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He shook his head. “Not a chance. Watch yourself.”
“You, too. Oh, Jacob!”
He turned with his hand on the doorknob. “What?”
“Thank you for the flowers.”
“They suit you.” He studied her face and smiled. “You look like one of them. Ciao, Gabby.”
And he was gone. She stared at the door for a long time before she went to put her flowers in some water.
Chapter Three (#ulink_9d77ce68-7b0f-55d9-b6ac-d4f4e6f373b8)
J.D. didn’t come back until late that afternoon, and he was strangely taciturn. He shared a silent supper with Gabby and then went out again, telling her tersely to get some sleep. She knew he’d found out something, but whatever it was, he wasn’t sharing it. Apparently his trust in her had limits. And that was disappointing. She climbed into bed and slept soundly and without interruption. Part of her had hoped for a nightmare or an earthquake that would bring him running into her room. All her wild fantasies ended with him running into her room and catching her up in his hard arms. She sighed. This was certainly not the trip she’d envisioned. It was turning into a wild tangle of new emotions. A week before, she couldn’t have imagined that he would tell her he wanted her.
* * *
They flew to Mexico the following morning. Several hours into the flight Gabby shot a worried glance at J.D. He’d hardly moved in his seat since takeoff, and she’d busied herself looking at clouds and reading the emergency instructions and even the label on her jacket out of desperation.
He seemed to sense her searching gaze and turned his head to look down at her. “What’s wrong?” he asked softly.
She made an odd little gesture. “I don’t know,” she said inadequately.
His eyebrows lifted. “I’ll take care of you.”
“I know that.” She let her eyes fall to the vest of his gray suit. “Will we stay in Mexico City?”
“Probably not. We’re supposed to be met at the airport.” He reached over and took her slender hand in his big one. The contact was warm and wildly disturbing, especially when she felt his thumb moving slowly, sensuously, against her moist palm. “Nervous?” he taunted.
“Oh, no. I always go running off into the dark unafraid,” she replied with a grimace. She glanced up. “I come from a long line of idiots.”
He smiled at her. It was a shock to realize that he’d smiled more at her in these two days than he had in two months back at the office. Her eyes searched the deep brown of his, and the airplane seemed to disappear. He returned the look, his smile fading. His nostrils flared and the hand holding hers began to move slowly, his fingers probing, easing between hers. It was so sensuous she felt herself tremble. His hand was pressed against hers, palm to palm, fingers tightly interlocked, and when it contracted it was almost an act of possession.
Her lips parted in a soft gasp, and his eyes narrowed.
“Bodies do that,” he whispered under his breath, watching her reactions intently. “Just as slowly, just as easily.”
“Don’t,” she protested brokenly, averting her face.
“Gabby,” he chided gently, “don’t be afraid.”
She ground her teeth together and struggled for composure. It wasn’t easy, because he wouldn’t let go of her hand despite her token protest.
“You’re out of my league, Mr. Brettman,” she said unsteadily, “as I’m sure you know. Don’t…don’t amuse yourself with me, please.”
“I’m not.” He sighed and turned sideways so that his head rested against the back of the seat. Then he coaxed her face around to his. “You’ve never known the kind of men you’ll meet when we get where we’re going. I thought,” he continued, smiling at her stunned look, “that it might be easier for you if we got in a little practice along the way.”
“What do you mean? What will we have to do…?” she began nervously.
“I mean, as I told you in Rome, that we’ll have to be inseparable for the most part. We have to look as if we can’t keep our hands off each other.”
She stopped breathing, she knew she did. Her eyes wandered quietly over his face. “Is that why, at the Forum…?”
He hesitated for an instant. “Yes,” he said deliberately. “You were far too jumpy with me to be taken for my lover. It has to look convincing to do us any good.”
“I see,” she said, fighting to keep her disappointment from showing.
He studied her eyes, her cheeks, and then her mouth. “You have the softest lips, Gabby,” he murmured absently. “So full and tempting; and I like the taste of them all too much…” He caught himself and lifted his eyes. “You’d better remind me at intervals that you’re off-limits.”
She was so aware of him that she tingled, and the thought that he might kiss her again made her go hot all over. She smiled strangely and looked away.
“What was that about, that tiny little smile?” he asked curiously.
“I never used to think of you that way,” she confessed without thinking.
“How? As a lover?” he probed.
She lowered her eyes quickly. “Yes,” she said shyly.
She felt his long fingers brush her cheek and then her neck, where the pulse was beating wildly.
“Oddly enough, I’ve hardly thought of you any other way,” he said in a deep, gruff whisper.
Her lips opened as she drew a sharp breath, and she looked straight into his eyes. “J.D….?” she whispered uncertainly.
His thumb brushed across her mouth, a tiny whisper of sensation that made her ache in the oddest places. His own breath wasn’t quite steady, and he frowned, as if what was happening wasn’t something he’d counted on or expected.
His eyes dropped to her parted lips and she heard him catch his breath. In a burst of nervousness, her tongue probed moistly at her dry upper lip and he made a rough sound in his throat. “Gabby, don’t do that,” he ground out. His thumb pressed hard against her mouth, and his head bent. “Let me…”
In a starburst of sensation, she felt the first tentative brush of his hard lips against her own.
And just as it began, it was suddenly over. The speakers blared out a warning for passengers to fasten their seat belts, and the delicate spell was broken.
J.D. lifted his head reluctantly, his eyes almost black with frustration, his face pale. “The next time,” he whispered gruffly, “I’ll kiss the breath out of you, the way I wanted to at the Forum.”
She couldn’t answer him. She was swimming in deep waters, hungry for him in an unexpectedly desperate way. Her hands fumbled with her seat belt and she couldn’t look at him. What was happening to them? she wondered, shaken. Just the morning before, they’d been employer and employee. And in a flash, they were something else, something frightening.
His hand caught hers, enfolding it. “Don’t, please, be frightened of me,” he said under his breath. “I won’t hurt you. Not in any way, for any reason.”
She glanced at him. “I’m all right,” she said. “I’m just…just…”
“Stunned?” he asked wryly. “Join the crowd. It shocked me, too.”
Her eyes locked on their clasped hands. “But I thought you kissed me to—how did you put it—make it look better for the men?”
“I did. And to satisfy my own curiosity about you. And yours about me.” He tilted her face up to his. “Now we know, don’t we?”
“I think I’d be better off not knowing,” she muttered.
“Really? At least now you’ve learned how to kiss.”
“You have the diplomacy of a tank!” she shot at him.
He smiled, his teeth white against that olive tan. “You’re spunky, Gabby. I’m glad. You’re going to need spunk.”
His words brought back the reason for their trip, and she frowned. The plane started to descend and she clung to J.D.’s strong fingers, wondering if in a few weeks this would all be nothing more than a memory. He’d said they’d have to seem involved; was this just a practice session? The frown deepened. She realized quite suddenly that she didn’t want it to be. She wanted J.D. to kiss the breath out of her, as he’d threatened, and mean it.
They landed in Mexico City, and Gabby’s eyes widened as they walked into the terminal. She smiled, dreams of Aztecs and ancient ruins going through her mind—until she remembered poor Martina, and the fact that they weren’t here to look at tourist attractions.
She looked at J.D., standing tall and quiet at her side. He stared slowly around the terminal while Gabby shifted restlessly beside him, their two small carry-on cases beside her.
After what seemed like a long time, J.D. began to smile as a tall, devastatingly attractive man strode toward them. He was wearing a beige suit and leather boots, and he looked debonair and a little dangerous—like J.D.
“Laremos.” J.D. grinned as they shook hands.
“Did you think I’d forgotten you?” the other man asked in softly accented English. “You look well, Archer.”
Gabby’s eyebrows lifted curiously.
“Archer,” the man explained, “is the name to which he answered many years ago, during our…acquaintance. You are Gabby Darwin, no?”
“Yes.” She nodded. “And you are Señor Laremos?”
“Diego Laremos, a sus ordenes,” he said formally, bowing. He grinned. “A beauty, Archer.”
“Yes, I think so myself,” J.D. said casually, smiling at her as he drew her unresisting body close to his side. “Did Dutch phone you?”
The smile faded and Laremos was at once something else, something out of Gabby’s experience. “Sí. Drago and Semson and Apollo are here now.”
“Good. How about my equipment?”
“Apollo got it from Dutch,” Laremos said, his voice low and intent. “An Uzi and a new AKM.”
J.D. nodded while Gabby tried to decide what in the world they were talking about. “We’ll need some RPGs.”
“We have two,” Laremos said. “And eight blocks of C-4, rockets for the RPGs, assorted paraphernalia, jungle gear, and plenty of ammo. The border is a hotbed for drug and human traffickers these days—you can get anything if you have the money and the contacts.”
J.D. smiled faintly. “Dutch said First Shirt has both. You made a smart move when you put him in charge of your ranch security.”
“Sí,” Laremos agreed. “It is why I survive and many of my neighbors have not. The finca above mine was burned to the ground a month ago, and its owner…” He glanced at Gabby. “Forgive me, señorita. Such talk is not for the ears of women.”
“I don’t even understand it,” she said, studying both men. “What is an RP…whatever it was? And what do you mean, rockets?”
“I’ll tell you all about it later,” J.D. promised. “Got the plane?” he asked Laremos.
The other man nodded. “We will have to go through customs. I assume you have nothing on you that it would be embarrassing to declare when we land, otherwise you would not have made it through Mexican customs.”
J.D. chuckled. “Even with you along, I doubt they’d look the other way if I boarded with an Uzi slung around my neck and clips of ammunition hanging out of my pockets.”
Laremos laughed too. “Doubtless they would not. Come. We are gassed up and ready to go.”
“Uzi?” Gabby queried as they followed him.
J.D. pulled her against him briefly. “An Uzi is an Israeli-made weapon. It’s classified as a submachine gun.”
“Did you use one in the Special Forces?”
He laughed softly. “No.”
“Then how do you…and why…and what…?”
He bent suddenly and pressed a hard, warm kiss on her startled mouth. “Shut up, Gabby, before you get us into trouble.”
As if she could talk at all, after that. Her lips felt as though they’d been branded. If only they’d been alone, and it could have been longer…
Laremos had a twin-engine plane and a pilot to fly it. He settled into one of the comfortable seats in front of Gabby and J.D., and another man, small and young, brought them cups of coffee as the plane headed toward Guatemala City.
“I have told the appropriate people that you and your friend here are visiting me,” Laremos said to J.D. and laughed. “It will put you under immediate suspicion I fear, because my past is no secret. But it will spare you the illegality of having to smuggle yourself across the border. I have friends high in government who will help. Oddly enough, the terrorists who have your sister attempted to kidnap me only weeks ago. First Shirt was nearby and armed.”
“First Shirt doesn’t miss,” J.D. recalled.
“Neither did you, my friend, in the old days.” Laremos studied the older man unsmilingly.
“How many men are there in the terrorist group?” J.D. asked. “Hard core, Laremos, not the hangers-on who’ll cut and run at the first volley.”
“About twelve,” came the reply. “Maybe twenty more who will, as you say, cut and run. But the twelve are veteran fighters. Very tough, with political ties in a neighboring country. They are just part of an international network, with members in Italy who saw a chance to make some fast money to finance their cause. Your brother-in-law is an important man, and a wealthy one. And the decision to bring your sister here was most certainly devised by one of those twelve. They took over the finca only a month ago. I have little doubt that the kidnapping has been planned for some time.” He shrugged. “Also, it is known that the Italian authorities have been successful in dealing with this sort of kidnapping. There is less risk here, so they smuggled her out of Italy.”
“Roberto is trying to borrow enough to bargain with,” J.D. said. “He’s determined not to go to the authorities.”
“He does not know about you, does he?” Laremos asked quietly.
J.D. shook his head. “I covered my tracks very well.”
“You miss it, the old life?”
J.D. sighed. “At times. Not often anymore.” He glanced at Gabby absently. “I have other interests now. I was getting too old for it. Too tired.”
“For the same reasons, I became an honest man.” Laremos laughed. “It is by far the better way.” He stretched lazily. “But sometimes I think back and wonder how it would have been. We made good amigos, Archer.”
“A good team,” J.D. agreed. “I hope we still do.”
“Have no fear, amigo. It is like swimming—one never forgets. And you, do you keep in condition?”
“Constantly. I can’t get out of the habit,” J.D. said. “Just as well that I have. Cutting through that jungle won’t be any easy march. I’ve been keeping up with the situation down here, politically and militarily.”
“What about this lovely one?” Laremos asked, frowning as he studied Gabby. “Is she a medic?”
“She’ll handle communications,” J.D. said shortly. “I want her at the ranch with you so that there’s no chance she might get in the line of fire.”
