скачать книгу бесплатно
To be out from under the slightly oppressive canopy was heady for a moment. Ignoring Luca, Serena studied the view. She could see that far away in the distance the land had been eviscerated. Literally. Huge chunks cut out. No trees. And what looked like huge machines were moving back and forth, sun glinting off steel.
Forgetting that she hated Luca for a moment, because unexpected emotion surged at seeing the forest plundered like this, she asked, a little redundantly, ‘That’s the mine?’
Luca nodded, his face stern when she sneaked an illicit glance.
‘Yes, that’s my family’s legacy.’
And then he pointed to a dark smudge much closer.
‘That’s the Iruwaya tribe’s village there.’
Serena shaded her eyes until she could make out what looked like a collection of dusty huts and a clearing. Just then something else caught her eye: a road leading into the village and a bus trundling along merrily, with bags and crates hanging precariously from its roof along with a few live chickens.
It took a few seconds for the scene to compute and for Serena’s brain to make sense of it. Slowly she said, ‘The village isn’t isolated.’
‘I never said it was totally isolated.’
The coolness of Luca’s tone made Serena step back and look up at him, her blood rapidly rising again. ‘So why the hell have we been trekking through a rainforest to get to it?’ She added, before he could answer, ‘You never said anything about it being optional.’
Luca crossed his arms. ‘I didn’t offer an option.’
‘My God,’ Serena breathed. ‘You really did do this in a bid to scare me off... I mean, I know you did, but I stupidly thought...’
She trailed off and backed away as the full significance sank in. Her stupid feeling of triumph for putting up the tent last night without help mocked her now. She’d known Luca hated her, that he wanted to punish her...but she hadn’t believed for a second that there had been any other way of getting to this village.
All this time he must have been alternating between laughing his head off at her and cursing her for being so determined to stick it out. And then amusing himself by demonstrating how badly she wanted him.
Luca sighed deeply and ran a hand through his hair. ‘Serena, this is how I’d planned to come to the village, but I’ll admit that I thought you would have given up and gone home long before now.’
His words fell on deaf ears. Serena felt exposed, humiliated. She shook her head. ‘You’re a bastard, Luca Fonseca.’
Terrified of the emotion rising in her chest, she turned and blindly walked away, not taking care to look where she was going.
She’d landed on her hands and knees, the breath knocked out of her, before she realised she’d tripped over something. It also took a moment for her to register that the black ground under her hands was moving.
She sprang back with a small scared yelp just as Luca reached her and hauled her up, turning her to face him.
‘Are you okay?’
Still angry with him, Serena broke free. And then she registered a stinging sensation on her arm, and on her thigh. She looked down stupidly, to see her trousers ripped apart from her fall, and vaguely heard Luca curse out loud.
He was pulling her away from where she’d tripped and ripping off her shirt, but Serena was still trying to figure out what had happened—and that was when the pain hit in two places: her arm and her leg.
She cried out in surprise at the shock of how excruciating it was.
Luca was asking urgently, ‘Where is it? Where’s the pain?’
Struggling, because it was more intense than anything she’d ever experienced, Serena got out thickly, ‘My arm...my leg.’
She was barely aware of Luca inspecting her arm, her hands, and then undoing her trousers to pull them down roughly, inspecting her thigh where it was burning. He was brushing something off her and cursing again.
She struggled to recall what she’d seen. Ants. They’d just been ants. It wasn’t a snake or a spider.
Luca was doing a thorough inspection of both legs and then moving back up to her arms. In spite of the pain she struggled to get out, ‘I’m fine—it’s nothing, really.’
But she was feeling nauseous now, with a white-hot sensation blooming outwards from both limbs. She was also starting to shake. Luca pulled her trousers back up. She wasn’t even registering embarrassment that he’d all but stripped her.
She tried to take a step, but the pain when she moved almost blinded her. And suddenly she was being lifted into the air against a hard surface. She wanted to tell Luca to put her down but she couldn’t seem to formulate the words.
And then the pain took over. There was a sense of time being suspended, loud voices. And then it all went black.
* * *
‘Serena?’
The voice penetrated the thick warm blanket of darkness that surrounded her. And there was something about the voice that irritated her. She tried to burrow away from it.
‘Serena.’
‘What?’ She struggled to open her eyes and winced at the light. Her surroundings registered slowly. A rudimentary hut of some kind. She was lying down on something deliciously soft. And one other thing registered: mercifully...the awful, excruciating pain was gone.
‘Welcome back.’
That voice. Deep and infinitely memorable. And not in a good way.
It all came back.
She turned her head to see Luca looking at her with a small smile on his face. A smile. He was sitting down near the bed she lay on.
She croaked out, ‘What happened?’
His smile faded, and it must have been a trick of the light but she could have sworn he paled slightly. ‘You got stung. Badly.’
Serena recalled the ground moving under her hands and shuddered delicately. ‘But they were just ants. How could ants do that?’
Luca’s mouth twisted. ‘They were bullet ants.’
Serena frowned. ‘Should that mean anything to me?’
He shook his head. ‘Not really, but they deliver a sting that is widely believed to be the most painful on record of any biting insect—like the pain of a bullet. I’ve been bitten once or twice; I know exactly what it’s like.’
Serena felt embarrassed. ‘But I passed out like some kind of wimp.’
Luca had a funny look on his face.
‘The fact that you were semi-conscious till we reached the village and kept fighting to walk was a testament to your obviously high pain threshold.’
She lifted her arm and looked at it. There was only a very faint redness where she’d been bitten. All that pain and not even a scratch left behind? She almost felt cheated. And then she thought of what he’d said and her arm dropped.
‘Wait a second—you carried me all the way here?’
He nodded. There was a scuffling sound from nearby and thankfully Luca’s intense focus moved off her. She looked past him to see some small curious faces peeping around the door. He said something to them and they disappeared, giggling and chattering.
Luca turned back. ‘They’re fascinated by the golden-haired gringa who arrived unconscious into their village a few hours ago.’
Serena was very disorientated by this far less antagonistic Luca. Feeling self-conscious, she struggled to sit up, moving back the covers on the bed.
But Luca rapped out, ‘Stay there! You’re weak and dehydrated. You’re not going anywhere today, or this evening. The women have prepared some food and you need to drink lots of water.’
Luca stood up, and his sheer size made Serena feel dizzy enough to lie down again. As if by magic some smiling women appeared in the doorway, holding various things. Luca ushered them in and said to Serena over their heads, ‘I have to go to the mines. I’ll be back later. You’ll be looked after.’
Weakly, Serena protested, ‘But I’m supposed to be taking notes...’
Something flashed in Luca’s eyes but he just said, ‘Don’t worry about that. There’ll be time tomorrow, before we have to leave.’
‘Before we have to leave.’ She felt a lurch in her belly and an awful betraying tingle of anticipation as to what might happen once they did leave this place.
* * *
The following morning, early, Luca was trying not to keep staring at Serena, who sat at the end of a long table in the communal eating hut. She was wearing a traditional smock dress, presumably given to her by one of the women to replace her own clothes, and the simple design might have been haute couture, the way she wore it with such effortless grace.
A small toddler, a girl, was sitting on Serena’s lap and staring up at her with huge, besotted brown eyes. She’d been crying minutes before, and Serena had bent down to her level and cajoled her to stop crying, lifting her up and settling her as easily as if she was her mother.
Now she was eating her breakfast—a manioc-based broth—for all the world acting as if it was the finest caviar, giving the little girl morsels in between her own mouthfuls. She couldn’t have looked more innocent and pure if she’d tried, tugging remorselessly on his conscience.
A mixture of rage and sexual frustration made Luca’s whole body tight. The remnants of the panic he’d felt the previous day when she’d been so limp in his arms after being stung still clung to him. She’d been brave. Even though he knew he was being completely irrational, he couldn’t stop lambasting her inwardly for not behaving as he expected her to.
Their eyes met and caught at that moment and he saw her cheeks flush. With desire? Or anger? Or a mixture of both like him? Suddenly her significance wasn’t important any more—who she was, what she’d done. Or not done. He wanted her, and she would pay for throwing his life out of whack not once but twice.
Resolve filling his body, he stood up and said curtly, ‘We’re leaving for the mines in ten minutes.’
He didn’t like the way he noticed how her arm tightened around the small girl almost protectively, or how seeing a child on her lap made him feel. All sorts of things he’d never imagined feeling in his life—ever.
Her chin tipped up. ‘I’ll be ready.’
Luca left before he did something stupid, like take up his phone and ask for the helicopter to come early so that he could haul her back to Rio and douse this fire in his blood as soon as possible.
CHAPTER SIX (#ubb6ae970-dd5a-5023-8a3d-e5fd159fa382)
A FEW HOURS later Serena was back in her own clothes, now clean, and sitting cross-legged beside Luca in the hut of the tribal elders. She was still smarting from the intensity of his regard that morning at breakfast. As if he’d been accusing her of something. Her suspicions had been reinforced when he’d said, with a definitely accusatory tone, on their journey to the mines, ‘You were good with that little girl earlier.’
Serena had swallowed back the tart urge to apologise and explained, ‘I have a nephew just a little bit older. We’re very close.’
She hadn’t liked being reminded of that vulnerability—that from the moment she’d held Siena’s son, Spiro, he and Serena had forged an indelible bond and her biological clock had started ticking loudly.
For someone who had never seen the remotest possibility of such a domestic idyll in her life, she was still surprised at how much she craved it.
And she hated it that she’d barely slept a wink in the hut because she’d missed knowing Luca’s solid bulk was just inches away. She dragged her attention back to what she was meant to be focusing on: writing notes as fast as Luca translated what he wanted taken down.
They’d spent the morning at the mines and she’d seen how diplomatic he had to be, trying to assuage the fears of the miners about losing their jobs, while attempting to drag the mine and its administration into the twenty-first century and minimise further damage to the land. It was a very fine balancing act.
When he was being diplomatic and charming he was truly devastating. It gave Serena a very strong sense of just how seductive he could be if...if he actually liked her. The thought of that made her belly swoop alarmingly.
He turned to her now. ‘Did you get that?’
She looked at the notes quickly. ‘About coming up with ideas to actively promote and nurture growth in the local economy?’
He nodded. But before he turned back to the tribal leader Serena followed an impulse and touched his arm. He frowned at her, and she smiled hesitantly at the man Luca was talking to before saying, ‘Could I make a suggestion?’
He drew back a few inches and looked at her. His entire stance was saying, You?
Serena fought off the urge to hit him and gritted her teeth. ‘Those smock dresses that the women make—I haven’t seen them anywhere else. Also, the little carvings that the children have been doing... I know that this village is twinned with another one, and they have monthly fair days when they barter goods and crops and utilise their skills and learn from each other...but what about opening it up a bit—say, having a space in Rio, or Manaus, a charity shop that sells the things they make here. And in the other village. A niche market, with the money coming back directly to the people.’
‘That’s hardly a novel idea,’ Luca said coolly.
Serena refused to be intimidated or feel silly. ‘Well, if it’s not a new concept why hasn’t one of these shops been mentioned anywhere in your literature about the charity? I’m not talking about some rustic charity shop. I’m talking about a high-end finish that’ll draw in discerning tourists and buyers. Something that’ll inspire them to help conserve the rainforest.’
Luca said nothing for a long moment, and then he turned back to the chief and spoke to him rapidly. The man’s old, lined face lit up and he smiled broadly, nodding effusively.
Luca looked back to Serena, a conciliatory gleam in his eyes. ‘I’ll look into it back in Rio.’
The breath she hadn’t even been aware of holding left her chest and she had to concentrate when the conversation started again. Finally, when Luca and the chief had spoken for an hour or so, they got up to leave. The old man darted forward with surprising agility to take Serena’s hand in his and pump it up and down vigorously. She smiled at his effervescence.
Following Luca out into the slightly less intense late-afternoon heat, she could see a Jeep approach in the distance.
Luca looked at his watch. ‘That’ll be our lift to the airfield. We need to pack our stuff up.’
He looked at her and must have seen something that Serena had failed to disguise in time.
His eyes glinted with something indefinable. ‘I thought you’d welcome the prospect of civilisation again?’
‘I do,’ Serena said quickly, avoiding his look. But the truth was that she didn’t...exactly. Their couple of days in the rainforest...the otherworldly pace of life in the village...it had soothed something inside her. And she realised that she would miss it.
Afraid Luca might see that, she folded her arms and said, ‘Are you going to give me a chance?’ And then quickly, before he could interject, ‘I think I deserve it. I don’t want to go home yet.’
Luca looked at her. She could see the Jeep coming closer, stopping. She held her breath. His gaze narrowed on her and became...hot. Instantly Serena felt something spike. Anticipation.
He came closer, blocking out the Jeep arriving, the village behind him.
‘I’ve no intention of letting you go home.’
Serena’s arms clenched tighter. She didn’t like the way her body reacted to that implacable statement and what it might mean. ‘You’re giving me a trial period?’
Luca smiled, and it made Serena’s brain fuzzy.
‘Something like that. I told you I wanted you, Serena. And I do. In my bed.’
Anger spiked at his arrogant tone, even as her pulse leapt treacherously. ‘I’m not interested in becoming your next mistress, Fonseca. I’m interested in working.’
