by Anne Stuart
ITWASA STRANGE and novel sensation for Reilly, this urge to wrap his hands around her throat and strangle her. He wasn’t a man prone to violent fantasies; he simply did what needed to be done. If that need included violence, he would do it, without undue hesitation or recriminations.
He knew perfectly well why he wanted to strangle her. Dutchy was out of the way, but he’d been quite voluble once Reilly had fired that bullet close enough to crease his filthy suit. And he’d been mad and drunk enough not to consider the benefits of discretion.
“So how does it feel to pork a nun, Reilly?” he’d demanded blearily as Reilly had lashed him to the old iron bed with the filthy sheets.
“What the hell are you talking about?” he’d said, yanking the ropes unnecessarily tighter.
“Your little lady friend. I thought she looked familiar, but it took a while before it came to me. She came from the convent, didn’t she? Our Lady of the Perpetual Virgin, or whatever it was, right? Bet she was real tight.”
He slammed Dutchy back against the bed, his hand around his wattled neck, ready to press the life out of him. “You’re crazy, old man.”
Dutchy wheezed in laughter, too drunk to realize his life was hanging by a thread. “You mean she didn’t tell you? I wouldn’t have thought she could put anything over on you—you’re getting soft, Reilly. It’s no wonder you’re getting out of the game.”
“You must have gotten into some bad whiskey,” Reilly said between gritted teeth. “That, or the jungle’s finally gotten to you.”
“I even know her name,” Dutchy said. “She was the only young one there, and I make it my business to keep track of all the young white women in the area. Sister Maria Carlos. Her parents were those missionaries that were killed a number of years back. But what I can’t figure out is where the baby came from.”
He pressed against his throat, just a bit harder. Dutchy’s eyes began to bulge, and he gasped for breath.
Reilly timed it perfectly. Just until Dutchy passed out. Then he stepped back, watching him, and he realized he was shaking.
He should kill him, of course. Sooner or later, most likely sooner, Morales would come back and put two and two together. With Dutchy’s pickled brain but still-sharp eyes, they’d come to their conclusions even more quickly, and now that Dutchy had managed to find out about the baby, things were getting too damned dangerous. The best way to protect the baby and the woman as well, would be to kill him.
He looked at the old man. He was the scum of the earth, and he certainly had earned death many times over.
The problem was, Dutchy was right. He had grown soft. Ten years ago he wouldn’t have hesitated, and Dutchy would have already breathed his last.
But he’d seen enough death, enough killing to last him the rest of his life. He was going to take his chances. If they moved fast, they’d be out of reach before Dutchy started blabbing, safely up in the deserted village of Puente del Norte, ready to fly out of the country.
Of all the places, why had he chosen Puente del Norte to land? Fate wasn’t making things any easier for him, or for the woman sitting in the front of the canoe.
Reilly looked at the top of Carlie’s head. The short dark hair was lightening in the sun, streaked with gold among the dark brown. He didn’t know whether she’d fallen asleep, but at least she’d ceased that soft, loving murmur she directed at the baby.
The sound of her voice, her damned nun’s voice, should have infuriated him. Indeed, it did, but it also crept under his skin and teased at him, making him horny and crazy and wanting to hit something.
He’d left the Catholic church years ago, but he still knew that a nun was off-limits. And much as he wanted to discount Dutchy, and believe the man’s words were all lies, he knew he couldn’t. There were too many things pointing straight at that unpalatable truth, including her total unfamiliarity with her body’s sexual potential. The way she kissed. The way she looked at him. The way she walked and talked, totally without sexual guile.
At first he’d assumed it was some act of a well-bred tramp like Caterina Morrissey—a sham innocence meant to be alluring, and he’d had to admit that it was.
Knowing it was real innocence should have destroyed any random traces of lust left in him. Unfortunately, life didn’t work like that.
He looked at her sun-streaked head, bowed low over the baby, and he thought about the taste of her mouth, the wetness he’d coaxed between her legs, the perfect fit of her breast against his hand. He looked at her, and he still wanted her. And nothing, not decency, not charity, not wisdom, could still the desire surging through his body
He told himself he wouldn’t do it. From now on it was strictly hands off. No touching, no loaded comments, no cursing if he could help it. She’d made her choice, and he wasn’t able to offer her any reasonable alternatives. They were two people, thrown together for a few days in a dangerous situation. It was no wonder his hormones were running high.
Once they made it out of here, once she was safely settled wherever the rest of her…sisters were, he’d get beyond it. He’d spend a little extra time in D.C., looking up a few old friends. His buddies were always trying to match him up, and this time he’d let them. He needed a woman, not a girl. Someone a little older, a little more experienced, should wipe away Carlie’s memory in no time.
He knew when she’d fallen asleep. When her tense shoulders relaxed, her entire posture softened and a faint, watery sigh drifted back to him. She’d been crying, he realized belatedly, with a pang he quickly stifled. Why had she been crying, for God’s sake? Over her imagined sins?
The sun was growing brighter overhead, and he steered the dugout closer to the riverbank and the protecting overhang of greenery. She’d already absorbed enough sun on her pale skin—he didn’t want her burned. It would slow them down, he added to himself. Lying to himself.
Damn, damn, hell and damnation. And then he found he still maintained a sense of humor. For all that his cursing was uncharacteristically mild, it was all too accurate. Hell and damnation would be awaiting him, for messing with a nun.
Particularly since he still wanted to mess with her, quite badly. He wanted to finish what he had started, and he didn’t want to think about white-and-black robes, and vows of chastity. He wanted to think about the look in her eyes, the scream she’d made, pressed up against his shoulder. He wanted to see whether he could make her scream again.
He reined in his imagination with steely control. She’d been trouble enough in her other incarnations. As Caterina Morrissey she was a selfish tramp who was looking for a meal ticket, as Carlie Forrest she wasn’t much better. But Sister Maria Carlos was the worst of all. The sooner he was out of this mess, the better. He’d head straight to his mountaintop and stay put, and nothing, but nothing, would make him come down.
After he got thoroughly and satisfyingly laid, of course. He needed to get this particular woman out of his mind, out of his blood, out of his fantasies. And it would take another woman to do it.
Hell, he might not wait until he got to D.C. If Simeon could find someone for him, he’d take care of his little problem right then and there, and too damned bad if the holy sister didn’t like it.
There was no way he was going to pretend that he was in anything else but a foul mood that day on the river. He pulled alongside the riverbank for a brief stop, made the bottle for the kid when needed and grudgingly partook of the bread and fruit the Shumi had packed for them. But he wasn’t about to indulge in any social amenities, and she seemed perfectly willing to accept his disapproving silence.
Hell, she was probably used to silence, he thought bitterly. What kind of vows did they take? Chastity, he knew that one for sure, and it was a thorn in his side and his conscience. Poverty and obedience. Well, she’d flunked the last one, but if she was supposed to keep silent she was doing a good job of it.
They reached the tiny landing of Cali Nobles by late afternoon. It wasn’t much larger than the small outpost where Dutchy liv
ed, but Simeon was standing on the rickety wharf in the dying sunlight, his eyes shaded with one beefy hand, looking toward them.
“I damned well don’t believe it,” he bellowed heartily. “I thought you told me nothing in God’s name would ever bring you back to San Pablo?”
Reilly controlled his instinctive wince. “I decided I missed your blue eyes, Simeon. Not to mention this lovely peaceful climate.”
“Yeah, sure,” said Simeon, grabbing the end of the boat as it drifted toward the dock and taking a good long look at the woman in the front. “And who’s this? You decided to experience the joys of marriage and father-hood after all?”
“Not me, Sim,” he said, jumping from the boat and tying up the back end. “I’m too smart for that kind of trap.” Carlie was struggling to her knees, and he moved to loom over her. “Simeon McCandless, let me introduce you to Carlie Forrest and her young son, Timothy.”
She glanced up at him, her blue eyes wary and doubting, but she had enough sense to keep silent. It wasn’t that he didn’t trust Simeon—hell, he’d stake his life on Simeon’s worth, and had more than once—but the fewer people who knew the truth about the baby, the better.
“Pleased to meet you, ma’am. You picked an odd time to be traveling downriver.”
“It wasn’t exactly a matter of choice,” Reilly said in his driest voice as he reached down to help Carlie out of the boat. He hadn’t wanted to touch her, but there was no way she could clamber out of that small dugout without tipping everything into the water, including the baby.
She landed on the dock beside him, lightly, the baby clasped capably in one arm. She looked like a natural mother, he thought distantly, gazing down at her. And she was a woman who’d turned her back on motherhood, and sex.
“It’s nice to meet you, Mr. McCandless,” she said with studious courtesy.
Simeon’s laugh traveled from the base of his huge belly. He was a British expatriate who lived life on the edge of civilization, and he was one of the few men Reilly really missed from San Pablo.
“You’re too good for the likes of Reilly anyway, lass,” he said. “Come along to my place and we’ll get you and the baby settled. I have a native woman who cooks for me, and she’ll fix you up something nice and hearty while Reilly and I catch up on old times.”
“It sounds lovely,” she said faintly.
“Lovely it’s not, but it’ll do,” Simeon said. “And I promise, I won’t keep your man from you for too long.”
“He’s not my—” she started to say hotly, but Reilly interrupted her smoothly.
“She’s learned to be patient, Sim. Besides, I need to hear about what sort of visitors you’ve been having in this area. Any of Morales’s renegades been visiting? And what about the noble revolutionaries?”
“Those stupid bastards,” Simeon said, spitting for emphasis. “Fortunately for them, they’ve kept to the west. They’re too mad to keep from killing and too damned stupid to keep from killing the wrong people. Morales has been in the west as well, near Dutchy’s place. You hear about Dutchy?”
“Hear what?” It was a sign of just how dangerous his companion was to his state of mind. If he hadn’t been thinking about her bare feet on the dirt-packed path to Sim’s house, he would have realized that probably wasn’t the best question to be asking.
“Dead, old man,” Sim announced. “Happened sometime last night or this morning. Single gunshot to the back of the head, I gather. Not that he’s any great loss, but it does seem strange that his good buddy Morales would suddenly turn on him. Unless it wasn’t Morales.”
“Is that who they’re saying did it?” Reilly asked in a neutral tone of voice. He could feel the tension vibrating through Carlie’s body. There was no doubt that she thought he’d killed him and then lied to her.
He was only slightly tempted to shove her against the nearest wall and confront her. If she thought he was capable of cold-blooded murder, so be it. It might make her walk a little more warily around him.
It would be unlikely to encourage her to confide the truth in him, but since she didn’t seem in the slightest hurry to do so in the first place, who was he to care?
“Come on, angel,” he drawled, taking her arm in one strong hand. “The sooner we get to Sim’s place the sooner I can have a beer.” He looked down into her eyes, expecting to see rage and disgust. What he saw instead startled him. Grief, pure and simple, and a numb kind of despair.
“I have Scotch as well, Reilly,” Sim said cheerfully, missing the furious undercurrents. “I remember you were always partial to a good Scotch.”
“I’d like some Scotch, too,” Carlie said after a moment in a strained voice.
“Of course,” Sim said with perfect courtesy.
“No, you don’t.” Reilly overrode her. “You’re too easy a drunk as it is. Two beers and you collapse. We aren’t wasting good whiskey on you. Particularly when we might have to hightail it out of here without a moment’s notice.”
“Someone after you?” Sim questioned knowingly.
“Who isn’t? If you’ve got a bed for the night and transportation north that’s all I ask.”
“Why do you want to go north? That’s where most of the fighting’s been during the last ten years. There’s not much up there but a few burned-out villages.”
I left the plane up there.”
Sim nodded. They’d reached the small frame house he called home. He pounded up the steps, past the empty hammock that stretched across the sagging porch, and paused by the dim interior of the place. “I’m sure I can arrange something. For the three of you?”
He looked down at Carlie’s bowed head. “Can’t leave my lady behind,” he said deliberately.
“I though you two weren’t…”
“We’re not married,” Reilly said. “But we’re together.”
“I’m glad for you, old man,” he said sincerely, heading into the house. “Just let me find us some glasses, and we’ll have a toast.”
Not if you know what I’ve landed myself with, Reilly thought ruefully. Sister Maria Carlos looked about ready to take a knife to him herself.
He was damned if he was about to start making excuses to her. He wasn’t the one who lied. “You’ll be staying in the room at the top of the stairs,” he said. “Why don’t you take the kid and make yourself scarce? I need to talk to Sim.”
“You lied.”
“Bull.”
“You killed him. You murdered him in cold blood and then you lied to me….”
“Liars are the scum of the earth, aren’t they?” he drawled. “I can’t say I’m any too fond of them, either, but now isn’t the time to argue about it. Just get your cute little butt upstairs and we’ll talk about it when I finish with Sim.”
“Finish with him? Are you going to take his Scotch and his hospitality and then kill him, too?”
“The only person I’m interested in killing right now is you,” he said flatly, glaring down at her. “Now get upstairs before I take you there and give you something you’d regret even more than you regret last night.”
“Bastard,” she said, her voice a furious hiss. It was probably the first time she’d ever uttered that word out loud, and her eyes widened in telltale shock at her own temerity.
“Why, Sister Maria Carlos,” he drawled. “Such language from a Roman Catholic nun.”
For a moment he thought she’d faint. She turned a dead white beneath the soft pink color of sunlight across her cheeks, and he was ready to catch her, and the baby, if she crumpled.
But she was made of sterner stuff than that.
She didn’t say a word. She simply turned her back on him, that narrow, straight back that he found so delectable, and marched up the stairs.
And not once did she look back.
Chapter Thirteen
Carlie could hear them downstairs. Talking. Laughing. She hadn’t thought a man like Reilly could laugh.
She lay in the center of the wide bed, awake, listening, waiting.
The baby was sound asleep in a makeshift cradle, and Carlie was half tempted to wake him up, just for the distraction. There were too many things hurtling about in her mind, not the least of which was whether Reilly was going to come up and join her in that bed.
It was a small house, she knew that. Two bedrooms—Simeon’s and the one she was in. There was no other place for him to sleep, and he was hardly likely to worry about her feelings in the matter.
She ought to be able to sleep. She was exhausted from the three days of travel, from the worry, from the heat of the sun. She’d eaten well tonight, thanks to the cheerful native woman who was most likely Simeon’s mistress, and she’d managed a decent sponge bath.
Reilly hadn’t said a word to her since they’d arrived. Ever since he’d called her by her religious name he’d all but ignored her, leaving it up to Simeon to get her settled and fed. And even now, in the sultry heat of the jungle night, she still had no answers to her questions.
Why had he killed Dutchy and then lied about it? And how did he know the truth about her? And had he known last night, when he’d…he’d…
She slammed down the memory as heat suffused her body. She didn’t want to think about last night. About the restless, desperate feelings he’d engendered inside her. And what he’d done to resolve those feelings.
The peace she’d fought so hard for seemed to be slipping away, and no matter how much she struggled, she couldn’t bring it back. She’d been away from the others for less than a month, she’d been out of the convent for no more than seventy-two hours. And already she knew there was no going back.
At some point the voices below fell silent. At some point she slept, dozing in and out of a troubled, dream-filled sleep. She dreamed of guns and blood and sex, and when she awoke in the pitch darkness, alone, panic filled her.
She climbed out of bed, pulling a pair of cutoff jeans under the oversize white T-shirt, and looked down at Timothy. He was sleeping soundly, and Carlie blessed the fates that had given her a peaceful, noncolicky baby.