His brother’s lover, he silently told himself over and over again. Kayla Grey was his brother’s lover.
“Liam used to talk about you all the time,” she said softly, and he looked up to find her watching him. Her brownish-green eyes were so exactly the color of the hillside back behind his barn, he felt as if he were carrying a piece of home along with him.
“Funny,” he said, “he never spoke to me about you.”
She just smiled at his words. “You know, he mentioned you could be a real nasty bastard when provoked.” She closed her book, putting the paper wrapping from a straw between the pages to mark her place. “Can we call a truce here?”
The muscles in his legs twinged, and he shifted in his seat again. “I thought we had.”
“No,” she said, slipping the book into the pouch attached to the seat in front of her before she turned to face him. “No, you barked out some kind of command about how we were both supposed to ignore and deny the very human, very natural…interaction we shared last night.”
Interaction? Damn right it was interaction. And it had come dangerously close to a whole lot more action.
“This…attraction between us isn’t something we have to be embarrassed about,” she continued. “We’re grown-ups. We can deal with this without having to pretend it didn’t happen.”
Cal resisted the urge to put his head back and cover his face with his cowboy hat. He suspected if he did, she’d keep talking to him anyway. No, he would just sit there, silently, and let her talk herself out.
“You didn’t know who I was,” she persisted.
“But you knew who you were,” he couldn’t resist commenting, even though he’d vowed to stay silent.
Kayla’s graceful lips curled up into a very small, faintly bitter smile. “My mistake was in wanting to be held.” She glanced up at him, her eyes flashing. “If I remember correctly, I asked you only to hold me. I didn’t ask you to kiss me until the room spun.”
Until the room spun? Had the room really spun for her too?
Their gazes caught and held, and for one brief, molten moment, Cal was sure he was going to reach for her again. For a fraction of a second he’d almost thought he had. But if he’d moved, he’d also stopped himself. God help him, he’d better stop himself.
“You shouldn’t have let me kiss you,” he countered harshly. “Lord knows I couldn’t help myself, but you—”
“Oh, please,” she scoffed. “Don’t give me that ‘I’m a man, I couldn’t help myself, but you’re a woman, it’s your job to stop me’ garbage. Too many men fail to take responsibility for themselves and their actions. Too many men cop out and blame testosterone for their own weakness.”
“All right, it’s all my fault—is that what you want to hear? I didn’t know who you were. You were beautiful, you were barely dressed, you were all alone, and I wanted you.” Damnation, he wanted her still. His desire was surely written clearly in his eyes, but he held her gaze anyway, daring her to acknowledge it.
“If you ask me to hold you again,” he continued softly, “I won’t make the same mistake. Because I do take responsibility for my actions. Because I don’t cop out. And because I honor my brother’s feelings—even if you don’t.”
“Last night was a highly emotionally charged situation for both of us,” she whispered, color spreading across her delicate cheekbones.
And so was the situation they were heading directly toward. It, too, was life and death, and just as fraught with emotional peril.
It had been nearly four months since Liam had last been seen. That is, assuming the American prisoner truly was Liam. If he was, four months was a long time for a man who was beaten and tortured regularly to stay alive….
Cal didn’t want to let himself hope, but it was already too late. He did hope. Sweet Lord, he was beyond hoping. He was thinking in terms of when, not if. When they found the kid…When they figured out a way to get him out of the prison and off the island…When he brought Liam back to the ranch…
If he was wrong, if the kid had died in that bus explosion…He didn’t want to think about it, didn’t want to think what that would do to him.
He looked at Kayla. She was quiet now, but she hadn’t picked up her book again. Her hands were clasped tightly in her lap, her knuckles nearly white from the pressure. Her eyes were brimming with tears that she refused to allow to escape. She blinked them valiantly back.
She loved Liam too.
The thought hit him hard in the gut and he knew his words to her had been too harsh, too cruel. She did love Liam. She’d come all the way to Montana to get the help she needed to search for him.
And now she was sitting there, with each passing moment a little bit closer to finding out if he was dead, as they’d been told, or still alive.
Maybe she didn’t love Liam as well as she should have, but she did love him. This had to be as hard on her as it was on Cal. And his cruel intolerance was only making it worse.
“Where exactly did you meet Liam?” he asked softly, both wanting to know and wanting her to know that there could, indeed, be a truce between them. And not just for Liam’s sake.
Fresh tears flooded her eyes, and he had to turn and pretend he didn’t notice her wiping them away.
“In Boston,” she told him. “He was writing an article on date rape and he came into the crisis center where I work. He wanted to do a ‘day in the life of a crisis center worker’ kind of sidebar for the piece, and he followed me around for twenty-four hours straight, writing down everything I said and did.” She smiled softly at the memory, her eyes distant. “The article was wonderful. It sparked interest in the center that got us additional funding.” She looked up at Cal. “He told me he always sent you copies of everything he wrote. Do you remember reading it? It was about eight months before he left for San Salustiano.”
Cal nodded. He remembered. “I’ll have to look at it again. I don’t remember your name being in there.”
“It wasn’t.” She leaned her head back against the seat as she looked at him. “The names were all changed to protect the innocent.”
“So that’s when you…became involved with him?”
Kayla shook her head no. “That’s when we became friends. He was seeing someone and I…I had my own agenda to work through. We didn’t start dating until right before he—”
Died. She was going to say died.
“—right before he left for the Caribbean.” She lifted the rodeo ring she was wearing on a chain around her neck, watching the light sparkle on the shiny red stone. “He asked me to marry him on our first official date. I still think his proposal was just an attempt to get me into bed.”
What on earth had possessed her to say that? Kayla had to look away from the cowboy, afraid to see his reaction to her words reflected in his pale blue eyes. From now on she had to avoid all references to sex, no matter how vague. Because there was something there between them, something almost tangible, something powerful. Something much too dangerous to fool with.
“Hell of a ploy,” Cal drawled, “considering he was willing to trade the rest of his life for the pleasure.”
“Liam wasn’t…very good at long-term planning,” she said, choosing her words cautiously. “He didn’t think much beyond the here and now. In fact, I’m not sure he gave much thought to the concept of marriage involving the rest of his life.”
To her surprise, Cal chuckled. “I guess you did know him pretty well, didn’t you?”
“Not as well as he wanted me to know him.”
His eyes narrowed slightly in disbelief, and Kayla had to look away again, suddenly embarrassed at the intimate secrets her words had revealed.
She hadn’t slept with Liam. She hadn’t been ready to, not even after having known him for eight months. Yet she’d come impossibly close to making love to his brother, closer than she had come in years to making love to anyone, after only an hour-and-a-half-long acquaintance.
Kayla didn’t want to think about what th
at might mean. She wouldn’t think about it. She hadn’t come this far to be distracted by a man who was such a curious and fascinating mix of soft and hard, hot and cold, gentle understanding and cruel intolerance.
“I spoke to as many people as I could about how to approach the San Salustiano government regarding Liam,” she told the rancher. He was watching her closely, as if he were trying to probe her mind. It was disconcerting and intimidating, and she gazed back at him, trying not to let him see her squirm.
His faded cowboy hat was resting on one knee, and he’d run his fingers through his jet-black hair, leaving it tousled and tumbling forward across his forehead. His rugged face was weathered from the sun, with deep wrinkles etched alongside his odd-colored eyes. His eyes should have been the warmest shade of deep brown, not this zero-degree grayish-blue.
Kayla searched his face for any similarity to Liam. Cal’s slightly hooked nose was different, as were his exotically wide cheekbones. Everything about him was different—the shape of his face, the color of his hair, the strength of his chin.
His mouth. There was something about his mouth that proclaimed the two men brothers. Maybe.
Kayla realized he was waiting for her to continue speaking, but she’d long since lost her train of thought. “Liam didn’t—doesn’t—look very much like you.”
“We had different mothers.”
Liam had told her that. Cal’s mother was part Native American—from the Crow tribe, Liam had said. Her heritage was evident in Cal’s height and darkly handsome face. She also knew that his mother had died when Cal was five. Both brothers had that in common—although Cal hadn’t had an older brother to care for him.
But Liam hadn’t told her that he and his older brother were as different as night and day. Liam was loquacious. He was charming and charismatic and sparkling with good humor. He was a relentless talker, filling any silences with stories and opinions and snatches of song.
Cal, on the other hand, didn’t speak unless he absolutely had to. Even then he was terse and to the point.
Kayla gave him a tentative smile. “Your mother was the talkative one, right?”
She saw it. A flash of genuine amusement in his eyes. It was a smile, even though it didn’t quite reach his lips.
“I figure if you know Liam as well as you claim to, considering the way the kid could talk, you know all there is to know about me.”
Kayla did know quite a bit. She knew that Cal had dropped out of high school the day he turned sixteen in order to run the ranch and provide for his little brother. She knew that there were many relentless, grueling hours involved in being a working rancher. She knew he’d given Liam everything he’d ever asked for. She knew he’d held Liam’s undying loyalty and deep-flowing brotherly love.
“I know only what Liam knew,” she said. “I think there’s probably a whole lot more you never told him.”
There was the faintest flicker in Cal’s eyes, but he looked away before she could tell whether or not she had imagined it.
“You know about me, but I don’t really know you at all,” he said. “Where’d you grow up? Are you from Boston?”
“Boston suburbs,” she said. “Let’s see, my childhood in a nutshell: No sisters, one brother—older than me by five years, a dog named George—younger than me by five years. Dad worked in middle management at an insurance company in the city, and Mom stayed at home, did volunteer work at the church. I had a classic American sitcom upbringing—without the cheesy laugh track. Every episode had a happy ending. I graduated from high school and went to Boston University—English major, Spanish minor. I was going for my teaching degree.”
He was watching her steadily, as if well aware that all of her information had been superficial. “But now you’re a social worker. What made you switch from teaching?”
Kayla gazed back at him, wondering how vague she should make her reply. Something in his pale blue eyes dared her to tell him, really tell him something personal about herself, tell him who she was.
So she told him. Bluntly. No apologies, no gentle words of warning to soften the truth. “I was raped.”
She could see disbelief flash into his eyes, followed quickly by the realization that she was dead serious. He didn’t try to hide his shock and his horror, and he didn’t look away in embarrassment the way some people did, as if her admission were something of which to be ashamed.
So she told him even more. “Sophomore year of college. I went out on a date with an upperclassman who didn’t believe me when I said I didn’t want to get it on with him.” She took a deep breath. She had his total attention, so she went on. “It was date rape. At the time I didn’t even know there was a name for it. I was too ashamed even to tell my roommate. It’s amazing the things you think when something like this happens to you. You think, it must’ve been my fault, I must’ve done something wrong, I must’ve said something to make him think I wanted this…. It really messed me up. I wanted to climb into my bed and hide for the rest of my life.
“But I was hurt badly enough to need to go to the health center,” she continued softly. “The doctor there knew I’d been raped, and she asked me if I wanted to notify the police and press charges. I said no. Who would believe me? The boy was incredibly popular. He was smart and rich and a great athlete. Girls were dying to go out with him. God, I’d thought I was so lucky when he asked me to the movies.” She laughed—a snort of disbelief loaded with twenty-twenty hindsight. “So I just…never told anyone. At least not for about a year. I spent that year hiding from the world.”
For the first time since she’d started telling her story, Cal shifted in his seat. “You don’t strike me as the kind of woman who hides from her problems.”
“You’d be amazed what something like rape can do to even the strongest of women.”
“What happened?” he asked softly. “What helped you learn to deal with it?”
Kayla gazed into this man’s eyes, and found herself telling him something she’d never admitted to anyone. “In some ways I can’t deal with it,” she said. “In some ways I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to deal with it.” Like when it came to making love, to sharing intimacies. “I have managed to convince myself that what happened to me was not my fault though, that what that boy did was wrong. And that’s a solid start.”
She looked away from him, suddenly terribly self-conscious. “So now you probably know a whole lot more about me than you wanted to know, huh?”
“I still want to know how you got hooked up with the Boston Women’s Crisis Center,” he said quietly.
“About a year later, the man who’d raped me was arrested,” she said. “Another girl pressed charges, and they went to trial. The Boston Women’s Crisis Center helped her post flyers—looking for other women who might’ve been assaulted by the same guy, to help with her case against him. I saw the flyer and called the hotline number. The woman I spoke to talked me into coming down to the center for a visit.” She glanced up at him. “I can’t tell you how incredible it was to talk to women who’d been right where I was. It was such a relief to be allowed to be angry and finally to acknowledge the fact that when that boy raped me, I wasn’t simply getting what I deserved.” She paused. “I wanted to help other women the way the center workers helped me. So I switched my major, did an extra year of study in social work and…here I am.”
Cal was silent for a moment, turning his hat around in his hands. And when he spoke, his words surprised her. “Last night…” He met her eyes. “I hope I didn’t frighten you.”
He was talking about when he’d kissed her.
“If I did, I’m truly sorry,” he continued.
“There was no way you could have known,” she said. “And besides, you didn’t. Frighten me.” On the contrary—she’d frightened herself. He was the first man in an eternity that she’d even halfway considered becoming intimate with. The thought still unnerved her enough to consciously change the subject. “We should talk about the best way to try to locat
e Liam.”
Cal shifted again. “You got something in mind besides just asking questions?”
“The people I spoke to thought it might be best if we don’t announce our arrival in Puerto Norte,” Kayla told him. “They thought we should pretend to be tourists and take a look around before we contact any officials. If the government is hiding Liam, we don’t want them to bury him so deep that we’ll never find him.”
He was silent, still turning his hat around and around and around.
“We should wait,” she added, “and go through official channels only if we don’t find out anything any other way—if we need to shake things up.”
He nodded slowly, glancing at her, and she knew he was thinking the same thing she was. Their presence in San Salustiano could very well put Liam in even more danger.
“So we’re tourists,” he said, his eyes suddenly as cold and as grim as the thin line of his lips, “coming to a war-torn island for a fun-filled vacation. Who the hell is going to believe that?”
Cal watched Kayla smile sunnily at the customs official as the dour-faced man perused both of their passports.
Despite what he’d thought, there was a surprising number of vacationers going through customs. But despite the country’s desire for a brisker tourist trade, the customs officials were unfriendly, and escorted several people to a private room for a thorough body search.
Cal didn’t want that to happen. He was carrying copies of the documents he’d received from the San Salustiano government concerning Liam’s death. His alleged death. But if he and Kayla were going to pretend to be tourists and not tip anyone off as to the real reason they’d come to the island, it was important those papers weren’t uncovered in a strip search.
He didn’t know what papers Kayla had hidden under her lightweight jacket, but he suspected she was carrying something equally incriminating.
“We don’t want to be strip-searched,” he breathed into her ear. She nodded, her smile never faltering. God, after what she’d told him on the plane, she may not have wanted to be strip-searched for an entirely different reason.
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