Don't Let Go by Marliss Melton

paid for, there would be no going back, no changing her mind. She was going to risk everything to get Miguel out of Venezuela.
    God help me,
she thought.
’Cause nobody else will.

Chapter Six
    She was almost broke.
    That evening, Jordan sat in her kitchen with the scent of burned toast hanging in the air, her bills spread across the dinette table, pen bleeding ink onto her checkbook. She needed considerably more cash flow.
    Being trapped in Venezuela had led her utility companies to slap late fees on all of her accounts. Apparently, they’d heard every excuse under the sun. They hadn’t believed she’d been hiding from rebels in the basement of a mission in a foreign country—who would? She couldn’t begin to cover all her bills, let alone start paying three hundred more per month on her mortgage.
    Nor was she eating or sleeping as she should. She watched television compulsively, praying for the most up-to-date news coming out of Venezuela, but the news was sparse. Running out of money was yet one more obstacle between her and Miguel. At this rate, she was going to have a nervous breakdown.
    The memory of Silas McGuire’s hesitant farewell wave summoned a peculiar feeling in her. She hadn’t been able to get his sweet, needy gaze out of her mind. Of course, each time she thought of the boy, she envied his father for having him back.
    How much would Solomon McGuire pay her for teaching his son to read? With her trip to Venezuela just two weeks away, it wouldn’t be much, but every little bit would help at this point.
    Would he hire her, though, for such a short amount of time? Maybe she should keep the date of her departure to herself.
    Standing up, she went to fetch the Post-it note she’d stuck onto her refrigerator. He’d scrawled the directions to his house but not a phone number, of course. He would have to make this harder on her, more humiliating.
    An hour later, Jordan found herself following his instructions, driving toward Virginia Beach with the sun shining in her rearview mirror, telling herself this decision had nothing to do with the man, himself. Yes, he was attractive. A woman would have to be dead not to notice that, but he was also extremely annoying. She didn’t like him enough for him to pose a threat to her carefully reconstructed heart.
    Turning her Nissan into an established waterfront community, she scowled at the oaks and magnolias lining mansions on either side. If he could afford a home here, why not hire a full-time nanny, she groused, coming to a house on a cul de sac.
Follow drive to rear,
Solomon had written.
    What was at the rear, she wondered, the servants’ entrance?
    She spied his truck parked beneath a carport and eased her car in alongside it, then followed a walkway to the rear entrance to knock and wait.
    “Hello,” answered a teenage boy.
    “I’m looking for Solomon McGuire,” Jordan said, angry that his directions weren’t more explicit.
    “Oh, he lives down at the dock,” said the youth.
    At the dock.
    “Yeah, he used to live here, but now he just rents the pier.”
    The pier.
    With rising concern, Jordan followed the walkway down the hill, away from the house, to a pier that jutted out into a glistening swathe of water, violet in hue, given the arrival of dusk. An osprey flapped into the skeletal remains of a tree. Insects chirped in the marsh grass. A fish jumped, leaving ripples on the water’s still surface. Beautiful.
    There, moored to the dock, was a houseboat named
Camelot
. Its surface was shiny and new, but the lines of the craft belonged to an earlier era. Lights shone warmly in the various-shaped windows.
    What a shame, she’d come all this way for nothing.
    She turned to leave. “Where are you going?” called a voice that made the hair on her nape prickle. She turned around and finally caught sight of him lounging behind a deck rail on a raised portion of the boat, as if awaiting her arrival.
    “I don’t do water,” she called, turning away