Morgan's Rescue (13 page)

     
"Only that we'll be visiting
another an
Argentinian horse farm to look at a mare, and we'll be gone for two weeks."

     
"She knows Rane will be at the village?"

     
Pilar grimaced. "No, I told her she would be with us.
When we use one."

     
Culver nodded his approval. If Ramirez realized Pilar was part of this mission, his goons could come in here and scare information out of the old housekeeper, putting the girl in jeopardy. He saw the pleading look in Pilar's eyes to say nothing more in front of her daughter. "Okay, let's get going. I'll bring the luggage."

     
Pilar sighed softly. Rane was sound asleep in her arms. They had taken Pilar's second car, an older Volvo, and had made it two hours out of
Lima
, on their way to Tarapoto, without further mishap. Overhead, the night sky sparkled with stars. This stretch of road was devoid of other cars, and she relaxed almost to the point of dropping off to sleep herself. Culver had taken advantage of the thermos of coffee she'd brought, drinking it steadily to stay awake.

     
"It won't be long," she promised him softly as she rested her hand across Rane. Her daughter was so lanky that her small, sock feet rested against Culver's massive thigh, but he didn't seem to mind. In fact, Rane had gravitated to him. Pilar wasn't surprised. She had gravitated to Culver, too.

     
"Good," he rumbled, rolling his shoulders to release the tension accumulating in them. "I'm dead on my feet."

     
"I know you are," she said, giving him a worried look. The sudden intensity of his gaze at her words caught her by surprise. Just as abruptly, he turned his attention back to the road ahead. They were now climbing into the hills, far from the Pacific. "I don't know how you do it. I never did. . . ."

     
"What?" Culver saw such peace in Pilar's face now that her daughter was safely in her arms.

     
She sighed softly. "I was always amazed at your untiring spirit. You never seemed to give out or give up." Pilar laughed a little and looked at him with tenderness. "Remember? I was always the one who had to rest. You were always ready to push on."

     
"Yes, I remember." Culver felt his heart beat hard in his chest at her intimate look. Pilar had a way of making him feel he was the center of her universe when she talked with him. He felt that way now. Bitterly, he reminded himself it was a facade—just part of the pretty packaging of Pilar Martinez.

     
"I'm scared this time, Culver."

     
He wrenched himself out of his self-pity. "What?" He glanced at her once more, and saw that her face was drawn with worry.

     
"I'm scared as never before." Pilar gazed lovingly down at her sleeping daughter and gently caressed her hair. "I have an awful feeling about this mission. I have from the start. Ramirez is evil. He has no heart in his chest. He kills as naturally as we breathe."

     
Culver checked the urge to reach out and touch her sagging shoulder. "Maybe," he said huskily, "you have more to lose this time around."

     
"Rane is my life," Pilar admitted in a broken whisper, as she studied her daughter's sleeping face. "She's taught me so much about giving and taking love. She has helped me heal in so many ways. I'm sure she'll never realize all she's done for me, and it doesn't matter." Her hand stilled on Rane's small shoulder. She saw the expression on Culver's face. His eyes had softened, as had the set of his mouth. When he realized she was watching him, his features hardened again. Pilar wanted so badly to tell him how sorry she was, but it would do no good.

     
Instead, she said, "Tell me about your home in
Scotland
, Culver."

     
"You didn't know much about me eight years ago. Why is it important now?"

     
She felt the cutting edge in his low tone. He refused to look at her, and she was glad for the cloak of darkness that hid her reaction to his biting words. "You talked of wanting a home," she persisted. "Are you going to return to
Scotland
?"

     
"My grandparents live there—I have relatives in
Scotland
and
England
. But my folks live in
Colorado
." His mouth twisted. "I guess the Rockies were as close as they could get in the
U.S.
to the Scottish moors and mountains. I like isolated places with lots of trees, and I like people who work with the earth and respect it."

     
Tentatively, she asked, "Do you have brothers or sisters?"

     
His hands tightened on the steering wheel. A part of him was wary of Pilar's attempt to weave more intimacy into their relationship. She was so personable, but where did the right to know and the
right to privacy begin
and end? With Pilar, the boundary was all too blurred. "I have four brothers and one sister, Mary."

     
"And does she live in
Scotland
?"

     
"No. In
Durango
, a small town in southern
Colorado
, near my folks."

     
"Is she married?"

     
"Yes. She's got two kids."

     
Pilar smiled a little. "Then you're an uncle."

     
He nodded. "They're good kids. Mary's divorced, but she has custody of them, and Bob, her ex-husband, sees them on weekends." He wanted to ask about Pilar's marriage to Fernando, but decided he'd rather not know. Why stab his heart with another ice pick? Was he a masochist or something?

     
Pilar stroked Rane's arm gently and watched her sleep. It was on the tip of her tongue to ask if Culver was married. Had he found someone, as he so richly deserved to do? Someone who could care for him the way he was capable of caring? Pushing a strand of hair out of her eyes, she released an unsteady breath. Just being this close to Culver made her ache with desire. Despite the harshness of the intervening years and circumstances, she wanted him now as she had the first time their eyes had met. Pilar didn't fool herself this time, however. She would never allow Culver to know she still wanted him. They lived in very different worlds. The two could never truly meet and bond. Her world wouldn't allow it.

     
"We'll be in Tarapoto in about forty minutes," she said into the silence. Looking at her watch, she saw it was three in the morning. Darkened jungle hugged the two-lane highway now, silhouetted against a starry sky.

     
"Good, because I'm ready to keel over from lack of sleep."

     
"How long has it been?"

     
"A good thirty-six hours."

     
"Do you want me to drive?"

     
"No, you have Rane on your lap. Don't wake her."

     
"If I talk, does it help you stay awake?"

     
His mouth quirked.
"Yes, talking helps." And God help him, he had so many questions he wanted to ask Pilar. "I remember one time you saying your father had royal blood?" He glanced at her.

     
Pilar stirred. Talking might help keep him awake, but she wasn't completely comfortable being the target of his attention. "My father was an aristocrat from
Spain
—an ambassador to
Peru
."

     
"And he married your mother, Maria?"

     
"Yes…Mama was a Quechua medicine woman." She opened her hand and studied it. "I was an only child and very much loved."

     
"I imagine," Culver said, "you lived a life of luxury." A lifestyle he couldn't have given her at twenty-five.

     
"Yes," she agreed. "I grew up at the consulate in
Lima
, surrounded by servants. Later, my papa sent me to
America
for college."

     
"And you went to Harvard," he confirmed, remembering.

     
Pilar nodded.

     
"Was it hard moving back and forth between North American society and this one?"

     
She sighed and nodded again. "You know how it is down here in
South America
. At Harvard, I didn't have to endure the kind of prejudice I experience here. People can be cruel. Manuela, Hector's assistant, for example, hates me."

     
"Why?"

     
She heard the dismay in his voice, and it gave her the courage to tell him the story.
"Because I'm mestiza—what you might call a ‘half-breed' in the
U.S.
You see, Manuela comes from a rich family of pure Castilian lineage. When she saw me leaving Hector
's office one day shortly after I became an agent, she turned to a friend and said, ‘Imagine mating a fine Paso Fino stallion to a donkey from the barrios of
Lima
. What you get is her."'

     
"The bitch."

     
Pilar felt the grating anger in Culver's voice.
"The words cut me deeply," she admitted, surprised by his response in her defense. "I guess I should have been used to such remarks by then, but I could never seem to harden myself in that way. I tried to hold my head up and keep my shoulders squared, as my mother counseled me. She was a housekeeper at the consulate when she met Papa. They fell in love, even though everyone said it was wrong."

     
Culver nodded. He was familiar with South American prejudice. A woman was considered the property of her husband. A daughter's entire fortune and life was tied to the man her father chose for her to marry. "Are your parents still around?"

     
Pilar felt sadness overwhelm her. "My wonderful Papa died when I was twenty-one. It was one of the worst days of my life. He died suddenly, of a heart attack. He was only sixty."

     
"And your mother?
What did she do without the shield of your father between her and
Lima
's rich?"

     
Pilar smiled grimly. "She fled
Lima
and moved back to the village where she was born. Without Papa's powerful presence, Mama didn't want to stay where she wasn't welcome. Five years later, she died suddenly, without warning. Now," Pilar whispered, "all I have left are Grandmother Aurelia and Grandfather Alvaro."

     
"And you got out of your career as an agent when?"

     
Squeezing her eyes shut, Pilar managed to say in a strained tone, "I joined at twenty-two, as soon as I graduated from Harvard. I was part-time in only three years. I—I quit after our mission."

     
Culver heard what was not said. She had married Fernando, a man twice her age—probably chosen by her father for her when she was ten or twelve years old. Fernando was a man of obvious wealth and station. Well, Culver couldn't fault Pilar for that, could he? She was
mestiza
, considered an outcast by the well-to-do of
Lima
with their aristocratic Spanish blood. Her father had been rich, and she wouldn't marry below her station, even with her half-breed blood. No, old Fernando had been a far more appropriate suitor than Culver had been. Hell, he'd been a twenty-five-year-old CIA agent with five thousand dollars in savings, no aristocratic breeding and without the sort of future prospects Pilar had wanted.