Chapter Five #3
Logic argued that there was no chance she’d murdered her father.
She was too warm and loving, too tenderhearted to take a life.
Yet he remembered the time she’d snatched his service pistol out of its holster and fired it to kill a fatally injured antelope from the game farm that had run in front of her jeep.
After it was done, she’d shed tears. Jasmine was surprisingly strong, but she wasn’t a killer.
Sam believed that with all his heart. But his work ethic demanded that he treat her as a suspect until proven otherwise.
If he didn’t go to her now, they would be finished. After traveling so far to be with him, Jasmine would never forgive him for putting his job ahead of their love.
But she was right about one thing. Las Vegas was a city of strangers. He might be known here in the South Point complex. But no one on the street or in the Excalibur would recognize him or Jasmine. Surely, they’d be safe, especially if he only saw her in her hotel room.
But there was still the ethical question. If he saw her, he’d be breaking the rules, putting the case and his career in jeopardy. He could always claim that he was investigating her as a suspect, but that would be the height of hypocrisy.
Right now, the only sure thing was that he loved her. And if he didn’t go to her, he would lose her.
Torn, he swung out of bed and walked to the window. Somewhere out in that sea of lights Jasmine waited alone. Was he strong enough to honor his vow and break her heart? Or was he already too late?
Jasmine turned over in bed and checked the glowing numbers on the digital clock. Twelve twenty-seven. She should have known that Sam wouldn’t be coming.
Sitting up, she untangled the sheets that had twisted around her legs. She’d tossed and turned as she struggled with the terms of her new reality. Sam might love her in his way, but he valued his work more, and she couldn’t expect him to change.
She had come to a painful decision. Tomorrow morning she would reschedule her return flight, pack her suitcase, and leave Las Vegas. And she wouldn’t cry. A man who would put his job ahead of his woman wasn’t worth a single tear.
With a muttered curse, she rose and made a short trek to the bathroom. Before climbing back into bed, she stripped off the sexy black nightgown she’d worn and pulled on an oversized gray cotton T-shirt. She was exhausted. Maybe now that she had a plan in place, she’d be able to get some sleep.
Closing her eyes, she took deep breaths and willed herself to think positive thoughts.
She was going to be fine, she told herself.
She already had a job offer from an animal-rescue group out of Lubbock.
She’d worked with them to find homes for the poor creatures salvaged from Charlie Grishman’s game farm.
The pay would be minimal, but she didn’t need the money.
She needed the satisfaction of doing some good in the world. At least she would have that.
Sam could take his job and shove it!
As her body relaxed, she began to drift, then to dream. But this dream wasn’t about Sam, shaped by longing and frustrated love. It was the nightmare, etched so deeply into her brain that she would never be free of it.
She was back in her mother’s Lake Travis condo, staring into the anthracite eyes of her mother’s lover, Louis Divino.
Her burner phone, which she’d used to communicate with Sam, lay crushed on the floor between them.
Divino had just heard Sam’s warning message with instructions for calling his boss at the FBI. Now Divino was going to kill her.
The muzzle of Divino’s pistol was inches from her heart. Seconds from now, she would be dead. She willed her last thought to be of Sam, his sweet blue eyes gazing into hers, his strong arms holding her, easing her fall to the floor.
Divino’s swarthy face showed no emotion as his finger tightened on the trigger.
Without warning, the deafening blast of a gunshot shattered the silence. Shot from behind, Divino’s forehead disintegrated in a mass of blood and tissue.
Jasmine’s scream died in her throat as he toppled forward, revealing her mother in the doorway. Her filmy negligee was spattered with crimson. Her manicured hands gripped a Smith & Wesson .38 Special.
Jasmine woke with a convulsive jerk. She was shivering, her body damp with perspiration.
What had awakened her? There must’ve been a sound—but was it the gunshot in her dream, or something real?
Her mother had warned her to keep a low profile.
A woman taking over the leadership of a powerful mob was bound to have enemies—enemies who wouldn’t hesitate to take revenge on her family members.
Jasmine’s loaded pistol lay on the nightstand next to the bed, where she’d placed it within easy reach. As she slipped out of bed, a rap on the door made her pulse jump. She’d been right. Someone was out there.
Even if she didn’t answer, a locked door might not be enough to keep out an intruder with tools or a master key.
With frantic hands, she bunched the pillows in the bed and covered them with a blanket to mimic her sleeping form.
Then she stood in the shadowed corner where the opened door would hide her, cocked the gun, and waited.
Seconds crawled past. The knock came again, more urgent this time—and a voice.
“Jasmine? Are you in there? Are you all right?”
Sam!
Her knees went limp. She sagged against the wall. Earlier tonight, she’d been furious with him. But that was behind her now. Sam, her love, had put his misgivings aside and come to her.
Her free hand fumbled with the door chain and opened the dead bolts. Sam opened the door partway and stepped through. As it closed behind him, he caught her close.
For a long, wordless moment, he held her tight. Tears blurred Jasmine’s eyes. She let them flow as her body softened against his.
“I didn’t think you’d come,” she whispered. “I was afraid I’d lost you.”
“You should have known I couldn’t stay away.” His kiss was long and fervent, awakening a flood of sensations that were deeper than lust, deeper than desire. Jasmine had never imagined that it was possible to love someone so much.
Only as he released her did he notice the pistol in her hand. “What on earth—” He eased it from her clenched fingers. “Were you planning to shoot me, Jasmine?”
Before she could collect her thoughts to speak, he looked past her. “What—?” He stared at what she’d done with the bed. “Jasmine, is someone after you?”
Jasmine scrambled for a response. Telling Sam what had happened in the condo and afterward would compromise him and their relationship. It would also endanger her mother. The truth, if it were to become known, could trigger an avalanche of tragedies.
“I’m sorry. It’s nothing, really.” She gave him an apologetic shake of her head.
“I just get nervous when I’m alone in a strange place.
I imagine that every footstep going past the door is some evildoer who’s going to break in and murder me.
When I heard your first knock, it threw me into a panic.
You can imagine how foolish I feel now.”
He surveyed the hastily arranged bed. “Are you sure you’re all right? I get the feeling there’s more to this than what you’re telling me.”
“I’m fine, especially now that you’re here,” Jasmine insisted, turning toward him. “Please, let’s forget it. I just want to be in your arms.”
“And I just want to be in … you.” He pulled her close. His hands invaded her T-shirt, caressing the naked skin beneath, the curve of her hips, her eager buttocks, her breasts, until her whole body tingled with need.
“Oh, you wicked, wicked man …” she murmured as his hand slid down her belly, then lower, setting off a cascade of miniature explosions. “I want you, Sam. I want you so much I can hardly stand it.”
“I think you’re about to have me.” Freeing a hand, he shoved aside the piled covers and lowered her to the bed.
It took him mere seconds to shed his boots and jeans.
She finished by working the elastic waistband of his briefs down over his jutting erection.
She loved the size of him, the baby smoothness and the steely hardness beneath.
She loved his manly warmth, the scent of him and the breathy sound he made as he entered.
Now he was there, her love, her Sam, thrusting deep inside her where he belonged.
“Welcome home,” she whispered.
Afterward, she lay spooned against him, legs tangled with legs. This was her heaven. The world could stop right here and she wouldn’t mind, as long as they could stay like this. But a new problem had arisen that could change everything.
She had always been truthful with Sam, even about her past as a party girl. But how could she tell him that her mother, the glamorous Madeleine Carlisle Culhane, had killed her mobster lover and taken his place in the Divino crime family?
Sooner or later, the truth was bound to come out. If Sam knew she’d kept it from him, he would never forgive her. But how could she betray her own mother, whom she loved in spite of her lawless ways—her mother, who had killed a man to save her life?
Sam had fallen into a doze. Beside him, Jasmine lay awake, listening to him breathe, treasuring each moment, knowing that the time of truth would come—the time when her dreams would crash like birds shot out of the sky, falling dead around her.