Obsession. Kay David

      

      Raul watched Emma

      He’d seen her before, but each time he found himself surprised by her appearance. The tall, thin blonde hadn’t been what he’d expected. There was a hint of uncertainty, a slight hesitation in her manner. It wasn’t a detail anyone else would have noticed, but Raul had spent the past few years looking for people’s weak spots. He’d had to learn that skill because his life depended on it.

      When he was ready to approach her, Raul moved away from the bar, threading his way through the crowd. And that was when he saw William Kelman.

      Kelman was working the room, heading inexorably toward Emma. Raul had hoped all along this encounter would happen—had counted on it—but now that it was, the reality turned his stomach. Seeing Kelman approach her was like watching a snake stalk a mouse.

      Raul grabbed a bottle of beer from a nearby waiter and told himself it didn’t matter. He had a job to do and nothing else was important. Emma Toussaint was Kelman’s mouse—and the reason Raul was there.

      He and Kelman were two of a kind. Users. Predators. Men who took what they wanted and never looked back. In his other life, Raul had been a peaceable, law-abiding person, but all that had changed because of William Kelman. Now they were the same.

      The realization should have made Raul unhappy. In his other life, it would have.

      Dear Reader,

      Obsession is set in Santa Cruz, Bolivia, a place 1 visited frequently a few years back when Pieter, my husband of twenty-five years, lived and worked there. The locale proved irresistible to me. Despite its overwhelming poverty, Bolivia is a place of beauty and hidden treasures. The longer I stayed, the more I realized I had to set a book in Santa Cruz. The city is lovely and the people even more so. Friendly and open, they are terribly interested in everything American.

      In the course of my travels, however, I’ve learned that no matter how attractive the location, most Americans still long for home. They miss their loving families, their familiar haunts, even their fast-food restaurants.

      Emma Toussaint is no different but she has a special reason for feeling this way. Forced from her job and divorced by an unloving husband, Emma has lost the right to see her children. She has only one phone call a week during which to hear their precious voices. She goes to Bolivia knowing she may never see them again, but hoping otherwise. Her hero, Raul Santos, is there for a totally different reason. He wants revenge. When their paths cross, neither will ever be the same again.

      I hope you enjoy your “visit” to Bolivia and that you’ll love the two new friends you’ll make—Emma and Raul—as well!

      Sincerely,

      Kay David

      Obsession

      Kay David

       www.millsandboon.co.uk

      Major Stan Clark of the Texas Department of Highways provided invaluable insight for this book. I’d like to thank him and acknowledge his help. Texas is a great state because of men like Major Clark.

      As always, a special thank-you goes to Heather, Pat and Marilyn, too. Great writers and even better friends.

      CONTENTS

       CHAPTER ONE

       CHAPTER TWO

       CHAPTER THREE

       CHAPTER FOUR

       CHAPTER FIVE

       CHAPTER SIX

       CHAPTER SEVEN

       CHAPTER EIGHT

       CHAPTER NINE

       CHAPTER TEN

       CHAPTER ELEVEN

       CHAPTER TWELVE

       CHAPTER THIRTEEN

       CHAPTER FOURTEEN

       CHAPTER FIFTEEN

       CHAPTER SIXTEEN

       CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

      CHAPTER ONE

      Santa Cruz, Bolivia

      TWO YEARS, three months, seven days.

      Staring out the smudged and dirty window of her taxi, the cobbled streets and crowded sidewalks passing by in a blur, Emma Toussaint wondered if the day would ever come when she would stop keeping track of time. When she would no longer look at a calendar and automatically calculate the number of weeks that had passed since her life—as she had known it—had ended. She doubted it would. Adding up the days was as natural to her now as breathing.

      She tried not to dwell on the situation, but in moments like these, when she had to do something she didn’t really want to do, her past came back full force, and it was impossible to ignore. All that occupied her mind was what she no longer had.

      Her family. Her home. The life she’d worked so hard to create.

      As if he was deliberately trying to distract her, the driver plunged the vehicle into the melee of the First Ring, the taxi’s bumper barely missing the fender of the ancient truck in front of them. The city streets were laid out in a series of concentric circles, and the congestion never ended. Emma grabbed for the door handle, then realized too late it was missing. With a swoosh, she slid across the cracked leather seat to the other side.

      She shook her head and held on to her purse a little tighter. The taxis in Santa Cruz were like everything else in this part of South America. Rundown and just getting by. For as long as she’d been in Bolivia, two years now, the whole country had seemed on the edge of collapse—a state with which she could easily sympathize.

      The beat-up Toyota she was in whipped out of the traffic circle and merged onto Avenida de Ventura, the main street of Santa Cruz. It was after eight in the evening and the area was still crowded and noisy, exhaust and smoke hanging over the thoroughfare in a dirty brown cloud. Most of the cars packed around her were ancient and filthy, with gaping cavities in the passenger-side dashboard. She’d been here four months before her Spanish had been good enough to ask about the disconcerting holes. She’d learned then that the vehicles had come from Japan where they’d been right-hand drives. Ripping out the steering wheels, exporters adapted the cars, then shipped them to Bolivia. The autos had spent the prime of their lives in another country and had come here on the downswing.

      Just