River of Eden

by Glenna Mcreynolds

  Jerk? In all his life, no one had ever called him a jerk. But then, in all his life, he'd never manhandled a woman the way he was manhandling Annie Parrish.

  Yet he didn't let her go.

  He didn't dare.

  He thought back to those garimpeiros she'd tussled with over the damned woolly monkey, and the results of that escapade gave him pause. He could take her, but maybe not without hurting her, not if she was going to fight him—and wasn't that the damnedest thing. God, he had seventy pounds on her, if he had an ounce.

  A silver flash out on the river behind her caught his gaze, a fractured beam of light dropping out of the sky. In seconds, the murky silhouette behind the light resolved itself into wings and a fuselage.

  “Are you going to kick my butt, if I let you go?” he asked, returning his attention to her.

  “Maybe,” she said through gritted teeth.

  “I don't want to hurt you.”

  “I can't say the same.”

  Definitely angry.

  Quickly, before he could change his mind, he released her and stepped back.

  She didn't so much as budge. Not a muscle. Just held him with a steely-eyed glare, until she heard the same thing he'd just seen—a Cessna 106 floatplane taxiing down the Rio Negro toward the Barcelos dock.

  CHAPTER 12

  She whirled around, her expression one of utter disbelief. For himself, he was disgustingly ambivalent. Yes, it was best all around if he got rid of her immediately, especially best for her. But damn, she'd cross-wired then hot-wired a whole slew of his nonlogical, rather loudly clamoring male impulses and natural instincts—all of which were telling him to keep her.

  Keep her for what? his intellect demanded to know— and he'd be damned if he had a reasonable answer for that.

  “I could shoot you,” she snapped, turning back around, her frustration palpable. “Just shoot you and steal your damn boat.”

  She was still wearing her gun, but Will wasn't too worried. She was crazy in some ways, but not in that way.

  The plane was about two hundred yards off and closing in.

  “Okay,” she said suddenly. “Okay. Let's deal. I'll give you all the information you want.”

  He was tempted. Whatever she was working on had to be amazing.

  “All right,” he said, trying to sound noncommittal enough to keep her from calling him a liar when he put her on the plane anyway. “Tell me what you've got.”

  She let out a deep breath, still hyped up, but visibly relieved, and he felt a twinge of guilt for getting her hopes up. If he knew what she was after, he could help her out, but she wasn't staying in Brazil, not as long as Fat Eddie breathed.

  “Okay,” she repeated, as if steadying herself for a confession. Then she confessed, all in one breath, all with appropriate reverence. “Aganisia cyanea.”

  “That's good,” he admitted slowly. “That's real good, but not worth risking your life for.”

  Her expression told him she disagreed. “It's only been collected half a dozen times”—she leaned in closer over the table—“and I found hundreds of them, hundreds, all blooming the first week of March up on the Rio Marauiá.”

  “Hundreds?” He was impressed, damned impressed. No one had ever found more than a single blue orchid anywhere. “Where on the Marauiá?”

  “Toward the headwaters.”

  “And how in the hell did you get up there?” Over a hundred miles off the main river, the headwaters of the Marauiá were born in the lost world straddling the Brazil-Venezuela border, a wild land mostly uninhabited, except for the Yanomani to the east, and farther west, between the Marauiá and the Cauaburi, by the nomadic Dakú when he'd first encountered them, or rather when they'd chosen to encounter him. He sure as hell hadn't been looking for a tribe known more by rumor than account, and he most certainly had not been looking for a man like Tutanji.

  Tutanji, though, had been looking for a man like him— a man exactly like him.

  “The last time I did research here, RBC had a river launch that docked in Santa Maria about every two months.” She glanced over her shoulder, talking fast. “Sometimes Gabriela would put it at my disposal for a week or so.”

  “I didn't know anyone was mining up on the Marauiá. The whole damn river is infested with caimans. Most miners won't go near the place. Too many crazy stories about monster jacarés, real man-eaters.”

  “I didn't know anyone was up there at the time, either.” Her gaze flicked again to the incoming plane. “Come on. Do we have a deal, or not?”

  “Aganisia cyanea at the headwaters of the Marauiá,” he mused aloud, then shook his head. “No. I'm not going to let you die for blue orchids, not even a hundred of them.”

  “I don't have to die for them,” she insisted. “I just have to go and get them.”

  “Give me the exact location, and I'll do what I can. I'll send all the specimens I collect to Gabriela with your name on them.”

  The blank look she gave him would have been comical, if she hadn't been so serious.

  “You?” she said. “You'll go get them?”

  “Yeah. I'll fight my way through all the Crocodilia

  and send any blue orchids I find to RBC through your peach palm project.” He repeated his offer. “No one needs to know.”

  “I'll know,” she begged to differ. “They're my orchids, and I'm going to be the one collecting them.”

  “Not after I put you on that plane.”

  It was the truth, and as it settled in, she got a look in her eyes he didn't quite trust, a look that seemed to question his ability to put her anywhere.

  “Yes I can,” he assured her, reaching in his pocket and pulling out a few bills to throw on the table.

  Glancing back at the plane, she ran her hand through her hair, making it all stand on end. And somewhere within the space of that movement, she made a decision he was sure he didn't like.

  “Then that's it,” she said. Without sitting down, she finished off her soft drink, then set the bottle on the table and took off walking across the patio with a very purposeful stride.

  Will worked his way around the table, getting slowed down by a batch of potted plants he hadn't noticed on the way in.

  “Damn.” He speeded up his steps, catching her just at the edge of the courtyard, by the wall.

  He took her by the arm; she turned—and suddenly the night was different than it had been before. She didn't seem to notice, but he felt it with his very next breath. The darkness was richer, deeper, enveloping them in a curve of night-shadowed adobe and trailing vines lush with bougainvillea and vanilla orchids. She shifted her stance, the subtlest of movements, but he knew it was the moment she became aware of the change, aware of the scent of flowers infusing the air, aware of him.

  “No,” he said. “That's not quite it.” Her skin was soft beneath his fingers, her eyes growing warier by the second—with good reason.

  He wanted a kiss.

  He wanted to feel her mouth beneath his—just once.

  Just once before she was gone and his two days with Amazon Annie, terror of the river basin, were nothing but another wild story to add to the tally.

  “So you changed your mind about the plane?” There was a slight hesitation in her voice, a slight breathlessness that brought a brief curve to his lips. She wasn't immune to what he was feeling.

  “No. I haven't changed my mind.” He shifted his weight closer to her, lifting his hand to cup her chin.

  She went very still within his light grasp, her eyes widening behind her glasses. Soft, diffuse light streamed through the orchid vines, casting her face in a delicate tracery of shadows, darkening her irises to a jungle-green. In contrast, her hair was a riotous halo of white and gold blond.

  “This,” she said softly, “is a terrible idea.”

  “I know,” he admitted.

  But he did it anyway, smoothed his fingers along the curve of her jaw and lowered his mouth toward hers.

  “Um… maybe you better re
think this,” she said when he was less than a breath away.

  “No,” he murmured. “I've done enough thinking.” She smelled sweet, like her soft drink, and he wanted to lick the taste off her lips.

  “Dr…. uh, Travers. Will, I—”

  “Shh, Annie. It's just a kiss.”

  And a bolder lie he'd never told. He touched her mouth with his, softly, so softly, capturing the small gasp of her response and tunneling his fingers up into the silky disarray of her hair.

  Her hand came up between them, pressing against his chest, and he stopped with his mouth on hers—but it wasn't enough. It wasn't nearly enough.

  Just a kiss, he'd said, but he hadn't even gotten that yet.

  Slowly, he slid his other hand down the length of her arm and twined his fingers through hers. Then he moved both of their hands to the base of her spine and pressed her forward, into his hips. His response was jointingly physical, one of those flashes of heaven and hell. It was heaven to have the pressure of her body up against his, and hell knowing he wasn't going to get much more— but this moment, this moment was about a kiss, and he wasn't going to be denied.

  He rocked against her, bringing her tight against him, and she groaned, a barely spoken word sounding a lot like “disaster,” before her mouth parted and her fingers curled into the fabric of his shirt. It was all the encouragement he needed. Opening his mouth over hers, he claimed her as his own.

  The kiss was instantly hot, and sweet, and wet, sending a wave of pleasure sluicing down his body to pool in his groin, and as quickly as that, he forgot the plane, the guns, the boat. All of it was lost in the taste and the surprisingly sensual wonder of Annie Parrish's mouth. She fit against him so perfectly, her small breasts pressed against his chest, the wondrous curves of her buttocks, her bunda, filling his palm. Her mouth was delicately formed, her lips soft, her tongue shy, until coaxed by his into a tantalizing exploration that left him wanting a lot more than he could get with her backed up against the wall in a public cantina.

  But he took what he could, sliding his hand under her T-shirt, marveling at the sleek strength of her back. She wasn't very big, but she was solid. She didn't feel fragile in his arms. She felt like the woman who had walked the Vaupes—and far more startlingly, she felt like his.

  It didn't make sense. He didn't have a place for any woman in his life, let alone a wild card like Annie Parrish. She was trouble, nothing but trouble, an actual danger to life and limb, but the longer he kissed her, the more fascinated he became. The tomboy of the Amazon was intrinsically, delightfully, mysteriously female, and everything male inside him wanted her, all of her, for as long as he could keep her—which, given his current life expectancy, he estimated would be all of two weeks. Which, he admitted, could be why he was even thinking in such terms. Two weeks of “till death do us part” really wasn't that big of a stretch, but it wasn't going to happen, so he kissed her. He kissed her until he was hot everywhere, and she was making little sounds in the back of her throat that told him she'd passed the same barrier of common sense he had and was only seconds away from doing something totally crazy and totally wonderful, like sliding her hand down the front of his pants.

  God, just the thought made him hard. He wanted her to hold him. He was ready to be teased into an oblivion of sexual languor. He was ready to rent a room with a bed and say to hell with the plane.

  “Senhor Travers?”

  Will was aware of the voice, but it took hearing his name two more times before the reality registered enough for him to lift his head. Yet even when he did, he stayed focused on her. Her eyes were closed, her glasses skewed, her head back, revealing the satiny column of her throat. Her lips were still parted, wet, and he could think of a thousand truly magical things he'd like her to do with her mouth.

  “Senhor Travers?” The voice intruded again.

  Her eyes came open slowly, a deep, gray-rimmed green, fringed in thick, golden lashes.

  “I'm going to hold this against you for a long, long time,” she whispered.

  “Yeah. I'm not going to forget you, either,” he promised, removing his hand from beneath her shirt, though he lingered for a few seconds at her waist, molding his palm to the warm curve, as if with the light gesture he could hold on to her.

  “The plane is here, Senhor Travers. Tied up by the boat. With the moon full and the river to follow, the pilot, he wants to leave again.”

  “Yeah. Right, but we may be talking a change in itinerary.” He turned to the man behind him and instantly froze. “Juanio.” It was one of Fat Eddie's henchmen from Pancha's. Short and round, with a mop of black hair, the young man had a nervous twitch in one eye, a cigarette stuck behind his ear, and a Colt revolver in his hand.

  Another man came out of the shadows, the one called Luiz, and Will's alarm heightened. Leaner and meaner, taller and more muscular, with buzz-cut hair, a cold, black-eyed gaze, and a big bush knife on his hip, he was by far the more dangerous of the two. Both of them were armed. Both of them were pointing their guns at him and Annie.

  He swore silently to himself. He'd known kissing her would be dangerous. He just hadn't realized how dangerous.

  “Uma pistola, garota?” Luiz gestured with his gun at the protrusion on Annie's hip, and Juanio stepped forward to disarm her. To Will's relief and her credit, she didn't offer any resistance, just raised her arms and let him take her gun. Drawing against two-to-one odds when the other team was already cocked and loaded was bound to bring things to a quick end, especially when Fat Eddie would just as soon have her dead as alive.

  “We don't want any trouble from you, Senhor Travers,” Juanio said. “No trouble from you, no trouble from us. Compreende?”

  “Compreendo,” he said. I understand. Though he didn't really know how they were going to keep from having trouble, if they tried to take Annie. He had to get her back on the boat. “How did you find us?”

  “El rádio.” Juanio grinned, revealing a curve of stained, yellow teeth. “We been waiting upriver for you, two days now, senhor, two steaming, stinking days in the plane, but when you call for help, Juanio and Luiz bring help, though the woman, she don't look too sick to me. But we help you; you help us. No?”

  Waiting upriver? Now why in the hell had they been doing that? he wondered. “Help you how?”

  Juanio's grin broadened, and he brought his free hand up, rubbing the tips of his fingers together. “Esmeraldas. Diamantes.”

  Will's gaze shot to the other man, who snarled at Juanio.

  “Silence! Idiota.”

  “You want Senhor Eduardo's gems?” Will asked disbelievingly, wondering just how many rats were fleeing Fat Eddie's ship and why. First, Johnny Chang had stolen the fat man's guns, and now the second-string jacunços were trying to make off with his gemstones. Johnny had had a plane ticket on him. Luiz and Juanio had a whole damn plane—but they didn't want Annie, and they hadn't mentioned her guns.

  Things were looking up—way up, if all the two bandidos wanted was the gems.

  “We know you have them, senhor,” Luiz warned. “We were there in Pancha's when the fat one gave them to you.”

  “Yes. I have them. They're on the Sucuri.”

  A look passed between the two men, as well it might. Fat Eddie Mano hadn't chosen Will as his courier simply because of his less-than-sterling reputation. The Sucuri had a reputation that easily equaled his, a reputation forged in the very murky waters of the upper Amazon Basin. People didn't board the boat uninvited for a reason. A reason Juanio and Luiz were obviously well aware of, or they would have simply scared off the kids and tried to take what they wanted.

  Luiz jerked his head toward the docks in an unspoken command, and Will reached for Annie's hand. The look she cast him was very steady, coolly controlled, easing a good deal of his worries. If he was going to be shanghaied on the Barcelos waterfront, he could do far worse than to have Annie Parrish by his side—and he probably couldn't do better.

  At the Sucuri, Luiz gave a curt command.
“Get rid of your filhotes, your puppies.” He'd concealed his gun by holding it under his greasy leather vest, but once near the boat, he'd gotten close enough to jab Will in the back with it. Juanio had simply draped the tail of his shirt over his hand. In the dark, it was enough to keep other people from noticing.

  “Embora!” Will said, approaching the group of ragtag children. “Agora mesmo!”

  Used to quick shifts of fortune, the children didn't hesitate to run off.

  A light was on in the dry-rot hulk floating next to the Sucuri, but the barge still had only the dogs and sleeping old man on board. The Cessna had been moored at the end of the dock, next to the hulk. A party was getting going farther up the waterfront, and the sounds of music and laughter drifted across the haphazard jumble of canoes, skiffs, barges, batalones, and riverboats at ever-increasing decibel levels.

  “Fat Eddie isn't going to like this,” Will said.

  “Well, we don't like stinking Fat Eddie,” Juanio proclaimed with a sneer.

  “Corisco Vargas isn't going to like it, either.” Will voiced a deeper warning with a noticeable effect.

  Juanio crossed himself and looked to his partner, a nervous shift of his gaze Luiz refused to acknowledge.

  “Fat Eddie doesn't own this river anymore,” the bigger man said.

  “And Vargas?” Out of the corner of his eye, Will saw Juanio cross himself again.

  “I spit on Corisco Vargas,” Luiz declared, then spit on the dock instead and stamped on the wet spot with his boot, rubbing the smear into the wood.

  Will glanced up and saw a weak smile cross Juanio's face as the younger man watched the macho display and took heart in Luiz's bravery against a wad of spit.

  Will gave them a week on the outside, before their bodies were hanging, gutted and skinned, from some tree in the rain forest, monkey meat for whatever passed by.

  “You won't be safe anywhere in Brazil, if you steal those stones,” he said.

  “But we'll be safe in Miami!” Juanio offered with a shaky laugh, as if affirming it out loud would help make it so.