The Ground Was Hard.

The Woman He Held Was Soft.

Michael didn’t hold out much hope of sleep.

But Alyssa was asleep. Soundly, peacefully asleep. That baffled him. Oh, the exertions of the past day and night had been enough to make stone feel as comfortable as a feather bed…but she’d curled into him so trustingly. That’s what didn’t make sense.

He’d made it clear he wanted her. She’d made it clear she didn’t want him. Oh, on a physical level she did. Michael wished he could take some satisfaction from that truth, but he couldn’t. Not when it was him she rejected—his actions, his choices, his career. His life.

Yet she was snuggled up as warm and cozy as if they’d slept together for years. As if she trusted him completely. What was a man supposed to make of that?

Dear Reader,

Welcome to Silhouette Desire! We’re delighted to offer you again this month six passionate, powerful and provocative romances sure to please you.

Start with December’s fabulous MAN OF THE MONTH, A Cowboy’s Promise. This latest title in Anne McAllister’s popular CODE OF THE WEST miniseries features a rugged Native American determined to win back the woman he left three years before. Then discover The Secret Life of Connor Monahan in Elizabeth Bevarly’s tale of a vice cop who mistakenly surmises that a prim and proper restaurateur is operating a call-girl ring.

The sizzling miniseries 20 AMBER COURT concludes with Anne Marie Winston’s Risqué Business, in which a loyal employee tries to prevent a powerful CEO with revenge on his mind from taking over the company she thinks of as her family. Reader favorite Maureen Child delivers the next installment of another exciting miniseries, THE FORTUNES OF TEXAS: THE LOST HEIRS. In Did You Say Twins?! a marine sergeant inherits twin daughters and is forced to turn for help to the woman who refused his marriage proposal ten years before.

The sexy hero of Michael’s Temptation, the last book in Eileen Wilks’s TALL, DARK & ELIGIBLE miniseries, goes to Central America to rescue a lovely lady who’s been captured by guerrillas. And sparks fly when a smooth charmer and a sassy tomboy are brought together by their shared inheritance of an Australian horse farm in Brownyn Jameson’s Addicted to Nick.

Take time out from the holiday rush and treat yourself to all six of these not-to-be-missed romances.

Enjoy,

Joan Marlow Golan

Senior Editor, Silhouette Desire

Michael’s Temptation
Eileen Wilks

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, raising two kids and innumerable dogs and cats along the way. 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 one’s for Glenda,

who wanted to read about a woman minister

who didn’t fit the stereotypes,

with special thanks to my editor, Mary-Theresa Hussey,

and

to Desire Senior Editor Joan Marlow Golan,

for making it possible.

Contents

Prologue

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Epilogue

Prologue

The sky growled. Lightning shattered the darkness, flashing an image of heavy wood and wet stone. The gargoyle flanking the door leered at him in the brief burst of light as he fitted his key to the lock.

Rain and darkness suited the old house, Michael thought as he swung the door open. Suited his mood, too.

The only light in the foyer came from a Christmas tree winking at him merrily from one corner. The wide stairwell was dark, and no light came from the hall that led to his brother’s office.

Jacob wouldn’t be in bed yet. The playroom, maybe. Michael’s boots squeaked on the marble floor, reminding him that he was dripping wet.

Ada wouldn’t thank him for tracking water all over. He stopped by a high-backed wooden chair that resembled a throne and pulled off his boots and leather jacket. Before tossing the jacket on the chair, he pulled a thick envelope from an inner pocket.

His steps were soundless now as he made his way to the back of the house. He paused in the doorway to the playroom.

The lights were off. A fire burned in the fireplace, hot and bright, tossing shadows along the walls. The windows were bare to the night, rain-washed, and the limb of one young elm tapped against the glass like fretful fingers. Jacob sat in the wing chair beside the fireplace, his legs outstretched, his face turned to the fire. He held a brandy snifter in one hand.

Michael smiled. “Snob. That expensive French stuff doesn’t taste any better than what I can get at the grocery store for 12.95 a bottle.”

If he’d startled his brother, it didn’t show. Very little did, with Jacob. The face he turned to Michael revealed neither pleasure nor surprise, but the welcome was there, in his voice. “I have a palate. You drink like a teenager, purely for the effect.”

“True.” Michael moved into the room.

It was furnished in a haphazard way at odds with the elegance of the rest of the house. Every time their father had taken a wife, the new Mrs. West had redecorated. Michael and his brothers had gotten in the habit of stashing their favorite pieces here. The playroom had become a haven for castoffs in more ways than one.

There was a library table that had once been the property of a Spanish viceroy of Mexico. It made him think of his brother Luke and countless games of poker—which Luke had usually won. Michael’s second-oldest brother might seem reckless, but he had always been good at calculating the odds. Luke was almost as at home with a deck of cards as he was on the back of a horse.

A chessboard with jade and jet pieces sat on the table now. Michael paused there to pick up the jet king and turn it over and over in the hand that wasn’t holding the thick envelope. Chess had always been Jacob’s game. The patience and planning of it had suited him when they were young, just as his careful accumulation of wealth did now.

Michael sighed and put the chess piece down. It was hard to ask, but worse not to know. “How’s Ada?”

“Mean as ever.” Jacob stood. He was a big man, Michael’s oldest brother. Big all over, and four inches taller than Michael’s six feet. His hair was short and thick, a brown so dark it almost matched Michael’s black hair; his shirt, too, was dark, with the subtle sheen of silk. “She’s doing well, Michael. The treatments are working.”

The breath he hadn’t realized he was holding came out in a dizzy rush. He cleared his throat. “Good. That’s good.”

“You here for a while?”

“I’ll have to leave in the morning. I’ve been…” He glanced at the envelope still in his hand. “Taking care of business. You have anything to drink other than that fancy cologne you’re sipping?”

“I think I can find something cheap enough to please you.” Jacob moved over to the bar. “How much of an effect are you after?”

“More than that,” Michael said when his brother paused after pouring two fingers of bourbon.

Jacob handed him the glass. “You can start with this. You won’t be here long enough to nurse a hangover.”

“I’ll nurse it on the plane.” He let his restless feet carry him to the pinball machine in the corner.

Pinball—that had been his game back when they all lived here. Flash and speed, he thought, and swallowed cheap fire, grimacing at the taste but relishing the burn. He’d been drawn to both back then. Lacking Jacob’s patience and Luke’s athleticism, he’d settled for the gifts he did have—a certain quickness of hand, eye and body.

He couldn’t complain. Agility was an asset for a man who lived the way he did. So was a clear mind…but tonight he preferred to be thoroughly fuzzed. He tossed back the rest of the liquor.

Jacob’s eyebrow lifted. “In a hurry?”

He shrugged and went over to the bar to refill his glass. What he’d done—what he intended to do—was for Ada, and therefore worth the sacrifice. Without the treatments administered by a Swiss clinic, she would die. But the treatments were experimental and very, very expensive.

There had been only one way for the West brothers to raise the money to keep Ada alive. The trust, the be-damned trust their father had left his fortune tied up in, could be dissolved and they could claim the inheritance none of them had wanted to touch…once they fulfilled the conditions.

Luke had already done his part. Michael intended to do his—that’s why he was here. Jacob wouldn’t be far behind…all three of them dancing to the old man’s piping at last, five years after burying him.

Jacob set his snifter on the bar. “Pour me some more while you’re at it. I’m not interested in a hangover, but I’ll keep you company. What’s the occasion?”

“What else?” He tossed the envelope on the bar. “That’s a copy of the prenuptial agreement your lawyer drew up for me, duly signed and notarized.”

“I see. Found someone already, have you?”

Michael lifted his glass, empty now, in a mocking salute. “Congratulate me. I’m getting married as soon as I get back from this mission. So tonight, I’m going to get very, very drunk.”

One

Were they coming for her?

She sat bolt upright, thrust from sleep into wakefulness. The bed ropes creaked beneath her. The taste of fear was thick and dry in her mouth. Dan, she thought. Dan, why aren’t you here?

There was, of course, no answer.

If it had been a sound that awakened her, she heard nothing now except the rhythmic rasp of Sister Maria Elena’s breathing in the bed beside her. Darkness pressed against her staring eyes, the unrelieved blackness only possible far from the artificial glow of civilization.

Automatically her gaze flickered toward the door. She couldn’t see a thing.

Thank God. Her sigh eased a single hard knot of fear. If they came for her at night—and they might—they would have to bring a light. She’d be able to see it shining around the edges of the door.

Her gaze drifted to the outside wall where whispers of starlight bled through cracks between the boards, smudging the darkness. Soldiers had hammered those boards over the window when they’d first locked her in this room last week.

One week. When morning came, she would have been here a full seven days. Waiting for the man they called El Jefe to return and decide if she were to live or die…or, if the taunts of her guards were true, what form that death would take.

He would decide Sister Maria Elena’s fate, too, she reminded herself, and wished the fear didn’t always come first, hardest, for herself. But while the sister was a religioso, she was also a native of San Christóbal, not a representative of the nation El Jefe hated even more than he hated organized religion. She was old and ill. He might spare her.

A.J. pushed back the thin blanket, careful not to wake the nun, and swung her legs to the floor. Her knees were rubbery. Her breath came quick and shallow, and her hands and feet were chilled.

She ignored the physical symptoms of terror as best she could, making her way by touch and memory to the boarded-up window. There she folded her long legs to sit on the cool, dirty floor. Spaces between the boards let in fresh air—chilly, this far up in the mountains, but welcome. She smelled dampness and dirt, the wild green aroma of growing things, the heavier perfume of flowers. Even now, in the dry season, there were flowers here.

Wherever “here” was. She didn’t know where the soldiers had brought her when they’d raided La Paloma, the sleepy village where she’d been working. San Christóbal had a lot of mountains.

The boards let in slices of sky along with air. And if the sky was clear…yes, when she leaned close she could see a single star. The sight eased her.

The night wasn’t truly silent. Inside, there was the labored breathing of the feverish nun. Outside, frogs set up a staccato chorus, and the soft whirring of wings announced the hunt of some night-flying bird. Somewhere not too far away, a man cried out a greeting in Spanish and was answered. The distant scream of a puma rattled the night. Then there was only the sighing of wind through trees.

So many trees. Even without boards, without soldiers and fear, it had been hard sometimes to find enough sky here to feed a soul used to the open plains of west Texas.

A.J. tried not to regret coming to San Christóbal. That, too, was hard. Her eyes stayed open while her lips moved in a soundless prayer.

It shamed her, how deep and terrible her fear was. It weakened her, too, and she would need strength to get through whatever was to come. So she would pray and wait here, wait and watch as her slivers of sky brightened. In the daylight, she could remember who she was. There was Sister Maria Elena to care for then, and birdsong and monkey chatter to listen to. In the daylight, the slices of sky between the cracks would turn brilliantly blue. She could steady herself against those snatches of life.

But at night, locked into the darkness, she felt alone, lost, forgotten. In the darkness, she missed Dan intensely—and blamed him, too, as foolish as that was. In the darkness, the fear came back, rolling in like the tide of a polluted ocean. Sooner or later, he would be back. The one they called El Jefe. He would finish killing people elsewhere and return to his headquarters.

Being left alone was a good thing, she reminded herself. El Jefe was a man who believed in killing for his cause—but he didn’t condone rape. Neither she nor Sister Maria Elena had been harmed in that way. A.J. watched her star and murmured a prayer of thanks.

If she hadn’t been sitting with her head almost touching the boards, she wouldn’t have heard the sound. Softer than a whisper, so soft she couldn’t say what made it—save that it came from outside. From the other side of the window.

Her breath stopped up in her throat. Her eyes widened.

Something blacked out her star.

“Reverend? Are you there?” The voice was male and scarcely louder than her heartbeat. It came from only inches away. “Reverend Kelleher?”

It was also American.

Dizziness hit. If she had been standing, she would have fallen. “Yes,” she whispered, and had to swallow. “Yes, I’m here.”

A pause. “I’m going to kill Scopes,” that wonderful voice whispered.

“Wh-what?”

“I was expecting a baritone, not a soprano.” There was a hint of drawl in the whisper, a deliciously familiar echo of Texas. “Lieutenant Michael West, ma’am. Special Forces. I’ve come to get you out of here.”

“Thank God.” The prayer was heartfelt.

“How old are you?”

“Thirty-two.” She bit back the urge to ask him how old he was.

“Are you injured?”

“No, I—”

“On a scale of couch potato to superjock, how fit are you?”

Oh—he needed to know if she would be able to keep up. “I’m in good shape, Lieutenant. But Sister Maria Elena is over sixty, and her leg—”

“Who?” The word came out sharp and a little louder.

“Sister Maria Elena,” she repeated, confused. “She was injured when the soldiers overran the village. I’m afraid she won’t be able to…Lieutenant?”

He’d begun to curse, fluently and almost soundlessly. “This nun—is she a U.S. citizen?”

“No, but surely that doesn’t matter.”

“The U.S. can’t rescue every native endangered by a bunch of Che Guevara wannabes. And what would I do with her? Guatemala and Honduras aren’t accepting refugees from San Christóbal, and Nicaragua is still pissed at the U.S. over the carrier incident last spring. They wouldn’t let us land a military helicopter.”

“But—but you can’t just leave her here!”

“Reverend, getting you out is going to be tricky enough.”

A.J. leaned her forehead against one rough board and swallowed hope. It lumped up sick and cold in her stomach. “Then I’m sorry,” she whispered. “I can’t go with you.”

There was a beat of silence. “Do you have any idea what El Jefe will do to you if you’re still here when he gets back?”

“I hope you aren’t planning to give me any gruesome details. It won’t help. I can’t leave Sister Maria Elena.” Her voice wobbled. “She’s feverish. It started with a cut on her foot that got infected. Sh-she’ll die without care.”

“Lady, she’s going to die whether you stay or go.”

She wanted desperately to go with him. She couldn’t. “I can’t leave her.”

Another, longer silence. “Do you know anything about the truck parked beside the barracks?”

She shook her head, trying to keep up with the odd jumps his mind made. “I don’t know. They brought me here in a truck. A flatbed truck with metal sides that smells like a chicken coop.”

“That’s the one. It was running last week?”

She nodded, then felt foolish. He couldn’t see her. “Yes.”

“Okay. Get your things together. Wait here—I’ll be back.”

She nearly choked on a giggle, afraid that if she started laughing she wouldn’t be able to stop. “Sure. I’m not going anywhere.”

The moon was a skimpy sliver, casting barely enough light to mark the boundaries between shadows. Michael waited in a puddle of deeper darkness, his back pressed to the cement blocks of El Jefe’s house. A sentry passed fifteen feet away.

The sentries didn’t worry him. He had a pair of Uncle Sam’s best night goggles, while the sentries had to rely on whatever night vision came naturally. He also had his weapons—a SIG Sauer and the CAR 16 slung over his shoulder—but hoped like hell he wouldn’t have to use them. Shooting was likely to attract attention. If he had to silence one of the sentries, he’d rather use one of the darts in his vest pocket. They were loaded with a nifty knockout drug.

El Jefe’s headquarters was like the rest of his military efforts—military in style but inadequate. The self-styled liberator should have stayed a guerrilla leader, relying on sneak attacks. He lacked the training to hold what he’d taken. In Michael’s not-so-humble opinion, San Christóbal’s government would have to screw up mightily to lose this nasty little war. In a week or two, government troops should be battling their way up the slope El Jefe’s house perched on.

But what the guerrilla leader lacked in military training he made up for in sheer, bloody fanaticism. A week would be too late for the soft-voiced woman Michael had just left.

What was the fool woman doing here? His mouth tightened. Maybe she was no more foolish than the three U.S. biologists they’d already picked up, who were waiting nervously aboard the chopper. But she was female, damn it.

One sentry rounded the west corner of the house. The other had almost reached the end of his patrol. Michael bent and made his way quickly and silently across the cleared slope separating the compound from the forest. Then he paused to scan the area behind him. The goggles rendered everything in grays, some areas sharp, others fuzzy. Out in the open, though, where the sentry moved, visibility was excellent. Michael waited patiently as the man passed the boarded-up window. He wouldn’t move on until he was sure he wouldn’t lead anyone to the rendezvous.

He was definitely going to kill Scopes.

It was Scopes who’d passed on word from a villager about some do-gooder missionary who’d been captured by El Jefe’s troops. He must have known the minister was a woman, damn him. Andrew Scopes was going to strangle on his twisted sense of humor this time, Michael promised himself.

Maybe the minister’s sex shouldn’t make a difference. But it did.

He remembered the way her voice had shaken when she’d whispered that she couldn’t go with him. She’d probably been crying. He hated a woman’s tears, and resented that he’d heard hers.

She was scared out of her mind. But she wasn’t budging, not without her nun.

A nun. God almighty. Michael started winding through the trunks of the giants that held up the forest canopy. Even with the goggles the light was poor here, murky and indistinct, but he could see well enough to avoid running into anything.

Why did there have to be a nun?

Since he’d joined the service, he’d had more than one hard decision to make. Some of them haunted him late at night when ghosts come calling. But a nun! He shook his head. His memories of St. Vincent’s Academy weren’t all pleasant, but they were vivid. Especially his memories of Sister Mary Agnes. She’d reminded him of Ada. Mean as a lioness with PMS if you hadn’t done your homework, and twice as fierce in defense of one of her kids.

Dammit to hell. This was supposed to have been a simple mission. Simple, at least, for Michael’s team. His men were good. True, Crowe was new, but so far he’d proved steady. But gathering intelligence on the deadly spat brewing between El Jefe and the government of San Christóbal, rounding up a few terrified biologists on the side, was a far cry from snatching captives from a quasi-military compound.

Still, the compound wasn’t heavily guarded, and the soldiers left behind when El Jefe left to take the mountain road weren’t well trained or equipped. Michael and his men had watched the place for two days and a night; he knew what they were up against. No floodlights, thank God, and the forest provided great cover. Once they got their target out, they had three miles to cover to reach the clearing where the Cobra waited with its cargo of nervous biologists. An easy run—unless you were carrying an injured nun with fifteen armed soldiers in hot pursuit.

But El Jefe had thoughtfully left a truck behind. And, according to the Reverend, it had been running a week ago, when they brought her here. There was a good chance it was in working order.

If the truck ran…

She’d giggled. When he’d told her to wait there—meaning for her to wait by the window so she would hear him when he returned—she’d answered with one silly, stifled giggle. That sound clung to him like cobwebs, in sticky strands that couldn’t be brushed off. He crossed a narrow stream in the darkness of that foreign forest, his CAR 16 slung over his back and memories of Popsicles melting in the summer sun filling his mind.

Her giggle made him think of the first time he’d kissed a girl. The taste of grape Nehi, and long-ago mornings when dew had glistened on the grass like every unbroken promise ever made.

There was no innocence in him, not anymore. But he could still recognize it. He could still be moved by it.

He could knock the Reverend out. It would be the sensible thing to do. Downright considerate, even, since then she’d be able to blame him instead of herself for the nun’s fate.

Of course, he’d blame himself, too.

When was he going to grow up and get over his rescue-the-maiden complex? It was going to get him killed one of these days. And, dammit, he couldn’t get killed now. He had to get married.

That wasn’t the best way to talk himself out of playing hero.

He’d reached the fallen tree that was his goal. He stopped and whistled—one low, throbbing note that mimicked a bird call. A second later, three men melted out of the trees. Even with his goggles, he hadn’t spotted them until they moved. His men were good. The best. Even Scopes, though Michael still intended to ream him a new one for his little joke.

He sighed and accepted the decision he’d already made, however much he’d tried to argue himself out of it. He couldn’t leave the Reverend to El Jefe’s untender mercy. Or the nun.

The Colonel was going to gut him for sure this time.

The wheeling of the earth had taken A.J.’s star out of sight. Now there was only darkness between the slits in the boards.

Getting her things together had been easy. They hadn’t let her bring any of her possessions, not her Bible, not even a change of underwear. She had a comb and a toothbrush tucked in her pocket, given to her a few days ago by a guard who still possessed a trace of compassion. Of course, he probably expected to get them back when she was killed. Still, she asked God to bless the impulse that had moved him to offer her those tokens of shared humanity.

Waiting was hard.

He was coming back. Surely he was. And if he did…when he did, he would take her and the sister away with him. He had to.

She touched the place between her breasts where her cross used to hang and wished she knew how long she’d been waiting. How long she still had to wait. If the sun rose and he hadn’t returned…oh, she didn’t want to give up hope. Painful as it was, she didn’t want to give it up.

Time was strange. So elastic. Events and emotions could compress it, wad up the moments so tightly that hours sped by at breakneck speed. Or it could be stretched so thin that one second oozed into the next with boggy reluctance. Slow as molasses, she thought. Into her mind drifted an image of her grandfather’s freckled hand, the knuckles swollen, holding a jar of molasses, pouring it over a stack of her mother’s buttermilk pancakes….

“Hey, Rev.”

Though the whisper was so soft it blended with the breeze, she jolted. “Yes.” It came out too loud, snatching the breath from her lungs. “I’m here.”

“In a few minutes there will be an explosion at the east end of the compound. Are you familiar with the setup?”

An explosion? Her heart thudded. “I didn’t see much when I was brought here, and I’ve been kept in this room ever since. Are you going to…Sister Maria Elena, will you…?”

“Yeah.” He sighed. “We’ll take the sister. You ready? Got your things?”

“There’s nothing.” Her hand went to the place her cross used to hang. A soldier with pocked skin and a missing tooth had yanked it off her neck. “Just Sister Maria Elena.”

“Is she ready to go?”

“She doesn’t hear well. I didn’t want to wake her to tell her what was going on. I would have had to speak too loudly.”

“Explanations will have to wait, then. The sentries are taken care of, but there might be other guards inside the house.”

The sentries were “taken care of”? What did that mean? She shivered. “Why an explosion? Wouldn’t it be better to sneak out?”

“We need a distraction. One of my men is going to blow up the barracks at the other end of the compound. When it goes—”

“No.” In her distress she rose to her knees, putting her hands against the boards as if she could reach him through them. “No, the soldiers—they’re sleeping. You can’t kill them when they’re sleeping.”

“It’s a shaped charge, just a little boom. Noisy enough to get their attention, but most of the force will be dispersed upward, taking out the roof. It probably won’t kill anyone.”

He sounded matter-of-fact, almost indifferent. As if death—killing—meant little to him. “Probably?”

“Keep your voice down,” he whispered. “Look, this is war. A small one, but the rules aren’t the ones you’re used to. These men would shoot you and the sister without blinking. That’s if you’re lucky. They’ve done worse.”

A.J. swallowed. The area where she’d been working had been peaceful at first. She wouldn’t have come to San Christóbal if she’d known…but after she’d arrived, she’d heard rumors of atrocities in the mountains. Men shot, tortured, villages burned. In Carracruz, the capital city, they blamed outlaws. In the rural villages, they whispered of rebels. Of El Jefe.

“Maybe so. That doesn’t make it right to kill them in their beds.”

“You worry about right and wrong, Rev. I’ll worry about getting us out of here. Here’s the plan. There’s a helicopter waiting three miles away. While the soldados are busy worrying about the explosion, we get you and the sister out of here and run like hell. There’s a trail that runs into the road about half a mile from the compound. We’ll meet the truck there.”

“What truck?”

“The one my men will liberate. It will get us to the copter. If everything goes well, we’ll be airborne about fifteen minutes after Scopes’s bomb goes off. Got it?”

It sounded good. It sounded so good she was terrified all over again at the sheer, dizzying possibility of escape. “Got it.”

“One more thing. From this point on, I’m the voice of God to you.”

“That’s blasphemous.”

“It’s necessary. You have the right to risk your own life, but you don’t have the right to endanger my men. You do what I say, when I say. No arguing, no questions. If I say jump, I don’t want to hear any nonsense about how high. Just jump. Understood?”

“I’m not good at following orders blindly.”

“You’d better learn fast, or I’ll knock you out and make my job easier.”

She swallowed. She didn’t have any trouble believing Lieutenant Michael West would knock her out if he considered it necessary. “You’re supposed to be one of the good guys.”

“They don’t make good guys like they used to, honey.”

“A.J.”

“What?”

“You’ve called me Reverend, Rev, lady, and now honey. My name’s A.J.”

“Sounds more like—”

It was like being inside a clap of thunder—end-of-the-world loud, floor-shaking, ear-bursting loud.

His “little boom” had gone off.

Two

Michael had the first board popped off before his ears stopped ringing. He’d brought a tire iron for that chore, borrowed from the shed that held the truck Scopes and Trace were stealing at this very moment. He worked quickly, his SIG Sauer in its holster, the CAR 16 on the ground. He’d drugged the closest sentry before approaching the window; he could count on Hammond to take care of the other one.

The nun had let out a screech when the bomb went off. The Reverend was explaining things to her now—loudly.

A voice that was all bone-rumbling bass sounded behind him. “Do I get the one that’s yellin’?”

“Nope.” Michael pried off the last board and stepped back. “You get the one that screamed when Scopes’s toy went boom. In you go.”

“She’ll start screamin’ again when she sees me,” Hammond said gloomily. The team’s electronics expert did look like the Terminator’s bigger, blacker brother, especially in camouflage with night goggles. He sighed and eased his six-feet-six inches of muscle through the small window.

Michael tossed down the tire iron and picked up his CAR 16, keeping his back to the window as he kept watch. He heard Hammond’s low rumble assuring the Reverend she could trust him with the sister; seconds later, he heard the Reverend climbing out the window. He slid her one quick glance, then jerked his gaze back to the clearing and the trees.

She sure as hell didn’t look like any minister he’d ever seen.

That momentary glimpse hadn’t given him a lot details, and his goggles robbed the scene of color. But he’d noticed a slim, long-fingered hand that shook slightly. A tangled wreck of curls that hung below her shoulders. A wide mouth in an angular face, and big eyes fixed on the weapon he cradled. And about six feet of legs.

Lord, she must be nearly as tall as he was. And ninety percent of her was legs.

What color were her eyes?

Hammond was at the window, ready to pass out a blanket-wrapped bundle. Michael traded a CAR 16 for an armful of old woman.

Even through the blanket and the material of her habit, he felt the heat from her fever. She was tiny, so light Hammond could probably cradle her in one arm and still handle his weapon. She’d lost her wimple. Her hair was thin, short and plastered to her skull. Her face was small and round and wrinkled…and smiling.

She looked nothing like Sister Mary Agnes. Michael smiled back at her, told her in Spanish that they would take good care of her, then passed her to Hammond.

The scream of automatic fire shattered the night, coming from the other end of the compound. Good. The others were keeping the soldiers busy. His quick glance took in the preacher’s pallor and shocked eyes. He didn’t know if it was the gunfire that spooked her, or if she could see the huddled shape of the sentries a few feet away.

He didn’t have time to coddle her. “We’ll go single file. Reverend, you’re the meat in the sandwich. Hammond and I can see where we’re going. You can’t, so hook your hand in my utility belt. We’ll be moving fast.”

“A.J. My name is A.J.”

He turned away. “Hang on tight.” As soon as he felt her hand seize the webbed belt at the small of his back, he moved out.

They crossed the clearing at a dead run and didn’t slow much when they hit the forest. The ground was rough, and the night must have been completely black to her, but she didn’t hold them up. A couple of times she stumbled, but her grip on his belt kept her upright, and she kept moving.

Good for her. He blessed her long legs as he wove among the trees, listening to the diminishing blast of gunfire behind them.

“Where are we going?”

“This trail intersects the road. We’ll meet the truck there. There’s a log here you’ll have to jump.” He leaped it.

She followed awkwardly but without falling. “This is a trail? Are you sure?”

He grinned, pleased with the trace of humor he heard in her voice. “Trust me. It’s here.” He’d found and followed it last night. Fortunately, the canopy wasn’t as thick here as it was in some places—part of this forest was second-growth. But that meant that there was more underbrush.

“Hammond,” he said. “Anything?”

“No sign of pursuit, Mick.”

Everything was going according to plan. It made Michael uneasy. Yeah, it was a good plan, implemented by good men. Problem was, he’d never yet been on a job where everything went according to plan. The truck might not start, or any of a dozen things could go wrong with getting it out.

When they reached the road Michael’s pessimism was rewarded. The truck wasn’t there. A fistful of soldiers were. And they were coming up the road, not down it from the compound.

One second A.J. was running a step behind her rescuer, her hand locked for dear life in the webbing of his belt while plants tried to trip her. The next, he stopped so suddenly she slammed into him.

He didn’t even wobble. Just spun, shoved her down and hit the ground beside her.

She couldn’t see a thing. Her hip throbbed from her rough landing in the dirt. A stick was poking her shoulder, and she didn’t know where Sister Maria Elena was. The other soldier, the one with the face of a comic book villain and the Mr. Universe body, wasn’t beside them. When A.J. lifted her head to see what had happened to him, a large hand pushed it back down so fast she got dirt in her mouth.

He kept his hand on her neck. She felt breath on her hair, warm and close to her ear. His whisper was so soft she barely heard it. “Soldiers coming up the road. Not the ones from the compound.”

Oh, God. More soldiers. Now that she’d stopped running, she felt cold. So cold. Or maybe it was his thumb, moving idly on her nape, that made goose bumps pop out on her shivery flesh. Or fear. She tried to keep her whisper as nearly soundless as his had been. “The truck?”

“Listen.”

She heard it now—a motor laboring, moving toward them. And from the other direction, voices of the soldiers he’d seen, coming up the rough dirt road. How could they have gotten in front of the truck?

No, she realized, these soldiers weren’t from the compound. They must be some of El Jefe’s other troops. Was El Jefe himself with them? Fear, sour and brackish, mixed with the flavor of dirt in her mouth. She tried to breathe slowly, to calm her racing heart.

Headlights! They splashed color against the dense black backdrop of trees just up the road as the truck rounded a curve.

“We’ll have a few seconds before they realize the truck isn’t part of their team anymore.” His hand left her nape, and she felt him move, crouching beside her, his weapon ready. “I’ve signaled Hammond. When he moves, you follow. Head for the back of the truck.”

The truck was closing the distance rapidly. Its headlights picked out three men on the road ahead—ragged, but unmistakably soldiers.

“I’ll lay covering fire if needed, then—hell! Damn that Crowe!”

Shots—machine-gun fast and deafeningly loud—came from the truck. One of the soldiers jerked and fell. The rest scattered, leaping for cover. And firing back.

The gunfire hurled her back in time, to a place and moment she never wanted to see again—past blurring the present with horror and blood. Her ears rang. Terror spurted through her like flames chasing gasoline.

Someone yelled—it was him, Michael, the lieutenant—but she had no idea what he was yelling. He waved his arm and the other soldier leaped right over her, huge and dark and graceful. Then he was running toward the truck, the sister in his arms, with the roar and hammer of gunfire exploding everywhere.

The truck had slowed, but it hadn’t come to a complete stop. The soldier leaped again and landed in the back of the rolling truck, the sister still in his arms. Oh, God, it was still moving. It would pass them by. She had to get up, had to run—but noise and terror, gunfire and memory smothered her, pressing her flat in the dirt.

The lieutenant grabbed her arm and jerked her to her knees. “Run!”

She gulped and shoved to her feet. A shadowy form loomed suddenly up out of the darkness. Moonlight gleamed on the barrel of his gun—pointed right at them.

Gunfire exploded beside her. The shadowy form jerked, fell. Someone screamed—was it her? Shots burst out all over, seeming to come from every direction. Dirt sprayed up near her feet.

He seized her hand and dragged her after him at a dead run—into the forest.

Away from the truck.

She pulled against his grip and tried to make him let her go. Maybe she cried out those words, let me go, let me go to the truck—but he dragged her after him, into the forest. She stumbled, tripped, crashing into the loamy ground. He jerked her to her feet and growled, “Run like the fires of hell are after you. They are.”

She heard renewed gunfire. And she ran.

What followed was a nightmare of darkness and noise. The soldiers came after them. She heard them crashing through the underbrush, heard them calling to one another. And she heard their guns. Once, bark chips flew from a tree, cutting her cheek, when a bullet came too close.

They ran and ran. The lieutenant gripped her hand as if she might try to get away, but she no longer wanted to, no longer thought she could let go. She ran as if her feet knew the ground her eyes couldn’t see, trusting him because she had no choice, relying on him to steer them both through the trees. She ran, images of death following her, of the man he’d shot to save them both—the body jerking, falling. Images of another man, shot under bright lights, not in darkness. Images of blood.

She ran, grieving for the truck and the lost chance of escape, fleeing ever deeper into the forest instead of being in the truck rolling rapidly away from guns and blood and bullets. After a while her entire being focused on running, on the dire importance of not falling, on the need to drag in enough breath to fuel her. There was only flight and the strong, hard hand that held hers. Pounding feet and a pounding heart and the sound and feel of him, so close to her, running with her.

Gradually, she realized she could see the black bulks of the trees and the vague outline of the man who ran with her. There were grays now as well as blacks, and dimness between the trees instead of complete darkness. She had an urge to look up, a sudden hunger for the sky. If she could see a star, just one—receive the sweet kiss of the moon, or glimpse the power of the sun pushing back the night…

He was slowing. As he did, the fear came rushing back, making her want to run and run, to run forever. She made herself slow along with him. And stop.

They stood in the gray light, motionless except for their heaving chests. The sound of her breathing shocked her. It was so loud, so labored. How long had they been running? Where were they?

Then she heard something else. A distant, mechanical thrumming. Coming from above? From the sky? A helicopter, she thought with all the wonder of renewed hope.

She turned to him, seeking the paler blur of his face. “Is—that—yours?” She was badly winded, making it hard to get the words out.

“They’re looking for us. We have to get out from under these trees.” He gave her hand a squeeze. “C’mon. Unless I’m lost, the trees end up ahead.”

The air lightened around them. And it was lightest in the direction they were headed, as if they were walking toward morning. Another sound replaced the whir of the helicopter—the thrumming roar of water falling. She smelled it, too, the wild liquid scent of water.

So suddenly it shocked, they left the trees behind.

The air shimmered with morning and mist. The sky was slate fading to pearl in the east. There was dampness on her face, and she could see the ground she walked on, the spearing shapes of trees behind her, and the bulk of rocks—a short, blunted cliff—rising off to her left.

And she could see him. Not with much detail, but at last she could see the man who had rescued her. He was tall and straight and carried his gun on his back. His face was partly hidden by the goggles that had let him lead their flight through the trees.

The sight of him, which should have reassured her, made her feel more lost. Fleeing through darkness with only his hand to guide her, she’d felt somehow connected, as if she knew him in some deep, visceral way. The reality of him, so straight and military and unknown, shattered that illusion.

The water-noise was very loud now. In the muted grays of predawn she saw it falling from the top of the cliff. Her breath caught as her feet stopped.

A yard away the ground ended, sheared off neatly as if cut by a giant’s knife. And below—far below—was the destination of the falling water, dark and loud.

A river. Which one? She tried to summon a mental map of the country, but her weary brain refused to make pictures for her. Whatever the river’s name, it was hearty, swollen with rain from the recently-ended wet season. Hemmed in by stone banks, water churned and rushed far below.

“Where are we?” she asked.

Maybe he didn’t hear her over the noise of the waterfall. He was scanning the sky, the goggles pushed down. Was it getting too light to use them? Biting her lip, she looked at the sky, too, but didn’t spot the longed-for shape of a helicopter.

“Come on, Dave,” the man beside her muttered. “Where else would I be but—yes!”

She looked where he was looking and saw it—a dark shape flying low, coming out from behind the trees well down the river. Heading their way. She laughed, releasing his hand at last, wanting to jump up and down.

Safety was flying up the river toward them.

A.J. had excellent hearing. Her other senses were no better than ordinary, but her hearing was unusually keen. It was she who heard the shout over the racket the waterfall made.

She spun. There—coming out of the trees—a soldier. No, soldiers. She gasped and grabbed the lieutenant.

He was already in motion, turning, his gun lifting.

Again, the impossibly loud sound of gunfire. Bullets spitting up dust at her feet—the soldiers fading back into the trees, save for one, who lay still on the ground. And hands at her waist, digging in, jerking her off her feet—

Throwing her off the cliff.

She fell. And fell. And fell. It seemed to go on forever, or maybe it was only an instant before the water slapped her—a giant’s slap, stunning and vicious. Water closed over her head so quickly she had no time to get a good breath, though instinct closed her mouth as she plummeted, expecting rocks that would crush and break, tumbled by the water until up and down were lost.

But one foot hit the bottom, mushy with silt. She pushed off, her lungs straining. The current was strong, but she kicked and clawed her way up, up, and at last her head broke the surface. She gulped in air.

Stony walls rushed past. The river moved even faster than she’d realized, and it took all her energy to keep her head above the churning water—but not all her thought. Where was he? She could see little but the dark rush of water. A rock loomed ahead, and she struck out with legs and arms, trying to avoid it. It clipped her hip as she tumbled by, but speed, chill and adrenaline kept her from noticing the blow.

Where was he? He’d thrown her from the cliff—and she would have fought him if she’d had time to understand what he was doing, but he’d known. All along, he’d known what to do. Somewhere in the back of her mind, while the rest of her fought the current, fought to breathe and stay afloat, she knew why he’d done it. The two of them had been out in the open, nowhere to go to escape the bullets spitting around them.

Nowhere but down.

So he’d thrown her off the cliff—but where was he? Had he made it over the edge, too? Or was he lying back in the clearing, bleeding and dying?

Again, it was her ears that gave her answers. Faintly over the noise of the water she heard her name. She opened her mouth, swallowed water, choked and finally managed to cry out, “Here! Over here!”

But the torrent didn’t allow her a glimpse of him until it slowed, until the stony banks gave way to dirt and the river widened and her arms and legs ached with the fierce burn of muscles used beyond their limits. The sun had finished pulling itself up over the edge of the world by then. She glimpsed his head, some distance farther downriver from her. She called out again.

He answered. She couldn’t make out the words, but he answered.

That quickly, the energy that had carried her was gone. Her legs and arms went from aching to trembling. Weakness sped through her like a drug, and she wanted, badly, to let the water carry her to him, let him do the rest.

Stupid, stupid. Did she want to drown them both? She struck out for the nearest shore, her limbs sluggish and weak.

At last her foot struck mud when she kicked. Silty, slimy, wonderful mud. She tried to stand, and couldn’t. So she crawled on hands and knees, feeling each inch won free of the water as a victory worthy of bands and trumpets and parades.

The bank was narrow, a stretch of mud, twigs and rotting vegetation. She dragged herself onto it. And collapsed.

For long minutes she lay there and breathed, her muscles twitching and jumping. Never had she enjoyed breathing more. Birds had woken with the dawn, and their songs, cries and scoldings made a varied chorus, punctuated by the chatter and screech of monkeys.

He had made it to shore, hadn’t he?

She had to look for him. Groaning, she pushed herself onto her side, raising herself on an arm that felt like cooked spaghetti, preparing for the work of standing up.

And saw him, for the first time, in the full light of day.

He sat four feet away with one knee up, his arm propped across it. Water dripped from short black hair and from the wet fatigues that clung to muscular arms and thighs. He wore an odd-looking vest with lots of pockets over his brown-and-green shirt. His face was oval, the skin tanned and taut and shadowed by beard stubble; the nose was pure Anglo, but the cheekbones and dark, liquid eyes looked Latin. His mouth was solemn, unsmiling. The upper lip was a match for the lower. It bowed in a perfect dip beneath that aristocratic nose.

Her heart gave an uncomfortable lurch. The stranger watching her was the most beautiful man she’d ever seen. And he was looking her over. His gaze moved from her feet to her legs, from belly to breasts, finally reaching her face.

“Basketball?” he asked.

Three

A.J. blinked. Maybe the vision of male beauty had taken a blow to the head? “I, ah, didn’t bring a ball.”

He grinned. “I must have swallowed more river water than I thought. No, I haven’t taken leave of my senses. I was thinking of your legs. I thought I’d lost you…” His grin faded as his mouth tightened. “The current was rough. I couldn’t get to you, and I didn’t think you’d be able to make it on your own, not after the run we’d just put in. But obviously you use those legs of yours for more than kneeling.”

“Oh.” She processed the sentence backward to his original question, and answered it. “Track in college, baseball for fun, running for exercise, swimming sometimes.”

“When you said you were fit, you meant it. Which relieves my mind considerably. We have a long walk ahead of us, Rev.”

Annoyance flicked a little more life back into her. She pulled her weary body upright. “I’ve asked you not to call me that.”

“Yeah, I know. The thing is, if I stop calling you Reverend, I’m apt to start paying attention to the wrong things, like those world-class legs of yours. They look great wet, by the way.”

It occurred to her that her legs weren’t the only part of her that was soaked. She glanced down—and quickly pulled her shirt out so it didn’t plaster itself against her breasts. Heat rose in her cheeks. “Then you can call me Reverend Kelleher, and I’ll call you Lieutenant West.”

He shook his head. “I’ll do better to think of you as one of my men for the next few days. We don’t lean toward much formality on the team, so you need to be either Rev or Legs. I’m better off with Rev, I think.” He reached for a canvas kit that hung from his belt. “Especially since the next thing we have to do is take off our clothes.”

She stiffened. “I don’t think so.”

“You’re cute when your mouth gets all prim.”

“Refusing to strip for a man I don’t know isn’t prim. It’s common sense. And a man who would ask me to—”

“Whoa.” He held both hands up. “I might tease, but you’re completely, one hundred percent safe with me. No offense, but you’re the last type of woman I’d make a play for.”

“Good.” She might be superficial enough to react to his looks, but that was all it was—a silly, superficial reaction. It would fade. He was a man of war. Nothing like Dan.

He nodded and unhooked the kit. “Okay, now that we’ve got that straight…you’ll find that I don’t give a lot of orders. And never without a reason. When I do give one, though, you’d do well to follow it. And that was an order, Rev. Take off your shirt and pants.”

“I’m not jumping without an explanation this time.”

“Visual scan,” he said briskly. “We need to check each other out for scrapes, scratches, anyplace the skin is broken. After being tumbled around in the river, we might not notice a small scratch, and between infection and parasites, even the smallest cut is dangerous.”

She thought of Sister Maria Elena’s foot. He made sense…unfortunately. “You first.

“I can wait.”

She inhaled slowly and prayed for patience. It was not a virtue that came naturally to her. “What will happen to me if your misguided sense of chivalry kills you off before we get out of here?”

He didn’t respond at first. His eyes were dark, steady and unreadable. Finally he pulled a small first aid kit out of his kit and handed it to her. “Use the ointment—it’s antibacterial. You’d better take care of my leg first.”

“Your leg?”

He nodded and unfastened his belt.

She tried not to gawk as he levered his hips up so he could pull his pants down. She was a grown woman. A widow. She’d seen male legs before. And her reason for looking at this particular pair of legs was strictly medical, so— “Oh, dear Lord.”

“A bullet clipped me when I made my swan dive off the cliff.” He bent to look at the long, nasty gouge dug into the flesh of his upper thigh. It was still oozing blood. “Doesn’t look too bad. The way it’s been burning, I was a little worried.”

It looked bad enough to A.J. She dug out the tube of antibiotic cream. “I don’t see peroxide or rubbing alcohol to clean the wound.”

“Chances are it bled itself clean.”

They would have to hope so, it seemed. She uncapped the ointment and squeezed out a generous portion.

“Hey—be stingy with that. We don’t have any more.”

“Shut up. Just shut up.” Grimly she bent over his leg. “I have no patience with blind, stubborn machismo. I can’t believe you were going to let this wait while you looked for scratches I don’t have.”

“A man has to take his pleasures where…” His breath caught when she stroked ointment into the shallow end of the wound. “Where he finds them. I expect I’ll enjoy looking for your scratches more than what you’re doing now. I don’t suppose you were part of a medical mission?”

“Teaching.” She bit her lip. She’d had little experience with nursing, and not much aptitude for it. Too much empathy. Her hands were already a little shaky. “You might want to start praying. Or cursing. Whatever works.”

His muscles quivered when she pulled the torn flesh apart so she could get the dressing into the deepest part of the wound. His breath hissed out. But if he did any cursing or praying, he kept it to himself. “Nice hands. I don’t see a wedding ring.”

“I’m a widow.”

“Pity.”

What did he mean by that? “Okay. That’s the best I can do.” She sat back on her heels. “It needs to be bandaged, but the gauze is damp.”

“Damned kit’s supposed to be waterproof.” He grimaced. “So was my radio, but I lost it and my CAR 16 in the river. Use the gauze. It won’t be sterile, but it’s better than letting flies lay eggs in my leg.”

She bit her lip. “There’s this plant…the villagers I worked with called it bálsamo de Maria. Mary’s balm. I think it’s a mild antibiotic. I don’t see any nearby, but if I could find some, we could make a pad of the leaves.”

“We don’t have time to look for leaves.” He grabbed the first aid kit, pulled out the gauze and began winding it around his leg. His mouth was tight, bracketed by pain lines.

“Here, let me.”

Those dark eyes flicked to her. He handed her the roll of gauze.

His boots were on, and his pants were bunched up around his ankles. He should have looked silly. That he didn’t might have had something to do with his briefs, which were undoubtedly white when they weren’t soaked. At the moment they were more skin-toned. As she wound the gauze around his thigh, she could feel the heat from his body—and a slow, insidious heat in her own.

It was embarrassing but only natural, she told herself. She was a healthy woman with normal instincts. And he was so very male. “I think that will hold.” She tied off the gauze and hoped she didn’t sound breathless. “I’ll check out the back of your legs now. If you could stretch out on your side…?”

He was remarkably obedient, moving as she’d suggested. The gleam in his eyes suggested he’d picked up on her discomfort, though. And the reason for it.

Oh, he knew he was beautiful. “Peacock,” she muttered under her breath, and set herself to her task.

His legs were muscular, the hair dark and coarse. No cuts marred his calves, or the tender pocket behind his knees, or the stretch of skin over the strong muscles of his thighs. She did her best not to notice the curve of his buttocks, so poorly hidden by his shirttail and the wet cotton of his briefs.

Dan’s thighs had been thicker than this, she thought, the muscles more bunchy, not as sleek. Hairier, too. Oh, he’d been hairy all over, her big, red giant of a man. And his calves had been freckled from the days when he’d worn shorts and let the sun scatter spots on his pale Irish skin, not dark like this man’s was….

He looked over his shoulder at her. “Enjoying yourself?”

She jerked back. “I’m finished. No cuts.”

He rolled into a sitting position. Levering his hips off the ground, he pulled his pants up. If the movement hurt, it didn’t show. “Lighten up, Rev. I told you, you don’t have to worry about me jumping you.”

“I’m not.” Automatically reaching for comfort, she started to touch her cross. But it, like Dan, was gone.

His fingers unfastened the many-pocketed vest. His eyes stayed on her face. “Something’s wrong.”

“Nothing that concerns you.” Annoyed—with him for noticing, with herself for tripping once more over the past—she blinked back the dampness and the memories. “Do you have any idea what we do next?”

“Start walking.” He tossed the vest aside and began unbuttoning his shirt. “I scraped my shoulder. You’d better have a look.”

He was sleek all over. Not slim—his shoulders were broad, the skin a darker copper than on his legs—but sleek, like an otter or a cat. His stomach was a work of art, all washboard ripples, and his chest was smooth, the nipples very dark. Her mouth went dry.

She moved behind him. There was a scrape along his left shoulder blade, and in spite of the protection of his shirt, the skin was broken. “I’ll have to use some ointment.” She squeezed some onto her fingers. “Where do we walk?”

“Over the mountains, I’m afraid. To Honduras.”

“Honduras?” She frowned as she touched her fingertips to his lacerated skin, applying the ointment as gently as possible. “I haven’t known where I was since they took me and Sister Maria Elena out of La Paloma, but I thought we were closer to the coast.”

“The river we just body-surfed down is the Tampuru. I’m guessing we’re about forty miles upstream of the point where it joins the Rio Maño.”

She wasn’t as familiar with the mountainous middle and north of the country as she was with the south. Still… “Shouldn’t we follow the river downstream, then? The government is in control of the lowlands, and Santo Pedro is on the Rio Maño.” Santo Pedro was a district capital, so it must be a fair-sized city. Telephones, she thought. Water you didn’t have to boil. And doctors, for his wound.

“Too much risk of running into El Jefe’s troops. Last I heard, there was fighting around Santo Pedro. If the government is successful—and I think it will be—the rebels will be pushed back. They’re likely to retreat this way.”

She shivered. “And if the government isn’t successful, we can’t wander into Santo Pedro looking for help.” At least she couldn’t. He might be able to, though. “You could probably pass for a native. None of the soldiers saw your face, and from what I heard, your Spanish is good.”

“Wrong accent.” He shrugged back into his wet shirt. “As soon as I opened my mouth I’d blend in about as well as an Aussie in Alabama. We’re going to have to do this the hard way.”

She sighed. “I’m sure we’ll run across a village sooner or later. This area is primitive but not uninhabited.”

“We probably will, but we can’t stop at any of them.”

“But we don’t have any food! No tent, no blankets—nothing!”

“We’ll eat. Not well, but I can keep us from starving. We can’t risk being seen. Some villagers will be loyal to El Jefe. Most are afraid of him. Someone might carry word of our presence to him.”

“Even if they did, why would he care? He has better things to do than chase us. Especially if his campaign is going badly.”

“If it is, he and his ragtag army may be headed this way. And he won’t be in a good mood. Do you want to risk having him punish a whole village for helping us?”

That silenced her.

“Your turn. Take off your shirt, Rev.”

Her lips tightened. “If you want me to follow orders like a good little soldier, you’re going to have to call me by name. And my name is not Rev.”

Unexpectedly, he grinned—a crooked, very human grin that broke the beautiful symmetry of his face into something less perfect. And a good deal more dangerous. “Stubborn, aren’t you? All right, A.J. Strip.”

There was a path away from the river. It wasn’t much, just an animal trail, and not meant to accommodate six feet of human male, but it was the only way into the dense growth near the river. Michael found a sturdy branch he could use as a walking stick—and to knock bugs or snakes from overhanging greenery.

At first, neither of them spoke. It took too much energy to shove their way through the brush and branches. Soon they were moving slowly up a steep, tangled slope.

A machete would have been nice, Michael thought as he bent to fit through a green, brambled tunnel. Hacking his way with one of those long blades couldn’t have been much noisier than the progress they made without one. He had his knife, but it was too short for trail-blazing. It was also too important to their survival for him to risk dulling the edge, so he made do with his walking stick.

His leg hurt like the devil.

He’d really done it this time, hadn’t he? He should never have complicated the operation in order to rescue a native. Even if she was a nun.

But Michael remembered the round, wrinkled face smiling up at him, and sighed. Stupid or not, there was no way he could have left Sister Maria Elena in the hands of a madman who made war on innocents.

His white-knight complex had put him in one hell of a bad spot, though. He hadn’t exaggerated the danger of seeking help in a village. They wouldn’t have to encounter El Jefe himself to be in big trouble. This area was smack dab in the middle of the easiest line of retreat for El Jefe’s troops if the action at Santo Pedro went against them, and soldiers on the losing side of a war were notoriously apt to turn vicious. The rebels already had a name for brutality. If El Jefe was defeated, his control over the worst of his men would be gone, leaving only one thing standing between the pretty minister and rape, probably followed by death: Michael.

And he was wounded.

He pushed a vine aside, set the end of his stick into the spongy ground and kept moving. Already he was leaning more heavily on the stick than when they’d first set out.

His lips tightened. Pain could slow him down, but it wasn’t a major problem. The real worry was infection, and there was damned little he could do about it. When the Reverend had made a fuss about treating him first he’d let her have her way, but that had been for her sake. She needed to feel useful, to feel in control of something. The few minutes’ difference in getting his leg treated wouldn’t have mattered. Not after his long soak in the river.

“Watch out for the branch,” he said, ducking beneath an overhanging limb.

“Tell me, Lieutenant,” said a disgruntled voice behind him. “Do you have any idea where you’re going?”

In spite of his mood, Michael felt a grin tug at his mouth. He knew why he’d been demoted to a title. Her legs had looked every bit as delicious bare as he’d hoped. Better. He’d enjoyed looking them over—enjoyed it enough to make the first part of their hike uncomfortable in a way that had nothing to do with his leg.

That kind of discomfort he didn’t mind. “I’m looking for high ground so I can figure out where we are and plan a route.”

“How?”

“I’ve got eyes, a map, a compass and a GPS device.” If he had to be saddled with a civilian, at least he’d drawn one with guts and stamina. She didn’t complain, didn’t insist on meaningless reassurances. She just kept going.

Couldn’t ask for more than that. “What does A.J. stand for?”

“Alyssa Jean. I’m not fluent in acronym. What does GPS mean?”

“Global Positioning System.” His brother Jacob had given him the gadget for his birthday, saying that this way Michael would know where he was, even if no one else did. “It talks to satellites and fixes my location on a digital map.”

“Is that the thing you were fiddling with back at the river?”

“Yeah.” He’d set the first waypoint after checking her out for scratches. He smiled. Man, those were great legs.

“I hope it’s more watertight than your first aid kit.”

“Seems to be. Why do you go by A.J.? Alyssa’s a pretty name.”

“First-grade trauma,” she said, her voice wry and slightly winded, “combined with stubbornness. There were three Alyssas in my class. I didn’t want to share my name, so I became A.J. It suited me. I was something of a tomboy as a kid.”

“How does a tomboy end up a minister?” A minister with long, silky legs and small, high breasts…and blue eyes. That had surprised him. Somehow he’d thought they’d be brown, a gentle, sensible color. But they were blue. Sunny-sky blue.

“Same way anyone else does, I guess. I felt called to the ministry, so after college I enrolled in seminary.” There was a scuffling sound, and what sounded suspiciously like a muffled curse. He paused, glancing over his shoulder.

She was climbing to her feet. “A root got me. Maybe I need a stick like yours.”

“I’ll keep my eye out for one.” They were near the top of the hill. Maybe he would let himself rest for a few minutes while he plugged in the new waypoint. His thigh was throbbing like a mother.

“How’s your leg?”

“Not bad.” He ducked under a hanging vine, grabbed the limb of a small tree to pull himself up a particularly steep section, straightened—and froze, his breath catching.

A small, scared whisper came from behind him. “What is it?”

In answer, he moved aside, gesturing for her to come up beside him.

The pocket-size clearing in front of them was coated in blue. Fluttering blue, brighter-than-sky blue, bits of sunny ocean floating free, their wings sorting air currents lazily.

Butterflies. What seemed like hundreds of butterflies flooded the little clearing, many with wingspans as large as his two hands.

A.J.’s shoulder brushed his. A second later, the butterflies rose—a dipping, curling cloud of blue swimming up, up through the air, lifting above the surrounding trees. Then gone.

“Ooh…”

Her soft exclamation was filled with all the wordless awe he felt. He turned to look at her. “Yeah,” he said, because he had no words for what they’d just seen…or what he saw now in her shining eyes.

Blue eyes. Not as bright as the butterfly cloud, maybe, but clear and lovely.

A smile broke over her face, big as dawn. “I’ve never seen anything like that.”

He hadn’t, either. A child’s delight on a woman’s face…was there anything more lovely? Without thinking, he touched her cheek. “You’ve got a spot of dried mud here.”

Her smiled faded. “I’ve got dried mud in a lot of places.”

“Brown’s a good color on you.” He rubbed lightly at the spot on her cheek. Surely the butterflies’ wings couldn’t have been any softer than her skin. His fingers spread to cup her face, and rested there while he looked for something in her eyes. Permission, maybe.

“Michael…” Her throat moved in a nervous swallow.

“I’m going to kiss you.” At that moment, it sounded wholly reasonable to him. “Just a kiss, no big deal.”

“Bad idea.” Her eyes were wide and wary. “Very bad idea.” But she didn’t move away.

“Don’t worry. I don’t let my—ah, my body do my thinking for me.” He bent closer to her pretty lips.

One kiss couldn’t hurt, could it?

He kept it simple, the most basic of connections—no more than the gentle press of one mouth to another. No big deal. Her lips were smooth and warm, her taste was salt and subtle spice. Her eyes stayed open. So did his.

And his hand trembled.

He straightened. The hand that had cupped her cheek dropped to his side. He stared down into eyes as wide with shock as his own.

What had he done? What the hell had he just done to himself?

Four

The sun was high in the sky, and it was hot. Headachy-hot, the kind of sullen heat that drains the body and dulls the mind. They moved among brush, oak and ocotino pines now, not true rain forest. Here, sunlight speckled the shade. Parrots screeched, monkeys chattered, and insects scuttled in the decaying vegetation underfoot. Sweat stung A.J.’s eyes and the scrape on her hand, picked up while scrambling over rocks earlier.

Like they say, it’s not the heat, she told herself as she skidded downslope after Michael. It’s the blasted humidity. Or maybe it was exhaustion making her head throb. Or hunger. Or dehydration. Her mouth and throat were scratchy-dry.

Best not to think about that.

At least the rainy season was over. The mercury dipped slightly during the wet months, but the increase in humidity more than made up for that small drop. Afternoons became steam baths. Daily rains turned every dip into a puddle and roads into mud baths, and the mosquitoes bred like crazy.

Not that roads were a consideration, she thought wistfully. They hadn’t seen any. They’d followed a shallow stream for a while, and that had made the going easier. It had also made her thirsty enough to drink her own sweat.

She paused to wipe the perspiration from her face. Probably she should ask for Michael’s water bag, a reinforced plastic sack from one of his many pockets.

Without a pot they couldn’t boil water to make it safe to drink, but he had iodine. He’d assured her it disinfected water as well as wounds, and he had treated water from the stream with it. Unfortunately, it tasted as nasty as it looked. She hadn’t been able to force down as much as she probably needed.

He was angling to the left now, moving across the slope instead of straight down. With a sigh, she followed.

His leg had to be hurting like a rotting tooth. He’d grown awfully quiet, too. Worried, she let her attention stray from the endless business of finding her footing to the man in front of her.

The back of his neck was shiny with sweat; his hair clung there in damp curls. She wanted to touch those curls. To taste the salt on his skin. She wanted—oh, she wanted to stop thinking of that kiss.

Why had she let it happen? One kiss shouldn’t complicate things so much…but it did. It left her hungry, needy, too aware of him. She didn’t want to come to life now—not here, not with this man. Oh, be honest, she told herself. The thought of becoming involved with anyone scared her silly. Such a coward she’d become! Dan would have hated that.

Of course, the soldier in front of her hadn’t been thinking of getting involved in a relationship when he kissed her. He’d been thinking of sex, pure and simple. She was making too much of it.

Yet she remembered the look in his eyes when he’d raised his head. Maybe it hadn’t been simple for him, either. And maybe, she thought as she skirted the trunk of a fallen giant, it wasn’t pain that had kept him quiet ever since he kissed her.

Tired of her thoughts, she spoke. “How’s your leg?”

“It’s holding up.” He glanced over his shoulder. “How about you? You’ve been quiet.”

The echo of her thoughts about him made her smile. “Keeping my mouth shut is one way to avoid whining.”

“Do you whine, then? You haven’t so far. Maybe you’re saving it for when things become difficult?”

“As opposed to merely miserable, you mean?” The path widened, letting her move up beside him instead of trailing behind. “Whining is an energy-sapper, and I don’t have any of that to spare. And I don’t really have any business complaining. When I compare where I am now to where I was yesterday, my calves almost stop hurting.”

“I guess a minister would be into counting blessings. Like, for example, not having stepped on a snake.”

“Or into a fire ant bed,” she agreed. The bite of the tiny red forest ants hurt worst than a bee sting. “Then there’s the size of these mountains. We could have been stuck in the Andes—”

“Not in San Christóbal, we couldn’t.”

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