Passion mingles with espionage in these two reader-favorite stories

Midnight Rainbow

Grant Sullivan—tough, rugged and handsome—is a retired military expert entrusted with a mission deep in the Costa Rican jungle: to find Jane Hamilton Greer, a wealthy socialite who has been taken hostage by rebels. When Grant rescues the self-possessed Jane by literally throwing her over his shoulder, no love is lost between them. But as the rebels pursue them, they’re forced to work together, and soon the jungle begins to smolder in more ways than one...

Tears of the Renegade

Susan has never known anyone like Cord Blackstone, the sexy black sheep of his family. Cord has a score to settle with the Blackstones—the same genteel clan that sheltered Susan after her husband’s death. Cord will stop at nothing to punish the Blackstones, but what if that means ruining the one woman who can’t stop loving him?

Praise for New York Times bestselling author Linda Howard

“Howard’s writing is compelling.”

—Publishers Weekly

“Linda Howard writes with power, stunning sensuality and a storytelling ability unmatched in the romance genre. Every book is a treasure for the reader to savor again and again.”

—#1 New York Times bestselling author Iris Johansen

“You can’t read just one Linda Howard!”

—New York Times bestselling author Catherine Coulter

“[A]...master storyteller.”

—RT Book Reviews

“Ms. Howard can wring so much emotion and tension out of her characters that no matter how satisfied you are when you finish a book, you still want more.”

—Rendezvous on Mackenzie’s Pleasure

“Linda Howard is an extraordinary talent whose unforgettable novels are richly flavored with scintillating sensuality and high-voltage suspense.”

—RT Book Reviews

“Linda Howard knows what readers want, and dares to be different. ”

—Affaire de Coeur

“Linda Howard exemplifies the very best of the romance genre.”

—RT Book Reviews

Reckless

Midnight Rainbow

Linda Howard

Tears of the Renegade

Linda Howard

www.millsandboon.co.uk

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Table of Contents

Cover

Back Cover Text

Praise

Title Page

Midnight Rainbow

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

Tears of the Renegade

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

EPILOGUE

Copyright

Midnight Rainbow

Linda Howard

CHAPTER ONE

HE WAS GETTING too old for this kind of crap, Grant Sullivan thought irritably. What the hell was he doing crouched here, when he’d promised himself he’d never set foot in a jungle again? He was supposed to rescue a bubble-brained society deb, but from what he’d seen in the two days he’d had this jungle fortress under surveillance, he thought she might not want to be rescued. She looked as if she was having the time of her life: laughing, flirting, lying by the pool in the heat of the day. She slept late; she drank champagne on the flagstone patio. Her father was almost out of his mind with worry about her, thinking that she was suffering unspeakable torture at the hands of her captors. Instead, she was lolling around as if she were vacationing on the Riviera. She certainly wasn’t being tortured. If anyone was being tortured, Grant thought with growing ire, it was he himself. Mosquitoes were biting him, flies were stinging him, sweat was running off him in rivers, and his legs were aching from sitting still for so long. He’d been eating field rations again, and he’d forgotten how much he hated field rations. The humidity made all of his old wounds ache, and he had plenty of old wounds to ache. No doubt about it: he was definitely too old.

He was thirty-eight, and he’d spent over half his life involved in some war, somewhere. He was tired, tired enough that he’d opted out the year before, wanting nothing more than to wake up in the same bed every morning. He hadn’t wanted company or advice or anything, except to be left the hell alone. When he had burned out, he’d burned to the core.

He hadn’t quite retreated to the mountains to live in a cave, where he wouldn’t have to see or speak to another human being, but he had definitely considered it. Instead, he’d bought a run-down farm in Tennessee, just in the shadow of the mountains, and let the green mists heal him. He’d dropped out, but apparently he hadn’t dropped far enough: they had still known how to find him. He supposed wearily that his reputation made it necessary for certain people to know his whereabouts at all times. Whenever a job called for jungle experience and expertise, they called for Grant Sullivan.

A movement on the patio caught his attention, and he cautiously moved a broad leaf a fraction of an inch to clear his line of vision. There she was, dressed to the nines in a frothy sundress and heels, with an enormous pair of sunglasses shading her eyes. She carried a book and a tall glass of something that looked deliciously cool; she arranged herself artfully on one of the poolside deck chairs, and prepared to while away the muggy afternoon. She waved to the guards who patrolled the plantation grounds and flashed them her dimpled smile.

Damn her pretty, useless little hide! Why couldn’t she have stayed under Daddy’s wing, instead of sashaying around the world to prove how “independent” she was? All she’d proved was that she had a remarkable talent for landing herself in hot water.

Poor dumb little twit, he thought. She probably didn’t even realize that she was one of the central characters in a nasty little espionage caper that had at least three government and several other factions, all hostile, scrambling to find a missing microfilm. The only thing that had saved her life so far was that no one was sure how much she knew, or whether she knew anything at all. Had she been involved in George Persall’s espionage activities, he wondered, or had she only been his mistress, his high class “secretary”? Did she know where the microfilm was, or did Luis Marcel, who had disappeared, have it? The only thing anyone knew for certain was that George Persall had had the microfilm in his possession. But he’d died of a heart attack—in her bedroom—and the microfilm hadn’t been found. Had Persall already passed it to Luis Marcel? Marcel had dropped out of sight two days before Persall died—if he had the microfilm, he certainly wasn’t talking about it. The Americans wanted it, the Russians wanted it, the Sandinistas wanted it, and every rebel group in Central and South America wanted it. Hell, Sullivan thought, as far as he knew, even the Eskimos wanted it.

So where was the microfilm? What had George Persall done with it? If he had indeed passed it to Luis Marcel, who was his normal contact, then where was Luis? Had Luis decided to sell the microfilm to the highest bidder? That seemed unlikely. Grant knew Luis personally; they had been in some tight spots together and he trusted Luis at his back, which said a lot.

Government agents had been chasing this particular microfilm for about a month now. A high-level executive of a research firm in California had made a deal to sell the government-classified laser technology his firm had developed, technology that could place laser weaponry in space in the near future. The firm’s own security people had become suspicious of the man and alerted the proper government authorities; together they had apprehended the executive in the middle of the sale. But the two buyers had escaped, taking the microfilm with them. Then one of the buyers double-crossed his partner and took himself and the microfilm to South America to strike his own deal. Agents all over Central and South America had been alerted, and an American agent in Costa Rica had made contact with the man, setting up a “sting” to buy the microfilm. Things became completely confused at that point. The deal had gone sour, and the agent had been wounded, but he had gotten away with the microfilm. The film should have been destroyed at that point, but it hadn’t been. Somehow the agent had gotten it to George Persall, who could come and go freely in Costa Rica because of his business connections. Who would have suspected George Persall of being involved in espionage? He’d always seemed just a tame businessman, albeit with a passion for gorgeous “secretaries”—a weakness any Latin man would understand. Persall had been known to only a few agents, Luis Marcel among them, and that had made him extraordinarily effective. But in this case, George had been left in the dark; the agent had been feverish from his wound and hadn’t told George to destroy the film.

Luis Marcel had been supposed to contact George, but instead Luis had disappeared. Then George, who had always seemed to be disgustingly healthy, had died of a heart attack...and no one knew where the microfilm was. The Americans wanted to be certain that the technology didn’t fall into anyone else’s hands; the Russians wanted the technology just as badly, and every revolutionary in the hemisphere wanted the microfilm in order to sell it to the highest bidder. An arsenal of weapons could be purchased, revolutions could be staged, with the amount of money that small piece of film would bring on the open market.

Manuel Turego, head of national security in Costa Rica, was a very smart man; he was a bastard, Grant thought, but a smart one. He’d promptly snatched up Ms. Priscilla Jane Hamilton Greer and carried her off to this heavily guarded inland “plantation.” He’d probably told her that she was under protective custody, and she was probably stupid enough that she was very grateful to him for “protecting” her. Turego had played it cool; so far he hadn’t harmed her. Evidently he knew that her father was a very wealthy, very influential man, and that it wasn’t wise to enrage wealthy, influential men unless it was absolutely necessary. Turego was playing a waiting game; he was waiting for Luis Marcel to surface, waiting for the microfilm to surface, as it eventually had to. In the meantime, he had Priscilla; he could afford to wait. Whether she knew anything or not, she was valuable to him as a negotiating tool, if nothing else.

From the moment Priscilla had disappeared, her father had been frantic. He’d been calling in political favors with a heavy hand, but he’d found that none of the favors owed to him could get Priscilla away from Turego. Until Luis was found, the American government wasn’t going to lift a hand to free the young woman. The confusion about whether or not she actually knew anything, the tantalizing possibility that she could know the location of the microfilm, seemed to have blunted the intensity of the search for Luis. Her captivity could give him the edge he needed by attracting attention away from him.

Finally, desperate with worry and enraged by the lack of response he’d been getting from the government, James Hamilton had decided to take matters into his own hands. He’d spent a small fortune ferreting out his daughter’s location, and then had been stymied by the inaccessibility of the well-guarded plantation. If he sent in enough men to take over the plantation, he realized, there was a strong possibility that his daughter would be killed in the fight. Then someone had mentioned Grant Sullivan’s name.

A man as wealthy as James Hamilton could find someone who didn’t want to be found, even a wary, burnt-out ex-government agent who had buried himself in the Tennessee mountains. Within twenty-four hours, Grant had been sitting across from Hamilton, in the library of a huge estate house that shouted of old money. Hamilton had made an offer that would pay off the mortgage on Grant’s farm completely. All the man wanted was to have his daughter back, safe and sound. His face had been lined and taut with worry, and there had been a desperation about him that, even more than the money, made Grant reluctantly accept the job.

The difficulty of rescuing her had seemed enormous, perhaps even insurmountable; if he were able to penetrate the security of the plantation—something he didn’t really doubt—getting her out would be something else entirely. Not only that, but Grant had his own personal experiences to remind him that, even if he found her, the odds were greatly against her being alive or recognizably human. He hadn’t let himself think about what could have happened to her since the day she’d been kidnapped.

But getting to her had been made ridiculously easy; as soon as he left Hamilton’s house, a new wrinkle had developed. Not a mile down the highway from Hamilton’s estate, he’d glanced in the rearview mirror and found a plain blue sedan on his tail. He’d lifted one eyebrow sardonically and pulled over to the shoulder of the road.

He lit a cigarette and inhaled leisurely as he waited for the two men to approach his car. “Hiya, Curtis.”

Ted Curtis leaned down and peered in the open window, grinning. “Guess who wants to see you?”

“Hell,” Grant swore irritably. “All right, lead the way. I don’t have to drive all the way to Virginia, do I?”

“Naw, just to the next town. He’s waiting in a motel.”

The fact that Sabin had felt it necessary to leave headquarters at all told Grant a lot. He knew Kell Sabin from the old days; the man didn’t have a nerve in his body, and ice water ran in his veins. He wasn’t a comfortable man to be around, but Grant knew that the same had been said about himself. They were both men to whom no rules applied, men who had intimate knowledge of hell, who had lived and hunted in that gray jungle where no laws existed. The difference between them was that Sabin was comfortable in that cold grayness; it was his life—but Grant wanted no more of it. Things had gone too far; he had felt himself becoming less than human. He had begun to lose his sense of who he was and why he was there. Nothing seemed to matter any longer. The only time he’d felt alive was during the chase, when adrenaline pumped through his veins and fired all his senses into acute awareness. The bullet that had almost killed him had instead saved him, because it had stopped him long enough to let him begin thinking again. That was when he’d decided to get out.

Twenty-five minutes later, with his hand curled around a mug of strong, hot coffee, his booted feet propped comfortably on the genuine, wood-grained plastic coffee table that was standard issue for motels, Grant had murmured, “Well, I’m here. Talk.”

Kell Sabin was an even six feet tall, an inch shorter than Grant, and the hard musculature of his frame revealed that he made it a point to stay in shape, even though he was no longer in the field. He was dark—black-haired, black-eyed, with an olive complexion—and the cold fire of his energy generated a force field around him. He was impossible to read, and was as canny as a stalking panther, but Grant trusted him. He couldn’t say that he liked Sabin; Sabin wasn’t a man to be friendly. Yet for twenty years their lives had been intertwined until they were virtually a part of each other. In his mind, Grant saw a red-orange flash of gunfire, and abruptly he felt the thick, moist heat of the jungle, smelled the rotting vegetation, saw the flash of weapons being discharged...and felt, at his back, so close that each had braced his shoulders against the other, the same man who sat across from him now. Things like that stayed in a man’s memory.

A dangerous man, Kell Sabin. Hostile governments would gladly have paid a fortune to get to him, but Sabin was nothing more than a shadow slipping away from the sunshine, as he directed his troops from the gray mists.

Without a flicker of expression in his black eyes, Sabin studied the man who sat across from him in a lazy sprawl—a deceptively lazy sprawl, he knew. Grant was, if anything, even leaner and harder than he had been in the field. Hibernating for a year hadn’t made him go soft. There was still something wild about Grant Sullivan, something dangerous and untamed. It was in the wary, restless glitter of his amber eyes, eyes that glowed as fierce and golden as an eagle’s under the dark, level brows. His dark blond hair was shaggy, curling down over his collar in back, emphasizing that he wasn’t quite civilized. He was darkly tanned; the small scar on his chin wasn’t very noticeable, but the thin line that slashed across his left cheekbone was silver against his bronzed skin. They weren’t disfiguring scars, but reminders of battles.

If Sabin had had to pick anyone to go after Hamilton’s daughter, he’d have picked this man. In the jungle Sullivan was as stealthy as a cat; he could become part of the jungle, blending into it, using it. He’d been useful in the concrete jungles, too, but it was in the green hells of the world that no one could equal him.

“Are you going after her?” Sabin finally asked in a quiet tone.

“Yeah.”

“Then let me fill you in.” Totally disregarding the fact that Grant no longer had security clearance, Sabin told him about the missing microfilm. He told him about George Persall, Luis Marcel, the whole deadly cat-and-mouse game, and dumb little Priscilla sitting in the middle of it. She was being used as a smoke screen for Luis, but Kell was more than a little worried about Luis. It wasn’t like the man to disappear, and Costa Rica wasn’t the most tranquil place on earth. Anything could have happened to him. Yet, wherever he was, he wasn’t in the hands of any government or political faction, because everyone was still searching for him, and everyone except Manuel Turego and the American government was searching for Priscilla. Not even the Costa Rican government knew that Turego had the woman; he was operating on his own.

“Persall was a dark horse,” Kell admitted irritably. “He wasn’t a professional. I don’t even have a file on him.”

If Sabin didn’t have a file on him, Persall had been more than a dark horse; he’d been totally invisible. “How did this thing blow open?” Grant drawled, closing his eyes until they were little more than slits. He looked as if he were going to fall asleep, but Sabin knew differently.

“Our man was being followed. They were closing in on him. He was out of his mind with fever. He couldn’t find Luis, but he remembered how to contact Persall. No one knew Persall’s name, until then, or how to find him if they needed him. Our man just barely got the film to Persall before all hell broke loose. Persall got away.”

“What about our man?”

“He’s alive. We got him out, but not before Turego got his hands on him.”

Grant grunted. “So Turego knows our guy didn’t tell Persall to destroy the film.”

Kell looked completely disgusted. “Everyone knows. There’s no security down there. Too many people will sell any scrap of information they can find. Turego has a leak in his organization, so by morning it was common knowledge. Also by morning, Persall had died of a heart attack, in Priscilla’s room. Before we could move in, Turego took the girl.”

Dark brown lashes veiled the golden glitter of Grant’s eyes almost completely. He looked as if he would begin snoring at any minute. “Well? Does she know anything about the microfilm or not?”

“We don’t know. My guess is that she doesn’t. Persall had several hours to hide the microfilm before he went to her room.”

“Why the hell couldn’t she have stayed with Daddy, where she belongs?” Grant murmured.

“Hamilton has been raising hell for us to get her out of there, but they aren’t really close. She’s a party girl. Divorced, more interested in having a good time than in doing anything constructive. In fact, Hamilton cut her out of his will several years ago, and she’s been wandering all around the globe since. She’d been with Persall for a couple of years. They weren’t shy about their relationship. Persall liked to have a flashy woman on his arm, and he could afford her. He always seemed like an easygoing good-time guy, well-suited to her type. I sure as hell never figured him for a courier, especially one sharp enough to fool me.”

“Why don’t you go in and get the girl out?” Grant asked suddenly, and he opened his eyes, staring at Kell, his gaze cold and yellow.

“Two reasons. One, I don’t think she knows anything about the film. I have to concentrate on finding the film, and I think that means finding Luis Marcel. Two, you’re the best man for the job. I thought so when I...ah...arranged for you to be brought to Hamilton’s attention.”

So Kell was working to get the girl out, after all, but going about it in his own circuitous way. Well, staying behind the scenes was the only way he could be effective. “You won’t have any trouble getting into Costa Rica,” Kell said. “I’ve already arranged it. But if you can’t get the girl out...”

Grant got to his feet, a tawny, graceful savage, silent and lethal. “I know,” he said quietly. Neither of them had to say it, but both knew that a bullet in her head would be a great deal kinder than what would happen to her if Turego decided that she did know the location of the microfilm. She was being held only as a safety measure now, but if that microfilm didn’t surface, she would eventually be the only remaining link to it. Then her life wouldn’t be worth a plugged nickel.

So now he was in Costa Rica, deep in the rain forest and too damned near the Nicaraguan border for comfort. Roaming bands of rebels, soldiers, revolutionaries and just plain terrorists made life miserable for people who just wanted to live their simple lives in peace, but none of it touched Priscilla. She might have been a tropical princess, sipping daintily at her iced drink, ignoring the jungle that ate continuously at the boundaries of the plantation and had to be cut back regularly.

Well, he’d seen enough. Tonight was the night. He knew her schedule now, knew the routine of the guards, and had already found all the trip lines. He didn’t like traveling through the jungle at night, but there wasn’t any choice. He had to have several hours to get her away from here before anyone realized she was missing; luckily, she always slept late, until at least ten every morning. No one would really think anything of it if she didn’t appear by eleven. By then, they’d be long gone. Pablo would pick them up by helicopter at the designated clearing tomorrow morning, not long after dawn.

Grant backed slowly away from the edge of the jungle, worming himself into the thick greenery until it formed a solid curtain separating him from the house. Only then did he rise to his feet, walking silently and with assurance, because he’d taken care of the trip lines and sensors as he’d found them. He’d been in the jungle for three days, moving cautiously around the perimeter of the plantation, carefully getting the layout of the house. He knew where the girl slept, and he knew how he was going to get in. It couldn’t have been better; Turego wasn’t in the house. He’d left the day before, and since he wasn’t back by now, Grant knew that he wasn’t coming. It was already twilight, and it wasn’t safe to travel the river in the darkness.

Grant knew exactly how treacherous the river was; that was why he would take the girl through the jungle. Even given its dangers, the river would be the logical route for them to take. If by some chance her departure were discovered before Pablo picked them up, the search would be concentrated along the river, at least for a while. Long enough, he hoped, for them to reach the helicopter.

He’d have to wait several more hours before he could go into the house and get the girl out. That would give everyone time to get tired, bored and sleepy. He made his way to the small clearing where he’d stashed his supplies, and carefully checked it for snakes, especially the velvety brown fer-de-lance, which liked to lie in clearings and wait for its next meal. After satisfying himself that the clearing was safe, he sat down on a fallen tree to smoke a cigarette. He took a drink of water, but he wasn’t hungry. He knew that he wouldn’t be until sometime tomorrow. Once the action was going down he couldn’t eat; he was too keyed up, all his senses enhanced so that even the smallest sound of the jungle crashed against his eardrums like thunder. Adrenaline was already pumping through his veins, making him so high that he could understand why the Vikings had gone berserk during battle. Waiting was almost unbearable, but that was what he had to do. He checked his watch again, the illuminated dial a strange bit of civilization in a jungle that swallowed men alive, and frowned when he saw that only a little over half an hour had passed.

To give himself something to do, to calm his tightly wound nerves, he began packing methodically, arranging everything so he would know exactly where it was. He checked his weapons and his ammunition, hoping he wouldn’t have to use them. What he needed more than anything, if he was to get the girl out alive, was a totally silent operation. If he had to use his carbine or the automatic pistol, he’d give away their position. He preferred a knife, which was silent and deadly.

He felt sweat trickle down his spine. God, if only the girl would have sense enough to keep her mouth shut and not start squawking when he hauled her out of there. If he had to, he’d knock her out, but that would make her dead weight to carry through vegetation that reached out to wrap around his legs like living fingers.

He realized that he was fondling his knife, his long, lean fingers sliding over the deadly blade with a lover’s touch, and he shoved it into its sheath. Damn her, he thought bitterly. Because of her, he was back in the thick of things, and he could feel it taking hold of him again. The rush of danger was as addictive as any drug, and it was in his veins again, burning him, eating at him like an acid—killing him and intensifying the feeling of life all at once. Damn her, damn her to hell. All this for a spoiled, silly society brat who liked to amuse herself in various beds. Still, her round heels might have kept her alive, because Turego fancied himself quite a lover.

The night sounds of the jungle began to build around him: the screams of the howler monkeys, the rustles and chirps and coughs of the night denizens as they went about their business. Somewhere down close to the river he heard a jaguar cough, but he never minded the normal jungle sounds. He was at home here. The peculiar combination of his genes and the skills he’d learned as a boy in the swamps of south Georgia made him as much a part of the jungle as the jaguar that prowled the river’s edge. Though the thick canopy blocked out all light, he didn’t light a lamp or switch on a flashlight; he wanted his eyes to be perfectly adjusted to the dark when he began moving. He relied on his ears and his instincts, knowing that there was no danger close to him. The danger would come from men, not from the shy jungle animals. As long as those reassuring noises surrounded him, he knew that no men were near.

At midnight he rose and began easing along the route he’d marked in his mind, and the animals and insects were so unalarmed by his presence that the din continued without pause. The only caution he felt was that a fer-de-lance or a bushmaster might be hunting along the path he’d chosen, but that was a chance he’d have to take. He carried a long stick that he swept silently across the ground before him. When he reached the edge of the plantation he put the stick aside and crouched down to survey the grounds, making certain everything was as expected, before he moved in.

From where he crouched, he could see that the guards were at their normal posts, probably asleep, except for the one who patrolled the perimeter, and he’d soon settle down for a nap, too. They were sloppy, he thought contemptuously. They obviously didn’t expect any visitors in as remote a place as this upriver plantation. During the three days he’d spent observing them, he’d noted that they stood around talking a great deal of the time, smoking cigarettes, not keeping a close watch on anything. But they were still there, and those rifles were loaded with real bullets. One of the reasons Grant had reached the age of thirty-eight was that he had a healthy respect for weapons and what they could do to human flesh. He didn’t believe in recklessness, because it cost lives. He waited. At least now he could see, for the night was clear, and the stars hung low and brilliant in the sky. He didn’t mind the starlight; there were plenty of shadows that would cover his movements.

The guard at the left corner of the house hadn’t moved an inch since Grant had been watching him; he was asleep. The guard walking the grounds had settled down against one of the pillars at the front of the house. The faint red glow near the guard’s hand told Grant that he was smoking and if he followed his usual pattern, he’d pull his cap over his eyes after he’d finished the cigarette, and sleep through the night.

As silently as a wraith, Grant left the concealing jungle and moved onto the grounds, slipping from tree to bush, invisible in the black shadows. Soundlessly, he mounted the veranda that ran alongside the house, flattening himself against the wall and checking the scene again. It was silent and peaceful. The guards relied far too heavily on those trip lines, not realizing they could be dismantled.

Priscilla’s room was toward the back. It had double sliding glass doors, which might be locked, but that didn’t worry him; he had a way with locks. He eased up to the doors, put out his hand and pulled silently. The door moved easily, and his brows rose. Not locked. Thoughtful of her.

Gently, gently, a fraction of an inch at a time, he slid the door open until there was enough room for him to slip through. As soon as he was in the room he paused, waiting for his eyes to adjust again. After the starlight, the room seemed as dark as the jungle. He didn’t move a muscle, but waited, poised and listening.

Soon he could see again. The room was big and airy, with cool wooden floors covered with straw mats. The bed was against the wall to his right, ghostly with the folds of mosquito netting draped around it. Through the netting he could see the rumpled covers, the small mound on the far side of the bed. A chair, a small round table and a tall floor lamp were on this side of the bed. The shadows were deeper to his left, but he could see a door that probably opened to the bathroom. An enormous wardrobe stood against the wall. Slowly, as silently as a tiger stalking its prey, he moved around the wall, blending into the darkness near the wardrobe. Now he could see a chair on the far side of the bed, next to where she slept. A long white garment, perhaps her robe or nightgown, lay across the chair. The thought that she might be sleeping naked made his mouth quirk in a sudden grin that held no real amusement. If she did sleep naked, she’d fight like a wildcat when he woke her. Just what he needed. For both their sakes, he hoped she was clothed.

He moved closer to the bed, his eyes on the small figure. She was so still.... The hair prickled on the back of his neck in warning, and without thinking he flung himself to the side, taking the blow on his shoulder instead of his neck. He rolled, and came to his feet expecting to face his assailant, but the room was still and dark again. Nothing moved, not even the woman on the bed. Grant faded back into the shadows, trying to hear the soft whisper of breathing, the rustle of clothing, anything. The silence in the room was deafening. Where was his attacker? Like Grant, he’d moved into the shadows, which were deep enough to shield several men.

Who was his assailant? What was he doing here in the woman’s bedroom? Had he been sent to kill her or was he, too, trying to steal her from Turego?

His opponent was probably in the black corner beside the wardrobe. Grant eased the knife out of its sheath, then pushed it in again; his hands would be as silent as the knife.

There...just for a moment, the slightest of movements, but enough to pinpoint the man’s position. Grant crouched then moved forward in a blurred rush, catching the man low and flipping him. The stranger rolled as he landed and came to his feet with a lithe twist, a slim dark figure outlined against the white mosquito netting. He kicked out, and Grant dodged the blow, but he felt the breeze of the kick pass his chin. Moving in, he caught the man’s arm with a numbing chop. He saw the arm fall uselessly to the man’s side. Coldly, without emotion, not even breathing hard, Grant threw the slim figure to the floor and knelt with one knee on the good arm and his other knee pressed to the man’s chest. Just as he raised his hand to strike the blow that would end their silent struggle, Grant became aware of something odd, something soft swelling beneath his knee. Then he understood. The too-still form on the bed was so still because it was a mound of covers, not a human being. The girl hadn’t been in bed; she’d seen him come through the sliding doors and had hidden herself in the shadows. But why hadn’t she screamed? Why had she attacked, knowing that she had no chance of overpowering him? He moved his knee off her breasts and quickly slid his hand to the soft mounds to make certain his weight hadn’t cut off her breath. He felt the reassuring rise of her chest, heard the soft, startled gasp as she felt his touch, and he eased a little away from her.

“It’s all right,” he started to whisper, but she suddenly twisted on the floor, wrenching away from him. Her knee slashed upward; he was unguarded, totally vulnerable, and her knee crashed into his groin with a force that sent agony through his whole body. Red lights danced before his eyes, and he sagged to one side, gagging at the bitter bile that rose in his throat, his hands automatically cupping his agonized flesh as he ground his teeth to contain the groan that fought for release.

She scrambled away from him, and he heard a low sob, perhaps of terror. Through pain-blurred eyes he saw her pick up something dark and bulky; then she slipped through the open glass door and was gone.

Pure fury propelled him to his feet. Damn it, she was escaping on her own. She was going to ruin the whole setup! Ignoring the pain in his loins, he started after her. He had a score to settle.

CHAPTER TWO

JANE HAD JUST reached for her bundle of supplies when some instinct leftover from her cave-dwelling ancestors told her that someone was near. There hadn’t been any sound to alert her, but suddenly she was aware of another presence. The fine hairs on the back of her neck and her forearms stood up, and she had frozen, turning terrified eyes toward the double glass doors. The doors had slid open noiselessly, and she had seen the darker shadow of a man briefly outlined against the night. He was a big man, but one who moved with total silence. It was the eerie soundlessness of his movements that had frightened her more than anything, sending chills of pure terror chasing over her skin. For days now she had lived by her nerves, holding the terror at bay while she walked a tightrope, trying to lull Turego’s suspicions, yet always poised for an escape attempt. But nothing had frightened her as much as that dark shadow slipping into her room.

Any faint hope that she would be rescued had died when Turego had installed her here. She had assessed the situation realistically. The only person who would try to get her out would be her father, but it would be beyond his power. She could depend on only herself and her wits. To that end, she had flirted and flattered and downright lied, doing everything she could to convince Turego that she was both brainless and harmless. In that, she thought, she’d succeeded, but time was fast running out. When an aide had brought an urgent message to Turego the day before, Jane had eavesdropped; Luis Marcel’s location had been discovered, and Turego wanted Luis, badly.

But by now Turego surely would have discovered that Luis had no knowledge of the missing microfilm, and that would leave her as the sole suspect. She had to escape, tonight, before Turego returned.

She hadn’t been idle since she’d been here; she’d carefully memorized the routine of the guards, especially at night, when the terror brought on by the darkness made it impossible for her to sleep. She’d spent the nights standing at the double doors, watching the guards, clocking them, studying their habits. By keeping her mind busy, she’d been able to control the fear. When dawn would begin to lighten the sky, she had slept. She had been preparing since the first day she’d been here for the possibility that she might have to bolt into the jungle. She’d been sneaking food and supplies, hoarding them, and steeling herself for what lay ahead. Even now, only the raw fear of what awaited her at Turego’s hands gave her the courage to brave the black jungle, where the night demons were waiting for her.

But none of that had been as sinister, as lethal, as the dark shape moving through her bedroom. She shrank back into the thick shadows, not even breathing in her acute terror. Oh, God, she prayed, what do I do now? Why was he there? To murder her in her bed? Was it one of the guards, tonight of all nights, come to rape her?

As he passed in front of her, moving in a slight crouch toward her bed, an odd rage suddenly filled Jane. After all she had endured, she was damned if she’d allow him to spoil her escape attempt! She’d talked herself into it, despite her horrible fear of the dark, and now he was ruining it!

Her jaw set, she clenched her fists as she’d been taught to do in her self-defense classes. She struck at the back of his neck, but suddenly he was gone, a shadow twisting away from the blow, and her fist struck his shoulder instead. Instantly terrified again, she shrank back into the shelter of the wardrobe, straining her eyes to see him, but he’d disappeared. Had he been a wraith, a figment of her imagination? No, her fist had struck a very solid shoulder, and the faint rippling of the white curtains over the glass doors testified that the doors were indeed open. He was in the room, somewhere, but where? How could a man that big disappear so completely?

Then, abruptly, his weight struck her in the side, bowling her over, and she barely bit off the instinctive scream that surged up from her throat. She didn’t have a chance. She tried automatically to kick him in the throat, but he moved like lightning, blocking her attack. Then a hard blow to her arm numbed it all the way to her elbow, and a split second later she was thrown to the floor, a knee pressing into her chest and making it impossible to breathe.

The man raised his arm and Jane tensed, willing now to scream, but unable to make a sound. Then, suddenly, the man paused, and for some reason lifted his weight from her chest. Air rushed into her lungs, along with a dizzying sense of relief, then she felt his hand moving boldly over her breasts and realized why he’d shifted position. Both terrified and angry that this should be happening to her, she moved instinctively the split second she realized his vulnerability, and slashed upward with her knee. He sagged to the side, holding himself, and she felt an absurd sense of pity. Then she realized that he hadn’t even groaned aloud. The man wasn’t human! Choking back a sob of terror, she struggled to her feet and grabbed her supplies, then darted through the open door. At that point she wasn’t escaping from Turego so much as from that dark, silent demon in her room.

Heedlessly, she flung herself across the plantation grounds; her heart was pounding so violently that the sound of her blood pumping through her veins made a roar in her ears. Her lungs hurt, and she realized that she was holding her breath. She tried to remind herself to be quiet, but the urge to flee was too strong for caution; she stumbled over a rough section of ground and sprawled on her hands and knees. As she began scrambling to her feet, she was suddenly overwhelmed by something big and warm, smashing her back to the ground. Cold, pure terror froze her blood in her veins, but before even an instinctive scream could find voice, his hand was on the back of her neck and everything went black.

Jane regained consciousness by degrees, confused by her upside down position, the jouncing she was suffering, the discomfort of her arms. Strange noises assailed her ears, noises that she tried and failed to identify. Even when she opened her eyes she saw only blackness. It was one of the worst nightmares she’d ever had. She began kicking and struggling to wake up, to end the dream, and abruptly a sharp slap stung her bottom. “Settle down,” an ill-tempered voice said from somewhere above and behind her. The voice was that of a stranger, but there was something in that laconic drawl that made her obey instantly.

Slowly things began to shift into a recognizable pattern, and her senses righted themselves. She was being carried over a man’s shoulder through the jungle. Her wrists had been taped behind her, and her ankles were also secured. Another wide band of tape covered her mouth, preventing her from doing anything more than grunting or humming. She didn’t feel like humming, so she used her limited voice to grunt out exactly what she thought of him, in language that would have left her elegant mother white with shock. A hard hand again made contact with the seat of her pants. “Would you shut the hell up?” he growled. “You sound like a pig grunting at the trough.”

American! she thought, stunned. He was an American! He’d come to rescue her, even though he was being unnecessarily rough about it...or was he a rescuer? Chilled, she thought of all the different factions who would like to get their hands on her. Some of those factions were fully capable of hiring an American mercenary to get her, or of training one of their own to imitate an American accent and win her trust.

She didn’t dare trust anyone, she realized. Not anyone. She was alone in this.

The man stopped and lifted her from his shoulder, standing her on her feet. Jane blinked her eyes, then widened them in an effort to see, but the darkness under the thick canopy was total, she couldn’t see anything. The night pressed in on her, suffocating her with its thick darkness. Where was he? Had he simply dropped her here in the jungle and left her to be breakfast for a jaguar? She could sense movement around her, but no sounds that she could identify as him; the howls and chittering and squawks and rustles of the jungle filled her ears. A whimper rose in her throat, and she tried to move, to seek a tree or something to protect her back, but she’d forgotten her bound feet and she stumbled to the ground, scratching her face on a bush.

A low obscenity came to her ears, then she was roughly grasped and hauled to her feet. “Damn it, stay put!”

So he was still there. How could he see? What was he doing? No matter who he was or what he was doing, at that moment Jane was grateful for his presence. She could not conquer her fear of darkness but the fact that she wasn’t alone held the terror at bay. She gasped as he abruptly lifted her and tossed her over his shoulder again, as effortlessly as if she were a rag doll. She felt the bulk of a backpack, which hadn’t been there before, but he showed no sign of strain. He moved through the stygian darkness with a peculiar sure-footedness, a lithe, powerful grace that never faltered.

Her own pack of pilfered supplies was still slung around her shoulders, the straps holding it even though it had slid down and was bumping against the back of her head. A can of something was banging against her skull; she’d probably have concussion if this macho fool didn’t ease up. What did he think this was, some sort of jungle marathon? Her ribs were being bruised against his hard shoulder, and she felt various aches all over her body, probably as a result of his roughness in throwing her to the floor. Her arm ached to the bone from his blow. Even if this was a real rescue, she thought, she’d be lucky if she lived through it.

She bounced on his shoulder for what seemed like days, the pain in her cramped limbs increasing with every step he took. Nausea began to rise in her, and she took deep breaths in an effort to stave off throwing up. If she began to vomit, with her mouth taped the way it was, she could suffocate. Desperately she began to struggle, knowing only that she needed to get into an upright position.

“Easy there, Pris.” Somehow he seemed to know how she was feeling. He stopped and lifted her off his shoulder, easing her onto her back on the ground. When her weight came down on her bound arms she couldn’t suppress a whimper of pain. “All right,” the man said. “I’m going to cut you loose now, but if you start acting up, I’ll truss you up like a Christmas turkey again and leave you that way. Understand?”

She nodded wildly, wondering if he could see her in the dark. Evidently he could, because he turned her on her side and she felt a knife slicing through the tape that bound her wrists. Tears stung her eyes from the pain as he pulled her arms around and began massaging them roughly to ease her cramped muscles.

“Your daddy sent me to get you out of here,” the man drawled calmly as he began easing the tape off of her mouth. Instead of ripping the adhesive away and taking skin with it, he was careful, and Jane was torn between gratitude and indignation, since he’d taped her mouth in the first place.

Jane moved her mouth back and forth, restoring it to working condition. “My daddy?” she asked hoarsely.

“Yeah. Okay, now, Pris, I’m going to free your legs, but if you look like you’re even thinking about kicking me again, I won’t be as easy with you as I was the last time.” Despite his drawl, there was something menacing in his tone, and Jane didn’t doubt his word.

“I wouldn’t have kicked you the first time if you hadn’t started pawing at me like a high school sophomore!” she hissed.

“I was checking to see if you were breathing.”

“Sure you were, and taking your time about it, too.”

“Gagging you was a damned good idea,” he said reflectively, and Jane shut up. She had yet to see him as anything more than a shadow. She couldn’t even put a name to him, but she knew enough about him to know that he would bind and gag her again without a moment’s compunction.

He cut the tape from around her ankles, and again she was subjected to his rough but effective massage. In only a moment she was being pulled to her feet; she staggered momentarily before regaining her sense of balance.

“We don’t have much farther to go; stay right behind me, and don’t say a word.”

“Wait!” Jane whispered frantically. “How can I follow you when I can’t see you?”

He took her hand and carried it to his waist. “Hang on to my belt.”

She did better than that. Acutely aware of the vast jungle around her, and with only his presence shielding her from the night terrors, she hooked her fingers inside the waistband of his pants in a death grip. She knotted the material so tightly that he muttered a protest, but she wasn’t about to let go of him.

Maybe it didn’t seem very far to him, but to Jane, being towed in his wake, stumbling over roots and vines that she couldn’t see, it seemed like miles before he halted. “We’ll wait here,” he whispered. “I don’t want to go any closer until I hear the helicopter come in.”

“When will that be?” Jane whispered back, figuring that if he could talk, so could she.

“A little after dawn.”

“When is dawn?”

“Half an hour.”

Still clutching the waistband of his pants, she stood behind him and waited for dawn. The seconds and minutes crawled by, but they gave her the chance to realize for the first time that she’d truly escaped from Turego. She was safe and free...well almost. She was out of his clutches, she was the only one who knew what a close call she’d had. Turego would almost certainly return to the plantation this morning to find that his prisoner had escaped. For a moment she was surprised at her own lack of elation, then she realized that she wasn’t out of danger yet. This man said that her father had sent him, but he hadn’t given her a name or any proof. All she had was his word, and Jane was more than a little wary. Until she was actually on American soil, until she knew beyond any doubt that she was safe, she was going to follow poor George Persall’s ironclad rule: when in doubt, lie.

The man shifted uncomfortably, drawing her attention. “Look, honey, do you think you could loosen up on my pants? Or are you trying to finish the job you started on me with your knee?”

Jane felt the blood rush to her cheeks, and she hastily released her hold. “I’m sorry, I didn’t realize,” she whispered. She stood stiffly for a moment, her arms at her sides; then panic began to rise in her. She couldn’t see him in the darkness, she couldn’t hear him breathing, and now that she was no longer touching him, she couldn’t be certain that he hadn’t left her. Was he still there? What if she was alone? The air became thick and oppressive, and she struggled to breathe, to fight down the fear that she knew was unreasonable but that no amount of reason could conquer. Even knowing its source didn’t help. She simply couldn’t stand the darkness. She couldn’t sleep without a light; she never went into a room without first reaching in and turning on the light switch, and she always left her lights on if she knew she would be late returning home. She, who always took extraordinary precautions against being left in the dark, was standing in the middle of a jungle in darkness so complete that it was like being blind.

Her fragile control broke and she reached out wildly, clawing for him, for reassurance that he was still there. Her outstretched fingers touched fabric, and she threw herself against him, gasping in mingled panic and relief. The next second steely fingers grasped her shirt and she was hurled through the air to land flat on her back in the smelly, rotting vegetation. Before she could move, before she could suck air back into her lungs, her hair was pulled back and she felt the suffocating pressure of his knee on her chest again. His breath was a low rasp above her, his voice little more than a snarl. “Don’t ever—ever—come at me from behind again.”

Jane writhed, pushing at his knee. After a moment he lifted it, and eased the grip on her hair. Even being thrown over his shoulder had been better than being left alone in the darkness, and she grabbed for him again, catching him around the knees. Automatically he tried to step away from her entangling arms but she lunged for him. He uttered a startled curse, tried to regain his balance, then crashed to the ground.

He lay so still that Jane’s heart plummeted. What would she do if he were hurt? She couldn’t possibly carry him, but neither could she leave him lying there, injured and unable to protect himself. Feeling her way up his body, she scrambled to crouch by his shoulders. “Mister, are you all right?” she whispered, running her hands up his shoulders to his face, then searching his head for any cuts or lumps. There was an elasticized band around his head, and she followed it, her nervous fingers finding an odd type of glasses over his eyes. “Are you hurt?” she demanded again, her voice tight with fear. “Damn it, answer me!”

“Lady,” the man said in a low, furious voice, “you’re crazier than hell. If I was your daddy, I’d pay Turego to keep you!”

She didn’t know him, but his words caused an odd little pain in her chest. She sat silently, shocked that he could hurt her feelings. She didn’t know him, and he didn’t know her—how could his opinion matter? But it did, somehow, and she felt strangely vulnerable.

He eased himself to a sitting position, and when she didn’t say anything, he sighed. “Why did you jump me like that?” he asked in resignation.

“I’m afraid of the dark,” she said with quiet dignity. “I couldn’t hear you breathing, and I can’t see a thing. I panicked. I’m sorry.”

After a moment he said, “All right,” and got to his feet. Bending down, he grasped her wrists and pulled her up to stand beside him. Jane inched a little closer to him.

“You can see because of those glasses you’re wearing, can’t you?” she asked.

“Yeah. There’s not a lot of light, but enough that I can make out where I’m going. Infrared lenses.”

A howler monkey suddenly screamed somewhere above their heads, and Jane jumped, bumping into him. “Got another pair?” she asked shakily.

She could feel him hesitate, then his arm went around her shoulders. “Nope, just these. Don’t worry, Pris, I’m not going to lose you. In another five minutes or so, it’ll start getting light.”

“I’m all right now,” she said, and she was, as long as she could touch him and know that she wasn’t alone. That was the real terror: being alone in the darkness. For years she had fought a battle against the nightmare that had begun when she was nine years old, but at last she had come to accept it, and in the acceptance she’d won peace. She knew it was there, knew when to expect it and what to do to ward it off, and that knowledge gave her the ability to enjoy life again. She hadn’t let the nightmare cripple her. Maybe her methods of combating it were a little unorthodox, but she had found the balance within herself and she was happy with it.

Feeling remarkably safe with that steely arm looped over her shoulders, Jane waited beside him, and in a very short time she found that she could indeed see a little better. Deep in the rain forest there was no brilliant sunrise to announce the day—the sunrise could not be seen from beneath the canopy of vegetation. Even during the hottest noon, the light that reached the jungle floor was dim, filtered through layers of greenery. She waited as the faint gray light slowly became stronger, until she could pick out more of the details of the lush foliage that surrounded her. She felt almost swamped by the plant life. She’d never been in the jungle before; her only knowledge of it came from movies and what little she’d been able to see during the trip upriver to the plantation. During her days at the plantation she’d begun to think of the jungle as a living entity, huge and green, surrounding her, waiting. She had known from the first that to escape she would have to plunge into that seemingly impenetrable green barrier, and she had spent hours staring at it.

Now she was deep within it, and it wasn’t quite what she’d expected. It wasn’t a thick tangle, where paths had to be cut with a machete. The jungle floor was littered with rotting vegetation, and laced with networks of vines and roots, but for all that it was surprisingly clear. Plant life that lingered near the jungle floor was doomed. To compete for the precious light it had to rise and spread out its broad leaves, to gather as much light as it could. She stared at a fern that wasn’t quite a fern; it was a tree with a buttressed root system, rising to a height of at least eight feet, only at the top it feathered into a fern.

“You can see now,” he muttered suddenly, lifting his arm from her shoulders and stripping off the night vision goggles. He placed them carefully in a zippered section of his field pack.

Jane stared at him in open curiosity, wishing that the light were better so she could really see him. What she could see gave wing to hundreds of tiny butterflies in her stomach. It would take one brave hombre to meet this man in a dark alley, she thought with a frightened shiver. She couldn’t tell the color of his eyes, but they glittered at her from beneath fierce, level dark brows. His face was blackened, which made those eyes all the brighter. His light colored hair was far too long, and he’d tied a strip of cloth around his head to keep the hair out of his eyes. He was clad in tiger-striped camouflage fatigues, and he wore the trappings of war. A wicked knife was stuck casually in his belt, and a pistol rode his left hip while he carried a carbine slung over his right shoulder. Her startled eyes darted back up to his face, a strong-boned face that revealed no emotion, though he had been aware of her survey.

“Loaded for bear, aren’t you?” she quipped, eyeing the knife again. For some reason it looked more deadly than either of the guns.

“I don’t walk into anything unprepared,” he said flatly.

Well, he certainly looked prepared for anything. She eyed him again, more warily this time; he was about six feet tall, and looked like...looked like... Her mind groped for and found the phrase. It had been bandied about and almost turned into a joke, but with this man, it was deadly serious. He looked like a lean, mean, fighting machine, every hard, muscled inch of him. His shoulders looked to be a yard wide, and he’d carried her dead weight through the jungle without even a hint of strain. He’d knocked her down twice, and she realized the only reason she wasn’t badly hurt was that, both times, he’d tempered his strength.

Abruptly his attention left her, and his head lifted with a quick, alert motion, like that of an eagle. His eyes narrowed as he listened. “The helicopter is coming,” he told her. “Let’s go.”

Jane listened, but she couldn’t hear anything. “Are you sure?” she asked doubtfully.

“I said let’s go,” he repeated impatiently, and walked away from her. It took Jane only a few seconds to realize that he was heading out, and in the jungle he would be completely hidden from view before he’d gone ten yards. She hurried to catch up to him.

“Hey, slow down!” she whispered frantically, catching at his belt.

“Move it,” he said with a total lack of sympathy. “The helicopter won’t wait forever; Pablo’s on the quick side anyway.”

“Who’s Pablo?”

“The pilot.”

Just then a faint vibration reached her ears. In only a moment it had intensified to the recognizable beat of a helicopter. How could he have heard it before? She knew that she had good hearing, but his senses must be almost painfully acute.

He moved swiftly, surely, as if he knew exactly where he was going. Jane concentrated on keeping up with him and avoiding the roots that tried to catch her toes, she paid little attention to their surroundings. When he climbed, she climbed; it was simple. She was mildly surprised when he stopped abruptly and she lifted her head to look around. The jungle of Costa Rica was mountainous, and they had climbed to the edge of a small cliff, looking down on a narrow, hidden valley with a natural clearing. The helicopter sat in that clearing, the blades lazily whirling.

“Better than a taxicab,” Jane murmured in relief, and started past him.

His hand closed over her shoulder and jerked her back. “Be quiet,” he ordered, his narrowed gaze moving restlessly, surveying the area.

“Is something wrong?”

“Shut up!”

Jane glared at him, incensed by his unnecessary rudeness, but his hand was still clamped on her shoulder in a grip that bordered on being painful. It was a warning that if she tried to leave the protective cover of the jungle before he was satisfied that everything was safe, he would stop her with real pain. She stood quietly, staring at the clearing herself, but she couldn’t see anything wrong. Everything was quiet. The pilot was leaning against the outside of the helicopter, occupied with cleaning his nails; he certainly wasn’t concerned with anything.

Long minutes dragged past. The pilot began to fidget, craning his neck and staring into the jungle, though anyone standing just a few feet behind the trees would be completely hidden from view. He looked at his watch, then scanned the jungle again, his gaze moving nervously from left to right.

Jane felt the tension in the man standing beside her, tension that was echoed in the hand that held her shoulder. What was wrong? What was he looking for, and why was he waiting? He was as motionless as a jaguar lying in wait for its prey to pass beneath its tree limb.

“This sucks,” he muttered abruptly, easing deeper into the jungle and dragging her with him.

Jane sputtered at the inelegant expression. “It does? Why? What’s wrong?”

“Stay here.” He pushed her to the ground, deep in the green-black shadow of the buttressed roots of an enormous tree.

Startled, she took a moment to realize that she’d been abandoned. He had simply melted into the jungle, so silently and swiftly that she wasn’t certain which way he’d gone. She twisted around but could see nothing that indicated his direction; no swaying vines or limbs.

She wrapped her arms around her drawn-up legs and propped her chin on her knees, staring thoughtfully at the ground. A green stick with legs was dragging a large spider off to be devoured. What if he didn’t come back...whoever he was. Why hadn’t she asked him his name? If something happened to him, she’d like to know his name, so she could tell someone—assuming that she could manage to get out of the jungle herself. Well, she wasn’t any worse off now than she had been before. She was away from Turego, and that was what counted.

Wait here, he’d said. For how long? Until lunch? Sundown? Her next birthday? Men gave such inexact instructions! Of course, this particular man seemed a little limited in the conversation department. Shut up, Stay here and Stay put seemed to be the highlights of his repertoire.

This was quite a tree he’d parked her by. The bottom of the trunk flared into buttressed roots, forming enormous wings that wrapped around her almost like arms. If she sat back against the tree, the wings would shield her completely from the view of someone approaching at any angle except head-on.

The straps of her backpack were irritating her shoulders, so she slid it off and stretched, feeling remarkably lighter. She hauled the pack around and opened it, then began digging for her hairbrush. Finding this backpack had been a stroke of luck, she thought, though Turego’s soldiers really should be a little more careful with their belongings. Without it, she’d have had to wrap things up in a blanket, which would have been awkward.

Finally locating the hairbrush, she diligently worked through the mass of tangles that had accumulated in her long hair during the night. A small monkey with an indignant expression hung from a branch overhead. It scolded her throughout the operation, evidently angry that she had intruded on its territory. She waved at it.

Congratulating herself for her foresight, she pinned her hair up and pulled a black baseball cap out of the pack. She jammed the cap on and tugged the bill down low over her eyes, then shoved it back up. There wasn’t any sun down here. Staring upward, she could see bright pinpoints of sun high in the trees, but only a muted green light filtered down to the floor. She’d have been better off with some of those fancy goggles that What’s-his-name had.

How long had she been sitting there? Was he in trouble?

Her legs were going to sleep, so she stood and stomped around to get her blood flowing again. The longer she waited, the more uneasy she became, and she had the feeling that a time would come when she’d better be able to move fast. Jane was an instinctive creature, as sensitive to atmosphere as any finely tuned barometer. That trait had enabled her to hold Turego at bay for what seemed like an endless succession of days and nights, reading him, sidestepping him, keeping him constantly disarmed, and even charmed. Now the same instinct warned her of danger. There was some slight change in the very air that stroked her bare arms. Warily, she leaned down to pick up her backpack, slipping her arms through the straps and anchoring it this time by fastening the third strap around her middle.

The sudden thunderous burst of automatic weapon fire made her whirl, her heart jumping into her throat. Listening to the staccato blasts, she knew that several weapons were being fired, but at whom? Had her friend been detected or was this something else entirely? Was this the trouble he’d sensed that had made him shy away from the clearing? She wanted to think that he was safe, observing everything from an invisible vantage point in the jungle, but with a chill she realized that she couldn’t take that for granted.

Her hands felt cold, and with a distant surprise she realized that she was trembling. What should she do? Wait, or run? What if he needed help? She realized that there was very little she could do, since she was unarmed, but she couldn’t just run away if he needed help. He wasn’t the most amiable man she’d ever met, and she still didn’t exactly trust him, but he was the closest thing to a friend she had here.

Ignoring the unwillingness of her feet and the icy lump of fear in her stomach, Jane left the shelter of the giant tree and began cautiously inching through the forest, back toward the clearing. There were only sporadic bursts of gunfire now, still coming from the same general direction.

Suddenly she froze as the faint sound of voices filtered through the forest. In a cold panic she dove for the shelter of another large tree. What would she do if they were coming in this direction? The rough bark scratched her hands as she cautiously moved her head just enough to peer around the trunk.

A steely hand clamped over her mouth. As a scream rose in her throat, a deep, furious voice growled in her ear, “Damn it, I told you to stay put!”

CHAPTER THREE

JANE GLARED AT him over the hand that still covered her mouth, her fright turning into relieved anger. She didn’t like this man. She didn’t like him at all, and as soon as they were out of this mess, she was going to tell him about it!

He removed his hand and shoved her to the ground on her hands and knees. “Crawl!” he ordered in a harsh whisper, and pointed to their left.

Jane crawled, ignoring the scratches she incurred as she squirmed through the undergrowth, ignoring even the disgusting squishiness when she accidentally smashed something with her hand. Odd, but now that he was with her again, her panic had faded; it hadn’t gone completely, but it wasn’t the heart-pounding, nauseating variety, either. Whatever his faults, he knew his way around.

He was on her tail, literally, his hard shoulder against the back of her thighs, pushing her onward whenever he thought she wasn’t moving fast enough. Once he halted her by the simple method of grabbing her ankle and jerking her flat, his urgent grip warning her to be quiet. She held her breath, listening to the faint rustle that betrayed the presence of someone, or something, nearby. She didn’t dare turn her head, but she could detect movement with her peripheral vision. In a moment the man was close enough that she could see him plainly. He was obviously of Latin ancestry, and he was dressed in camouflage fatigues with a cap covering his head. He held an automatic rifle at the ready before him.

In only a moment she could no longer see or hear him, but they stayed motionless in the thick tangle of ferns for long, agonizing minutes. Then her ankle was released and a hand on her hip urged her forward.

They were moving away from the soldier at a right angle. Perhaps they were going to try to get behind their pursuers, then take off in the helicopter while the soldiers were still deep in the jungle. She wanted to know where they were going, what they would do, who the soldiers were and what they wanted—but the questions had to remain bottled up inside her. Now was definitely not the time for talking, not with this man—what was his name?—practically shoving her through the undergrowth.

Abruptly the forest cleared somewhat, allowing small patches of sunlight to filter through. Grasping her arm, he hauled her to her feet. “Run, but be as quiet as you can,” he hissed in her ear.

Great. Run, but do it quietly. She threw him a dirty look, then ran, taking off like a startled deer. The most disgusting thing was that he was right behind her, and she couldn’t hear him making a sound, while her own feet seemed to pound the earth like a drum. But her body seemed cheered by the small amount of sunlight, because she felt her energy level surge despite her sleepless night. The pack on her shoulders seemed lighter, and her steps became quick and effortless as adrenaline began pumping through her veins.

The brush became thicker, and they had to slow their pace. After about fifteen minutes he stopped her with a hand on her shoulder and pulled her behind the trunk of a tree. “Rest a minute,” he whispered. “The humidity will wipe you out if you aren’t used to it.”

Until that moment Jane hadn’t noticed that she was wringing wet with sweat. She’d been too intent on saving her skin to worry about its dampness. Now, she became aware of the intense humidity of the rain forest pressing down on her, making every breath she drew lie heavily in her lungs. She wiped the moisture from her face, the salt of her perspiration stinging the small scratches on her cheeks.

He took a canteen from his pack. “Take a drink; you look like you need it.”

She had a very good idea what she looked like, and she smiled wryly. She accepted the canteen and drank a little of the water, then capped it and returned it to him. “Thanks.”

He looked at her quizzically. “You can have more if you want.”

“I’m okay.” She looked at him, seeing now that his eyes were a peculiar golden-brown color, like amber. His pupils seemed piercingly black against that tawny background. He was streaked with sweat, too, but he wasn’t even breathing hard. Whoever he was, whatever he was, he was damned good at this. “What’s your name?” she asked him, desperately needing to call him something, as if that would give him more substance, make him more familiar.

He looked a little wary, and she sensed that he disliked giving even that much of himself away. A name was only a small thing, but it was a chink in his armor, a link to another person that he didn’t want. “Sullivan,” he finally said reluctantly.

“First or last?”

“Last.”

“What’s your first name?”

“Grant.”

Grant Sullivan. She liked the name. It wasn’t fancy; he wasn’t fancy. He was a far cry from the sleekly sophisticated men she usually met, but the difference was exciting. He was hard and dangerous, mean when he had to be, but he wasn’t vicious. The contrast between him and Turego, who was a truly vicious man, couldn’t have been more clear-cut.

“Let’s go,” he said. “We need to put a lot more space between the hounds and the foxes.”

Obediently she followed his direction, but found that her burst of adrenaline was already dissipating. She felt more exhausted now than she had before the short rest. She stumbled once, catching her booted foot in a liana vine, but he rescued her with a quick grab. She gave him a tired smile of thanks, but when she tried to step away from him he held her. He stood rigid and it frightened her. She jerked around to look at him, but his face was a cold, blank mask, and he was staring behind her. She whirled again, and looked down the barrel of a rifle.

The sweat congealed on her body. For one moment of frozen terror she expected to be shot; then the moment passed and she was still alive. She was able then to look past the barrel to the hard, dark face of the soldier who held the rifle. His black eyes were narrowed, fastened on Sullivan. He said something, but Jane was too upset to translate the Spanish.

Slowly, deliberately, Sullivan released Jane and raised his arms, clasping his hands on top of his head. “Step away from me,” he said quietly.

The soldier barked an order at him. Jane’s eyes widened. If she moved an inch this maniac would probably shoot her down. But Sullivan had told her to move, so she moved, her face so white that the small freckles across her nose stood out as bright dots of color. The rifle barrel jerked in her direction, and the soldier said something else. He was nervous, Jane suddenly realized. The tension was obvious in his voice, in his jerky movements. God, if his finger twitched on the trigger...! Then, just as abruptly, he aimed the rifle at Sullivan again.

Sullivan was going to do something. She could sense it. The fool! He’d get himself killed if he tried to jump this guy! She stared at the soldier’s shaking hands on the rifle, and suddenly something jumped into her consciousness. He didn’t have the rifle on automatic. It took her another moment to realize the implications; then she reacted without thought. Her body, trained to dance, trained in the graceful moves of self-defense, went into fluid motion. He began moving a split second later, swinging the weapon around, but by then she was close enough that her left foot sliced upward under the barrel of the gun, and the shot that he fired went into the canopy over their heads. He never got a chance at another shot.

Grant was on him then, grabbing the gun with one hand and slashing at the man’s unprotected neck with the side of the other. The soldier’s eyes glazed over, and he sank limply to the ground, his breathing raspy but steady.

Grant grabbed Jane’s arm. “Run! That shot will bring every one of them swarming down on us!”

The urgency of his tone made it possible for her to obey, though she was rapidly depleting her reserves of energy. Her legs were leaden, and her boots weighed fifty pounds each. Burning agony slashed her thighs, but she forced herself to ignore it; sore muscles weren’t nearly as permanent as being dead. Urged on by his hand at her back, she stumbled over roots and through bushes, adding to her collection of scratches. It was purely a natural defense mechanism, but her mind shut down and her body operated automatically, her feet moving, her lungs sucking desperately at the heavy, moist air. She was so tired now that she no longer felt the pain in her body.

The ground abruptly sloped out from under her feet. Her senses dulled by both terror and fatigue, she was unable to regain her balance. Grant grabbed for her, but the momentum of her body carried them both over the edge of the hill. His arms wrapped around her, and they rolled down the steep slope. The earth and trees spun crazily, but she saw a rocky, shallow stream at the bottom of the slope and a small, hoarse cry tore from her throat. Some of those rocks were big enough to kill them and the smaller ones could cut them to pieces.

Grant swore, and tightened his grip on her until she thought her ribs would splinter under the pressure. She felt his muscles tighten, felt the desperate twist he made, and somehow he managed to get his feet and legs in front of him. Then they were sliding down in a fairly upright position, rather than rolling. He dug his heels in and their descent slowed, then stopped. “Pris?” he asked roughly, cupping her chin in his hand and turning her face so he could see it. “Are you hurt?”

“No, no,” she quickly assured him, ignoring the new aches in her body. Her right arm wasn’t broken, but it was badly bruised; she winced as she tried to move it. One of the straps on the backpack had broken, and the pack was hanging lopsidedly off her left shoulder. Her cap was missing.

He adjusted the rifle on his shoulder, and Jane wondered how he had managed to hold on to it. Didn’t he ever drop anything, or get lost, or tired, or hungry? She hadn’t even seen him take a drink of water!

“My cap came off,” she said, turning to stare up the slope. The top was almost thirty yards above them and the slope steep enough that it was a miracle they hadn’t crashed into the rocks at the streambed.

“I see it.” He swarmed up the slope, lithe and sure-footed. He snatched the cap from a broken branch and in only a moment was back beside her. Jamming the cap on her head, he said, “Can you make it up the other side?”

There was no way, she thought. Her body refused to function any longer. She looked at him and lifted her chin. “Of course.”

He didn’t smile, but there was a faint softening of his expression, as if he knew how desperately tired she was. “We have to keep moving,” he said, taking her arm and urging her across the stream. She didn’t care that her boots were getting wet; she just sloshed through the water, moving downstream while he scanned the bank for an easy place to climb up. On this side of the stream, the bank wasn’t sloped; it was almost vertical and covered with what looked like an impenetrable tangle of vines and bushes. The stream created a break in the foliage that allowed more sunlight to pour down, letting the plants grow much more thickly.

“Okay, let’s go up this way,” he finally said, pointing. Jane lifted her head and stared at the bank, but she didn’t see any break in the wild tangle.

“Let’s talk about this,” she hedged.

He gave an exasperated sigh. “Look, Pris, I know you’re tired, but—”

Something snapped inside Jane, and she whirled on him, catching him by the shirtfront and drawing back her fist. “If you call me ‘Pris’ just one more time, I’m going to feed you a knuckle sandwich!” she roared, unreasonably angry at his continued use of that hated name. No one, but no one, had ever been allowed to call her Priscilla, Pris, or even Cilla, more than once. This damned commando had been rubbing her face in it from the beginning. She’d kept quiet about it, figuring she owed him for kicking him in the groin, but she was tired and hungry and scared and enough was enough!

He moved so quickly that she didn’t even have time to blink. His hand snaked out and caught her drawn back fist, while the fingers of his other hand laced around her wrist, removing her grip from his shirt. “Damn it, can’t you keep quiet? I didn’t name you Priscilla, your parents did, so if you don’t like it take it up with them. But until then, climb!”

Jane climbed, even though she was certain at every moment that she was going to collapse on her face. Grabbing vines for handholds, using roots and rocks and bushes and small trees, she squirmed and wiggled her way through the foliage. It was so thick that it could have been swarming with jaguars and she wouldn’t have been able to see one until she stuck her hand in its mouth. She remembered that jaguars liked water, spending most of their time resting comfortably near a river or stream, and she swore vengeance on Grant Sullivan for making her do this.

Finally she scrambled over the top, and after pushing forward several yards found that the foliage had once again thinned, and walking was much easier. She adjusted the pack on her back, wincing as she found new bruises. “Are we heading for the helicopter?”

“No,” he said curtly. “The helicopter is being watched.”

“Who are those men?”

He shrugged. “Who knows? Sandinistas, maybe; we’re only a few klicks from the Nicaraguan border. They could be any guerrilla faction. That damned Pablo sold us out.”

Jane didn’t waste time worrying about Pablo’s duplicity; she was too tired to really care. “Where are we going?”

“South.”

She ground her teeth. Getting information out of this man was like pulling teeth. “South where?”

“Limon, eventually. Right now, we’re going due east.”

Jane knew enough about Costa Rica to know what lay due east, and she didn’t like what she’d just been told. Due east lay the Caribbean coast, where the rain forest became swampland. If they were only a few kilometers from the Nicaraguan border, then Limon was roughly a hundred miles away. In her weariness, she felt it might as well have been five hundred miles. How long would it take them to walk a hundred miles? Four or five days? She didn’t know if she could stand four or five days with Mr. Sunshine. She’d known him less than twelve hours, and she was already close to death.

“Why can’t we just go south and forget about east?”

He jerked his head in the direction from which they’d come. “Because of them. They weren’t Turego’s men, but Turego will soon know that you came in this direction, and he’ll be after us. He can’t afford to have the government find out about his little clandestine operations. So...we go where he can’t easily follow.”

It made sense. She didn’t like it, but it made sense. She’d never been in the Caribbean coastal region of Costa Rica, so she didn’t know what to expect, but it had to be better than being Turego’s prisoner. Poisonous snakes, alligators, quicksand, whatever...it was better than Turego. She’d worry about the swamp when they were actually in it. With that settled in her mind, she returned to her most pressing problem.

“When do we get to rest? And eat? And, frankly, Attila, you may have a bladder the size of New Jersey, but I’ve got to go!”

Again she caught that unwilling twitch of his lips, as if he’d almost grinned. “We can’t stop yet, but you can eat while we walk. As for the other, go behind that tree there.” He pointed, and she turned to see another of those huge, funny trees with the enormous buttressed roots. In the absence of indoor plumbing it would have to do. She plunged for its shelter.

When they started out again he gave her something hard and dark to chew on; it tasted faintly like meat, but after examining it suspiciously she decided not to question him too closely about it. It eased the empty pains in her stomach, and after washing a few bites down with cautious sips of water, she began to feel better and the rubbery feeling left her legs. He chewed a stick of it, too, which reassured her in regard to his humanity.

Still, after walking steadily for a few hours, Jane began to lose the strength that had come with her second wind. Her legs were moving clumsily, and she felt as if she were wading in knee-deep water. The temperature had risen steadily; it was well over ninety now, even in the thick shelter of the canopy. The humidity was draining her as she continued to sweat, losing water that she wasn’t replacing. Just when she was about to tell him that she couldn’t take another step, he turned and surveyed her with an impersonal professionalism.

“Stay here while I find some sort of shelter for us. It’s going to start raining in a little while, so we might as well sit it out. You look pretty well beat anyway.”

Jane pulled her cap off and wiped her streaming face with her forearm, too tired to comment as he melted from sight. How did he know it was going to start raining? It rained almost every day, of course, so it didn’t take a fortune-teller to predict rain, but she hadn’t heard the thunder that usually preceded it.

He was back in only a short while, taking her arm and leading her to a small rise, where a scattering of boulders testified to Costa Rica’s volcanic origin. After taking his knife from his belt, he cut small limbs and lashed them together with vines, then propped one end of his contraption up by wedging sturdier limbs under the corners. Producing a rolled up tarp from his backpack like a magician, he tied the tarp over the crude lean-to, making it waterproof. “Well, crawl in and get comfortable,” he growled when Jane simply stood there, staring in astonishment at the shelter he’d constructed in just a few minutes.

Obediently she crawled in, groaning with relief as she shrugged out of her backpack and relaxed her aching muscles. Her ears caught the first distant rumble of thunder; whatever he did for a living, the man certainly knew his way around the jungle.

Grant ducked under the shelter, too, relieving his shoulders of the weight of his own backpack. He had apparently decided that while they were waiting out the rain they might as well eat, because he dug out a couple of cans of field rations.

Jane sat up straight and leaned closer, staring at the cans. “What’s that?”

“Food.”

“What kind of food?”

He shrugged. “I’ve never looked at it long enough to identify it. Take my advice: don’t think about it. Just eat it.”

She put her hand on his as he started to open the cans. “Wait. Why don’t we save those for have-to situations?”

“This is a have-to situation,” he grunted. “We have to eat.”

“Yes, but we don’t have to eat that!”

Exasperation tightened his hard features. “Honey, we either eat this, or two more cans exactly like them!”

“Oh, ye of little faith,” she scoffed, dragging her own backpack closer. She began delving around in it, and in a moment produced a small packet wrapped in a purloined towel. With an air of triumph she unwrapped it to expose two badly smashed but still edible sandwiches, then returned to the backpack to dig around again. Her face flushed with success, she pulled out two cans of orange juice. “Here!” she said cheerfully, handing him one of the cans. “A peanut butter and jelly sandwich, and a can of orange juice. Protein, carbohydrates and vitamin C. What more could we ask for?”

Grant took the sandwich and the pop-top can she offered him, staring at them in disbelief. He blinked once, then an amazing thing happened: he laughed. It wasn’t much of a laugh. It was rather rusty sounding, but it revealed his straight white teeth and made his amber eyes crinkle at the corners. The rough texture of that laugh gave her a funny little feeling in her chest. It was obvious that he rarely laughed, that life didn’t hold much humor for him, and she felt both happy that she’d made him laugh and sad that he’d had so little to laugh about. Without laughter she would never have kept her sanity, so she knew how precious it was.

Chewing on his sandwich, Grant relished the gooiness of the peanut butter and the sweetness of the jelly. So what if the bread was a little stale? The unexpected treat made such a detail unimportant. He leaned back and propped himself against his backpack, stretching his long legs out before him. The first drops of rain began to patter against the upper canopy. It would be impossible for anyone to track them through the downpour that was coming, even if those guerrillas had an Indian tracker with them, which he doubted. For the first time since he’d seen the helicopter that morning, he relaxed, his highly developed sense of danger no longer nagging him.

He finished the sandwich and poured the rest of the orange juice down his throat, then glanced over at Jane to see her daintily licking the last bit of jelly from her fingers. She looked up, caught his gaze, and gave him a cheerful smile that made her dimples flash, then returned to the task of cleaning her fingers.

Against his will, Grant felt his body tighten with a surge of lust that surprised him with its strength. She was a charmer, all right, but not at all what he’d expected. He’d expected a spoiled, helpless, petulant debutante, and instead she had had the spirit, the pure guts, to hurl herself into the jungle with two peanut butter sandwiches and some orange juice as provisions. She’d also dressed in commonsense clothing, with good sturdy boots and green khaki pants, and a short-sleeved black blouse. Not right out of the fashion pages, but he’d had a few distracting moments crawling behind her, seeing those pants molded to her shapely bottom. He hadn’t been able to prevent a deep masculine appreciation for the soft roundness of her buttocks.

She was a mass of contradictions. She was a jet-setter, so wild that her father had disinherited her, and she’d been George Persall’s mistress, yet he couldn’t detect any signs of hard living in her face. If anything, her face was as open and innocent as a child’s, with a child’s enthusiasm for life shining out of her dark brown eyes. She had a look of perpetual mischievousness on her face, yet it was a face of honest sensuality. Her long hair was so dark a brown that it was almost black, and it hung around her shoulders in snarls and tangles. She had pushed it away from her face with total unconcern. Her dark brown eyes were long and a little narrow, slanting in her high-cheekboned face in a way that made him think she might have a little Indian blood. A smattering of small freckles danced across those elegant cheekbones and the dainty bridge of her nose. Her mouth was soft and full, with the upper lip fuller than the lower one, which gave her an astonishingly sensual look. All in all, she was far from beautiful, but there was a freshness and zest about her that made all the other women he’d known suddenly seem bland.

Certainly he’d never been as intimate with any other woman’s knee.

Even now, the thought of it made him angry. Part of it was chagrin that he’d left himself open to the blow; he’d been bested by a lightweight! But another part of it was an instinctive, purely male anger, sexually based. He’d watch her knee now whenever she was within striking distance. Still, the fact that she’d defended herself, and the moves she’d made, told him that she’d had professional training, and that was another contradiction. She wasn’t an expert, but she knew what to do. Why would a wild, spoiled playgirl know anything about self-defense? Some of the pieces didn’t fit, and Grant was always uneasy when he sensed details that didn’t jibe.

He felt pretty grim about the entire operation. Their situation right now was little short of desperate, regardless of the fact that they were, for the moment, rather secure. They had probably managed to shake the soldiers, whoever they worked for, but Turego was a different story. The microfilm wasn’t the only issue now. Turego had been operating without the sanction of the government, and if Jane made it back and filed a complaint against him, the repercussions would cost him his position, and possibly his freedom.

It was Grant’s responsibility to get her out, but it was no longer the simple in-and-out situation he’d planned. From the moment he’d seen Pablo leaning so negligently against the helicopter, waiting for them, he’d known that the deal had gone sour. Pablo wasn’t the type to be waiting for them so casually; in all the time Grant had know him, Pablo had been tense, ready to move, always staying in the helicopter with the rotors turning. The elaborate pose of relaxation had tipped Grant off as clearly as if Pablo had hung a sign around his neck. Perhaps Pablo had been trying to warn him. There was no way he’d ever know for certain.

Now he had to get her through the jungle, out of the mountains, and south through a swamp, with Turego in hot pursuit. With luck, in a day or so, they’d find a village and be able to hitch a ride, but even that depended on how close behind Turego was.

And on top of that, he couldn’t trust her. She’d disarmed that soldier far too casually, and hadn’t turned a hair at anything that had happened. She was far too matter-of-fact about the whole situation. She wasn’t what she seemed, and that made her dangerous.

He was wary of her, but at the same time he found that he was unable to stop watching her. She was too damned sexy, as lush and exotic as a jungle orchid. What would it be like to lie with her? Did she use the rich curves of her body to make a man forget who he was? How many men had been taken in by that fresh, open expression? Had Turego found himself off balance with her, wanting her, knowing that he could force her at any time—but being eaten alive by the challenge of trying to win her, of making her give herself freely? How else had she managed to control him? None of it added up to what she should have been, unless she played with men as some sort of ego trip, where the more dangerous the man, the greater the thrill at controlling him.

Grant didn’t want her to have that much influence over him; she wasn’t worth it. No matter how beguiling the expression in her dark, slanted eyes, she simply wasn’t worth it. He didn’t need the sort of complication she offered; he just wanted to get her out, collect his money from her father, and get back to the solitude of the farm. Already he’d felt the jungle pulling at him, the heated, almost sexual excitement of danger. The rifle felt like an extension of his body, and the knife fit his palm as if he’d never put it down. All the old moves, the old instincts, were still there, and blackness rose in him as he wondered bitterly if he’d ever really be able to put this life behind him. The blood lust had been there in him, and perhaps he’d have killed that soldier if she hadn’t kicked the rifle up when she had.

Was it part of the intoxication of battle that made him want to pull her beneath him and drive himself into her body, until he was mindless with intolerable pleasure? Part of it was, and yet part of it had been born hours ago, on the floor of her bedroom, when he’d felt the soft, velvety roundness of her breasts in his hands. Remembering that, he wanted to know what her breasts looked like, if they thrust out conically or had a full lower slope, if her nipples were small or large, pink or brown. Desire made him harden, and he reminded himself caustically that it had been a while since he’d had a woman, so it was only natural that he would be turned on. If nothing else, he should be glad of the evidence that he could still function!

She yawned, and blinked her dark eyes at him like a sleepy cat. “I’m going to take a nap,” she announced, and curled up on the ground. She rested her head on her arm, closed her eyes and yawned again. He watched her, his eyes narrowed. This utter adaptability she displayed was another piece of the puzzle that didn’t fit. She should have been moaning and bitching about how uncomfortable she was, rather than calmly curling up on the ground for a nap. But a nap sounded pretty damned good right now, he thought.

Grant looked around. The rain had become a full-fledged downpour, pounding through the canopy and turning the jungle floor into a river. The constant, torrential rains leeched the nutrients out of the soil, making the jungle into a contradiction, where the world’s greatest variety of animal and plant life existed on some of the poorest soil. Right now the rain also made it almost impossible for them to be found. They were safe for the time being, and for the first time he allowed himself to feel the weariness in his muscles. He might as well take a nap, too; he’d wake when the rain stopped, alerted by the total cessation of noise.

Reaching out, he shook her shoulder, and she roused to stare at him sleepily. “Get against the back of the lean-to,” he ordered. “Give me a little room to stretch out, too.”

She crawled around as he’d instructed and stretched out full length, sighing in ecstasy. He pushed their backpacks to one side, then lay down beside her, his big body between her and the rain. He lay on his back, one brawny arm thrown behind his head. There was no twitching around, no yawning or sighing, for him. He simply lay down, closed his eyes and went to sleep. Jane watched him sleepily, her gaze lingering on the hawklike line of his profile, noting the scar that ran along his left cheekbone. How had he gotten it? His jaw was blurred with several days’ growth of beard, and she noticed that his beard was much darker than his hair. His eyebrows and lashes were dark, too, and that made his amber eyes seem even brighter, almost as yellow as an eagle’s.

The rain made her feel a little chilled after the intense heat of the day; instinctively she inched closer to the heat she could feel emanating from his body. He was so warm...and she felt so safe...safer than she’d felt since she was nine years old. With one more little sigh, she slept.

Sometime later the rain ceased abruptly, and Grant woke immediately, like a light switch being flipped on. His senses were instantly alert, wary. He started to surge to his feet, only to realize that she was lying curled against his side, with her head pillowed on his arm and her hand lying on his chest. Disbelief made him rigid. How could she have gotten that close to him without waking him? He’d always slept like a cat, alert to the smallest noise or movement—but this damned woman had practically crawled all over him and he hadn’t even stirred. She must’ve been disappointed, he thought furiously. The fury was directed as much at himself as at her, because the incident told him how slack he had become in the past year. That slackness might cost them their lives.

He lay still, aware of the fullness of her breasts against his side. She was soft and lush, and one of her legs was thrown up over his thigh. All he had to do was roll over and he’d be between her legs. The mental image made moisture break out on his forehead. God! She’d be hot and tight, and he clenched his teeth at the heavy surge in his loins. She was no lady, but she was all woman, and he wanted her naked and writhing beneath him with an intensity that tied his guts into knots.

He had to move, or he’d be taking her right there on the rocky ground. Disgusted at himself for letting her get to him the way she had, he eased his arm from beneath her head, then shook her shoulder. “Let’s get moving,” he said curtly.

She muttered something, her forehead puckering, but she didn’t open her eyes, and in a moment her forehead smoothed as she lapsed back into deep sleep. Impatiently, Grant shook her again. “Hey, wake up.”

She rolled over on her stomach and sighed deeply, burrowing her head against her folded arm as she sought a more comfortable position. “Come on, we’ve got to get going,” he said, shaking her more vigorously. “Wake up!”

She aimed a drowsy swat at him, as if he were a pesky fly, brushing his hand aside. Exasperated, Grant caught her shoulders and pulled her to a sitting position, shaking her once again. “Damn it, would you get up? On your feet, honey; we’ve got some walking to do.” Her eyes finally opened, and she blinked at him groggily, but she made no move to get up.

Swearing under his breath, Grant hauled her to her feet. “Just stand over there, out of the way,” he said, turning her around and starting her on her way with a swat on her bottom before he turned his attention to taking down their shelter.

CHAPTER FOUR

JANE STOPPED, HER hand going to her bottom. Awakened now, and irritated by his light, casual slap, she turned. “You didn’t have to do that!”

“Do what?” he asked with total disinterest, already busy removing the tarp from the top of the lean-to and rolling it up to replace it in his backpack.

“Hit me! A simple ‘wake-up’ would have sufficed!”

Grant looked at her in disbelief. “Well, pardon me all to hell,” he drawled in a sarcastic tone that made her want to strangle him. “Let me start over. Excuse me, Priscilla, but nappy time is over, and we really do have to—hey! Damn it!” He ducked in time, throwing his arm up to catch the force of her fist. Swiftly he twisted his arm to lock his fingers around her wrist, then caught her other arm before she could swing at him with it. She’d exploded into fury, hurling herself at him like a cat pouncing. Her fist had hit his arm with enough strength that she might have broken his nose if the blow had landed on target. “Woman, what in hell is wrong with you?”

“I told you not to call me that!” Jane raged at him, spitting the words out in her fury. She struggled wildly, trying to free her arm so she could hit him again.

Panting, Grant wrestled her to the ground and sat astride her, holding her hands above her head, and this time making damned certain that her knee wouldn’t come anywhere near him. She kept wriggling and heaving, and he felt as if he were trying to hold an octopus, but finally he had her subdued.

Glaring at her, he said, “You told me not to call you Pris.”

“Well, don’t call me Priscilla, either!” she fumed, glaring right back.

“Look, I’m not a mind reader! What am I supposed to call you?”

“Jane!” she shouted at him. “My name is Jane! Nobody has ever called me Priscilla!”

“All right! All you had to do was tell me! I’m getting damned tired of you snapping at my ankles, understand? I may hurt you before I can stop myself, so you’d better think twice before you attack again. Now, if I let you up, are you going to behave?”

Jane still glared at him, but the weight of his knees on her bruised arms was excruciating. “All right,” she said sullenly, and he slowly got up, then surprised her by offering his hand to help her up. She surprised herself by taking it.

A sudden twinkle lit the dark gold of his eyes. “Jane, huh?” he asked reflectively, looking at the surrounding jungle.

She gave him a threatening look. “No ‘Me Tarzan, you Jane’ stuff,” she warned. “I’ve heard it since grade school.” She paused, then said grudgingly, “But it’s still better than Priscilla.”

He grunted in agreement and turned away to finish dismantling their shelter, and after a moment Jane began helping. He glanced at her, but said nothing. He wasn’t much of a talker, she’d noticed, and he didn’t improve any on closer acquaintance. But he’d risked his own life to help her, and he hadn’t left her behind, even though Jane knew he could have moved a lot faster, and with a lot less risk to himself, on his own. And there was something in his eyes, an expression that was weary and cynical and a little empty, as if he’d seen far too much to have any faith or trust left. That made Jane want to put her arms around him and shield him. Lowering her head so he wouldn’t be able to read her expression, she chided herself for feeling protective of a man who was so obviously capable of handling himself. There had been a time in her own life when she had been afraid to trust anyone except her parents, and it had been a horrible, lonely time. She knew what fear was, and loneliness, and she ached for him.

All signs of their shelter obliterated, he swung his backpack up and buckled it on, then slung the rifle over his shoulder while Jane stuffed her hair up under her cap. He leaned down to pick up her pack for her, and a look of astonishment crossed his face; then his dark brows snapped together. “What the—” he muttered. “What all do you have in this damned thing? It weighs a good twenty pounds more than my pack!”

“Whatever I thought I’d need,” Jane replied, taking the pack from him and hooking her arm through the one good shoulder strap, then buckling the waist strap to secure it as well as she could.

“Like what?”

“Things,” she said stubbornly. Maybe her provisions weren’t exactly proper by military standards, but she’d take her peanut butter sandwiches over his canned whatever anytime. She thought he would order her to dump the pack on the ground for him to sort through and decide what to keep, and she was determined not to allow it. She set her jaw and looked at him.

He put his hands on his hips and surveyed her funny, exotic face, her lower lip pouting out in a mutinous expression, her delicate jaw set. She looked ready to light into him again, and he sighed in resignation. Damned if she wasn’t the stubbornest, scrappiest woman he’d ever met. “Take it off,” he growled, unbuckling his own pack. “I’ll carry yours, and you can carry mine.”

If anything, the jaw went higher. “I’m doing okay with my own.”

“Stop wasting time arguing. That extra weight will slow you down, and you’re already tired. Hand it over, and I’ll fix that strap before we start out.”

Reluctantly she slipped the straps off and gave him the pack, ready to jump him if he showed any sign of dumping it. But he took a small folder from his own pack, opened it to extract a needle and thread, and deftly began to sew the two ends of the broken strap together.

Astounded, Jane watched his lean, calloused hands wielding the small needle with a dexterity that she had to envy. Reattaching a button was the limit of her sewing skill, and she usually managed to prick her finger doing that. “Do they teach sewing in the military now?” she asked, crowding in to get a better look.

He gave her another one of his glances of dismissal. “I’m not in the military.”

“Maybe not now,” she conceded. “But you were, weren’t you?”

“A long time ago.”

“Where did you learn how to sew?”

“I just picked it up. It comes in handy.” He bit the thread off, then replaced the needle in its package. “Let’s get moving; we’ve wasted too much time as it is.”

Jane took his backpack and fell into step behind him; all she had to do was follow him. Her gaze drifted over the width of his shoulders, then eased downward. Had she ever known anyone as physically strong as this man? She didn’t think so. He seemed to be immune to weariness, and he ignored the steamy humidity that drained her strength and drenched her clothes in perspiration. His long, powerful legs moved in an effortless stride, the flexing of his thigh muscles pulling the fabric of his pants tight across them. Jane found herself watching his legs and matching her own stride to his. He took a step, and she took a step automatically. It was easier that way; she could separate her mind from her body, and in doing so ignore her protesting muscles.

He stopped once and took a long drink from the canteen, then passed it to Jane without comment. Also without comment, and without wiping the mouth of the canteen, she tipped it up and drank thirstily. Why worry about drinking after him? Catching cold was the least of her concerns. After capping the canteen, she handed it back to him, and they began walking again.

There was madness to his method, or so it seemed to her. If there was a choice between two paths, he invariably chose the more difficult one. The route he took was through the roughest terrain, the thickest vegetation, up the highest, most rugged slope. Jane tore her pants sliding down a bluff, that looked like pure suicide from the top, and not much better than that from the bottom, but she followed without complaining. It wasn’t that she didn’t think of plenty of complaints, but that she was too tired to voice them. The benefits of her short nap had long since been dissipated. Her legs ached, her back ached, her bruised arms were so painful she could barely move them, and her eyes felt as if they were burning out of their sockets. But she didn’t ask him to stop. Even if the pace killed her, she wasn’t going to slow him down any more than she already had, because she had no doubt that he could travel much faster without her. The easy movements of his long legs told her that his stamina was far greater than hers; he could probably walk all night long again without a noticeable slowing of his stride. She felt a quiet awe of that sort of strength and conditioning, something that had been completely outside her experience before she’d met him. He wasn’t like other men; it was evident in his superb body, in the awesome competence with which he handled everything, in the piercing gold of his eyes.

As if alerted by her thoughts, he stopped and looked back at her, assessing her condition with that sharp gaze that missed nothing. “Can you make it for another mile or so?”

On her own, she couldn’t have, but when she met his eyes she knew there was no way she’d admit to that. Her chin lifted, and she ignored the increasingly heavy ache in her legs as she said, “Yes.”

A flicker of expression crossed his face so swiftly that she couldn’t read it. “Let me have that pack,” he growled, coming back to her and jerking the straps free of the buckles, then slipping the pack from her shoulders.

“I’m handling it okay,” she protested fiercely, grabbing for the pack and wrapping both arms around it. “I haven’t complained, have I?”

His level dark brows drawing together in a frown, he forcefully removed the pack from her grasp. “Use your head,” he snapped. “If you collapse from exhaustion, then I’ll have to carry you, too.”

The logic of that silenced her. Without another word he turned and started walking again. She was better able to keep up with him without the weight of the pack, but she felt frustrated with herself for not being in better shape, for being a burden to him. Jane had fought fiercely for her independence, knowing that her very life depended on it. She’d never been one to sit and wait for someone else to do things for her. She’d charged at life head-on, relishing the challenges that came her way because they reaffirmed her acute sense of the wonder of life. She’d shared the joys, but handled the problems on her own, and it unsettled her now to have to rely on someone else.

They came to another stream, no wider than the first one they had crossed, but deeper. It might rise to her knees in places. The water rushing over the rocks sounded cool, and she thought of how heavenly it would be to refresh her sweaty body in the stream. Looking longingly at it, she stumbled over a root and reached out to catch her balance. Her palm came down hard against a tree trunk, and something squished beneath her fingers.

“Oh, yuck!” she moaned, trying to wipe the dead insect off with a leaf.

Grant stopped. “What is it?”

“I smashed a bug with my hand.” The leaf didn’t clean too well; a smear still stained her hand, and she looked at Grant with disgust showing plainly on her face. “Is it all right if I wash my hand in the stream?”

He looked around, his amber eyes examining both sides of the stream. “Okay. Come over here.”

“I can get down here,” she said. The bank was only a few feet high, and the underbrush wasn’t that thick. She carefully picked her way over the roots of an enormous tree, bracing her hand against its trunk to steady herself as she started to descend to the stream.

“Watch out!” Grant said sharply, and Jane froze in her tracks, turning her head to look askance at him.

Suddenly something incredibly heavy dropped onto her shoulders, something long and thick and alive, and she gave a stifled scream as it began to coil around her body. She was more startled than frightened, thinking a big vine had fallen; then she saw the movement of a large triangular head and she gave another gasping cry. “Grant! Grant, help me!”

Terror clutched at her throat, choking her, and she began to claw at the snake, trying to get it off. It was a calm monster, working its body around her, slowly tightening the lethal muscles that would crush her bones. It twined around her legs and she fell, rolling on the ground. Dimly she could hear Grant cursing, and she could hear her own cries of terror, but they sounded curiously distant. Everything was tumbling in a mad kaleidoscope of brown earth and green trees, of Grant’s taut, furious face. He was shouting something at her, but she couldn’t understand him; all she could do was struggle against the living bonds that coiled around her. She had one shoulder and arm free, but the boa was tightening itself around her rib cage, and the big head was coming toward her face, its mouth open. Jane screamed, trying to catch its head with her free hand, but the snake was crushing the breath out of her and the scream was almost soundless. A big hand, not hers, caught the snake’s head, and she dimly saw a flash of silver.

The snake’s coils loosened about her as it turned to meet this new prey, seeking to draw Grant into its deadly embrace, too. She saw the flash of silver again, and something wet splashed into her face. Vaguely she realized that it was his knife she’d seen. He was swearing viciously as he wrestled with the snake, mostly astride her as she writhed on the ground, struggling to free herself. “Damn it, hold still!” he roared. “You’ll make me cut you!”

It was impossible to be still; she was wrapped in the snake, and it was writhing with her in its coils. She was too crazed by fear to realize that the snake was in its death throes, not even when she saw Grant throw something aside and begin forcibly removing the thick coils from around her body. It wasn’t until she actually felt herself coming free of the constrictor’s horrible grasp that she understood it was over, that Grant had killed the snake. She stopped fighting and lay limply on the ground. Her face was utterly white except for the few freckles across her nose and cheekbones; her eyes were fixed on Grant’s face.

“It’s over,” he said roughly, running his hands over her arms and rib cage. “How do you feel? Anything broken?”

Jane couldn’t say anything; her throat was frozen, her voice totally gone. All she could do was lie there and stare at him with the remnants of terror in her dark eyes. Her lips trembled like a child’s, and there was something pleading in her gaze. He automatically started to gather her into his arms, the way one would a frightened child, but before he could do more than lift his hand, she dragged her gaze away from his with a visible effort. He could see what it cost her in willpower, but somehow she found the inner strength to still the trembling of her lips, and then her chin lifted in that characteristic gesture.

“I’m all right,” she managed to say. Her voice was jerky, but she said the words, and in saying them, believed it. She slowly sat up and pushed her hair away from her face. “I feel a little bruised, but there’s nothing bro—”

She stopped abruptly, staring at her bloody hand and arm. “I’m all bloody,” she said in a bewildered tone, and her voice shook. She looked back at Grant, as if for confirmation. “I’m all bloody,” she said again, extending her wildly trembling hand for him to see. “Grant, there’s blood all over me!”

“It’s the snake’s blood,” he said, thinking to reassure her, but she stared at him with uncontrolled revulsion.

“Oh, God!” she said in a thin, high voice, scrambling to her feet and staring down at herself. Her black blouse was wet and sticky, and big reddish splotches stained her khaki pants. Both her arms had blood smeared down them. Bile rose in her throat as she remembered the wetness that had splashed her face. She raised exploring fingers and found the horrible stickiness on her cheeks, as well as smeared in her hair.

She began to shake even harder, and tears dripped down her cheeks. “Get it off,” she said, still in that high, wavering voice of utter hysteria. “I have to get it off. There’s blood all over me, and it isn’t mine. It’s all over me; it’s even in my hair... It’s in my hair!” she sobbed, plunging for the stream.

Cursing, Grant grabbed for her, but in her mad urgency to wash the blood away she jerked free of him, stumbling over the body of the snake and crashing to the ground. Before she could scramble away again, Grant pounced on her, holding her in an almost painful grip while she fought and sobbed, pleading and swearing at him all at once.

“Jane, stop it!” he said sharply. “I’ll get the blood off you. Just hold still and let me get our boots off, okay?”

He had to hold her still with one arm and pull her boots off with his free hand, but by the time he started to remove his own boots she was crying so hard that she lay limply on the ground. His face was grim as he looked at her. She’d stood up to so much without turning a hair that he hadn’t expected her to fall apart like this. She’d been pulling herself together until she’d seen the blood on herself, and that had evidently been more than she could bear. He jerked his boots off, then turned to her and roughly undid her pants and pulled them off. Lifting her into his arms as easily as he would have lifted a child, he climbed down the bank and waded out into the stream, disregarding the fact that his own pants were being soaked.

When the water reached the middle of his calves, he stood her in the stream and bent to begin splashing water on her legs, rubbing the blood stains from her flesh. Next, cupping water in his palms, he washed her arms and hands clean, dripping the cooling water over her and soaking her blouse. All the while he tended to her, she stood docile, with silent tears still running down her face and making tracks in the blood smeared across her cheeks.

“Everything’s all right, honey,” he crooned soothingly to her, coaxing her to sit down in the stream so he could wash the blood from her hair. She let him splash water on her head and face, blinking her eyes to protect them from the stinging water, but otherwise keeping her gaze fixed on his hard, intent features. He took a handkerchief from his back pocket and wet it, then gently cleaned her face. She was calmer now, no longer crying in that silent, gut-wrenching way, and he helped her to her feet.

“There, you’re all cleaned up,” he started to say, then noticed the pink rivulets of water running down her legs. Her blouse was so bloody that he’d have to take it off to get her clean. Without hesitation, he began to unbutton it. “Let’s get this off so we can wash it,” he said, keeping his voice calm and soothing. She didn’t even glance down as he unbuttoned her blouse and pulled it off her shoulders, then tossed it to the bank. She kept her eyes on his face, as if he were her lifeline to sanity and to look away meant a return to madness.

Grant looked down, and his mouth went dry as he stared at her naked breasts. He’d wondered how she looked and now he knew, and it was like being punched in the stomach. Her breasts were round and a little heavier than he’d expected, tipped by small brown nipples, and he wanted to bend down and put his mouth to them, taste them. She might as well have been naked; all she had on was a pair of gossamer panties that had turned transparent in the water. He could see the dark curls of hair beneath the wisp of fabric, and he felt his loins tighten and swell. She was beautifully made, long-legged and slim-hipped, with the sleek muscles of a dancer. Her shoulders were straight, her arms slim but strong, her breasts rich; he wanted to spread her legs and take her right there, driving deeply into her body until he went out of his mind with pleasure. He couldn’t remember ever wanting a woman so badly. He’d wanted sex, but that had been simply a physical pleasure, and any willing female body had been acceptable. Now he wanted Jane, the essence of her; it was her legs he wanted wrapped around him, her breasts in his hands, her mouth under his, her body sheathing him.

He jerked his gaze away from her, bending to dip the handkerchief in the water again. That was even worse; his eyes were level with the top of her thighs, and he straightened abruptly. He washed her breasts with a gentle touch, but every moment of it was torture to him, feeling her silky flesh under his fingers, watching her nipples tighten into reddened little nubs as he touched them.

“You’re clean,” he said hoarsely, tossing the handkerchief to the bank to join her blouse.

“Thank you,” she whispered, then fresh tears glittered in her eyes, and with a little whimper she flung herself against him. Her arms went around him and clung to his back. She buried her face against his chest, feeling reassured by the steady beat of his heart and the warmth of his body. His very presence drove the fear away; with him, she was safe. She wanted to rest in his arms and forget everything.

His hands moved slowly over her bare back, his calloused palms stroking her skin as if he relished the texture of it. Her eyes slid shut, and she nestled closer to him, inhaling the distinctly male scent of his strong body. She felt oddly drunk, disoriented; she wanted to cling to him as the only steady presence in the world. Her body was awash in strange sensations, from the rushing water swirling about her feet to the faint breeze that fanned her wet, naked skin, while he was so hard and warm. An unfamiliar heat swept along her flesh in the path of his hands as they moved from her back to her shoulders. Then one hand stroked up her throat to cup her jaw, his thumb under her chin and his fingers in her hair, and he turned her face up to him.

Taking his time about it, he bent and fitted his mouth to hers, slanting his head to make the contact deep and firm. His tongue moved leisurely into her mouth, touching hers and demanding a response, and Jane found herself helplessly giving him what he wanted. She’d never been kissed like that before, with such complete confidence and expertise, as if she were his for the taking, as if they had reverted to more primitive times when the dominant male had his pick of the women. Vaguely alarmed, she made a small effort to free herself from his grasp. He subdued her with gentle force and kissed her again, holding her head still for the pressure of his mouth. Once again Jane found herself opening her mouth for him, forgetting why she’d struggled to begin with. Since her divorce a lot of men had kissed her and tried to make her respond. They’d left her cold. Why should this rough...mercenary, or whatever he was, make shivers of pleasure chase over her body, when some of the most sophisticated men in the world had only bored her with their passion? His lips were warm and hard, the taste of his mouth heady, his tongue bold in its exploration, and his kisses caused an unfamiliar ache to tighten within her body.

A mindless little whimper of delight escaped her throat, the soft female sound making his arms tighten around her. Her hands slid up to his shoulders, then locked around his neck, hanging on to him for support. She couldn’t get close enough to him, though he was crushing her against him. The buttons of his shirt dug into her bare breasts, but she wasn’t aware of any pain. His mouth was wild, hungry with a basic need that had flared out of control, bruising her lips with the force of his kisses, and she didn’t care. Instead she gloried in it, clinging to him. Her body was suddenly alive with sensations and needs that she didn’t recognize, never having felt them before. Her skin actually ached for his touch, yet every stroke of his hard fingers made the ache intensify.

Boldly cupping her breast in his palm, he rubbed the rough pad of his thumb across her tightly puckered nipple, and Jane almost cried aloud at the surge of heat that washed through her. It had never been like this for her before; the urgency of the pure, brazen sensuality of her own body took her by surprise. She’d long ago decided that she simply wasn’t a very physical person, then forgotten about it. Sex hadn’t been something that interested her very much. The way Grant was making her feel completely shattered her concept of herself. She was a female animal in his arms, grinding against him, feeling and glorying in the swollen response of his body, and hurting with the emptiness deep inside her.

Time disappeared as they stood in the water, the late afternoon sun dappling them with the shifting patterns of light created by the sheltering trees. His hands freely roamed her body. She never even thought of resisting him. It was as if he had every right to her flesh, as if she were his to touch and taste. He bent her back over his arm, making her breasts jut enticingly, and his lips traveled hotly down her throat to the warm, quivering mounds. He took her nipple into his mouth and sucked strongly, and she surged against him like a wild creature, on fire and dying and wanting more.

His hand swept downward, his fingers curving between her legs to caress her through the silk of her panties. The boldness of his touch shocked her out of her sensual frenzy; automatically she stiffened in his grasp and brought her arms down from around his neck to wedge them between their bodies and push against him. A low, gutteral sound rattled in his throat, and for a brief, terrified moment she thought there wouldn’t be any stopping him. Then, with a curse, he thrust her away from him.

Jane staggered a little, and his hand shot out to catch her, hauling her back to face him. “Damn you, is this how you get your kicks?” he asked, infuriated. “Do you like seeing how far you can push a man?”

Her chin came up, and she swallowed. “No, that’s not it at all. I’m sorry. I know I shouldn’t have thrown myself at you like that—”

“Damned right, you shouldn’t,” he interrupted savagely. He looked savage; his eyes were narrowed and bright with rage, his nostrils flared, and his mouth a thin, grim line. “Next time, you’d better make sure you want what you’re asking for, because I’m damned sure going to give it to you. Is that clear?”

He turned and began wading to the bank, leaving her standing in the middle of the stream. Jane crossed her arms over her bare breasts, suddenly and acutely aware of her nakedness. She hadn’t meant to tease him, but she’d been so frightened, and he’d been so strong and calm that it had seemed the most natural thing in the world to cling to him. Those frenzied kisses and caresses had taken her by surprise, shaken her off balance. Still, she wasn’t about to have sex with a man she barely knew, especially when she didn’t quite know if she liked what little she did know about him.

He reached the bank and turned to look at her. “Are you coming or not?” he snapped, so Jane waded toward him, still keeping her arms over her breasts.

“Don’t bother,” he advised in a curt voice. “I’ve already seen, and touched. Why pretend to be modest?” He gestured to her blouse lying on the ground. “You might want to wash the blood out of that, since you’re so squeamish about it.”

Jane looked at the blood-stained blouse, and she went a little pale again, but she was under control now. “Yes, I will,” she said in a low voice. “Will you...will you get my pants and boots for me, please?”

He snorted, but climbed up the bank and tossed her pants and boots down to her. Keeping her back turned to him, Jane pulled on her pants, shuddering at the blood that stained them, too, but at least they weren’t soaked the way her blouse was. Her panties were wet, but there wasn’t anything she could do about that now, so she ignored the clammy discomfort. When she was partially clad again, she squatted on the gravel at the edge of the stream and began trying to wash her blouse. Red clouds drifted out of the fabric, staining the water before being swept downstream. She scrubbed and scrubbed before she was satisfied, then wrung out as much water as possible and shook the blouse. As she started to put the blouse on, he said irritably, “Here,” and held his shirt in front of her. “Wear this until yours gets dry.”

She wanted to refuse, but she knew false pride wouldn’t gain her anything. She accepted the shirt silently and put it on. It was far too big, but it was dry and warm and not too dirty, and it smelled of sweat, and the musky odor of his skin. The scent was vaguely comforting. There were rust-colored stains on it, too, reminding her that he’d saved her life. She tied the tails in a knot at her waist and sat down on the gravel to put on her boots.

When she turned, she found him standing right behind her, his face still grim and angry. He helped her up the bank, then lifted their packs to his shoulders. “We’re not going much farther. Follow me, and for God’s sake don’t touch anything that I don’t touch, or step anywhere except in my footprints. If another boa wants you, I just may let him have you, so don’t push your luck.”

Jane pushed her wet hair behind her ears and followed obediently, walking where he walked. For a while, she stared nervously at every tree limb they passed under, then made herself stop thinking about the snake. It was over; there was no use dwelling on it.

Instead she stared at his broad back, wondering how her father had found a man like Grant Sullivan. They obviously lived in two different worlds, so how had they met?

Then something clicked in her mind, and a chill went down her spine. Had they met? She couldn’t imagine her father knowing anyone like Sullivan. She also knew what her own position was. Everyone wanted to get their hands on her, and she had no way of knowing whose side Grant Sullivan was on. He’d called her Priscilla, which was her first name. If her father had sent him, wouldn’t he have known that she was never called Priscilla, that she’d been called Jane from birth? He hadn’t known her name!

Before he died, George had warned her not to trust anyone. She didn’t want to think that she was alone in the middle of the jungle with a man who would casually cut her throat when he had no further use for her. Still, the fact remained that she had no proof that her father had sent him. He’d simply knocked her out, put her over his shoulder and hauled her off into the jungle.

Then she realized that she had to trust this man; she had no alternative. He was all she had. It was dangerous, trusting him, but not as dangerous as trying to make it out of the jungle on her own. He had shown flashes of kindness. She felt a funny constriction in her chest as she remembered the way he’d cared for her after he’d killed the snake. Not just cared for her, kissed her—she was still shaken by the way he’d kissed her. Mercenary or not, enemy or not, he made her want him. Her mind wasn’t certain about him, but her body was.

She would have found it funny, if she hadn’t been so frightened.

CHAPTER FIVE

THEY MOVED DIRECTLY away from the stream at a forty-five-degree angle, and it wasn’t long before he stopped, looked around and unslung the packs from his shoulders. “We’ll camp here.”

Jane stood in silence, feeling awkward and useless, watching as he opened his pack and took out a small, rolled bundle. Under his skilled hands, the bundle was rapidly transformed into a small tent, complete with a polyethylene floor and a flap that could be zipped shut. When the tent was up he began stripping vines and limbs from the nearby trees to cover it, making it virtually invisible. He hadn’t so much as glanced in her direction, but after a moment she moved to help him. He did look at her then, and allowed her to gather more limbs while he positioned them over the tent.

When the job was completed, he said, “We can’t risk a fire, so we’ll just eat and turn in. After today, I’m ready for some sleep.”

Jane was, too, but she dreaded the thought of the night to come. The light was rapidly fading, and she knew that it would soon be completely dark. She remembered the total blackness of the night before and felt a cold finger of fear trace up her backbone. Well, there was nothing she could do about it; she’d have to tough it out.

She crouched beside her pack and dug out two more cans of orange juice, tossing one to him; he caught it deftly, and eyed her pack with growing irritation. “How many more cans of this do you have in that traveling supermarket?” he asked sarcastically.

“That’s it. We’ll have to drink water from now on. How about a granola bar?” She handed it to him, refusing to let herself respond to the irritation in his voice. She was tired, she ached, and she was faced with a long night in total darkness. Given that, his irritation didn’t seem very important. He’d get over it.

She ate her own granola bar, but was still hungry, so she rummaged for something else to eat. “Want some cheese and crackers?” she offered, dragging the items out of the depths of the pack.

She looked up to find him watching her with an expression of raw disbelief on his face. He held out his hand, and she divided the cheese and crackers between them. He looked at her again, shook his head and silently ate his share.

Jane saved a little of her orange juice, and when she finished eating she took a small bottle from the pack. Opening it, she shook a pill into the palm of her hand, glanced at Grant, then shook out another one. “Here,” she said.

He looked at it, but made no move to take it. “What the hell’s that?”

“It’s a yeast pill.”

“Why should I want to take a yeast pill?”

“So the mosquitoes and things won’t bite you.”

“Sure they won’t.”

“They won’t! Look at me. I don’t have any insect bites, and it’s because I take yeast pills. It does something to your skin chemistry. Come on, take it. It won’t hurt you.”

He took the pill from her hand and held it with a pained expression on his face while she took her own, washing it down with a sip of the orange juice she’d saved. She passed the can to him, and he muttered something obscene before he tossed the pill into his mouth and slugged down the rest of the juice.

“Okay, bedtime,” he said, rising to his feet. He jerked his head toward a tree. “There’s your bathroom, if you want to go before we turn in.”

Jane stepped behind the tree. He was crude, he was rude, he was a little cruel—and he had saved her life. She didn’t know what to expect from him. No matter how rough he was, he would eventually disarm her with an unexpected act of kindness. On the other hand, when things were going smoothly between them, he would say things that stung, as if deliberately trying to start a quarrel.

He was waiting for her by the opening of the tent. “I’ve already put the blanket down. Crawl in.”

She knelt down and crawled into the small tent. He had spread the blanket over the floor, and she sat on it. He shoved their packs inside. “Put these out of the way,” he instructed. “I’m going to take a quick look around.”

She shoved the packs into the far corners of the tent, then lay down on her back and stared tensely at the thin walls. The light was almost gone; only a glimmer entered through the translucent fabric. It wasn’t quite as dark outside yet, but the limbs he’d used as camouflage made it darker inside. The flap parted, and he crawled in, then zipped the opening shut.

“Take your boots off and put them in the corner next to your feet.”

Sitting up, she did as he said, then lay down again. Her eyes strained open so widely that they burned. Her body stiff with dread, she listened to him stretch and yawn and make himself comfortable.

Moments later the silence became nearly as unbearable as the darkness. “A collapsible tent comes in handy, doesn’t it?” she blurted nervously. “What is it made out of?”

“Nylon,” he replied, yawning again. “It’s nearly indestructible.”

“How much does it weigh?”

“Three pounds and eight ounces.”

“Is it waterproof?”

“Yes, it’s waterproof.”

“And bug proof?”

“Bug proof, too,” he muttered.

“Do you think a jaguar could—”

“Look, it’s jaguar proof, mildew proof, fireproof and snake proof. I personally guarantee you that it’s proof against everything except elephants, and I don’t think we’re going to be stomped on by an elephant in Costa Rica! Is there any other damned thing you’re worried about?” he exploded. “If not, why don’t you be quiet and let me get some sleep?”

Jane lay tensely, and silence fell again. She clenched her fists in an effort to control her nervousness, listening to the growing cacophony of the jungle night. Monkeys howled and chattered; insects squeaked their calls; underbrush rustled. She was exhausted but she had no real hope of sleeping, at least not until dawn, and at dawn this devil beside her would want to start another day of marathon travel.

He was totally silent in that unnerving way of his. She couldn’t even hear him breathe. The old fear began to rise in her chest, making her own breathing difficult. She might as well be alone, and that was the one thing she absolutely couldn’t bear.

“Where are you from?”

He heaved a sigh. “Georgia.”

That explained his drawl. She swallowed, trying to ease the constriction of her dry throat. If she could just keep him talking, then she wouldn’t feel so alone. She’d know he was there.

“What part of Georgia?”

“South. Ever hear of the Okefenokee?”

“Yes. It’s a swamp.”

“I grew up in it. My folks own a farm just on the edge of it.” It had been a normal boyhood, except for the skills he’d learned automatically in the swamp, those skills, which had eventually changed his life by shaping him into something not quite human. He willed the memories away, pulling a mental shade down over them, isolating himself. There was no use in thinking about what had been.

“Are you an only child?”

“Why all the questions?” he snapped, edgy at revealing any information about himself.

“I’m just interested, that’s all.”

He paused, suddenly alert. There was something in her voice, a tone that he couldn’t quite place. It was dark, so he couldn’t see her face; he had to go entirely by what his ears told him. If he kept her talking, he might be able to figure it out.

“I’ve got a sister,” he finally said reluctantly.

“I’ll bet she’s younger. You’re so bossy, you must be an older brother.”

He let the dig pass and said only, “She’s four years younger.”

“I’m an only child,” she volunteered.

“I know.”

She searched frantically for something else to say, but the darkness was making her panic. She felt herself move to grab for him, then remembered what he’d said about startling him, and about not making offers she didn’t mean. She ground her teeth together and stilled her reaching hands, the effort so intense that tears actually welled in her eyes. She blinked them away. “Grant,” she said in a shaking voice.

“What?” he growled.

“I don’t want you to think I’m throwing myself at you again because I’m really not, but would you mind very much if I...just held your hand?” she whispered. “I’m sorry, but I’m afraid of the dark, and it helps if I know I’m not alone.”

He was still for a moment; then she heard his clothing rustle as he rolled onto his side. “You’re really that afraid of the dark?”

Jane tried for a laugh, but the sound was so shaky that it was close to a sob. “The word terrified only begins to describe how afraid I am. I can’t sleep in the dark. All the time I was at that wretched plantation I was awake all night long, never sleeping until dawn. But at least I could use that time to watch the guards and figure out their routine. Besides, it wasn’t as totally dark there as it is here.”

“If you’re so all-fired scared of the dark, why were you getting ready to hit the jungle on your own?”

A dark, handsome, incredibly cruel face swam before her mind’s eye. “Because even dying in the jungle would be better than Turego,” she said quietly.

Grant grunted. He could understand that choice, but the fact that she had so correctly summed up the situation illustrated once again that she was more than what she seemed. Then again, perhaps she already had reason to know just how vile Turego could be. Had Turego raped her, or would it have been rape? With this woman, who knew? “Did you have sex with him?”

The blunt question made her shudder. “No. I’d been holding him off, but when he left yesterday...it was just yesterday, wasn’t it? It seems like a year ago. Anyway, I knew that, when he came back, I wouldn’t be able to stop him any longer. My time had run out.”

“What makes you so certain of that?”

Jane paused, wondering just how much to tell him, wondering how much he already knew. If he was involved, he would be familiar with Luis’s name; if he wasn’t, the name would mean nothing to him. She wanted to tell him; she didn’t want to be alone in this nightmare any longer. But she remembered George telling her once that secrecy was synonymous with security, and she quelled the need to turn into Grant’s arms and tell him how afraid and alone she had been. If he wasn’t involved already, he was safer not knowing anything about it. On the other hand, if he was involved, she might be safer if he didn’t realize how deeply she was a part of things. Finally, to answer his question, she said, “I wasn’t certain. I was just afraid to stay, afraid of Turego.”

He grunted, and that seemed to be the end of the conversation. Jane clenched her jaw against the sudden chattering of her teeth. It was hot and steamy inside the dark tent, but chills were running up and down her body. Why didn’t he say something else, anything, rather than lying there so quietly? She might as well have been alone. It was unnatural for anyone to be that soundless, that utterly controlled.

“How was Dad?”

“Why?”

“I just wondered.” Was he being deliberately evasive? Why didn’t he want to talk about her father? Perhaps he hadn’t been hired by her father at all and didn’t want to be drawn into a conversation about someone he was supposed to have met, but hadn’t.

After a measured silence, as if he had carefully considered his answer, he said, “He was worried sick about you. Surprised?”

“No, of course not,” she said, startled. “I’d be surprised if he weren’t.”

“It doesn’t surprise you that he’d pay a small fortune to get you out of Turego’s hands, even though you don’t get along with him?”

He was confusing her; she felt left out of the conversation, as if he were talking about someone else entirely. “What are you talking about? We get along perfectly, always have.”

She couldn’t see him, couldn’t hear him, but suddenly there was something different about him, as if the very air had become electrically charged. A powerful sense of danger made the fine hairs on her body stand up. The danger was coming from him. Without knowing why, she shrank back from him as far as she could in the confines of the small tent, but there was no escape. With the suddenness of a snake striking, he rolled and pinned her down, forcing her hands over her head and holding them shackled there in a grip that hurt her wrists. “All right, Jane, or Priscilla, or whoever you are, we’re going to talk. I’m going to ask the questions and you’re going to answer them, and you’d better have the right answers or you’re in trouble, sugar. Who are you?”

Had he gone mad? Jane struggled briefly against the grip on her wrists, but there was no breaking it. His weight bore down heavily on her, controlling her completely. His muscled legs clasped hers, preventing her from even kicking. “Wh-what...?” she stammered. “Grant, you’re hurting me!”

“Answer me, damn you! Who are you?”

“Jane Greer!” Desperately, she tried to put some humor in her voice, but it wasn’t a very successful effort.

“I don’t like being lied to, sugar.” His voice was velvety soft, and the sound of it chilled her to her marrow. Not even Turego had affected her like this; Turego was a dangerous, vicious man, but the man who held her now was the most lethal person she’d ever seen. He didn’t have to reach for a weapon to kill her; he could kill her with his bare hands. She was totally helpless against him.

“I’m not lying!” she protested desperately. “I’m Priscilla Jane Hamilton Greer.”

“If you were, you’d know that James Hamilton cut you out of his will several years ago. So you get along with him just perfectly, do you?”

“Yes, I do!” She strained against him, and he deliberately let her feel more of his weight, making it difficult for her to breathe. “He did it to protect me!”

For a long, silent moment in which she could hear the roaring of her blood in her ears, she waited for his reaction. His silence scraped along her nerves. Why didn’t he say something? His warm breath was on her cheek, telling her how close he was to her, but she couldn’t see him at all in that suffocating darkness. “That’s a good one,” he finally responded, and she flinched at the icy sarcasm of his tone. “Too bad I don’t buy it. Try again.”

“I’m telling you the truth! He did it to make me a less attractive kidnap target. It was my idea, damn it!”

“Sure it was,” he crooned, and that low, silky sound made her shudder convulsively. “Come on, you can do better than that.”

Jane closed her eyes, searching desperately for some way of convincing him of her identity. None came to mind, and she had no identification with her. Turego had taken her passport, so she didn’t have even that. “Well, what about you?” she blurted in sudden fury. She’d taken a lot from him, endured without complaining, and now he’d frightened her half out of her mind. She’d had her back to the wall before, and had learned to strike back. “Who are you? How do I know that Dad hired you? If he did why didn’t you know that no one ever calls me Priscilla? You were sloppy with your homework!”

“In case you haven’t noticed, honey, I’m the one on top. You answer my questions.”

“I did, and you didn’t believe me,” she snapped. “Sorry, but I don’t have my American Express card with me. For God’s sake, do I look like a terrorist? You nearly broke my arm; then you knocked me out. You’ve bounced me on the ground like a rubber ball, and you’ve got the utter gall to act like I’m dangerous? My goodness, you’d better search me, too, so you’ll be able to sleep tonight. Who knows? I might have a bazooka strapped to my leg, since I’m such a dangerous character!” Her voice had risen furiously, and he cut her off by resting all his weight on her rib cage. When she gasped, he eased up again.

“No, you’re unarmed. I’ve already had your clothes off, remember?” Even in the darkness, Jane blushed at the memory, thinking of the way he’d kissed her and touched her, and how his hands on her body had made her feel. He moved slowly against her, stopping her breath this time with the suggestive intimacy of his movements. His warm breath stirred her hair as he dipped his head closer to her. “But I wouldn’t want to disappoint a lady. If you want to be searched, I’ll oblige you. I wouldn’t mind giving you a body search.”

Fuming, Jane tried again to free her hands, but finally fell back in disgust at the futile action. Raw frustration finally cleared her mind, giving her an idea, and she said harshly, “Did you go in the house when Dad hired you?”

He was still, and she sensed his sudden increase of interest. “Yes.”

“Did you go in the study?”

“Yes.”

“Then a hotshot like you would have noticed the portrait over the mantle. You’re trained to notice things, aren’t you? The portrait is of my grandmother, Dad’s mother. She was painted sitting down, with a single rose on her lap. Now, you tell me what color her gown was,” she challenged.

“Black,” he said slowly. “And the rose was blood-red.”

Thick silence fell between them; then he released her hands and eased his weight from her. “All right,” he said finally. “I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt—”

“Well, gee, thanks!” Huffily she rubbed her wrists, trying to keep her anger alive in the face of the enormous relief that filled her. Evidently her father had hired him, for otherwise how could he have seen the portrait in the study? She wanted to remain mad at him, but she knew she would forgive him because it was still dark. In spite of everything she was terribly glad he was there. Besides, she told herself cautiously, it was definitely better to stay on this man’s good side.

“Don’t thank me,” he said tiredly. “Just be quiet and go to sleep.”

Sleep! If only she could! Consciously, she knew she wasn’t alone, but her subconscious mind required additional affirmation from her senses. She needed to see him, hear him, or touch him. Seeing him was out of the question; she doubted he’d leave a flashlight burning all night, even assuming he had one. Nor would he stay awake all night talking to her. Perhaps, if she just barely touched him, he’d think it was an accident and not make a big deal out of it. Stealthily she moved her right hand until the backs of her fingers just barely brushed his hairy forearm—and immediately her wrist was seized in that bruising grip again.

“Ouch!” she yelped, and his fingers loosened.

“Okay, what is it this time?” His tone showed plainly that he was at the end of his patience.

“I just wanted to touch you,” Jane admitted, too tired now to care what he thought, “so I’ll know I’m not alone.”

He grunted. “All right. It looks like that’s the only way I’m going to get any sleep.” He moved his hand, sliding his rough palm against hers, and twined their fingers together. “Now will you go to sleep?”

“Yes,” she whispered. “Thank you.”

She lay there, enormously and inexplicably comforted by the touch of that hard hand, so warm and strong. Her eyes slowly closed, and she gradually relaxed. The night terrors didn’t come. He kept them firmly at bay with the strong, steady clasp of his hand around hers. Everything was going to be all right. Another wave of exhaustion swept over her, and she was asleep with the suddenness of a light turning off.

* * *

GRANT WOKE BEFORE DAWN, his senses instantly alert. He knew where he was, and he knew what time it was; his uncanny sixth sense could pinpoint the time within a few minutes. The normal night sounds of the jungle told him that they were safe, that there was no other human nearby. He knew immediately the identity of the other person in the tent with him. He knew that he couldn’t move, and he even knew why: Jane was asleep on top of him.

He really didn’t mind being used as a bed. She was soft and warm, and there was a female smell to her that made his nostrils flare in appreciation. The softness of her breasts against him felt good. That special, unmistakable softness never left a man’s mind, hovering forever in his memory once he’d felt the fullness of a woman against him. It had been a long time since he’d slept with a woman, and he’d forgotten how good it could feel. He’d had sex—finding an available woman was no problem—but those encounters had been casual, just for the sake of the physical act. Once it was finished, he hadn’t been inclined to linger. This past year, especially, he’d been disinclined to tolerate anyone else’s presence. He’d spent a lot of time alone, like an injured animal licking its wounds; his mind and his soul had been filled with death. He’d spent so much time in the shadows that he didn’t know if he’d ever find the sunlight again, but he’d been trying. The sweet, hot Tennessee sun had healed his body, but there was still an icy darkness in his mind.

Given that, given his acute awareness of his surroundings, even in sleep, how had Jane gotten on top of him without waking him? This was the second time she’d gotten close to him without disturbing him, and he didn’t like it. A year ago, she couldn’t have twitched without alerting him.

She moved then, sighing a little in her sleep. One of her arms was around his neck, her face pressed into his chest, her warm breath stirring the curls of hair in the low neckline of his undershirt. She lay on him as bonelessly as a cat, her soft body conforming to the hard contours of his. Her legs were tangled with his, her hair draped across his bare shoulder and arm. His body hardened despite his almost savage irritation with himself, and slowly his arms came up to hold her, his hands sliding over her supple back. He could have her if he wanted her. The highly specialized training he’d received had taught him how to deal excruciating pain to another human being, but a side benefit to that knowledge was that he also knew how to give pleasure. He knew all the tender, sensitive places of her body, knew how to excite nerves that she probably didn’t even know she had. Beyond that, he knew how to control his own responses, how to prolong a sensual encounter until his partner had been completely satisfied.

The sure knowledge that he could have her ate at him, filling his mind with images and sensations. Within ten minutes he could have her begging him for it, and he’d be inside her, clasped by those long, sleek, dancer’s legs. The only thing that stopped him was the almost childlike trust with which she slept curled on top of him. She slept as if she felt utterly safe, as if he could protect her from anything. Trust. His life had been short on trust for so many years that it startled him to find someone who could trust so easily and completely. He was uncomfortable with it, but at the same time it felt good, almost as good as her body in his arms. So he lay there staring into the darkness, holding her as she slept, the bitter blackness of his thoughts contrasting with the warm, elusive sweetness of two bodies pressed together in quiet rest.

When the first faint light began to filter through the trees, he shifted his hand to her shoulder and shook her lightly. “Jane, wake up.”

She muttered something unintelligible and burrowed against him, hiding her face against his neck. He shifted gently to his side, easing her onto the blanket. Her arms still hung around his neck, and she tightened her grip as if afraid of falling. “Wait! Don’t go,” she said urgently, and the sound of her own voice woke her. She opened her eyes, blinking owlishly at him. “Oh. Is it morning?”

“Yes, it’s morning. Do you think you could let me up?”

Confused, she stared at him, then seemed to realize that she was still clinging around his neck. She dropped her arms as if scalded, and though the light was too dim for him to be certain, he thought that her cheeks darkened with a blush. “I’m sorry,” she apologized.

He was free, yet oddly reluctant to leave the small enclosure of the tent. His left arm was still under her neck, pillowing her head. The need to touch her was overwhelming, guiding his hand under the fabric of her shirt, which was actually his. He flattened his hand against her bare stomach. His fingers and palm luxuriated in the warm silkiness of her skin, tantalized by the knowledge that even richer tactile pleasures waited both above and below where his hand now rested.

Jane felt her breathing hasten in rhythm, and her heartbeat lurched from the slow, even tempo of sleep to an almost frantic pace. “Grant?” she asked hesitantly. His hand simply rested on her stomach, but she could feel her breasts tightening in anticipation, her nipples puckering. A restless ache stirred to life inside her. It was the same empty need that she’d felt when she’d stood almost naked in his arms, in the middle of the stream, and let him touch her with a raw sensuality that she’d never before experienced. She was a little afraid of that need, and a little afraid of the man who created it with his touch, who leaned over her so intently.

Her only sexual experience had been with her husband. The lack of success in that area of their marriage had severely limited what she knew, leaving her almost completely unawakened, even disinterested. Chris had given her no useful standard, for there was no comparison at all between her ex-husband—a kind, cheerful man, slender and only a few inches taller than she was—and this big, rough, muscular warrior. Chris was totally civilized; Grant wasn’t civilized at all. If he took her, would he control his fearsome strength, or would he dominate her completely? Perhaps that was what frightened her most of all, because the greatest struggle of her life had been for independence: for freedom from fear, and from the overprotectiveness of her parents. She’d fought so hard and so long for control of her life that it was scary now to realize that she was totally at Grant’s mercy. None of the training she’d had in self-defense was of any use against him; she had no defense at all. All she could do was trust him.

“Don’t be afraid,” he said evenly. “I’m not a rapist.”

“I know.” A killer, perhaps, but not a rapist. “I trust you,” she whispered, and laid her hand against his stubbled jaw.

He gave a small, cynical laugh. “Don’t trust me too much, honey. I want you pretty badly, and waking up with you in my arms is straining my good intentions to the limit.” But he turned his head and pressed a quick kiss into the tender palm of the hand that caressed his cheek. “Come on, let’s get moving. I feel like a sitting duck in this tent, now that it’s daylight.”

He heaved himself into a sitting position and reached for his boots, tugging them on and lacing them up with quick, expert movements. Jane was slower to sit up, her entire body protesting. She yawned and shoved her tangled hair back from her face, then put on her own boots. Grant had already left the tent by the time she finished, and she crawled after him. Once on her feet, she stretched her aching muscles, then touched her toes several times to limber up. While she was doing that, Grant swiftly dismantled the tent. He accomplished that in so short a time that she could only blink at him in amazement. In only a moment the tent was once more folded into an impossibly small bundle and stored in his backpack, with the thin blanket rolled up beside it.

“Any more goodies in that bottomless pack of yours?” he asked. “If not, we eat field rations.”

“That yucky stuff you have?”

“That’s right.”

“Well, let’s see. I know I don’t have any more orange juice....” She opened the pack and peered into it, then thrust her hand into its depths. “Ah! Two more granola bars. Do you mind if I have the one with coconut? I’m not that crazy about raisins.”

“Sure,” he agreed lazily. “After all, they’re yours.”

She gave him an irritated glance. “They’re ours. Wait—here’s a can of...” She pulled the can out and read the label, then grinned triumphantly. “Smoked salmon! And some crackers. Please take a seat, sir, and we’ll have breakfast.”

He obediently sat, then took his knife from his belt and reached for the can of salmon. Jane drew it back, her brows lifted haughtily. “I’ll have you know that this is a high class eating establishment. We do not open our cans with knives!”

“We don’t? What do we use, our teeth?”

She lifted her chin at him and searched in the backpack again, finally extracting a can opener. “Listen,” she said, giving the opener to him, “when I escape, I do it in style.”

Taking the opener, he began to open the can of salmon. “So I see. How did you manage to get all of this stuff? I can just see you putting in an order with Turego, collecting what you wanted for an escape.”

Jane chuckled, a rich, husky sound that made him lift his dark gold head from his task. Those piercing yellow eyes lit on her face, watching her as if examining a treasure. She was busy fishing crackers out of the backpack, so she missed the fleeting expression. “It was almost like that. I kept getting these ‘cravings,’ though I seldom mentioned them to Turego. I’d just have a word with the cook, and he generally came up with what I wanted. I raided the kitchen or the soldiers’ quarters for a little something almost every night.”

“Like that pack?” he queried, eyeing the object in question.

She patted it fondly. “Nice one, isn’t it?”

He didn’t reply, but there was a faint crinkling at the corners of his eyes, as if he were thinking of smiling. They ate the salmon and crackers in companionable silence, with the food washed down by water from Grant’s canteen. He ate his granola bar, but Jane decided to save hers for later.

Squatting beside the pack, she took her brush and restored order to her tangled mane of hair, then cleaned her face and hands with a premoistened towelette. “Would you like one?” she asked Grant politely, offering him one of the small packets.

He had been watching her with a stunned sort of amazement, but he took the packet from her hand and tore it open. The small, wet paper had a crisp smell to it, and he felt fresher, cooler, after cleaning his face with it. To his surprise, some of the face black he’d put on before going in after Jane had remained on his skin; he’d probably looked like a devil out of hell, with those streaks on his face.

A familiar sound caught his attention and he turned to look at Jane. A tube of toothpaste lay on the ground beside her, and she was industriously brushing her teeth. As he watched, she spat out the toothpaste, then took a small bottle and tilted it to her mouth, swishing the liquid around, then spitting it out, too. His stunned gaze identified the bottle. For five whole seconds he could only gape at her; then he sat back and began to laugh helplessly. Jane was rinsing her mouth with Perrier water.

CHAPTER SIX

JANE POUTED FOR a moment, but it was so good to hear him laugh that after a few seconds she sat back on her heels and simply watched him, smiling a little herself. When he laughed that harsh, scarred face became younger, even beautiful, as the shadows left his eyes. Something caught in her chest, something that hurt and made a curious melting feeling. She wanted to go over and hold him, to make sure that the shadows never touched him again. She scoffed at herself for her absurd sense of protectiveness. If anyone could take care of himself, it was Grant Sullivan. Nor would he welcome any gesture of caring; he’d probably take it as a sexual invitation.

To hide the way she felt, she put her things back into her pack, then turned to eye him questioningly. “Unless you want to use the toothpaste?” she offered.

He was still chuckling. “Thanks, honey, but I have tooth powder and I’ll use the water in the canteen. God! Perrier water!”

“Well, I had to have water, but I wasn’t able to snitch a canteen,” she explained reasonably. “Believe me, I’d much rather have had a canteen. I had to wrap all the bottles in cloth so they wouldn’t clink against each other or break.”

It seemed completely logical to her, but it set him off again. He sat with his shoulders hunched and shaking, holding his head between his hands and laughing until tears streamed down his face. After he had stopped, he brushed his own teeth, but he kept making little choking noises that told Jane he was still finding the situation extremely funny. She was lighthearted, happy that she had made him laugh.

She felt her blouse and found it stiff, but dry. “You can have your shirt back,” she told him, turning her back to take it off. “Thanks for the loan.”

“Is yours dry?”

“Completely.” She pulled his shirt off and dropped it on her backpack, and hurriedly began to put her blouse on. She had one arm in a sleeve when he swore violently. She jumped, startled, and looked over her shoulder at him.

His face was grim as he strode rapidly over to her. His expression had been bright with laughter only a moment before, but now he looked like a thundercloud. “What happened to your arm?” he snapped, catching her elbow and holding her bruised arm out for his inspection. “Why didn’t you tell me you’d hurt yourself?”

Jane tried to grab the blouse and hold it over her bare breasts with her free arm, feeling horribly vulnerable and exposed. She had been trying for a nonchalant manner while changing, but her fragile poise was shattered by his closeness and his utter disregard for her modesty. Her cheeks reddened, and in self-defense she looked down at her badly bruised arm.

“Stop being so modest,” he growled irritably when she fumbled with the blouse. “I told you, I’ve already seen you without any clothes.” That was embarrassingly true, but it didn’t help. She stood very still, her face burning, while he gently examined her arm.

“That’s a hell of a bruise, honey. How does your arm feel?”

“It hurts, but I can use it,” she said stiffly.

“How did it happen?”

“In a variety of ways,” she said, trying to hide her embarrassment behind a bright manner. “This bruise right here is where you hit me on the arm after sneaking into my bedroom and scaring me half to death. The big, multi-colored one is from falling down that bluff yesterday morning. This little interesting welt is where a limb swung back and caught me—”

“Okay, I get the idea.” He thrust his fingers through his hair. “I’m sorry I bruised you, but I didn’t know who you were. I’d say we were more than even on that score, anyway, after that kick you gave me.”

Jane’s dark chocolate eyes widened with remorse. “I didn’t mean to, not really. It was just a reflex. I’d done it before I thought. Are you okay? I mean, I didn’t do any permanent damage, did I?”

A small, unwilling grin tugged at his lips as he remembered the torment of arousal he’d been enduring on her account. “No, everything’s in working order,” he assured her. His gaze dropped to where she clutched her blouse to her chest, and his clear amber eyes darkened to a color like melted gold. “Couldn’t you tell that when we were standing in the stream kissing?”

Jane looked down automatically, then jerked her gaze back up in consternation when she realized where she was looking. “Oh,” she said blankly.

Grant slowly shook his head, staring at her. She was a constant paradox, an unpredictable blend of innocence and contrariness, of surprising prudery and amazing boldness. In no way was she what he’d expected. He was beginning to enjoy every moment he spent with her, but acknowledging that made him wary. It was his responsibility to get her out of Costa Rica, but he would compromise his own effectiveness if he allowed himself to become involved with her. Worrying over her could cloud his judgment. But, damn, how much could a man stand? He wanted her, and the wanting increased with every moment. In some curious way he felt lighter, happier. She certainly kept him on his toes! He was either laughing at her or contemplating beating her, but he was never bored or impatient in her company. Funny, but he couldn’t remember ever laughing with a woman before. Laughter, especially during the past few years, had been in short supply in his life.

A chattering monkey caught his attention, and he looked up. The spots of sunlight darting through the shifting layers of trees reminded him that they were losing traveling time. “Get your blouse on,” he said tersely, swinging away from her to sling his backpack on. He buckled it into place, then swung her pack onto his right shoulder. The rifle was slung over his left shoulder. By that time, Jane had jerked her blouse on and buttoned it up. Rather than stuffing it in her pants, she tied the tails in a knot at her waist as she had with Grant’s shirt. He was already starting off through the jungle.

“Grant! Wait!” she called to his back, hurrying after him.

“You’ll have to stay with me,” he said unfeelingly, not slackening his pace.

Well, did he think she couldn’t? Jane fumed, panting along in his path. She’d show him! And he could darn well act macho and carry both packs if he wanted; she wasn’t going to offer to help! But he wasn’t acting macho, she realized, and that deflated some of her indignation. He actually was that strong and indefatigable.

Compared to the harrowing day before, the hours passed quietly, without sight of another human being. She followed right on his heels, never complaining about the punishing pace he set, though the heat and humidity were even worse than the day before, if that were possible. There wasn’t any hint of a breeze under the thick, smothering canopy. The air was still and heavy, steamy with an almost palpable thickness. She perspired freely, soaking her clothes and making her long for a real bath. That dousing in the stream the day before had felt refreshing, but didn’t really qualify as bathing. Her nose wrinkled. She probably smelled like a goat.

Well, so what, she told herself. If she did, then so did he. In the jungle it was probably required to sweat.

They stopped about midmorning for a break, and Jane tiredly accepted the canteen from him. “Do you have any salt tablets?” she asked. “I think I need one.”

“You don’t need salt, honey, you need water. Drink up.”

She drank, then passed the canteen back to him. “It’s nearly empty. Let’s pour the Perrier into it and chuck the empty bottles.”

He nodded, and they were able to discard three bottles. As he got ready to start out again, Jane asked, “Why are you in such a hurry? Do you think we’re being followed?”

“Not followed,” he said tersely. “But they’re looking for us, and the slower we move, the better chance they have of finding us.”

“In this?” Jane joked, waving her hand to indicate the enclosing forest. It was difficult to see ten feet in any direction.

“We can’t stay in here forever. Don’t underrate Turego; he can mobilize a small army to search for us. The minute we show our faces, he’ll know it.”

“Something should be done about him,” Jane said strongly. “Surely he’s not operating with the sanction of the government?”

“No. Extortion and terrorism are his own little sidelines. We’ve known about him, of course, and occasionally fed him what we wanted him to know.”

“We?” Jane asked casually.

His face was immediately shuttered, as cold and blank as a wall. “A figure of speech.” Mentally, he swore at himself for being so careless. She was too sharp to miss anything. Before she could ask any more questions, he began walking again. He didn’t want to talk about his past, about what he had been. He wanted to forget it all, even in his dreams.

* * *

ABOUT NOON THEY stopped to eat, and this time they had to resort to the field rations. After a quick glance at what she was eating, Jane didn’t look at it at all, just put it in her mouth and swallowed without allowing herself to taste it too much. It wasn’t really that bad; it was just so awfully bland. They each drank a bottle of Perrier, and Jane insisted that they take another yeast pill. A roll of thunder announced the daily downpour, so Grant quickly found them shelter under a rocky outcropping. The opening was partially blocked by bushes, making it a snug little haven.

They sat watching the deluge for a few minutes; then Grant stretched out his long legs, leaning back to prop himself on his elbow. “Explain this business of how your father disinherited you as a form of protection.”

Jane watched a small brown spider pick its way across the ground. “It’s very simple,” she said absently. “I wouldn’t live with around-the-clock protection the way he wanted, so the next best thing was to remove the incentive for any kidnappers.”

“That sounds a little paranoid, seeing kidnappers behind every tree.”

“Yes,” she agreed, still watching the spider. It finally minced into a crevice in the rock, out of sight, and she sighed. “He is paranoid about it, because he’s afraid that next time he wouldn’t get me back alive again.”

“Again?” Grant asked sharply, seizing on the implication of her words. “You’ve been kidnapped before?”

She nodded. “When I was nine years old.”

She made no other comment and he sensed that she wasn’t going to elaborate, if given a choice. He wasn’t going to allow her that choice. He wanted to know more about her, learn what went on in that unconventional brain. It was new to him, this overwhelming curiosity about a woman; it was almost a compulsion. Despite his relaxed position, tension had tightened his muscles. She was being very matter-of-fact about it, but instinct told him that the kidnapping had played a large part in the formation of the woman she was now. He was on the verge of discovering the hidden layers of her psyche.

“What happened?” he probed, keeping his voice casual.

“Two men kidnapped me after school, took me to an abandoned house and locked me in a closet until Dad paid the ransom.”

The explanation was so brief as to be ridiculous; how could something as traumatic as a kidnapping be condensed into one sentence? She was staring at the rain now, her expression pensive and withdrawn.

Grant knew too much about the tactics of kidnappers, the means they used to force anxious relatives into paying the required ransom. Looking at her delicate profile, with the lush provocativeness of her mouth, he felt something savage well up in him at the thought that she might have been abused.

“Did they rape you?” He was no longer concerned about maintaining a casual pose. The harshness of his tone made her glance at him, vague surprise in her exotically slanted eyes.

“No, they didn’t do anything like that,” she assured him. “They just left me in that closet...alone. It was dark.”

And to this day she was afraid of the dark, of being alone in it. So that was the basis for her fear. “Tell me about it,” he urged softly.

She shrugged. “There isn’t a lot more to tell. I don’t know how long I was in the closet. There were no other houses close by, so no one heard me scream. The two men just left me there and went to some other location to negotiate with my parents. After a while I became convinced that they were never coming back, that I was going to die there in that dark closet, and that no one would ever know what had happened to me.”

“Your father paid the ransom?”

“Yes. Dad’s not stupid, though. He knew that he wasn’t likely to get me back alive if he just trusted the kidnappers, so he brought the police in on it. It’s lucky he did. When the kidnappers came back for me, I overheard them making their plans. They were just going to kill me and dump my body somewhere, because I’d seen them and could identify them.” She bent her head, studying the ground with great concentration, as if to somehow divorce herself from what she was telling him. “But there were police sharpshooters surrounding the house. When the two men realized that they were trapped, they decided to use me as a hostage. One of them grabbed my arm and held his pistol to my head, forcing me to walk in front of them when they left the house. They were going to take me with them, until it was safe to kill me.”

Jane shrugged, then took a deep breath. “I didn’t plan it, I swear. I don’t remember if I tripped, or just fainted for a second. Anyway, I fell, and the guy had to let go of me or be jerked off balance. For a second the pistol wasn’t pointed at me, and the policemen fired. They killed both men. The...the man who had held me was shot in the chest and the head, and he fell over on me. His blood splattered all over me, on my face, my hair....” Her voice trailed away.

For a moment there was something naked in her face, the stark terror and revulsion she’d felt as a child; then, as he had seen her do when he’d rescued her from the snake, she gathered herself together. He watched as she defeated the fear, pushed the shadows away. She smoothed her expression and even managed a glint of humor in her eyes as she turned to look at him. “Okay, it’s your turn. Tell me something that happened to you.”

Once he’d felt nothing much at all; he’d accepted the chilled, shadowed brutality of his life without thought. He still didn’t flinch from the memories. They were part of him, as ingrained in his flesh and blood, in his very being, as the color of his eyes and the shape of his body. But when he looked into the uncommon innocence of Jane’s eyes, he knew that he couldn’t brutalize her mind with even the mildest tale of the life he’d known. Somehow she had kept a part of herself as pure and crystalline as a mountain stream, a part of childhood forever unsullied. Nothing that had happened to her had touched the inner woman, except to increase the courage and gallantry that he’d seen twice now in her determined efforts to pull herself together and face forward again.

“I don’t have anything to tell,” he said mildly.

“Oh, sure!” she hooted, shifting herself on the ground until she was sitting facing him, her legs folded in a boneless sort of knot that made him blink. She rested her chin in her palm and surveyed him, so big and controlled and capable. If this man had led a normal life, she’d eat her boots, she told herself, then quickly glanced down at the boots in question. Right now they had something green and squishy on them. Yuck. They’d have to be cleaned before even a goat would eat them. She returned her dark gaze to Grant and studied him with the seriousness of a scientist bent over a microscope. His scarred face was hard, a study of planes and angles, of bronzed skin pulled tautly over the fierce sculpture of his bones. His eyes were those of an eagle, or a lion; she couldn’t quite decide which. The clear amber color was brighter, paler, than topaz, almost like a yellow diamond, and like an eagle’s, the eyes saw everything. They were guarded, expressionless; they hid an almost unbearable burden of experience and weary cynicism.

“Are you an agent?” she asked, probing curiously. Somehow, in those few moments, she had discarded the idea that he was a mercenary. Same field she thought, but a different division.

His mouth quirked. “No.”

“Okay, let’s try it from another angle. Were you an agent?”

“What sort of agent?”

“Stop evading my questions! The cloak-and-dagger sort of agent. You know, the men in overcoats who have forty sets of identification.”

“No. Your imagination is running wild. I’m too easily identifiable to be any good undercover.”

That was true. He stood out like a warrior at a tea party. Something went quiet within her, and she knew. “Are you retired?”

He was quiet for so long that she thought he wasn’t going to answer her. He seemed to be thinking of something else entirely. Then he said flatly, “Yeah, I’m retired. For a year now.”

His set, blank face hurt her, on the inside. “You were a...weapon, weren’t you?”

There was a terrible clarity in his eyes as he slowly shifted his gaze to her. “Yes,” he said harshly. “I was a weapon.”

They had aimed him, fired him, and watched him destroy. He would be matchless, she realized. Before she’d even known him, when she’d seen him gliding into her darkened bedroom like a shadow, she’d realized how lethal he could be. And there was something else, something she could see now. He had retired himself, turned his back and walked away from that grim, shadowed life. Certainly his superiors wouldn’t have wanted to lose his talents.

She reached out and placed her hand on his, her fingers slim and soft, curling around the awesome strength of his. Her hand was much smaller made with a delicacy that he could crush with a careless movement of his fingers, but implicit in her touch was the trust that he wouldn’t turn that strength against her. A deep breath swelled the muscled planes of his chest. He wanted to take her right then, in the dirt. He wanted to stretch her out and pull her clothes off, bury himself in her. He wanted more of her touch, all of her touch, inside and out. But the need for her satiny female flesh was a compulsion that he couldn’t satisfy with a quick possession, and there wasn’t time for more. The rain was slowing and would stop entirely at any moment. There was a vague feeling marching up and down his spine that told him they couldn’t afford to linger any longer.

But it was time she knew. He removed his hand from hers, lifting it to cup her chin. His thumb rubbed lightly over her lips. “Soon,” he said, his voice guttural with need, “you’re going to lie down for me. Before I take you back to your daddy, I’m going to have you, and the way I feel now, I figure it’s going to take a long time before I’m finished with you.”

Jane sat frozen, her eyes those of a startled woodland animal. She couldn’t even protest, because the harsh desire in his voice flooded her mind and her skin with memories. The day before, standing in the stream, he’d kissed her and touched her with such raw sexuality that, for the first time in her life, she’d felt the coiling, writhing tension of desire in herself. For the first time she’d wanted a man, and she’d been shocked by the unfamiliarity of her own body. Now he was doing it to her again, but this time he was using words. He’d stated his intentions bluntly, and images began forming in her mind of the two of them lying twined together, of his naked, magnificent body surging against her.

He watched the shifting expressions that flitted across her face. She looked surprised, even a little shocked, but she wasn’t angry. He’d have understood anger, or even amusement; that blank astonishment puzzled him. It was as if no man had ever told her that he wanted her. Well, she’d get used to the idea.

The rain had stopped, and he picked up the packs and the rifle, settling them on his shoulders. Jane followed him without a word when he stepped out from beneath the rocky outcropping into the already increasing heat. Steam rose in wavering clouds from the forest floor, immediately wrapping them in a stifling, humid blanket.

She was silent for the rest of the afternoon, lost in her thoughts. He stopped at a stream, much smaller than the one they’d seen the day before, and glanced at her. “Care for a bath? You can’t soak, but you can splash.”

Her eyes lit up, and for the first time that afternoon a smile danced on her full lips. He didn’t need an answer to know how she felt about the idea. Grinning, he searched out a small bar of soap from his pack and held it out to her. “I’ll keep watch, then you can do the same for me. I’ll be up there.”

Jane looked up the steep bank that he’d indicated. That was the best vantage point around; he’d have a clear view of the stream and the surrounding area. She started to ask if he was going to watch her, too, but bit back the question. As he’d already pointed out, it was too late for modesty. Besides, she felt infinitely safer knowing that he’d be close by.

He went up the bank as sure-footedly as a cat, and Jane turned to face the stream. It was only about seven feet wide, and wasn’t much more than ankle-deep. Still, it looked like heaven. She hunted her lone change of underwear out of her pack, then sat down to pull off her boots. Glancing nervously over her shoulder to where Grant sat, she saw that he was in profile to her, but she knew that he would keep her in his peripheral vision. She resolutely undid her pants and stepped out of them. Nothing was going to keep her from having her bath...except maybe another snake, or a jaguar, she amended.

Naked, she gingerly picked her way over the stony bottom to a large flat rock and sat down in the few inches of water. It was deliciously cool, having run down from a higher altitude, but even tepid water would have felt good on her overheated skin. She splashed it on her face and head until her hair was soaked. Gradually she felt the sweaty stickiness leave her hair, until the strands were once more silky beneath her fingers. Then she took the small bar of soap out from under her leg, where she’d put it for safekeeping, and rubbed it over her body. The small luxury made her feel like a new woman, and a sense of peace crept into her. It was only a simple pleasure, to bathe in a clear, cool stream, but added to it was her sense of nakedness, of being totally without restrictions. She knew that he was there, knew that he was watching her, and felt her breasts grow tight.

What would it be like if he came down from that bank and splashed into the water with her? If he took the blanket from his pack and laid her down on it? She closed her eyes, shivering in reaction, thinking of his hard body pressing down on her, thrusting into her. It had been so many years, and the few experiences she’d had with Chris hadn’t taught her that she could be a creature of wanting, but with Grant she wasn’t the same woman.

Her heart beat heavily in her breast as she rinsed herself by cupping water in her palms and pouring it over her. Standing up, she twisted the water out of her hair, then waded out. She was trembling as she pulled on her clean underwear, then dressed distastefully in her stained pants and shirt. “I’m finished,” she called, lacing up her boots.

He appeared soundlessly beside her. “Sit in the same place where I sat,” he instructed, placing the rifle in her hands. “Do you know how to use this?”

The weapon was heavy, but her slim hands looked capable as she handled it. “Yes. I’m a fairly good shot.” A wry smile curved her lips. “With paper targets and clay pigeons, anyway.”

“That’s good enough.” He began unbuttoning his shirt, and she stood there in a daze, her eyes on his hands. He paused. “Are you going to guard me from down here?”

She blushed. “No. Sorry.” Quickly she turned and scrambled up the bank, then took a seat in the exact spot where he’d sat. She could see both banks, but at the same time there was a fair amount of cover that she could use if the need arose. He’d probably picked this out as the best vantage point without even thinking about it, just automatically sifting through the choices and arriving at the correct one. He might be retired, but his training was ingrained.

A movement, a flash of bronze, detected out of the corner of her eye, told her that he was wading into the stream. She shifted her gaze a fraction so she wouldn’t be able to see him at all, but just the knowledge that he was as naked as she had been kept her heart pounding erratically. She swallowed, then licked her lips, forcing herself to concentrate on the surrounding jungle, but the compulsion to look at him continued.

She heard splashing and pictured him standing there like a savage, bare and completely at home.

She closed her eyes, but the image remained before her. Slowly, totally unable to control herself, she opened her eyes and turned her head to look at him. It was only a small movement, a fraction of an inch, until she was able to see him, but that wasn’t enough. Stolen glances weren’t enough. She wanted to study every inch of him, drink in the sight of his powerful body. Shifting around, she looked fully at him, and froze. He was beautiful, so beautiful that she forgot to breathe. Without being handsome, he had the raw power and grace of a predator, all the terrible beauty of a hunter. He was bronzed all over, his tan a deep, even brown. Unlike her, he didn’t keep his back turned in case she looked; he had a complete disregard for modesty. He was taking a bath; she could look or not look, as she wished.

His skin was sleek and shiny with water, and the droplets caught in the hair on his chest glittered like captured diamonds. His body hair was dark, despite the sun-streaked blondness of his head. It shadowed his chest, ran in a thin line down his flat, muscled stomach, and bloomed again at the juncture of his legs. His legs were as solid as tree trunks, long and roped with muscle; every movement he made set off ripples beneath his skin. It was like watching a painting by one of the old masters come to life.

He soaped himself all over, then squatted in the water to rinse in the same manner she had, cupping his palms to scoop up the water. When he was rinsed clean, he stood and looked up at her, probably to check on her, and met her gaze head-on. Jane couldn’t look away, couldn’t pretend that she hadn’t been staring at him with an almost painful appreciation. He stood very still in the stream, watching her as she watched him, letting her take in every detail of his body. Under her searching gaze, his body began to stir, harden, growing to full, heavy arousal.

“Jane,” he said softly, but still she heard him. She was so attuned to him, so painfully sensitive to every move and sound he made, that she would have heard him if he’d whispered. “Do you want to come down here?”

Yes. Oh, God, yes, more than she’d ever wanted anything. But she was still a little afraid of her own feelings, so she held back. This was a part of herself that she didn’t know, wasn’t certain she could control.

“I can’t,” she replied, just as softly. “Not yet.”

“Then turn around, honey, while you still have a choice.”

She quivered, almost unable to make the required movement, but at last her muscles responded and she turned away from him, listening as he waded out of the water. In less than a minute he appeared noiselessly at her side and took the rifle from her hands. He had both packs with him. Typically, he made no further comment on what had just happened. “We’ll get away from the water and set up camp. It’ll be night pretty soon.”

Night. Long hours in the dark tent, lying next to him. Jane followed him, and when he stopped she helped him do the work they had done the night before, setting up the tent and hiding it. She didn’t protest at the cold field rations, but ate without really tasting anything. Soon she was crawling into the tent and taking off her boots, waiting for him to join her.

When he did, they lay quietly side by side, watching as the remaining light dimmed, then abruptly vanished.

Tension hummed through her, making her muscles tight. The darkness pressed in on her, an unseen monster that sucked her breath away. No list of compulsive questions leaped to her lips tonight; she felt oddly timid, and it had been years since she’d allowed herself to be timid about anything. She no longer knew herself.

“Are you afraid of me?” he asked, his voice gentle.

Just the sound of his voice enabled her to relax a little. “No,” she whispered.

“Then come here and let me keep the dark away from you.”

She felt his hand on her arm, urging her closer, then she was enfolded in arms so strong that nothing could ever make her afraid while they held her. He cradled her against his side, tucking her head into the hollow of his shoulder. With a touch so light that it could have been the brush of a butterfly’s wings, he kissed the top of her head. “Good night, honey,” he whispered.

“Good night,” she said in return.

Long after he was asleep, Jane lay in his arms with her eyes open, though she could see nothing. Her heart was pounding in her chest with a slow, heavy rhythm, and her insides felt jittery. It wasn’t fear that kept her awake, but a churning emotion that shifted everything inside her. She knew exactly what was wrong with her. For the first time in too many years, everything was right with her.

She’d learned to live her life with a shortage of trust. No matter that she’d learned to enjoy herself and her freedom; there had always been that residual caution that kept her from letting a man get too close. Until now she’d never been strongly enough attracted to a man for the attraction to conquer the caution.... Until now. Until Grant. And now the attraction had become something much stronger. The truth stunned her, yet she had to accept it: she loved him. She hadn’t expected it, though for two days she had felt it tugging at her. He was harsh and controlled, bad-tempered, and his sense of humor was severely underdeveloped, but he had gently washed the snake’s blood from her, held her hand during the night, and had gone out of his way to make their trek easier for her. He wanted her, but he hadn’t taken her because she wasn’t ready. She was afraid of the dark, so he held her in his arms. Loving him was at once the easiest and most difficult thing she’d ever done.

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