And Babies Make Four (2 page)

At least, not until now.

She licked her lips, which suddenly felt bone dry despite the oppressive humidity. “What did he say?”

Donovan gave a dry chuckle. “Trust me. You don’t want to know.”

Anger built like a thunderhead inside her. This guy was her employee, and the sooner she made that clear, the better. “Look, Mr. Donovan, for the next week and a half I’m paying the bills, so I’m the boss. You do what I say—period. Now tell me what that old man said.”

His eyes narrowed and his jaw pulled into a hard, tight line. Once again she sensed the violence within him, straining like a wolf on a chain. A hellishly handsome blue-eyed wolf … But this time she sensed
something in herself as well—small, twisting and unfamiliar, with an underlying violence that matched his own. She stood rigidly still, frozen by his gaze and the strange, unexpected currents it created inside her. Adrenaline coursed through her, but not from fear. She wished to God it was from fear.…

Donovan stuffed his bandanna into his back pocket. “He says you’re scrawny as a chicken, and have the disposition of a warthog, but you’ve got great legs and a tight little ass, and he figures you’d be pretty good in bed.” He flashed her a grin as uncivilized as the rest of him. “So tell me,
sweetheart
, any truth in that?”

This is a bad dream, Noel thought as she tightened her grasp on the Jeep’s roll bar. In a minute I’m going to wake up in my own apartment, in my own bed—

But as the Jeep roared through another pothole, she was forced to admit the truth. She was careening through the depths of a Caribbean jungle in a vehicle that threatened to rattle apart at any moment, driven by a macho maniac who wouldn’t know a safe-driving lesson if it bit him in the a—

Another bone-jarring jolt cut short her imaginings. She cast a worried glance at the equipment in the back of the Jeep, with special concern for the two small notebook PCs perched on top. The ordinary-looking units contained two of the most extraordinary personalities she’d ever known—Sheffield’s remarkable artificial-intelligence computers PINK and Einstein.
With the technicians’ help she’d painstakingly downloaded subsets of their personalities into the PCs, taking duplicates of their programs to help her in her analytical research. Technically the AI computers were still safe and sound in the powerful Sheffield mainframe back in Miami. But for all practical purposes they were being bounced and battered just as badly as she was.

“Can’t you slow down?” she asked the man behind the wheel.

Donovan gave a belligerent snort. “This Jeep only goes two speeds—flat out and stop. But relax. I know these roads like the back of my hand.”

Yeah, but how long since you’ve looked at your hand?
Donovan inspired many emotions in her. Confidence wasn’t one of them. Still, as she stole a clandestine look at his profile, she honestly had to admit that his other attributes were pretty impressive.

Tanned and tough, he was pure muscle from his sinewy arms to his washboard stomach. His rugged profile had none of Hayward’s refined handsomeness, yet it drew her eye like a flame draws a moth. Health clubs could have made a mint using him in their advertisements. The man radiated sheer animal power like the sun radiated heat. There was something almost infernally irresistible about the unrepentant strength of his jaw, and the ruthless directness of his shockingly blue eyes. A man’s man, she thought, trying to box his image with the cliché. She might have succeeded, if she weren’t such a stickler for honesty.

She didn’t trust the man. She was well on her way
to detesting him. Yet her research-trained gaze saw the disturbing shadows that haunted his deep-set eyes, and the sensitive, expressive mouth that was so much at odds with the rest of his harsh, frowning features. She looked away, feeling jarred in a way that had nothing to do with the pothole-pocked road they traveled.

Clearing her throat, she steered her thoughts in a safer direction. “How long have you known Jack?”

He shrugged. “Fagen? We worked together on and off for years, handling security and defense projects for emerging nations.” He gave her a sharp, sideways glance, as if he knew she expected the worst of him. “I’m qualified to handle the AI prototypes, if that’s what you’re driving at.”

“That’s not—” she began, shaking her head in frustration. She’d always considered herself a calm, levelheaded person, but Donovan managed to push every one of her hot buttons. Consistently. If he kept this up she wasn’t going to survive a week, much less ten days. “Look, I know we started off on the wrong foot, but we’ve still got to work together. Can we start over and at least try to be civil to each other?”

Donovan never took his eyes from the road. “Lady, one reason I left the States was to get away from ‘civil.’ ”

Well, I tried, she thought glumly, looking away. It wasn’t her fault if this cretin didn’t want to be polite, but it was going to be a long ten days. Take it a day at a time, she told herself. In less than two weeks she’d
be off this godforsaken island, and back to her regular job, her friends, her climate-controlled condominium.

And to her climate-controlled life.

Lord, where had that thought come from? She had a wonderful life—a challenging job, an elegant condo, lots of friends. What more could a woman want?

More
, whispered a contrary inner voice.
Much, much more.

“You’re right,” Donovan said suddenly.

Noel whirled to face him, her eyes wide with shock. He couldn’t have read her mind. Could he? “Wha-what do you mean?”

“My bad attitude.” The tension in his hard jaw eased slightly as he gave her a look that was almost contrite. “Look, I’ve got nothing against you personally, but until I got Jack’s letter this morning I was expecting a man. Sending a woman here … well, it complicates things.”

Noel’s great-grandmother on her mother’s side had been an advocate for women’s rights, and the doctor stiffened with every ounce of her suffragette heritage. “I can do the research as well as Dr. Harvey. Better, if you want to know the truth.”

“I’m sure you can.” Donovan flashed her the edge of a disturbingly disarming smile. “I’m just not sure you’re going to get the chance. The mountains you plan to explore lie at the heart of St. Michelle, both geographically and spiritually. The islanders won’t want a woman—especially a
foreign
woman—treading on their sacred ground.”

“But I have permits.” She reached down to pat her bulging, soft-side briefcase. “I’ve got dozens of them—everything from trespassing exceptions to a fishing license. I’ve been legally approved by every bureau in this country’s government.”

“Maybe so, sweetheart,” Donovan explained with a cynical smile, “but that
government
is two islands and fifty miles of ocean away. Official permits don’t mean jack sh—er, squat on St. Michelle. The only law these people live by are the traditional tribal-Catholic-spiritual customs they’ve adhered to for the last hundred-odd years. And the only recognized authority is the chief shaman, Papa Guinea.”

“A shaman? Like a witch doctor?”

“Got it in one,” he commented gruffly.

He slowed the Jeep to an almost responsible speed and turned off the main road onto a narrow, green-canopied path. The overgrown lane made the road they’d just left seem like a superhighway, but Noel hardly noticed the new bumps and potholes. She was too busy thinking about the bulging stack of impressive-looking permits in her bag—useless permits if what Donovan said was true. She winced, recalling all the time and trouble she’d spent procuring the documents—all the hours she’d wasted while the island bureaucrats sent her from room to room to room. The officials must have known from the start that the documents would be worthless once she reached the island, but they’d taken her company’s money just the same. Bastards, she thought grimly, realizing too
late that her country didn’t have a lock on dishonest politicians.

All right. If they weren’t going to play fair, neither would she. “Couldn’t we just sneak into the mountains by the back roads?”

“We could—if we didn’t care about having the entire population out for our blood. Don’t let the sleepy atmosphere fool you. These people take their religion seriously, and defiling the sacred lands is as good as a death sentence.”

She glanced at the man beside her, the only person she’d met who’d told her anything like the truth. She wasn’t entirely comfortable with the thought. Actually, she wasn’t one bit comfortable with the thought. Depending on Sam Donovan for a ride was bad enough—depending on him for anything more bordered on suicidal. She’d rather have trusted a force-five hurricane than her guide, but she had no choice. The Eden Project was her responsibility, and she needed Donovan’s help to get it done.

“All right. If this Papa Guinea is the person I need to see, then you’d better take me to him.”

“You don’t just waltz up to Papa’s door and demand to see him. Not unless you want to spend the rest of your life as a chicken.”

“Surely you don’t believe in voodoo magic,” Noel scoffed.

“I’ll give you a free piece of advice,” he said in a voice so chilling, it raised the hackles on the back of her neck. “If you want to make it through the next ten days you’ll show some respect for ‘voodoo magic.’
When you stepped out of the plane you stepped over the line. You’re not in the civilized world anymore. The rules are different here.”

The rules are different here.
She watched the shadows of the overhanging vines slide across the hard contours of his face and body. His expression was closed tighter than a tomb. She suspected he was the kind of man a person could know for years, and not really know at all. The kind of man who could pretend to care about you, then turn around and leave you without even saying good—

“We’ll see him,” Donovan stated suddenly.

She shook her head, putting aside memories she’d boxed and shut away almost thirty years before. “See who?”

Donovan grimaced. “Papa Guinea, of course. He’s holding a general assembly tonight at the old church. If we approach him together, we might be able to convince him that you’re harmless. At least, we might convince him—if you keep your mouth shut. Think you can do that for an evening, sweetheart?”

“I’m not your—” Noel began, but her words died in her throat. At that moment the Jeep reached the end of the green-walled path, leaving the close, humid depths of the jungle behind. They came out on a bluff overlooking the island’s small but bustling harbor. But as far as Noel was concerned, they’d entered another world.

A cool, salt breeze blew off the water, reviving her, filling her with the rich, secret smells of the ocean. Ships of every size and description wandered across
the shining blue meadow of the bay, their seemingly random movements fitting together into a huge, chaotic, yet somehow precise symmetry.

She smiled, charmed beyond words. This was the paradise she’d imagined as a child, the warm, sun-kissed dream that had kept her spirit warm during all those long, sunless winters she’d spent in her grandmother’s rigid and joyless household. It was the dream that had kept her child’s heart from breaking as she watched her beautiful, once-laughing mother fade away to a pale, lifeless shell.…

She was so caught up in the memory that she didn’t immediately register that Donovan had pulled the Jeep to a stop. By the time she did, he’d already hopped out of the driver’s seat and yanked two heavy cases from the open back. She turned, noticing the low, Mediterranean-style bungalow perched like an elegant bird on the bluff’s edge, shaded by immense, ancient banyan trees. “This looks a little small for a hotel.”

“That’s because it isn’t one,” he grunted as he hoisted one of the cases on his broad shoulder. “There aren’t any hotels on St. Michelle. No tourist trade. Visitors, when we get them, stay in private homes. You’ll have to stay here.”

An uneasy suspicion formed in her mind. “Where’s
here?
”

He readjusted the case, and gave a curt nod in the direction of the nearest banyan tree. She glanced toward it and caught sight of a weathered wooden sign hanging from the lowest branch, swinging gently
in the lazy harbor breeze. The white lettering was sun-faded but still legible.
S. DONOVAN
. Her gaze whipped back to her guide, who stood staring at the sign with an expression as glum as her own.

“Like I said, sweetheart,” he told her grimly. “Things would have been a hell of a lot less complicated if you’d been a man.”

God had ten commandments. Sam Donovan had three. Never drink alone. Never cheat a friend. And never, ever do business with a woman.

He’d already broken two of them.

He’d broken number one when he’d gotten Jack Fagen’s letter—delivered only a week late because it was stamped
Urgent
—informing him that Dr. Harvey was being replaced by a Dr. Noel Revere. Cursing, Sam had poured himself a shot of straight tequila, and tossed it back in a single gulp.

He’d broken commandment number three when he’d reached the airfield, and watched the crew from the charter plane unload the doctor’s equipment—and the doctor. Surprised, he watched the slim, dark-haired figure walk with remarkable dignity down the rickety steel steps. He hadn’t expected one of Sheffield’s top computer scientists to be so young. Or to be wearing a sweat-drenched silk shirt that hugged
her very unscientific curves like a fast car on a slick track.