But he had. The twenty-eight-year-old sleek jaguar of a man he’d been when she’d first laid eyes on him ten years ago, who’d ruled her thoughts and decisions for the most traumatic two years of her life, had been upgraded. And how.
His leanly muscled, broad-shouldered six-foot-six frame had bulked up with maturity. The same ripening magic had taken a chisel to his face. Then he took off his sunglasses.
Everything inside Jewel jangled an all-out alarm.
“No hug for your poor abandoned husband?”
Hug. Sure. Don’t you dare shudder. And say something.
She did. “Hi, Roque. What brings you to Tabatinga?”
She caught back a sigh of relief. That was far better than she’d expected. Steady, indifferent. Proof that his incursion hadn’t provoked anything more than passing curiosity.
“'Hi, Roque.'” His mimicry was spooky, almost reproducing her voice. “Is that all I get after eight years, minha Jóia?”
Minha Jóia. My Jewel. He’d always called her that. Groaned it to her on the ascents of arousal, roared it from the heights of release, whispered it from the depths of satiation, branding her soul as surely as he’d branded her body and senses…
What was wrong with her? How could those memories be so sharp, so accessible? The territory in her being where he’d once reigned supreme was non-existent now.
“As for what I’m doing in Tabatinga…” Slanting opal eyes, which reflected the distant river and fire and sky, swept cool knowledge down her body, paused, shifted color and intensity. Her eyes followed his sweeping gaze and—God! Her drab olive shirt was plastered to breasts that, unheeding of her mental aversion, were jutting their response at his words. He had to be accessing some Pavlovian reaction she hadn’t known existed! Those all-seeing eyes dwelled on the twin confessions, before going up to capture hers. “What do you think brings me all the way to the Brazilian border? Other than a burning desire to see you, Jóia?”
How dared he call her that now? How dared he flirt with her?
And no question, he was flirting. If not the offensive or hopeful propositioning other men practiced. His flirtation was laced with intimidation, his praise with menace.
That was another thing that had changed about him, then. The Roque Aguiar Da Costa she’d known had had no darkness to him, no danger. Not before their last confrontation anyway. He hadn’t needed either to boost his blinding appeal. He’d reduced all females to clinging fools, not to mention vicious wildcats, without even trying. Then he’d turned it all on her and had erased her every sense of logic and self-preservation.
Well, she was no longer an emotionally starved twenty-year-old, or a damaged twenty-two-year old. She was a whole and hearty, rock-stable thirty-year-old professional and he was interrupting a job she’d been preparing for a year. She wanted him to vanish on that account alone.
“So you traveled 2500 miles from Rio de Janeiro to the Brazilian-Colombian border to see me? Well, now you have seen me.” She upped her coldness factor, gave him the practiced dismissal she’d perfected in her former trade. “Anything else I can do for you?”
“Plenty.”
His flagrant innuendo hit hard. Don’t let him bait you. Don’t even try to guess why he wants to. End this.
She hiked all the height she could in her five-foot-eleven frame, disconcerted yet again at the rare event of being towered over. “OK, Roque, this was fun, but whatever you’re here for…”
A cacophony of approaching shouts sent the snub she hadn’t yet formulated in her mind backlashing in her throat.
She swung around to the source of disturbance, registered only the outline of a truck screeching to a halt against the glare. Until the dust it had kicked up settled, she choked on the relief of interruption, of reprieve. On the gall that she should feel it, that he could affect her that much—still.
Which didn’t matter right now. Right now she was needed. She recognized cries for help when she heard them.
Indigenous people poured from the decrepit vehicle and rushed toward her and Roque, yelling an indecipherable jumble of a local dialect and Portuguese. She understood one word. Snakebite.
She didn’t need more explanations. She had to get to her emergency supplies, to the casualty. And Roque was in her way!
He was running ahead of her, his longer legs sustaining his lead no matter how much speed she poured on. He jumped on board her boat first, bent and scooped her by the waist up the two-foot haul. He released her before she could process his scalding touch, his actions. Dazed, she rushed inside after him and confusion turned to chagrin when his bulk kept blocking her path all the way to the treatment room.
“Move out of my way, Roque.” She pushed at him, anxious to get to her patient.
He only turned, revealing that no casualty had been brought in. His lips twisted at her bewilderment. “You didn’t get the part where they said we had to go to the casualty?”
“We? They came here seeking my help.”
Daunting eyebrows rose, a portrait of sarcasm. “Yours? And you know that when you didn’t even understand what they said?”
“I know because the residents have been running to us with every medical complaint they have since they found out we were a medical expedition, and to me specifically as I’m the leader. We’ll handle it, so don’t feel like you have to help here. I’m sure you have more important things to do.”
“You’re suggesting there’s anything more important than a person in danger? And that I can disregard such a person to keep up with my schedule? What kind of doctor do you think I am?”
The last part dripped with that baiting tone. She bit back a retort. The worst kind. The mercenary, exploitative kind.
Better leash it in, give him no more reasons to stick around and extend this—this… whatever this was, out of spite.
She gave him her most diplomatic look. “The best kind, I’m sure. You’re just not needed here. So why don’t you get out now and let me do my job?” So much for diplomacy.
“Move out of my way, Roque. Get out, Roque,” he mimicked again. Another chameleon power, that uncanny ability to change his voice. If not as uncanny as the way his eyes changed color. Or the way he’d changed his disposition to whatever suited his purpose. “Is that any way to talk to a godsend in this emergency? What’s next? Go jump in the river, Roque?”
Her resistance crumbled. She gave up any pretense of civility, and swallowed his bait. “As long as you don’t resurface so you can continue wasting my time. Just how are you a godsend? Last time I looked you were a surgeon, not an emergency doctor.”
He met her exasperation with mockery. “And last time I looked you were in front of the cameras selling haute couture.”
“Your memory must be going. The last time you looked, the only cameras I was in front of were X-ray and MRI ones.”
Silence crashed. Damn. She shouldn’t have made reference to the past. That gave it relevance. Rawness. Gave him ammunition.
But, wonder of wonders, he didn’t use it. Instead, he turned to the supplies cabinets lining the wall. He snatched up a lock, swung back to her. “Keys?” he demanded.
She fumed, rustled for them in her cargo pants pockets, chaos pushing to the surface. How did he know his way around here? How long had he been here, snooping around behind her back?
He was clearly providing no answers. Or space. He didn’t budge, forcing her to squeeze against him to open the cabinets. She didn’t jerk away. She wouldn’t give him the display of discomfort he was after. Discomfort? Try upheaval.
Angrier at herself than at him, she snatched extra supplies, stuffed them with unnecessary force into the main emergency bag as her totally unwanted and unexpected partner checked the airway bag and added articles to it, too. She was dragging the zipper closed when his hand clamped hers. She jerked this time.
He met her fury with cool calculation. “Snakes common here are the hemotoxic jararaca and the neurotoxic surucucu pico de jaca. Do you have specific antiven
ins for those species?”
She did a double-take. A city surgeon like him shouldn’t be versed in Brazilian jungle reptilian dwellers or be aware that snake venom actually came in two varieties—the hemotoxic variety that caused death from uncontrolled bleeding and the neurotoxic one that caused death by paralysis of breathing muscles.
So. Score one for his wilderness medicine knowledge. It couldn’t be as extensive as hers. Not with the intensive course she’d had at the Jungle Warfare Training Center in Manaus.
Roque’s grip still demanded an answer. Just give it to him. She yanked her hand away and the zipper closed. “I have coral snake antivenins and crotalidae polyvalent antivenin.”
He again stopped her from hiking the bag over her shoulder, his eyes pinning her, probing. “No Cro-Fab?”
So his knowledge extended to the new, purified antivenin of sheep origin. How nice. “Alas, not at seven hundred dollars per vial. Global Aid Organization—our expedition sponsors—are scraping by nowadays.”
He gave a slow nod, pressed on. “If we need the polyvalent antivenin, are you stocked up on anti-anaphylaxis drugs?”
That had to be freshly acquired knowledge for whatever purpose had brought him here. Why would his brain be cluttered with such unnecessary data for a surgeon? He couldn’t have always known polyvalent antivenin could elicit hypersensitivity reactions, from chronically debilitating to instantly fatal.
And of course she was prepared! “I have a comprehensive kit.” She snarled her displeasure.
It didn’t even loosen his grip. “You have a surgical kit, too? Surgical intervention is a possibility here.”
“Which part of comprehensive didn’t you understand?”
He just shrugged. “I understand comprehensive one way and an internist—like the one you are nowadays—would another, Jóia.”
So he knew exactly what she was now. Of course he did. It felt like long-established knowledge, too. No time to wonder how, when and why. She snatched the bag open, stabbed a finger at the set of surgical instruments and materials.
Satisfied at last, he reached out urgent hands to take the bag’s considerable weight from her. She wrestled him for it and it was his turn to glower. But he said nothing, just turned and sprinted out of the boat. The moment he jumped off, his arms reached up to help her down. She avoided them, hugged the bag high as she negotiated the uneven stairs. He reached up and hauled her down to the pier, bag and all.
His touch was imperative, practical and gone in seconds—along with the bag. Her heart still fired randomly and wildfire radiated from every point of contact with his fingers to engulf her body. This was getting ridiculous! Snakebite casualty. Get to it.
With the burden of the bag removed from her, she ran to the truck. Inácio and Madeline, her friends and assistants, were already on board. Roque beat her there, jumped into the open truck bed, as silent and agile as a big cat, and again bent to her, hauled her with great ease, and care, all the way up.
Before she found a footing, the wheels shrieked, kicked up a storm of the red soil Tabatinga was named after, then the vehicle lurched forward. She was catapulted backwards, found nothing at her back, saw Roque receding, the world blurring by. Panic burst, hot, desperate—then it was over, dissipating within the same booming heartbeat. Roque had snatched her back!
Her fingers dug a blind anchor into him, stifling a cry as the sudden deceleration drove a lance through her neck.
Impossibly steady, he herded her to the only empty corner in the truck’s long bed where he pulled her down and came down beside her, enclosing her between his bulk and the truck’s side, making sure its violent heaves had minimum effect on her.
Her dazed eyes searched his face, read nothing but his intent to ensure her comfort. A jumble of reactions churned inside her as he relinquished her eyes, turned to the tribesmen.
What did he think she was? A swooning damsel who needed to be handed in and out of carriages? Did he think she retained any part of the susceptible girl she’d been before her accident, or the disturbed and even more pliable one after it?
Embarrassed acknowledgement followed indignation. He had saved her from a nasty tumble, and no doubt a new set of injuries.
But a surge of illicit pleasure dominated everything. At all his courtesies, at their grace and effortlessness.
God. Just how stupid could she get? Courtesies? She was fluttering at those? Courtesies had no place between them. They’d parted on the worst of terms. They no longer owed each other consideration. So why was he offering any now?
And why was she wondering? He’d always been thoughtful before, overwhelmingly so at times. It had felt so sincere then, too. And it had all been a means to an end.
So what did his gestures mean now? What did his presence here mean? Did he want something from her still? What could he want this time? Was this about his American citizenship? Was her absence holding up finalizing procedures—or something…?
“Now I understand why they didn’t bring the victim to us.” His spine-tingling baritone yanked her out of her oppressive musings. “This isn’t a recent bite. The victim is their shaman and yesterday they found him in the jungle ill and delirious. They didn’t interfere, fearing he might be under some self-induced trance as part of his rituals, which confused the picture. Today he deteriorated and they finally examined him and found the fang marks.”
Her eyebrows shot up, impressed he could understand the tribesmen’s obscure language in such detail. “So our debate over antivenins was for nothing. We’ve long missed the four-hour window when they could have inactivated the venom. What took them so long to seek help? And why seek help at all? Indigenous people are very good at handling snakebites.”
Roque’s frown showed his aggravation. “Like so many other tribes here, this one is no longer what you can call indigenous. They are now of mixed ethnicity and have for generations been exposed to different cultures through their association with the drug-involved narco-guerillas and their intermarriages with Portuguese-origin Brazilians, which, it seems, have not been to their advantage. But apparently the one thing they cling to from their indigenous roots is the superstitions. Their shaman’s mystical-spiritual status is warping their decision-making. Even after they decided to seek help, they didn’t dare move him. And by the way—they say if he dies we’ll be punished.”
She sighed. “That’s standard practice with some tribes.”
He inclined his head, leaning back for a better overall look at her. “And the threats don’t worry you?”
“Oh, they don’t. I discovered they’re all talk.”
“Then you’d be alone in believing that. The clinic staff at the platoon outpost take such threats seriously. They’re no longer willing to offer the people around here such reputedly punishable-by-death help. That’s why they ran to us.”
She ignored the emphasized “us”, and cast a skeptical look at the men who didn’t look all that threatening right now. “Maybe the clinic staff are just swamped.”
He shook his head. “They’re not swamped, they’re wary. This region is almost ungovernable. The Brazilian army’s Frontier Command, which they belong to, is responsible for security along a whopping 850 miles of open frontier with Colombia and Peru. Serving over a hundred thousand people, with the foreigners among them mostly into drug trafficking and illegal fishing and logging, it wouldn’t be smart to risk themselves on humanitarian gestures. Smart would be believing a threat when they hear one.”
She knew all that, but was stunned that he did. She’d always wondered how most people were uninformed about their own country, how foreigners who’d made it their home, like she’d made Brazil, knew far more about it than they did. But it seemed he wasn’t only informed about his country, but insightful, comprehensive, passionate. This didn’t sit well with the kind of person she’d always thought he was.
She shrugged, escaped her own deductions. “I only speak from experience when I say such threats amount to nothing.”
He pouted his skepticism. “Maybe you managed to avoid their wrath because you have succeeded in curing them so far.”
She leaned back, putting more breathable air between them. “There were times I didn’t. No. Issuing the threats always felt like some sort of tradition or something, insurance to stop strangers messing where they don’t belong, or promising what they can’t deliver. But from my experience they’re actually very kind and welcoming people and when you help them, they’re just thankful, and very demonstrative about it. Proof is that I haven’t been killed or maimed yet for failing to save any…”
The rest jammed in her throat. At the word ‘maimed', his eyes ignited, poured what felt like lava over her skin as they traced her now-vanished scars. His hand followed suit and something she’d long thought rock-stable inside her wrenched loose.
She struggled not to lurch away as his fingers lingered where once a half-inch scar had run vertically down from her left eyebrow to the corner of her jaw, a scar he’d fondled and tormented on endless nights of abandon. She’d hated him for that most of all. For pretending not to be repulsed by her, manipulating her hypersensitive physical and emotional scars. Now those fingers that had once been all over her weaved in her hair, caressing a heavy lock behind her ear. Had it caught fire? Had her skin?
She did lurch when he spoke, moaned at the stab of pain in her neck. “You talk as if you’ve been here a long time…” She shouldn’t have heard his whisper above the truck’s din. It was all she heard. “When I know you’ve been here only a few days.”
What more did he know about her? Everything? She pressed back into the truck, tried to suppress the tremors racking her body, tried to knead away the twinge in her neck. “I’ve been in many places in the rainforest. I expect the same laws apply.”
He kept on talking, matter-of-fact, as if he wasn’t taking over kneading her neck, pouring ease into fresh pain and nine-year-old aches. “They don’t. The border with Colombia is the most paranoid place in the country. Those who live here have become hardened by the constant dangers and their reactions are tinged by the extremism that stems from fear and ignorance.”
One Night In Collection Page 83