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  The Fugitive’s Sexy Brother

  Annabeth Leong

  Emily Boysen is sick of low-level bounty hunting jobs that don’t pay her rent, and sick to death of her ex-boyfriend taking credit for her work. Ready to claim her due, she takes on the quarry of a lifetime, the notorious Fernando Bonavita. But instead of the fugitive, she captures his sexy younger brother, Javier.

  Javier Bonavita never wanted to know the truth about his older brother’s activities, instead protecting him out of loyalty. When he uses his hacking skills to pose as Fernando, he never expects to uncover crimes he can’t stomach. Beautiful Emily has no idea how glad he is to be in her custody—as long as he’s her prisoner, he doesn’t have to face his brother.

  Passion flares between Emily and Javier, and soon he’s putting the handcuffs on her. Suspicion grows along with their feelings, though. A sinister plot centers around Fernando, and untangling it will test their loyalties to the limit.

  A Romantica® suspense erotic romance from Ellora’s Cave

  The Fugitive’s Sexy Brother

  Annabeth Leong

  Chapter One

  Emily Boysen shoved her hands into her pockets to keep them from trembling as she walked the narrow hallway to the door of her quarry’s apartment. Irritated by her nerves, she focused on the details around her. If you’re scared, work harder, she told herself fiercely. Get better at what you do. Decades-old sea-foam paint cracked off the dilapidated walls. Dust gathered in the corners and heaped on the baseboards. Cobwebs fluttered from naked light bulbs spaced too far apart along the dingy ceiling.

  Recent scuff marks in the dirt caked into the fugitive’s welcome mat confirmed someone’s recent presence. Emily halted, her body so tense that her throat threatened to close off completely. Her fingers brushed the mace in her pocket and clenched for a second. She shook her head in exasperation.

  Some bounty hunters—like her ex-boyfriend, Matthew—would kick the door in right now, spray the first person they encountered and generally create havoc, trusting that once they cuffed their quarry no one would dare to challenge the legality of it all. Emily had promised herself she’d never work like that, no matter how much her adrenaline might want her to.

  This fugitive lived in a bad building in a bad neighborhood. The woman in the next apartment had turned Judas for the merest bribe, promising to contact Emily the next time the fugitive came around. A person who’d sell a man out for a twenty-dollar bill couldn’t be trusted to get her facts straight. That had to be Emily’s job.

  She slipped her smartphone from her jacket’s breast pocket, pulling up her most recent text message. He’s here, the quarry’s neighbor had written. I’ll make sure he stays awhile. Emily wondered how the other woman could be so sure.

  Again, the dirty floor held a clue. A delicate high-heeled shoe had marked the dust layer at a few of its thickest points. Emily edged closer to the front door and pressed her ear against it.

  Moaning, male and female. Fierce and needy.

  Emily’s eyes widened as she suddenly understood the bitterness she’d heard in the neighbor’s voice when she’d discussed the fugitive. She should have recognized that particular combination of shame and stale desire—Emily’s ex had made her feel it far too many times. Sympathetic arousal flushed through Emily’s body as she listened to the fugitive and his neighbor gasp raggedly. Something clattered to the floor and the neighbor’s voice crested into a scream. Emily could not help imagining a counter swept clear, a bare ass lifted to perch on cold stainless steel, fingers clutching warm skin and whitening it with the desperation of their grasp, the head of a cock thrusting and searching.

  She shuddered and stepped back from the door, needing to catch her breath for a different reason now. It had been six months since her last night with Matthew, and her resolution to stay away from him seemed to grow more difficult every day. He would only make you feel bad about yourself. Stay focused on the job. You need the money. Emily didn’t know how that voice in her head stayed so reasonable, but she sighed and listened to it, as she always did.

  Based on the tracks and what she could guess about the neighbor, Emily felt comfortable assuming she had the right guy. Still, she never liked to break down a door when a person might just open it. Emily rang the bell insistently, an improvised character coming to her mind.

  “Can you keep it down?” She imagined an impoverished college student with a big test the next day. “I’m trying to study!”

  From inside, the fugitive shouted back a series of colorful curses, informing Emily exactly where she could put her studying. Emily snorted and switched to banging on the door with the flat of her palm. “Please, guys! Really!”

  “Go to the library!”

  He must have increased the force of his thrusts, because the neighbor’s moans became sharper and louder, carrying through the door with a clarity that pierced straight through Emily’s core. She shook her head to shake off the distracting image of him holding the neighbor in place with powerful, sculpted arms, his abs contracting as he drove into her. She played her trump card. “I’m going to have to call the cops.”

  The neighbor shrieked in a different way this time, then gave an indignant, “Ow!” Emily thought the fugitive might have dropped her. Definitely another sign she’d found the right guy. “Listen, bitch,” he shouted, and flung the door open without having bothered to throw on a robe. The sight of him was pretty much a let-down—no cut abs and sculpted arms here, just a bad attitude, an ugly facial expression, a beer gut and a lot of prison tattoos. If possible, he looked worse than he had in the mug shots the bail bondsman, Guy Nolf, had shown her.

  This was probably a good thing, Emily figured. If he’d looked hot naked, she might not have been able to get together the presence of mind to sweep his ankles out from under him. She grabbed one of his arms on the way down so she could direct him to a safe but submissive position on the grimy hallway floor. The takedown pulled her back into focus, and before she thought about it consciously, she drove one knee into the fugitive’s exposed spine, wrenched his arms behind his back and restrained him with the pair of cuffs slung at her waist. He gasped and writhed a bit, but Emily had him in the sort of position where strength wouldn’t really help him escape—he’d need a lot more self-defense knowledge than he seemed to have.

  “Guy’s disappointed that you screwed him over,” Emily murmured. “He’s a nice person, despite his looks. He wouldn’t have taken your bond unless you convinced him you really wanted to put your life back together.”

  The fugitive spat dust out of his mouth and spluttered. The neighbor peeked her head around the corner. She’d wrapped her thin body in a towel, but the flush of sex still reddened her cheeks, and big, gold hoop earrings and the mussed remains of a painstaking hairdo attested to the effort she’d made. She gazed down at the restrained man with a mix of regret and triumph, and Emily’s heart ached a little for her.

  “Is he going to be okay?” the neighbor asked.

  Emily raised an eyebrow. The woman hadn’t seemed so concerned the first time they’d talked, but she supposed sex made people feel a little softer toward each other—that had always been a problem with Emily’s resolutions to get away from Matthew too. “He’ll get his trial,” she answered.

  “Did you hurt him?”

  Emily suppressed a grin. The fugitive had more than a foot and a hundred pounds over Emily’s petite frame. She had to be doing something right if the neighbor could actually worry for his safety. “I’m not a monster. I’m just going to take him back to the bail bondsman. Nothing extra.”

  The neighbor bit her lip and nodded. “I’ll visit,” she called to the restrained fugitive.

  Emily rolled her eyes but
made sure that the man couldn’t see her slip the neighbor folded bills. She couldn’t really afford the extra thirty dollars she passed over, but couldn’t stop the generous impulse either.

  “Listen, will you grab him something to wear? I don’t want to take him out to my car naked.”

  By the time Emily had dressed the fugitive in a pair of loose jeans, the man had recovered enough to spew invective at her. She smiled at his clumsy, impersonal insults. Her parents and brother could have taught a master class on the art of verbal wounding, and the quarry’s amateur attempts served only to take the edge off Emily’s arousal. She welcomed his anger.

  Emily frog-marched him out of the building, leaving the neighbor staring after them. He wasn’t a big prize—her bounty on the petty criminal would leave her with a couple of hundred dollars above what she’d paid the neighbor. With careful eating over the next week, she’d just be able to make rent. Still, it was better than losing the apartment or having to add to the balance on her already strained credit card. And certainly better than admitting she couldn’t cut it at this job. That would have been all too satisfying to her family, or even to Matthew, who’d wanted her to work as his assistant. She scowled at the memory and shoved the fugitive down the stairs a little faster than was strictly necessary.

  It was a good day, Emily insisted to herself. She only wished she didn’t have to drive to Guy’s Bail Bonds with this man smelling like all the sex she’d been missing.

  * * * * *

  A rattle marred the powerful purr of the car’s engine slowing and stopping. Matthew Lodi swallowed hard, trying to control his anger and anxiety, but his fists clenched on the steering wheel, whitening his knuckles. Lotus Elise 2008, California Edition. Those words alone could make him happy on the worst of days. Too bad the car had turned on him in the last eight months.

  He ran a finger over her sleek dash. A crack tugged at his skin and he sucked air in through his teeth. First the rattle, now this. One part after another had developed problems since he’d crashed her late last year. But no matter what went wrong, he couldn’t let her go. He’d never been this wound up even over a flesh-and-blood woman. He hemorrhaged money to keep her running and he didn’t like to think about the repo man he’d seen poking around his yard the other night.

  He hoped Guy’s little secretary, Neva, had her story straight. He could use a big payday.

  A stream of curse words pouring through the window jerked his attention away from the flaw in the dash. Matthew popped up out of the car. A month before someone had keyed the Lotus while it was parked outside Guy’s Bail Bonds. Since then, every hostile word or movement near his employer’s building seemed directed at Matthew’s car.

  The guy with the foul mouth appeared around the corner of the building, but Matthew forgot him the moment he focused on the woman pushing him forward. Emily. Protective emotions surged in Matthew’s chest at the sight of his ex-girlfriend’s slight body and big, innocent blue eyes. He locked the car and stepped forward.

  “Need some help bringing this joker in?”

  Emily’s pretty, freckled face wasn’t made for the sour expression she gave him in response. “I can’t afford to ‘share’ any more commission with you, Matthew. Go get your own.”

  Thirty seconds and she’d already brought up this old fight? He wished Emily would stop denying the strength of her feelings for him. “Emily,” Matthew protested. “I’m not trying to take anything that belongs to you. But we both know it’s no good for you to try to do all this alone. You should let me help you with the physical part so you can concentrate on the stuff you can do well.”

  The fugitive in her grasp gave a sudden grunt. “Sorry,” Emily told him. “That one really wasn’t for you, even if you did spend the drive over calling me every name in the book.” Matthew rolled his eyes. Emily insisted on treating her quarry like people responding to a dinner invitation. She lacked the stomach to handle them the way they deserved. Matthew reached for the man, mentally planning a hold that would inflict the right amount of pain without leaving bruises that would concern prison officials.

  Emily blocked his approach, interposing her body between Matthew and the fugitive. He didn’t think she should leave her back open like that. His forehead wrinkled in concern. “Get your hands off my quarry,” she growled. Thin cheeks showed Matthew that she hadn’t been eating well. Her desperation made him worry about her even more.

  “Emily.” He couldn’t resist touching the side of her neck. A few freckles dotted the skin there, but he knew they were just a tease compared to the dots splashed over her shoulders and breasts.

  Her shove shocked him, knocking him back onto the sidewalk. Matthew blinked. She shouldn’t have done that when his guard was down. He scrambled to his feet and followed her in.

  Emily had wasted no time handing the fugitive over. She stood defiantly, one hand on her hip, as Guy Nolf wrinkled his thickly scarred forehead and looked over the quarry’s ID and bond paperwork. Matthew let out a frustrated breath. It was just like Emily to insist that Guy pay attention to her small-time claim without taking a moment to think about the important business that had drawn him to Guy’s place.

  He cleared his throat and barged forward, too irritated with his ex to do more than give a passing glance to Neva. He owed the woman a thank you for tipping him off to the big new job Guy had up, but she’d be glad enough if he asked her out in a few days. No need to give Emily even more reasons to complain. “Guy,” Matthew called, ignoring Emily’s glare. “What’s this about a big criminal out on half a million bail? Missed his court date this morning?” Matthew checked the calculation in his head for the tenth time since Neva had called—half a million dollars in bail meant fifty grand in commission for him. Enough to repair the Lotus for good and even get that damn repo man off his back.

  Guy’s hard brown eyes regarded Matthew with even less warmth than usual. “I didn’t call you for that one, Lodi.”

  “You just didn’t get around to it yet,” Matthew said as confidently as he could. Guy had been stingy with jobs lately—it was part of why the Lotus had become so hard to maintain. Guy needed a reminder of who was the best bounty hunter on his roster. Matthew glanced over his shoulder at Neva and winked. “I was looking at the court rosters this morning and found out about Fernando Bonavita skipping town. I started some preliminary investigation. I’ll have him back here in forty-eight hours, tops.”

  Neva avoided Matthew’s eyes. Appreciating her discretion, he turned back to Guy and raised his eyebrows expectantly.

  Guy sighed, his barrel chest swelling to nearly twice its normal size. He nodded to Emily. “Take your guy back to the holding cell, will you? All that cussing’s giving me a headache.” She nodded and disappeared. Matthew stepped closer to the counter, grateful for the chance to speak to his employer man to man.

  But Guy’s expression didn’t soften. “Son,” he said. “Time was, I’d have given you the Bonavita job without blinking an eye. But your work’s been erratic lately. I want to try this job on another hunter.”

  “You can’t afford to try this job on another hunter!” The outburst came with a surge of panic-inducing images. The Elise on the back of a tow truck. Emily on another bounty hunter’s arm.

  “Matthew, I can’t afford to give this job to you. Half a million’s too much to stake on the possibility you’ll shape up and actually bring your quarry in this time.” Guy’s face seemed too knowing. Matthew’s guts roiled. He’d been careful with every deal he’d cut. Guy couldn’t know about that.

  “You don’t have another hunter who knows how to deal with a character like Bonavita,” Matthew said desperately.

  “I could,” a feminine voice interjected. Matthew whirled, staring incredulously at tiny, delicate Emily. The girl whose eyes had widened in awe when he’d shown her the gunshot scar on his right arm. The girl who ought to be safe in Matthew’s home, helping him sort through all the headache-inducing paperwork that came along with this job, not risking her
self day after day among a bunch of lowlife criminals. The woman who belonged in his bed, not competing with him for the highest-paying job Guy had offered in years.

  Matthew let out a disbelieving laugh at the same moment Guy said, “Done.”

  “Done?” Matthew echoed.

  “Emily’s got the job,” Guy said.

  “She won’t be safe!”

  Emily turned her back on him and faced Guy. “Should I get the details from Neva?”

  “Please.” Guy scowled. “She certainly seems to have them all.”

  Matthew leaned forward on the counter, thinking of the bill for the bright orange paint job he’d just had done on the Lotus. “Guy, you can’t be serious.”

  “I’m deadly serious. Emily is more than competent. She has a criminal justice degree, martial arts training. She works her ass off. She’s always trying to improve her skills.” The corners of his mouth turned down pointedly. “She’s not resting on the laurels of a few successful jobs. I’ve been trying to get her to take on a real challenge for months now.”

  “You won’t turn me away when I bring Bonavita in first.”

  “To be honest, Lodi, I don’t think you can.”

  The pitying expression on Guy’s face knocked the breath out of Matthew. He turned on his heel, glaring at the two girls with their heads together at the front counter. Outside, he got to the Lotus just as the overgrown sideburns of the repo man appeared from around the corner. Cursing, Matthew wrenched the car door open and flung himself inside, banging his head as he compressed his body into the sports car’s low-slung seat.

  At least the car didn’t let him down this time—in seconds, her fine handling and fast acceleration had left the repo man in the dust. Matthew pulled into a supermarket parking lot and caught his breath, adrenaline still rushing through his body. Guy didn’t think he could bring in Fernando Bonavita? The man clearly underestimated the power of Matthew’s contacts. Searching through his phone’s logs, he found the number of the last member of Bonavita’s gang that he’d cut a deal with.