High-Stakes Affair by Gail Barrett Read Free Book Online Page B

furious.
    “I have a friend who can probably help,” Dante said. “A computer hacker I know. He’s the one who cut the power to the casino so we could get in.”
    “I thought you did that.”
    “I only disabled the backup generators. Miguel did the rest.”
    She rolled that over in her mind. “You’re sure we can trust him?”
    “He came through for us at the casino. Rafe can vouch for him, too.”
    She creased her brow, hating to rely on someone she didn’t know. But Rafael Navarro was the fiancé of her old school friend, Gabrielle Ferrer. And Paloma knew their judgment was sound. Besides, Dante had as much at stake as she did, maybe more. He’d hardly recommend a man they couldn’t trust.
    “All right. Go ahead and ask him to help.”
    “I’ll call him right now.” Dante tugged his cell phone from his back pocket. He punched in a number, then rose and headed toward the sink. “Coffee?” he called back.
    “Sure.” Her gaze went to the laptop again. “I’ll check the rest of these disks, then start looking for information about that rash.”
    Dante turned on the faucet to fill the coffee machine, and the running water muffled his voice. Shifting her mind to Gomez, Paloma made short work of the disks and flash drives, which contained only his correspondence from the past few years.
    Hoping she’d have better luck identifying what killed him, she opened a search engine on the computer and typed in the keyword rash. Several pages later she’d seen images of everything from shingles and smallpox to rosacea, but nothing that even remotely resembled Gomez’s horrific face.
    She added the word diseases. Still nothing. She sat back and frowned at the screen.
    “Miguel’s going to meet us at the Roman bridge in an hour,” Dante said from the kitchen island. “He wants to take the laptop back to his place. You have a problem with that?”
    Paloma rose and walked to the island. She hated to give up control of the laptop. It was the only possible link to that blackmail evidence she had. But she couldn’t do this alone. And the longer it took to find that surveillance footage, the greater the chance that something else would go wrong.
    “As long as you’re sure we can trust this guy.”
    Dante set two cups of coffee on the counter, and his gaze connected with hers. “I told you we can.”
    “It’s just…I’ve been burned before.” She added sugar to her coffee and stirred it in. “When you’re a public figure like I am, you never know when someone’s going to leak something to the tabloids to make a buck. It doesn’t even matter if it’s true.”
    He cocked his head. “You’re saying the stories they’ve published about you aren’t true?”
    Wishing she could claim just that, she sighed. “No. Most of them are true. Exaggerated, maybe, but I’ve made my share of mistakes. I haven’t exactly been a saint.”
    His dark eyes warmed. The corners of his mouth kicked up in a wickedly carnal smile that brought a rush of heat to her loins. Then he lowered his gaze, forging a slow, hot path to her breasts and back, and her heart did somersaults in her chest.
    “I never did care for saints,” he said, his voice even huskier now.
    Her pulse skittered and lurched. She lifted her cup and gulped down some coffee, counting on the quick jolt of caffeine to bring her back to earth. But her knees felt weak, every nerve ending sizzling with sensual awareness. Dante was hard enough to resist when he acted surly. But when he turned on the charm, leveling that bad-boy smile her way…
    “Any luck finding that rash?” he asked, suddenly all business again.
    She took another sip of the espresso coffee, needing time to compose herself. “Not so far. None of the images even come close.”
    Forcing her mind back to Gomez, she carried her cup to the table and sat. After fortifying herself with another sip of the strong coffee, she continued her search, entering more keywords.
    So Dante had flirted a bit. So