Lethal Affair. Jean Pichon Thomas

desk where her bag lay. “What is it?”

      He relayed the number to her.

      “Happy now?” she asked him after jotting the number down.

      “Reasonably so. How are you doing? Okay?”

      “Why wouldn’t I be?”

      “Just wanted to check.”

      “Don’t.” What was it with these two guys, Marcus and now Casey, determined to watch over her? “Look, I’m going to hang up now. I was just headed for bed when you called.”

      They exchanged good-nights. Minutes later, after turning off all the lights in the suite, Brenna crawled into bed. She expected to be asleep within seconds of laying her head on the pillow. It didn’t work that way.

      Casey kept her awake. She couldn’t seem to rid herself of the image of him that rose in the dark and stayed there.

      It was as if that strong, forceful body was actually in the room with her, standing over her, wearing the same wounded look on his face he had worn the day she’d given his ring back to him.

      But she didn’t want to go there again. Hadn’t she already suffered enough torment for weeks after? She had, yes, and in the end managed to survive it, too.

      She didn’t deserve to fight that battle all over, spend a sleepless night being haunted by Casey McBride. And she didn’t. She finally willed herself into a deep, uninterrupted sleep.

      Uninterrupted, that is, until what must have been hours later when she came awake with a restless inability to understand why. It took her a few minutes to realize she could no longer hear the peaceful hum of the air conditioner.

      Brenna had learned that, in the deep hours of the night, the tropical heat of the day, even a steamy heat, was known to cool down to a degree that was downright chilly. Had to be the reason why the thermostat had shut down the air conditioner. It was no longer needed.

      The temperature of the bedroom was comfortable enough without it, but the air in here felt stuffy now. She had to open a window.

      She didn’t bother turning on a lamp. It wasn’t necessary. The security lights outside that bathed the property provided enough illumination through the blinds to guide her from the bed to the nearest window. Lifting the sash, she knelt on the carpet to breathe in the fresh air.

      A breeze off the land not only cooled her face, it carried with it the wonderful scents of the spices that were grown on the island. Then, suddenly, she caught a whiff of something less pleasant. The odor of a cigarette. It had to be close by for her to smell it like this.

      Peering through the slats of the blind she hadn’t bothered to raise, Brenna was able to immediately detect the source of the smoke. Julio was out there, a burning cigarette in hand as he paced along the path that circled the guesthouse.

      This was no casual, midnight walk. His gait was too purposeful, too deliberate for that. Marcus must have ordered him to patrol her quarters. There was something else. He’d paused to crush his cigarette on the ground. Even in the shadows, the glow from the security light mounted overhead was sufficient enough for her to read his face.

      There was no other word to describe his expression. Sinister.

      She didn’t like it. Didn’t like that look on his face. Didn’t like Julio being out there. Didn’t like his keeping watch on her, because that’s what it was.

      Could Casey be right? Was she making herself vulnerable to some unknown, potential danger just by being here at the villa?

      * * *

      Casey couldn’t sleep. He was concerned about Brenna, convinced that Marcus Bradley was an unpredictable presence in her life. This was why he was here on the deck, listening to the waves crashing on the beach, instead of in his bed.

      He could tell the tide was coming in. There was no moon, but he could see a luminescence like foxfire on the crests of the waves, marking their position.

      He had to be honest with himself. There was something more than just Bradley troubling him.

      It was the memories of Brenna and him and why their affair had gone wrong. He had no business revisiting those memories, but he couldn’t help himself. Couldn’t stop himself from placing the blame for their breakup where it belonged. With himself.

      And there it is, McBride. The self-accusation you deserve.

      Because hadn’t he known from the beginning that persuading her to marry him was a mistake? Brenna had made no secret of her fear for his safety. She’d been raised on it by a mother who’d lost her husband, a Chicago fireman who’d died in a warehouse blaze.

      “It devastated her, Casey,” Brenna had confided to him. “It killed her in the end. Mom just seemed to fade away on Will and me.”

      Casey had sympathized with their loss, but he hadn’t seriously listened to Brenna’s argument that his work as an FBI agent was every bit as dangerous, perhaps even more so than that of a fireman. She had made repeated efforts during the course of their engagement to talk him into leaving the field and taking a safe desk job at the bureau.

      But he knew that wasn’t for him. He craved the adventure out there.

      It might have turned out all right if, on assignment in the Mideast to rescue an officer from the American embassy captured by terrorists, he hadn’t been caught and held himself. The FBI was unable to tell Brenna during those long, nightmare weeks whether he was alive or dead.

      In the end, a release for both the officer and Casey had been negotiated, but it was too late for Brenna and him.

      “I can’t take it anymore, Casey. I love you, but I can’t live with the fear of losing a husband. I just can’t. It’s easier to live with the heartache of letting you go.”

      That’s when Brenna had returned his ring to him. When his bitterness had followed. In time he had overcome that bitterness, but he’d never been able to forget her or what they had shared.

      And now here they were, thrown together again.

      Oh, hell, was this going to turn out to be another bad mistake?

      He looked up at the stars overhead, brilliant in the night sky, and realized he had no answer for himself.

      Chapter 2

      The first thing Brenna did when she emerged from the guesthouse the next morning, besides noting that it was going to be another clear, beautiful day, was to deliberately seek out Julio. Providing, that is, he wasn’t asleep in his bed after patrolling her quarters all night.

      She found him near the garage, where he was washing the Jaguar in the driveway. He looked much too alert to have spent the entire night without sleep. She decided he’d either deserted his post at some point or been replaced by another member of the staff at the villa. For all she knew, Marcus had a whole army of them working in shifts to guard her around the clock.

      Or maybe, thanks to Casey’s paranoia on the subject of Marcus, she was simply letting her imagination run wild.

      As it must have last night, she thought, when she had sworn the expression on Julio’s face was a grim, sinister one. His was nothing remotely like that this morning. He was all harmless smiles, greeting her with a cheerful, “Good morning, miss. I will have the car ready for you after breakfast.”

      She returned the greeting, adding a careless “Thank you, Julio, but I won’t need you to drive me anywhere.”

      “You are not doing the painting today?”

      “Not today, no. I’m planning on walking down to town, where I’ll probably spend most of the day scouting subjects for possible paintings at some other time. There are a lot of interesting colonial buildings in the city, as well as some fascinating stuff along the harbor, don’t you think?”

      He looked alarmed at her intention. “There