Free Taking Chances by Susan Lewis

crimes.’
    Chambers crooked an eyebrow. ‘
Are
there that many?’ he said.
    ‘Oh yes,’ she assured him. ‘And I think you have committed them all. Morales, he says you did, and that no-one should mess with you, because you are a very wicked and dangerous man.’
    Chambers pushed his hands in his pockets and started back down the hill. He liked the girl, enjoyed her prattle, and knew he should dissuade her from seeking him out.
    ‘Where is your wife?’ she asked, falling in beside him.
    He threw her a sidelong glance, and carried on walking.
    She skipped up over a rock, then came down to block his way. ‘I want to be your wife,’ she told him, her slanted green eyes shining with mischief. ‘I am a virgin. I could be your wife.’
    Picking her up, he set her aside to clear his path, then laughed as she threw herself to the ground and tried to pull him down with her. ‘Morales says I must seduce you,’ she smiled up at him. ‘He says you are in need of a woman.’
    ‘And you are a girl,’ he said, pulling her back to her feet. ‘A child.’
    ‘A woman!’ she cried. ‘I am a woman. I can give you love, and I can make you special rate.’
    They walked on in silence, until finally she said, ‘The men who were with you and Morales before we leave Popayán, they arrive just now.’
    Chambers felt a rapid beat in his heart. ‘Did Morales send you to find me?’ he said.
    ‘He told me to find you, and love you, then bring you back to the house.’
    Despite the sudden edge to his nerves there was a glint of humour in Chambers’s eyes. ‘Here,’ he said, dragging a twenty-dollar bill from his pocket, ‘tell him you succeeded.’
    She snatched the money, buried it inside her dress, and said, ‘It is too soon. He will know that there was no love, because we come back too soon.’
    Ordinarily Chambers wouldn’t have cared what Morales thought, but the man had been on his case for days about a woman, and this could be an easy way of getting him off. Let him think that he had taken the girl, maybe then his celibacy would cease to be an issue. ‘Come here,’ he said to Carlota, and taking her hand he pulled her behind a boulder and pushed her down on the grass. ‘I want you to lie there and be quiet,’ he told her, sitting down facing her and resting his back against the rock. ‘I need to think, and I need you to tell Morales we made love.’
    ‘Then let’s make love,’ she said. ‘It will be easier that way.’
    There was great irony in Chambers’s eyes as he surveyed her. Lying there like that, so fresh and inviting, she looked as desirable as any woman he’d known, and God knew he needed the release. But no matter how many times she had given herself before, sex with a minor was no more his scene than sex with a horse.
    It wasn’t that he’d been celibate since Rachel died, far from it, it was just that being back in this country was reconnecting him to her in a way that made him want to exclude other women. Were he being honest, he’d have to admit, on an emotional level, it was pretty much that way wherever he was. It certainly wasn’t that he set out to hurt a woman, but after he’d slept with her he just didn’t want the additional involvement.
    He thought about Michelle Rowe, the British actress who’d worked with him on bringing down the Brazilian businessman Pedro Pastillano. In the time they were together he had probably felt closer to her than he had to anyone since Rachel’s death, but, as beautiful as Michelle was, there had never been a question of anything more than friendship between them. He wondered where her most recent letter was. It seemed he’d mislaid it somewhere between Cartagena and here. It wasn’t important, he could always get her address from Michael – as he recalled, she was currently working in the Afghan refugee camps on the borders of Pakistan. He liked the suggestion she’d come up with in her letter, and wondered if she’d put it to Michael yet. Chances