Exotic Affairs(71)

In its own way the picture was as dramatically plain as everything else in here—nothing more than the faint gold outline of a scorpion clinging to a white background with its lethal-looking tail curving upwards and over its scaly body in preparation to strike.

But it made the blood run cold just to look at it. For, although it was Luiz Vazquez’s chair that was situated directly beneath that lethal claw, it was not him the scorpion seemed to threaten—but whoever was unlucky enough to sit in the chair placed on the other side of the desk.

Its message was clear. Mess with me and I strike.

It was his mark—his logo. Or one of them, at least. But once upon a time the sign of the golden scorpion had used to adorn everything Luiz Vazquez was involved in. He had since learned to be much more subtle. And he just kept this one picture around him for personal reasons now—and as a warning to anyone who was unfortunate enough to find themselves summoned to these private rooms, that the cool-headed, soft-talking Luiz Vazquez still had a vicious sting in his tail.

But these days he was known better for his new logo. The one which gave his string of exclusive, internationally renowned hotels their name and had earned him quite a reputation for quality service and comfort during the last ten years.

For this was an Angel Hotel. Angel as in Luiz Angeles de Vazquez. Angel as in good, honest and true.

The sublime to the ridiculous. And an example of what good marketing could do because all of his hotels possessed in-house casinos which were the real draw. The luxury his admittedly well-heeled guests enjoyed while they played was just an added bonus.

The scorpion was probably a far more honest representation of what Luiz Vazquez really was.

Luiz went to sit beneath that scorpion now, sliding his perfectly contoured frame into a thickly padded swivel desk chair before reaching down to unlock and open one of the drawers in the desk.

His fingers, so long and lean and beautifully coordinated that they revealed even more about the man’s extraordinary powers of self-control in the way they did everything with such neat precision, took out the only item in the drawer and placed it on the desktop.

It was a leather-bound dossier, expensive but nothing particularly ominous about it. Yet he didn’t immediately open it. Instead he leant back in the chair and began swinging it lightly while one set of neatly filed fingernails tapped an absent tattoo against the desk. His expression revealed nothing, as usual. Whatever was going on in that shrewd, sharp mind of his was being kept hidden beneath the curling black lashes that usually shrouded his eyes.

Beautiful eyes. Eyes of a rich, dark fathomless brown colour that sat in the sleepy hollows of an arrestingly handsome face. A full Spaniard by birth, though raised in America, he undoubtedly had the warm golden skin of his Spanish forebears, the high cheekbones, the nose, the rock-solid, firmly chiselled jaw-line, and the shadowy outline of a beautifully moulded mouth.

But, for all of its good points, it was still the face of a cool operator. Of a man reputed to possess no heart—or, to be less fanciful, to possess the heart of an athlete, able to maintain the calm, steady pace necessary to keep the oxygen pumping into his clever brain no matter what pressure he put it under.

The fingers suddenly stopped tapping and moved, sliding over the desk and across smooth leather until they could curl and flick open the dossier cover to reveal a thick wad of documents stacked inside. With a supple dexterity that had been trained into his fingers years ago, he began sifting through the papers until he found the one he was looking for. Removing it from the stack, he set it neatly back down upon the top, then simply went still, his eyes glowing with a sudden burn as he sat there looking at a seven-by-nine colour photograph of—Caroline.

She was without doubt extraordinarily beautiful. No one with eyes would ever say she was not. Hair the colour of ripening wheat framed the most delicately perfect face even Luiz Vazquez, for all his thirty-five years of worldly experience, had ever set eyes upon. She had the flawless white skin of a pale English rose and eyes the colour of amethyst. Her small straight nose was classically drawn, like the finely defined curve of her delicate jaw-line. But it was her mouth that held Luiz’s attention. Soft, warm, pink and full—it was a mouth made to drive a man wild with pleasure.

And he should know, Luiz mused cynically. For he’d had plenty of experience of just what that mouth could do—and he meant to have some more very soon.

It was a prospect that had the burn in his eyes changing back to their normal inscrutable cool as he utilised yet another facet of his strong character. Patience. The man was blessed with unending patience when it came to goals he had set himself.