Unbroken Vows

by Frances Williams

  “Stop it, I said,” he whispered against the fragile silk of her temple. “You’ve done enough thinking for one day.”

  He smoothed back her tousled hair and tightened his hold on her.

  Alarm leapt into her eyes.

  “No, David... I don’t...”

  Giving the lie to her weak protest, her hands crept to his chest and grasped his shirt as if it were a lifeline. With what could have been a faint sigh of defeat, she curved her softness against him and dropped her head onto his shoulder.

  “Hush,” he soothed, cuddling her close. “Hush. You’ve had one hell of a day. Let go of it.” He rocked her gently in his arms until he felt some of the tension drain out of her.

  He was holding her simply to comfort her, he told himself. Not because it filled him with pleasure. Not because of the comfort it brought him. He wasn’t a boy. He could control himself. He wouldn’t let their embrace get out of hand.

  The justification he forced into his mind needed a lot more work to sound the least bit convincing.

  His fingers encountered the pliant side of her right breast. By accident, he told himself. No way, what was left of his conscience countered. Her hand moved up to his shoulder, giving him the room to stroke gently back and forth over the yielding curve.

  With a small sigh she shifted against him. The soft heat of her middle arched into him. He swallowed a groan. His manhood swelled to hot, throbbing life. He gritted his teeth.

  This embrace isn’t for your benefit, you jerk. It’s for hers.

  Cara clung to David’s comforting solidity. She hadn’t meant to thrust herself against him that way, but after the cold hard scene of death in the barrio, she so needed to be close to his wonderful warmth, his vibrant life.

  She needed him to hold her. Needed to lean on the strength he never seemed to lose. Her own had fled when she’d had to walk away and leave that sad young man lying all alone in the dirt. Lying there perhaps because of her.

  She squeezed her eyes shut against that dispiriting thought and snuggled her face into the strong steel wall of David’s chest. The scent of him arrowed straight through her, leaving a nebulous, shivering need in its wake.

  Her cheek picked up the vibrations of the low growl rumbling through his chest. A growl that sounded strangely like anger.

  Before she could begin to wonder where the sudden anger came from, his fingers roughly clasped her chin and tilted her face upward. The miraculous heat of his mouth rid her of the chill that had clamped over her at the killing scene.

  Large strong hands molded her breasts, blanketing her whole body in shuddering, wanting heat. The light fabric of her blouse and bra couldn’t prevent her nipples from puckering and straining closer into the warmth of his palms.

  Forever, it seemed, she’d craved to feel David’s burning touch directly on her bare skin. Hard on her mental wish, he fumbled at the top button of her blouse.

  Fearing that his large fingers wouldn’t manage the tiny fasteners quickly enough, she slipped the remaining buttons out of their loops.

  With the frustrating care of a person opening a longed-for Christmas gift, he slowly spread apart the sides of her blouse. The raptness of his expression as he gazed at her breasts barely concealed behind their small scallops of lace made her feel she possessed a sexual skill she never knew she had.

  Slowly and reverently he drew the backs of his fingers down the valley of her breasts. A delicious quiver ran through her.

  His trailing fingers reached the front fastening of her bra. He flicked open the hook and brushed aside the lace. The fullness of her breasts fell into his cradling hands.

  “Your skin feels like warm, delicate satin.”

  She thrilled to the hoarse purr of his voice.

  His thumbs brushed over her nipples, caressing both into tight, hard nubs.

  A bright sting of pleasure shot through her. A soft cry of delight pulled from her throat.

  His lips found the base of her throat. Her pulse hammered beneath the searing contact, and her head dropped back. With tormenting slowness his lips dragged a burning fuse down the rise of her chest.

  In a flagrant plea for a more intimate contact she raised her hands to tangle in the thick waves of his hair, and arched her back to lift her breasts closer to his mouth.

  He bent and brushed his lips teasingly over one piercingly sensitive tip. His tongue flicked out to taste.

  A moan of purest pleasure escaped her. His muted groan echoed hers.

  If he didn’t give her more, she was afraid she might slip to the floor and beg him for it. Only his immediate, tantalizing response to that unspoken desire kept her from going that far. His hot, wet mouth engulfed the burning crest of her breast, bathing the whole of it in moist, aching fire.

  Hovering want flared out and licked at her womanhood. Molten excitement rolled through her veins. She was sure she’d die if she didn’t soon feel his searing mouth moving over every part of her.

  She was ready to implore him for exactly that. He’d join her in that bliss in a heartbeat, she knew. His arousal pressed hot and hard against her. His breathing rasped as ragged as hers. One word from her and he’d stay the night.

  Her whole body screamed at her to give him that word.

  She moved a leg against his. Clammy cold brushed against her ankles. She glanced down. The bottoms of his trousers were still soaked from the stream.

  The whole frightening day rushed back at her—the attack, Manuel’s broken body lying forlornly by the ditch.

  Her pleasure, her happiness at being held in David’s arms flowed away like water from a smashed pitcher.

  Not all of it, though. A different kind of happiness stayed with her. A feeling that went way beyond a desire for sex. Far beyond the simple affection and admiration she’d had for David Reid since they’d met. A feeling that lodged deep inside her, so overwhelming it almost felt like hurt. So powerfully emotional, she flailed about for logic to counter it.

  What she thought she felt for David made no sense.

  How could she be in love with him? Only a teenager fell in love this easily. This fast. Or this hard. Especially not this hard.

  The strange feeling flooding her heart had to be the result of the guilty loneliness that had plagued her for so long. Or stress. Or the horror of the depressing scene they’d gone through an hour ago.

  That was it. She grabbed for the rational excuse with both hands. She and David were making love in reaction to the psychological trauma of today’s attack and Pereira’s death. This growing ache in her heart for him was simply part of that perfectly normal reaction to severe mental stress.

  Was this what she wanted? Making love with David Reid as a form of therapy? She didn’t turn up her nose at treatment of any kind that helped make a hurt better. But the therapy of sex with David, no matter how wonderful, how consoling, would only complicate her life and lead to more pain.

  Pointless to hope for anything more than the relief of sex from a man who’d made it quite clear that he was with her only because of a mission he never wanted any part of in the first place.

  She already knew firsthand how destructive a one-sided relationship could be. No matter how much she wanted David, she wasn’t about to foist herself on a man who was unwilling—perhaps unable—to make any real commitment to her other than the purely professional obligation he’d taken on.

  “David.”

  She wasn’t sure her body, still straining for the relief only he could give it, would let her do what she wanted to do.

  She pushed against his chest.

  His hold on her didn’t budge.

  “David, it’s been a terrible night.” She tried again to escape his grasp, with no more success than the last effort. “We need time to recover from it before we get ourselves into something we might both be sorry for.”

  From the naked desire flushing David’s face, his struggle to control his rapid breathing, she half hoped he might contradict her. Half hoped he’d simply conti
nue to lock her to him and kiss her senseless. Wished he might order her once again to quit thinking so much and get on with what they both so obviously needed.

  “Yes,” he growled. “Of course.” He opened his arms, allowing her escape.

  She wrapped her blouse over her still throbbing breasts and tucked it into her skirt. Crazy to feel so dejected at getting precisely the response she’d asked for from him. She turned away, pulling her professional persona around her.

  “Get out of those wet things as soon as you can,” she ordered, pleased that her voice contained such a slight wobble he might not have heard it. “Who knows what kinds of contaminants were in that water. Take a shower when you get back to your room. I’ll do the same. We should see about getting tetanus boosters when we get back to the States.”

  Putting more distance between them should help her resist the impulse to rush back into his arms. She hoped he wouldn’t read that embarrassing admission in the quickness with which she scurried back to the couch. Picking up the tumbler from the table, she drained the last half inch of brandy left in it.

  “I suppose we’ll be leaving tomorrow,” she said. “There’s no point in staying any longer.”

  “I agree.”

  His voice was cold. And unlike hers, completely steady. Distancing himself from her, his anger was written in the careful stiffness of his body, in the guarded blankness of his face.

  With humiliating eagerness to get away from her, he limped quickly to the door and yanked it open.

  How could she blame him? She’d wantonly led him on, only to cut him off without granting him the physical release her teasing actions had given him every right to expect.

  “We leave tomorrow,” he said with curt directness. Without bothering to look back at her, he pulled the door shut behind him.

  Exhaustion swept over her. She might have fallen to the floor if the couch hadn’t been there to catch her.

  The people who called her search a crazy obsession were right, she decided, with a surge of anger at the foolish compulsion that had led her here. She should never have come on a mission that led only to the death of a man she barely knew, and a tangle of emotions over a man who didn’t want her, except in bed.

  David was a decent man. He hadn’t pressed her on that when he could have.

  He couldn’t help his lack of any serious feeling for her. Any more than she could help the feelings that raged through her for him.

  David lay in his lonely bed, his body still aching from the strain of being denied what it so strongly craved. Cara never knew how close he’d come to laying her down on the floor of her room and taking her with or without her consent. She’d wanted the same thing, he was certain, until thoughts of the damnable Grant turned her off.

  Only fair if she was having as lousy a night as he.

  If he needed further proof that he was now nowhere near the man he used to be, the incident at the religious procession this afternoon had provided it. In spades. Before he was shot up, he could have prevented those goons from getting anywhere near Cara. He could have left them in the dirt in a few capable moves.

  No more.

  He’d mentally castigated Tommy for involving her in a killing. But David Reid had been the one to lead her to that scene of murder in the barrio. Led her there against his better judgment.

  He frowned in puzzlement. It was so hard to refuse her anything. No one else was able to make him do something he didn’t want to do. Why should it be any different with her?

  His mouth jerked into an ironic smile. For starters, she never allowed him to refuse her anything. Not even when he knew refusal would be for her own good.

  That enraging thought made him hurl a sharp curse into the quiet dark of his room. For the third time since he’d hauled his tortured body into bed, he reached over and clicked on the bedside lamp. He shot a baleful glance at the crumpled bit of paper lying on top of a glossy brochure on the nightstand.

  Damn. He should never have stopped to make that quick search of Manuel’s pockets just before he led Cara back to the taxi. If he hadn’t found that wet and almost illegible note he wouldn’t be facing this problem now. And he should never have given in to the damnable inquisitiveness that sent him back down to the lobby to search the rack of advertising brochures aimed at tourists for the note’s same two words.

  He snatched up the colorful pamphlet and absently flicked it against his chest as he pondered the fix he’d placed himself in. He didn’t have to read the brochure. He’d already done that several times.

  Manuel could have scribbled those words for any number of reasons, David argued lamely with himself. They didn’t necessarily refer to the information Pereira had planned to give them. Maybe the enterprising young man had been planning to branch out his business to the resort trade. Maybe he was thinking about taking a vacation. The five hundred dollars he’d demanded for his information would have helped him do that.

  David threw himself back down on the pillow. He knew damn well what the note meant. The only real question was: What was he going to do about it?

  Undoubtedly the smartest thing to do would be to let Cara go on believing that they’d come to the end of her search.

  The attack at the village was bad enough. Pereira’s death scared the hell out of him for her safety. He wanted nothing more than to get her out of this threatening place as fast as possible.

  He gave a firm nod of decision. That’s what he’d do. She’d done more than enough for Tommy. Tomorrow he’d take her back to Baltimore.

  He tossed the brochure back toward the nightstand. It skidded across the tabletop and fell to the floor. He left it there.

  Chapter 11

  David watched Cara toss her travel bag onto the bed and pull open the zipper. His own packed case waited by the door.

  “After last night,” he said with a hopeful nod, “I’m sure you’ve had enough of this whole thing. You’re more than ready to go home. I know I am.”

  She gave him a dispirited smile. “I can believe that, David, after what I’ve put you through. Yes. I’m finally giving up on trying to find Tommy.”

  He should be glad. He shouldn’t let that tone of flat defeat in her voice bother him. He kept his mouth pressed tightly shut.

  She strode to the dresser and scooped up a sweater and a couple of blouses from the top drawer. She folded a blouse neatly into the case and stacked another on top.

  “What other choice do I have?”

  Just a rhetorical question, he reminded himself. No need to give her an answer.

  “I may be too darn tenacious for my own good, but I’m not stupid. After all our work—” she flicked him a glance “—all your hard work, David, Pereira was our only lead. With him gone, our chances of finding Tommy are nil.”

  She walked to the closet and slipped a dress from its hanger. “It’s just that...” She halted halfway back to the bed and chewed on her lower lip. “Well, I’ve come so far, it’s hard to leave without being able to confront Tommy about — ”

  “Damn it, woman,” David broke in. “Stop talking about that man. Stop living your life around him.”

  Fury seethed through him. With her it was always Tommy. She claimed she was never really in love with the man, but the louse still had to mean something to her. In spite of everything he’d done, everything that had happened to her here in Colombia, it was still Tommy.

  David gnashed his teeth. The thought of her once being Grant’s lover—the thought of her as being anyone’s lover but his—inflamed him. A totally irrational reaction. He wasn’t in the market for commitment. And even if he were, he wanted so much better for her than himself.

  He heaved a sigh of frustration. This wasn’t about him. Nor was it about his feelings. It was about Cara and her single-minded efforts to help a longtime friend. How could he fault her for wanting to see a mission through to the end? Exactly what he’d always done himself.

  Until now.

  That repugnant idea surfaced in his mind. N
ot only was his silence forcing Cara to quit, but he was quitting, too. The admission made him squirm.

  He was quitting. Why? Was he afraid of what might happen if she ever did meet up with that jerk again? Was he throwing in the towel on a job he didn’t like out of sheer jealousy of a man for whom he felt nothing but contempt?

  That question was one he didn’t want to touch. He wasn’t ready to deal with what jealousy that deep might imply.

  One thing he did know: The loyalty to a man and the devotion to an idea that drove Cara had to be respected, whether he approved of it or not.

  Concern for her safety wasn’t the only worry biting him. If she went home believing she’d failed, would she ever really be through with the detestable Tommy? Everything he’d learned about her made him doubt that. How many more years might she go on struggling under that needless load of guilt she carried?

  He wanted her to be completely through with Dr. Thomas Grant. He wanted her to be happy. She’d known so much heartache, she was overdue for enough happiness to balance the scales.

  He yearned to get her away from this dangerous place. Nevertheless he had to concede that a woman who strived so hard to accomplish what she’d set out to do had a right to make her own decision on whether or not to take this final step.

  Angry at himself for not having the guts to look her in the eyes and go on lying to her—or at least, not telling her the whole truth—he yanked the advertisement from his pocket and thrust it out to her.

  “Here. I found a note mentioning this place on Manuel’s body.”

  Cara looked up from her packing and gazed at him across the bed. “On Manuel’s body? What is it?” Dropping the dress she was holding onto the case, she took the pamphlet from him.

  She opened the brochure and glanced through it. “I can’t read this, David. It’s printed in Spanish.”

  “You’re holding a brochure advertising a luxury casino-resort on Colombia’s Caribbean coast.”