Port of Paradise

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Epilogue

  Other Books by Lisa Marie Rice

  Copyright

  About The Author

  Bari, Italy

  “Do you lick folk?” Hope Winston turned to meet the eager eyes of an attractive young Italian man. He grinned. “I have two tickets to the Bob Dugan concert.”

  Hope scrambled to decipher what she’d just heard while mentally flipping through the student files she’d memorized in the three months since she’d taken over as Director of the English Language Center in Bari, Italy.

  Ah, now she had it. Giuseppe Carrera, bank employee, second year Intermediate and, at 22, a good four years younger than she was.

  “Do I like folk music?” Hope replied, gently stressing the verb. “Yes, I like folk music.”

  Giuseppe, the dog, ran his eyes down her figure, lingering on her breasts, bringing his eyes back up reluctantly to her face. It was something Italian men often did, but usually with more finesse. “So—I pick you up at eight, yes? Concert starts at nine.”

  Hope did not roll her eyes as she searched for a way to politely refuse. It was the fourth invitation to the concert she’d had this week.

  “That’s very kind of you, Giuseppe,” she said gently but firmly, “but I’m going to be correcting papers all weekend.” She ran through his file once again in her mind’s eye. “And final exams are coming up. Your employer is paying for this course. I think your bank is expecting you to do better than you have been up to now.”

  He brightened at that and leaned forward enough for her to catch a whiff of Armani for Men. “When exams are over, we go out together, yes?” He even waggled his eyebrows. What a puppy.

  Hope smiled and moved past him. Ah, she thought, the Italian male ego. Not even a hammer could put a dent in it.

  Italian men were good as comedy relief, though, she thought as she walked down the broad, tiled corridor to the Director’s office.

  She could hear the soft hum of voices as she walked by the classrooms. Teachers were teaching and students were learning. Everything was orderly. Everything was as it should be.

  Hope felt a surge of satisfaction. Against all the odds, she’d held things together for her best friend. It was going to be all right.

  She breathed in the balmy sea air wafting in through the open windows of the corridor, and remembered that it had been a cold and rainy March day in New York when her best friend, Kay Summers, had called her from a hospital bed in Bari.

  Kay had hated being an employee in the run-down ESL language school off Times Square in Manhattan where they both worked. She dreamed of running and eventually owning her own school. So when Kay read the ad on the internet for a job as director of an English language school in Bari, Italy, applied and received acceptance in one week, Kay had only stopped long enough to look up Bari in an atlas, rush out to buy herself an Italian grammar book and clear out her possessions in the apartment she shared with Hope.

  Kay’s letters to Hope had been ecstatic. The school was a roaring success with new students pouring in every day. Bari was chaotic but beautiful, a bustling port city on the boot heel of Italy, studded with palm trees. She’d found a charming house on the beach, a ten-minute train ride from the school. Italian men were gorgeous.

  And then had come the panic phone call at five o’clock in the morning.

  Kay had been struck by a hit-and-run driver and left for dead in the scrub bushes by the side of the road. By chance, a passing car had stopped at the huddled clump of rags that was Kay and had rushed her to a hospital, where the doctors had barely saved her life.

  When Kay came to several days later, she realized her livelihood was in jeopardy. She would be laid up for months, and the school needed a director. Desperate, Kay had called Hope and pleaded with her to come and take her place.

  With trepidation, Hope had withdrawn all her savings and bought herself a one-way ticket to Italy.

  And she’d done it. She’d kept the school on track for her friend. When Kay finally recovered, she would come back to a still-flourishing business.

  Hope frowned as she walked into the director’s office. And maybe by the time Kay had recovered there’d be a stop to the frightening, deeply disturbing events centered around Kay’s lovely beach home. She was still mulling over that morning’s sickening find when her cell rang. She checked the screen. Speak of the devil…

  “Hope?”

  “Kay! I was going to call you later this afternoon. How are you feeling? How’s the pain?”

  “The pain?” Hope heard the strain in Kay’s voice as she moved on the hospital bed with a creaking of springs. “The pain’s doing fine, thank you.”

  Hope knew that if Kay was complaining, however lightly, the pain must be fierce. She wasn’t a complainer.

  “I’m coming in tomorrow morning with some steamy romances and a pound of chocolates.” Hope smiled. The loves scenes in some of them were hot enough to wake the dead. “Swiss chocolate and sex. Try and clear it with your surgeon.”

  “The steamy romances or the chocolates? Doesn’t make any difference, anyway. What he doesn’t know won’t hurt him.” Kay’s determinedly cheery voice hesitated. “Hope…have you spoken with Captain Rivera yet?”

  Hope’s stomach muscles clenched. “Uh…not exactly.”

  Hope couldn’t ignore the exasperation in Kay’s sigh. “Honey, you—we—need someone who knows what he’s doing to help us with whatever’s going on. We can’t do this on our own. Not in a foreign country.”

  Hope clutched her cell tightly. “There’s got to be some rational explanation for it, Kay. Maybe it’s just someone playing pranks. I don’t need help. I don’t want help.” A shudder of revulsion ran through her. “Not from a cop, anyway,” she added with loathing. “Isn’t there anyone else we can call in? The marines?”

  Kay made a sound deep in her throat. “Of course you need a policeman. You’ve been getting odd phone calls in the night, you see strange men lurking about the house, my new boiler goes on the blink and the repairman discovers that the wires have been severed. Someone slashes the tires on my car. And something else has happened, hasn’t it, Hope?”

  How did she do it, flat on her back in a hospital bed? “Oh, that…it was probably the neighbor’s cat—”

  “My neighbors don’t have a cat.”

  Hope was silent for a long moment. “Okay.” She let out her breath in a gust. “There was a dead fish on the doorstep this morning. Very dead. It smelled to high heaven.”

  “That does it. You’ve got to talk to Franco. Believe me, Hope, I know how you feel about policemen—”

  “I hate them,” Hope muttered tightly, heart racing.

  “I know how you feel,” Kay continued as if Hope hadn’t spoken. “I’ve seen you cross the street in New York to avoid a traffic cop. You’ve told me all about your stepfather. But we’re talking about something different here. I don’t know what’s happening, Hope, but it’s scary.”

  Hope was silent, clutching cell as if it were an enemy because though she hated to admit it, Kay was right.

  “Franco Rivera looks formidable but he is a really nice man.” Kay’s voice was coaxing. “Not to mention a grade A hunk.”

  “Good God!” Hope was horrified, remembering all too clearly oversized, brainless macho idiots. “Cops aren’t hunks, Kay. Cops are barely human!” She was pushing away even the thought of dealing with a cop. There had to be a way out of this… ”Listen,
Kay, I couldn’t even communicate with Captain Rivera. My Italian still isn’t all that— ”

  “Franco’s English is excellent,” Kay interrupted. “He got his degree in political science at Georgetown University. His English is better than most Americans’. He told me he’d be sitting in on the Intermediate D class this afternoon. Go talk to him.”

  Franco Rivera was here? In the building? Hope’s heart clenched in fear. “If his English is so good, what’s he doing in class?”

  Kay’s voice held an unexpectedly diffident note. “I don’t really know, Hope. Looking after his men? I don’t know. I do know he’s asked about you a lot.”

  Panic flared and Hope grasped the edge of the desk. He’d been asking about her? What did he want with her?

  Mind racing, Hope tried to think of anything she might have done to attract a cop’s attention. But nothing came to mind.

  She’d declared the small amount of money she was bringing into the country at the airport. Her residence permit and work permit were in order. As far as she knew, she hadn’t broken any laws at all. Of course, there was last Saturday…

  “Oh, my God, Kay, I double parked in Via Dante last Saturday,” she whispered in despair. “Do you suppose…?”

  “No.” Kay’s voice was dry. “No. Somehow I don’t think Captain Franco Rivera, who heads the city’s anti-racketeering squad, really has time to waste on parking tickets. Hope, have you looked in a mirror lately?”

  “Kay -- “

  “No, listen to me.” The bed creaked again and Hope could hear Kay stifle a cry of pain. “I—I know I’ve asked a lot of you. I can’t think of anyone else in the world who’d drop whatever they were doing and travel halfway around the globe to help me. Believe me, you can’t imagine how grateful I am.”

  “Oh, Kay,” Hope murmured.

  “It’s true, Hope. And I h-h-h,” Kay’s voice trembled. She drew a deep breath. “I hate having to keep asking for your help. But something is going on and you’re not equipped to deal with it. Maybe someone is setting me up to ask for protection money for the school. I just don’t know. This is my future, Hope. I love it here. I have a real chance to do something with the school. Someone is trying to take it away from me, and I can’t defend myself. Please.” Kay’s voice caught. “Please help me.”

  Hope’s heart thudded heavily in her chest. It felt as if she had a hundred pound rock lodged in there. Fear and bitter memories fought a brief, fierce battle with friendship. The fear and bitterness lost.

  Kay knew what she was asking. The fact that she was asking it showed how desperate she was.

  Kay’s voice fell to a whisper. “Hope?” The pleading note was unmistakable. Kay was proud. To plea was wrenching for her. “Please, just talk to Franco. Ask his opinion. He’s been such a good friend to me. I know he’ll help you. Please, Hope.”

  Head bowed, Hope fiddled aimlessly with a paperweight. Finally, she heaved a huge sigh. “All right, Kay. I’ll talk with your Captain Rivera. How awful can he possibly be?”

  “Subjunctive mood,” the young English teacher, Mark Harrington, said.

  Captain Franco Rivera stirred uneasily in his seat and wondered about his own mood. He stretched his legs out in the aisle, paying scant attention to the earnest young man pacing in front of the cadet carabinieri, the elite police corps of Italy, and a few of his trusted lieutenants.

  “This is a tricky mood to get right,” the teacher intoned.

  Rivera knew that his men were paying attention to the subjunctive, because he had made it clear to every single one that a good working knowledge of English was essential to the job and, above all, essential to a promotion. Police work nowadays was international, crossed frontiers just like criminals did. Rivera himself worked closely and often with Interpol, Europol, the FBI and the DEA. English was a must and his own was damned good.

  So what was he doing wasting his time in a class? It wasn’t as if he had nothing better to do. His office desk was piled a foot high with files waiting to be read.

  He shifted in his hard chair and told himself he was keeping his men company. Through the windows came the sounds of a crash and glass shattering. Imprecations floated up from the street below. An instant later, horns blasted as angry drivers discovered that they were stuck behind the scene of an accident.

  Rivera suppressed a grin. Some poor sucker of a traffic cop was going to have a difficult half hour.

  “I wish she were here,” Mark said, pushing up with a forefinger the wire-rimmed glasses that kept slipping down his nose. “That is the subjunctive as an expression of desire.”

  Desire, Rivera thought.

  Okay.

  That was why he was sitting in a hot classroom when he had better things to do. Desire. Desire for Hope Winston, a woman he hadn’t yet managed to meet.

  Six months ago, he’d met Kay Summers at a city-sponsored event and they’d become good friends immediately. Both of them realized right away that they were destined to be friends, not lovers.

  Rivera had done what he could to help Kay, recommending the school to colleagues and acquaintances, fully aware of the weight a senior police officer’s recommendation carried in this society.

  And his word had ultimately cinched the city’s contract with Kay’s school to teach English to all city policemen. In return, Kay had offered him endless cups of weak coffee and a sympathetic ear when he needed to let off steam.

  In return, his men were getting a thorough grounding in English.

  Rivera had been heartbroken over Kay’s accident and visited her often in the hospital. She didn’t know that he’d been moving heaven and earth to find the hit-and-run driver who’d almost taken her life.

  So when Kay had asked him last week to look out for her best friend, Hope Winston, he had agreed, unhesitatingly. He was willing to do anything to make Kay’s friend welcome.

  But after one look at Hope, even from a distance, he’d realized that whatever help he could give, it wouldn’t be purely for Kay’s sake.

  He’d been hooked the first time he saw Hope Winston. At the time, he didn’t know who she was. All he knew was that she was tantalizing.

  The woman was climbing the big marble steps of the English Language Center. He’d been walking to the corner bar to have a cappuccino before going into the school to introduce himself to Kay’s friend when he stopped dead in his tracks to watch the woman who instantly mesmerized him.

  Woman watching was one of his favorite past-times, a hobby he shared with roughly 30 million other Italians — the entire male population. But there had been something truly compelling about the woman gracefully climbing the steep marble stairs.

  A foreigner, she was clearly a foreigner. For one thing, she wasn’t elegantly dressed. Old jeans hugging glorious hips and long, slender legs, tennis shoes and an old tee shirt. Clothes any self-respecting Italian woman wouldn’t be caught dead in, not even while washing windows. But the giveaway was the hair--long, straight, thick and a stunning platinum blonde. Natural, he’d bet his badge on it. There wasn’t a woman in Bari with hair like that.

  So he’d stood on the street staring much longer than was usual, ashamed of his behavior. He wasn’t fourteen and woman-starved, after all, he was thirty six and had more than enough sex, thank you very much. Just last night, in fact, he’d had a very satisfactory couple of hours in bed with Silvana Lucarini. So what was he doing, stopping and staring at a woman’s back?

  Then someone from street level called, and the woman turned and Franco caught his breath. Gesù, she was gorgeous. In a country of beautiful women, she was a knockout. Pale, oval face, stunning features, eyes a pale silvery blue so intense the color was startling from 50 feet away. It was Hope Winston. It had to be. There wasn’t another woman like that in all of Apulia.

  Helping Kay’s friend had suddenly become his new top priority.

  Like an idiot, he’d stood stunned in the street just long enough for her to turn back around and disappear into the building. It took him a
minute to gather his wits and then he sprinted up the steps, cappuccino forgotten. He’d described her to an amused secretary, who confirmed that the person he’d seen was, indeed, the new director, Hope Winston. But la Direttrice Winston had just left the premises, two minutes ago.

  That had been four days ago and it was always the same story. She’d just left or hadn’t arrived yet. Franco had caught tantalizing glimpses of a platinum head disappearing around corners, slender curves in ugly clothes walking down a hallway and vanishing from sight and once—two days ago—he’d looked down out of a window at the school to see her looking up. Their eyes met and held. She was breathtaking, so beautiful it was as if she’d come from another world. And maybe she had because she’d completely vanished by the time he’d run down the flight of stairs.

  He couldn’t get her face out of his head all that first day, and that night he’d had a wet dream for the first time in years. Woke up wet and unsatisfied. Silvana had called him the next day for a repeat performance and he found himself pleading overwork. Cristo, since when did he turn down sex?

  It was insane. He needed to see her. He’d been walking around with a semi hard-on for four days now and that couldn’t be healthy. And Kay was becoming more and more insistent that something dangerous was going on. All the more reason to corner the woman. Maybe he’d just knock on her door and introduce himself.

  The soft knock startled him out of his reverie and stopped Mark Harrington in mid-sentence.

  “Mark?” Hope Winston opened the door a crack and stuck her head in, the pale spill of hair catching the light from the open windows. She looked around the room, silver blue eyes wide and anxious. “Can I interrupt your class for a minute?”

  Hope stepped gingerly into the classroom, feeling as if she were walking straight into a minefield, shooting an apologetic smile at Mark.

  “Excuse me.” Hope gave a brief, fleeting smile. She walked to the teacher’s podium and surveyed the room as she wiped damp palms on her jeans.

  She saw a roomful of clean-cut young men, not all that different from the young men she could see on any street in Bari. They didn’t look anything like the cops she remembered. She had all-too painful memories of what they looked like.