by JoAnn Ross
Daria vowed not to let this man—this killer!—put a single hand on her body ever again. Since it seemed she truly was going to die, she would rather go down fighting and was desperately wondering how she could best use the knife when a crackling sound distracted her.
“Damn.” James plucked a walkie-talkie she hadn’t noticed earlier from his belt. “What the hell is it?”
“There’s a storm front moving in fast from the Gulf,” the disembodied voice said over the static. “If we don’t leave right now, we may get stuck out here.”
James cursed. His reptilian eyes moved slowly over Daria again. “I suppose we’ll have time for fun and games later,” he mused. “In fact, now that I think about it, perhaps, after I’m finished with you, I’ll hand you over to the other Tribunal members. As a reward for work well-done.”
Daria would use the knife on herself before she permitted anything like that to happen. But there was still time, she reminded herself. As long as she managed to remain alive, there was hope for escape.
He pulled a pistol from a shoulder holster beneath his jacket and pointed it at her. “You heard the man. Let’s get going.” .
Having no choice, Daria walked down the stairs, fearing that once she got into that helicopter, Roarke would never be able to find her.
She was on her own.
As she climbed aboard the helicopter, Daria recognized the cop immediately. “It’s you!”
The man who’d nearly killed her in the cemetery had the gall to grin. “Fancy meeting you again.” The leer in his eyes gave her an idea.
“Isn’t it a small world,” she murmured. “Perhaps, now that the three of us are here together, you can tell James what you really think of him.”
“What’s she talking about?” James’s glance went from Daria to the pilot, who shrugged.
“Who knows? She’s a woman. They all lie.” He started the engine; the copter rose from the patch of solid ground he’d found amid the swamp and took off. Daria’s heart sank as she watched Roarke’s cabin rapidly get smaller and smaller.
“He doesn’t think you’re much of a man,” Daria said conversationally. “In fact, I believe he suggested that you were a pansy.” She glanced over at the pilot. “Wasn’t that the word you used?”
He shot her a quelling glare. “Bitch.”
“This is all very illuminating,” James said smoothly. “But it isn’t going to work, Daria.”
“What isn’t going to work?”
“Getting the two of us to argue over you. In the first place, you’re not worth it.” It was his turn to glance over at the pilot. “She’s frigid. The entire time we were together, I don’t recall her having a single orgasm.”
“You know what they say,” Daria retorted as thunder rumbled over the sound of the rotors spinning overhead. Lightning flashed on the horizon and rain began pounding on the convex windshield. “There’s no such thing as a frigid woman. just bad lovers. Which was pretty much what your friend here assured me.”
“You told me you were a virgin,” the pilot grumbled.
“That wasn’t really a lie,” Daria said. “Since James has admitted that what I told you was mostly true. He never did make a real woman out of me.” She sighed. “In truth, I don’t think he had it in him.”
She turned back to her former fiancé. “Roarke does,” she continued in a conversational tone that suggested they were discussing nothing more personal than the weather, which was growing uglier by the minute. “I couldn’t begin to count the number of times he made me come in a single night Why—” her voice dropped to its lower registers ”—he even made me scream.”
As she’d hoped it would, her assertion caused jealousy to flare. A dark red flush rose from his collar, suffusing his face. “I’ll make you scream.”
He dragged her against him, thrust one hand beneath her sweatshirt and squeezed her breast in a way designed to bring pain rather than pleasure. The other hand moved to her waistband, intent on yanking down her leggings.
When she bucked against his intimate touch, he stumbled against the pilot, who cursed again. “If you’re going to rape the chick, can you at least wait until I get this bird on the ground? Because if you keep this up, you’ll get us all killed.”
James turned to watch as the man steadied the bucking helicopter. “Just keep your mind on your flying,” he snarled. “And later, when I’ve got her warmed up, I may even let you have the opportunity to prove your overstated claims of sexual prowess.”
It was the chance Daria had been hoping for. She yanked the knife from its sheath beneath her shirt and lunged toward his back. At the last second James began to turn away from the pilot and the knife slashed into his shoulder, instead.
Roaring with pain and fury, he threw her away from him. Daria landed heavily against the pilot. Shouting and cursing, he struggled to regain control of the copter that had suddenly begun to spin downward in dizzying circles.
She had no idea how long it took for the helicopter to fall out of the sky. It seemed like an eternity of spinning and rolling and shouting. She lost her balance and all sense of which way was up or down. Black spots flashed in front of her eyes. And then they hit the water with a bone-rattling shock. Everything went deathly still.
It took a moment for Daria to realize she was still alive. Another moment to realize that both men had been knocked out and to recognize the smell of gasoline. Even though he’d had every intention of killing her, Daria felt horrible about standing on top of James’s unconscious body in order to reach the helicopter door over her head. At first it wouldn’t budge. She tried again, harder. And again.
Screaming with frustration, she tried it once more. This time the door moved and she was able to push it open far enough to pull herself up and out of the cock pit.
Half running, half swimming, she splashed through the swampy water, struggling to reach solid ground as the driving cold rain pounded down on her like bullets. She’d just managed to crawl onto a spot of high marshy ground and was on her knees, bent over at the waist, gasping and coughing, when there was a sound like a thousand claps of thunder going off all at once.
She looked up just in time to see the helicopter go up in a blinding fireball that shook the bayou and felt like a furnace against her skin. And then everything went black.
ROARKE WAS RACING across the water, headed back to the cabin, terrified he would be too late, when he heard the unmistakable sound of a helicopter. He watched it rise above the trees and head away from the cabin and hoped that they’d taken Daria hostage, rather than killing her on the spot. Afraid Mike wouldn’t manage to get backup here in time, he cursed, and was trying to decide his next move when what he saw.caused his heart to lodge in his throat.
The copter was going down.
“No!” Roarke watched, horrified, as the helicopter hit the water. Screamed when he saw it explode. Daria couldn’t be in there, he told himself. Experience had taught him that life was anything but fair. But he refused to believe that the fates, or God, or whatever forces were controlling his life, would be cruel enough to force him to watch two lovers die in explosions.
Watching Natasha die had made him want to quit his job.
If Daria had been in that copter when it had blown sky-high, Roarke knew he wouldn’t want to keep on living.
DARIA WAS LYING on the cold wet ground. Although she’d regained consciousness, she was still dazed. And more than a little shaken. She was trying to focus her befogged, muddled mind when she thought she heard a familiar sound over the rain and thunder.
“It’s not him,” she warned herself. “You’re obviously delirious. He wouldn’t even know how to find You.”
But as her mind cleared, she realized that the fire that was beginning to die down would undoubtedly attract somebody.
Perhaps it wasn’t Roarke at all. Perhaps it was merely a trapper who’d seen the explosion and was coming here out of curiosity. That would be good enough.
“Anything to keep from spe
nding the night out here,” she said with a shudder.
The sound grew closer. And closer still. Daria managed to push herself to her knees again and looked out through the slanting curtain of icy rain. Watching. Waiting.
And then she saw him—pulling the mud boat out of the water and running toward her. She tried once again to stand, but her legs wouldn’t hold her. So, with the rain and tears of joy streaming down her face, she began crawling toward him.
His heart was pounding so hard and so fast, Roarke could have sworn he was having a heart attack. His own legs none too steady, when he reached her he dropped to his knees and gathered her into his arms. He kissed her—her lips, her blistered face, her temples, her eyelids—tasting the salt of tears, not knowing if they belonged to Daria or to him.
He was a man who’d always made his living with words. As he’d piloted the boat through the bayou, he’d thought of all the things he wanted to say to Daria. All the things he needed to say to her. All the promises he intended to make.
But there would be time for all that later. A lifetime, he thought with uncharacteristic wonder.
He tenderly framed her face between his palms. “You’re going to many me.”
Daria was laughing and crying all at the same time. “Is that a proposal?”
“Didn’t it sound like one?”
“It sounded like an order.” A wonderful, glorious, heavenly order.
“Lord, that’s what I get for falling in love with a lawyer,” he grumbled. “Would you just say yes, dammit?”
He loved her! Not only that, he’d said those all-important words out loud. And although she’d been prepared to wait for them—for as long as it took—the pleasure of hearing them warmed her to the core, making her suddenly oblivious to the rain, the cold, the horror she’d experienced.
“Yes, dammit.” As she watched his obvious relief, Daria laughed. Then lifted her face for Roarke’s kiss.
ISBN : 978-1-4592-7100-5
ROARKE: THE ADVENTURER
Copyright © 1997 by JoAnn Ross.
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