Gritty-eyed with fatigue, he eased onto his back, brought Margarita around to curl against his chest and stared at the unrelenting darkness.
* * *
Morning, like night, came suddenly in the jungle. There was a brief graying when blackness shadowed into dim shapes. Seemingly within the next heartbeat, gray turned luminous and green.
With Margarita's head heavy on his shoulder, Carlos listened to the sounds of the jungle coming awake. Toucans cawed. Hummingbirds whizzed by. Mosquitoes buzzed. By far the most fearsome of the new day's sounds came from the howler monkeys as they announced the dawn. Deep-throated roars produced by their giant voice boxes and amplified by a hollow bone at the base of their tongue warned other troops away from their territory. Their calls echoed like thunder in the distance.
When a nearby howler let loose a hoarse cry not far from the campsite, Margarita stirred but didn't wake. Carlos let her sleep as long as he dared, watching the dew drip from the moss fuzzing the tree branches above them and run in streaks down the netting. He tracked several silvery drops all the way to the ground before he nudged her gently.
"Rita."
She made a noise halfway between a grunt and a groan. He prodded her again.
"It's dawn."
"Mmm."
"We should move out."
"Give me a minute," she mumbled.
Her minute spun into two, then five. Carlos shifted an arm deadened by her weight. Grumbling, she rolled tight against him and burrowed her nose into his shoulder.
"I'm getting the idea you're not a morning person," he drawled.
She sniffed and muttered into his T-shirt. "Until I down some caffeine, I'm not any kind of a person."
"I'll remember that."
The promise buried in his reply brought her head up. Blinking owlishly, she treated him to a cranky stare.
"Just for the record, I'm not real good at sexual repartee first thing in the morning."
"I'll remember that, too."
She was still frowning when he lifted the netting and tipped his boots upside down to dislodge any uninvited night visitors.
"I'm going to the river to wash up. I'll leave the Beretta with you. Try to avoid any more up close encounters with javelinas," he added in his driest voice.
"I'll stay out of their way if they stay out of mine."
He left her sitting cross-legged on the leafy bed, dragging her fingers through her hair and squinting at the murky green dawn with unfriendly eyes.
Although he didn't show it, Carlos didn't feel particularly friendly himself. The long hours with Margarita's body curled tight against his had put a few painful kinks in his muscles, some of which he suspected might remain there permanently. Rolling his neck and shoulders, he made his way to the tumbling, rock-strewn river and stripped off.
Repeated dunkings in the clear, cool river helped loosen the knots. So did a brisk rubdown with a handful of scratchy leaves from a handy Inga tree. His skin tingling, he pulled on his clothes and combed his clean hair with his fingers before retracing his steps. He was greeted by the sight of Margarita sitting beside the smoldering fire, her hands busy as she plaited vines together.
Madre de Dios! How could the woman look even more delectable in his scruffy fatigue shirt than she had in flame-colored silk?
"I've made a backpack," she informed him, holding up a loosely woven pouch of leaves. "We can carry enough of the roasted meat to last a day or two."
Her ingenuity impressed him. So did the tangy, sweet scent that drifted from the fire. She followed his gaze, smiling when his stomach gave a loud rumble.
"I baked the rest of the bananas and berries for breakfast."
"So I see."
She poked at the leaf-wrapped bundles with a small stick. "I also found some wild mangoes when I was gathering vines. You can chow down while I wash up."
The muscles Carlos had just worked loose jerked into knots again. Sternly, he clamped down on an offer to perform back-scrubbing services for her.
"Don't take too long. We need to get moving."
"No, sir!"
"I'll put some fresh antiseptic ointment on your wrists when you finish."
"Yes, sir!"
Flipping him a cocky, two-fingered salute, she strolled down the trail to the riverbank. A smile played at Carlos's mouth as he squatted and devoured his breakfast of wild fruit salad.
* * *
Any inclination to smile disappeared very soon after they set out again. Leaving the river behind, they were forced to capture their drinking water in the plastic pouch during the frequent thunderstorms. The pouch sloshed awkwardly against Carlos's thigh with each step, adding its weight to that of his vest. Margarita carried her handmade backpack slung over her shoulders by the plaited vines. She also took possession of the Beretta while Carlos swung the machete to cut a swath through the dangling strangler roots and towering ferns.
Within minutes, their shirts were plastered to their backs. Within hours, they'd used up the energy generated by the night's rest and were drawing on their reserves. It was impossible to follow a straight path. Cliffs thrust out of the jungle like granite walls. Ravines cut savage gashes in the earth's surface, necessitating long, leg-cramping detours. Knees scraping, palms raw from grasping vines, they slithered down one steep bank, then dragged themselves up the next.
Storms crashed and boomed intermittently overhead. Torrential rains bulleted through the canopy, adding to their misery. Margarita soon lost all sense of time and direction. Hot, dank air cut through her lungs in jagged pants when Carlos blew out a long breath and finally signaled a rest break.
She thought it was mid-afternoon. It had to be mid-afternoon. The dense green umbrella overhead let in only a few rays of light, but she felt as though she'd been swatting mosquitoes and slogging through greenery for days, if not weeks.
"How far have we come?"
He pulled the Global Positioning Satellite directional finder from the sleeveless vest and squinted at it through lashes beaded with sweat. "A little over five miles."
Her jaw sagged. "You're kidding, right?"
"Unfortunately, I'm not."
"Are you sure you know how to read that thing?"
He didn't bother to reply.
That meant the village was still a good five miles distant. Swallowing her dismay, Margarita sank onto a fallen log and placed the Beretta beside her. Her aching shoulders cried for a break.
His eyes unreadable behind those ridiculously thick black lashes, Carlos searched her face. "Can you make it?"
"I can make it."
"You've surprised me these past two days at how well you kept up."
Margarita accepted the implied compliment with a nod and a private little smirk.
"You're in better shape than I realized," he remarked casually.
Too casually. She caught the question behind his comment and felt her bubble of smug pride burst. Warily, she eased out of the backpack.
"I try to exercise regularly."
"When?"
"Excuse me?"
Planting a boot on the log, he hooked an elbow on his knee and regarded her thoughtfully.
"When do you exercise, Rita? I know you're usually at work before anyone else arrives, and you've certainly used the excuse of working late often enough to avoid having dinner with me. So how did you develop the stamina for the march we just put in, and how do you maintain it?"
"I do Jazzercise at home in the evenings," she replied, reaching up to rub her aching shoulders. "It helps me relax."
The brutal workout she put herself through every night was about as relaxing as sleeping on a bed of rusty nails. Her personal habits were her business, however, and no one else's—as she would have pointed out if Carlos hadn't brushed her hands aside at that moment and taken over the task of kneading her shoulders. After their initial shock of protest, her aching muscles melted under the magic of his strong, sure hands.
"You escape a brutal kidnapper, take down a wild pig with
a single shot and trek for two days through the jungle without a single complaint," he mused. "I don't know many women who could accomplish any one of those feats, let alone all three."
"Mmm."
"Men, either."
She didn't care for the direction of this conversation, but his incredible hands proved too distracting for more than a flippant response.
"Desperation is a great motivator. I've surprised myself, too."
"Have you?"
"Yes, I—Oh! Oh, God! Do that again."
Rotating his thumbs in the gap between her shoulder blades, he massaged the knotted tendons. Margarita closed her eyes and mewled in delight.
Diabolically, he waited until she was swimming in mindless pleasure before he slid his hands around her neck, hooked his thumbs under her jaw and tilted her head back against his knee.
"Do you take me for a fool, Rita?"
The question brought her lids flying open. Shock jolted through her when she saw the suppressed fury in his dark eyes.
"Tell me what game you're playing," he growled.
She wanted to. At that moment, with her head captured in his hands and his whisker-roughened chin set at a dangerous angle only inches above her, she wanted to tell him about SPEAR, about the call from Marcus Waters that had sent her rushing to the prison, about the scar-faced Simon and his seemingly murderous vendetta against Jonah.
Silently cursing the vow of secrecy she'd made so many years ago, she fell back on the same ambiguous answer she'd given Carlos before.
"I'm not playing any kind of a game."
Something flickered behind the anger in his eyes before they went cold and flat. Frustration, she thought. Or was it hurt that she wouldn't trust him with the truth?
Abruptly, he released her. "Are you rested enough to move out?"
"Carlos…"
"We should be able to cover another half mile before dark."
He picked up the machete and swung away. Feeling miserable, and annoyed because of it, Margarita slid her arms through the woven shoulder straps, tucked the Beretta into the waistband of her jeans and followed.
* * *
Their second night in the jungle passed much as the first had.
They shared a meal of cold roast pig and wild avocados, washed up with water from the plastic pouch and crawled under the mosquito net. Margarita lay cocooned against Carlos, all too aware of the distance between them despite the intimacy of their embrace. She ached to twist around in his arms, take his cheeks in her palms and kiss away the coldness that had settled in his eyes. The intensity of the need kept her from sleep, despite the exhaustion that pulled at her like a tide.
It also confused the heck out of her. She'd never felt this urge to pet and soothe and coax Carlos before. Nor had he ever withdrawn from her so deliberately. Only now did she realize how much she'd taken his even temperament and constant, if occasionally annoying, attentions for granted.
Ruefully, she recalled her mother's often repeated maxim that no wife should ever go to sleep angry with her husband unless she wanted to wake up angry with him, as well. Since the still beautiful Maria de las Fuentes had ruled supreme over her husband in all matters relating to her household for more than thirty years, Margarita conceded that her mother might have a point.
If only it was that simple, she thought, shifting restlessly on the nest of ferns. If only she could accept the role of a proper Madrileñan wife, content to keep busy at home while Carlos provided for her and the children she one day hoped to have.
Without warning, her womb clenched. The idea of bearing children, his children, gripped her and wouldn't let go. She stared into the darkness, envisioning the offspring she and Carlos would produce. Grinning, mischievous little girls. Cocky, dark-eyed boys who'd swagger along in their father's footsteps. One baby every other year, she thought wryly. Like a proper Madrileñan wife.
To her disgust, the prospect didn't dismay her as much as it usually did. Quite the contrary, in fact. An unexpected longing to hold Carlos's child to her breast tugged at something deep inside her. Would it be so bad to lose her identity in marriage and family? To spend her days at home and her nights in her husband's arms? Listening to his breath, warm and steady in her ear. Feeling his heartbeat strong and sure against her back.
For a few insidious moments, the prospect shimmered like a beacon in the darkness.
It was the jungle, she thought irritably. This damned jungle. The green, primordial rawness was closing in on her, stirring instincts older than time. To mate. To procreate. To sweep out a cave and build a nest. To soothe the disgruntled male who held her so stiffly in his arms.
The very disgruntled male, judging by the terse order he issued when she shifted restlessly once more.
"Go to sleep."
"I'm trying."
His arm tightened about her waist warningly. "Try harder."
The curt reply might have sparked a heated exchange if it wasn't so absurd—and if Margarita hadn't become suddenly aware of the reason he held her so stiffly, his body angled away from hers. All it took was another slight movement, a small, restless twitch of her hips that brought them into contact with his.
Her eyes popped wide open. She sucked in a swift breath, electrified by the rock-hard arousal pressed against her. Heat flared in her belly and burned its way into her chest.
Carlos jerked away from the intimate contact. In a voice that could have ground glass, he snarled in her ear.
"Go to sleep, dammit."
* * *
His disposition didn't improve with the dawn. Or with the passage of three more tortuous miles.
Grimly efficient, he whacked a trail through the dangling vines and ferns as tall as small trees. Margarita followed, even more confused than before by the contradictory feelings this man roused in her. She chafed at the shuttered expression in his eyes when they caught hers. Chafed more at the knowledge he wanted her every bit as much as she wanted him. She had only to remember the way he'd jutted against her jean-clad hip to go dry in the throat. Damn him and his iron control!
The consoling thought that he'd laid awake as long as she had last night kept her going for most of the day. They stopped only twice, once at midday to eat and once an hour or so before dusk. Sighing, Margarita eased off the backpack and rubbed the grooves cut in her shoulders by the plaited vine straps while Carlos scaled a jagged granite cliff to search for curls of smoke that would indicate the presence of humans. He found them, but not to the east in the direction of the village.
A muscle was ticking in the side of his jaw when he slid down the cliff face.
"They're behind us."
"The escaped prisoner and his band?"
"That's my guess. None of my men would be so foolish as to light a cook fire before nightfall."
"How far away are they?"
"A mile or more."
She sagged in disappointment. A mile in the jungle meant they were hours away. Too far to determine who, in fact, had built that fire. Her gut told her it was Simon, though, as Carlos had surmised.
The muscle in his jaw jumped again as he regarded her with dark, hooded eyes. "This man must want you very badly to track you like this."
Simon didn't want her, except as a means to get at the man at the helm of SPEAR.
"My guess is he wants us both," she countered, reaching for her backpack. "I told you, he blames you for destroying his base of operation in Madrileño. He's after you as much as me."
It was only half the truth, but it was better than a lie. Or so she told herself as she turned away.
"We'd better keep moving as long as we have light."
Slinging the pack over one shoulder, she was groping behind her for the other strap when the woven vine pouch thumped against her back. Startled, she halted with her arm in midair. The sensation of something slithering onto her shoulder stopped her heart.
She had time for a single prayer.
Let it be a small boa! Not a deadly pit viper or coral snake!
She caught a whiff of fetid breath, felt a brush of slimy fur. The realization that a slug rat had climbed onto her shoulder hit her at the precise instant close to two hundred pounds of fury slammed into her back.
Margarita pitched forward as Carlos ripped the uninvited hitchhiker off her neck.
Chapter 7
To a man who loathed the vicious rodents as much as Carlos, seeing one crawl onto Margarita's shoulder was like watching his worst nightmare played out in excruciating slow motion.
In the half second it took him to spear through the air, he registered a pointed snout, bared claws and a fanged mouth stretched in a hideous parody of a grin. Then his fist closed around the furry body and he went down, twisting in midair to avoid Margarita as she collapsed under his flying tackle.
Pure luck got him a one-handed grip behind the rat's head so it couldn't whip around and bite him. Pure adrenaline kept his right arm outstretched and the vicious fangs a good foot from his face as he rolled away from Margarita. He heard her panting sob as she scrambled to her knees, but didn't—couldn't—take his eyes from the hissing, spitting rodent that slashed his neck and arms with its tail.
On his back, with the rat's fangs a rigid arm's length straight above him, he fumbled with his left hand for the machete tucked into its scabbard.
Crack!
The single shot split the air. The three inches of rat protruding from Carlos's fist disintegrated.
He stared at his bunched fingers for a stunned moment, not hearing the clamor that filled the air as startled birds flapped into the sky and monkeys screeched into flight. Then his face contorted and he jerked upright, fighting free of the slack carcass. He'd barely managed to fling it away when Margarita threw herself down on her knees beside him and shoved him flat on his back.
"Lie still!" She followed her fierce command with a swift visual search of his face and neck. "Were you bitten?"
"No, I—"
"Don't move! Those things carry rabies."
"Never mind me. What about you?"
"I'm okay. Dammit, don't move."
Her eyes a purplish-black in their intensity, she tore open his vest and checked his upper arms and shoulders.
The Spy Who Loved Him Page 7