Kenton stood on the terrace of the rental vacation villa and watched Georgiou enter the taxi on the street down the steep incline at the base of the complex. The bullet-headed bald, yet otherwise hirsute, Greek with the physique of a wrestler didn't turn to wave back. He just folded himself in the taxi and was gone from Kenton's life. Kenton hadn't really e...
I am fairly certain my father knew there was more to my being apprenticed to the Dutch munitions broker Fons Hertzog when I arrived in Cape Town from London then learning a merchant's trade. He was being protective of me, I'm sure, the Great War having broken out the previous summer in Europe with the assassination of the archduke. With the war only enlargi...
"No, sweetie, I don't want to hear about Key West again. That's your little impossible dream. I'm getting my dream right here, thank you very much." "I'm telling you it's neither a dream nor impossible, Jewel," I said, as I mixed two cappuccinos for a pair of matrons incongruously dressed to the nines over by the front window. You only needed to look out of...
I stepped back from the sidewalk, hugging my arms close to my sides, and leaned back on the wall at the corner into the alley, raising one leg, knee bent, and my cowboy booted foot flat against the wall. The hole in the sole of that boot was worn clean through and the cold of the wall wasn't as cold as that of the sidewalk pavement. Besides, it was a good po...
The two figures, looking handsome together, stood at the doorway of the rambling adobe house on the heights overlooking old Santa Fe. They were standing close together, silhouetted shadows as seen from inside the house, where, in the great room beyond the foyer, small groups of people gathered in proximity - but not too near - a long trestle table, drinking...
At first Chet thought the older man staring at him from across the bar at the top of the cruise ship was Jamaican. The man engaged his attention because he had the most compelling light-gray eyes, which went really well with his silver-gray hair and the black suit with black silky shirt and black tie with a hash pattern of silver strands. But the thought tha...
Allen came to the window of his Maple Street bungalow and looked out at the driveway at the unmistakable sound of the purring of an expensive sports car. He had arrived in time to see Jack unfold his elegant six-foot-four frame out of the red Porsche Carrera convertible and run his hand through a thick mane of auburn hair with frosted highlights. The man was...
The pain was fighting with the pleasure; the fear with the exhilaration. The struggle for the dominant sensation was sending my adrenaline through the roof. God, I was skipping along the top of the clouds. Shit, I was skimming the searing flames of hell. Pain, pleasure. Pleasure, pain. Right there on the edge. Would he love me or kill me? Would he fulfill my...
I had been banished. My wife would be joining me in a couple of months, but I was sent ahead—banished from New York—for my transgressions. April's father had known I was bi before he bought me for her daughter—and he also knew how I made my living, because he had been paying April's bills. But I suppose he assumed I would put all of that behind me when we we...
August 27, 1944 Paul jerked and shuddered at the sound of the salvo of gunfire that penetrated through to his cell from across the courtyard. He looked around the small cell. Stone floor, walls, and ceiling. a cot suspended down from chains on the wall at one side. A drain in the corner with a chamber pot next to it. The Ritz it was not. This was anything...