Renegade with a Badge Read Online Free PDF Page A

faced with empirical data.
    The lanky man with the smirk on his mouth and the hunger in his eyes was very probably taking a bead on Ernesto right this minute, waiting for Olivia to come to her senses and fall into a crying, squalling heap on the floor. Something she very much felt like doing, as a matter of fact.
    It was midnight now, and Ernesto was calling for a toast. Thank heavens. After that was finished, she’d go straight back to the motel, wait sleepless until morning, when she would take a taxi—or a bus or a vegetable wagon—to La Paz, and then the first plane home.
    A flute of champagne was pressed into one hand, while Ernesto pulled her gently to his side by taking the other. Olivia went willingly. No point fighting the inevitable. She would smile at the sure-to-be elaborate toast—then get the hell out of Dodge. She’d had enough Mexican hospitality to last her a lifetime.
    Ernesto launched into his toast with full vigor. She listened with half attention and smiled politely at the beaming crowd. Where was the criminal, while these people quaffed expensive champagne? Slitting throats? Stealing silver? Pressing up against some other unsuspecting female with that steely body and that shocking arousal? She took a gulp of champagne and choked on it.
    “And if she will do me the very great—” Ernesto paused for effect here, and Olivia smiled gamely up at him, her face beet red from suppressed coughing, trying desperately hard not to spew Dom Pérignon onto his silk suit, “ very great honor of becoming my wife, and the mistress of this house and the mother of this humble village, I will be the happiest man on God’s earth.”
    The crowd erupted. Olivia let go with a spasm of coughing that had Ernesto patting her on the back. When she was finished gagging on her hundred-dollar champagne, she looked blankly around at the people crushing in on her, then, stupefied, up at Ernesto.
    “What?” she whispered.
    Ernesto bent his head to kiss her. “Say yes, my darling,” he said rather fervidly into her ear.
    “To what?” she asked, spilling champagne on her clothes as someone jostled her from behind. She barely noticed. She had no idea what he was talking about. Had he just proposed? To whom? To her? In front of hundreds of people? With a sexually excited smuggler loose in his house?
    Impossible.
    Ernesto’s smile went a little stiff. “You are shocked.” He laughed heartily, though it sounded forced to Olivia’s ears. “I am shocked myself. I have been a bachelor for almost fifty years.”
    “Ernesto, you can’t possibly—”
    He cut her off sharply. “But I had never met a woman who could share my house and my life before now, Olivia Magdalena Rosanna deRuiz Galpas.”
    Olivia almost groaned aloud. Not the whole name. He must be pretty damn serious if he was using her full name.
    “You are a prize,” Ernesto continued in his beautiful voice. “A woman of education and family. The great-granddaughter of Don Ricardo Galpas of Chiapas,” he said loudly, though Olivia was sure he’d already mentioned that at least three times during the toast. “You will be the perfect wife for Ernesto Cervantes.”
    At this show of bravado, the crowd erupted into cheers again. Olivia looked around, nearly bursting once more into hysterical laughter. The entire evening had been thoroughly surreal.
    “Ernesto, we have to talk.”
    He kissed her lavishly, his tongue breaching for the first time the seam of her lips. The man had just proposed marriage, Olivia thought, dazed, and he’d never even kissed her properly. She’d had a bandit pressed against her more intimately just an hour ago than this man had ever been. She’d never so much as tasted Ernesto Cervantes, who now fully intended to become her husband.
    Olivia touched Ernesto’s shoulder to break the kiss.
    He smiled down into her face, glowing with triumph. “I must attend to my guests, now, love.”
    “We need to talk, Ernesto,” Olivia insisted. She