He tried not to notice how soft and delectable she looked in that barely-there swimsuit. “I’ll leave an IOU. You got any better ideas?”
“Yes. Leave me here!”
He didn’t dignify that with an answer as they reached the sleek two-person sea kayak.
This kidnapping business was tricky stuff, he realized immediately. How was he supposed to haul the damn thing down to the surf while still holding his machete and the leather strap binding her hands?
He finally had to take a chance and toss the machete into the kayak and pull the craft one-handed down the sand while he dragged her along with the other hand.
It was hard, awkward work but adrenaline pushed him along, helped in large measure by the intense barking he could hear drawing closer.
“Get in,” he growled, when they reached the waves.
She froze, and in the moonlight she lifted stricken, terrified eyes to him. He wanted to assure her everything would be all right but he didn’t have time—and right about now, he needed somebody to convince him they would make it through this.
Instead, he picked her up and plopped her in the front cockpit, fastening the apron around her in one smooth motion.
“You’re going to have to trust me, lady, as insane as that might seem right now. If you don’t, we’re both going to end up dead, I can promise you that.”
“Please let me go,” she begged again. “Please. I won’t tell anyone I saw you, I swear. I don’t even know who you are or…or why you’re running away.”
She might not. But Rafferty certainly did. The gambling mogul would know as soon as his men found Ren’s own kayak at the other end of the beach who had come to call—and who had witnessed the whole ugly business by the pool.
By now they had probably found it, complete with his research notebooks and his satellite phone in its watertight pouch, which would have come in mighty handy right about now.
Their only chance was to make it two miles down the coast to his research station and his Jeep so he could head to the little rural police outpost in the next village to report what he had seen.
If anybody would even believe him. After his wildness of the last few years, he didn’t exactly have the greatest reputation among the villages on the Osa.
He pushed that depressing thought away as he towed the kayak out into the surf, then climbed in behind his hostage and started paddling like hell to get them away.
The woman was making small whimpers in front of him. He was sorry for her panic—terrifying a woman wasn’t something that sat well with Neva Galvez’s younger son.
His brother Daniel, the sturdy and honorable sheriff of Moose Springs, Utah, would probably frown on this whole business. But it couldn’t be helped. Right now he didn’t have breath left to explain anything. He could only work the oars with all his energy.
They made it to the point at the edge of the moon-shaped beach of the Suerte in half the time it would have normally taken him and only after they slid around it and out of sight of the estate did Ren begin to breathe a little easier.
They certainly weren’t out of trouble yet. Rafferty’s men had probably already found his kayak—easily identifiable to anyone around these parts—and figured out he was the idiot who had intruded on their boss’s private little party. But the roads in this section of the Osa were wild and primitive, requiring four-wheel-drive most of the time. This was the rainy season, when the roads turned into big sloshy piles of mud.
He could kayak down the coast far more quickly than they could drive to his place.
He cursed himself all over again. None of this would have happened if he had just slipped back the way he had come as soon as he figured out what was going down at the hacienda’s pool. Nobody would have even known he was there.
But seeing Rafferty standing over the body of a dead woman, the gun in his hand and the grisly hole in her forehead, had stunned him so much he had stood frozen like a damn piece of furniture as he watched Rafferty taunt the man tied to a lawn chair about the gambling debts he owed him and Rafferty’s uniquely effective form of debt collection.
The shock wore off quickly, leaving hot dread in his gut as he realized what a mess he had stumbled into.
He had tried to back out quietly. He was used to stealth—hell, he could sneak up on a twelve-hundred-pound nesting leatherback without making a sound.
He would have probably made it, if a howler monkey hadn’t chosen just that moment to come swinging through the trees and making a ruckus, giving away his position in the process.
One of the thugs Rafferty surrounded himself with had sighted him and he had given up on stealth and had just run like hell. A few moments later, he had stumbled onto the woman whose soft, hunched shoulders were currently trembling in front of him.
Ren sighed and slowed his frenetic paddling enough that he could catch his breath. They needed to hurry, but he could at least take a moment to allay her fears.
“Hold out your hands,” he said.
She turned, flashing him a wide-eyed look of fright in the moonlight, and he felt like some kind of perverted rapist again.
“Come on. I told you I won’t hurt you. If you promise not to jump out, I can untie you now.”
After a moment’s hesitation, she held out her trembling hands. Regretting her fear, he pulled his pocket knife out and cut through the leather binding her. She flexed her wrists and he thought maybe her big blue eyes lost a little of their panic.
“I’m Lorenzo Galvez. Ren. What’s your name?”
“Olivia Lambert. My…my father will pay to have me home safely.” Her voice faltered.
She had said that already, he remembered. And with that same note of doubt in her voice.
“You don’t sound a hundred percent convinced of that, sweetheart.”
“He will.”
“He a gambler?”
She blinked, her lashes looking impossibly thick and dark in the moonlight reflecting off the water. “Excuse me?”
“I’m just trying to figure out how you got messed up with Rafferty, Olivia Lambert. What are you doing at Suerte del Mar?”
“I’m…I’m here on my honeymoon.”
A raw, strangled laugh escaped him and he was tempted to smack the paddle against his head a few times.
Could his life get any more delightful?
“Your honeymoon. Perfect. So not only will we have a homicidal gazillionaire after us but a frantic groom looking for his bride.”
She made a sound he couldn’t interpret, but it was cut off when a dark shape moved past them in the water, brushing his paddles as it went.
“What was that?” she gasped.
He peered into the inky water. “Nothing to worry about. My guess is a triaenodon obesus. White-tipped reef shark. Around here they call them cazón coralero trompacorta. That’s what it looked like from here, but I could be wrong.”
“A…a shark?”
Her voice wobbled. Afraid she was about to cry, he hurried to reassure her.
“They’re relatively harmless. Pretty easygoing. Sometimes they even let divers hand-feed them. I’m a little surprised he would come this close to the surface, since they usually stay pretty close to the substrate at the ocean floor where they feed, but he was probably just curious about what we might be doing up here.”
“Are…are you a diver?”
He had to admit, she was taking all of this remarkably well, though he could sense every time the moments of panic seemed to creep in. As a scientist, he had to admire any creature that could adapt to its circumstances.
“When I have to be,” he answered. “I’m a research biologist. I study the nesting habits of sea turtles. Olive Ridleys and endangered leatherbacks.”
“And you moonlight as a machete-wielding maniac, apparently, capturing innocent women off the beach.”
Despite the grimness of their situation, the sweat pouring off him and the strain in his muscles as he paddled like hell down the coast, his lips curved at her tart reply.
“You know what they say,” he drawled. “It’s tough work, but somebody’s got to do it.”
CHAPTER 2
“Where are you taking me?”
His hostage’s sexy voice cut through the darkness as he power-stroked as hard as he could.
He inhaled raggedly, the muscles in his arms aching from the exertion. He considered himself in pretty darn good shape, but this insane pace and the strain of paddling both of them were definitely taking a toll on him.
Since he didn’t have breath to spare, he chose not to answer her question with a long explanation. “We’re almost there. See those lights ahead and to the left?”
She looked in the direction he pointed. “Yes,” she answered after a moment, wrapping her arms around herself.
She couldn’t possibly be cold, could she? he wondered. It was a mild night, probably only low 80s, and slightly cooler out here on the water, but it was far from chilly. Of course, she was only wearing a bikini and she wasn’t paddling her guts out.
“That’s my research station. Playa Hermosa. I’ve got a Jeep there.”
She shuddered and tightened her arms around herself.
He grimaced, wishing he had time to offer her words of comfort. He wasn’t crazy about the idea of traumatizing a bride on her honeymoon, but it couldn’t be helped.
He allowed a quick moment to wonder where her groom might be lurking in this miserable drama and why he had left his luscious little wife even for a minute. Maybe out fishing on the missing yacht? The Pacific coast of the Osa Peninsula was rich with marine life, from marlins to sailfish to tuna.
Any groom who would abandon his bride to go fishing deserved to have her kidnapped. Ren certainly wouldn’t have let her out of his sight.
Something about Rafferty’s next intended victim appealed to him on some deep, visceral level. In the pale moonlight shimmering off the water, she looked lush and soft and delectable, with creamy skin and voluptuous features.
A blond cream puff, Rafferty had called her. Ren had a feeling she wouldn’t appreciate the nickname—or his sudden fierce desire to swallow her up in one delicious bite.
The discovery did not improve his mood. In two years, he hadn’t been able to drum up even a tiny smidgeon of enthusiasm for the whores in the rough and ready town of Puerto Jiménez, no matter how determined their attempts at seduction during his infrequent visits to the cantinas.
In the space of the last hour, he had witnessed a vicious murder, had kidnapped a woman for the first—hopefully only—time in his life and terrified her out of her skull, then paddled like hell across the ocean.
Yet here he sat with the biggest hard-on of his life.
Disgusted with himself, Ren growled a fairly vile curse in Spanish and felt like an even bigger pervert when the woman in front of him flinched as if he were planning to ravish her any second now, something he was fairly sure was impossible—not to mention rather ill-advised—in a sea kayak adrift on the open ocean.
He could ignore the heat and hunger. He’d had plenty of practice, after all. Excepting those first wild months after the fire when he hadn’t climbed out of a bottle, for two years he had focused his entire energies on his work, leaving no room for anything else.
Though he had the occasional research assistant and used volunteers to help him patrol the beaches for nesting sites, he lived a solitary life for the most part, and that was just the way he liked it. He had a few friends on the Peninsula, but most of the villagers considered him the Crazy Turtle Man of Playa Hermosa.
Early in his time in Costa Rica five years ago, a few heated altercations with poachers after the culinary prize of turtle eggs taken beyond the legal season had started the rumors. His wildness of the last two years had cemented the reputation.
He imagined this little escapade would probably add more fuel to the fire if word got out, which he had no doubt it would.
No help for it, he thought. Snatching Rafferty’s little blond cream puff had been an impulse, but he couldn’t regret it.
At least not yet.
When he neared Playa Hermosa, he paddled as far as he could and let the waves push them the rest of the way. Close to shore, he climbed out and pulled the kayak up the beach.
In the moonlight, his hostage looked numb, her features expressionless and dull, and he hoped to hell she wasn’t going into some kind of delayed shock and taking a mental vacation on him. That would be just what he needed right about now—a catatonic sexpot in a bikini.
Though he would have liked to consign Rafferty’s expensive kayak to the sharks, he couldn’t find it in him to waste such a sleek, beautiful craft. With Olivia Lambert still inside, he muscled it up past the high-tide mark, then reached a hand to help her out.
“Here we are. We’ll just grab my keys inside and a change of clothes for you and be on our way.”
She gazed at him blankly, and he wondered again if she’d lost her marbles somewhere out there on the ocean.
“It’s okay,” he tried to reassure her.
After a long pause, she slipped her hand in his and climbed out of the kayak as regally as a princess. Her small hand was cool and soft as the petals of the hibiscus and orchids and frangipani flowering around them, and she trembled only a little.
It was dark and would probably begin raining any minute, but for now the moon was full and clearly illuminated the short pathway from the beach to his station. He gestured for her to proceed him.
“Head through those trees right there,” he said.
“We’re on the only developed road in this area, if you can call the mud track in the green season a road.”
He should have been tipped off to her intent, but her abstracted, out-of-it air fooled him. He was completely unprepared when she took just a shuffling step forward in the direction of the trail, then whipped around the other way and took off down the beach.
For about half a second, he was severely tempted to just let her slip away into the jungle. His life and the surreal trip it had become in the last hour would sure be a hell of a lot easier without having to deal with a soft dumpling of a bride who seemed on the verge of dissolving into a quivering mass of fear any second now.
He even took a step toward his research station, then he growled an oath and turned around. He couldn’t let her just wander off out here. The jungle was a dangerous place, especially for a soft thing like her.
She had several seconds head start and she was faster than he would have expected. She was almost to the thick shelter of trees, where he would have a much tougher time catching her.
Out of patience and breath, he finally lunged at her from the side in a classic football tackle his college linebacker of a brother would have been happy with, just before she would have slipped into the brush.
With an oomph, she hit the sand and his momentum carried him on top of her.
For a second, he froze there, some savage male beast inside him taking primitive delight in her soft curves.
He was aroused all over again, he realized with no small measure of disgust.
All his life, he had considered himself a pretty decent guy. His parents taught all three of their sons to treat women with respect and honor, and Ren thought he had completely absorbed those lessons.
So why did this woman—this situation—seem to bring out the worst in him and make him feel like some kind of rampaging beast?
She squirmed beneath him, fighting frantically to be free. “Please,” she whimpered. “Please don’t.”
Her words and the panicked fear behind them were like taking a dip in spring runoff back home in Utah. He stood up, this time keeping a close hold on her wrist.
“I’m not going to attack you,” he growled, tugging her back up the beach toward the station.
“M-more than you already have?”
“You’re alive, aren’t you?” he snapped. “At least for now.”
Wrong choice of words, he realized, when she hissed in a breath. He was grimly aware she was trembling no
w as she stumbled along behind him.
He hated her terror and wanted to explain everything but he didn’t dare take the time. Rafferty and his men hadn’t reached Playa Hermosa yet, but he knew they couldn’t be far behind. Her little attempt at escape and the subsequent delay it caused could turn out to be a deadly mistake for both of them.
He could tell her everything as they drove to the little police outpost in Matapalo, but for now they needed to get the hell out of Dodge.
“Look, I’m trying to help you here. You can believe me or not, but there are some mighty nasty creatures stalking the Osa after dark, not a few of them human. Trust me, sweetheart, right now I’m your best chance of getting out of this whole thing in one piece. If you run away from me again, I’m going to have to tie you up for your own safety and neither of us wants that.”
She muttered something under her breath he didn’t catch but he didn’t have time to waste wondering about it. He just headed up the hillside to the research station, keeping his hand firmly clamped around her wrist the whole way.
He had locked the station to protect his equipment inside when he headed down to Suerte del Mar earlier and his keys were zippered into the same waterproof bag on his kayak, but he quickly found the emergency spare snugged under Yertle, the huge leatherback carved by one of his research assistants the summer before.
With one eye trained on the hill for approaching headlights, he unlocked the door and yanked her inside behind him.
He didn’t dare let her go so he kept her wrist firmly in his grasp as he grabbed his Jeep keys, then headed to his bedroom and flipped on the generator-driven light. When she caught sight of his bed, she dug her heels into the concrete floor as if he were going to yank aside the mosquito netting and ravish her on the spot.
He sighed and forced away the annoyance. There was no time for it. If she wanted to think he was some kind of mad rapist, so be it.
Of course, it didn’t help that seeing her in the light made him all too aware of her lush, curvy femininity, so blond and soft and different from anything to be found in this wild corner of Costa Rica.
He opened a drawer and grabbed a couple clean T-shirts and some shorts. They would be way too big for her, but they’d have to do.
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