it evaded her. But she could still almost feel him. His presence, his touch, his essence.
“Sexual frustration,” she said with a grin. Her laugh sounded hollow even to her own ears.
The dream had felt so real. The warmth of him. Lying in his arms, his touch arousing her in ways—
She stopped, staring down at the bed, as her body turned to ice. Her heart began to pound erratically.
There were two impressions in the down-covered mattress. One on her side, where she always slept. The other where someone else had lain next to her.
Chapter Six
There was only one thing Raymond Valencia hated more than being treated like a fool, and that was allowing someone to think he was one.
Lorenzo Dante’s story didn’t hold water. Franco wouldn’t cross him. At least not on his own.
Raymond could think of only two ways in which Franco could be coerced into doing something so stupid as stealing from the man who’d picked him up out of the gutter.
One would be if he had no other choice. Like a knife to his privates. But even that was hard to believe, given that Franco knew Raymond would do far worse to him when he caught him.
Two would be by a woman. If Lorenzo was right, some female had Franco confused. Raymond knew that a woman could turn any man’s head around. But Franco? Franco had women, of course. But he made no secret that they were only the kind he paid for, the kind a man could depend on not to let him down.
Was it possible Franco had an honest-to-goodness girlfriend he hadn’t let on about?
“You know anything about Franco having a girlfriend?” he asked one of the two men he’d called the moment Franco hadn’t shown up.
Both men, now weary from lack of sleep, shook their heads. “I never saw him with anyone,” Rico said. Rico was small, wiry and deadly. Raymond never turned his back on the man.
“You never heard him talking on his cell to any broad?” he asked the other man, a massive Neanderthal everyone called Jolly, short for Jolly Green Giant. Jolly was anything but.
“I never heard nothin’,” Jolly said.
Raymond studied the expressions of the two men: bored and half-asleep, but seemingly not hiding anything. “Okay, Jolly, I want you to find the girlfriend.”
“There is a girlfriend?” he asked in surprise.
“That’s what you’re going to find out,” Raymond snapped. “Rico, I want you to take over the tail I have on Lorenzo Dante. If he blinks I want to know about it. Got it?”
Rico showed only slight surprise. There had never been any love lost between Rico and Lorenzo. Probably because they were so much alike. Another reason Raymond didn’t trust Rico. Both were capable of killing their mothers without the least bit of remorse if there was something in it for them.
Raymond couldn’t understand that. He’d bought his mother a huge house, sent her on expensive cruises, made sure she had everything she’d ever dreamed of. A man had to have someone in his life who loved him no matter what he did. That, Raymond had realized a long time ago, was only one person: his mother.
Lorenzo hadn’t understood that. He hated his mother and instead had attempted to find love through marriage. Raymond had tried to warn him, but the man hadn’t listened. Not that Raymond hadn’t liked Jenna. In truth, he thought of his associate’s wife with a deep-seated envy. Jenna had been too good for Lorenzo. The man hadn’t known how to treat a woman like her and Lorenzo had lost her—and his child.
Lorenzo was a fool. He had proved he wasn’t reliable. Raymond had been relieved when Lorenzo had offered to buy his way out of the business and leave the country.
But Jenna…well, she was another story. Raymond still didn’t regret that he’d helped her during the divorce. Otherwise Lorenzo would have ended up with his daughter. A man like that had no business with a child like Alexandria. Raymond knew he’d done the right thing helping Jenna get her divorce. And with fake passports, he had trusted that she would never tell Lorenzo who had helped her.
But Raymond wondered now if Lorenzo had somehow found out the truth. The thought brought a cold dread. It would make Lorenzo a liability that had to be taken care of immediately.
The problem was that Lorenzo had friends. It wouldn’t be good for business to hit Lorenzo. Especially now that Raymond was legit. It would be better if Lorenzo just