Proposition: Marriage
Eileen Wilks
FIANCE ON HER DOORSTEP?One memorable adventure was what pretty, practical Jane Smith had wanted. After all, her life had proved to be as ordinary as her name. But Jane never dreamed she'd end a conventional vacation almost kidnapped by rebels, then rescued by the most seductive spy she ever could have imagined.Nor did Jane expect Samual Charmaneaux, still seductive, now an ex -spy, to show up on her doorstep and propose a marriage of convenience - just in case her holiday souvenir turned out to be his bundle of joy. She'd lost her heart to Samuel already, but could practical Jane give her hand to a mystery man who promised to make marriage a lifelong adventure?
CONFIDENTIAL (#u90553e26-2e8b-5b68-8995-437cd9336f3a)Letter to Reader (#u3fc96a09-d92a-5185-a6bb-41b0b0b818ad)Title Page (#u13eaab43-4680-5947-8f8f-90faba244da3)About the Author (#u53f6cf01-979d-5633-8b35-88c89f615fe2)Dedication (#u0a9e37f0-3043-5d95-8dc4-da37c06939bd)Chapter One (#u3bd5e103-0fa3-5a77-a1d6-ba22ec13c4ce)Chapter Two (#u6304a60a-c3e8-51fc-8781-e2d5be33a0b6)Chapter Three (#u785e298d-9161-5cfe-ad43-91569b35681f)Chapter Four (#u5304c670-1209-507f-b672-73eb79fe43c5)Chapter Five (#litres_trial_promo)Chapter Six (#litres_trial_promo)Chapter Seven (#litres_trial_promo)Chapter Eight (#litres_trial_promo)Chapter Nine (#litres_trial_promo)Chapter Ten (#litres_trial_promo)Chapter Eleven (#litres_trial_promo)Chapter Twelve (#litres_trial_promo)Chapter Thirteen (#litres_trial_promo)Copyright (#litres_trial_promo)
CONFIDENTIAL
Jane confuses the hell out of me. Maybe it will help to write out my objectives. I’m not used to putting anything on paper, but I can always destroy this later.
Objectives Attained:
1. Quit the Agency
2. Activate Samuel Charmaneaux identity
3. Find Jane Smith
Objectives Remaining:
1. Find an ordinary job
2. Make a place for myself in my new hometown
3. Marry Jane
The first two objectives depend on the last one. Jane doesn’t like risks, so I have to make her either need me or want me enough to take a chance. I don’t understand what she wants from me, or what happens to me when I kiss her, but I know she wants me—almost as much as I want her. I can use that to get her to agree to marry me.
New objective: Seduce Jane.
Dear Reader,
Welcome to Silhouette Desire—where you’re guaranteed powerful, passionate and provocative love stories that feature rugged heroes and spirited heroines who experience the full emotional intensity of falling in love!
Wonderful and ever-popular Annette Broadrick brings us September’s MAN OF THE MONTH with Lean, Mean & Lonesome. Watch as a tough loner returns home to face the woman he walked away from but never forgot.
Our exciting continuity series TEXAS CATTLEMAN’S CLUB continues with Cinderella’s Tycoon by Caroline Cross. Charismatic CEO Sterling Churchill marries a shy librarian pregnant with his sperm-bank baby—and finds love.
Proposition: Marriage is what rising star Eileen Wilks offers when the girl-next-door comes alive in the arms of an alpha hero. Beloved romance author Fayrene Preston makes her Desire debut with The Barons of Texas: Tess, featuring a beautiful heiress who falls in love with a sexy stranger. The popular theme BACHELORS & BABIES returns to Desire with Metsy Hingle’s Dad in Demand. And Barbara McCauley’s miniseries SECRETS! continues with the dramatic story of a mysterious millionaire in Killian’s Passion.
So make a commitment to sensual love—treat yourself to all six September love stories from Silhouette Desire!
Enjoy!
Joan Marlow Golan
Senior Editor, Silhouette Desire
Please address questions and book requests to:
Silhouette Reader Service
U.S.- 3010 Walden Ave., PO Box 1325, Buffalo, NY 14269
Canadian. PO Box 609, Fort Erie, Ont. L2A 5X3
Proposition: Marriage
Eileen Wilks
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
EILEEN WILKS
is a fifth-generation Texan. Her great-great-grandmother came to Texas in a covered wagon shortly after the end of the Civil War—excuse us, the War Between the States. But she’s not a full-blooded Texan. Right after another war, her Texan father fell for a Yankee woman. This obviously mismatched pair proceeded to travel to nine cities in three countries in the first twenty years of their marriage. For the next twenty years they stayed put, back home in Texas again—and still together.
Eileen figures her professional career matches her nomadic upbringing, since she’s tried everything from drafting to a brief stint as a ranch hand—raising two children and any number of cats and dogs along the way. Not until she started writing did she “stay put,” because that’s when she knew she’d come home. Readers can write to her at P.O. Box 4612, Midland, TX 79704-4612.
This book is dedicated to my bookseller friends—
to Sherry at Miz B’s for her support, her friendship
and for many, many hours of reading pleasure;
to Rick at Waldenbooks for always going the extra yard;
and to Donita Lawrence at Bell, Book and Candle for her
loving support of romance books, romance writers
and romance readers everywhere.
One
Repentance came too late. Jane was up to her neck in lake water and trouble.
The lake was a shallow one. The trouble waited about ten feet away, in the form of a pair of combat boots planted right at her eye level on the muddy bank. Jane crouched behind a bush that clung to life in spite of its recent inundation, and wished very hard for the impossible.
She wished she’d never heard of the small-Caribbean nation of San Tomás. She wished even more that she hadn’t bought the cruise tickets a fellow teacher had been forced to sell when his wife’s appendix ruptured just before spring break. Most of all, she wished she’d never given in to the rare spirit of adventure that had moved her to leave the port city where the cruise ship was docked, and go haring off to investigate the island’s interior.
Why, oh why, had she decided to toss aside the cautious habits of a lifetime and live a little?
The boots belonged to a soldier. The soldier had one friend nearby, whom she couldn’t see through her bush, and others spread out in the surrounding tropical forest. All were looking for her, and they had guns—big, mean-looking, Rambo-type guns.
The water was warm, the air was still and hot, but Jane shivered.
Until she’d heard the gunshots, she had been enjoying herself tremendously. She’d made several friends on the bus, including a native couple who had told her proudly about the dam the government had built nearby. Jane was sure she was more profoundly grateful for that dam than anyone else could be. Especially for the newness of it. That dam had created the shallow lake where she crouched. Its waters had swallowed part of the forest and killed off the ground-hugging plants, but it hadn’t finished drowning the trees and larger bushes. Jane’s bush still had plenty of leaves to hide behind.
Though she couldn’t see the soldiers’ faces now, she’d seen them in the village before she’d fled. They had all looked terribly young to her—no older than most of the boys she taught back home in Atherton. She’d noticed the dozen-or-so youthful soldiers with wicked-looking rifles slung over bony shoulders as soon as she’d climbed off the bus, but she hadn’t thought anything of it. Not really. Soldiers were a common sight in San Tomás.
Everything had happened so fast. When the bus driver had announced they had to stop for repairs; she hadn’t minded because she’d needed to find a ladies’ room. Seconds after she went into a local cantina, a boy she had met on the bus had come running in. He’d tried to warn her, but she hadn’t believed him—not until she’d been washing her hands in the tiny rest room, and had heard gunfire.
She’d crawled out the narrow window and had run for her life. The dirt path she’d stumbled across had led her straight to this lake, and her bush.
“Hernández is a fool,” one of the soldiers said in Spanish. “Do you see a woman? Of course not, because she isn’t here. Why would anyone head this way, right into the lake? Even a silly norteamericana would not be such a fool. But even if we find her, what good will it do us? Will any of that ransom he talks about find its way into our pockets?”
The other soldier chuckled and made a crude comment about what Hernández could do with his orders. The first young man laughed.
Whom had they been shooting at, back at the village? Jane tried not to think about that. It made her shiver, and she didn’t want to move, not even a breath. But it was hard, very hard, to be still.
There was a bug on her hand. It had climbed on when she’d gripped one limb of the bush—another move that she repented too late, because now she didn’t dare move her hand to release the bush. They might hear.
The bug was a huge, horrid monster of an insect as long as her little finger. It sat on her hand and stared at her, its carapace shining greenish-black in the sun, and it had too many legs. That was how bugs were. They had all those squirmy little legs. Jane purely hated being touched by squirmy little bug-legs.
Jane stared at the bug while she listened to the obscene joke the first soldier told, and to the second soldier’s laughter. Her other hand—the bugless one—gripped a tiny locket that hung on a chain around her neck. The two young men argued about where each of them would search for her.
Then they talked about what they would do if they found her.
When she heard one of them leaving, she waited for the tight band of terror around her chest to ease. It didn’t.
They’d just been talking tough to impress each other, she told herself. In spite of the guns, they were just kids—kids the same age as the ones she taught Spanish to, back at Atherton High, for heaven’s sake. They’d been talking about things they didn’t understand. Surely they couldn’t understand the reality of what they had said they would do to her.
Fear nearly choked her. The edge of the little disk she wore around her neck dug into the pads of her fingers, nearly cutting the skin. Papa, she thought, why did you always tell me I was like you? I’m not. I’m not cut out for adventures.
She wondered what had happened to the other foreigners who’d been on the bus. Please, God, she prayed, let them be all right. That German couple had been so nice, and so had the other passengers—like the quietly gorgeous man with the wire-rimmed glasses who had sat in the bench seat across from her. Jane couldn’t stand to think that the gunfire she’d heard had been directed at him. She’d talked with many of the others on the bus, but hadn’t gotten up the nerve to speak to him.
Normally, Jane made friends easily. That was one advantage to being unremarkable. She might secretly long for one outstanding trait, good or bad, but people did relax with her because she was so very average. New acquaintances often said she reminded them of someone—a niece, a friend from school, the daughter of a neighbor.
But something about the man she’d mentally dubbed “the professor” had made her uncharacteristically uncertain. Maybe it was the East Coast look of him, with those trendy glasses and baggy chinos, that had intimidated her. He’d seemed rather reserved, but she’d decided he was probably shy.
And his hands... For some reason, his hands had fascinated her. He’d had big hands, curiously graceful, with long, elegant fingers, yet she’d seen a number of small nicks and scrapes such as a workingman collects. She’d been downright silly about his hands, in fact, letting them feature in a mildly sexual fantasy. It had been perfectly safe to fantasize, of course. He hadn’t noticed her. Men seldom did.
What had happened to him? she wondered now. If the guerrillas were looking for hostages to ransom, surely they wouldn’t have hurt any of the foreigners on the bus.
Ten feet from her bush, the army boots moved.
The bug decided to move, too, tickling her hand with its squirmy feet Jane grimaced. It was hard to hold still with a monster bug strolling around on her arm.
She couldn’t see what Army Boots was doing, not through the shrubbery, but her ears told her he hadn’t gone far. She heard the scritch of a match being struck and smelled sulfur. For one panicked moment she thought he was going to burn her bush down, then the scent of tobacco smoke drifted her way, making her feel foolish. He’d stopped to light a cigarette, of course, not to commit arson upon her hiding place. He stood there smoking it about fifteen feet from where she crouched, sodden and scared.
The bug paused, waved its fuzzy antennae at her, and rounded the bend of her elbow.
So far, this was shaping up to be one hell of a vacation.
Cinnamon trees mingled with kapok, yellow cedar, mahoe and boxwood in the tropical forest. Some of the trees would die over the next year, their roots or trunks rotted away by the new lake. The big mango tree sitting several feet back from the northern edge of the water would probably survive.
The man perched in that tree had a lot in common with it. Few of the locals realized that mangoes weren’t native to the island. Mango trees had been around long enough and had adapted readily enough that it didn’t occur to anyone that they didn’t belong. Like the tree, the man was a survivor. Like it, he was good at fitting into places where he didn’t belong. He rested comfortably in a vee formed by the trunk and a thick branch, and watched the woman and the soldiers.
The newly-formed lake was, for him, a mixed blessing. The woman had found a place to hide, which was good. But water covered the dirt track he’d planned to take to his pickup spot on the other side of the island. Not so good.
The situation had changed. He had some decisions to make.
The mango tree did a better job of hiding him than the woman’s bush did for her. He could keep track of the ragged soldado from Ruiz’s so-called Liberation Army who stood smoking a cigarette some twenty feet to the west. He also had a decent view of the woman in the lake. Her pale sundress floated out around her in the muddy water, making her easy to spot.
She looked pretty pathetic. Even her hair was dispirited—a dark, dripping cap plastered to her head.
But he’d seen her hair when it was dry. Dry, it held fire hidden in its depths, a richness that only showed when sunlight struck sparks off it. On the bus, he’d watched her. His life sometimes depended on how well he observed those around him, so he’d taken note of all the passengers, including the cheerful American tourist who had chatted with the others in surprisingly good Spanish.
Maybe he had rested his eyes on her more than was strictly necessary. She was so very American, so blessedly ordinary. It had soothed him to look at her. Of course, her hair wasn’t ordinary at all, though it pretended to be. Such a warm brown it was, and thick enough to make a man’s hands itch to touch it.
He shook his head. Silly woman. She was clutching her bush as if it made her invisible. Couldn’t she tell that as soon as the soldier moved east along the shore of the little lake he’d be able to see her?
Probably not. Few people saw the world accurately, and she was a civilian. Her only experience of hiding had probably ended when she and her friends had stopped waiting to hear “Ally, ally, outs in free,” and had started playing kissing games.
The thought of playing kissing games with the woman snagged his attention for one surprising second. He remembered the way she’d laughed on the bus. She’d been talking to that boy, the one he’d bribed to warn her of the guerrillas’ plans She had a warm laugh, as warm and inviting as her hair.
He’d thought of kissing her then—when she’d laughed.
The soldado threw down his cigarette butt and shouldered his rifle. He started moving east.
The woman didn’t move. She stayed put—poor, foolish creature, huddled up to her armpits in lake water, hiding behind her bush. He doubted she could see the man who was looking for her. She didn’t realize the guerrilla would be in a position to see her soon.
It didn’t matter, he told himself. What he’d learned about the ties being formed between two terrorist groups would affect the lives of a great many more women than this one. If she were caught—no, when she was caught, he amended, because she obviously would be—she shouldn’t suffer too much. Ruiz was after ransom, and the self-styled generalissimo wasn’t a vicious man; he would have no need or intention of harming his hostages. The woman might have a rough couple of weeks, but she should be okay. Ruiz didn’t want to look like a barbarian in the press. He just wanted money.
Only...Ruiz wasn’t a real general. He wasn’t even a real soldier, though he wore a fancy uniform and quoted Che Guevara. His control over his troops was poor, and, while some of his soldiers were as decent as men in their positions could be, others gave beasts a bad name.
If the woman were raped, he thought, she wouldn’t laugh that warm laugh anymore. Not for a very long time.
Maybe not ever.
It had nothing to do with him, he reminded himself; nothing to do with his purpose for being here. He’d seen that she received a warning. He’d even lingered after sending that warning, hoping to see that she’d gotten safely away. There was nothing more he could do without risking himself inexcusably.
He told himself these things, but his hands were already moving to find the grips he needed to climb out on a limb for a wet, frightened woman.
The bug was three inches past Jane’s elbow when she heard a thud—a sudden, solid thud, as if something heavy had fallen on the nearby shore.
She jumped. Her arm moved, the branch jerked, the leaves rustled and the bug fell into the water.
There was a grunt and a dull smack. A hitting sort of smack. After seven years as a teacher and twenty-nine years as a sister to two quarrelsome brothers, she knew that sound. She swallowed the whimper trying to climb out of her throat and crab-walked backward, sure she had to get away. Her wet dress clung to her legs, hampering her movement.
She paused, still crouched low. Now she couldn’t hear anything. Even the birds were quiet. That stupid bug was swimming toward her, and she had no idea where the soldier was, what was going on, or what she should do. Jane was used to being sensible, but common sense wasn’t much help in such an utterly uncommon situation. So she stayed where she was, frozen by indecision, straining to hear.
What was that? Behind her—
Before she could turn, a hand clamped over her mouth. Panic sent her heartbeat into triple time. She tried to bite the hand, but long fingers dug into her cheeks and she couldn’t get her mouth open. The hand jerked her head back. She took a deep, panicked breath through her nose and inhaled her attacker’s scent just as his other arm wrapped around her. He forced her off-balance so that she knelt, water lapping at her breasts, with her upper body bent awkwardly back. The hand on her mouth kept her head tilted, exposing her neck.
She thought about necks and knives. Nausea mixed with the panicked drumming of her heart.
A voice spoke in her ear in tiny puffs of air, softer than a whisper. “The soldier with the cigarette is unconscious, but there’s another one in the trees to the west He’ll hear us if we make any noise. Are you going to scream if I take my hand off your mouth?”
He spoke English. American English. Relief made he limp, and she managed to shake her head in spite of the bruta grip of his hand.
At last that hand left her mouth, though his arm stayed wrapped around her. She held her breath, trying to reassun him with her silence that she had the sense to be very, very quiet.
When he let go, she nearly toppled over backward. His hand on her shoulder steadied her. Taking care not to splash she stood, turned—and almost forgot the need for silence.
His glasses were gone. Everything else was the same—the loose white shirt, baggy chinos, and straight brown hai pulled back in a ponytail—but the glasses were gone, and with them had gone the man who’d worn them. It was the eyes, she thought. Those cold, blue-as-heaven eyes meeting hers didn’t belong to a shy professor. No. The man standing in front of her now, his pants wet from the thighs down, was something else; something so far outside her experience, she couldn’t put a label on him. She stood, mute and shaken staring at the stranger in front of her.
He held a finger to his lips in the age-old gesture for quiet and she realized his hands were the same. The same long fingers and palms, the same calluses and small nicks. Even though the man was different, the hands were the same. I was absurdly reassuring.
She nodded her understanding.
He turned.
She started to follow, but paused, looking down at the water that came up to her thighs now that she was on he feet. The bug was still swimming valiantly, but it was con fused. It was going in circles. She hesitated, but for only a second. The stupid thing was going to drown itself.
Quickly she scooped up the horrid creature, using the hand it had already touched. Ugh. Bug legs. Her face scrunched up in disgust, she dumped the glistening monster-bug onto the relative safety of her bush, and turned.
The man who was not a professor had stopped five feet away. He stared at her, an odd expression on his face. He probably wanted to ask if she was nuts. That was what Doug used to ask her whenever she did something he thought was dumb, which had happened rather often in the last couple of months of their ill-fated engagement.
She shrugged apologetically and tried a smile. It hurt her cheek.
He didn’t smile back. He turned and started for the shore—the western shore, which made no sense to her. He’d said there was another soldier in those woods, so why was he going that way?
Because she had no idea what else to do, she followed him.
Jane felt as frightened and confused as the bug must have been when it swam in circles, looking for land. She wanted to cry. On the one hand, she wanted the boyish professor back. An odd pang of loss assailed her over a man who had never existed. Yet she had to admit that the person she’d thought existed behind those gold-framed glasses wouldn’t have known what to do in this situation. This man, with his cold blue eyes and elegant hands, apparently did.
They reached the drowning trees first, then the muddy shore. He gestured at her, indicating he wanted her to hide behind one of the larger trees and wait.
She shook her head. The safety he offered was precarious, but at least he knew what to do. Jane hated not knowing what to do even more than she hated bugs. So she smiled and refused silently, but the smile made her face hurt where his long fingers had dug into her flesh.
She had actually fantasized about those hands. Her face heated when she remembered that. To her dismay, the rest of her body heated, too.
He moved quickly, startling a gasp out of her, stopping so close to her that she could feel the heat from his body all up and down her own wet, too-aware flesh. One strand of his hair had come loose from his ponytail, and it tickled her neck when he bent his head. “I have to take out the other soldado ,” he whispered so softly she scarcely heard him, even with his lips brushing her ear. His breath was as gentle and warm as his words were cold. “I’d rather not kill him. It will be easier to avoid that if you aren’t trotting along behind me.”
She swallowed, nodded, and went to wait behind the tree he’d indicated. And she tried to convince herself that her goose bumps came from fear, or from being wet. From anything except the remembered thrill of his lips brushing her ear.
Two
The second soldier was as easy to surprise as the first one had been. The watcher came up behind his quarry, silent as a shadow, and locked his forearm across the soldado’s throat, his right hand finding the carotid artery with deadly speed. His victim didn’t struggle long. Cutting off the blood flow to the brain was a faster way of knocking a man out than trying to throttle him, and a good deal quieter and more certain than hitting him over the head.
After seven carefully counted seconds, he lowered the unconscious body to the ground, then lightly felt the artery again. He held his breath, then let it out, relieved, as soon as he felt the pulse.
Killing some poor SOB accidentally would have been a hell of a note on which to end his career with the agency.
It took only a moment to use the man’s belt to tie his arms behind him. That wouldn’t hold him for long, but they couldn’t expect a long delay, anyhow. There were other searchers, and not all of them were Ruiz’s poorly trained, poorly equipped guerrillas.
Not all of them were after the woman, either.
He straightened and looked down at his victim, who wasn’t really a man at all, he saw. Not yet, anyway. Sixteen or seventeen, at a guess. Scarcely old enough to grow a beard. Had soldiers always been so painfully young? Or was he getting old?
Of course, he was himself capable of looking both young and innocent, though he couldn’t remember being the former, and wasn’t sure he’d ever been the latter. It was a useful skill, but he doubted he could manage it if he were the one unconscious.
He made his silent way back to where he’d left the woman. She was peering around the trunk of the tree, looking in the wrong direction. Her gauzy sundress had originally been long and loose and white; it was still long, dragging about her ankles, but now it was wet and dirty and nearly transparent He had a marvelous view of her rounded rump and white bikini panties beneath the clinging fabric.
He smiled and gave in to a rare impulse. “Boo,” he said conversationally.
She jumped half a mile.
He had his impulses under control and his smile tucked back out of sight by the time she spun around. She was really kind of cute, even half-drowned as she was right now; small and cute and round all over, like a kitten. Her face was round and innocent Her body was nicely rounded, too, if not so innocent looking, with plenty of curves and softness in just the places where a man liked to find curves and softness. Even her big brown eyes were round at the moment
Then they narrowed. “You scared me on purpose. I take it the other soldier is, uh—unconscious?”
He shrugged dismissively. Let her wonder what he’d done. It might make her jump more quickly when he wanted her to jump. “There’s no one close enough to hear us at the moment.” They needed to put some distance between them and Ruiz’s men while they could. He turned away. “Come on.”
“Where?”
He headed for his mango tree.
“Dang it,” she said. The rubbery squish of wet tennis shoes hurried along behind him. “Where are we going?”
“To get my gear, first.” He reached the tree, crouched, and jumped, catching the lowest branch. He heaved himself up.
“Then what happens?” She tilted her head back, watching him.
“We go to a village I know about on the old Camino Real—that’s the royal highway.”
“I know what it means. What I want to know is—”
“That’s right, you speak Spanish, don’t you? I hope we can reach the village before dark, but I’m not sure of the route. Between Ruiz’s troops and the new lake, my choices have become limited.” He grabbed his backpack from the crotch of the tree. “Watch out.” He tossed it down.
She jumped back just in time.
He swung down to land beside her. The sight of her from the front was just as appealing as it had been from behind. A little gold locket lay in the valley formed by full, pretty breasts. Her lacy white bra kept him from seeing as much of her nipples as he would have liked, but he could see their shadows beneath the two layers of wet cloth.
It was probably just as well she had on the bra, he decided. The low hum of arousal he felt now was pleasant More would be distracting.
Either she liked letting him look, or she was too upset to realize how transparent her dress was. “But the old Camino Real is in the high country to the east,” she said earnestly. “Shouldn’t we head south, back where we came from? Or west? There’s a decent-size town to the west—Narista, I think it’s called. I’m sure they’d have a garrison of the national police there.”
He raised his brows. Apparently she’d done some homework on San Tomás. “There’s a man in the village where we’re headed who can be trusted to get you back to the capital.” Which was where she should have stayed. The local government made great efforts to keep the beaches safe for tourists from the cruise ships. “Going south is out. Ruiz will have his troops watching the road.” He shouldered his backpack.
She frowned. “Who’s Ruiz?”
“The man who sent soldiers to kidnap you. Let’s go.”
“Wait a minute.” She laid her hand on his arm. It was a small hand, surprisingly warm, with rounded fingernails that had been neatly manicured before she soaked them in a lake while hiding from guerrillas. Now the pretty pink polish was chipped. “Who are you? I mean, I saw you on the bus, but we weren’t introduced.”
“John,” he said. It was as good a name as any, and the man he was taking her to thought of him as “John.”
“John. I am very glad to meet you.” She smiled, and her fingers tightened in a friendly squeeze. “I’m Jane.”
Heat, quick and compelling, dazzled his system for one crazy moment.
“Thank you for—”
“Come on.” He pulled away from her, looking for a game trail to take them deeper into the forest.
She scrambled after him, making every bit as much noise as he’d expected she would. “What about west? Why aren’t we going west instead of heading into the hills?”
“Go west if you want to. I’m going east.” The strength of his reaction to her disturbed him. He was familiar with the effects of danger—the heightened senses, the rush of adrenaline, the occasional swift slide from sensory stimulation into arousal. But he’d never reacted this fast, this hard, before. She’d only squeezed his arm, for heaven’s sake. One simple squeeze, and his body had gone on full alert.
He didn’t just want to kiss the woman now. He wanted to lay her down on the spongy floor of the forest, push up her dress, pull down her panties and push inside her. He wanted to nde her until they both screamed.
She followed without speaking. He’d almost hoped she’d turn around and head west—where, as she’d said, a town with a large garrison of the national police waited to welcome her back to what passed for civilization. Of course, Ruiz’s men would almost certainly pick her up before she’d gone a mile.
They traveled in silence with him in the lead, moving slowly but steadily upward. The trails he took twisted and branched. He used the compass from his backpack to keep them heading in the right general direction, and by late afternoon they were deep in the rain forest and several hundred feet higher. The light here was shadowy and green, filtered by the leafy canopy overhead. Vague scurryings in the brush spoke of tiny lives being lived all around them, lives that had nothing to do with them. The man who called himself John was comforted by the indifference of his surroundings. Bit by bit, as they pressed farther into a world that cared not at all for their exalted status as humans, he relaxed back into his usual detachment
It was just as well this was his last job. He’d known it was time to get out. Ever since Jack’s death he had known, but his reactions today were so far out of line he had to wonder if he should have agreed to take this job, even as a favor. He owed Patrick a great deal, but messing up this job wouldn’t repay him.
He heard a muffled squeak and turned. She was brushing frantically at something on her arm, a spider or some other small, multi-legged creature. “Did it bite you?” Concern hit him with a quick, unexpected punch. Few of the creepie-crawlies on the island were dangerous, but—
“No,” she said. “Its wiggly little legs got on me.” She looked as if she thought she’d been poisoned.
“You saved the other one,” he pointed out. “In the lake. The beetle.”
“It was going to drown.” She rubbed her arm as if she hoped to wipe the insect germs off. “I couldn’t just let it drown after... Well, the bug thought my arm was safe, and by holding still, I was sort of deceiving it. When it fell into the water, I felt responsible.”
He looked at her, disbelieving. She’d felt responsible for a beetle? “Come on. I see a stump up ahead where you can sit. We need to get dry socks on.”
“Why?” She limped after him. “Our shoes will still be wet.”
“Jungle rot.” He stopped by the stump to unzip his backpack. “One of the first rules in climate and terrain like this is to keep your feet dry.” He handed her a pair of socks.
She shuddered and sat down.
He changed his own socks without sitting, balancing first on one leg, then the other, checking each foot for any small cuts or blisters. Open wounds in the tropics could be dangerous. When he had both shoes back on he looked at her and frowned. She was taking too long. She’d only done one foot. Her other foot was propped on her knee, her dress gathered up to her knees to droop in concealing folds between her parted legs. She was pulling the wet sock off slowly.
The sock had a wide, lacy border. It also had a red stain. “You’re bleeding.”
She eased the sock the rest of the way off. “Brilliant observation. Wet shoes and socks can rub blisters, you know.”
He tightened his lips. “Leaving an open, untreated wound on the foot in a tropical zone is just begging for infection, fungus—” He shook his head, disgusted, as he unzipped the backpack. “What about your other foot?”
“It’s fine.”
He thought about the fact that she’d just kept going, without complaint, when her blister must have hurt like hell. “Take your shoe off.” He got out the ointment and gauze. “I want to check both feet.”
She had an odd expression on her face. “It’s like my mother’s purse.”
“What?”
“Your backpack. It’s like my mother’s purse. She carries a tote the size of Manhattan, and it’s got everything in it. Having you got a sewing kit in there?” she asked, interested.
As a matter of fact, he did. Among other things. He knelt in front of her and grabbed her foot.
“Hey!”
“Hold still.” She had small feet, with pearly pink toenails. He couldn’t keep from smiling when he saw those toenails. What was the point of painting them when she wasn’t wearing sandals? He looked at the blister on her heel that had burst and bled into her sock. “Why didn’t you tell me you were hurting?”
“Why? We couldn’t have stopped any earlier, anyway, could we?”
“I need to know your limitations to plan properly.” There was a topical anaesthetic in the ointment, and he would pad the area with gauze. That, and the dry socks, should make her more comfortable, but he wouldn’t be able to keep her from hurting entirely. He frowned. Absently, he stroked his thumb along the bottom of her foot. It flexed in a quick, involuntary movement. “Are you ticklish?”
“N-no.” Her eyes were dark when they met his. “I mean, yes.”
He saw the heat in her eyes, heard the uncertain longing in her voice. His hand tightened on her foot as his body tightened elsewhere. Apparently he wasn’t the only one coming down with jungle fever.
His gaze drifted away from her foot. Her dress was still damp. It molded nicely to the firm swells of her breasts, but he couldn’t see her nipples anymore. Not quite. If he were to lean forward, though, and take one in his mouth...
No, he told himself. Not now. The time and the place were wrong. But it was harder than it should have been to look away, take the cap off the ointment, and tend to the part of her body that needed it most. And when he’d finished treating her blister, he stroked the sole of her foot again—one long, seemingly casual stroke of his thumb—and watched her foot quiver. No, he thought again, angry with her for responding so quickly and easily. He wouldn’t take her. It wasn’t safe; not here and now.
But maybe it would be. Later.
Jane caught glimpses of the sun whenever the forest canopy thinned. It was on its way down now, though they still had some daylight left. The man who’d rescued her kept moving tirelessly while she watched, and followed.
Observing him was altogether too pleasant. He was lithe and muscular and graceful, and Jane’s body couldn’t seem to understand that he wasn’t at all what she wanted, no matter how firmly she spoke to it. She didn’t understand it. Her dress was filthy and wrinkled; her feet hurt with every step; she was tired and lost, and mystified by her body’s reactions. After twenty-nine years of reasonable behavior, it seemed determined to embarrass her with outrageous demands.
She felt as if she’d started the day in Kansas and ended up in Oz. Only instead of ruby slippers, all she had to get her home were her filthy tennis shoes, and instead of a friendly Scarecrow or Tin Man, her companion was a cold-eyed liar who made her body burn.
So his name was John, was it?
After noticing the way he’d stared at her breasts, she’d kept her distance from him, not asking questions, though she was nearly bursting with them. Except her foolish body wasn’t listening to her sensible brain.
Maybe, she thought as they started up yet another a hill, this sudden attack of lust was part of the price she had to pay for her foolishness. A solitary, impromptu vacation had seemed like such a small adventure, though. Most of the time, Jane felt mildly foolish about her other name—the one her father had given her—but she’d wanted just once to see if she could live up to it. A woman whose middle name was Desirée ought to be able to handle all sorts of risks.
Which proved how little she deserved such an exotic name, she thought glumly. She would much rather have been helping Frances Ann get her garden ready the way she’d planned to do before Ed had waved that cruise ticket under her nose. Instead, she was on the run with a man who might be a spy. Or a criminal.
At least her inconvenient lust took her mind off the way her feet hurt. “How much farther do you suppose this village is?”
“Hard to say, when we haven’t been traveling in a straight line.”
No, they hadn’t, had they? He’d gone out of his way to avoid that, and she wondered why. Jane added that to the mental list she was keeping of questions to ask at a better time, when she wasn’t out of breath and her reluctant rescuer seemed a little friendlier. But what if things didn’t get better? she asked herself suddenly, pausing to catch her breath. What if things stayed messed up and scary, and the man in front of her stayed silent and scary?
Damn. Jane bit her lip. He was heading downhill, annoyingly tireless. She skidded after him—and spoke up. “So why aren’t we traveling in a straight line? Why didn’t we take that little dirt road we passed a while back?”
“It was going in the wrong direction.”
That sounded good, and yet... Jane consulted her mental list as she made her way unsteadily downhill after him.
His pants were dry now. They should have been too baggy to be sexy, but watching him move did funny things to her breathing. He was as lithe as a dancer, but it was a deadly sort of grace—one that spoke of both survival and danger.
Moves like an athlete or a martial-arts expert, she added to her mental list.
That list kept growing. He had known about General Ruiz. He’d done something violent and serious to the two soldiers when he rescued her. He didn’t like roads, or even well-traveled footpaths. He knew about this village that was, apparently, the only place he considered safe; and that, in itself, didn’t make sense.
“Why is this village the only safe spot for us to go?” she asked. “Why didn’t we go west?”
He didn’t bother to look back. “Generalissimo Ruiz has his camp set up a few miles west of the village where our bus stopped. I doubt that it needed repairs, by the way. The driver had probably been bribed to deliver the norteamericanos to the village. Ruiz has done this before, grabbing any foreigners who wander near what he considers his territory. He’s after ransom.”
“But I don’t have any money!”
He shrugged. “If he couldn’t get money from your family, he’d try to get it from his government, which can’t afford to be embarrassed by his little tricks. The cruise ships will stop docking here if they start losing tourists to Ruiz’s plans for redistributing the wealth.”
They’d reached the bottom of the gully, where a trickle of water pretended to be a stream. He headed south along the would-be streambed.
Jane scrambled after him. He had to be either a spy or a criminal, didn’t he? Who else would know the kinds of things he did? She shuddered at the possibility that she might be at the mercy of someone who sold drugs or guns—a man with no morals and no conscience.
But would a man like that have saved her? She couldn’t believe it.
Of course, this whole situation veered between the incredible and the unbelievable. Here we are, she thought, John and Jane, tramping through the jungle, pursued by rebel guerrillas.... She frowned. “What did you say your name was?”
“John.”
“Now that’s original. John Doe, maybe?”
He turned around. The gleam in his eyes might have been amusement. Or a warning. “I should remember that naïveté isn’t the same as stupidity. Let’s make it Smith.”
Her heart beat faster. “What a coincidence. My name’s Smith, too.”
His mouth thinned. “Sure, it is. Look, you don’t need to know who I am. Just do what I tell you, and don’t ask questions.”
Shutting up sounded like a good idea, except now that she’d gotten started, she couldn’t seem to stop. “I don’t see what difference it makes. You’re just going to lie about the answers anyway.”
“The less you think you know, the better. There are people who wouldn’t let you leave the country if they suspected you knew me.” He paused. “Pay attention, Jane. This is what really happened. You were frightened by the gunfire and ran. You got lost, but kept going because you didn’t know what else to do. You don’t know how you wound up near a village where a nice man found you, and offered to escort you to the capital. You never saw me after the bus stopped for repairs.”
She bit her lip. “Are you a spy?”
For a second his face went blank. When he smiled, it looked as graceful and intentional as everything else he did. “Sure. I’m a spy, Jane. Just like James Bond and all the other good guys.”
She was pretty certain he was nothing like James Bond, maybe nothing like any of the good guys. But he had rescued her. Surely that meant he had a conscience.
“So worried,” he murmured, his gaze sliding down from her face. “If you’re frightened of me, why do you stay with me?”
He was looking at her again. At her breasts. And his eyes weren’t cold now, not at all. As for her traitorous body... She resisted the urge to cross her arms in front of her and hide its reaction.
He came toward her. “Jane—”
She took one quick step back so she wouldn’t throw herself up against him—and tripped, landing hard on her bottom.
Now his smile was genuine—and amused, damn him. “I was just going to ask what your real last name is.”
“Smith,” she muttered, and stood with far less grace than he used to just stand there and breathe. She rubbed her sore bottom.
“I’m glad you have a sense of humor, Jane, but I need your real name.”
“Well, John Smith, we don’t always get what we want, do we? But in this case you did. My real name is Smith. Jane Smith. From Atherton, Kansas.”
“Your parents actually named you Jane Smith?” He grinned.
Oh, Lord, when he grinned like that he became yet another person—this one, lively and compelling. “It’s my curse,” she said weakly. It wasn’t fair that all his personas were so blasted sexy. “I always have to show ID. People don’t believe anyone is really named Jane Smith.”
He held out his hand. “In any case, I’m glad to meet you, Jane Smith of Atherton, Kansas.”
She hesitated only a second before accepting his outstretched hand. They shook. “And I’m delighted to meet you, John Smith of... wherever.”
“Never-Never Land, do you think? Or maybe Oz.”
Startled by how he’d echoed her earlier thoughts, she laughed.
“Ah, Jane,” he said, and closed his other hand over hers. The light in his eyes wasn’t amusement now. “You’re not in Kansas anymore, are you?”
It was the oddest feeling, having her hand trapped between both of his that way. Odd, and...stimulating. Her pulse thrummed in her throat. She swallowed. “No. This definitely isn’t Kansas.”
He stood there without speaking. His fingers played with hers, stroking one, then another, but she had the impression he wasn’t paying attention to what his hands did. She was, though. His casual claiming of her hand sent tingles zipping through her system like the air-drawn streamers trailed by a Fourth of July sparkler. But he seemed entirely focused on her face.
On her.
It was the most erotic thing she’d ever experienced. Her lips parted and her breathing grew shallow, because he wanted her. It wasn’t fair. Men seldom noticed her. Certainly she’d never expected this frightening man, this cold-eyed liar of a man, to notice her. Her fantasies should have stayed safe, private....
He smiled a quiet, knowing smile, as if he’d seen right inside her head to where those fantasies were lodged; as if he knew exactly what they were—and intended to do something about them. Then he blinked. His eyes lost their focus, and he went still, like a cat just before it jumps on a mouse. His head lifted.
“What?” she whispered, looking around in alarm. “What is it?”
He dropped her hand and held his finger to his mouth as he had hours ago, signaling her to silence. They stood motionless, and she strained her ears for a long moment before she heard what he had heard—a voice.
No, several voices. Distant still, but coming this way along the streambed.
Three
There was nothing lover-like about the way he grabbed her hand this time. He dragged her back up the side of the gully with him, but he was confusingly arbitrary about how he moved, zigzagging all over the place. When he snatched her back from a bare patch of ground, she realized he was staying on the grassy patches so they wouldn’t leave tracks.
That did nothing to quiet the frantic alarm signals her heart was pounding out.
They reached a thicket of tall grasses and weeds shadowed by the trees behind them. The voices were nearer—much nearer. He tugged her down with him, so that they lay flat on their stomachs. She felt giddy, her breath coming fast and shallow. He scooted forward, so she did, too, and she saw why he’d chosen this spot Here, the shadows of the trees fell over them, dense and concealing. They could peer through the cover offered by the weeds, but no one below would be able to see them—not as long as they were still.
Jane knew she could hold still. She’d proved that much in the lake. This should be easier. She had dry ground beneath her, and his warm body beside her. Unfortunately, his body was every bit as distracting as the monster bug had been—but in a different way.
She stared down at the little trickle of a stream, her muscles tight with fear and the need for stillness. Two men came into view. They wore uniforms, familiar uniforms that made Jane go limp with relief. These were federales, members of the semimilitary national police. The cops, she thought, giddy with regained safety. The good guys. She started to turn to John, to tell him they were safe, but her head never finished the motion.
His hand clamped over her mouth. Again. She jolted, then glared at him out of the corner of her eye.
He brought his mouth next to her ear, as he had before. “Shh. Look before you leap, Jane. An isolated squad of soldiers may not be a safe escort for a woman alone,” he breathed. Slowly he removed his hand from her mouth.
Below them, three more of the national police moved into view. She frowned, confused, and watched. The men in the little gully weren’t a reassuring sight. They were dirty and unshaven and they slouched along, weapons at the ready, joking with each other or snarling complaints. They didn’t act very military. One of them said something that made her think they were looking for something.
Or someone.
No one would have mounted a search for her—not this quickly. She glanced at the man beside her. They lay so close together on the ground that she could smell him. The faint, welcoming note of human warmth was almost lost in the earthy odor of the humus covering the forest floor beneath them. Silently she mouthed, “Who are they looking for?”
His gaze met hers. His lips smiled, but those vastly blue eyes of his were cold. He brought his mouth close again m that disconcerting simulation of a lover’s approach, so that his voice was a puff of barely heard words on her skin. “Me. So if you’re tired of my company, sweet Jane, all you have to do is attract their attention.”
The authorities were after him? She jerked—not much; just one quick, involuntary motion away from a man who might be the criminal she didn’t believe him to be.
A pebble rolled down the hill.
She froze in horror.
At first she thought it would be all right. Then one of the men said something, pointing in their direction. A couple of them stopped and peered upward. One chided the others for being jumpy, and the first man defended himself angrily. A fourth man—maybe he was a sergeant or an officer; he had a cleaner uniform—came back to see what the argument was about.
The man beside her stiffened. She turned her head slowly.
He wasn’t looking at her. Or at the federales. A bead of sweat trickled slowly down his temple as he stared at his left hand, the one farthest from her.
A snake slithered slowly across his outspread hand.
It paused, a pretty creature a little more than a foot long, the green, scaly body crossed by narrow white bands. It looked like a chubby green rope. Jane tried telling herself that short, chubby snakes weren’t as scary as long, sleek ones, but fear sucked her brain empty, and the thought wouldn’t stick.
The snake raised its flat, lance-shaped head, opened its mouth and tasted the air with rapid flicks of its tongue.
Only inches separated the snake’s mouth from John’s face.
Panic crawled over her like a swarm of ants. She wanted to move—wanted it with a twitchy physical craving she’d never known before—but if she moved, if she even breathed too hard, the snake might bite John. She had managed to stay still with that bug on her. She could do this. She had to, or it would bite him and he would die. Right there beside her he would die, and it would be all her fault.
She told herself desperately that most snakes weren’t venomous. John was holding very, very still, so maybe he didn’t know this. She wasn’t sure he was even breathing.
The snake lowered its head and moved forward. Over John’s hand. Across the ground. And straight toward Jane’s hand.
She thought she’d faint.
It sampled the air near her clenched fist. When had she closed her fingers up tight like that? Now she couldn’t relax them. She thought furiously “vegetable” thoughts at the snake: I am a green, leafy plant. I am warm from the sun, not from blood. You can’t eat me. I am a green, leafy plant....
The snake’s tongue flicked over her skin. She stopped breathing. Her vision dimmed.
But she didn’t move.
The snake turned away from her hand and slithered casually on into the thicket.
She watched as it slid through the grass, heading slowly downhill. Her chest hurt. She remembered to breathe, which helped. She wondered if the snake would go all the way down to the gully and bite one of the soldiers.
The second the snake vanished from sight, she felt a hand on hers.
This time, she didn’t jump. She turned her head.
John nodded once. What is that supposed to mean? she wondered hysterically. Hello? How are you today? Seen any good snakes lately? Then he started inching backward on his stomach. Alarmed, she glanced down and saw that while they’d been occupied—literally—by the snake, the soldiers had moved along the gully and out of sight.
She was more than ready to follow her rescuer’s lead this time.
They inched backward until they could stand. As soon as she was on her feet he took her hand again.
They ran hand in hand down one of the trails, him ahead, her behind, and no doubt he was fully in control of himself and had sound, logical reasons for making such a speedy escape. Jane ran because it felt so damned good to run. She didn’t want to stop. She didn’t want to see another bug or soldier or slithery green snake ever again--or any part of a forest, either. But the forest was all around them, and no matter how hard they ran, she couldn’t get away from it.
He slowed and stopped, pulling her off the trail with him into a small, sun-dappled spot, a patch of ground where some mystery of the soil had caused the trees and underbrush to thin. There was enough sunlight for a bit of grass to spread itself out. Scraps of blue showed through overhead, laced by the leaves of the few branches that arced above the pocketsize clearing.
“I’m not tired,” Jane said, gasping for breath and clutching her side. “I can keep going.”
“Hey.” He turned her to face him. “It’s all right. We’re far enough away from them now.” He took her other hand in his, too, and smiled at her.
“I—I—” She couldn’t catch her breath. He wasn’t winded, damn him, and his ponytail was still neat. “I hate snakes!” she exclaimed. “I hate snakes, I really do. I just hate them, but I couldn’t move. At first it would have bit you and then it would have bit me, but I—I—” Her breath caught in a hiccup that was perilously close to a sob.
“I know,” he said, and pulled her up against him and put his arms around her. “You hate snakes.”
He was warm and solid and she clutched at him, delirious from lack of oxygen. “I know you’re not laughing at me,” she told him. “Because if you were, I’d have to kill you, and I don’t have my breath back yet.”
“I’m not laughing,” he assured her, and his hand stroked down her back. “You did good back there. Real good. I thought I was dead. I would have been, if you’d startled the snake. You saved my life by keeping your head.”
She had rescued him? The thought made her even more dizzy. “Then it was poisonous? I thought maybe you were just scared of snakes, too.”
“I think it was a fer-de-lance. They’re rare, and I’ve never seen one in person before, so I could be wrong. It could have been another of the bothrops—that’s a genus of pit viper found in Central and South America.”
She pulled away suspiciously. “You know an awful lot about snakes. Are you some kind of—of herpetologist or something?”
“I thought we’d agreed that I was a spy.” His expression was solemn, but his eyes were bright with mirth.
“You are laughing at me.”
“You sounded so horrified.” he said apologetically.
“Well, spying I could understand, but why anyone would want to spend their life studying snakes—”
He chuckled.
She blinked and managed to be offended for one whole second before her own absurdity tricked her into giggling. “I r-really don’t like snakes,” she said between giggles, and this struck her as so exquisitely funny that she went off into peals of laughter—at herself, at him, at the whole silly show of life, because she was so very glad she was still a part of it.
He didn’t laugh. His eyes changed, darkening, but that was the only notice she had. It wasn’t enough of a warning, not when she was laughing so hard her vision was blurred by tears.
When his mouth closed over hers, her laughter stopped.
His lips were smooth and firm and beguiling, and she smelled him—oh, she breathed him right in, and he went to her head like wine. She made one sound of protest, but he ignored that, just as he ignored the hand she put on his chest to hold him back. He simply moved her hand out of his way while his other hand slipped to her bottom and scooped her up against him.
It was too much, too fast. She’d lurched from terror to flight, skidded from flight into laughter, and now she was being ruthlessly kissed by a man who made her knees silly and her soul shiver. In a day already ripped loose from everything Jane knew about herself and her world, the sudden surge of passion caught her and flung her into a mad riptide she had no way of resisting.
When he pushed his thigh between her legs and pressed up, she heard herself moan. And it was her. She was the one making those soft, urgent sounds. She had to stop this, stop him—only he pressed up again with his thigh, and his tongue wet her lips while his hands, both hands now, kneaded her bottom, lifting her, then pressing her down on the leg she straddled. He taught her to ride him, taught her a slow, rolling rhythm that carried her mind the rest of the way out to sea, and left her body in charge.
And her body knew what it wanted.
He pulled her down with him. The forest floor was damp and spongy, and the moist, fecund odor was almost as intoxicating as the way he smelled when she pressed her face to his neck.
He didn’t unfasten her clothing. He ran his hands over her as if there was no part of her he didn’t need to feel, to know. Her knee, her breast, her shoulder. The soft swell of her belly But he didn’t take her clothes off, which gave her a spurious sense of safety.
Then his mouth left hers and closed over the tip of her breast. Right through her dress and her bra he suckled her, and no one had ever done that to her. She hadn’t even known people did that—not with their clothes on—and she was almost shocked back into conscious thought. Almost. But by then he had her dress and her bra wet from his mouth, and he did things with his tongue and his teeth that rasped the dampened material against her sensitive nipple, and she moaned instead, and clutched at his shoulders.
His mouth moved to her other breast, and that was good, too; that was what she wanted. He sucked. She felt his hand on her leg, and it was drawing her skirt up, and that felt good, too—the warmth of his palm on her thigh, on her—
She yelped when he pressed his palm against her there, right between her legs. He slid a finger beneath the elastic of her panties and touched her even more intimately, and she moaned again, and this time she shocked herself, because her hips lifted pleadingly.
“I—I—” she stammered. “I don’t—ah—”
He licked her nipple. His finger slid inside her feminine folds and rubbed her lightly. She made a sound she’d never made before, and her hips turned wanton again, making that greedy pushing-at-him movement. But she held on to the thin thread of consciousness and gripped his shoulders hard, willing him to look at her.
He raised his head. His mouth was wet and his eyes gleamed with hunger, and his finger was still moving, stirring her unbearably. He looked so entirely delicious she knew this was her last chance “I don’t do this sort of thing!” she gasped.
“But I do, Jane,” he said gently, and he moved his hand, stretching the elastic of her panties so that his finger went up inside her. “I do.”
And he did, too. First he kissed her again. And he tasted like danger, but he also felt like safety and home—solid and strong and eager for her, so eager. Maybe she could have fought her own hunger, the need that had grown in her all day. She couldn’t resist his.
He wasn’t cold now. Now he burned just as she did. Now he needed her.
And when he pulled her panties down and shifted between her legs, she helped him. He gripped her hips in his hands and guided himself inside, and the sensation was so rich and huge it almost sent her over the top right then.
Her eyes closed. She slipped her hands inside his loosened shirt, and delighted in his skin. “John,” she gasped. “John.”
He didn’t move He was fully, firmly inside her, but he wasn’t doing anything. Jane wasn’t exactly a woman of the world, but she knew what was supposed to be happening now, and it wasn’t.
She opened her eyes and looked up at him.
His eyes were full of all sorts of blue—the restless blues of oceans and ghosts and sorrow, and the hot blue at the heart of a flame. “My name isn’t John,” he said softly. Then, at last, he began to move.
She was warm and limp beneath him. Instinct or some last gasp of reason had kept him braced on his elbows so that now, as he slowly seeped back into himself after the sensory explosion of climax, his upper body, at least, wasn’t crushing her.
Unlike her, he was still fully dressed. But he felt naked. Trapped and naked and exposed.
Fear was a swell he rode, a great, ocean-deep wave too vast and familiar for panic. Reason rode the wave with him—a slim craft he clung to. But reason told him he had just made himself into a fool. Fools died quickly in his business. And sometimes they caused other people to lose their lives, too.
He looked at the woman beneath him. Her eyes were closed. A half smile curved her lips. Sweat dampened her face and shoulders, making her glow. The little chain she wore around her neck hung crooked now. The locket dangled in the dust beside her.
Ah, Jane.
He pushed off her. “Get up.” Grimly he put himself to rights and zipped his pants.
She blinked up at him, obviously confused, a trickle of hurt altering the curve of her mouth. He had to force his voice to soften, but it took no effort at all to reach out one more time and cup her cheek; her skin was so soft. “I’m sorry,” he said more gently. “I’ve endangered both of us. We have to get out of here, quickly.”
His shirt hung outside his pants. It was partly unbuttoned. He remembered her hands—such warm, avid hands—struggling to undo a few buttons so she could stroke his chest
She did sit up, but then just sat there, looking bewildered. The skirt of her dress slipped from her waist to puddle in her lap. Her bodice was still damp over one nipple. “You didn’t put us in danger,” she said. “There’s no one around.”
She didn’t understand. He’d forgotten everything but the need to bury himself in her. That went beyond danger to sheer foolhardiness. How could he have lost control so completely?
He’d been doing all right until she’d laughed.
He tightened his lips. “The federales we saw were looking for me. They intend to shoot me, Jane, not take me prisoner.”
“But why?”
He hesitated, but there was no reason not to tell her this much. “I have information some people don’t want leaving the country, and those people have enough money to bribe any number of government officials. If you’re with me when they find me, they’ll kill you, too. I have to get you to the village so I can get the hell off this island.” He didn’t want to die on his last assignment. He didn’t want to see this bright, plucky woman shot down because she was with him.
She bit her lip, her eyes wide with fear. Slowly, she stood. “Who are you?” she whispered. “What are you?”
He met her gaze, and wondered if the sadness he felt showed. “Who and what I am doesn’t matter at all. You can forget me under the name ‘John’ as well as you could under another name.”
“I’m not going to—”
“You will. You have to.”
Three hours later, Jane sat on a cot in a rapidly-darkening room in a village whose name she still hadn’t heard. Her host, a British expatriot, was in the parlor of the small but pleasant house, talking secrets with the man whose name wasn’t John.
He had to leave her here, she knew. He couldn’t stay and be found by the government troops quartering the area for him. She knew he had to leave and she knew she would never see him again, but she sat there and waited for him to at least come and say goodbye.
He never did.
Four
It was not yet dark, but the light was fading as dusk slowly replaced daylight In an old frame house on a street lined with elms, a light came on in an upstairs window. Most people in town still referred to the old house as “the MacAllister place,” though all but one of that family had died or moved away years ago. The one remaining MacAllister, Frances Ann, lived downstairs with her cats, her needlepoint and her family albums.
Jane lived upstairs.
She flipped on the light switch in her kitchen and hurried to the pantry. She pushed aside the gingersnaps, the rice and two boxes of breakfast cereal, muttering under her breath. She was due at the meeting of the Atherton Combined Charities in fifteen minutes. As secretary for the community-wide fund-raising project, she absolutely had to be there. But she was not leaving without her crackers.
She probably wouldn’t be late, she told herself as she switched her search to the second shelf. Even if she had to stop and buy more crackers, she had time. She could get from anywhere in Atherton to anywhere else in fifteen minutes, usually with time to spare. But she didn’t want to get into her car without crackers. Although she seemed to be over the stomach bug that had afflicted her off and on for the past two weeks, she wasn’t taking any chances. The nausea might come back when she started driving.
Ah. She straightened as her hands touched a cellophane-wrapped package. Success.
Jane grabbed her purse, shrugged it onto her shoulder and flipped on her porch light. It would be dark by the time she came home. She stepped out onto the landing and was just pulling her front door closed when the phone rang. She froze.
Her hand went to her chest. She could barely feel the lump her locket made beneath the wool of her favorite pink sweater. Her fingers pressed against that tiny lump. Don’t be silly, she scolded herself. It was probably her mother, calling to check on her. Marilee Smith’s normal fretfulness had escalated to nearly unbearable levels since Jane had returned from the island.
She really ought to go back inside and reassure her mother, but—
The phone rang again.
But what if it was him?
It wasn’t, of course. She knew that He’d had three weeks to call if he were going to. He hadn’t. And why should he? What had happened between them had meant nothing to him, obviously. He hadn’t bothered to say goodbye.
She didn’t even know if he was still alive.
No, whoever was calling now, it certainly wasn’t the man who’d been her lover for fifteen life-changing minutes. And dammit, she wasn’t going to do this to herself anymore. She’d stopped crying, hadn’t she?
The tears that had come at odd, unpredictable moments for the first week after she’d arrived home had embarrassed her as much as they had worried her mother. Trauma could have odd effects on a person, but she was done with that. She had nothing to cry about. Nor did she intend to spend any more nights staring at her ceiling with her mind racing like a hamster running itself crazy on its wheel. She would never know if her mysterious rescuer had lived to leave the island or not, and staying awake worrying about him was as pointless as it was pathetic.
But Jane couldn’t silence the frantic little voice inside that said that this time the call might be from him. What if it was?
The phone rang again.
She rubbed the small lump that her locket made. Papa, she thought wistfully, did you ever wonder if some of the chances you took might not have been worth what you risked? Or am I just a coward? Probably she was a coward. Hadn’t she proved how poor she was at coping with danger? Look at what she’d done—made passionate love with a man whose name she didn’t know. Passionate, unprotected love.
Slowly, Jane pulled the door closed behind her. This wasn’t the first call she had refused to answer since she’d gotten home—just in case.
The wind was picking up. It ruffled her hair as she stood on the landing looking down at her reliable old Toyota. She took a steadying breath and promised herself that tomorrow she would buy a Caller ID machine so she wouldn’t freak out every time her phone rang.
She pulled a cracker from the package she carried and nibbled on it as she started down the steps.
Samuel Charmaneaux pulled off into the rest area at the top of a low hill. He sat in the three-year-old black Jeep Cherokee he’d bought last week, though the registration showed he’d bought it new. The name on that registration matched the one on his driver’s license, birth certificate and all the other papers that made a person real in today’s world.
He turned off the stereo and rolled down the window, wanting to listen to the wind that blew here. To taste it.
Samuel had been planning this for months. Oh, not all of it. He’d had to wait on circumstances to supply some details. Certainly the particular detail that had brought him nearly fifteen hundred miles across the country hadn’t been part of his original plan, but Samuel’s plans were always fluid. Objectives were the fixed points in his universe, and he was very good at achieving his objectives.
Good, but not perfect. His eyes darkened as he remembered the sound of Jack choking on his own blood as he’d fought for breath. Samuel had been far less than perfect that day. He didn’t exactly blame himself for his friend’s death, but he accepted the burden of it, knowing he’d been part of the events that had led to it. With that acceptance had come a certainty: he could no longer be part of the world he’d lived in for the past ten years.
At first, he hadn’t known what he would do instead. He still wasn’t sure, but he knew what his new objective was. Samuel wanted to be part of the world that other people knew. The ordinary world.
It wasn’t going to be easy. The official records of his new identity would hold up under much stronger scrutiny than he should ever receive, but he wasn’t as sure of himself as he was of his papers. He was used to living under other names, living bits and pieces of borrowed lives, but this was different. This time it would be for the rest of his life. And for the first time in years, “the rest of his life” meant more than just the next job.
Having a future was going to take some getting used to.
To the west, the sun still shone at the rim of the world, but twilight was seeping up from its eastern edge, blurring the outlines of things. Samuel looked down at the small town of Atherton, where lights were blinking on in houses as dusk drew near.
He hadn’t expected hills.
Admittedly, these hills weren’t much. Compared to their grander cousins in other parts of the world, such as the tumbled hills of Provence or the worn heights crowding the ancient city of Dharmsala, these were barely lumps. But the fact that he’d had expectations that weren’t grounded in experience or research bothered him. He was a thorough man. He’d gotten a background check on the town as well as the woman, yet apparently he’d allowed his thinking to be colored by ideas formed about Kansas when he was very young. He’d expected pancake-flat land—not this green, gently rolling country laced with streams.
He shook his head, disgusted. Had he expected to meet a young girl and her little dog, Toto, too?
It had been a long drive, and Samuel’s left palm ached in spite of the care he’d taken with it. He rested his hand on his thigh and began rhythmically opening and closing the hand. The exercise made it hurt more, of course, but the pain was easy enough to ignore. What he couldn’t ignore was the impairment. His fingers still wouldn’t close tightly.
It’s been less than two weeks since the surgery, he reminded himself. He refused to believe he wouldn’t regain any more function than this.
Thunder rumbled off to the west. It was early April, and spring meant storms in this part of the world. His gaze returned to the town at the foot of the hill, and he thought about the future and his plans.
Jane Smith was down there. Jane Desirée Smith, he thought, smiling as he remembered the report he’d read, which had given her full name. Her middle name suited her. On the surface, she was wonderfully ordinary, but there were surprises inside. He thought about pretty Jane of the innocent eyes and delicious body, practical Jane who had climaxed with such amazement Jane, who hated snakes and rescued beetles and kept walking without complaint while her feet bled into her lacy socks.
What was she doing right now? Was she with her family? Was she laughing or sad or worried?
Had she thought about him today?
Determination clenched inside him. She would think of him soon. And soon, he would have an answer to the question that would determine the shape of his future.
The sudden, hot pain startled him. He looked at his hands. He was holding the steering wheel tightly; his knuckles were white. The left hand hurt fiercely, as if struggling to obey, but would not close fully.
He didn’t even remember gripping the wheel.
Shaken, he relaxed his grip. It was definitely time to retire, if his emotions could control him that way. He took one last, lingering look at the town below. Long habit had him evaluating it in tactical terms, matching what he saw to the map he’d studied earlier, but the feeling that welled up in him as he put the Cherokee into gear had little to do with tactics.
He didn’t have a name for what he felt. The gentle tugging deep inside was nothing he recognized. It didn’t seem strong enough to disturb his control, however, so he ignored it as he had ignored the pain, and pulled away from the rest stop.
It was no wonder the feeling was unfamiliar. The man who was now named Samuel had never come home before.
“Jane!”
“Hmm? Oh.” Jane realized she’d let her thoughts drift off. That had happened too often lately. Hastily she closed the notebook where she’d jotted down the minutes. “Sorry. I was thinking.” Glancing around, she saw that she was the only one still seated in the conference room, though a number of people were milling around, chatting or making their way to the door. “Did you ask me something, Sandy?”
Sandy Clemmons was the local Red Cross director. She was a plump, pretty woman several years older than Jane whose calm temperament disproved the stereotypes about redheads. “Are you okay?”
“I’m fine.” Jane pushed her chair back and stood.
“Are you sure? It’s none of my business, but I can’t help noticing that you’ve acted different ever since you got back from that trip.”
“I said I’m fine.” Jane grabbed her purse and her coat.
Sandy’s eyebrows went up. “Heard that sort of comment a little too often, maybe?”
Jane’s mouth twitched in reluctant humor. “Have you been talking to my mother? She wants me to consider therapy. And eat more vegetables.” The suggestions were typical of Marilee Smith, who had also mentioned a CAT scan, earlier bedtimes and Saint-John’s-wort as possible cures for whatever ailed her youngest child.
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