Carrera's Bride. Diana Palmer

he gave a guy a week’s paid vacation in one of his hotels for two yards of old cloth.”

      “Antique fabric is very valuable,” Delia said softly, “and extremely hard to get.”

      “They say he keeps an album of his quilts,” Barney chuckled.

      “He does. I saw it. He’s won international competitions,” Delia replied. “His needlework is marvelous.” She showed the mend to Barb, who couldn’t find the stitches.

      “That’s really something,” Barb had to admit.

      “If he ever shoots me, I’ll ask him to sew me a quilted shroud,” Barney quipped.

      Barb stared at him. “Why would he want to shoot you?”

      Barney looked uncomfortable. Then he shrugged. “No reason right now. I had thought about suggesting we all take in a show at the casino. We might get special treatment now, what with him sewing up Delia.”

      Barb glowered at her husband. “We’re not putting her in his path again. I do not want my baby sister running around with a criminal!”

      “He’s not a criminal. Not exactly,” Barney said. “He’s a nice guy as long as you don’t try to steal from him or threaten anybody close to him.”

      “I don’t want to find out,” Barb said firmly. She turned to Delia. “You stay away from that man. I don’t care how nicely he sews, either.”

      Delia wanted to tell them that Marcus had asked her out the next day, but she didn’t quite have the courage. It was hard to stand up to Barb, who was mature and brimming with authority. Delia had never refused to do anything Barb asked.

      But she remembered the hungry kiss she’d shared with Marcus on the windswept balcony, the feel of his arms around her, the warm strength of him in the cool evening. She tingled all over with memory. She wanted to be with him.

      The only thing that bothered her was his reputation. What if he really did kill people…?

      Barb was studying her expression. “Dee, did you hear me?” she asked. “I said, I don’t want you going around with a gangster.”

      “I heard, Barb,” Delia replied.

      “He’s loaded, you know,” Barney interrupted. “They say he’s worth millions.”

      “It’s how he got it that bothers me,” Barb replied.

      “There are worse crooks heading up corporations all over the world,” Barney said carelessly. “He’s certainly got the midas touch when it comes to business. At least he’s honest, and he never makes idle threats. He loves senior citizens.”

      “So does the Japanese mafia, the Yakuza,” Barb shot back.

      Barney threw up his hands. “Everything’s black and white with you.”

      “I’ll go to bed and let you two finish your argument in private,” Delia offered.

      “You do that, baby,” Barb said gently. “I’m glad you’re okay. Imagine, riding around Nassau in the company of a killer!”

      “They never proved that he killed anybody,” Barney argued.

      “They never proved he didn’t!”

      Delia slipped out of the sitting room and closed the door on the loud voices. She got ready for bed in a daze. She couldn’t believe what Barney said about Marcus. Surely she’d have sensed evil if it was in him. He’d been kind, and comforting. He’d even been affectionate. He was attracted to her, as she was to him. Was it so wrong to spend time with him?

      She worried about what Barb would say. And then she thought, I’m a grown woman. I have to make my own decisions about people.

      She remembered suddenly what Marcus had said to her, about not believing what she might hear about him; about waiting until she knew him better to make that sort of judgment.

      It was going to be too much temptation anyway, to turn away from him now. She was already hooked. She couldn’t stop thinking about him. She was going to go to Blackbeard’s Tower with him, even if she had to do it covertly.

      She remembered that he’d said he’d meet her in the lobby, and she began to worry. It was a long shot, but what if Barb and Barney happened to be in the lobby at the same time?

      The thought kept her awake late into the night.

      She dreamed about the hot kiss they’d shared on his balcony as well. She’d always been a sensible, practical sort of person. But when Marcus Carrera touched her, she lost her head completely and became someone else. She’d never understood why women gave up their principles and slept with men before they were married. But it was becoming clear that sometimes physical attraction overran caution. Her body throbbing, she felt stirrings that she’d never experienced in her life. She could barely stand to have the sheet touch her body, she was so feverish with just the memories. Marcus’s body close to hers, his big hands flat on her back, his mouth biting into hers hungrily. She actually moaned. It was dangerous for her to see him again, because she wanted him with a blind, mindless passion. She knew already that she couldn’t resist him if he put on the heat. And he might be as helpless to stop it as she already was.

      She was very curious about sex. Her mother had been reticent and reluctant to even talk about it, just like Barb. But Delia had friends who indulged, and they told her the most shocking things about men and women in bed together. She thought of Marcus that way and her body ached for him.

      She knew that if he asked her out, she’d go with him as often as he liked. She’d lived in a cocoon all her life, without refusing to do whatever she was told. But she was twenty-three now, and already falling in love with that big, dark man from the casino. For once, she was going to do what pleased her, and she’d live with whatever consequences there were. She wasn’t going to spend the rest of her life alone without even one sweet memory to cherish in her old age. And if she had to go against Barb to do that, she was willing. It was, after all, her life.

      When Delia woke, she felt as if she hadn’t slept at all. She couldn’t believe that Marcus was a killer, no matter what anyone said. He had been tender with her, generous, kind. Surely a gangster wouldn’t have been so accommodating to a perfect stranger.

      But what did she know about gangsters? She was a small-town girl with no knowledge of people with mob connections, except by gossip. There had been some excitement in Jacobsville, Texas, over the past few years. A drug lord had decided to build a distribution center there, and a group of local mercenaries had stopped him. A local girl had been kidnapped in revenge and taken to the drug lord’s home in Mexico, and her stepbrother had rescued her. There had even been a shooting when Christabel Gaines and her guardian Judd Dunn had run afoul of a murderer; Christabel had been shot by one of the notorious Clark brothers, who had killed a young woman up around Victoria. Clark was now serving a life sentence without hope of parole.

      But other than those episodes, Jacobsville was mostly a quiet place to live. Delia lived in a cocoon of kind people and rustic charm. She was unsophisticated, not really pretty, and rather shy.

      So, why, she wondered, would a rich, worldly man like Marcus Carrera even want to take her sightseeing. If he was as rich as Barney said he was, surely he could get any sort of women he liked—beautiful women, talented women, famous women. Why would he want to take Delia out? Maybe he was desperate for company? She laughed at that thought. But then she remembered the torrid kiss they’d shared, and her heart raced. Perhaps he felt the same way she did. It didn’t have a lot to do with looks, social position or wealth. Nobody could explain physical attraction, after all.

      That fiery passion was unsettling to a woman who’d never felt it in her life. She couldn’t even consider an affair, she told herself. And he didn’t seem to be a marrying man. Surely if he’d wanted to marry, he’d have done it, at his age.

      There was another consideration—if she was going to go against her own best instincts and go out with him, she’d