Volcano

by Patricia Rice

  Rummaging through a cabinet nailed to the wall, he located coffee and a metal pot. He had the coffee boiling by the time his new chief operating officer appeared from the minuscule bathroom.

  She had all that thick black hair loosely clipped into a stack that Charlie hoped would topple at any moment. Without any forethought on his part, his gaze dropped to the perfect breast he’d held in his hand so briefly that morning. She’d covered it with a loose linen camp shirt, but even through the pockets, he could see that she hadn’t harnessed herself in one of her damned bras. Maybe, just maybe, Miss Penny was loosening up.

  He shouldn’t care. He’d known her type back in college, the sorority girls with their preppy clothes and their noses stuck in the air. They’d wiggle under a successful football player eagerly enough, but not one with a busted knee and no prospects. At the time, he’d been putting himself through school on a scholarship and whatever he could earn in his father’s struggling construction company. He’d driven an old Plymouth that the cheerleaders laughed at, worn Sears jeans and Goodwill shirts they’d pried off his back and paid their own money to replace with designer duds. He’d thought it funny while he was riding high on NFL prospects. He hadn’t appreciated their condescension after the knee incident. Maybe he’d just grown surly with age.

  Penelope Albright was no different from those college cheerleaders. She’d already stated her opinion of his choice of clothes and sunglasses. He could just imagine her opinion of his vintage GTO. She was the kind who dated the frat boys, the ones with BMWs and Tommy Hilfiger jeans. Just because they were trapped together in this foreign setting wouldn’t change her attitude.

  He’d stay well away from Miss Penelope from now on. If he’d seen the hammock last night, he would have slept in it.

  She eyed him warily as she sipped the coffee he handed her. “Telephone?”

  He almost had to smile at her one-track mind. “Behind the futon, underneath the stack of cloth. I’ll move the table over there so you can set your computer on it.”

  She nodded and scanned the cabin much as he’d done earlier. “Nice. Food?”

  If he wasn’t so damned worried, he’d enjoy this. A woman who didn’t ‘t chatter first thing in the morning. Amazing. “Cereal and goat’s milk.” She wrinkled her nose without replying, and he grinned. His opinion, expressed more succinctly. “Toast and guava jam.”

  She nodded in approval. “If you’re offering to cook, I accept. Set up the table, and I’ll get to work.”

  She was relegating him to beast of burden. It had happened often enough for him to recognize the attitude. Right now, he really didn’t care. She was doing what he wanted her to do. He’d willingly play the part of ape-man for a while, if that’s what it took to find Raul’s murderer.

  “Is there some way of notifying the police about the cabin in the rain forest?” she asked as he hauled the table across the room.

  “Is there some point?” he asked with more acidity than she deserved.

  “Identifying the body for certain. Tammy has to be told, but it doesn’t seem right without more proof.”

  “He was wearing the watch I gave him last Christmas. How much more proof do you want?” Charlie slammed the table, ashamed of his ill humor but unable to tone it down. He didn’t want to believe he’d lost Raul. Raul was his right hand. Raul was the turtle to Charlie’s rabbit. Many a time Raul’s slower pace had forced Charlie to stop and think things through more clearly, saving him untold amounts of time and money. Who the hell would he rely on now?

  Penelope didn’t flinch at his tone. “The watch could have been stolen. You owe it to Raul and to Tammy to verify that the remains are his. And to bury them.”

  “Damn, see if I offer you any more coffee,” he muttered, unburying the phone and tracking the line to its source.

  “What’s coffee got to do with it?” she asked in genuine puzzlement.

  “Turns the motor on, apparently. Here, give me your modem cord. Maybe if you get to work you’ll shut up.”

  She shut up without further prompting. Throwing him the phone cord, she went in search of an electrical outlet. The cabin apparently had two: the one to the stove and another behind the futon. Charlie mentally groaned as he glanced up to see her bent over the back of the sofa, looking for the plug. She’d chosen shorts for a change, fitted ones. A backside like that deserved a place in the Playboy Hall of Fame.

  Unaware of the flight his mind had taken, Penelope slid back into the seat and opened the laptop, sufficient reminder that he had his own job to do.

  He couldn’t spend the day watching her work. Toasting the bread in the skillet with some lard from the cupboard, he flipped the pieces onto a plate, left the plate beside Penelope, and ambled off in pursuit of eggs. He’d seen hens in the yard.

  By the time he’d fried the eggs, she’d finished her first piece of toast and gone through a second cup of coffee. She also had the tiny piece of junk she called a printer spitting out paper.

  He handed her more toast. “What’s that?” Slapping an egg on his bread, folding it into a sandwich, and biting a chunk out of it, Charlie reached for the paper as it fell out.

  “List of the Foundation’s board of directors. Frequently, major stockholders are on the board. I’ll start looking them up next.” She watched him with a quizzical expression as he read through the list.

  Charlie nearly swallowed his egg sandwich whole. “Don’t bother with the others. Start with Emile and this Sam Jacobsen.” Jacobsen! He should have known.

  Penelope glanced up at him with an odd expression. “Why did you choose Jacobsen?”

  He didn’t like the way she asked that. Now wasn’t the time to remember she’d arrived on the same flight as Jacobsen. Coincidence, or not? “I’ll answer that if you tell me why you asked,” he replied with suspicion.

  She looked a little startled at his vehemence. “I just asked because last night I remembered his name. He’s a client of my employer. I saw him at the airport and again yesterday, leaving your stepfather’s estate.”

  Hit from two directions, Charlie didn’t know which way to turn. Penny knew Jacobsen but didn’t work for him. Jacobsen was at Emile’s—just before the explosion. This didn’t look healthy at all. Did he really want to believe Jacobsen killed Raul?

  Penelope’s expectant look forced Charlie out of his wallow of grief and confusion. He shrugged. “I’m helping someone sue Jacobsen, he hates my guts, and he’s returned the favor by serving papers on me that have closed down all my bank accounts. I have a payroll to meet next week, and if I don’t, all the men working on the hotel in Orlando will walk. I imagine he figures I’ll sell the St. Lucia land to get the cash to keep my company running.” Charlie’s brain ticked quickly. “If we can put Jacobsen together with Emile...”

  Nibbling at her toast, Penelope punched a few more keys on the computer. “Credit records. Sometimes there are balance sheets attached.”

  She ate as the machine did its job. Diverted by her toy, Charlie took the seat beside her. He liked learning things hands-on. He had too much energy to sit still for long, staring at any kind of screen: computer, TV, or otherwise. But the gobbledygook scrolling across the laptop contained an array of information he’d like to grab with his hands and haul off the screen. Instead, it jabbered slowly into the printer.

  While she waited for the machine to print, she hit some more keys, flipped through a few more on-screen pages, and Emile’s name appeared across the top. Charlie widened his eyes as he scanned quickly through the information scrolling before him.

  “Damn, but I should have taken computer courses in college. I wasted three years reading Dickens and fiddling with math problems and never learned one thing of any use except the Dolphins’ old plays.”

  Finishing her toast, Penelope unconsciously sucked a smear of jam off her finger, then wiped her hands on a napkin before reaching for the paper falling from the printer. “College has essentially become a playground for kids who don’t know what to
do with themselves,” she answered absently, scanning the printed page in her hand. “Most of the jobs in our current economy can’t even be taught in college. Why they don’t wise up and start apprenticeship training is beyond my understanding.”

  Forgetting the paper she handed to him, Charlie stared at her with incredulity. “I thought all you preppy types believe a college education is essential.”

  She blinked, shrugged, then returned to reading. “Who needs a college education to lay bricks? A good course on accounting and bookkeeping, maybe contract law, could put someone with technical training into business, provided he’d learned what he should have in high school. College teaches theory, not practical basics. It gives kids time to grow up and maybe learn a little more than they did in high school. Maybe. But when I graduated from accounting school, I couldn’t even balance a ledger. I’d never seen a ledger. But I had a computer and could use one. Theory is helpful; practice is everything.”

  “My God, where have you been all my life?” he muttered as he read through the next pages falling from the printer. “Even my father wanted to disown me when I didn’t graduate. I wasn’t learning anything useful. I was earning a business degree, can you imagine? I took marketing. Did that class ever teach me how to go out and hobnob with the movers and shakers? How to make word of mouth sell? Not in this lifetime.”

  He laid the papers out on the table, pulling out the ones he recognized as balance sheets and laying them on top. “All right, so this shows that both Emile and Jacobsen own percentages of the Resort Foundation. What’s that prove?”

  “Not any more than we already guessed.” She rearranged the stacks. “But this shows Jacobsen is in a heap of financial trouble. And he owes Emile’s corporations, big-time.” She pulled out another sheet. “He also owes several of the other board members. Are you sure I shouldn’t look them up too? A lot of them look European, so it may not be as easy,” she added thoughtfully.

  Charlie sat back and shuffled through the stack on Jacobsen. “Let’s take the easy route first. We’ve proved Jacobsen is a desperate man. Where does that get us?”

  She turned her beautiful brown eyes in his direction. “You realize Samuel Jacobsen is a big client of PC&M’s.”

  “PC&M?” Charlie could have fallen straight through the beckoning fields of her eyes except he heard the ring of warning in her voice.

  “My employer.” Her voice had taken on a flatness he didn’t recognize. “They do the bookkeeping for Jacobsen’s companies, as well as financial statements and taxes.”

  He wanted to kiss her. “You mean, you could—”

  She cut him off. “I’d lose my job. That’s confidential information. I’d lose my license as well. I could be fired just for digging into his background like this.”

  That had been too lucky a break. He should have known it. “What if he had Michel and Raul murdered?”

  “Then the authorities would have to subpoena the information.” She glanced down at the screen, hit a message light, and opened her e-mail. “Beth got my note about Tamara.” Penelope frowned and glanced down at her watch. “It’s almost noon here. What time did Tammy’s flight arrive?”

  “Dawn. I had my pilot take her in. Why, what’s wrong?” Charlie jerked the screen around so he could read it. “Damn,” he swore. “Where the hell is she?”

  “Not with Beth,” she answered dryly. “Pilot? You have your own pilot?”

  He read the message again. No Tamara. “Florida is a big state. It was taking too long to get from job to job. So I got a plane. Now I can fly crews in and out as I need them.” He couldn’t look away from the screen. Where had the damned idiot gone?

  “Maybe you could call your pilot?”

  “He’ll have hit the sack by now after flying in the middle of the night. I can leave a message on his machine. Turn this thing off so I can hook up the phone again.”

  “Give me his name and number; I’ll have Beth do it. She’ll need to be our Miami connection.”

  Charlie glared at her. “I thought you said your sister was blind. How’s she reading this damned thing?”

  Penelope shrugged. “Voice monitor. There are limitations, but one of the guys I went to college with is on the high-tech edge of these things. Beth tests his software.”

  With a snort of disbelief, Charlie gave her the number and lurched to his feet to pace the room. He didn’t need this now. Damn Tamara... He would wring her neck.

  “Charlie.”

  The alarm mixed with worry in Penelope’s voice swung Charlie around. “What?”

  She stared at the screen. “I just got another message from Beth. She says someone is trying to crack my firewall.”

  “What?” He tried not to yell, but that made no sense at all.

  “I use my PC at home to network with the firm’s computers. I’ve installed the newest software that keeps hackers like me out. Someone’s trying to break through it. It shrieks a warning. Beth wants to know what to do next.”

  A frown creased Penelope’s forehead as she looked up at him. “I don’t have that firewall on this machine yet. They may know everything I’ve looked up this morning.”

  “Can they trace it?” Charlie demanded.

  “If I were them, I’d damned well be hunting me down right now. They’ll know I’m on the island server. I have no idea if the St. Lucia telephone system can sustain a wiretap, but if they have police connections, they can probably trace us through the server number.”

  “Hell, shut that thing down and let’s get out of here. If I’ve got police connections, you know damned well Emile does.”

  “Give me a minute. I want Beth to delete the network software. I don’t want them after her too.”

  Charlie stared in dismay at the vulnerable nape of Penelope’s slender white neck as she bent over the laptop. She’d stuck that neck out because of him, and now he had three women in danger.

  Maybe he ought to sell the damned land and cut his losses while he could.

  Before he could follow that thought, Penelope was standing in front of him, her eyes nearly on a level with his.

  “I have the address for Beth’s ex in my e-mail file. He’s a bastard of the worst degree, but he’s a cop. He can find Tamara and keep Beth safe. It will do him good to be useful. And we need the cops on our side, Charlie.”

  He heard the warning in her voice, but he also heard the commitment. He’d never heard a more beautiful sound in his life. Miss Nose-in-the-Air Careerwoman was with him on this, even though it might cost her her precious job.

  Without giving it a second thought, Charlie wrapped Penelope in his arms and kissed her. The minute his lips touched hers, he forgot to think at all.

  SIXTEEN

  Penelope slid her hands around Charlie’s broad T-shirted back, as if she’d done it a thousand times before. Charlie might not know the meaning of the word cautious, but he had a good grasp on gentle. His mouth seduced her with gentleness, plied her with lovely, mind-bending kisses until she no longer wondered at her insanity but offered him what he wanted.

  The instant she parted her lips and his tongue touched hers, a shudder swept through him, and he tightened his grip around her waist. The pressure warned Penelope she was playing too deep, that it was time to back away, but she ignored the warning she’d obeyed so often these last few years. Charlie’s muscles rippling beneath her palms felt too good, too right, and the mouth covering hers obliterated any other thought.

  He kissed her as if he meant it, as if he wanted just this intimacy and nothing more, as if he really cared enough to hold her and kiss her and cherish her without demanding more than she had to offer. And she fell for it, hook, line, and sinker.

  Lifting his head, Charlie gazed into her eyes with as much amazement as she felt. “My God,” he whispered. Apparently unable to formulate a more complete sentence, he lowered his head toward hers again.

  Penelope’s fingers gripped his back, torn between holding him closer and pushing him away. But the decision
was ripped from her as he caught sight of something outside the window and swiftly dropped his hands.

  “Cops! Grab your computer. They can’t know we’re here, but it’s just a matter of time....” Cursing under his breath, he began pulling telephone and electrical cords and throwing them in her direction.

  Glancing out the window, Penelope caught sight of a uniformed officer on a motor scooter slowly rolling by on the dirt road outside. She dropped to the futon and hurriedly shut down the program. Heart beating so fast she figured she’d fall on her face if she stood up again, she forced herself to calm down. “What are they doing? Patrolling?”

  “If they’re looking for us, they’ve got a list of Jacques’s naturalist friends. The ecologists have been a thorn in the government’s side for years. But it doesn’t look like the cops are in a hurry to get out and beat the bushes yet. What can they charge us with anyway? Existing?” Charlie stalked to the back room and shoved clothes into their bags and backpack.

  Obviously, men recovered from earthshaking kisses faster than women. Or the earth hadn’t moved for him as it had for her. Penelope’s fingers actually shook as she shoved the laptop into its case. Maybe she’d refrained from sex too long and this craving was the result. If so, she’d damned well better get Charlie out of her system before she began thinking this need meant anything.

  Love on the run, she thought grimly as she draped the strap over her shoulder and hurried to grab her sack of clothing. She should have had a sensible backpack too, but stumbling through jungles hadn’t been on her itinerary.

  “Where do we go now?” she asked in exasperation as he checked out the wide front window. “We can’t get anything done if we keep picking up and running.”