cecelia. Marcus was delighted to have a nephew and then a niece to spoil.
Once, he let himself fall in love. She was a beautiful socialite from a powerful Eastern family with money to burn. She liked his reputation, the aura of danger that swirled around his tall head. She liked showing him off to her bored friends.
But she didn’t like Carlo or the friends Marcus kept around, mostly people from his old Chicago neighborhood, who had as many rough edges as he did. He didn’t like opera, he couldn’t discuss literature, and he didn’t gossip. When he mentioned having a family, Erin only laughed. She didn’t want children for years and years, she wanted to party and travel and see the world. But when she did want them, it wasn’t going to be with a man who couldn’t even pretend to be civilized, she’d added haughtily. And that was when he realized that his only worth to her was as a novelty. It had crushed him.
By that time, Marcus had already seen most of the world, and he wasn’t enchanted by it. The end came unexpectedly when he threw a birthday party for Erin at one of his biggest hotels in Miami. He missed Erin and went looking for her. He spotted her, disheveled and drunk, sneaking out of a hotel room with not one, but two rock stars he’d invited. It was the end of the dream. Erin only laughed and said she liked variety. Marcus said she was welcome to it. He walked away and never looked back.
These days, he’d lost much of his interest in women. It had been replaced by an interest in textiles and needlework. Nobody laughed at him since he’d started winning international competitions. He met a lot of women who were good with their hands, and he enjoyed their company. But most of them were married or elderly. The single ones looked at him oddly when they heard his name and the gossip. Nobody wanted to get mixed up with a hood. That was what had led to the decision he’d made recently. It was a life-changing event. But one he couldn’t talk about.
He was sick of being a bad guy. He was more than ready to change his image. He sighed. Well, that wasn’t going to be possible for a few months. He had to play the game to the end. His most immediate problem was finding a conduit to a necessary contact who was staying at a hotel in Nassau. He couldn’t be seen talking to the man and, despite Smith’s tight security, it was risky to use the telephone or even a cell phone. It was a knotty problem. There was another one. The man he was supposed to help in some illegal activities was due to talk to him tonight. So far, he hadn’t shown up.
He put out the cigar reluctantly, but there was no smoking in the hotel or the casino. He couldn’t really complain. He’d set the rules himself, after his young nephew and niece had come for a week with their mother, Cecelia. Smoking in the dining room had caused his nephew Julio to go into spasms of coughing. The boy was taken to a doctor and diagnosed with asthma. Since he had to protect Julio, and little Cosima, he decided to ban smoking in the resort. It hadn’t been a popular decision. But, hell, who cared about popularity? He only smoked the rare cigar, though, he consoled himself. He didn’t even really like the things anymore. They were a habit.
He stalked back into his luxurious carpeted office. Smith was scowling, peering at a bank of closed-circuit television screens.
“Boss, you’d better look at this,” he said, standing straight. He was a mountain of a man, middle-aged but imposing and dangerous-looking, with a head shaved bald and green eyes that could be suddenly sparkling with amusement at the most unexpected times.
Marcus joined him, peering down. He didn’t have to ask which monitor he should look at. A slight blond woman was being manhandled by a man twice her size. She was fighting, but to no effect. The man moved and Marcus saw who he was. His blood boiled.
“Want me to handle it?” Smith asked.
Marcus squared his shoulders. “I need the exercise more than you do.” He moved gracefully into the private elevator and pushed the down button.
* * *
Delia Mason was fighting with all her strength, but she couldn’t make her drunk companion let go of her. It was demeaning to have to admit that, because she’d studied karate for a year. But even that didn’t help her much. She couldn’t get away. Her green eyes were blazing, and she tried biting, but the stupid man didn’t seem to feel the teeth making patterns in his hand. She hadn’t wanted to come on this date in the first place. She was in the Bahamas with her sister and brother-in-law, getting over the lingering death of her mother. She was supposed to be enjoying herself. So far, the trip was a dead bust. Especially, right now.
“I do like…a girl with spirit,” he panted, fumbling with the short skirt of her black dress.
“I hate a man who…won’t take no for an answer!” she raged, trying to bring her knee up.
The man only laughed and forced her back against the wall of the building.
She started to scream just as his wet, horrible mouth crushed down onto hers. He was making obscene movements against her and groaning. She’d never been more powerless, more afraid, in her life. She hadn’t even wanted to go out with this repulsive banker, but her rich brother-in-law had insisted that she needed a companion to accompany her out on the town. Her sister Barb hadn’t liked the look of the man, either, but Barney had been so insistent that Fred Warner was a true knight. Fred was a banker. He had business at the casino anyway, he told Delia, so why not combine business and pleasure by taking Delia along? Fred had agreed a little reluctantly. He was already nervous and then he’d had one drink after another in the bar downstairs waiting for Delia, trying to bolster his courage. He mumbled something about getting into bed with a rattlesnake to keep his business going. It made no sense to Delia, who almost backed out of the date at the last minute. But Barney had been so insistent…
Delia sank her teeth into the fat lower lip of the man and enjoyed his sharp yelp of pain for a few seconds. But the pain made him angry and his hand suddenly ripped down the neckline of her dress and he slapped her.
The shock of the attack froze her. But just as she was trying to cope with the certainty of what was about to happen, a shadow moved and Fred was spun around like a top and knocked down with a satisfying thud.
A huge man, immaculately dressed and menacing, moved forward with pantherlike grace.
“You son of a…!” the drunken man shouted, scrambling to his feet. “I’ll kill you!”
“Go for it,” a deep, darkly amused voice invited.
Delia moved forward before her rescuer could, and swung her purse at Fred, landing a solid blow on his jaw.
“Ouch!” Fred groaned in protest, grabbing his cheek.
“I wish it was a baseball bat, you second cousin to a skunk!” Delia spat, red-faced and furious.
“I’ll loan you one,” Marcus promised, admiring her ferocity.
Fred gaped at the man and his eyes flashed. “Who the hell do you think you are…!” Fred demanded drunkenly, moving forward.
Marcus planted a huge fist in his gut and sent him groaning to his knees.
“What a kind thing to do,” Delia exclaimed in her broad Texas accent. She smiled at the stranger. “Thanks!”
Marcus was noticing her torn dress. His face hardened. “What are you doing here with this bargain basement Casanova?” he asked.
“My brother-in-law offered him to me as a companion,” she said disgustedly. “When I tell Barb what he tried to do to me, she’ll knock her husband out a window for suggesting this date!”
“Barb?”
“My big sister, Barbara Cortero. She’s married to Barney Cortero. He owns hotels,” she confided.
Marcus’s eyebrows lifted suddenly, and he smiled. His luck had just changed.
She looked up at the big man with fascination. “I really appreciate what you did. I know a little self-defense, but I couldn’t stop him. I bit a hole in his lip, but it didn’t slow him down, it just made him mad, and he hit me.” She rubbed her cheek and winced.
“He hit you?” Marcus asked angrily. “I didn’t see that!”
“He’s a real charmer,” she muttered, glancing down at the drunk, who was still holding his stomach and groaning.
Marcus pulled out his cell phone and pressed in a single number. “Smith?” he said. “Come down here and take this guy back to his hotel. In one piece,” he added. “We don’t need any more trouble.”
There was a reply. Marcus chuckled and flipped the phone shut. He looked at Delia curiously. “You’re going to need to stitch that dress up,” he remarked. He slid out of his dinner jacket and slid it over her shoulders. It was warm from the heat of his big body and it smelled of expensive cologne and cigar smoke.
She looked up at him with utter fascination. He was a handsome man, even with those two jagged white scars on his cheek, cutting through his olive complexion like roadmaps. He had big, deep-set brown eyes under thick eyebrows. He was built like a wrestler and he looked dangerous. Very dangerous.
“Stitches,” she murmured, spellbound.
He was watching her, too, with amused curiosity. She was small, but she had the heart of a lioness. He was impressed.
The elevator opened and Smith walked out of it, powerful muscles rippling under his dark suit as he approached the small group.
“Where shall I deliver him?” he asked in his gravelly voice.
Marcus looked at Delia and lifted an eyebrow.
“We’re all staying at the Colonial Bay hotel in Nassau,” she stammered.
He nodded toward Smith, who put out one huge hand and brought Fred abruptly to his feet.
“Let go of me or I’ll sue!” Fred threatened.
“Attempted sexual assault is a felony,” Marcus said coldly.
“You can’t prove that!” Fred replied haughtily.
“I’ve got cameras everywhere. You’re on tape. The whole thing,” Marcus added.
Fred blinked. He scowled and peered at the older man. Through the fog of alcohol, recognition stiffened his face. “Carrera!” he choked.
Marcus smiled. It wasn’t a nice smile. “So you remember me. Imagine that. Small world, isn’t it?”
Fred swallowed hard. “Yeah. Small.” He straightened. “I actually came here to talk to you,” he began, swaying unsteadily.
“Yeah? Well, come back when you’re sober,” Marcus said firmly, giving the man a look that he hoped Fred would manage to understand.
Fred seemed to sober up at once. “Uh, yeah, sure. I’ll do that. Listen, this thing with the girl, it’s all a…a misunderstanding,” he added quickly. “I had a little too much to drink. And she just kept asking for it…”
“You liar!” she exclaimed.
“We’ve got tape,” Marcus said again.
Fred gave up. He gave Marcus an uneasy look. “Don’t hold this against me, okay? I mean, we’re like family, right?”
Marcus had to bite his tongue to keep from spilling everything. “One more stunt like this, and you’ll need a family—for the wake. Got me?”
Fred lost a shade of color. “Yeah. Sure. Right.” He pulled away from Smith and tried to sober up. “I was just having a little fun. I was drunk or I’d never have touched her! Sorry. I’m really sorry!”
“Get him out of here,” Marcus told Smith, and he turned away while the drunken man was still trying to proffer apologies and excuses. He gave Fred a long look.
“I’ll…call you,” Fred choked.
Marcus nodded without Delia seeing him.
He took Delia by the arm. “Come on, we’ll get a needle and thread and fix your dress. You can’t go home looking like that.”
She was still trying to figure out what was going on. Fred seemed to know this man, even to be afraid of him. And strange messages were passing between them without words. Who was this big, dark man?
“I don’t know you,” she said hesitantly.
He lifted an eyebrow. “Repairs first, introductions later. You’re perfectly safe.”
“That’s what my sister said I’d be with Fred,” she pointed out, tugging his jacket closer. “Safe.”
“Yeah, but I don’t need to attack women in dark alleys,” he stated. “It’s sort of the other way around.”
He was smiling. She liked his smile. She shrugged and her perfect lips tugged up. “Okay.” She managed a smile of her own. “Thanks.”
“Oh, I was just there to back you up,” he said lazily, letting her go into the elevator in front of him. “You’d have done okay if you’d had a shotgun.”
“I’m not so sure,” she said. “He was inhumanly strong.”
“Men on drugs or alcohol usually are.”
“Really?” she asked in a faint stammer.
He gave her a worldly appraisal as the elevator carried them up to his office. “First experience with a drunk?” he asked bluntly.
“Well, not exactly,” she confessed on a long sigh. “I’ve never had an experience like that, at least. I seem to draw drunks the way honey draws flies. I went to a party with Barb and Barney last month. A drunk man insisted on dancing with me, and then he passed out on the floor in front of God and everybody. At Barb’s birthday party, a man who had too much to drink followed me around all night trying to buy me a pack of cigarettes.” She looked up at him with a rueful smile. “I don’t smoke.”
He chuckled deeply. “It’s your face. You have a sympathetic look. Men can’t resist sympathy.”
Her green eyes twinkled. “Is that a fact? You don’t look like a man who ever needs any.”
He shrugged. “I don’t, usually. Here we are.”
He stood aside to let her exit the elevator.
She stopped just inside the office and looked around, fascinated. The carpet was shag, champagne colored. The furniture was mahogany. The drapes matched the carpet and the furniture. There were banks of screens showing every room in the casino. There was a bar with padded stools curled around it. There were computers and phones and fax machines. It looked like a spy setup to Delia, who never missed a James Bond film.
“Wow,” she said softly. “Are you a spy?”
He chuckled and shook his head. “I’d never make the grade. I don’t like martinis.”
“Me, either,” she murmured, smiling at him.
He motioned her toward the huge bathroom. “There’s a robe behind the door. Take off the dress and put on the robe. I’ll get some thread and a needle.”
She hesitated, her eyes wide and uncertain.
He pointed to the corner of the room. “There are cameras all over the place. I’d never get away with anything. The boss has eyes in the back of his head.”
“The boss?” she queried. “Oh. You mean the man who owns the casino, right?”
He nodded, trying not to smile.
“You’re a…” She almost said ‘bouncer,’ but this man was far too elegant to be a thug. “You’re a security person?” she amended.
“Something like that,” he agreed. “Go on. You’ve had all the hard knocks you’re going to get for one night. I’m the last person who’d hurt you.”
That made her feel guilty. Usually she was a trusting soul—too trusting. But it had been a hard night. “Thanks,” she said.
She closed the door and slid out of the dress, leaving her in a black slip and hose with her strappy high heels. She put on the robe quickly and wondered at her complete trust in this total stranger. If he was a security guy, he must be the head guy, since he’d told the other guy, Smith, what to do. She felt oddly safe with him, for all his size and rough edges. To work in a casino, a man must have to be tough, though, she reminded herself.
She went out of the bathroom curled up in the robe that had to be five sizes too big for her. It dragged behind her like the train of a wedding gown.
Her rescuer was seated on the desk, wearing a pair of gold-rimmed reading glasses. Beside him was a sewing kit, and a spool of black thread. He was already threading a needle.
She wondered if he’d been in the military. She knew men back home who were, and most of them were handy around the house, with cooking and mending as well. She moved forward and smiled, reaching for the needle at the same time he reached for the dress.
“You sew?” she asked.
He nodded. “My brother and I both had to learn. We lost our parents early in life.”
“I’m sorry.” She was. Her father had died before she was born. She’d just lost her mother to stomach cancer. She knew how it felt.
“Yeah.”
“I could do that,” she said. “I don’t mind.”
“Let me. It relaxes me.”
She gave in with good grace and sat down in a chair while he bent his dark head to the task. His fingers, despite being so big, were amazingly expert with the needle. And his stitches were short, even, and almost invisible. She was impressed.
She looked around the huge office curiously, and on an impulse, she got to her feet when she spotted a wall hanging.
She moved toward it curiously. It wasn’t a wall hanging after all, she noted when she reached it. The pattern was familiar. The fabric was some of the newest available, and she had some of it in her cloth stash back home. Her eyes were admiring the huge beautiful quilt against one wall, hung on a rod. It was a symphony of black and white blocks. How incredible to find such a thing in the security office of a casino!
“Bow tie,” she murmured softly.
His head jerked up. “What’s that?” he asked.
She glanced at him with a sheepish smile. “It’s a bow tie pattern, this quilt,” she replied. “A very unique one. I could swear I’ve seen it somewhere before,” she added thoughtfully. “I love the variations, and the stark contrast of the black and white blocks. The stitches are what make it so unique. There are stem stitches and chain stitches…”
“You quilt.” It was a statement and not a question.
“Well, yes. I teach quilting classes, back home in Jacobsville, Texas, at the county recreation center during the summer.”
He hadn’t moved. “What pattern do you like best?”
“The Dresden Plate,” she said, curious at his interest in what was primarily a feminine pursuit.
He put her dress down, opened a drawer in the big desk, pulled out a photo album and handed it to her, indicating that she should open it.
The photographs weren’t of people. They were of quilts, scores of quilts, in everything from a four-patch to the famous Dresden Plate, with variations that were pure genius.
She sank back down in the chair with the book in her lap. “These are glorious,” she exclaimed.
He chuckled. “Thanks.”
Her eyes almost came out of their sockets as she gaped at him. “You made these yourself? You quilt?”
“I don’t just quilt. I win competitions. National and even international competitions.” He indicated the bow tie pattern on the wall. “That one won first prize last year in a national competition in this country.” He named a famous quilting show on one of the home and garden channels. “I was her guest in February, and that quilt was the one I demonstrated.”
She laughed, letting out a heavy breath. “This is incredible. I couldn’t go to the competition, but I did see the winning quilts on the Internet. That’s where I remember it from! And no wonder you looked so familiar, too. I watch that quilting show all the time. I saw you on that show!”
He cocked a thick eyebrow. “Small world,” he commented.
“Isn’t it just? I’m sorry, I don’t remember your name. But I do remember your face. I watched you put together a block from the bow tie quilt on that television show. Well, I’m impressed. Not that many men participate, even today.”
He laughed. “We’re gaining on you women,” he said with a twinkle in his dark eyes. “There’s a Texas Ranger and a police officer who enter competitions with me these days. We travel together sometimes to the events.”
“You’re good,” she said, her eyes going back to the book of photos.
“I’d like to see some of your work,” he remarked.
She laughed. “I’m not quite in your league,” she said. “I teach, but I’ve never won prizes.”
“What do you do when you’re not teaching?”
“I run an alterations shop and work with a local dry cleaner,” she said. “I do original fashions for a little boutique as well. I don’t make a lot of money at it, but I love my work.”
“That’s more important than the amount of money you make,” he said.
“That’s what I always thought. One of my girlfriends married and had a child, and then discovered that she could make a lot of money with a law degree in a big city. She took the child and went to New York City, where she got rich. But she was miserable away from her husband, a rancher back home, and she had no time at all for the child. Then they filed for divorce.” She shook her head. “Sometimes we’re lucky, and we don’t get what we think will make us happy. Anyway, I learned from watching her that I didn’t want that sort of pressure, no matter how much money I could make.”
“You’re mature for your age. You can’t be more than twenty…?” he probed.
Her eyebrows arched and she grinned. “Can’t I?”
