Forbidden (5 page)

         
5
         

This had to be the longest flight in the history of the world. Cal shifted in his seat, trying to find a comfortable position. His leg bumped Kayla’s and she glanced up from the book she was reading.

“Sorry,” he murmured.

She pushed up the armrest that separated them and pulled her legs up onto the seat, tailor-style. “Stretch your legs over this way,” she told him, gesturing toward the open space in front of her seat.

He didn’t want to do it. It would mean that her knee would rest tantalizingly on top of his thigh. But if he didn’t do it, he wasn’t going to be able to walk by the time this damned plane landed in the city of Puerto Norte.

He stretched out his legs. She settled back, her own leg lightly resting against his.

The place where she was touching him seemed to burn, and try as he might, he couldn’t think about anything but the fact that they were sitting too damned close.

It never happened
, he’d told her about those powerful kisses they’d shared just the night before.
As of right now, we don’t talk about it, we don’t
think
about it
.

Don’t think about it. Right. He’d been able to think of little else from the moment he’d uttered those words.

His brother’s lover, he silently told himself over and over again. Kayla Grey was his brother’s lover.

“Liam used to talk about you all the time,” she said softly, and he looked up to find her watching him. Her brownish-green eyes were so exactly the color of the hillside back behind his barn, he felt as if he were carrying a piece of home along with him.

“Funny,” he said, “he never spoke to me about
you
.”

She just smiled at his words. “You know, he mentioned you could be a real nasty bastard when provoked.” She closed her book, putting the paper wrapping from a straw between the pages to mark her place. “Can we call a truce here?”

The muscles in his legs twinged, and he shifted in his seat again. “I thought we had.”

“No,” she said, slipping the book into the pouch attached to the seat in front of her before she turned to face him. “No, you barked out some kind of command about how we were both supposed to ignore and deny the very human, very natural…
interaction
we shared last night.”

Interaction? Damn right it was interaction. And it had come dangerously close to a whole lot more action.

“This…
attraction
between us isn’t something we have to be embarrassed about,” she continued. “We’re grown-ups. We can deal with this without having to pretend it didn’t happen.”

Cal resisted the urge to put his head back and cover his face with his cowboy hat. He suspected if he did, she’d keep talking to him anyway. No, he would just sit there, silently, and let her talk herself out.

“You didn’t know who I was,” she persisted.

“But
you
knew who you were,” he couldn’t resist commenting, even though he’d vowed to stay silent.

Kayla’s graceful lips curled up into a very small, faintly bitter smile. “My mistake was in wanting to be held.” She glanced up at him, her eyes flashing. “If I remember correctly, I asked you only to hold me. I didn’t ask you to kiss me until the room spun.”

Until the room spun? Had the room really spun for her too?

Their gazes caught and held, and for one brief, molten moment, Cal was sure he was going to reach for her again. For a fraction of a second he’d almost thought he had. But if he’d moved, he’d also stopped himself. God help him, he’d
better
stop himself.

“You shouldn’t have let me kiss you,” he countered harshly. “Lord knows I couldn’t help myself, but you—”

“Oh,
please
,” she scoffed. “Don’t give me that ‘I’m a man, I couldn’t help myself, but you’re a woman, it’s your job to stop me’ garbage. Too many men fail to take responsibility for themselves and their actions. Too many men cop out and blame testosterone for their own weakness.”

“All right, it’s all my fault—is that what you want to hear? I didn’t know who you were. You were beautiful, you were barely dressed, you were all alone, and I wanted you.” Damnation, he wanted her still. His desire was surely written clearly in his eyes, but he held her gaze anyway, daring her to acknowledge it.

“If you ask me to hold you again,” he continued softly, “I won’t make the same mistake. Because I
do
take responsibility for my actions. Because I
don’t
cop out. And because I honor my brother’s feelings—even if you don’t.”

“Last night was a highly emotionally charged situation for both of us,” she whispered, color spreading across her delicate cheekbones.

And so was the situation they were heading directly toward. It, too, was life and death, and just as fraught with emotional peril.

It had been nearly four months since Liam had last been seen. That is, assuming the American prisoner truly
was
Liam. If he was, four months was a long time for a man who was beaten and tortured regularly to stay alive….

Cal didn’t want to let himself hope, but it was already too late. He
did
hope. Sweet Lord, he was beyond hoping. He was thinking in terms of when, not if.
When
they found the kid…
When
they figured out a way to get him out of the prison and off the island…
When
he brought Liam back to the ranch…

If he was wrong, if the kid had died in that bus explosion…He didn’t want to think about it, didn’t want to think what that would do to him.

He looked at Kayla. She was quiet now, but she hadn’t picked up her book again. Her hands were clasped tightly in her lap, her knuckles nearly white from the pressure. Her eyes were brimming with tears that she refused to allow to escape. She blinked them valiantly back.

She loved Liam too.

The thought hit him hard in the gut and he knew his words to her had been too harsh, too cruel. She
did
love Liam. She’d come all the way to Montana to get the help she needed to search for him.

And now she was sitting there, with each passing moment a little bit closer to finding out if he was dead, as they’d been told, or still alive.

Maybe she didn’t love Liam as well as she should have, but she
did
love him. This had to be as hard on her as it was on Cal. And his cruel intolerance was only making it worse.

“Where exactly did you meet Liam?” he asked softly, both wanting to know and wanting her to know that there could, indeed, be a truce between them. And not just for Liam’s sake.

Fresh tears flooded her eyes, and he had to turn and pretend he didn’t notice her wiping them away.

“In Boston,” she told him. “He was writing an article on date rape and he came into the crisis center where I work. He wanted to do a ‘day in the life of a crisis center worker’ kind of sidebar for the piece, and he followed me around for twenty-four hours straight, writing down everything I said and did.” She smiled softly at the memory, her eyes distant. “The article was wonderful. It sparked interest in the center that got us additional funding.” She looked up at Cal. “He told me he always sent you copies of everything he wrote. Do you remember reading it? It was about eight months before he left for San Salustiano.”

Cal nodded. He remembered. “I’ll have to look at it again. I don’t remember your name being in there.”

“It wasn’t.” She leaned her head back against the seat as she looked at him. “The names were all changed to protect the innocent.”

“So that’s when you…became involved with him?”

Kayla shook her head no. “That’s when we became friends. He was seeing someone and I…I had my own agenda to work through. We didn’t start dating until right before he—”

Died. She was going to say died.

“—right before he left for the Caribbean.” She lifted the rodeo ring she was wearing on a chain around her neck, watching the light sparkle on the shiny red stone. “He asked me to marry him on our first official date. I still think his proposal was just an attempt to get me into bed.”

What on earth had possessed her to say
that
? Kayla had to look away from the cowboy, afraid to see his reaction to her words reflected in his pale blue eyes. From now on she had to avoid all references to sex, no matter how vague. Because there was something there between them, something almost tangible, something powerful. Something much too dangerous to fool with.

“Hell of a ploy,” Cal drawled, “considering he was willing to trade the rest of his life for the pleasure.”

“Liam wasn’t…very good at long-term planning,” she said, choosing her words cautiously. “He didn’t think much beyond the here and now. In fact, I’m not sure he gave much thought to the concept of marriage involving the rest of his life.”

To her surprise, Cal chuckled. “I guess you
did
know him pretty well, didn’t you?”

“Not as well as he wanted me to know him.”

His eyes narrowed slightly in disbelief, and Kayla had to look away again, suddenly embarrassed at the intimate secrets her words had revealed.

She hadn’t slept with Liam. She hadn’t been ready to, not even after having known him for eight months. Yet she’d come impossibly close to making love to his brother, closer than she had come in years to making love to anyone, after only an hour-and-a-half-long acquaintance.

Kayla didn’t want to think about what that might mean. She
wouldn’t
think about it. She hadn’t come this far to be distracted by a man who was such a curious and fascinating mix of soft and hard, hot and cold, gentle understanding and cruel intolerance.

“I spoke to as many people as I could about how to approach the San Salustiano government regarding Liam,” she told the rancher. He was watching her closely, as if he were trying to probe her mind. It was disconcerting and intimidating, and she gazed back at him, trying not to let him see her squirm.

His faded cowboy hat was resting on one knee, and he’d run his fingers through his jet-black hair, leaving it tousled and tumbling forward across his forehead. His rugged face was weathered from the sun, with deep wrinkles etched alongside his odd-colored eyes. His eyes
should
have been the warmest shade of deep brown, not this zero-degree grayish-blue.

Kayla searched his face for any similarity to Liam. Cal’s slightly hooked nose was different, as were his exotically wide cheekbones. Everything about him was different—the shape of his face, the color of his hair, the strength of his chin.

His mouth. There was something about his mouth that proclaimed the two men brothers. Maybe.

Kayla realized he was waiting for her to continue speaking, but she’d long since lost her train of thought. “Liam didn’t—
doesn’t
—look very much like you.”

“We had different mothers.”

Liam had told her that. Cal’s mother was part Native American—from the Crow tribe, Liam had said. Her heritage was evident in Cal’s height and darkly handsome face. She also knew that his mother had died when Cal was five. Both brothers had that in common—although Cal hadn’t had an older brother to care for him.

But Liam hadn’t told her that he and his older brother were as different as night and day. Liam was loquacious. He was charming and charismatic and sparkling with good humor. He was a relentless talker, filling any silences with stories and opinions and snatches of song.

Cal, on the other hand, didn’t speak unless he absolutely had to. Even then he was terse and to the point.

Kayla gave him a tentative smile. “Your mother was the talkative one, right?”

She saw it. A flash of genuine amusement in his eyes. It was a smile, even though it didn’t quite reach his lips.

“I figure if you know Liam as well as you claim to, considering the way the kid could talk, you know all there is to know about me.”

Kayla
did
know quite a bit. She knew that Cal had dropped out of high school the day he turned sixteen in order to run the ranch and provide for his little brother. She knew that there were many relentless, grueling hours involved in being a working rancher. She knew he’d given Liam everything he’d ever asked for. She knew he’d held Liam’s undying loyalty and deep-flowing brotherly love.