Damnation, he was in trouble here. What Cal was feeling, what he wanted, was wrong. But he couldn’t get away from it. From the moment he’d laid eyes on Kayla, he’d wanted her. From the moment that she’d opened her eyes and looked up at him, from the moment she’d stood up in that tub like the grand prize winner of a wet T-shirt contest, from the moment he’d helped her out of her clothes, he’d been walking around in a constant state of arousal. He burned for this girl.
Kayla glanced at him, and Cal shook his head, trying to clear it of all thoughts but the ones that mattered: finding Liam.
“It’s easier if you let me get on first,” he told her.
She pulled off her sunglasses and gazed up at him in surprise. “We’re riding this thing together?”
Cal nodded. “That’s right. All you have to do is hold on.”
She didn’t move. “This means I’m going to have to touch you,” she said bluntly. “You don’t like it when I touch you.”
He shook his head. “No, ma’am,” he said. “I like it too much when you touch me.”
Kayla didn’t look away. She held his gaze, and the sweet sadness she let him see in her eyes was more intimate than a kiss. “This is a problem, isn’t it?” she asked softly. “This thing—whatever it is—between us.”
“Only if we let it be.” He held on to the handgrips of the motorcycle, gesturing with his head for her to hop off. She did, and he swung his leg over the seat, sitting far enough forward for her to fit behind him. She climbed on, and he had to close his eyes at the sensation of her legs pressed against him. He didn’t dare look. The sight of her long, tanned legs against his jeans would have done him in. When he spoke again, his voice was raspy. “I for one don’t intend to let it be. The way I see it, we’ve got more than enough to focus on with finding Liam and figuring out how to get him the hell out of here.”
“It’s just…” Kayla spoke softly, but sitting behind him, her mouth was close to his ear. “It’s chemistry, and it’s not something either one of us asked for, so don’t waste your time beating yourself up about it, all right? It’s not your fault—I feel it too, you know.”
God, was that supposed to make him feel better, knowing that this heat that threatened to consume him was something that she felt too? Was knowing that she, too, had to fight this relentless desire supposed to help? Was knowing that if he slipped, if he succumbed in a moment of weakness, she might not be able to stand firm, that she might be equally seduced by her own desires—was that supposed to give him confidence?
Cal started the motorcycle with a roar, silently cursing both Kayla and himself. Mostly himself.
“Careful where you put your legs,” he warned her, shouting over the sudden noise. “The exhaust pipe gets hot.”
He felt her arms go around his waist, felt her body press up against his back, and he had to wonder. Was this why he’d settled for renting this motorcycle? Was this why he hadn’t searched harder for an establishment that could rent him a car? Had he intentionally given in too soon simply out of his need to feel Kayla’s arms around him again?
“Please don’t go too fast,” she said into his ear.
He wanted to race. He wanted to push this piece of junk as fast as it could possibly go and feel the wind in his face and the rush of the pavement under his tires. He wanted to run away from himself and from Kayla and even from Liam.
Instead, he eased out into the road that led toward town, attaching an addendum to his constant prayers that they find the kid alive, asking the good Lord to expedite his request, to work overtime and help them find Liam soon.
7
“Are you crazy?” Kayla gazed at the elderly San Salustiano shopkeeper, well aware of Cal watching the exchange as she spoke in Spanish. “If you think we’re going to pay seventy-five dollars American for that little piece of garbage, you’re in for a disappointment.”
“I can get more than one hundred dollars for this.” The merchant sniffed. “I was giving you a discount because you are such a pretty young girl.”
She picked up the cheap battery-operated radio. She flipped on the switch, and tinny, distorted salsa music blared from the inexpensive speaker. She quickly turned it off. “It’s not even new. The knob is missing and the speaker is dented.”
“This is a pawn shop. Nothing here is new.”
“I’ll give you twenty-five. Not a penny more.”
The old man smiled, and Kayla knew that at one time he had broken more than his share of hearts. “Seventy. Not a penny less.”
Cal put a small but deadly-looking knife in a plain leather holster on the counter. “Just pay him what he wants for both the radio and the knife, and let’s get the hell out of here,” he said.
Kayla ignored him. If he had read everything that had been written about San Salustiano, then he surely knew that this was the way things were bought and sold on the island. If she paid this man the inflated amount, he would be disappointed in her. He certainly wouldn’t respect her, and he’d hesitate to give them any information he might have about the current political situation and the rumored prison camps in the mountains. Besides, as it was, the price she was prepared to settle on was ten times higher than the value of the radio. “Thirty. For both the radio and the knife.”
“Both?” The shop owner rolled his eyes, turning to glance at the sweet-faced middle-aged woman who was behind the counter with him. Kayla couldn’t tell if she was his daughter or his wife. “Sixty-five.”
“Thirty-five.”
“Sixty.”
“Forty.”
“Fifty-five.”
“Forty.” Kayla took two crisp twenty-dollar bills from her pocket, unfolding them and letting the shopkeeper have a look at Andrew Jackson’s face. “Cash.”
“Sold.” He held out his hand and she slapped the money into it, then tossed the radio to Cal. She let him pick up the knife himself.
“Didn’t I read somewhere that a recent San Salustiano law makes it illegal for merchants to accept American dollars?” he drawled.
The storekeeper hesitated only slightly as he rearranged his display of radios and telephones, and Kayla suspected the man knew more English than he had originally let on. In case she was wrong, she translated Cal’s words into the man’s native language.
“Many things are illegal in Puerto Norte these days,” the old man quietly replied. “Things such as thinking, for example. It’s no longer legal to have your own opinion in San Salustiano.”
Kayla translated his words for Cal as the woman clucked worriedly. “Davio, don’t speak of such things to strangers,” she murmured.
Cal held Kayla’s gaze, his eyes silently questioning. She knew what he was thinking. Did they dare to ask questions about Liam? She nodded slightly. They had to start somewhere.
“Ask him if he knows about the prison camps in the mountains,” Cal told her. “Ask him if he’s heard about Liam.”
“I have heard talk,” the old man said in only slightly accented English, “about such camps, though I’ve never seen them myself. Which is just as good, since I have heard that one doesn’t see them until one is brought there as a prisoner. And once inside, there is no way out.”
“You will have us all taken there, old man,” the woman growled. With one last desperate look at Cal and Kayla, she left the room, disappearing behind a curtain.
“We’re here looking for an American who disappeared two years ago,” Kayla told the shopkeeper. “His name is William Bartlett—he was a news reporter from Boston. We’ve heard rumors from people who have left the island about a blond Americano held in one of the prison camps in the mountains—”
The old man was shaking his head. “I have heard of him too, and he is just a myth. Just a bogeyman to scare the villagers. The way the story goes, he escaped from one of the prison camps, badly injured, and was taken in by a family in a small village. They nursed him back to health and helped him find a boat to take him off the island. But somewhere along the way, they were betrayed.
Government soldiers went into the village, but the Americano was nowhere to be found. In retaliation, the entire village was wiped out.” He gazed levelly from Kayla to Cal. “It is no more than a fairy tale designed to frighten the ‘children’ of San Salustiano into behaving.”
“I’ve talked to someone who saw the Americano,” Kayla told the old man. “He is real.”
He just smiled. “People see what they want to see. And these days, people want to see heroes.”
“He always wore a gold journalism award ring on his right hand.” Cal spoke up. “You haven’t seen something like that come into this shop, have you?”
“No, sir.” The man shook his head. “I have not heard of such a ring among my competitors either—and they would not have hesitated to brag if it was indeed real gold. If I hear anything, I will let you know.”
“We’re staying at the resort.”
The old man nodded, then turned away, disappearing into the back room.
Kayla followed Cal out of the gloom of the shop and into the bright sunlight of the afternoon.
“Do you trust him?” she asked quietly.
“Right now I don’t think I trust anyone,” he replied, unlatching the small bag that was attached to the back of the motorcycle seat. He put the radio inside and closed it securely. Where he had put the knife Kayla didn’t know—and she wasn’t sure she wanted to know.
“Don’t look now,” he added quietly, “but there’s a car on the corner that’s following us. I saw it before, when I was out picking up the bike.”
Kayla looked everywhere but at the corner. From her peripheral vision she could see the car. It was black and sleek and more expensive than all of the rest of the cars on the street combined.
“I saw it before too,” she said. “It was at the resort when we first arrived.”
Cal climbed onto the motorcycle as she took her helmet off the handlebars and strapped it under her chin. “Want to see if whoever it is keeps following us?”
“Yeah. Where to?”
“Someplace crowded.”
“The beach?”
Cal nodded, starting the bike with a roar. She climbed on behind, holding tightly to him, trying not to notice how good he smelled or how solid and powerful his muscles felt beneath her arms.
He drove slowly through town, gradually picking up speed as he pulled onto a narrow road that seemed to cut directly through the tropical jungle.
“Where are we going?” Kayla shouted over his shoulder and into his ear.
“Like you said—to the beach.”
Sure enough, she could see turquoise water sparkling through the thick underbrush. The road wound down the hillside, opening up into a nearly full parking lot. Cal slowed the bike, pulling right to the edge of the beach.
It was beautiful. The sand was blindingly white, and the ocean and the sky were in fierce competition for the world’s most striking shade of blue. The two-mile-long beach was at the inside curve of a large U-shaped cove, beyond which the ocean stretched on and on, seemingly forever.
“He didn’t follow us,” Kayla said. The black car still hadn’t pulled into the parking lot.
“He didn’t need to follow us right away,” Cal told her. “According to the map, that road we were on deadends here at the beach. As soon as we took that right turn, he knew exactly where we were going. My bet is he’ll show up soon enough.”
He waited for her to climb off the bike, then swung his leg over the seat. He took off his helmet and stood staring out at the water.
Underneath her helmet Kayla’s curls were damp with perspiration. She ran her fingers through her hair, hooking the strap of the helmet on the back of the motorcycle. She kicked off her boots and wiggled her toes in the warm sand. “Aren’t you going to take off your boots?”
“Yeah.” Cal sat down in the sand and pulled off his cowboy boots and peeled off his socks. His shirt followed soon after. It was funny. Even with his shirt off and his jeans rolled up, he still looked like a cowboy, at home on the range, but out of place on the beach.
“Come on, let’s walk.” He set off toward the water, his stride so long, Kayla nearly had to trot to keep up with him. But he stopped at the edge of the ocean, letting the warm water wash over his feet, just gazing out at the shimmering blueness.
“Living in Montana, you probably don’t have the opportunity to go to the beach very often,” Kayla realized aloud.
He glanced at her. “About four years ago I flew to Boston and spent a week on Cape Cod with Liam. It was the first time I ever saw the ocean.” His face softened into a small smile. “Needless to say, I was impressed.”
“I grew up near the water,” she told him. “I can’t imagine the impact of seeing it for the first time as an adult.”
“It’s…pretty damn scary.”
Kayla smiled. “I never would’ve expected you to admit that—not in a million years. That’s good—I think the ocean deserves to be treated with healthy respect.”
“Healthy respect? I’m not the world’s strongest swimmer—now, there’s an understatement—and the damn thing damn near scared me to death. Look at it out there, always moving, like some giant, beautiful, awful living thing, waiting to take some poor, unsuspecting fool and pull him under. Hell, what I’ve got is a genuine, full-blown, almost-out-of-control, wet-my-pants fear of the ocean. With a capital F.”
She had to laugh. “I can’t believe it. The way Liam talked about you, you were fearless and invincible. Superman’s first cousin.”
The ocean breeze lifted his hair, pushing it forward into his face, then sweeping it out of his eyes as he started to walk along the edge of the water. “The kid didn’t have a clue about a lot of things. But I guess I misled him on purpose, starting back when he was little. He’d already lost enough when his mama and daddy died, so I figured I had to make him believe I could take care of him no matter what. I couldn’t let him know how close we came almost every year to losing the ranch. Lord, those first few years were tough. And when he got older…it’s hard just to turn around and start confessing that you’ve spent most of your life scared witless about something as foolish as money.”
“He told me he wasn’t sure exactly what you were worth, but he thought you were extremely well off. He said that anytime he needed money during college, you sent it to him right away. No problem.”
“No problem. That’s a good one.” Cal squinted slightly as he gazed out at the horizon. “I found…creative ways to get him money for school. But they were rarely problem-free.”
“Such as?”
He bent down to pick up a shiny piece of sea glass, rubbing its smooth surface with his thumb. He glanced up at her, and she could see indecision in his eyes. This was far more personal even than admitting he was afraid of the water. She knew this was something he hadn’t ever talked about. Not with Liam. Not with anyone.
She nudged him with her toe. “Come on, Bartlett. You’ve got me curious now. Did you rob a bank to pay for Liam’s Harvard education? Or—I know—you posed nude for one of those women’s magazines, right? Wearing only your boots and your hat?”
He laughed at that, tossing the sea glass back into the water and straightening up. “I never considered that option. Robbing a bank I maybe thought about for seven whole seconds…”
“So what did you do?”
“I made investments, played the stock market. Although that didn’t always work.” He brushed the sand off his hands on the thighs of his jeans. “Right before the second semester payments were due for Liam’s junior year, the market took a nosedive and I lost damn near everything. I had two thousand dollars in my savings account, and I needed a whole hell of a lot more than that to pay the kid’s college bill, so…I got in my truck and drove down to Las Vegas.” He glanced at her, and she saw that now-familiar glint of humor in his eyes once more. They started walking again. “I got the money, but I swear, I aged ten years in two and a half days.”
“You don’t seem like a gambler to me.”<
br />
“I’m not.” He smiled, but it was rueful. “And there’s the irony. My entire life has been one long-shot gamble after another. Running a ranch is no sure thing. If disease doesn’t get you, the weather will. If it’s not a drought, it’s a flood. The only guarantee you’ve got is that you’ll work seven days a week, sunup to sundown, and sometimes even longer.” He broke off, shaking his head. “I don’t mean to sound as if I’m complaining, because I’m not. The past five years or so have been good. Financially, that is.” He made a sound that came out more like a sob than a laugh. “I’m finally set, and Liam’s not around to share it. God, I’d give it all back if only I could find him and bring him home. If he’s still alive, I swear, I’ll be content for the rest of my days.”
It might have been the slight catch in his voice, or it might have been the sheer desperation in his eyes. Whichever it was, it drew Kayla to him. Before he could back away, she put her arms around him, offering comfort. He hesitated only a second before he took what she offered, and more. He pulled her close, burying his face in her hair, squeezing her so tightly, she could barely breathe.
Cal couldn’t move. He had Kayla in his arms, pressed close enough for her to know without a doubt that he wanted her, and still he couldn’t move. His desire rose up so swiftly, it shocked him. But he knew his desire was no more than just that—just a physical yearning. He had to control himself. He had to keep his priorities straight. He had to find Liam and bring him safely home. But even knowing that, Cal couldn’t back away. He clung to Kayla almost desperately, knowing it was wrong to want her this way, but powerless to stop.
“It’s going to be all right,” Kayla murmured. Her hands were in his hair, on his neck, down his back, stroking, soothing, as if he were a child needing reassurance.
What he needed was for her to get far, far away from him. But still he couldn’t move.
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