by Anne Stuart
They walked in silence for the better part of an hour, listening as the jungle awakened around them. The screech of the macaws, the random scream of the jaguar floated on the thick, liquid air, and Reilly felt the sweat pool at the base of his spine.
Damn, he hated the jungle. Hated this smothering heat, where a man couldn’t breathe without filling his lungs full of ooze. He knew that accounted for part of his bad attitude toward Carlie. He wanted to be back on his mountaintop in Montana, not hacking his way through the undergrowth with a woman and a baby behind him. He’d had enough of jungles in his life. Enough of heat. He wasn’t sure which he hated more—the steamy tropical forests of Latin America, or the dry, searing heat of the Middle Eastern deserts. He’d left the army because he was fed up with heat, fed up with stupid little wars and innocent people getting in the way. So where did he end up? Smack-dab in another stupid little war, in the heat, trying to save a couple of innocent people.
He owed Billy. He owed him his life, he owed him anything Billy would ask. It was too late for that. But bringing his kid and his playgirl wife back to the States would even out a lot of old debts, even if he paid them beyond the grave. He could put up with a little heat and discomfort for that, couldn’t he?
What he was having a hard time putting up with was Caterina Morrissey. He was fine when he thought of her as Caterina, when he didn’t look so closely at her, when he kept himself wound so tightly that nothing could sneak through.
But when he looked at her, really looked, at the absurdly innocent eyes and vulnerable mouth, at the small, coltish body and the instinctive, natural grace, at the love she poured on that red-faced little baby, he found himself thinking other, dangerous thoughts. Like how Billy might have misjudged her. Like what a lucky man he’d been. Like what would she taste like if he kissed her. Like how long did it take for a small woman like her to recover from the physical trauma of childbirth.
He hadn’t thought much about having kids of his own. He’d been too busy, there’d been no special woman and his horde of nieces and nephews had provided him with more than enough kids to last him.
But if he did get married, did find a woman to share his mountaintop, he’d want her to be just a little like Carlie. Not Caterina, the spoiled bitch who’d married Billy, left him when she grew bored, and only came back when she found out she was unexpectedly pregnant and her cozy little life in San Pablo was collapsing.
No, he’d want her to be like Carlie, who snapped at him, trudged along behind him uncomplaining, and who loved her baby.
The terrain that comprised most of San Pablo was like no other place in the world. Half rain forest, half jungle, it was home to pit venomous snakes and jaguars and hundreds of varieties of flesh-eating fish to birds that had never been cataloged or identified by the scientists who’d braved the revolutions and the natural dangers of the land to document the wildlife. And among all those deadly species, none were quite so threatening as the fanatical armies of San Pablo, the black-shirted goon squads of Hector Mendino and Ender Morales, his notorious general, and the ragtag rebels who wouldn’t think twice about slaughtering an innocent baby who might someday pose a threat.
He didn’t like it here, Reilly thought sourly, trudging onward. Hell, he didn’t like it anywhere nowadays, except for Montana. He’d spent too much time in San Pablo in the past, but he’d forgotten how bad the climate could really be. He wanted out of here, and he wanted out, fast.
He glanced back at Carlie. Her face was pale beneath the hot pink flags of sunburn against her cheeks, and her eyes were dull with exhaustion. She walked slowly, without limping, the baby cradled against her, and he wondered how much longer she was going to manage to keep going. If worse came to worst he could always carry her. She was a tiny thing, hardly big enough to have given birth to even a baby as small as Timothy. He couldn’t imagine her lying beneath someone like Billy Morrissey, who’d been built like a linebacker.
He quickly shut off that line of thought. It was none of his damned business whether she was beneath or on top. The sex life of Caterina Morrissey was none of his business at all.
He halted abruptly, then turned, putting a hand on her shoulder to stop her. She looked up at him, her clear blue eyes dull and shadowed by exhaustion, her soft mouth grim. “We just stopped an hour ago, Reilly,” she said in that calm voice of hers. “You don’t need to pamper me—I don’t need another rest yet.”
She needed a hell of a lot more than a rest, but he didn’t bother pointing that out to her. “We aren’t resting,” he said. “We’re here.” He jerked his head toward the underbrush.
She peered around him. “Where? I don’t see anything.”
“I do. The jeep’s still in there. Just give me a couple of minutes to check for sabotage and then we can start out of here. With luck we might make Dos Libras by nightfall. There’s a cantina there, run by an old scoundrel named Dutchy. We could probably commandeer a bed for the night.”
“One bed?”
His mouth curved in a wry smile.’ ‘This time I’ll do the sleeping and you can keep watch.”
She had the most expressive blue eyes. He could see every thought, every emotion as it flitted through. She was looking up at him, judging him, measuring him. “You look tired,” she said flatly. “You had me thinking you were invulnerable.”
“I get tired,” he said. “I get hungry, I get thirsty, I get horny. I just don’t do anything about it if it’s not convenient.”
She still didn’t respond as he expected her to. “You didn’t say whether you ever got lonely.”
He thought for a moment, of the remote mountain cabin, half a continent away, with only the animals and his work for company. “No,” he said flatly. Lying. She didn’t call him on it, as he’d expected her to. She simply nodded, sinking onto the thick grass and holding the sleeping baby against her. He handed her his canteen, and she took it without argument.
By the time he’d managed to clear the camouflaging brush away from the jeep, check over the entire thing and load up the packs, Carlie looked as if she were half-asleep. She barely made a sound when he loaded her into the front seat, not even protesting when Reilly took the sleeping baby away from her and strapped him in the infant seat he’d stashed with the gear. He almost teased her, but she sat in the cracked leather seat, and if the old army vehicle hadn’t come equipped with webbed seat belts to hold her in place he expected she might very well have slipped right onto the floor.
She was asleep before he put the jeep in gear, and even the bouncing, rolling ride over the rutted path didn’t wake her. He had less than a quarter of a tank of gas—enough to get them to the tiny village of Dos Libros and not much farther. He just had to hope that the tiny outpost there had a reasonable supply of fuel. Otherwise they’d be walking again, and he wasn’t sure how his frail little jungle flower would hold up.
Except that she wasn’t frail. She was little, but she was surprisingly strong, and he’d put her through a workout that would make an aerobics instructor collapse. And she wasn’t his.
He needed to keep that firmly in mind. She was dependent on him right now, and she didn’t like it. She also looked up at him with a kind of innocent wondering in her eyes that made him damnably uncomfortable. Though why someone with a reputation like Caterina Morrissey would be possessed of either wonder or innocence was beyond him.
He had to be careful. Billy’s wife was the kind of woman who was used to having a man take care of her. Since he was the only one around, it would be only natural that she would turn to him. And he didn’t want that.
He wasn’t quite sure why. He had a healthy interest in sex, when it didn’t interfere with other, more important matters, and he would be a fool to deny that he found Carlie…irresistible. There was no real reason he shouldn’t have sex with her if she was willing and eager.
But he didn’t want to. For the first time in his life he wanted the same woman Billy Morrissey had wanted. For the first time in his life he could feel t
he slow, strangling tendrils of longing for something more than the fast, hot release of sex. When he looked at the pale face of the woman sleeping beside him, he didn’t see a manipulative socialite or a cheating wife. He didn’t see a mother who would doubtless abandon her child the first chance she got, or a woman with a score of rich and powerful lovers.
When he looked at her he saw hope. And a dream.
It scared the bloody hell out of him.
* * *
Chapter Six
* * *
Carlie’s eyes flew open in sudden, mind-shearing panic. She was alone, in the parked jeep, in the middle of a narrow jungle track. It was already growing dark, and the night insects were darting around her head. There was no sign of Reilly. No sign of the baby.
She tried to leap out of the car seat, but the seat belt held her back. She fumbled with it, taking forever to release the old clasp, telling herself not to panic. He wouldn’t have abandoned her. Wouldn’t have stolen the baby and left her alone in the heart of the jungle.
But then again, why wouldn’t he? He’d proved he was more than capable of taking care of Timothy—he didn’t need her around to feed or change him. She was just an inconvenience, something Billy Morrissey’s family would have to deal with. Everyone would be a lot happier to know that Caterina Morrissey was really dead.
Maybe she should have insisted on telling Reilly the truth. She’d tried, but he hadn’t believed her. What would he have done, once he’d known? Would he have taken the baby and left her behind? She’d promised Caterina she’d take care of her son, and she hadn’t wanted to give him up. Perhaps this was God’s punishment for her lies and her selfishness. Timothy would be better off with his grandparents, but she hadn’t wanted to let him go.
Had Reilly been planning this all along? Why had he bothered taking her this far, only to abandon her to what was probably certain death in the night-shrouded jungle? Why hadn’t she remembered what men with guns and uniforms were capable of?
She sat back in the car seat, pulling her legs up under her. The air had grown cool on her bare arms, and she shivered. If she were anyone else she would have had the luxury of tears. But it had been nine years since she’d cried, and she wasn’t about to start now.
“Did you think I’d abandoned you?” The voice came from close behind her, drawing, laconic.
She whirled around in the seat, to see Reilly standing on the edge of the clearing, watching her out of wary eyes.
Relief and something more washed over her. She didn’t even think, she simply moved, bolting out of the seat and racing across the clearing. She flung herself against him, babbling in relief and exhaustion.
“I thought you weren’t coming back,” she said against the soft cotton of his T-shirt. “I thought you’d left me here to die.”
His hands had come up to catch her arms, holding her, and she was vaguely aware of his strength. His warmth. His surprising tenderness. He didn’t push her away. He simply held her there as she ranted, cradling her against his body, and she breathed in the warmth and the scent of him, and the words ran down as she let out a long, shuddering sigh.
“That’s better,” he murmured. He’d moved his hand up to the nape of her neck, beneath her short-cropped hair, and he was kneading the tension away with his long fingertips. “I’ve found us a place for the night. You were dead to the world when we got here, so I decided to let you sleep.”
She looked up at him, as the slow, sensual kneading erased the tension in her body. “I was frightened.”
“You had reason to be.”
His face was very close to hers. It came to her, belatedly, that she was standing in a man’s arms, pressed against his body. She stepped back, suddenly nervous, and he released her.
“Where’s the baby?”
“Dos Libros is just over the rise. The women are looking after him. I realize you probably aren’t too happy about the fact that I turned your son over to strangers, but the women of the Shumi tribe are excellent mothers and nurturers, and I figured he would be much safer.”
“It’s all right,” Carlie said. “I trust your judgment.”
She’d managed to startle him. And then his mouth curved in a faint smile. “That’s good. Because I decided we’d better share a bedroom.” He didn’t wait for her startled reaction, and she wiped all expression from her face before he could see it. There was nothing she could do about the sudden clenching in her stomach, but at least that was invisible.
“Keep your mouth shut and your head down,” he added, heading off the way he’d come, blithely assuming she’d follow. “I don’t think the Shumi have had much traffic with the outside world, but Dutchy has some dangerous friends, and he might very well recognize you. I don’t want to raise any suspicions if I can help it.”
“What did you tell the Shumi?”
“That you’re my woman. That the baby is ours, and that I’m a very jealous man. The Shumi will leave us alone. I’m not so sure about Dutchy. He’d sell his own grandmother for a handful of pesos, and the reward on you and the kid is a lot higher than that.”
She strained to match his steady pace through the underbrush. “Reward?” she echoed, not certain if she’d heard right.
“Enough to keep me in style for the next decade,” he said lightly.
“Are you trying to frighten me, Reilly?” she demanded, panting slightly as she struggled to keep up with him. “If you are, I think I ought to mention that there’s no need to try quite so hard. I’m officially terrified.”
He glanced over his shoulder, his eyes glittering in the darkness. “I’d say you’re about as frightened as the Terminator,” he drawled.
“What’s the Terminator?”
“Give me a break, Carlie. You know what I’m talking about.”
She didn’t, but she obviously should have. If she’d lived anywhere near civilization for the past ten years she would have been conversant with the entity. “You think I don’t get scared?” she demanded.
He stopped and looked at her. “Well, I don’t know. I’ve already admitted I get tired and hungry and scared and horny. You have all those human weaknesses?”
“Most of them,” she said carefully.
He laughed, and it wasn’t an unpleasant sound. “We’ll get you some food and some rest tonight,” he said. “We’ll have to see about the other stuff. In the meantime, you stick to me like glue. There’ve been bands of Mendino’s ex-soldiers roaming the area, and Morales himself has been seen not too far from here. Not to mention the rebels, who are just as bloodthirsty as your stepfather’s goons. I didn’t bring you this far just to lose you.”
“I have no intention of letting you out of my sight if I can help it.”
“Why, princess,” he said with a slash of a smile. “I didn’t know you cared.”
She’d seen tiny villages like Dos Libros, though not in the nine years she’d been cloistered with the sisters. Her parents had died in a village very much like this one, and the memory sent a shudder of remembered pain through her, one that she was able to hide from Reilly. She’d seen places like Dutchy’s—a combination store, post office, bar and hotel, but most of all a hovel. There was no sign of the Shumi women, or Timothy for that matter, and she quickly stilled her flash of possessive panic, resisting her need to go after him.
“Get behind me,” Reilly muttered under his breath. She quickly did as she was told, and he put his arm around her, pushing her face against his shoulder. She couldn’t see anything, could only trust in him to steer her safely toward the door.
“This your wife, Reilly?” The voice was jovial, Germanic and not to be trusted for a moment. Even Carlie could tell that much.
“Close enough,” Reilly drawled. “You got a bed and a shower for us, Dutchy?”
“Is the pope Catholic?” Dutchy responded. “I’ve also got a hot meal and the best whiskey in all of San Pablo. I make it myself.”
“We’ll take a bottle,” Reilly said, pulling her toward the stairs.
She could see her feet out of the corner of her eye, feel the other people watching her. Dutchy, and others, as well. “You can send it up to our room.”
“Now, Reilly. You know how cut off we get around here. Starved for information, we are, aren’t we, boys? You can’t just hole up in your room with that pretty little thing. We want to know where you’ve been. What you’ve seen. These boys have to report back to their commander, and they need to hear about any trouble you may have run into. These are dangerous times, my boy, and we need to be prepared.”
She didn’t need to see Reilly’s mocking smile to know his expression. “Information doesn’t come free, Dutchy. And I’m more interested in having my woman in a bed for a change than gossiping. They’ll have to go out and find their own information instead of sitting around in a bar.”
It was just as well her face was pressed against his body. The color flooded her pale skin, and her faint sound of protest was uncontrollable.
“You sure she wants that?” Another voice spoke, this time in Spanish. Slow, and menacing. “The lady seems uncertain. My men and I would be glad to provide her with an alternative.”
They’d reached the foot of the stairs. She could feel the tension coiling through Reilly’s body, the utter, deadly calm. He put his hand under her chin, drawing her face into the dim light of the building. The watching men were at a distance, the room was thick with smoke and the greasy light of oil lamps, and there was no way they could get a clear look at her. No way they could recognize the daughter of Hector Mendino in the face of a nun. “What do you say, woman? Are you interested in leaving my protection?”
She shook her head, staring at him in mute pleading. He turned, shielding her behind his strong back. “You see, gentlemen. The lady is not uncertain, merely tired and impatient.”