Chapter 6 #2
Alana slowed her steps. “Right. Tourists. With a murderer wanting to off us for some reason we can’t remember.” She threw him a sideways grin, albeit a forced grin. “Got it.”
She liked the feel of his arm hooked in hers. Liked the hardness of his muscles against her body, and she wondered, not for the first time—and probably not the last—what it felt like to make love with him. Try as she might, she couldn’t remember.
But she had remembered his kiss. Her core coiled and heated.
No woman could forget a kiss like that. That kiss fired up memories of a dance that had ended in a similar kiss.
She remembered the fire in her veins as he’d spun her around the floor, the way his hips had moved to the rhythm of the music, and how he’d dipped her low to the ground, crushing his lips to hers in a searing kiss that had left her panties damp and her heart pounding to the beat of the Latin music.
Even as she walked into the bar, her heart thrummed to that tune in her head, firing up her nerves and making her pulse beat hard against her eardrums.
Once inside, Alana reached for her sunglasses. The dimness of the interior made it hard to distinguish between the shapes of people or furniture.
“Might want to keep those on.” Chase covered her hands with his and guided the glasses back onto her nose. “Your eyes are unforgettable.”
“You managed to forget them,” she reminded him.
“Yeah, but I was drunk. We can’t expect La Casa Loca staff to have been in the same inebriated state last night. We’re better off if they don’t know who we are.”
“If we don’t want them to know who we are, how will we ask about last night?” Alana asked.
“Leave it to me,” Chase said. He made a beeline for the bar and settled her onto a stool before sliding onto one himself.
The bartender took their orders and delivered a Salty Dog for Chase and a beer for Alana.
“I would’ve guessed you as a whiskey drinker,” Alana said.
“And I would’ve guessed more margaritas for you.”
“Normally, I would have a margarita.” She lifted a shoulder. “But after all the tequila I had last night...” She pinched the bridge of her nose. “My head still hurts.”
“And normally, I would drink a whiskey. But now that I’m out of the military, I have to watch what I drink. I figure grapefruit juice is healthy, right?” Chase lifted his drink and grinned. “And, like you, my head is numb from the tequila last night.”
Alana laughed. “The grapefruit juice might be better for you, but the vodka…not so much.”
The bartender drifted off to wait on another customer. He returned a few minutes later. “Anything else?” he asked while wiping the counter with a cloth.
Chase smiled at the short, meaty Hispanic man. “We heard there was some excitement here last night.”
With a shrug, the bartender continued wiping.
Alana gritted her teeth and waited for Chase to continue.
“Were you here?” Chase asked.
Again, the bartender shrugged.
After a quick glance around the bar, Chase leaned forward. “Was there a fight?”
The man nodded, glanced around the interior of the bar, just like Chase had a moment before, and leaned closer.
“We had a visit from the Jalisco cartel. Raul Delgado, one of the leaders of the cartel, got into a fight with a tourist. The tourist beat the shit out of Delgado. Delgado wouldn’t back down.
He was very angry that he got bested in front of his men. ”
“Why didn’t his men stick up for him?” Alana asked.
“They did,” the bartender said. “Only the tourist they targeted was a better fighter than Delgado and his men.”
“Good to know,” Chase said. “Does this cartel hang out here often?”
“Delgado likes to flirt with the pretty tourists,” the bartender said.
Alana tilted her head. “The Cabo police don’t keep them out? I thought they were pretty good at protecting the tourism trade.”
The bartender snorted. “The last policeman who dared stand up to Delgado ended up hanging from a bridge.”
Alana swallowed hard. With all the nice trappings of the tourist hotels and resorts, there was a seedier side to Cabo San Lucas. And it appeared that seedier side was infiltrating the tourist haunts. “Do you know how many people are a part of the Jalisco cartel?”
“One, maybe two hundred,” the bartender said. “And that’s just in the Cabo area.”
Her belly knotted as Alana fought to stay upright. “Do they ever show up in the same place all at once?” she asked, her voice squeaking slightly.
The bartender’s eyes narrowed. “Why so much interest in the cartel? The cartels are part of life in Mexico. We learn to stay clear or give them the payola they demand to leave us alone.”
“Is that what you do? Pay the Jalisco cartel to leave you alone?” Chase asked.
A frown settled on the man’s thick brow. “You ask too many questions. If you don’t want another drink, you go. We don’t want trouble here.”
Chase slid an American one-hundred-dollar bill across the counter. “Thank you for your time.” He got up, helped Alana off her bar stool and walked out of the bar.
“I remember what happened last night,” Chase said, his jaw tightening.
“Why is it you can remember, but I can’t?”
He touched a hand to his bruised cheek. “I remembered a Hispanic man hitting me. When that memory returned, I remembered why he hit me.”
Alana stopped and faced Chase. “Why did he hit you?”
Chase cupped her elbow and steered her around the back of the building.
“Where are we going?”
“I need to know the layout of the building and the surrounding area.”
Alana dug her heels into the ground and stopped. “You’re not actually considering showing up for Delgado, are you?”
“If I want him off my back and yours, I may have to confront him.”
Her pulse quickened, and her chest grew tight. “You heard the bartender. And you’ve seen news reports. Confrontations with the cartel don’t end well.”
Chase didn’t look at her. He scanned the immediate vicinity, studying it as if committing every nook and cranny to memory. “He won’t leave us alone unless I show up here.”
“Then we should leave Cabo.” She touched his arm. “Now.”
“I have a feeling leaving won’t be an option. He probably has contacts at the airport. He had them at the hotel. If I’m not wrong, that near-miss in front of Cabo Wabo was one of his people. He wants a piece of me and won’t be satisfied until he gets it.”
“So, you’re just going to march into a hive of cartel thugs?
Alone and unarmed?” Alana shook her head, her heart hammering, her mind spinning with the potential scenarios.
“Why did you get into a fight with Delgado?” she asked.
“You don’t strike me as someone who goes around picking fights with cartel members.
Perhaps it’s all some big misunderstanding. ”
A smile twisted into a grimace on Chase’s face. “What do most men fight over?”
“Money, cars and women?” Alana lifted her hands, palms facing upward. “You name it.”
Chase chuckled. “Point taken. This time it was a woman.”
“A woman?” Alana frowned, her fingers curling, her nails ready to dig into any woman who had come close to Chase. “What woman?”
He turned to face her and lifted one of her hands. “You.”
The soft tone of his voice and the way he laced his fingers with hers made her weak-kneed and ready to fall into his arms. “Me?” she said, though the sound came out as more of a squeak than a word.
“You,” Chase repeated. “I hit the head, the bathroom, after so much beer and tequila. By the time I came back, Delgado had cornered you at the bar and was hitting on you.”
“But I wouldn’t have given him the time of day if I’d just married you.”
“Apparently, you were trying to give him the brush-off, but he wasn’t taking no for an answer.
About the time I saw what was happening, he grabbed your arm.
” He turned her palm up and pressed his lips to the lifeline at the center.
“I distinctly recall the rush of blood through my veins and the heat about to explode out of my head.”
“You were jealous?” Alana’s heart seized in her chest, and she held her breath, afraid to breathe until he answered.
“Raging jealousy. I recall it wasn’t a pretty feeling. I marched up to Delgado, clamped a hand to his shoulder and spun him around.”
Alana gasped. “I’m surprised he didn’t stick a knife into you at that moment.”
“I didn’t give him time to think. I slammed him up against the bar and told him you were my wife and to leave you the hell alone.”
Her heart thrilled at Chase’s words and chilled at the same time. “Delgado could’ve killed you.”
“Oh, he took a swing and missed. Then he grabbed a bottle from the bar and hit me here.” Chase pointed to the bruise on his cheek. “I knocked the bottle out of his hand. It flew across the room and hit one of his cartel groupies.”
“Sweet Jesus.” Alana pressed a hand to her lips. “You really weren’t thinking.”
“Nope. I was in pure, primal reactionary mode.” Chase stared down into her eyes, his gaze intense, his jaw set in stone. “Someone was hurting my wife. I wouldn’t stand for it. Not on my watch.”
“So, is it true? You beat the shit out of Delgado?”
Chase grimaced. “I didn’t intend to, but he kept swinging. I blocked and swung back.”
“You really are insane,” Alana said. “The bartender said Delgado’s people tried to help him, which means you fought more than one of them.”
“They tried,” he shoved a hand through his hair. “But I was in full kick-ass mode.”
“Wow. I suppose I should be grateful.” Alana shook her head. “But you really set yourself up for retribution. You barely knew me. Why didn’t you just let me defend myself?”
“You were trying, but Delgado was dragging you toward the exit.”
“Well then, thank you,” Alana said. Vague memories tugged at her mind but refused to solidify. “Do you think the bartender will let Delgado know we were asking questions?”
“If he does, I’m not worried about it. We need to know what we’re up against. Delgado already knows.
Apparently, he didn’t have as much to drink as we did last night.
” He lifted her hand to his lips and pressed a kiss to her knuckles.
“I’m sorry I got you into this mess, but I’m going to get you out of it. I promise.”
“You didn’t get me into this mess. Delgado did that.” Alana’s insides heated at the touch of Chase’s lips on her knuckles. “Sounds to me like Delgado was going to take off with me, whether I liked it or not.” She lifted her hand to the bruise on his face. “You saved me.”
“And put you into more danger by doing so.” He cupped her cheek in his palm and stared down at her.
His blue eyes were so blue that Alana felt as if she could fall into them and never want to come back out.
Yes, she could see how she’d fallen so quickly for this man.
He was every woman’s dream come true—he was handsome, he could dance, he was kind to old women, and he’d taken on a drug cartel to save his woman. Her breath caught in her throat.
His woman.
How ironic was it that she was trying to get out of the marriage most women would love to be in? Hell, she couldn’t hold him to the vows, knowing they’d been spoken while shit-faced drunk. He’d said it himself that he wouldn’t have married her had he been sober.
After all she’d learned about Chase, the thought of annulling their marriage didn’t hold the same appeal as it had a few hours earlier.
To be fair, she had to. No man should marry when he was drunk.
She’d been stone-cold sober when she’d considered marrying Vance, and that decision had been stupider than marrying a complete stranger after several rounds of tequila shots.
No matter. The marriage would be annulled before they left Cabo San Lucas. If they left in one piece. First, they had to get past the midnight deadline with Delgado, a badass affiliated with one of the most violent cartels in Mexico.