His smile was tender. “Yes, home…to the houseboat.” He slid his hand down her arm, cupped her elbow and slowly turned her around on the trail. “I’ll take you home, Catt. Just trust me….”
Trust…there was that word again. Stumbling over her own feet, Catt realized she’d pushed beyond her own stamina reserves. This time she had no mean words of anger or hostility for him. She couldn’t pull up her defensive walls against Ty if she tried.
“I’ve got to save them, Ty….”
He heard the slight slur in Catt’s speech. Falling into step with her, he shortened his stride for her sake as she wove unsteadily down the path. “I know, I know…but you can’t do it at a risk to your own life. You know if you don’t get enough sleep that leaves you wide open to this infection, too.”
Rubbing her brow with unsteady fingers, Catt choked out, “Mandei…she’s pregnant…I’m so afraid for her. I went back three times to see how she was doing….”
Wincing, Ty felt Catt stumble again. To hell with it. He placed his arm around her shoulders. “Lean on me, Catt. Just for a little while, lean on me. I’ll get you home.”
Wearily, she did as he asked. “You feel so strong. I feel like a wimp,” she muttered. Yes, he felt strong, and good and steady. Everything she did not feel presently. His fingers closed firmly around her shoulder and she smiled a little. “You were always so strong….”
“You’re strong, too, Catt, but you just don’t know your physical limits sometimes.” Hunter looked down at her. Unable to believe she was really leaning on him, he again felt that frisson of hope spring to life in his chest.
Rubbing her watering eyes with the back of her hand, she murmured, “Mandei…I’m worried….”
“I know,” Ty replied soothingly.
“Her baby. Oh Lord, Ty, I’m afraid she’s going to die. And I won’t be able to save her baby if she does….” She sniffed. Looking up at the jungle overhead, she added, “There’s no preemie incubators out here. There’s no nothing. It’s frontier medicine, bare bones. If she dies, I can’t save her baby and—”
He heard her sob once. Ty halted and moved in front of her, his hands settling on her slumped shoulders. There was such raw anguish in Catt’s eyes as she looked helplessly up at him.
“Why can’t medicine save them both?” she cried. She placed her fists against his chest. “Why?”
Shaking his head, Hunter tunneled his fingers through her hair. “You’re doing everything you can, darlin’. It has to be enough, don’t you see?”
“No!” Catt’s cry was absorbed by the jungle surrounding them. “No, I refuse to accept that, Ty. Dammit.” She wiped her nose with the back of her sleeve. “I won’t let Mandei or her baby die! They just can’t!”
“Come on, keep walking,” he counseled her hoarsely. Ty couldn’t stop what he saw happening before his eyes. Catt was too caught up in the emotional drama of Mandei’s sickness. But for the moment she moved without fighting him, and for that he was relieved. They continued down the path, his arm around her shoulders to guide and steady her.
“This village is in terrible shape, Ty,” Catt continued in a broken whisper. “I’ve seen outbreaks before, but not like this…not to this extent. Lord, half the community has been wiped out by this—this bacteria…virus…whatever the hell it is….”
Ty let her continue to babble. He knew how worried Catt was. She of all people knew what outbreaks were capable of doing. She was no stranger to them, yet the combination of seeing him again and having to deal with dying children and pregnant mothers was too much for Catt to handle. Especially when she was dog tired like this.
Finally, he saw lights ahead and knew that they were coming to the lab tent and the houseboat. The rest of the medical team were huddled around a campfire as they cooked a late meal. Glancing down at his watch, he realized it was nearly 2:30 a.m.
To his surprise, he felt Catt suddenly pull away from him. He halted, his eyes widening. She seemed more alert now, as if getting a second wind. Her eyes were clearer, too. His heart twinged as they raked him.
“Don’t you dare take advantage of me like that again,” she ordered fiercely. Jabbing her finger into his chest, her voice high and off-key, she added, “You can’t be trusted, Hunter. I’ll never trust you!” And she turned on her heel and hurried down the path toward her team.
Standing there, Ty snapped his mouth shut. Catt was so tired and out of it that she probably hadn’t realized what had happened. When she had, she’d reacted defensively. Rubbing his chest, he scowled. Well, what the hell did he expect? For Catt to fall into his arms without a fight? No. It wasn’t her way. She was a Texas rancher’s daughter. Ty knew of her past, of the small, struggling cattle ranch in West Texas where there was little water and little grass for the animals. Her father had had a heart condition, and after her mother had died when Catt was only six years old, Jed Simpson had made Catt into the son he’d always wanted but never got. She was an only child and her father had relied heavily on her to keep the ranch afloat and viable. Without her help, the ranch would have ceased operating a lot sooner.
As Ty stood there, he remembered vividly her telling him one evening about her father, of her harsh life in Texas. Catt had known nothing but a hardscrabble existence, fighting to keep the cattle alive until they could be sold for money to pay the ranch’s heavy mortgage. Her father was a dreamer, although he’d worked hard to make his dream come true. When his wife died, part of him had, too. Catt was all that was left for him. He treated her like a son more than a daughter.
Ty had never forgotten the evening she’d told him about her childhood. They’d lain in one another’s arms after fierce lovemaking in front of a campfire on the beach at Half Moon Bay. She had snuggled up beside him, naked and sipping the wine they’d brought along. Wrapped with her in a blanket, he’d held her close to him, feeling satiated and more happy than he could ever recall being. As they lay on their blanket and watched the fire lick, jump and illuminate the darkness around them, the thunder and crash of the waves not far away, Catt had told him the sad story.
“My dad…” she had begun, after sipping the fruity chardonnay from the plastic cup, “he was a fighter, Ty. You’d have liked him.”
He’d glanced down at her, lifting his head just enough to catch that drowsy, fulfilled look in her eyes. “I love his daughter, so I’m sure I’d have liked him.” He saw a flush steal up her cheeks and it made him love her even more fiercely. Catt was so open then, so available and vulnerable to him, to his words, to each grazing touch and tone he shared with her.
“No…really, you’d have liked him.”
He brought her back into his embrace fully and closed his eyes, content as never before. “I’m sure I would, darlin’. What happened to him?”
“Oh…it’s sorta sad….” Catt mused softly. She looked down at the plastic cup in her hand. “Ever since Mama died, he wasn’t the same. I remember at the funeral Daddy cried. I’d never seen him cry before or after that. I just sorta stood there crying too, because I’d never seen him so unhappy.” With a slight shrug, she rested in Ty’s embrace. “After that, Daddy seemed to dry up and go away like water does on that Texas desert we called home. I really tried to be a help to him and not a problem. I knew he worked himself to the bone sixteen hours a day. I knew how much the ranch meant to him. He and Mama bought it when they’d first been married. It was a dream come true for them. They had talked about starting a dynasty. I was their firstborn. They talked of having a passel of kids, at least six because ranch work is so hard, and a large family would be a big help in getting the ranch operation growing.
“Daddy had lots of dreams and he was willing to work hard to make them come true. When Mama died suddenly, I did the cooking, cleaning and helped him as much as I could. About a year after she died, he started having heart pains. He never told me about ’em, but he took pills for it. Nitroglycerine tablets. I was too young to understand, I guess, but he never once asked me for help.” Catt fro
wned and pressed the edge of the plastic cup against her lips as she stared, mesmerized, into the fire. “Once, when I was sixteen, I was out riding fence with him. It was hotter than a firecracker out there that day. The sun was blistering. It musta been over a hundred degrees in the shade. Daddy was sweating a lot. We’d find a fence post that had loosened barbed wire and we’d dismount, fix it, mount up and ride on until we found the next place where the cattle had tried to push through.
“All at once Daddy started gasping real hard. He grabbed his chest. I turned around in the saddle. He went white. I heard him cry out, and then he toppled out of the saddle. I was scared. I jumped off my horse and ran back to him. He lay there on that hard, unforgiving Texas dirt and died. There was nothing I could do. I felt so helpless…. After the funeral, I got told by the judge that the ranch would be sold back to the bank. Now, the local sheriff, Henry Brooks, took pity on me. Both my mama and daddy were orphans, so I didn’t have nowhere to be sent to. The sheriff took me in as a foster child.
“He made sure that the herd of cattle was sold off and the money from it put into an account for my college fund. I lived with him and his wife for two years and finished my schooling. What I didn’t know is that he’d taken that money from the cattle and invested it in the stock market. By the time I was eighteen, I had more than enough money to get a good education and a little left over for dorm expenses.”
Ty shook his head. “That was a hard life for anyone.”
With a tiny shrug, Catt said, “Looking back on it, I don’t think it was. My parents gave me my drive, my discipline and ability to carry through on things.”
“And that’s why you want to be a doctor?” he’d asked gently.
Nodding, tears in her eyes, Catt whispered, “Yes…I don’t ever want to feel helpless like that again when a human being is dyin’. I want—I will—make a difference next time….”
As Ty remembered her emotion-filled declaration that night so long ago, he understood even more clearly why Catt refused to lean on anyone, especially him. She had reached out to him once when he was too young, too foolish to see how much she needed him. Earning her trust again would be a challenge. A challenge Ty was more than ready to take on.
Chapter Seven
Catt twisted and turned in the bed, her dreams torrid. Ty was kissing her, melting the wall around her heart and soul. He was touching her, his fingers gliding warmly across the sensitized skin of her face, holding her at just the right angle for his mouth to descend once again upon hers. The beauty of his tender lips engaging hers made her moan. Hungrily, Catt leaned upward to meet and dissolve within his very male embrace.
A noise awakened her.
Catt groggily sat up. What time was it? Where was she? Pushing several strands of hair off her brow, she rubbed her puffy eyes. Her body throbbed with need. She felt heat pooling languidly in her lower body, that ache so familiar, so filled with desire. How long had it been since she’d felt like a thousand suns were burning so brightly within her?
Looking around, she saw that Ty had left his bed, his sheet wadded up in the corner. Glancing at her watch, she saw it was five o’clock. She had to get going! There were people to see, to help, lives to try to save. Hurriedly taking a shower, Catt dressed in a pair of jeans and a white T-shirt that had a bit of lace at the neckline, then put on her socks and a pair of sensible shoes. Running a brush through her hair, she hurried up on deck.
Dawn was barely edging away the night. Gripping the rail, Catt sleepily struggled across the graying, splintered deck. The Amazon River was a wide, muddy ribbon before her.
“What are you doing up so early?”
Catt gasped and spun to the left. Ty was sitting on some coiled rope, looking out across the moving water. Not quite awake yet, she stood there helplessly, her lips parting beneath his torrid inspection. Hunter was dressed in clean clothes, his hair gleaming from just being washed. He gave her a boyish smile of welcome.
“I thought you might be up soon. Here….” he said, pouring her some coffee from the Thermos at his side, “Drink this and relax a bit, we should wait until it lightens up a little before we head to the village.”
She swallowed hard as he handed her a cup of strong, fortifying coffee.
“Sugar and cream, right?”
Dumbly, Catt took the proffered cup. Their fingers met and touched. Something good and healing flowed up through her hand. She was too sleepy to raise her shield against Ty. A huge part of her needed him right now to offset the terrible weight of grief for the Juma people that lay in her breast. It was her need of him that made Catt go to the other coil of rope a few feet from where he was sitting.
“Uh, yes…right…” She sounded like an idiot. Sitting down, her thighs apart, her hands between them holding the warm cup, Catt took a grateful sip of the hot, fragrant liquid.
Ty smiled a little as he watched her drink the very necessary coffee. This morning Catt looked more like a little girl than a warrior woman, a Joan of Arc trying to save an entire village. He saw the dark smudges beneath her sleepy-looking blue eyes. Her hair was still damp and lay in freshly combed waves around her face. More than anything, Ty felt her vulnerability. When she’d taken the cup from him, he’d felt a fine trembling in her fingers as his hand brushed hers. Ty knew she was on the edge of exhaustion.
“I’ve been watching the world wake up,” he confided in a low tone. “There’s probably about fifteen or twenty parrots across the river.” He pointed to the opposite bank. “They fly up, I see a flash of red or yellow, and then they dive back down into the canopy to hide.”
Catt looked around, a lot of the weight on her shoulders dissolving beneath the dark honeyed tone of Ty’s voice. He could always soothe her nervousness, her pent-up tension, with just his voice. It was an amazing thing to Catt that one person could have such an overwhelming effect on her like that. No man had made her feel that way since she’d left Ty. Only him. The memory of the torrid dream that had awakened her made heat crawl into her cheeks. Catt purposely stared down at the coffee cup.
Clearing her throat, she said, “I miss the stars here. There’re always clouds up there.” And indeed, the gauzy film of clouds was becoming visible as daylight chased the night away. The clouds twisted and moved as if in slow motion. Strands would form, like long tentacles, and then move back into the main mass. Then more strands would form, only to be reabsorbed.
Ty nodded. “That’s the only bad thing about the equator area of the Amazon.”
“In a way,” Catt said wistfully as she watched the clouds, “this place reminds me of a birthing incubator of sorts—it’s hot, humid, moist and so alive, so pulsing, with life.”
Nodding, Ty said, “Rafe works closely with a woman named Inca, who is known as the jaguar goddess here in Brazil. He was telling me yesterday that Inca is worshipped as a goddess in the flesh around these parts. The Juma are one of the tribes that she tries to protect from marauders. He was saying that Inca has told the Juma that the Amazon basin is really the womb of Mother Earth.” He met and held Catt’s drowsy gaze. “I liked the way she described this region. And it looks like you and Inca are on the same wavelength about this place.”
Catt wanted to drown in Ty’s soft cinnamon gaze, which burned with such tenderness—toward her. She was aware of that special look he gave her. It made her feel cherished, nourished and loved. Loved? Instantly, Catt rejected that notion. Cradling the cup between her hands, her voice still husky from sleep, Catt whispered, “How do you see this place?”
Ty was pleased and delighted that they were talking like they used to. He yearned for a white flag of truce between them. One corner of his generous mouth lifted. “Well, I’m a little prejudiced about it, Catt.” He gave an appreciative look around. The cape of night was drawing back. To the east the dull glow of day was being birthed on the horizon. “I’ve spent a lot of time in South America over the last six years. For me, this is home away from home. I like coming to the Amazon. It’s a special place—a p
lace where mystery and magic combine, and sometimes, if you’re in the right place, you can physically see some of that magic.”
She smiled softly and held the cup next to her cheek as she observed him. Ty’s face was free of tension, and he was so handsome to her. His was a face filled with character, with the scars of life imprinted upon it. She couldn’t help letting her gaze fall back to that very male mouth of his, now twisted slightly in a half smile of wonder at the beauty surrounding them. Just hearing that low, roughened tone as he spoke of the sense of mystery he had experienced in this place made her feel incredibly tender toward him.
Sipping her coffee, Catt pulled her gaze from him and stared out across the slow-moving water. “Can you give me an example?” she asked. “What have you seen that seemed magical and then turned into reality?”
Chuckling, Ty sipped his coffee. He saw a number of emotions on Catt’s face. He still saw wariness in her glorious blue eyes, but there was something else he couldn’t quite decipher. He’d seen that look from her before, long ago, however, when he would love her senseless and then simply hold her for a long time afterward in his arms, talking, touching and enjoying the closeness they shared.
“Inca would be a good example of it.”
“The so-called jaguar goddess?” Catt said with a hint of derision.
“Don’t be so fast to condemn her status among the local Indians,” he cautioned. “Inca has earned her reputation here. The Indians believe all things are alive, all things have spirit. They believe that spirits can manifest, turn into human form, into birds, reptiles or whatever. Because I’ve spent so much time down here, I’d often heard from various sources about the jaguar goddess. Like you, I shrugged off the legend about her.”
“What is the legend?” she asked, curious now. She had always enjoyed his stories. Ty was a good storyteller and she poignantly recalled the hours they’d spent in one another’s embrace as he’d shared memories of his childhood growing up in Colorado.
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