Beautifully Cruel (Beautifully Cruel #1)(85)

Startled, she stares at me, her brown eyes wide. “Love you, too.”

I turn around and run to the front door. She calls out after me, “And if you guys are up for a threesome, count me in!”





31





Tru





In the Southern Hemisphere, winter begins in June. So although I left balmy weather in Boston, when I step off the private plane onto the tarmac in Buenos Aires, it’s cold and rainy.

It might as well be August in Miami for how much I’m sweating.

The flight was more than twelve hours long nonstop. I didn’t sleep, eat, or drink, except for all the vodka sodas the nice flight attendant kept bringing me. Somehow, I never got drunk.

The alcohol probably burned away the minute it hit my bloodstream.

I’m on fire.

My heart, my soul, my brain, my sweat glands: all of me burns.

A uniformed chauffer holding an umbrella waits for me beside a limo parked only a few yards from where the plane came to a stop. He meets me at the bottom of the air stairs—or whatever those folding airplane steps are called—and ushers me into the car without a word.

We speed off into the gray, drizzly morning. If he’s wondering why I’m wearing what looks like a hotel maid’s uniform along with an expression like I’ve suffered several recent electrocutions, he doesn’t ask.

The city center is sprawling and cosmopolitan, more crowded even than Boston with its skyscrapers and busy streets. But as we drive farther, congestion and concrete give way to green fields and rolling hills. After about forty-five minutes, we turn into a long gravel driveway flanked by huge weeping willow trees. Horses graze in the pastures beyond. The driveway meanders through the countryside until it ends at a formidable-looking iron gate.

A carved wooden sign beside the gate reads Estancia Los Dos Hermanos.

The driver clicks a remote. The gate creaks slowly open. We proceed about a mile up a low hill. When we crest the top, I see down into the valley below.

Off in the distance sits a sprawling ranch house with a red tiled roof and a wraparound porch in the front. A large wooden barn is nearby, along with horse stables and several other small outbuildings. A flock of geese float tranquilly in the nearby pond.

In the open front door of the house stands a man. He’s tall and dark-haired, broad through the shoulders, wearing jeans, boots, and a white dress shirt unbuttoned at the throat with the cuffs rolled up thick, tattooed forearms.

Even at this distance, I know who it is.

I can’t see his face, but my heart tells me.

The relief I feel is so overwhelming I break down sobbing.

I cry all the way down the hill toward the house. I don’t stop, even when the limo pulls in front and the man in the doorway comes out to meet the car, his long legs eating up the distance in a run.

I cry when I throw open the door before the car has even fully stopped moving, cry as I burst out, cry as I stumble over my own feet and start to fall to my knees.

He’s there to catch me before I hit the ground, of course.

Liam would never let me fall.

Probably because he so enjoys carrying me.

He sweeps me up and stands there holding me in his strong arms as I sob into his neck, the gentle rain misting our hair, my arms clenched so hard around him he’s probably suffocating.

“Hullo, queen bee,” he whispers gruffly into my ear.

Through my sobs, I manage to reply. “Hello, wolfie.”

“I hear you love me.”

That Declan is such a blabbermouth. “You’re okay, I guess.”

Liam squeezes me tight. Then he gives me a deep, passionate kiss, which only serves to make me cry harder.

Chuckling, he turns around and walks slowly back to the house, cradling me in his arms.



I’m too exhausted at the moment to insist he tell me how he escaped from custody and got to Buenos Aires, and my brain is too mushy to take it in, anyway. So I simply allow him to carry me into the bedroom of this cozy, lovely ranch house and set me on the bed.

He silently removes my sweater and shoes and shucks off his boots. Then he takes us down to the mattress and holds me tight, front to front instead of our usual spooning.

Cupping my head in his big hand, he murmurs, “How was the flight?”

“Endless.”

“You smell like vodka.”

“Remind me to smack you when I wake up.”

Then I fall into such a deep, dreamless sleep I could be dead.

When I awaken, the light has changed, but that’s the only thing. Liam and I are still in the same position we were in when I fell asleep. Only now, he’s asleep, too.

I take a moment to gaze at him and let my fluttering heartbeat settle, then reach up and touch his jaw. His beard is rough and springy under my fingertips. I lean in and sniff his neck, sighing in contentment.

If someone had told me a few months ago that I’d be so in love with a fugitive mob boss that the mere smell of his skin would make me shimmer with happiness, I’d have told that person she was crazy.

Liam’s voice is a sleepy rumble. “If I didn’t know better, I’d think you were huffing me like glue.”

“I never got the appeal before, but now I can see how glue sniffing could be so addictive.”

He lifts his lashes and gazes at me with warm, loving eyes. “Hullo again.”