Dangerous Pursuit (The Protectors)

by Margaret Daley

  Brock’s gaze briefly brushed her before returning to the guard. Brock spoke to the man in a calm, even voice that amazed Samantha. She would have been beside herself if someone were pointing a gun at her.

  Step by quiet step, she sneaked up on the guard, raising the piece of wood high above her head. She was sure the man could hear her thudding heartbeat, but Brock kept his full attention.

  With all her strength she swung the wood down onto the man’s head, wincing when she heard the thud as she struck him. He crumpled to the ground, and she sagged with relief. She took one look at Brock and ran into his arms, hugging him, checking to make sure he was all right.

  “Let’s get out of here before we have company.” As they passed the man, Brock bent down and checked his pulse.

  “Is—is he alive?” Samantha’s voice quivered.

  “Yes. He’ll have a nasty headache, but that’s all.”

  She released a long sigh. She would have done it all over again to save Brock, but she hadn’t wanted to kill the man, even if he did work for Carlos.

  Out in the main street they quickly fled the scene, heading away from the Grand Hotel. Samantha was completely turned around by the time Brock stopped in front of another second-rate hotel.

  “We’ll stay here for the night and decide how to find your brother.”

  Brock handled the arrangements, getting a room for them on the second floor with a window overlooking the street below.

  After inspecting their room, he turned to her and asked, “Where were you earlier?”

  Anger contorted his features and made Samantha step back. “I…” How could she explain that for a while she hadn’t trusted him? Somehow she suspected he wouldn’t laugh as he had in the jungle.

  He covered the distance between them, his flint-like eyes assessing. “Why weren’t you in the restaurant?”

  She swallowed several times and tried to speak, but nothing would come out.

  He gripped her arms and pulled her against him. “You scared me to death. I’d thought for sure that Carlos had you. I could hardly see or think straight when I came out of the restaurant.”

  “I couldn’t wait at the table, so I stood at the window. That’s when I saw the guard going into the hotel. I had to warn you.”

  “I told you I could take care of myself. I have for thirty-eight years.”

  Her anger began to surface. “And what would you have done if I hadn’t come along in the alley?”

  “I nearly had him convinced I wasn’t the man he was looking for.”

  Her forehead creased with a frown. “What do you mean?”

  “In the hotel lobby he approached me for directions. I knew who he was and that he didn’t really want those directions. He was testing me. I guess he wasn’t totally convinced I wasn’t the man with the American lady, so he followed me. If I hadn’t been so worried about you, I wouldn’t have turned down a dead-end street.”

  “Oh, so this is my fault?”

  “Absolutely. If you had stayed put, it wouldn’t have happened.”

  “Yeah, instead he would have had both of us at gunpoint.”

  “Why didn’t you come up to me when I came out of the hotel?”

  Samantha couldn’t look him directly in the eye. “I—I saw the guard following you.”

  “I don’t buy that.”

  “Why? It’s true.”

  “The guard didn’t immediately follow me. I made sure of that before I left.”

  “Okay.” She pulled herself from his grip and put as much distance as possible between them in the small room, pushing back the curtain to gaze out on the street below. “I saw you and the guard together in the lobby. It sure looked as though you two were long-lost buddies.” She glanced at Brock, her throat seizing her breath.

  “I see. You still think I’m working for Carlos—or at the very least trying to make my own deal.” His expression was totally closed, but his voice was full of disgust.

  She spun about and faced him. “No, I don’t now. I don’t think I ever really did, even on the river.”

  “You’ve read too many spy novels.”

  “You’re the one who said we can’t trust anyone.”

  “I didn’t mean each other.”

  “I’m sorry, Brock. It isn’t what—”

  “I think it’s a little late to be sorry.” He turned his back on her and opened his suitcase.

  “I know you have a perfect right to be angry with me, but under the circumstances—”

  “You’re wrong, Sam. I’m not angry with you. I’m just disappointed.”

  The edge to his words made her feel cold in the heat of the tropical city. “Please understand.”

  “Understand what? We owe each other nothing. This is a business arrangement between us, no more. You made that perfectly clear from the beginning.”

  “And you didn’t on the riverboat?”

  “I’m staying for one thing only: my ten percent of whatever your brother is talking about. I just hope I’m not being played for a fool. Once in my life is enough. Now, don’t you think we should get back to the business at hand of finding your brother and solving the mystery of the book?”

  “By all means. I wouldn’t want you to be cheated out of your percentage. We both need to get on with our normal lives.”

  Outwardly she appeared quietly angry, but inside she was hurting. By misjudging him she had lost any chance of ever making a relationship between them last. Part of her understood and felt his anger was justified, but why couldn’t he understand that the strange adventure she had been thrust into was often overwhelming and frightening? Logically his behavior at the hotel had been questionable, and her survival instinct had prompted her evasive action. In her heart, emotionally, she had known he wasn’t capable of betraying her like that.

  “The book, Sam? We’ll need it if we’re going to decipher the code. That is, if you trust me enough to look at it.”

  Clenching her teeth, she delved into her bag and produced the black book.

  Brock flipped through the pages, his forehead wrinkling with a frown of concentration. Finally he handed it back to Samantha. “Any ideas?”

  As she examined the book, she said, “I can’t shake the feeling that I should know this code. But numbers and letters? It doesn’t make sense.”

  “Codes rarely do except to the people who use them. Let’s start with the obvious and work from there.”

  “I read a book once—”

  “Only once?”

  She glared at him and continued, “About a code someone devised involving starting in the middle of the alphabet with M and alternating letters and numbers.” She wrote the beginning of the code down to show him.

  “Maybe your brother read the same book. Let’s see what we get.” Brock sat at the table that rocked every time he moved his hand across the pad. When he was through deciphering the first sentence of the message, he slid the paper across the table so Samantha could see it. “Unless this is a new language, I would say it’s probably not the right code.”

  They began going through possibilities, some wild ones, but after working on the book for three hours, all they had produced was a floor littered with discarded paper. They had ceased even the semblance of working together the last hour and each had his own pad, trying to break the code before the other.

  Samantha had a hard time concentrating on the jumbled letters and numbers of Mark’s book. Every time Brock moved, her attention was drawn to him—against her will, she told herself, knowing it was a lie. She loved the way his brow knitted and his jaw tensed when he was in deep thought.

  Samantha was watching Brock scribble some letters on the paper when he suddenly stopped writing in mid-word. Her gaze slowly, almost reluctantly, traveled up to his face. His eyes sparkled with silent humor as he stared at her staring at him.

  “Come up with anything?” she asked, her voice breathless, betraying her reaction to his appeal.
r />   “Yes."

  “You did?”

  He smiled with a twinkle of mischief in his eyes. “Yeah. That I’m tired of looking at numbers and letters and that I’m hungry. What about you?”

  “Do you think it’s safe to go out?”

  “What do you suggest we do?”

  “One of us can go out and bring some food back while the other guards the book.”

  “Any orders?”

  One of her eyebrows arched, much like he did. “You’re assuming I don’t want to go.”

  His smile broadened. “I’m not assuming anything. It’s very simple. I’m going because I speak the language and can order the food.”

  “You’re more familiar with Brazilian food, so anything that’s edible will be fine with me.” She was exhausted, too, with trying to decode the book and match wits with Brock. Above anything else, she really wanted to be held, loved, and told everything would work out.

  He put on his straw hat and left. While he was gone, Samantha stared at the book, the letters and numbers blending together. A childhood memory flitted in and out of her mind, trying to take shape…

  “Come on, Sam. It’ll be fun making up our own code.” Mark’s boyish face had lit with a smile. “We can play spy. I’ve got a great idea. I’ll use your name.”

  “My name? What are you talking about, Mark?”

  “Your name will be numbers, then the rest of the alphabet will be letters starting at the end and working to the front. Come on, Sam, let’s write a secret message.”

  Samantha blinked, seeing again the aged hotel room. That was it! Mark’s code was the same one he’d used when he was ten.

  She straightened in the chair and began to translate. By the time Brock returned to the room with the food, she knew what Mark had written.

  Before Brock had closed the door completely, Samantha was across the room and throwing her arms about his neck. “We’re rich! It’s gold!”

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  “It isn’t a city of gold but a large deposit of it. The book has very detailed directions to its location,” Samantha exclaimed while she relished the feel of Brock’s arms about her.

  “You’re kidding!” He pulled back to look her in the eye.

  “I’d never kid about something like gold. We’ll all be rich!” Her smile encompassed her whole face.

  He picked her up and swung her around and around, laughing from the sheer excitement of her discovery. Then suddenly he stopped. Their gazes touched. His laughter died, and her smile faded.

  “Samantha,” he whispered, then slowly brought his mouth down to hers.

  "I’m so sorry I ever doubted you. Please give us a chance.”

  He tensed and straightened, then put her back on the floor and stepped away.

  “Just for a moment you were able to forget your anger and react to me the way you really want to.” She spoke to his back, which was a rigid wall, shielding her from his expression. “I made a mistake. I’m human. Can you stand that and tell me you’ve never made a mistake in your life, Brock Slader?”

  He pivoted, his eyes sharp, cutting. “I’ve made my share of mistakes. One was helping a woman in a hotel lobby.”

  She met his hard gaze with one of her own. “You’ll get paid for your services.”

  “How soon?" he said as though he couldn’t wait to get away from her.

  For a few seconds she was numbed by his remark. All he cared about was the money. The past days meant nothing to him really. Then the pain came, and she had a difficult time fighting back the tears. She spun around, biting her lower lip to hold back her emotions that were cartwheeling between anger and anguish. She’d fallen in love, and he’d seen her as a way to make the money he needed for his venture.

  When he touched her shoulder, she flinched and put as much space between them as possible in the small room. She peered out the window onto the darkened street below, not really seeing anything.

  “I’m the one who should say I’m sorry.”

  “Why?” She tried to sound as though his words hadn’t hurt, but she heard her voice quaver.

  “Because I wanted to hurt you like you had hurt me.”

  She faced him. “I didn’t think you were capable of feeling that particular emotion.”

  “I’ve tried hard not to care about you, but I do, Samantha.”

  “Samantha?”

  “You seem more like a Samantha to me now than a Sam.”

  “Prim, proper, formal?”

  “No. Feminine, soft, very beautiful. I wanted to forget the days we spent in the jungle, getting close, getting to know each other. I can’t. I seized the opportunity this afternoon to use anger to force me to forget what we shared. It didn’t work.”

  “You’re not angry or disappointed that for a few minutes today I wasn’t sure I could trust you.”

  “I won’t deny it didn’t hurt or disappoint me, but I can understand why you felt that way. We’ve both been thrust into an unusual situation. We haven’t known each other long.”

  “My normal, ordinary world has been turned upside down. I sometimes feel I’m meeting myself coming and going. I’ve never imagined myself having to run for my life.”

  He chuckled. “Not even briefly when you’ve read an adventure or a spy thriller?”

  “Not even briefly.”

  He crossed the room to her. “I thought you immersed yourself into the characters of the books you read.”

  “It’s one thing to go through an adventure with some characters on a printed page and a completely different thing to actually live an adventure.”

  He rubbed his hands up and down her arms. “You realize how high the stakes are?”

  She nodded.

  “The mere mention of gold drives men to do things that in normal circumstances they wouldn’t even think of doing.”

  The molten silver of his eyes mesmerized her. “Our lives as well as Mark’s are on the line.”

  “I’m afraid it’s us or Carlos.”

  She couldn’t look away from the fiery claim in his eyes. “Hold me, Brock.”

  He took her into his arms as if it were the most natural thing in the world. They felt so right around Samantha that she didn’t know how she would cope when she had to leave him. In two weeks time he had entrenched himself into her life until she didn’t know how she would live her life without him.

  His arms about her were a sheath of gentleness as he whispered against the top of her head, “We’re two people set in our ways. Stubborn, full of pride. Neither wants to give in. Both of us are afraid and wary of the emotions we’re feeling. Let’s settle on taking each day we have together as it comes and enjoy whatever time has been granted us.”

  “But in the end we go our separate ways?” She wasn’t sure she wanted to hear his answer, the only one she knew he would give.

  “Is there any other way for us? I could never punch a time clock again. I’ve tried your world. I can’t live in it.”

  “You’re assuming again. What if I could live in your world?”

  “From the very beginning I’ve made it clear that long-term commitments aren’t in my life plan.”

  “I thought you didn’t plan.” With her arms tightening about him and her head against his chest, she squeezed her eyes closed and tried to imagine what it would be like without Brock; she couldn’t. And yet, she wasn’t ready to give up her life to wander the world. It went against everything she believed in and had always thought she wanted. “You’re right about me. I couldn’t see myself living from day to day with no regard for the future. It’s not me, but it is you.”

  He tilted up her head so he could kiss her. She felt the burning seal of his kiss deep in her soul and decided she would cherish every precious moment she had with him. When the time came, she would deal with the pain of parting.

  His tongue slowly, sensuously, traced the outline of her mouth before he kissed each corner, saying, “You have been a
breath of spring in my life.”

  Savoring the tingling pressure of his mouth on hers, she wondered when they went their separate ways if her life would be colder than winter in the Arctic. She never did like cold weather. Would she ever feel this kind of warmth again? For once she wasn’t going to think of the future but live for the moment.

  As he held her in his embrace, Samantha wanted to tell Brock she loved him. Yet he would see it as a chain she was trying to place about him, so she remained quiet, waiting for him to break the silence.

  “Samantha, I wish I was different, but…” His voice trailed off. He knew he didn’t have to complete the sentence. They both knew he wouldn’t, couldn’t change.

  The bittersweet longing in his voice made her heart twist with the impossibility of their situation. She was realistic enough to realize that love didn’t conquer everything, no matter how much a person wished it could.

  “You can’t teach an old dog new tricks,” she said with as much lightness as she could muster.

  The silence lengthened between them as Brock pulled her even closer.

  “Tomorrow we have to begin looking for your brother.”

  “How? You said if a man wants to get lost in this town he can.”

  “Let’s hope he wants to get in contact with you. After all, you have the book now.”

  “What if he’s at the gold mine?” She laid her head against his chest, listening to his heart beat.

  “Maybe he needs the directions as much as Carlos.”

  “I can call Nell at my store in New Orleans. Mark may have tried calling me there.”

  “That’s a place to start. We’ll see what she has to say."

  She leaned back to look into his eyes. “Would you save me again?”

  “Isn’t that the duty of a knight?”

  “But you don’t rescue damsels in distress.”

  “I can be persuaded by a beautiful face.”

  But not enough to give up his way of life. In the days to come she would have to remember that and start to steel herself against his charms.