Anne Stuart's Out-of-Print Gems

by Anne Stuart

  “What do you think?” Simeon surveyed the decrepit old truck with a misplaced satisfaction.

  “This will take us to the airfield?” she asked doubtfully. “There doesn’t look like room for the three of us.”

  “There isn’t,” Reilly said, appearing in the doorway of the ramshackle house. He was shirtless, with a day’s growth of beard on his jaw, and he held the baby against him with a natural grace. Timothy was awake, looking up at him out of those somber brown eyes, waving one tiny fist. “You and the kid are riding in back.”

  “Without a baby carrier and a seat belt? No,” she protested, moving to take the baby from him.

  Reilly made no move to relinquish him into her waiting arms. “Listen, angel, Morales and his men are between us and the deserted village where I left the plane. You’re more likely to get a bullet in your brain if you sit up front with me, and then what the hell good would a seat belt do? You’ll be hidden down behind some boxes, and I won’t need to worry about anyone but me being a sitting target if we have to make a run for it.”

  “Are we going to run into them?”

  “God knows. I don’t. So far we’ve been fairly lucky, but sooner or later our luck is going to run out.”

  She reached out again. “I’ll take the baby.”

  “No, you won’t. He and I are getting acquainted.”

  She dropped her hands, tucking them around her body, feeling oddly bereft. They made a cozy picture, the big, strong man and the little baby, both shirtless, both male, both gorgeous. A family picture, and she was excluded, on the outside, looking in.

  It was her choice, she reminded herself. Her destiny. She’d have to relinquish both of them soon enough—she may as well get used to it.

  “Fine,” she said with a bright, false smile. “I’ll get the rest of our things from the room.”

  “I already brought them down while you were sleeping,” he said brusquely. “The baby’s fed and changed, and everything’s set to go. As soon as you’re ready we can take off.”

  She squashed down the feeling of guilt that accompanied her odd sense of bereavement. “All right,” she said in a deceptively tranquil voice. “Obviously you can manage perfectly well without me.”

  “I don’t see that we’re going to have much choice in the matter.”

  “Children, children,” Simeon said smoothly. “There’s no need to squabble. Let me get you some of my best coffee, Carlie, while Reilly plays make-believe daddy. Maybe it’ll convince him that marriage and children aren’t such a dismal prospect.”

  “They’re not a dismal prospect,” Reilly said, moving out onto the porch in the early-morning breeze and settling into the hammock with Timothy clasped safely against his chest. “They’re just not for me.”

  Simeon’s bearded face creased in a smile. “So you say. We’ll see whether it ends up that way.”

  She followed Simeon into the marginally cooler interior of the house, determined not to look behind her. To notice that there would have been room for her on that hammock as well, to curl up next to Reilly and the baby.

  “So how do you like your coffee, Carlie?” Simeon asked, handing her a mug. “Black as night, sweet as sin, strong as love?”

  “I hadn’t thought of it that way,” she said faintly, taking a deep, grateful gulp of the brew.

  “No, I imagine you haven’t,” Simeon agreed innocently.

  Carlie glanced up at him. “He told you.”

  “That you were a nun? Yes. I think he wanted to make sure I behaved myself. Not that Reilly seems to be making much of an effort,” he added easily, lowering his impressive bulk to a rickety-looking chair.

  “He doesn’t like me.”

  Simeon frowned. “You don’t believe that any more than I do, child. He may not approve of your life choices, but the problem is he likes you far too much. I never thought I’d see Reilly succumb.”

  “Succumb to what?” she said, curiosity getting the better of her wariness.

  “To the fair sex. To family values. To love, child.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous!” she snapped.

  “I’ve known Reilly for more than ten years. I’ve seen him with lovers and enemies, friends and acquaintances, and during all that time I’ve never seen him look at a woman the way he looks at you. For what it’s worth, I think it scares the hell out of him.”

  Carlie drained her coffee, failing to savor it. “I think,” she said carefully, politely, “that you’ve been out here a little too long.”

  “Denial is not just a river in Egypt.”

  “I beg your pardon?” she said, mystified.

  “That’s right, he said you’ve been immured in a convent for the last decade. It means, child, that you’re lying to me, but more important, you’re lying to yourself.” He waved an airy hand. “Go ahead, though. I won’t argue with you. It’s between you and Reilly. When the time comes for you to go back to your sisterhood, will you go? Or will you stay with Reilly and the child?”

  “You don’t understand,” she said miserably. “We’ll all go our separate ways, alone. Timothy will go to live with his grandparents, Reilly will go back to wherever he comes from, and I’ll join the sisters.”

  “Colorado,” Simeon said.

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “Reilly lives on a mountaintop in Colorado, in a house he built himself. He lives alone.”

  “He probably prefers it that way.”

  “So he says.”

  “And I’ll be very happy to be back with the sisters,” she said firmly.

  “And you’re sure that’s what you really want?”

  There was amazing kindness in Simeon’s eyes, and she wanted to tell him the truth. She wanted to put her head in his lap and weep out her confusion and doubt. The frightening truth of her feelings for Reilly, feelings she didn’t want to have. The convent was no longer home for her. But what home did she have?

  Reilly had appeared in the door behind her, silent, but his shadow blocked out the early-morning sunlight. “It’s what I really want,” she said firmly.

  Adding another lie to her list of sins.

  THE PROBLEM WAS, Reilly thought as he pulled away from Simeon’s place, that she didn’t look like a nun. Part of the problem was Caterina Morrissey’s clothes. Those skimpy shorts, exposing a surprising length of leg for such a small creature, the lack of bra beneath the T-shirts, the short-cropped hair and the defiant eyes added up to a potent, tempting package of womanhood. If she was dressed in veils, with her eyes modestly downcast and her language demure, he could keep himself in line. But every time he glanced at her, at her pale mouth and wary eyes, her lean, luscious body, he wanted her.

  At least he didn’t need to glance at her now. She was comfortably settled in the back of the truck. Timothy lay strapped in a makeshift bassinet, and there were several layers of blankets protecting her from the rusted floor of the old vehicle. It wasn’t the safest arrangement, but safety was a relative issue in San Pablo these days. He just needed to get them through enemy lines, back up into the mountain village where he’d left the plane, and they’d be home free.

  He knew his way around the northern forests. He’d been stationed just over the border, in Costa Rica, for two years back in the eighties, and during that time his platoon had spent the majority of their days and nights roaming through San Pablo. Back then he had been busy trying to make the world free for democracy. That was before he’d learned that one man’s democracy was another man’s fascism, and that all governments were screwed up.

  It was almost over. By tonight, or tomorrow morning at the latest, they’d be back in the U.S. Sister Mary Charles would be back to the bosom of her convent, the baby would be on his way to D.C., and he could put all this behind him. Just four days of tropical madness. Four days of falling for the one person he couldn’t have.

  She’d been tempted, though. She might not know the signs, but he certainly did. The way her bones softened when he touched her, and her eyes glazed ove
r. She wanted him almost as much as he wanted her.

  Of course, he was about to take care of that. Once she found out where they were actually headed she wasn’t going to feel the slightest bit lustful. She was more likely to be downright murderous.

  Hell, it wasn’t his fault where he’d decided to land the plane. Just simple bad luck. There were few enough places in the sparsely populated mountains of San Pablo, and the only logical place to land a small plane was the burned-out remains of an old village. One that had seen a massacre just nine years before.

  She wasn’t going to like returning to Puente del Norte. For the past two days, ever since she’d told him the truth, he’d been racking his brains for another way out.

  There wasn’t one. She was going to have to return to the place where she’d watched her parents being slaughtered. And she wasn’t going to like it. And she wasn’t going to like him for taking her there.

  Problem solved. So why didn’t he feel just a little bit more cheerful about the prospect?

  CARLIE WAS surprisingly comfortable in the back of the pickup truck. The canvas covering flapped in the wind, cooling her as they rumbled along, the baby slept and she didn’t have to look at Reilly.

  Which was definitely a mixed blessing. She liked looking at Reilly—liked it too much. It was just her luck that after being shut away from the majority of the opposite sex, she got thrown together with what was undoubtedly a prime specimen. It didn’t require a great deal of experience to know a handsome man when she saw one. And Reilly was most definitely a handsome man, in his own, unbending way.

  She was going to have to get used to not looking at him. Today was simply good practice.

  The road was narrow, rutted, climbing through the jungle, higher and higher through the sultry, green-canopied forest. The smells were different here—different, and yet oddly familiar. Carlie glanced out past the flapping canvas, but all she could see were the endless, dark depths of the forest as they climbed higher.

  It started with nothing more than a simple gnawing in the pit of her stomach. She knew it wasn’t hunger, or sickness. She’d eaten enough of the simple food Simeon had packed for them, and she should have been content to doze on the pile of blankets, next to the baby.

  But something was wrong. Something was terribly wrong. It began to spread through her body, a miasma, a sense of disaster, of a horror so great, a terror so deep she would never climb out of that bottomless hole. She knew where they were going.

  She knew it from the grim expression on Reilly’s face when they’d stopped earlier, and the way he’d refused to meet her gaze. She knew it from the pounding of her heart, the cold sweat that covered her, the trembling that started slowly and then grew more and more overwhelming.

  She lost track of time. Hours, days, years passed as the truck rattled up the steep incline, an incline she knew too well. She knew when it would level off, and it did.

  She told herself she might be wrong. Why would fate, and Reilly, have brought her back to this place of death? She tried to lift her hand, to move the canvas away to reassure herself that she’d been mistaken, but her hand lay motionless in her lap, paralyzed.

  Timothy began to whimper. Just quiet little sounds as he stirred from his sleep. Carlie wanted to murmur something soothing, but her voice was trapped behind her mouth. She heard the whimper turn into a cry of protest, and she knew he needed her. Needed to be changed, needed a bottle, needed her arms around him.

  She couldn’t move. She couldn’t go to him, comfort him, see to him. She sat, huddled against the side of the truck as it bounced along, listening as the cries turned to angry wails as he lay there, trapped, abandoned, and she couldn’t help him, all she could do was curl up in a little ball, shaking, terrified, panting so loudly they might hear her, they might find her, they might do to her what they’d done to her mother and the girls of the village, while their screams echoed in her ears as she hid, she hid, and the blood was everywhere, and it was death, and pain, and she couldn’t help him, couldn’t go to him, couldn’t go to them, couldn’t…

  “Carlie!”

  She heard him calling her, but she wasn’t sure whose voice it was. Her father, calling for help, calling her to run away and hide. Or Reilly.

  She curled up tighter, her hands over her ears, trying to shut out their cries, the baby, her parents, the people of the village, the laughter and shouts of the soldiers, the gunfire, the gunfire…

  REILLY WORKED FAST, efficiently, despite the uncharacteristic panic that filled him. The moment he heard the baby’s wails a chill washed over him, and he ditched the truck in a copse just outside the village.

  He just had time to see Carlie, curled up in a fetal ball, before he dealt with Timothy, stripping the sodden diaper from him, propping the hastily made bottle of formula in his hungry mouth before he could turn to Carlie and pull her into his arms.

  She probably had no idea who he was, but it didn’t matter. She needed someone to hold her, to murmur soothing words, to hold her so tightly the monsters in her memory abandoned her. She was icy cold, sweating in the thick heat of the jungle, her breathing was rapid and shallow, and her eyes were unseeing. He cursed himself inwardly, all the while keeping up a soothing litany of comforting nonsense. He should have found some other way out of the country, despite the risk. For now, all he could do was cradle her rigid body in his arms and try to warm her.

  “The baby…” she managed to gasp through deep, shuddering breaths, her fingers digging into his arms as she tried to drag herself back.

  Reilly glanced over at him. “He’s fine. I gave him a bottle, and he’s asleep again.”

  “I couldn’t…help him….” The words were coming in hiccups as she shivered helplessly. “I couldn’t save him.”

  “He’s fine,” Reilly said again. “Just take deep breaths, Carlie. It’s over. It’s in the past. No matter how bad it was, it’s gone.”

  “They’re screaming…” she gasped.

  “No. It’s over, long ago. No one’s hurting anymore. They’re at peace now. Except for you.”

  It jarred her. She jerked her head up to look at him out of bleak, desperate eyes. “Make it go away, Reilly,” she whispered.

  He knew what she wanted. Oblivion, life. She wanted the one thing from him he’d been determined not to give her.

  “No,” he said as gently as he could, ignoring the need that swept through his own body. He couldn’t do it to her. She was lost, broken, hurting. She needed comfort. Not a further betrayal.

  “Please,” she said, begging, her hands gripping his shirt. “Please.”

  And he knew that he was going to take her. He was going to deflower a nun in the back of a pickup truck, with a sleeping infant beside them. And nothing, either in heaven or hell, could stop him, no matter what the consequences.

  Putting his mouth against hers broke the last of the spell. She kissed him back, desperately, as she pulled his shirt away from him.

  Stilling her restless hands with one of his, he slowed the kiss, using his tongue, kissing her with a leisurely thoroughness that stole her terrified breath. He could feel the warmth begin to seep back into her flesh, feel the restless stirring in her limbs.

  “Please,” she said one more time when he lifted his head to look down at her.

  “All right,” he said, hating himself. “But we’ll do it my way. Slowly. So there won’t be any mistakes. So you know what you’re doing, and you won’t change your mind.”

  She wasn’t listening to him. She wasn’t interested in noble motives, she wanted oblivion. As he did.

  He skimmed the T-shirt over her head, baring her breasts, half hoping to shock her into a latent sense of self-preservation. She made no effort to cover herself, and he realized it was he who needed preserving.

  She simply stared up at him, mute, pleading, and with a muffled curse he gave up his last attempt at decency.

  He’d tried. God only knew, he’d tried to resist her. But now it was too late, and things
had escalated beyond his control. He needed her, and the sweet death her body and soul could provide him, almost more than she needed him.

  CARLIE LAY BACK on the rough wool blankets, lost. His hard, deft hands pulled her shorts off, tossing them away, and she was naked, vulnerable, as he leaned over her, darkness and longing in his eyes.

  She was beyond rational thought, of sin or redemption, past or future. All that mattered was now. All that mattered was that he touch her, kiss her, take her. Now.

  His hands covered her breasts, gentle, rough-skinned, and she closed her eyes, arching against his touch. His mouth followed, catching the tiny nub and suckling like a baby, his long hair flowing down around her.

  She reached up to touch him, to pull him closer, and felt the frustrating barrier of his khaki shirt. She pushed at it, and it was gone, and his skin was smooth and warm against hers.

  She felt no fear, for the first time in years. Just an overwhelming sense of rightness, of need. His hands, his mouth were everywhere, seducing her when she had no need to be seduced, filling her with a sense of power and delight.

  He kissed her breasts, her stomach, her hips. He put his mouth between her legs, as he’d promised and warned her, and she cried out, feeling her body convulse immediately, darkness prickling against her eyes.

  And then he moved up, lying between her legs, cradled against her hips, and she could feel the rough denim of his jeans.

  “We’ll stop now,” he whispered in a tight voice. “You can—“

  “No!” She caught his narrow hips with desperate, angry hands, clawing at the denim. She bucked against him, stray tremors still flashing through her body, as she tried to edge closer, to crawl inside his skin, to take him, to make him take her.

  “Carlie.” His voice was almost desperate now, but she was beyond rational thought. “I can’t do this to you.”

  “You can’t stop,” she said, reaching between them for the zipper of his jeans.

  It was tight over his erection, and her hands were awkward, hasty. He stopped her desperate fumbling, unfastened his jeans and shoved them out of the way.