Dangerous Pursuit (The Protectors)

by Margaret Daley

  Samantha hurried across the room, throwing herself into Brock’s arms. “Where have you been?” she asked laughingly between kisses.

  “Taking care of Paul in the garden. He followed me outside and jumped me when I was alone.”

  Samantha pulled back and examined Brock’s face. “Are you okay?”

  “Fine,” he murmured, his mouth slowly descending toward hers. “And you?”

  “I’m fine.” Her lips whispered across his once, then again.

  “Well, well. What has happened here, Sis? I came to rescue you and everything’s been taken care of.”

  Samantha pivoted to face her brother, who was lounging nonchalantly against the doorframe, smiling, a gleam in his eyes. Her hands flew to her waist, and she took several steps toward him, anger and relief fighting for supremacy.

  Anger won. “You’ve come to rescue me! What have you been doing all this time?”

  Mark shoved himself away from the door, his grin wiped from his face as he backed away from her. “My intention at the beginning of this whole mess was to leave Brazil and wait until Carlos got tired of looking for me. But everywhere I turned, Carlos or his men were there. I went into hiding. Then I found out from your assistant in New Orleans that you were in Manaus with the book from the mission, and I saw an opportunity to set this all up to catch Carlos. I knew until he was captured none of us would be safe.”

  “You used me and didn’t tell me?”

  “I couldn’t without tipping him off to the trap. Believe me, I didn’t want to use you as a pawn, and I certainly didn’t like the idea. But, Sam, when you came down here, you put yourself into the middle of a hornet’s nest.”

  “Mark Prince, I should—”

  “I’m Brock Slader. I gather you’re Samantha’s brother,” Brock said in amusement as he reached around her to offer Mark his hand.

  “Yes. I want to thank you for helping Sam out.” Mark shook Brock’s hand, looking definitely relieved that Brock had interrupted Samantha’s tirade. “These last few weeks have been a nightmare. I was finally able to reach a friend who could arrange this trap.”

  “Who are these men?” Brock laid a comforting hand on Samantha’s shoulder and pulled her back against him.

  Mark pointed to Carlos on the floor. “He’s a major at a military outpost in the Amazon, so therefore the situation was a delicate one. I had to make sure I solicited the right kind of help. Gold makes men greedy. I had to wait until my friend returned from an assignment in the Amazon.”

  Behind Mark were three Brazilian policemen, ready to take Carlos into custody. Samantha watched as the major, regained consciousness and the policemen dragged him to his feet and took him out of the room. Obviously Mark’s friend was able to arrange the “right” kind of assistance.

  “His cohort is in the garden,” Brock said.

  “He’s being taken care of right now.” Mark looked from Brock to his sister. “Sam, am I forgiven for getting you into this mess? At the time you were the only one I could turn to for help. I thought I could get out of the country and be in New Orleans to reassure you in person that I hadn’t gotten in too deep. As it turned out, things weren’t that easy. I underestimated the Major’s influence.”

  When Mark flashed her his smile that he knew she could never resist, her anger melted completely, and only her relief that he was alive and safe remained. “How could I stay mad at you when you added such spice to my life? Just don’t do it again.”

  “You’re both entitled to an explanation after I take care of some details with the police. I’ll meet you back at your hotel in an hour and retrieve the book then.”

  After her brother left, the silence was fraught with tension. Everything would be fine with her brother, and now it was time to move on with her life. Samantha didn’t want this moment to happen. She squeezed her eyes shut and wished for the impossible.

  “Sam?”

  Her heart thudded against her chest. Her breath came out raggedly. She knew what Brock was going to say.

  He turned her around to face him, and she stared up into his eyes with an appealing look. “Sam, I have to..." He swallowed hard. "Let’s go back to the hotel and wait for your brother. We’ll talk later.”

  They both were postponing the inevitable, but Samantha would take every minute granted her. She nodded, wanting to reach up and cup his face, enticing him to kiss her. Instead, she turned and headed for the door and the hotel—and eventually that talk.

  At the hotel, Samantha paced one side of the room while Brock prowled the other, avoiding any physical contact. But when she occasionally looked at Brock, she found him looking back at her. Tension gnawed at her nerves until she couldn’t stand the silence any longer.

  “What are you going to do after Mark arrives?” she asked, stopping in the middle of the room.

  He pivoted to face her, his eyes dull. “It depends.”

  “On what?”

  “On your brother.”

  “Don’t worry. You’ve earned your ten percent. Mark will fulfill the promise I made to you.”

  “You’re very sure of your brother.”

  “I told you we were very close.”

  His gaze drilled into her. “It’s not the money or the gold I’m concerned about. It’s you. I want to make sure he’s going to be around.” He attempted a smile that didn’t quite reach his eyes. “After all, you don’t know how to speak the language.”

  Her heartbeat slowed to a painful throb. “I can take care of myself. If that’s all that’s keeping you here, then please go. I’ll make sure Mark gets your share to you for your oil deal.” She held her head at a proud angle, her body rigid.

  Brock ran his fingers through his hair repeatedly while his gaze remained linked to hers. “Sam—this isn’t easy.”

  Good, she thought, because it was tearing her up inside. In the back of her mind she had hoped when this moment arrived he would change his mind and return to New Orleans with her. From the beginning there had been a part of her, which hadn’t accepted that a person would prefer this life to the one she lived.

  “It just wouldn’t work between us, Sam.”

  She'd noticed he was back to calling her Sam, which made it clear where she stood with him. “I see we’re back to Sam again.” She tried to inject some lightness into her voice.

  “We’re from two different worlds.”

  “Oh, do you come from someplace I don’t know about?” Her question came out in a strained voice, and she swallowed to ease her dry throat.

  In two strides he was in front of her. “Making light of it isn’t going to work. You know what I mean and I believe you agree with me.”

  With wide, shimmering eyes, she stared up into his endearing face. “Yes, I do agree with you. I can’t even stand here and fight with you over it. These past two weeks have been unreal.” Finally she reached up and framed his face with her trembling hands. “A wonderful, thrilling adventure, but not real. My reality is New Orleans and my bookstore. Yours is this place or some other place like it.”

  He covered her hands with his own. “If I hadn’t lived in your world, I’d be sorely tempted to give it a try. But I have, and I know what it would do to me.” He twisted his head to kiss the palm of her hand. “Good-bye, Samantha. Tell your brother if he wants to get in touch with me I’ll be staying at the Grand Hotel for the next few days.”

  “Then where?”

  He stepped back, holding her hands in his. “Who knows?”

  For one static moment he looked deep into her eyes. Then he left.

  “I love you, Brock Slader,” Samantha whispered to the empty room.

  * * *

  “What do you think of this one, Samantha?”

  “Another trip, Mrs. Carson?” Samantha looked up from arranging some books on the shelf, remembering their conversation two months before and how she had wished she could go away to someplace warm. Boy, had she.

  “You guessed it.” The o
lder woman handed Samantha the book she was thinking of buying.

  “Not enough adventure,” Samantha immediately replied. “Dull.” Like her life lately, she added silently, not really surprised at the admission.

  In the six weeks since she had returned from the Amazon, she had pretended everything was back to normal, that she was happy and content with her secure life that rarely had anything unexpected happen. But she couldn’t kid herself. There was nothing normal about pacing her living room every night, wondering what Brock was doing at the moment, or sitting at the store counter staring into space, lost in a dream world of green plants, humidity, and heat. She had gone into the jungle dependent on Brock. When they had come out of the jungle, they had been dependent on each other. It had been a time for change and growth in a different direction for her, and she hadn’t completely realized that until she had returned to her normal, real world.

  “I think I’ll look for a book full of romance. Any suggestions?” Mrs. Carson asked, interrupting Samantha’s thoughts.

  Yes, memoirs of her trip to the jungle, if there was such a book, Samantha was tempted to say, remembering herself standing with Brock at the waterfall, embracing, kissing. The raw beauty of the Amazon had been reflected in the raw emotions between them.

  “Try this one,” she finally answered, taking a new romantic saga off the shelf in front of her. She hadn’t read it, but several of her customers had enjoyed it. Before, she would never have thought to recommend a book she hadn’t personally read, but like other things in her life since the Amazon, that had changed too.

  Mrs. Carson read the back cover, flipped through the first pages of the book, and said, “Thanks. I think I will. I’ve been so busy this last month that I haven’t had a chance to ask you how your vacation was last month. Nell told me you went south.”

  “It was a change of pace.”

  “Your vacation must be different from the ones I take. Whenever Tom and I go anywhere, we always end up running ourselves ragged, trying to see everything. We have to come home just to recuperate. I’m glad yours was quiet and peaceful.”

  Samantha smothered her laugh, turning away to act as if she were interested in stocking her shelves.

  “Where did you go? Nell never said.”

  “Brazil.”

  “Ah, the warm beaches of Rio. I can see why you were rested. Did you sample any of the nightlife? I’ve heard it’s quite hot.”

  Hot? Yes, it certainly was. “No, I rarely left my—accommodations.”

  “Oh. Well, that must account for all the rest you got. I’d better let you get back to work. I think I’ll look around some more. This may be a two-book business trip.”

  Samantha paid little attention to the books she was placing on the shelves. Usually she loved to scan them, deciding which ones she would read first. But now when she went home at night, she would end up daydreaming about another time, another place, another life. She no longer read or did the things she had done in her free time before the Amazon, before Brock.

  Face it, Samantha Prince, you're bored and lonely. You miss Brock, and no matter what you do, that fact isn’t going to change.

  She was beginning to think there was more of her brother in her than she had ever thought possible. Samantha was actually yearning for the life she had had with Brock. No, she was actually yearning for the man. She loved him, and nothing was going to change that—not time, not distance.

  “Samantha, look at this!” Nell scurried over to her, waving a current news magazine at her. “There’s an article about Mark in here.”

  “You’re kidding.” Samantha took the magazine and flipped through it until she found the article on her brother and the large gold deposit he had discovered.

  But what riveted her attention was that next to Mark in the picture was Brock. Her heart stopped beating for a few seconds. She caressed the black-and-white image on the paper, wishing he were standing in front of her so she could touch the man.

  “It tells all about how your brother found that man who was wounded and trying to escape the Major in the jungle. It makes Mark sound like such a romantic hero, describing how he tried to save the man’s life, even though in the end the man died of an infection.”

  The prospector had been staying at the Major’s outpost and had gotten drunk one night, telling them about the gold deposit he had found. From then on he had been running for his life. When Mark had tried to help him and the prospector had known he would die anyway, he had given Mark the complicated location of the gold deposit on the promise that her brother would make sure his wife back in Belem was taken care of. Mark had written the directions down in his journal in his abbreviated code when he had realized he was in as much danger as the prospector had been.

  “Who’s the man in the picture with Mark? Is that the man who helped you?”

  Samantha nodded, not trusting her voice. She hadn’t told Nell much about Brock, to her friend’s disappointment.

  “Wow. And you were with him for two weeks? I’m surprised you even came home. He’s something else.”

  “Yes, he is,” Samantha murmured, giving the magazine back to Nell, feeling more depressed and discontented than before.

  While she was in the Amazon she had kept trying to discover who Brock was, when in actuality his background was unimportant. It was the man he was that was important, and every day they had been together he had revealed another facet of his personality.

  “You never told me much about what happened in the jungle. Is it scary? Are there a lot of snakes? Bugs?”

  “Yes. Yes. And yes,” Samantha said with a laugh. “In fact, Brock saved my life when I had a close encounter with a fer-de-lance.”

  “I’d have died.”

  Not with Brock around. She could endure a lot with him. With that realization, she knew she could even endure an uncertain future if Brock was a part of that future.

  The ringing phone interrupted Nell’s next question, and Samantha hurried to answer it. She was expecting Mark to call her today.

  “Hi, Sam. How’s everything?” Mark greeted her.

  “More to the point, how are you doing? Any problems?”

  “Not now. I just can’t believe all the attention this thing is getting.”

  “I know. I saw an article on you in a magazine.”

  “A publisher has approached me about doing a book on my little escapade. What do you think? You’re the book expert.”

  “It definitely has possibilities. You always were creative, Mark.”

  “I might, once things settle down.”

  Samantha laughed. “Settle down around you?”

  “Sis, sometimes I envy your quiet, normal life.”

  And sometimes she envied his exciting, carefree life. Maybe that was the reason she always read adventures, thrillers, and romances. “Things can get pretty exciting around here. I don’t know if you could handle it. Just last week I had two checks bounce.”

  Her brother chuckled. “I hope to be in New Orleans in a month. Will you fix your favorite brother his favorite meal?”

  “I’ll fix my only brother shrimp gumbo.”

  “My mouth’s watering just thinking about it. Till then, Sis.”

  “Wait. Mark—” Samantha started to ask her brother about Brock but wasn’t quite sure what to say. Brock had walked away from a long-term commitment in Manaus as much as she had.

  “Brock was fine the last time I saw him. I kept your promise about the ten percent. I’d have given the man half. He saved your life. But he only wanted the ten. He said something about an oil deal he needed to finish up. I haven’t seen him in over a week. I wasn’t going to ask, Sam, but you know your nosy brother. What happened between you two?”

  “Nothing a plane ticket can’t fix. Do you think he’s still in Manaus?” She had changed Brock Slader’s mind about helping her find Mark. She was determined to change his mind about a more important matter.

  “I don’t kno
w. I can ask around. Why?”

  “Because I’m coming to Manaus tomorrow.”

  “Samantha Prince, you aren’t an impulsive person. What’s this world coming to?”

  “My world is finally going to be right. I’ll see you tomorrow. See if you can track down Brock. You know me and the language.”

  “Yes, Brock told me about how you two met.” Mark’s laughter flowed over the line. “See you when you arrive.”

  With her decision made, Samantha knew she had little time before she had to leave. First, she made a call to the airlines to book passage to Brazil. Then she informed Nell she was leaving again. Nell just smiled and told her that she had been expecting her to, especially after seeing the picture in the magazine. Samantha would have been crazy to let someone like him go, Nell informed her.

  Standing behind the counter, Samantha tried to make a list of everything she needed to do in the next twenty hours. She was down to paying her bills when Mrs. Carson came to the register to pay for three books. Nell was busy stocking the shelves, so Samantha rang up Mrs. Carson’s purchases, trying to hurry so she could leave.

  The bell over the door rang, indicating another customer. It would be just her luck to have the busiest day of the year when she had to go home and prepare for her early morning flight. Oh, well, it looked like another sleepless night. She was too excited to sleep anyway.

  “Be right with you,” Samantha automatically said to the customer who entered the store.

  “Take your time, Sam.”

  Samantha spun about, dropped the change she was going to give Mrs. Carson, and stared at Brock. Mrs. Carson looked from Samantha to Brock, then back to Samantha.

  “Is anything wrong, dear?” Mrs. Carson asked, worried.

  Samantha shook her head, absently scooping up the money on the counter to hand Mrs. Carson. If the older woman hadn’t quickly placed her hand under Samantha’s, she would have dropped the change again.

  “I was just talking to Mark,” Samantha murmured, marveling at her ability to say something so unimportant when the occasion called for brilliance. This was her chance to convince Brock they could work everything out, and her mind went blank.