Risky Business Read Online Free PDF Page B

clouds there were, were thin and shaggy and good-natured.
    “Damn!” Liz kicked the starter on her motorbike and turned in a little U toward the street. She’d been hoping for rain.
    He was going to try to get her involved. Even now, Liz could imagine those dark, patient gray eyes staring into hers, hear the quietly insistent voice. Jonas Sharpe was the kind of man who took no for an answer but was dogged enough to wait however long it took for the yes. Under other circumstances, she’d have admired that. Being stubborn had helped her start and succeed in a business when so many people had shaken their heads and warned her against it. But she couldn’t afford to admire Jonas Sharpe. Budgeting her feelings was every bit as important as budgeting her accounts.
    She couldn’t help him, Liz thought again, as the soft air began to play around her face. Everything she’d known about Jerry had been said at least twice. Of course she was sorry, and had grieved a bit herself for a man she’d hardly known, but murder was a police matter. Jonas Sharpe was out of his element.
    She was in hers, Liz thought as her muscles began to relax with the ride. The street was bumpy, patched in a good many places. She knew when to weave and sway. There were houses along the street with deep green grass and trailing vines. Already clothes were waving out on lines. She could hear an early newscast buzzing through someone’s open window and the sound of children finishing chores or breakfast before school. She turned a corner and kept her speed steady.
    There were a few shops here, closed up tight. At the doorof a market, Señor Pessado fumbled with his keys. Liz tooted her horn and exchanged waves. A cab passed her, speeding down the road to the airport to wait for the early arrivals. In a matter of moments, Liz caught the first scent of the sea. It was always fresh. As she took the last turn, she glanced idly in her rearview mirror. Odd, she thought—hadn’t she seen that little blue car yesterday? But when she swung into the hotel’s parking lot, it chugged past.
    Liz’s arrangement with the hotel had been of mutual benefit. Her shop bordered the hotel’s beach and encouraged business on both sides. Still, whenever she went inside, as she did today to collect the lunch for the fishing trip, she always remembered the two years she’d spent scrubbing floors and making beds.
    “ Buenos días, Margarita.”
    The young woman with a bucket and mop started to smile. “Buenos días, Liz. ¿Cómo està?”
    “ Bien. How’s Ricardo?”
    “Growing out of his pants.” Margarita pushed the button of the service elevator as they spoke of her son. “Faith comes home soon. He’ll be glad.”
    “So will I.” They parted, but Liz remembered the months they’d worked together, changing linen, hauling towels, washing floors. Margarita had been a friend, like so many others she’d met on the island who’d shown kindness to a young woman who’d carried a child but had no wedding ring.
    She could have lied. Even at eighteen Liz had been aware she could have bought a ten-dollar gold band and had an easy story of divorce or widowhood. She’d been too stubborn. The baby that had been growing inside her belonged to her. Only to her. She’d feel no shame and tell no lies.
    By seven forty-five, she was crossing the beach to her shop, lugging a large cooler packed with two lunches and a smallerone filled with bait. She could already see a few tubes bobbing on the water’s surface. The water would be warm and clear and uncrowded. She’d like to have had an hour for snorkeling herself.
    “Liz!” The trim, small-statured man who walked toward her was shaking his head. There was a faint, pencil-thin mustache above his lip and a smile in his dark eyes. “You’re too skinny to carry that thing.”
    She caught her breath and studied him up and down. He wore nothing but a skimpy pair of snug trunks. She knew he enjoyed the frank or surreptitious stares