by Liz Fielding
It wasn’t that she cared what he thought of her, but those broad shoulders of his were going to be an asset since it was obvious that their chances of survival would double if they worked together.
Tricky enough under the best of circumstances.
Team-building was not one of her more developed skills; she tended to work best as top dog. Issuing orders. It worked well with the TV production team she’d put together. Belle, in front of camera, was undoubtedly the star, but she was a professional, used to taking direction.
Daisy…Well, Daisy was learning.
Sensing that on this occasion she was going to need a different approach, she began again by introducing herself.
‘Look, we seem to have got off on the wrong foot. My name is Miranda Grenville,’ she said, striving, with difficulty, for politeness. ‘I’m here taking a short break…’
‘In Cordillera? Are you crazy?’
She gritted her teeth, then said, ‘Undoubtedly. It has possibilities as a holiday destination, admittedly, but so far none of them have been successfully exploited.’
‘Oh, believe me. They’ve got the exploitation angle covered.’
He didn’t sound happy about that, either.
‘Not noticeably,’ she replied. ‘And tourists tend to have a bit of a phobia about earthquakes.’
‘In that case they-you-would be well advised to stick to somewhere safer,’ he retaliated. ‘Try Bournemouth next time.’
‘Thank you for your advice. I’ll bear it in mind should there ever be a “next time”.’
His bad mood was beginning to seriously annoy her, a fact which, if he’d known her, should worry him. That she suspected it wouldn’t bother him in the slightest made him interesting. A pain, but interesting…
‘Meanwhile, since I’m here-we’re here-in the middle of the earthquake that happened while you were sleeping off…’ politeness, Manda, politeness ‘…whatever you were sleeping off, maybe you’d like to help me figure out how we’re going to get out of here?’
She spoke in calm, measured tones. Dealing with an idiot had the advantage of making her forget her own fears, it seemed.
He replied briefly in a manner that was neither calm nor measured. Then, having got that off his chest, he said, ‘There’s been an earthquake?’
‘By George he’s got it,’ she replied sarcastically.
He repeated his first thought, expressing his feelings with a directness that she’d have found difficulty in bettering if she wasn’t making a determined effort to play nice. Clearly, this was not the moment to point out that he hadn’t completed their introductions.
Whoever he was, he didn’t seem to have much time for the social niceties, but the silence went on for a long time and, after a while, she cleared her throat-just to get rid of the dust.
Manda heard him shift in the darkness, felt rather than saw him turn in her direction. ‘Tell me,’ he said, after what seemed like an age. ‘What, in the name of all that’s holy, are you doing in a Cordilleran temple in the middle of an earthquake?’
For a moment she considered telling him that it was none of his damned business. But she needed his help, whoever he was. So she compromised.
‘I’ll tell you that,’ she informed him, ‘if you’ll tell me what the devil you’re doing, drinking yourself to perdition in a Cordilleran temple. At any time.’
Despite the pain in his head, Jago had to admit that this woman had a certain entertainment value and he laughed.
This was not a wise move as his head was swift to remind him. But something about the way she’d come back at him had been so unexpectedly sharp, so refreshingly astringent that he couldn’t help himself. And if she was right about the earthquake she got ten out of ten for…something. If only being a pain in the butt.
Admittedly it was a very nicely put together butt…
He began, despite every cell in his body clamouring a warning, to wonder who she was, where she had come from. What she looked like.
Had he, despite his best intentions, started drinking in Rob’s bar and been so lost to sense that he’d picked up some lone female tourist looking for a good time and brought her back here with him? If so, he’d signally failed to deliver, he thought, as he searched his memory for a picture to match the voice.
His memory refused to oblige so he was forced to ask, ‘Did I pick you up in Rob’s bar?’
‘Who’s Rob?’
‘I guess that answers that question…’
‘Don’t you remember?’
Great butt, smart mouth. Tricky combination. ‘If I remembered I wouldn’t ask,’ he snapped right back, but the scorn in her voice warned him that he was on dangerous ground. And, remembering that kick, it occurred to him that insulting her might not be his best idea.
But where the hell had she come from?
Everything after Rob had thrust that bottle at him was something of a blur, but he hadn’t been in the mood to pick up a woman, no matter how warm and willing she was-and actually he was getting very mixed messages about that-but then he’d be the first to admit that he hadn’t been thinking too straight.
If only his head didn’t hurt so much. He needed to concentrate…
He had a vague memory of driving back up the side of the mountain in a mood as grim as the pagan gods that had guarded the temple and he glared into the darkness as if they had the answer.
It really was dark.
Of his companion he had no more than a vague impression, amplified by that handful of a small, perfectly formed breast. Two handfuls of neat little butt. Tallish, he thought, a bit on the skinny side, but with hair that smelled of childhood innocence…
He stopped the thought right there.
Women were born devious and he was done with the whole treacherous, self-serving sex.
He’d driven back from the coast on his own, he was certain of that, but if he hadn’t picked her up, where the devil had she come from?
He scrubbed at his face with his hands in an effort to clear away the confusion. Then, dragging his fingers through his hair, he winced as he encountered a damn great lump and a stickiness that couldn’t be anything but blood.
It seemed that the throbbing ache in his head was the result of a collision with something hard rather than the effects of Cordilleran brandy. Unless he had fallen out of the camp-bed he’d set up down here after the rest of the team had left when the rains set in. Going home to their families.
It was drier than his hut in the village during the rains. Quieter. And, without Fliss to distract him, he’d got a lot of work done.
He blinked. The lack of light was beginning to irritate him. He wanted to be able to see this woman. Was she another student backpacking her way around the globe? If so, she’d chosen the wrong day to drop in looking for work experience…
‘Okay, I didn’t pick you up in a bar,’ he began, then stopped. That was too loud. Much too loud. ‘So where-?’
‘You didn’t pick me up anywhere.’ Her disembodied voice enunciated each word slowly and carefully, as if speaking to someone for whom English was a foreign language. ‘I’m fussy about who I hang around with.’
‘Really? My mistake,’ he said, heavy on the irony. ‘So how did you get here?’
‘By bus.’
Jago laughed again and this time he was genuinely amused at the thought of this hoity-toity madam flagging down one of the island’s overcrowded buses and piling in with the goats and chickens.
Apparently she didn’t share his sense of humour.
‘What’s so funny?’
‘Not a thing,’ he said, meaning it. Then, ‘What did you say your name was? Amanda…?’ The effort of remembering her surname was too much and he let it go.
‘Miranda,’ she corrected. ‘My friends call me Manda but, since I have no plans for a long acquaintance with you, whoever you are, we might as well keep it formal.’
‘Suits me,’ he replied with feeling. Then, ‘I’m Jago,’ he said, begrudgingly giving up his n
ame at the same time as he remembered hers. Grenville. That was what she had said. The name was vaguely familiar, but he didn’t recognise her voice. Maybe the face…He could strike a match, he supposed, but really it was too much effort and, despite his desire to see her, he wasn’t ready for anything that bright. ‘No,’ he said. ‘Sorry. I give up. I’ve forgotten where we met.’
‘It sounds to me as if you gave up a long time ago but I’ll put you out of your misery. We’ve never met.’
‘I may be careless, lady-’
‘Will you please stop calling me that,’ she interrupted crossly. ‘My name is Miranda-’
‘I may be careless about some things, Miranda,’ he said, with heavy emphasis on her name, ‘but I’ve given up on inviting strangers home to tea.’
‘Why is that, I wonder? Are you frightened they might steal the silver?’
He wished, but confined his response to, ‘Who are you? What are you?’
CHAPTER FOUR
G OOD question, Manda thought. One to which the people she lived and worked with could give any number of answers, most of them wrong.
‘Does it matter? I promise I won’t run off with the spoons,’ she said, pulling a face, confident that he would not see it.
It was a long time since afternoon tea had been part of his social life if she was any judge of the situation. But although a little verbal fencing in the dark with an unknown, unseen man might have been amusing at any other time, she’d had enough. She’d had enough of the dark, enough of being scared, enough of him.
‘Oh, forget it. Just point me in the direction of the nearest exit and I’ll be only too happy to leave you alone.’
Jago was beyond such politeness. His head was pounding like the percussion section of the London Philharmonic and all he wanted to do was lie down and close his eyes. ‘You got yourself in here. Reverse the process,’ he advised. ‘You’ll be home in no time.’ Then added, ‘Don’t forget to shut the door on your way out.’
An explosive little sound echoed around the dark chamber. ‘Sober up and look around you, Mr Jago. There aren’t any doors.’
He groaned.
Why was it, with the whole world of wonderful things to choose from, God had picked women as the opposite sex?
‘Time and white ants have done their worst,’ he admitted, ‘but I was speaking metaphorically. Entrance. Opening. Ingress. Access. Take your pick.’
‘What on earth is the matter with you? Did a lump of stone fall on your head? Or have you drunk yourself quite senseless?’
‘That was the plan,’ he said, hoping that she might finally take the hint, shut up and leave him in peace. ‘It doesn’t seem to have worked. How did you get in here, anyway? This area is restricted.’
‘To whom?’
To whom? He rubbed his hand over his face again-carefully avoiding the lump on his hairline this time-in an attempt to bring it back to life. Whoever this female was, she couldn’t be a student. No student he’d ever met could be bothered to speak English with that precision. He eased himself into a sitting position. ‘To me, Miranda Grenville. To me. And you weren’t invited.’
‘I wouldn’t have come if I had been,’ she declared. ‘This is the last place I want to be, but I’m afraid you’ll have to stand in line to send your complaint to a higher authority.’
‘Oh? And which higher authority would that be?’ he enquired, knowing full well that it was a mistake, that he would regret it, but completely unable to help himself. There was something about this woman that just got under his skin.
‘Mother Nature?’ she offered. ‘I was simply standing on a footpath, quietly minding my own business, when the ground opened up beneath me and I fell through your roof. As I believe I’ve already mentioned, while you were busy drowning your sorrows there was an earthquake.’
‘An earthquake?’ He frowned. Wished he hadn’t. ‘A genuine, honest-to-God earthquake?’
‘It seemed very real to me.’
‘Not just a tremor?’
‘Not a tremor. I was in Brazil last year when there was a tremor,’ she explained. ‘I promise you this was the real deal.’
Jago fumbled in his pocket for a box of matches. As he struck one, it flared briefly, for a moment blinding him with the sudden brightness so near to his face, but as his eyes adjusted to the light, he stared around, momentarily speechless at the destruction that surrounded him.
The outside walls of the temple, with their stone carvings, had been pushed inward and the floor that he had spent months digging down through the debris of centuries to clear was now little more than rubble.
The woman was right. It would have taken a serious earthquake to have caused this much damage.
It had, all in all, been one hell of a day.
A small anguished sound caught his attention and he turned to his unwelcome companion, temporarily forgotten as he had surveyed the heartbreaking destruction of the centuries-old temple complex built by a society whose lives he had devoted so much time to understanding. Reconstructing.
He swore and dropped the match as it burned down to his fingers.
The darkness after the brief flare of light seemed, if anything, more intense, thicker, substantial enough to cut into slices and in a moment of panic he groped in the box for another match.
It was empty.
There was a new carton somewhere, but his supplies were stored at the far end of the temple. And the far end of the temple, as he’d just seen, was no more…
‘We’re trapped, aren’t we?’
Her voice had, in that instant of light, lost all that assured bravado.
‘Of course we’re not trapped,’ he snapped back. The last thing he needed was hysterics. ‘I just need a minute to figure the best way out.’
‘There isn’t one. I saw-’
Too late. Her voice was rising in panic and his own clammy moment of fear was still too close to risk her going over the edge and taking him with her.
‘Shut up and let me think.’
She gave a juddering little hiccup as she struggled to obey him, to control herself, but he forced himself to ignore the instinct to reach out, hold her, comfort her.
She’d said she’d been standing on the path, presumably the one leading to the acropolis, but she couldn’t have been alone.
‘How did you get up here?’ His voice was sharper this time, demanding an answer.
‘I told you,’ she said. ‘By bus.’
His head still hurt like hell, but the realisation that he was caught up in the aftermath of an earthquake had done much to concentrate his mind. He’d broken the seal on the bottle of brandy, but the minute the liquor had touched his lips he’d set it down, recognising the stupidity of drinking himself into oblivion.
That was what Rob had done when his yacht had gone down in a storm. Was still doing. Washed up on the beach and pretty much a wreck himself…
‘What kind of bus?’ he demanded. ‘Nobody lives up here.’ The locals avoided the area, ancient folk memory keeping them well away from the place.
‘Not a local bus. I was on a sightseeing trip.’
He grunted.
A sightseeing trip. Of course.
The government was trying attract tourism investment, but Cordillera would be hard pushed to compete with the other established resorts of the Far East unless there was something else, something different to tempt the jaded traveller.
The ruins of a sexed-up ancient civilisation would do as well as anything. And once the finance was fixed, the resorts built, the visitors would flood in.
He hadn’t wanted hordes of tourists trampling about the place disturbing his work. As archaeological director of the site he had the authority to keep them out and he’d used it.
He’d seen the damage that could be done, knew that once there was a market for artefacts, it wouldn’t be long before the locals would forget their fear and start digging up the forest for stuff, chiselling chunks of their history to sell to tourists.
He’d known that sooner or later he would be overruled, but in the meantime he’d kept everything but the bare bones of his discoveries to himself, delaying publication for as long as possible.
Impatient for results he could exploit to his advantage, it seemed that Felipe Dominez had looked for another way.
‘I hadn’t realised that we were already on the tourist route,’ he said bitterly.
‘I don’t think you are,’ she assured him. ‘If a trade delegation whose flight was delayed hadn’t been shanghaied into taking the trip, it would have been me, a couple of dozen other unfortunates who believed that Cordillera was going to be the next big thing and the driver-cum-tour-guide. Why the business people bothered I can’t imagine.’
‘I can,’ he said sourly, ‘if the alternative was the doubtful comforts of the airport departure lounge.’
‘Maybe, but at least there they’d be sure someone was going to try and dig them out of the rubble. Here-’
He didn’t think it wise to let her dwell on what was likely to be her fate ‘here’.
‘What happened to the rest of your party?’ he cut in quickly.
‘It was hot and sticky and I was suffering from a severe case of ancient culture fatigue so I decided to sit out the second half of the tour. When the ground opened up and swallowed me I was on my own.’
‘But you’ll be missed?’
‘Will I?’ Manda asked.
In the panic she knew it was unlikely. Even supposing anyone else had survived. They could easily have suffered the same fate as she had and she was unbelievably lucky not to have been buried beneath tons of debris…Maybe. That would at least have been quick.
Trapped down here, the alternative might prove to be a lot worse, she thought, and dug what was left of her nails into the palms of her hands.
Breathe…
‘I suppose that eventually someone will wonder what happened to me,’ she admitted. ‘Right now, I suspect they’ll all be too busy surviving, Mr Jago, so if you could put your mind to the problem of how we’re going to get out of here I really would be grateful.’ There was a long pause. ‘Please.’