by Diana Palmer
He didn’t even bother with a reply. “I wouldn’t dare kiss you,” he said. “Addictions are dangerous.”
She expelled a shaky breath. “Exactly.”
His pale eyes searched hers for a long moment, and the world around them vanished for that space of seconds.
“When you’ve had a couple of serious affairs and I’ve remade my fortune, I’ll come back around.”
She glared at him. “I don’t like rich people.”
His eyebrows shot up. “I’m not rich and you don’t like me.”
“You’re still rich inside,” she muttered.
“And you’re just a little college girl with a heartless boss,” he murmured. He smiled. “You could come to work for me. I’d give you paid holidays.”
“You don’t have a business.”
“Yet,” he replied, smiling with such confidence that she believed in that instant that he could do anything he liked.
“But you will have,” she added.
He nodded. “And I’ll need good and loyal employees.”
“How do you know I’d be one?”
“You’re working on your vacation. How much more loyal could you be?”
She averted her eyes. “Maybe I’m not exactly what I seem.”
“Yes, you are. You’re the most refreshing female I’ve met in years,” he confessed reluctantly. “You’re honest and loyal and unassuming. God, I’m so tired of socialites and actresses and authoresses who attract attention with every move and can’t live out of the limelight! It’s a relief to meet a woman who’s satisfied just to be a cog instead of the whole damned wheel!”
She felt a blush coming on. He had no idea what her normal life was like. She was a very famous authoress indeed, and on her way to a large bankroll. She wasn’t a cog, she was a whole wheel, in her niche, and even reviewers liked her. But this man, if he knew the truth, would be very disillusioned. He’d lost so much because he’d trusted the wrong people. How would he feel if he knew that Janine had lied to him?
But that wouldn’t really matter, because he didn’t want an intimate relationship and neither did she.
“Well, as one neighbor to another, you’re fairly refreshing yourself. I’ve never met a down-on-his-luck millionaire before.”
He smiled faintly. “New experiences are good for us. Short of kissing you, that is. I’m not that brave.”
“Good thing,” she replied, tongue-in-cheek. “I don’t know where you’ve been.”
He smiled. He laughed. He chuckled. “Good God!”
“I don’t,” she emphasized. “You are who you kiss.”
“Bull. Your mouth doesn’t know one damned thing about kissing.”
“Oh, yes, it does.”
His chin lifted. “I might consider letting you prove that one day. Not today,” he added. “I’m getting old. It isn’t safe to have my blood pressure tried too much in one afternoon.”
“Is it high?” she asked with real concern.
He shrugged. “It tends to be. But not dangerously so.” He searched her eyes. “Don’t care about me. You’re the last complication I need.”
“I was about to say the same thing. Besides, I have a boyfriend.”
“Good luck to him,” he replied with a short laugh. “If you’re pristine at twenty-four, he’s lacking something.”
Her mouth opened without words, but he was already leaving the deck before the right sort of words presented themselves. And of all the foul names she could think of to call him, only “scoundrel” came immediately to mind.
“Schurke!” she yelled in German.
He didn’t break stride. But he turned, smiled and winked at her. His smile took the wind right out of her sails.
While she was still trying to think up a comeback, he walked on down the beach and out of earshot. The man was a mystery—and what she felt when he was around her was a puzzle she was unsure she’d ever solve.
Chapter Five
For the next hour, Janine did her best to look forward to Quentin’s forthcoming visit. She and Quentin were good friends, and in the past, while she was still living at home, they’d gone out a lot together socially. But to give him credit, he’d never mentioned marriage or even a serious relationship. A few light, careless kisses didn’t add up to a proposal of marriage.
On the other hand, what she experienced with Canton Rourke was so explosive that all she could think about was the fact that one day soon, she’d have to go back to Chicago and never see him again. In a very short time, she’d come to know their down-on-his-luck neighbor in ways she never should have. She wanted him just as much as he wanted her, despite the fact that he infuriated her most of the time. But she was living in dreams again, and she had to stop. Having Quentin here even for a weekend might snap her out of her growing infatuation with Canton Rourke.
Quentin came down three days later. He got off the plane in Cancñaun, looking sweaty and rumpled and thoroughly out of humor. He sent a dark glare at a young woman with red hair who smiled at him sweetly and then sent a kiss his way.
Quentin glared after the woman as he joined Janie, carry-on bag in hand. He wiped his sweaty light brown hair with his handkerchief, and his dark eyes weren’t happy.
“English majors,” he spat contemptuously. “They think they know everything!”
“Some of them do,” Janine remarked. “One of my English professors spoke five languages and had a photographic memory.”
“I had old Professor Blake, who couldn’t remember where his car was parked from hour to hour.”
“I know how he felt,” she murmured absently as she scanned the airport for the rental car she was driving.
He groaned. “Janie, you didn’t lock the keys in it?”
She produced them from her pocket and jangled them. “No, I didn’t. I just can’t remember where I put it. But it will come to me. Let’s go. Did you have a nice flight?”
“No. The English professor sat beside me on the plane and contradicted every remark I made. What a boor!”
She bit her tongue trying not to remind him that he did the same thing to her, constantly.
“God, it’s hot here! Is it any cooler at the hotel?”
“Not much,” she said. “There’s air-conditioning inside. It helps. And there’s always a breeze on the beach.”
“I want to find the library first thing,” he said. “And then the local historical society. I speak Spanish, so I’ll be able to converse with them quite well.”
“Do you speak Mayan?” she asked with a smile. “I do hope so, because quite a few people here speak Mayan instead of Spanish.”
He looked so uncomfortable that she felt guilty.
“But most everyone knows some English,” she added quickly. “You’ll do fine.”
“I hope that redheaded pit viper isn’t staying at my hotel. Where is my hotel, by the way?” he demanded.
“It’s about three miles from my beach house, in the hotel zone. I can drive you to and from, though. I rented the car for a month.”
“Isn’t it dangerous to drive here?”
“Not any more dangerous than it is to drive in Chicago,” she replied. “Ah. There it is!”
“I thought your brother was with you,” he remarked.
“He is. He has a playmate, and he’s staying with her family today.” She didn’t add that he’d refused to go to meet Quentin, who wasn’t one of his favorite people.
“I see. Is he still as outspoken and ill-mannered as ever?”
She hated that smug smile of his. This was going to be a fiasco of a vacation, she could see it right now.
Kurt was polite to Quentin; just polite and no more. He spent the weekend tagging after Karie and avoiding the beach house where Quentin was poring over copies of old manuscripts he’d found in some archives. They were all in Spanish. Old Spanish.
“This is sixteenth century,” he murmured absently, with pages spread all over the sofa and the floor while he sat cross-legged on the small rug go
ing from one to another. “Some of these verbs I don’t even recognize. They may be archaic, of course…”
He was talking to himself. Across from him, Janine was poring over a volume on forensic medicine, searching for new methods of bumping off her villains.
Into the middle of their studious afternoon, Karie and Kurt came back from a walk on the beach, with Karie’s father looming menacingly behind them. Both children were flushed and guilty-looking.
Janine laid her volume aside and sighed. “What have you done, now?” she asked Kurt with resignation.
“Remember the garden hose I bought them?” Canton asked her with barely a glance for the disorderly papers and man on the floor.
“Yes,” Janine said slowly.
“They were hacking it up with a very sharp machete under the porch at our place.”
“A machete? Where did you get a machete?” Janine exclaimed to Kurt.
Before he could answer, Quentin got to his feet, his gold-rimmed glasses pushed down on his nose for reading. “I told you that you’d never be able to handle Kurt by yourself,” Quentin said helpfully.
Janine glared at him. “I don’t ‘handle’ Kurt. He’s not an object, Quentin.”
Canton had his hands deep in his pockets. He was looking at Quentin with curiosity and faint contempt.
“This is our neighbor, Mr. Rourke,” Janine introduced. “And this is Quentin Hobard, a colleague of my parents’ from Bloomington, Indiana. He teaches ancient history at Indiana University.”
“How ancient?” Canton asked.
“Renaissance,” came the reply. He held up a photocopied page of spidery Spanish script. “I’m researching—”
Midsentence, Canton took the page from him and gave it a cursory, scowling scrutiny. “It’s from a diary. Much like the one Bernal Dñaiaz kept when he first came from Spain to the New World with Cortñaes and began protesting the encomienda.”
Quentin was impressed. “Why, yes!”
“But this writing deals with the Mayan, not the Aztec, people.” Canton read the page aloud, effortlessly translating the words into English.
Rourke finally looked up. “Who wrote this?” he asked.
Quentin blinked. He, like the others, had been listening spellbound to the ancient words spoken so eloquently by their visitor.
“No one knows,” the scholar replied. “They’re recorded as anonymous, but he writes as if he were a priest, doesn’t he? How did you read it?” he added. “Some of those verbs are obsolete.”
“My mother was Spanish,” Rourke replied. “She came from Valladolid and spoke a dialect that passed down almost unchanged from the Reconquista.”
“Yes, when Isabella and Ferdinand united their kingdoms through marriage and drove the Moors from Spain, in 1492. They were married in Valladolid,” Quentin added. “Have you been there?”
“Yes,” Rourke replied. “I still have cousins in Valladolid.”
This was fascinating. Janine stared at him with open curiosity, met his glittery gaze and blushed.
“Well, thank you for the translation,” Quentin said. “I’d be very interested to have you do some of the other pages if you have time.”
“Sorry,” Rourke replied, “but I have to fly to New York in the morning. I should be back by midnight. I wanted to ask Janie if she’d keep my daughter while I’m away.”
It was the first time he’d abbreviated her name. She felt all thumbs, and was practically tongue-tied. “Why…of course,” she stammered. “I’d be glad to.”
“I’ll send her over before I leave. It’ll be early.”
“Good luck getting a flight out,” Quentin murmured.
Canton chuckled. “No problem there. I have a Learjet. See you in the morning, then.” He glanced down at the book lying on the sofa and his eyebrows went up. “Forensic medicine? I thought history was your field.”
“It is,” Janine said.
“Oh, she does that for her books,” Quentin said offhandedly.
“The ones I’m trying to sell,” she added quickly, with a glare at Quentin.
He didn’t understand. He started to speak, but Janine got to her feet and walked Canton to the door.
“I took the machete away from them, by the way, and hid it.” He glanced past her at the kids, who were on the patio by now. “Don’t let them out of your sight. Good God, I don’t know what’s gotten into them. Why would they hack up a perfectly good garden hose?”
“Fishing bait to catch gardeners?” she suggested.
He made a gruff sound. Behind her, Quentin was already reading again, apparently having forgotten that he wasn’t alone.
“Dedicated, isn’t he?” he murmured.
“He loves his subject. I love it, too, but my period is Victorian America. I don’t really care much for earlier stuff.”
He searched her eyes. “Do tell?”
“You’re very well educated,” she remarked. “You read Spanish like a native.”
“I am a native, as near as not, even if I don’t look it,” he replied. He lifted his chin. “As for the education part, I was a little too busy in my youth to get past the tenth grade. I have a certificate that gives me the equivalent of a high-school diploma. That’s all.”
She went scarlet. She’d had no idea that he wasn’t college educated. He’d been a millionaire, and had all the advantages. Or had he?
The blush fascinated him. He touched it. “So you see, I’m not an academic at all. Far from it, in fact. I got my education on the streets.”
Her eyes met his. “No one who could invent the software you’ve come up with is ignorant. You’re a genius in your own right.”
His intake of breath was audible. He looked odd for a moment, as if her remark had taken him off guard.
“Weren’t your parents well-off?” she asked.
“You mean, did I inherit the money that got me started? No, I didn’t,” he replied. “I made every penny myself. Actually, Miss Enigma, my father was a laborer. I had to drop out of school to support my sister when he died of cancer. I was seventeen. My mother had already died when I was fourteen.”
She did gasp, this time. “And you got that far, alone?”
“Not completely alone, but I made every penny honestly.” He chuckled. “I’m a workaholic. Doesn’t it show?”
She nodded. “The intelligence shows, too.”
He cocked an eyebrow and there was an unpleasant smile on his firm mouth. “Buttering me up, in case I make it all back?”
She glowered. “Do I look as if money matters to me?”
“Women are devious,” he replied. “You could look like an angel and still be mercenary.”
Her pride was stung. “Thanks for the compliment.” She turned to go back in.
He caught her arm, pulled her outside and shut the door. “Your pet scholar in there is an academic,” he said through his teeth. “That’s why you keep him around, isn’t it? And I don’t even have a high-school diploma.”
“What does that matter?” she said with equal venom. “Who cares if you’ve got a degree? I don’t! We’re just neighbors for the summer,” she added mockingly. “Just good friends.”
His eyes fell to her mouth. “I’d like to be more,” he said quietly.
The wind was blowing off the ocean. She felt it ruffle her hair. Sand whipped around her legs. She had no sense of time as she looked at his face and wondered about the man hidden behind it, the private one that he kept secret from the world.
Suddenly, with a muffled curse, he bent and brushed his lips lightly over hers, so softly that she wasn’t sure he’d really done it.
“Thanks for looking after Karie,” he said. “I’ll pay you back.”
“It’s no hardship.”
“Like children, don’t you?” he murmured.
She smiled. “A lot.”
“I love my daughter. I’d like a son, too.” His gaze lifted to meet hers and he saw the pupils dilate suddenly. His jaw tautened. “Don’t sleep with him,” he s
aid harshly, jerking his head toward the door.
Her jaw fell. “Sleep…!”
“Not with him, or anyone else.” He bent again. This time the kiss was hard, brief, demanding, possessive. His eyes were glittering. “God, I wish I’d never met you,” he said under his breath. And without another word, he turned and left her at the door, windblown and stunned, wondering what she’d done to make him kiss her—and then suddenly get angry all over again. She could still feel the pressure of his mouth long after she went back into the living room and tried to act normally.
Karie was a joy to have around, but she and Kurt seemed to find new ways to irritate Quentin all the time. From playing loud music when he was studying his manuscripts to refusing to leave Janine alone with him, they were utter pests.
And there was one more silent complication. The man was back again. He didn’t come near the house, but Janine spotted his car along the highway most mornings. He just sat there, watching, the sun glinting off his binoculars. Once again, she started toward the road, and the car sped away. She was really getting nervous. And she hadn’t heard from her parents.
She tried to explain her worries to Quentin, but he’d found a reference to Chichñaen Itzñaa in the manuscript and was dying to go there.
“There’s a bus trip out to the ruins, but it takes all day, and you’ll be very late getting back.”
“That doesn’t matter!” he exclaimed. “I have Saturday free. Come on, we’ll both go.”
“I can’t take Kurt on a trip like that. He’s still recovering.”
He glared at her. “I can’t miss this. It’s the opportunity of a lifetime. There are glyphs on the temple that I really want to see.”
She smiled. “Then go ahead. You’ll have a good time.”
He pursed his lips and nodded. “Yes, I will. You don’t mind, do you?”
“Oh, of course not,” she said. “Go ahead.”
He smiled. “Thanks, Janine, I knew you’d be understanding about it.”
When was she ever anything else, she wondered. He didn’t mind leaving her behind, when they were supposed to be spending their vacation together. But, then, that was Quentin, thoughtless and determined to have his own way. She thought that she’d never forget the sound of Canton Rourke’s deep voice as he translated that elegant Spanish into English. Quentin had been impressed, which was also unusual.