Spy Hard (14 page)

“How about you start that quest for complete independence when you get back home?”

“I
can
take care of myself, you know,” she said, her defenses rising.

“I know you can.”

Huh?
Nobody had told her that before. She looked at him with some suspicion, wondering if he was just humoring her, but his expression seemed earnest.

“I don’t even doubt that you could walk out of the jungle by yourself,” he said after a moment. “The research station is not that far. You know the direction. There’s plenty of rainwater to drink, and a person can go days without food.”

That’s right.
She sat up a little straighter on her log. She could.

“Add Mochi to the mix and you’re as good as there. Between the two of you, you have all kinds of skills. So if anything should happen to me, I want the two of you to just keep going.”

What would happen to him? Did he plan on leaving her and going back to his mission? “I don’t want anything to happen to you,” she blurted.

He gave a slow smile that went straight to her heart.

That infernal awareness that refused to go away blossomed between them once again.

But then Mochi asked him something, and she dropped his hands and stepped away, busying herself with getting ready for the night. He checked Mochi’s arm, then went to see about the tea.

He’d set up a cozy campsite for them, the hammocks close to each other, the fire placed so the smoke wouldn’t hit them but would still keep some of the insects away.

When the tea was done he unwrapped the venison jerky and the flatbread he’d set out earlier, and they had a decent meal.

The prospect of spending another night in the open didn’t seem as scary as before, now that she’d survived one night like this already.

She couldn’t deny the homey sense to the scene—Jase and she sitting by the fire while Mochi played with the puppy, training him with that peg leg. She caught herself smiling more than once as she watched them. Then the boy picked up the dog, and together they settled into his hammock.

Like a family camping trip.

She’d have that someday—under normal circumstances—with her mellow music teacher. Who somehow seemed less appealing now than when she’d first invented him. She wondered where Jase would be then. Probably in a place very much like this. The thought started a dull ache inside her. She took another sip of her tea.

He went to put a few more logs on the fire. The flames behind him outlined his powerful physique, a sturdy frame with solid muscles. He was built for fighting, for this life, for dominating the environment around him and winning. He wasn’t afraid of anyone or anything. Her exact opposite.

He strode back to their log when he was done and settled in, checking and cleaning his gun. They sat in companionable silence for a while.

“Let me see your stings,” he said after he’d finished and put the weapon away.

He cupped her chin and turned her face toward the light of the fire, brushed her hair away with his long fingers. And there came that damned awareness again.

His touch unnerved her. She remembered their kiss back at the hacienda and she wondered if he was thinking the same, because suddenly his gaze dipped to her lips.

The night vibrated with tension around them.

“I wish we didn’t have to leave camp in such a hurry and you had more time to try to seduce me,” he said with a devilish grin.

Her breath caught.
Keep it lighthearted.
She pulled up a cocky eyebrow. “Try?”

He laughed.

The sound went straight to her heart. She had to do something to stop that.

“Do you flirt with all the women you rescue?” she asked.

The smile slid off his face as he pulled away.

She’d clearly hit a nerve. Should she apologize? “None of my business.” His private life was his private life.

“I have this thing…” he mumbled.

She threw him a questioning look.

“Like a rescue complex or something,” he confessed in a low voice. “I’m working on it.”

They sat in silence for a while.

“I have the opposite problem,” she said at last. “I think if someone is trying to help me it must mean that they love me. So in looking for love, I continually put myself in situations where I need to be rescued. Comes from having parents who were both too busy with their academic careers to pay any attention to me whatsoever when I was a kid, except when I was hurt.”

“That’s a lot of insight,” he observed. “Sounds like you got your money’s worth in therapy.”

“All free.” She gave a sour smile. “One of my best friends at work is a psychologist.”

“Where do your friends think you are now?”

“Safe and sound at my wealthy brother-in-law’s country estate, too far off the beaten path to be in cell phone range.” Which meant nobody was calling the police to search for her. But even if some of her friends did, Pedro had the local police bought and paid for. They wouldn’t go anywhere near him.

“Ironic that the one time I truly, badly need rescuing, nobody even knows I’m in trouble.”

“I’m here,” he said simply.

Yes, he was.

“We’re not a good combination, are we? We play right into each other’s misguided needs. My need to be rescued and yours to rescue.” She could only imagine the dysfunctional relationship that would result if two people like them ever got together.

He shook his head.

“It can’t be easy to have a normal relationship with the work you do,” she observed, wondering if he felt as lonely as she did in the middle of the night.

“I thought I was in love once,” he said after a few minutes, staring into the fire. “She turned out to be a counterspy and nearly killed me in the end. I survived, but my stupidity cost lives.”

“Let me know if you want to talk to my shrink girlfriend someday. I’ll set you up.”

He gave her a flat smile.

She couldn’t even imagine the kind of life he lived, a life where he couldn’t trust anyone, not even the woman he was falling in love with.

Then again, a little mistrust might be healthy. In hindsight, she’d trusted Julio way too fast, married him even faster. She should have waited until she knew something about his family. That would have saved her a lot of grief, for sure.

She watched as Jase fed the flames. “Do you miss your family when you’re on a mission?”

He looked back at her. “My parents are gone. Never had any brothers and sisters. The type of work I do is best suited for men without close family ties.”

That sounded terribly lonely. She wasn’t sure what to say.

“You?”

“My mother and father passed away, but I have two older sisters in the States. They were both out of the house by the time I was growing up.” Didn’t believe a word about the neglect she’d lived through, that their parents had simply run out of attention and patience by the time she was born.

She’d worn clothes for years after they were too small, had to fend for herself pretty much as far as food went. Her parents ate at the university cafeteria, so her mother rarely remembered to cook at home. About the only time they seemed to realize that she was alive was when she was sick or hurt. She’d learned to use that.

Then she’d learned, once she’d grown up, that she needed to stop such self-defeating habits. She wasn’t mad at her parents. They’d been who they had been.

“I don’t have a lot of warm and fuzzy memories of my childhood, and I’m unwilling to pretend for my sisters’ sake that I do, which causes friction,” she admitted, aware of his nearness, of his full attention on her, his graphite eyes watching her solemnly.

Her father had gotten even stranger after her mother’s death. Flipped over to supercontrolling. He couldn’t prevent the death of his beloved wife but, by God, he was going to protect his accident-prone daughter now. From everything. Trouble was, she was in college by then.

Ignored when she’d needed care. Practically locked up when she should have been trying her wings.

Compared to her, Jase seemed amazingly pulled together. He smelled woodsy and manly, a tantalizing scent that seeped inside her and messed with her senses, so she prattled on to prove that she was unaffected.

“My sisters resent my version of the past, so now we have this gap between us. I’m going to end that nonsense as soon as I get home. They’re going to be William’s aunts. The time I spent at the camp as Pedro’s prisoner put a lot of things into perspective.”

Longing unfurled deep inside her. “I miss my sisters.”

She’d been working on her Ph.D. in South America for so long, she was used to not seeing them a lot. But all of a sudden she wanted them desperately, wanted to stay alive to see them again. Tears sprung to her eyes. She wiped them away. Stupid pregnancy hormones again.

When the next batch of tears came, Jase brushed them away with the pad of his thumb. And then he leaned in and kissed her.

Any thoughts of loneliness were shoved to the back of her mind as his warm lips settled over hers.

Her nerves didn’t get the better of her like the first time. He was no longer a stranger. He was no longer a bandit. He was the man who’d saved her life on more than one occasion, the man who’d saved an orphaned kid and a three-legged puppy. He was the man who was going to lead all of them out of the jungle.

She liked the way he kissed: not like some starved wild man, not manhandling her, but holding her and kissing her gently, letting her set the pace. It lulled her into feeling safe with him, and because she felt safe, she could truly enjoy the kiss.

Pleasure bloomed in her body, spreading through her, making her lose herself in the moment and in his kiss. When she pulled back after a long, titillating minute, he didn’t try to hold her back. He just looked at her with a dazed expression on his face.

He cleared his throat. “We’d better get some sleep.”

An image of the two of them in a proper bed, together, flashed into her mind, and heat spread through her in a flash. She found the picture irresistibly appealing. She’d been alone for months and months now, isolated at the compound. He was the first person she could trust. Falling for him would have been so incredibly easy.

And so beyond-belief stupid.

He was going to leave her in a few days. They were never going to see each other again.

She pushed up to a standing position and waddled to her hammock without looking back at him.

*

H
E NEEDED TO
stop kissing her.

The lingering taste of her on his lips was damn distracting.

Despite what she thought of him, he didn’t make a habit of having affairs with women he saved. Just the one. And that had turned out disastrously.

Letting his testosterone run away with him where Melanie was concerned had the potential of ending even worse. She was pregnant. There was a baby to be considered. Having a child alone had to be difficult enough. He didn’t want to step into the middle of all that and mess up her life even worse.

Even if he wanted her, child and all.

Crazy.

He’d never seen himself as a father figure. He liked saving people, the adventure of it, but the long-term taking care of them… He wasn’t sure how good he’d be at that. His job didn’t exactly spell family man.

He settled into his hammock, his body hard as a rock. “I don’t know where that came from. Sorry about the kiss,” he called over.

“Don’t ever apologize for a kiss like that,” she called back after a second, quoting him.

He grinned into the darkness.

He really liked her.

“How much farther is it to the research station?” she asked after a little while.

“Two more days.” Too long, and in a way not nearly long enough. “We’re about halfway there. You handled everything fine so far. You’ll handle the rest just the same. Piece of cake.”

*

H
E REMEMBERED THAT
sentiment two days later and wished he’d never tempted fate by saying it. Jase swore silently as he stepped into the large clearing and took in the charred, empty building where a fully staffed research station should have been.

The outpost had been attacked and burned—a few days before, from the look of it. He signaled to Melanie and Mochi to stay back, stay in the cover of the palm trees.

“Hello,” he called out as he moved forward, then stepped into the building, his gun ready.

No response came.

He saw a number of rust-colored stains on the wall as he walked, then more dried blood on the floor in one of the bedrooms. But he found no bodies as he cleared the station room by room.

He checked the kitchen for supplies, since he didn’t have much left in his backpack. But whoever had ransacked the place had cleared out pretty much everything. He searched for the station’s radio equipment, but what hadn’t been ripped out had been bashed to pieces.

He wished, not for the first time, that he still had his own phone. The research station had a patch cleared for a landing helicopter. He could call in his location and they’d have a rescue team here within hours.

Disappointment washed through him as he moved to one of the windows and waved to Melanie and Mochi to let them know that it was safe to come in.

“What happened to the people?” She looked around wide-eyed and a little green around the gills when they caught up with him in the central hallway.

“The staff probably called for help when the attack began. Help got here at one point and evacuated the survivors and the bodies.”

She braced her back and nodded numbly. “Why would anyone attack peaceful scientists? Who would do this?”

“Either Cristobal’s men or the government troops. My money is on the latter. Not all the generals are crazy about foreign presence in their country. Some consider the scientific and human aid groups coming here American spies.”

A stricken expression clouded her already drawn face.

“We’ll spend the day here.” While the charred wood around them smelled like smoke, the fire had burned out. “You need rest.”

Tension drew his shoulders tight. She was eight months pregnant. She needed to be evacuated. Now.

She nudged some broken equipment on the floor with her toe. “Do you think the people who worked here will come back?”