The Stealth Commandos Trilogy (53 page)

Bells were ringing. And someone was shouting in a Portuguese accent. It took him another moment to connect the bell and the shouting. It was their bags, he realized. The porter was at the door with their bags.

“What is that?” Randy asked, gazing up at him as though she’d just emerged from another plane of consciousness.

“I think you’ve been saved by the bellboy,” Geoff said. She drew back, but continued to cling to him, her hands on his shoulders as if she wasn’t sure she’d be able to stand on her own. She seemed even more vulnerable in that moment than when he’d been kissing her, and it made him want to sweep her up and carry her to a bedroom.

“Go ahead,” she said, stepping back and waving him toward the door. “Answer it. I’m all right.”

“I wish that made two of us,” he said under his breath. He was glad for the looseness of his fatigue pants as he headed for the door.

The porter turned out to be a rail-thin young boy who was frantic to please as he rolled the luggage cart into the room. He rushed to unload the luggage, struggling with one of Randy’s heavy suitcases first. Geoff immediately took pity and helped him. When they’d finished, he pulled a ten-dollar bill from the money clip in his pocket and ushered the boy to the door. “Don’t call us, we’ll call you,” he said, tucking the money into the shirt pocket of the kid’s uniform.

As he turned back to Randy, he saw that she was staring out the windows, her arms tightly folded. She was still trembling, and Geoff didn’t need to be told why. He knew exactly what was troubling her. She was thinking about how close they’d come to making love and what would have happened if they had. Despite all of her pleas and his quest for control, they would have been all over each other, crazy, hungry, just like ten years ago. He knew that as well as he knew his name, rank, and serial number. And she knew it too.

“Ouch,” Randy said softly as she plucked a stubborn hair from the inner arch of her eyebrow. It was past midnight, her bedroom door was barricaded against the enemy, and the ritual of purification had begun. She sat on her bed, cross-legged, a cosmetic mirror in one hand, tweezers in the other.

Whenever she was frustrated or anxious she plunged herself into some insignificant but intensely concentrated activity. Counting backward was just one of the devices she used. If she was at home, she cross-indexed her personal library or bleached the grout in her bathroom tiles, scrubbing the grooves with a stiff toothbrush until they were snowy white. If she was at the office, she reorganized her Rolodex or reprogrammed her high-tech message phone. Often the focused action alone could restore her sense of control.

She was neither place tonight, so personal grooming would have to suffice. She’d just given herself a manicure and a pedicure, and now she was restructuring the shape of her eyebrows, admittedly a dangerous thing to do when one was distraught. She could easily end up looking like an extra from “Star Trek,” a Vulcan science officer.

She angled the mirror to catch the light from the table lamp beside the bed, then tweaked a tiny offending dark hair from the space between her brows. Tears stung her eyes, and she swore softly, setting the tweezers down. Not surprisingly, the ritual wasn’t working. It would take more than four coats of Wild Coral Kiss nail polish and Greta Garbo eyebrows to prepare her for the next go-around with Geoff Dias.

The man had a devastating effect on her. His strange green eyes were hypnotic, and his seemingly inhuman control made her feel defenseless against him. It didn’t seem to matter that she held womanizers like him in total contempt. It didn’t even seem to matter that she was engaged to be married. When he touched her, she was entrapped, helpless.

She tested her toenails for dryness, then plucked the cotton balls from between her toes. “You would have loved him, Edna,” she murmured, speaking as if her deceased mother were there. “He’s beautiful, he’s sexier than sin—and he’s a black-hearted devil if I ever saw one. He even rides a motorcycle with a broken heart on it.”

Sliding off the bed, she headed for the lavishly appointed marble-and-brass bathroom. “He doesn’t seem to care a damn that he might be ruining my life,” she added, continuing her soliloquy as she disposed of the cotton balls in the wastebasket. “All he wants is to salve his male ego because I disappeared on him. Being dumped must have been a brand-new experience for him, poor baby. He’s probably used to women worshiping at his feet.”

As Randy came out of her troubled reflections, she caught her own image in the wall of mirrors and hesitated, scrutinizing her pensive expression. There were purple smudges under her dark eyes, and her normal healthy flush had faded to paleness. She should have been in bed asleep—or if nothing else, thinking about how to find her fiancé. Instead, she was obsessively sifting through the lurid details of her most recent encounter with Geoff Dias.

“All he wants is to prove that he can have me,” she said, fingering the silk bodice of her black lace-trimmed teddy. The shivery sensations he evoked stirred inside her as she realized she was absently caressing herself with the cool, slick material. “Once he’s accomplished that, he’ll discard me, just like all those men discarded Edna.”

Staring in the mirror, thinking about the effect he had on her, she watched her eyes melt with dark pleasure and the flush return to her face. She tilted her chin, looking for the tender spot where he’d nipped her throat, and the strangest sensation of excitement spiraled in the depths of her belly. It wasn’t bad enough that he aroused her. She had to do it to herself!

She switched off the bathroom lights as she went out, then fell across the bed diagonally, pulling a pillow into her arms and resting her head on it. She tried to shut off her thoughts, but she couldn’t shut off her bodily responses. She felt as trembly as the moonlight shimmering across the bay, as loose and flowing as the water. Even when she drew up her legs, it did nothing to stop the excitement swirling inside her.

There was a part of her that wanted to go with the feelings. She couldn’t deny it. There had been moments in the years since she’d been with him that she’d caught herself remembering, almost reveling in the memories of what they’d done. And then the shame had hit her, the guilt and the fear. Fear that she had fallen heir to Edna’s curse, that she would start to like the way Geoff Dias made her feel, start to need it . . .

She couldn’t let that happen. There was too much at stake. “E ... N ... O,” she whispered, beginning to count backward.

G
EOFF HELD THE TUMBLER
of rum to his breastbone and rolled it back and forth across his chest, absorbing the cold shock of the ice-filled glass against the heat of his body. He half expected to see steam rise off his skin. He’d lost track of the time, but it had to be at least two in the morning, and the temperature hadn’t dropped all that much from the high nineties of the late afternoon when they’d arrived. It was going to be one long, sultry bitch of a night.

Pulsing waves of Latin music rolled up to him from the street several stories below his bedroom balcony. A mounting frenzy seemed to have taken over the city in anticipation of Carnaval. Street bands beat out jungle rhythms on their drums, and throngs of tawny-skinned Cariocas danced and cavorted in the same bikinis they’d worn to the beach. They were practicing for the parades that would start in less than twenty-four hours, and nothing could wilt their spirits, not even the heat and steambath humidity.

He leaned against the balcony railing, holding the drink in both hands, his weight on his forearms as he watched the undulating dancers. Once it had started, Carnaval would run nonstop until Ash Wednesday, four days of wildly hedonistic and blatantly sensual celebration. Most Cariocas threw themselves into the revelry with total abandon. They donned elaborate costumes for the
desfiles
, as the parades were called. Men became women, or demons, or magical animals. Women became samba snakes, high priestesses of sensuality, both slave and mistress to the throbbing, unrelenting dance music.

Sex on parade, Geoff thought, remembering the Carnavals of his past. He’d celebrated the event, also known as Mardi Gras, all over the world, in Rio, France, New Orleans. It was always the same—a full-tilt striptease of the senses, where everyday conventions were wantonly discarded and normal behavior was totally unacceptable.

Geoff could think of only one other experience in his life that came anywhere close to the sexual spontaneity and dark excitement of Carnaval. And that experience was far more memorable in its way ...

He’d thought he was having a dream the night he caught sight of a virginal vision in a wedding gown walking down the lonely stretch of highway. She was carrying her high heels and an open bottle of champagne. When he pulled up alongside her on his bike, she threatened to break the bottle over his head if he came near her.

He’d finally convinced her she wasn’t safe out alone that time of night, and she’d reluctantly climbed on behind him, but not before telling him in no uncertain terms what no-good bastards men were. She’d railed about how her mother had always picked men who broke her heart—users, losers, and dance-away lovers. How she herself, determined not to repeat her mother’s mistakes, had fallen in love with the perfect man, a brilliant and wealthy young medical researcher, only to have him jilt her because his parents didn’t approve of her.

The tirade left her weepy and trembling. But once she was finished, she wiped the tears from her dark eyes and tilted her chin at the world. “Everybody thinks I’m a bad girl anyway,” she’d said defiantly, arranging her full skirt on the bike behind him and curling her arms tightly around his waist. “So I might as well be one.”

Geoff figured he’d latched onto a beautiful lunatic. His plan was to get her to the nearest phone booth, call a taxi, and send her home. That was before he realized she had something else in mind. It seemed as if one minute she was clutching him and sobbing against his back, and the next, she was touching him. It couldn’t have happened that fast, but everything must have accelerated in his mind when he glanced down and saw where her hands were.

She was very tentative at first, as if he were a bomb she was trying to defuse blindfolded. But her trembling fingers didn’t stay tentative. She turned him into a wild man. Before she was through with him, she had him so hot, he drove the bike into an alley, pulled her onto his lap, and took her right there in her wedding dress.

They climaxed like exploding stars, but it wasn’t enough. They found a motel room and made love all night. It wasn’t until after they’d spent themselves that she began to cry again. He wanted to hold her, but she wouldn’t let him. She was horrified at what she’d done and even more embittered about men and love. That’s when he’d begun to realize how out of character their night of wildness was for her. She didn’t have to tell him. Her anguish spoke for her. She’d never done anything like that before—and never would again ...

With a hard sigh, Geoff pushed back from the railing and drained the tumbler of rum. Dampness broke out on his temples as the liquor seared his throat. He’d been fairly jaded up to that point in his life. He’d thought there was nothing new under the sun where women were concerned, but he’d never known the intensity, the raw, sweet turbulence of Randy’s passion.

Like Carnaval, she’d broken all the rules of normal behavior. She’d turned his world on its axis, reversed his expectations. He still hadn’t recovered from the shock of it. And nothing shocked Geoff Dias.

He turned and walked into his bedroom, knowing her room was just across the way. Staring at the door, he was aware of the mounting tension in his thigh muscles, the spillway of energy into his groin. He would have loved nothing better than to turn the tables, to catch her off guard while she was sleeping and make her as blind with need as she’d made him.

Instead he went to the desk, set down the empty tumbler, and pulled a piece of hotel stationery from the drawer.
Time to exorcise some demons
, he told himself.

Randy woke to the moist languor of mid-morning, the slow whir of ceiling fans and the soft screech of a jungle bird. As the sounds penetrated her consciousness, she remembered where she was: Rio de Janeiro ... the River of January, with its exotic rain forests, miles of white crescent beaches, and steamy tropical nights.

Images of Rio were filtering through her awareness like a travel brochure as she opened her eyes and realized she was exactly where she’d fallen asleep, curled up around the pillow, still wearing her teddy. She’d never put on a nightgown or turned down the bed covers.

Sheened in perspiration, slowed by the weight of the moist heat that enveloped her, she untangled herself from the pillow and pushed up to a sitting position. Someone had opened the French doors to the balcony off her bedroom, she realized. She glanced in confusion at the door to her room, which was still locked. A hotel maid? How did she get in?

A brilliant orange and turquoise macaw was perched on the balcony’s white wrought-iron railings, gazing at her with unblinking eyes. As she stared back at the magnificent bird, uncertain that it was real, a garland of yellow butterflies flitted by. The travel brochures were right, she thought. This was paradise. Pots of exotic orchids dotted the balcony, and the breezes that wafted into the room were so heavy with their perfume, they seemed tinted a blush pink like the flowers.

She rolled her neck slowly, feeling logy and stiff, as if she’d been doing something she shouldn’t have the night before. It must have been the macaw’s cry that woke her up, but otherwise she seemed to be alone. As she slid around to get off the bed, she noticed something lying on the bed’s other pillow ... a pen and ink sketch.

She was almost afraid to pick it up. From her vantage point it looked suspiciously like a drawing of a man and a woman in some kind of erotic ecstasy, and she knew who the artist must be. Her heart began to pound as she angled nearer, trying to see what it was without actually touching it, as if she could somehow make the images less disturbing that way. Finally she gave in to her feverish curiosity and picked the paper up.