Thrill Ride (10 page)

“
Bon
,” Rock winked. “Good choice. Now,
chere
,” Rock turned to her, “I need you to hurry and get in the main compartment of my pack and pull out that bundle of zip ties.”

Looping the M4’s strap over her shoulder, Vanessa felt a little like Rambo—sans the spiffy red bandana—and did as Rock instructed. Less than ninety seconds later, the operative was tied to a small tree. His ankles and wrists secured by plastic zip ties and a strip of duct tape over his mouth.

She stepped away from the trussed-up man and turned to Rock, a wonderful lightness filling her being despite the fact that they were still in a shitload of trouble.

“What?” he demanded, frowning so fiercely the corners of his goatee drooped, his lush bottom lip pouting in the most delicious way. “Why are you grinning at me like a possum eatin’ a sweet ’tater?”

“You
didn’t
kill all those men, did you? You really didn’t.”

He blew out a deep breath, rubbing a hand over his goatee and turning away to squint into the distant foliage. “ʼCourse I didn’t,” he muttered.

***

“I
knew
it!” Vanessa shot a fist in the air—that’s right, a fist. Rock felt one corner of his mouth twitch. He’d never seen someone—outside of the stoner dude at the end of
The
Breakfast
Club
—actually do that.

“I knew those charges were trumped up.” She nudged the tied-up operator with her foot and pointed a finger in Rock’s direction. “And when your buddies find you, you should tell them to leave Rock alone. He’s innocent. I mean, if he’d really killed all those men do you think he’d think twice about killing you? No.” She shook her head adamantly. “And another thing—”

“We don’t have time for this,” Rock cut her off because he could tell she was about to get herself on a roll. “We need to get goin’.”

“Oh,” she blinked at him. “Uh…yeah. Sure.” But instead of coming to his side, she once more nudged the operator’s foot. “I’m serious,” she hissed. “You’re going to tell them, right?”

And seeing her, with her inky black hair—shorter now, thanks to his knife work—all down around her shoulders, and an M4 strapped to her back, railing in his defense, a veritable tigress determined to help him clear his name, he felt himself fall…just a little. Because,
mon
dieu,
she was something.

But he shook his head and reminded himself of all the pain and suffering that resulted from loving someone, reminded himself of Lacy’s sunken eyes and sallow skin in those last months, and his resolve once more hardened to stone.

Vanessa was obviously satisfied when the operator vigorously nodded his head, because she smiled triumphantly and strolled over to Rock. And when she glanced up at him, the dreamy look in her eyes disturbed him more than if she’d chucked a grenade in his direction.

“Get that thought right out of your pretty head,” he warned, adjusting his pack and turning into the jungle.

“What thought?” she inquired, following close behind him.

“The one that says,
oh, Rock
,” he raised his voice into a terrible falsetto, “
you’re my knight in shinin’ armor, my hero
.”

“Pfft. For one thing, I’ve known a lot of heroes in my life, so don’t go thinking you’re anything special.”

And
that
caught him off guard. Because it was the first time he considered the fact that Vanessa had spent most of her career as a linguistics and communications specialist in the spec-ops community surrounded by men who tended to not only come equipped with far more than their fair share of testosterone, but also the ability to bag just about anything that moved—and it occurred to him to wonder just how many of those
heroes
she’d invited into her bed.

And following right on the heels of that thought was a burst of jealously so intense he actually lost his footing. Had a vine not been handy, he’d have face-planted into the forest floor. As it was, he had to grab onto the sucker and breathe past the hot vise gripping his chest.

Just the thought of her arching into some bastard who grunted above her was enough to have red easing into the edge of his vision.

And he knew it was absolutely ridiculous to feel that way. He had no claims on her. Didn’t
want
any claims on her. But he still couldn’t shake the images in his head or the way they made him want to tear some nameless, faceless A-hole’s head clean off his shoulders.

“And secondly,” Vanessa continued, unaware that he was about to burst an aneurism on the spot, “your
armor
isn’t all that shiny. In fact, if you must know, it’s actually pretty dingy and, I’m not trying to pick a fight or anything, but you could use a washing machine and a healthy spritz of cologne.”

Just like that, the green-eyed monster that’d perched on his shoulder disappeared, and a surprised laugh burst from him.

“Wow,” he said, trudging through particularly dense undergrowth, wincing when he crushed some of the plant life beneath his boot since it was basically the same thing as waving a semaphore flag for the guys who were hunting them. Of course, if his calculations were correct, and he was right about how far back that agent’s teammates were, they had enough of a head start to make it to the old Rio Verde road and the rusting 1966 Bultaco Metisse dirt bike he’d squirreled away there, before the spooks caught them. “Now, doncha go holdin’ back on me. I want you to tell me how you really feel.”

She snorted. “I just thought I should drag you down off that high horse you climbed up on. Wouldn’t want you to start suffering from altitude sickness or anything.”

He chanced a glance over his shoulder and—

Mistake.

Because her cheeks were red and rosy from the heat, her eyes dark and half-lidded from weariness, her hair all mussed and crazy from letting it dry without brushing it, and he realized…

This
is
what
she
looks
like
after
making
love…Warm and blushing and messy and…
merde, merde, merde!

“You’re really beautiful, you know that?” The words hopped out of his mouth like they were attached to springs.

And the statement, blurted with absolutely none of his usual Southern finesse, caught her off guard. She stopped in her tracks, her chin jerking back on her neck as if she was a marionette and someone yanked her string. She stared at him for a long moment, her dark eyes searching for something in his face as the jungle around them chattered and buzzed and dripped, as the air hung heavy with the smell of wet foliage and exotic orchids. But when it became obvious he wasn’t going to give anything else away, she shrugged her shoulders and pushed forward, brushing aside a long vine that hung in the path. “I don’t get you,” she observed quietly.

“You wouldn’t be the first,” he retorted, cursing as his boot snagged on a root, causing him to stumble. Again.

Goddamnit! Twice in as many minutes he’d lost his footing. Which was saying something since he usually had the reflexes of a whole herd of cats.

But this woman, this one, small,
spectacular
woman muddled his thinking, caused him to lose his focus and—

“Seriously,” she pressed, “one minute you’re all
stay
back, Van; I’ll break your heart
and the next you’re telling me how beautiful I am. What’s with that? Are you, like, some sort of sadist or something?”

No. More like a masochist. At least when it came to her. Which was just one more reason on his very
long
list of reasons why it was imperative he keep her at arm’s length.

“I didn’t tell you that to hurt you,
ma
belle
,” he admitted, taking out his Bowie knife to slice into a vine. They were running dangerously low on water. And besides the ass-load of hostiles after them, the next biggest threat in the jungle was dehydration.

Unscrewing the cap on his canteen, he gripped the severed end of the vine and aimed it at the opening, allowing it to unload its precious cargo of water. Once the canteen was full, he dropped two iodine tablets inside before replacing the cap and re-hooking it to his pack.

Vanessa was silent through the process, but once they were moving again she asked, “Then why
did
you tell me?”

Why indeed…

He considered all the possible answers he could give her and decided on the truth. “I suppose because chances are pretty good I’m not gonna make it out of this thing alive, and I…
merde
…” He felt the air thickening around him. Rain was coming. Soon. “…I guess I…I guess I wanted you to know that while what I said last night was true; it has nothin’ to do with you and everything to do with me.”

“
Not
make
it
out
of
this
thing
alive.
You keep saying that,” she snapped at his back. “But I don’t get it. If you didn’t kill those men, then there
has
to be a way to clear your name. There has to be some sort of evidence that proves you weren’t—”

He stopped and swung around, surprising her when he grabbed her by the shoulders. Now, normally he didn’t cotton to laying hands on a woman without her permission, but right now he needed to make sure she understood what he was saying. And that required him having her full, undivided attention.

From the diameter of her wide eyes and the way her mouth was hanging open, he had it.

“I might not have been the one to pull the trigger,
chere
,” he growled, hoping she could see the truth in his face. “But I’m the reason they’re dead all the same.”

And right at that moment, the sky opened up.

Vanessa’s heart beat with a terrible rhythm at Rock’s declaration, and the torrential rain instantly soaked her to the skin.

The
reason
they’re dead? What does that mean?

Had he…had he participated somehow? Maybe…hired the person who
had
done the deeds?

But that last one didn’t make any sense. She wasn’t sure about much when it came to Rock—not anymore; the man was an enigma wrapped in a riddle surrounded by beard stubble—but one thing she was certain of was that he wasn’t one to let another do his dirty work.

So…what? What was with that cryptic statement?

She opened her mouth to demand he explain himself, but he’d already turned and was trudging quickly away. Left with no other recourse, she clenched her jaw and followed, her mind spinning with exactly two thoughts…

Is
he
innocent? Or is he guilty?

She’d gone back and forth so much on the issue in the last sixteen hours she felt like a yo-yo.

But even when she caught up with him, she couldn’t ask what he meant, because it took everything she had to keep pace as he wound his way through the jungle. She stepped where he stepped, avoiding the things he avoided, stopped to grab a quick drink from the iodine-laced water in the canteen when he stopped to do the same.

For an hour, maybe two—she’d lost the ability to accurately gauge the passing of time—they fought their way through the undergrowth, the rain steadily falling all around them but doing nothing to mitigate the heat. Vines clung to clothing and hair, shrubs grabbed ankles, and tree roots jumped up to snag the unsuspecting toe. Her muscles began to ache, her empty stomach began to make itself infuriatingly known by grumbling and growling, and the headache she’d awoken with that morning remained stubborn as a mule, kicking her in the cranium every couple of minutes.

She was just about to call for a break—her legs were Jell-O, and she’d tripped three times in the last five minutes—when suddenly the rainforest opened up and she found herself on the side of a mountain. The ground dropped off in a steep decline that was traversed some thirty feet below by the long, snakelike track of an old jungle road.

Without the protection of the canopy, the rain came down in sheets, running into her eyes and mouth, but she didn’t care. It felt so
good
to be at the edge of the jungle, to be out in the open. She drew in a deep breath and spread her arms wide, reveling in the freedom of being able to stretch out without touching vines or ferns or bushes or trees or—

“What are you?” Rock shouted beside her, the heavy patter of raindrops on foliage muffling his voice and obscuring his face, but she could still make out his lopsided smirk. “Queen of the World?”

She scowled up at him, in no mood to joke—even if the reference
did
include the oh-so-delicious Leonardo DiCaprio—just as the ledge of dirt she was standing on gave way. And then it was yeehaw! She flew down the mountainside on the jungle’s version of a Slip N’ Slide. Only there was no smooth, plastic sheet beneath her bottom. Oh, hell no. It was just a river of mud and root-balls and the occasional rock.

She bounced and skidded and bounced some more. And every time she landed back on her ass, her teeth clacked together causing her headache to grow to the relative size and shape of an aircraft carrier.

By the time she hit the flatness of the roadway with her stomach, arms and legs all akimbo, mouth full of mud and M4 gouging into her side, she was thinking it might’ve been easier, and certainly less painful, if she’d just stepped in front of one of those rounds aimed at her head last night.

“
Blech
,” she hacked, repeatedly spitting until most of the mud that’d been in her mouth was sitting on the road in front of her in a wet, disgusting heap. Then, she managed to—
painfully
—heave herself onto her back, keeping her eyes closed as the rain pelted the dirt from her face and filled her open mouth.

She turned to spit just as Rock landed with a
humph
beside her. Slowly, as if every bone in his body ached, he pushed into a kneeling position, raking the rain and mud from his face with an ungentle swipe of his hand.

“
Mon
dieu
,” he breathed, shaking his dark head until dirty water flew from the spiky tips of his short hair. “That was unexpected.”

“Yeah,” she agreed, still flat on her back, wondering if she’d ever be able to move again. “And it looked a lot more fun in
Romancing
the
Stone
.” She blinked the water from her eyes only to have it replaced by more.

“You okay?”

She lifted her chin—and, yep, the ol’ noggin weighed in at a cool metric ton—and shot him a look that not only questioned his intelligence, but his sanity.

He winced. “Sorry. Stupid question. Let me rephrase; is anything broken or irreparably damaged?”

“My pride?”

“I’m serious.”

“So am I,” she insisted, slowly pushing into a sitting position. The horror of the last day combined with the worry of the past six months caused unexpected tears to pool in her eyes.

Oh, great. Perfect time to have a breakdown.

She hoped he couldn’t tell, not with it raining so hard. But then her stupid lip began to quiver and suddenly she was back in his arms.

“Ah, hell,
chere,”
he crooned, rubbing a gentle hand over the back of her head. “I’m so sorry to put you through all this.”

All?
Did that include last night’s rejection? Did that include his declaration that he’d never—capital N—love her?

Oh, great, and now she was crying—again, she was crying
again,
for Pete’s sake!—for a whole new reason. He must think her a total pantywaist. Here she was, supposed to be
helping
him, and so far all she managed to do was lead the guys who were after him right to his door and break down in his arms. Twice.

Geez, Van, pull yourself together!

But try as she might, she couldn’t stop the tears that slipped down her cheeks, hotter than the raindrops. And that’s when it occurred to her—as she sat covered in mud on a remote jungle road while being chased by government agents who’d been given orders to kill her—that there was no other place she’d rather be.

Because no matter how badly she hurt, or how much she longed for a shower, or how scary it was to actually get shot at, nothing mattered as long as she was with Rock.

Her tears dried up quicker than a mirage in the desert, and she stilled in his arms.

No, no, no. This can’t be happening.

Her impression of a two-by-four obviously wasn’t lost on him, because he tilted her chin up and brushed her sopping hair back from her brow.

“What?” he asked, his lovely hazel eyes searching her face, his perfect nose dripping water from the tip, his luscious, swoon-worthy lips tilted in a frown. “What is it? What’s wrong?”

What was wrong?
What
was
wrong?

She just realized she
loved
him,
that’s
what was wrong!

She loved him for his courage and his honesty, for his loyalty to his friends. She loved him for his strength and determination and, yes, even his stubbornness. She loved him like she’d never loved any other man, and he was determined, no, absolutely
convinced
, he’d never love her back. Which had all been fine and good when the idea of the two of them together was more fantasy than feeling, more lust than anything close to love. Last night it’d been a blow to her pride when he made that declaration, but now…?

Oh, sweet Lord, his words replayed through her head—
I’ll never fall in love with you
—and this time the blow, quick and deadly as a stiletto strike, went straight to her heart.

Tears once more burned up the back of her throat, but this time she refused to let them fall. If she let them fall when he was looking her smack-dab in the face, he’d know, he’d use that crazy skill of his to figure it out…

“It’s nothing,” she said, sliding from his arms—it felt like she left her heart behind. “Just one hell of a headache.”

Creakily, she pushed to a stand and rearranged the M4 so the magazine no longer threatened to take out her left kidney. And as quickly as it had started, the rain stopped. In the relative silence that followed, she could feel Rock watching her.

She tried to act nonchalant as she stretched the kinks from her neck and busied herself with a missing button on her shirt. Then the sun came out, and the world around them turned into a steam bath. Sweat broke out all over her already wet body, but still Rock sat there. Looking at her, undoubtedly trying to see inside her head.

She bent to retie the lace on her boot, tucked the bottom hem of her cargo pants more securely inside her sock, and realized she was quickly running out of distractions when, finally, he pushed to his feet. Taking a step toward her, her heart played the part of Mexican jumping bean and hopped into her throat.

No, no, no. Don’t press me for answers,
she silently begged him.

And it was almost like he heard her thoughts, because he quickly changed direction and headed toward the side of the road with that loose-hipped swagger so many Southern men learned to perfect.

She cocked her head and watched as he pushed aside the lush foliage growing next to the road like he was searching for some sort of treasure hidden beneath.

What
the—

Her curiosity took the slightest edge off her heartbreak, or at least allowed her to focus on something else, and she was amazed to find herself limping—her left ass cheek was going to be black and blue for a week—over to him, “What are you looking for?”

“A
cipó cabeludo
,” he said, shoving aside a huge fern.

“A what?”

“It’s a plant and it—ah, there’s one.” His face was triumphant when he straightened and handed her a…was that a leaf?

Yes. Yes, it was.

“Uh,” she frowned down at a tear-shaped piece of plant life sitting green and glossy in the center of her palm, “
okay
?”

“Chew on it,” he instructed, and she turned her head so she could regard him from the corner of her eyes, pursing her lips.

“Whatchu talkin’ bout, Willis?”

He grinned, and the expression went all through her. Because even though most folks wouldn’t label Rock as handsome, they’d have to agree that, when he smiled, he was absolutely beautiful. Those perfect lips, those flashing eyes…

“Chew on it,” he insisted again.

“And
why
would I want to do that?”

“Because of your headache. It’ll help with the pain.” He winked, hooking an arm around her shoulders like they were best buds.

And suddenly the sharp edge was back on her heartbreak. In fact, her heartbreak felt like nothing
but
sharp edges. Like there was a ball of shattered glass banging around behind her breastbone. And she knew there wasn’t a plant on the planet that could help with that…

***

Bam! Bam! Bam!

Bill almost spilled the glass of lemonade in his hand and, from the corner of his eye, he saw Eve nearly jump through the roof when someone pounded on the back door with a heavy fist.

“Who the hell is—” But that’s as far as he got before Ozzie burst onto the scene, followed quickly by Steady and Ghost.

“We hear you guys are up the Rio de Caca without the proverbial oar,” Ozzie announced with his usual, dramatic fanfare. “But never fear; the cavalry is here!”

“Lord, save us,” Becky muttered, pushing up from the table where she’d been in the process of downloading all the information she could find on Rock’s supposed targets onto her laptop. They’d already exhausted that avenue, but she’d needed something to occupy her time because none of them—her included—were used to sitting around with their dicks in their hands. Well…Becky didn’t have a dick, but the point was still valid. “With your IQ, I’ll never understand how you manage to not only mangle, but completely mix your metaphors.”

“It’s a gift,” Ozzie grinned then spied Eve behind the kitchen counter. He dropped his duffel bag on the clay-tiled floor and slapped a palm over his heart. “I swear Eve,” he crooned in what Bill had come to recognize as his panty-removing voice, “you get more beautiful every time I see you.”

Eve blushed, a hand fluttering to her throat as Ozzie skirted the center island and snatched her into his arms, smacking a kiss on her cheek and squeezing her until she smiled and batted ineffectually at his shoulder.

“Put me down, you big goof,” she laughed, her sapphire eyes sparkling.

Bill discovered that he was grinding his teeth so hard he was probably in the process of pulverizing his fillings. Any second now, there’d be little shards of metal alloy shooting out of his ears.

“I’ll put you down when you agree to marry me,” Ozzie retorted, nuzzling her neck.

“You ask every woman you meet to marry you,” Eve giggled, squirming in his arms. “Now put me down!”

“Yes!” Bill shouted, tossing aside the report he was reading on the latest brand of plastic explosives and slamming his lemonade on the end table. He pushed up from the plush sofa and glared at Ozzie until it was a wonder the kid didn’t spontaneously combust. “Put her down!”

Ozzie dropped Eve, lifting a questioning brow at Bill. The guy’s sandy blond hair was even wilder than usual, thanks in part, Bill suspected, to the fact that upon hearing Boss’s demands to get their asses down here ASAP, the boys had hopped the first military transport they could find. Which probably meant they’d spent most of the night in the cold belly of a cargo plane trying to find a comfortable spot among the shipment of whatever was being transported and the high-grade netting holding it all in place.

“Well, who pissed in your Post Toasties?” Ozzie inquired, coming around the island so he could bend and dig something out of his duffel bag.