Volcano (17 page)

Punishing fingers gripped her breast and kneaded. Vaguely, Penelope recognized that Charlie's embrace might be the only reason she was still upright. Her tongue met his, and his hold tightened, slid to her hips, crushed her against him.

Charlie's fingers bit into her buttocks as he rocked their hips together. Penelope whimpered, not with terror, but with desire, with the volcanic rush of mindless need. All the frustration, the pent-up tension, exploded, freeing her from the box of propriety she'd lived in for so long. She released his shirt and grabbed his shoulders.

Charlie shoved her against a tree and returned to plundering her breasts. Insane with a desire she'd never known, not knowing how to cope with it, Penelope raised her legs and wrapped them around him, demanding he continue to hold her. Her skirt slid upward until it reached her waist.

Charlie effortlessly took her weight, and muttering something obscene against her mouth, bit her lip. He slid his hands up her thighs until strong fingers brushed against the crotch of her torn panty hose. No longer caring how she looked or what she did, Penelope surged against him, and he dug his fingers deeper, pushing, exploring until she squirmed with desperation and the first quaking signals of total surrender.

A squawk screeched past their ears. Red and green feathers stirred the air so close they jumped with surprise. Another squawk and flap of wings intruded, jolting them back to earth.

“His nest must be in this tree,” Charlie muttered through clenched teeth, unable to bear parting from the escape she offered. Her heat and scent surrounded him. He had only to unzip his pants and lose himself inside her. All the blood in his body had surged to his loins, leaving nothing in his brain. He wanted it that way. He wanted the mindless release of sex, the conquering plunge, the sheathing shelter of her woman's body. In some vague part of his mind he hoped he could release all his anger and grief into her, bury his guilt and fears deep inside her womb, and come out whole again.

The blasted squawking parrot diving at his head knocked him back to reality.

Still aching with unquenched desire, Charlie reluctantly released Penelope's hips and let her legs slide back to the ground. He cupped her breasts, and she shuddered with the same passion flowing through him. She averted her eyes as he studied her, but she couldn't disguise the flush of pink across her cheeks. Her embarrassment nearly undid him.

Obviously, he had very strange reactions to death. He brushed her cheek with his raw knuckles and kissed her forehead. The damned parrot screamed its fury overhead.

“I lost my head; I apologize. I'm not sorry, but you deserve better.” Needing some crutch of sanity, Charlie gripped her hand as he stepped away.

She still didn't look at him, but she didn't pull her hand away either. “We both overreacted, I guess.”

He didn't want her looking ashamed. He wanted the Valkyrie back, screaming him to his senses. Only he hadn't returned to his senses; he'd dragged her down into hell with him. For that, he was sorry. The ache in his heart swelled as the enormity of Raul's death hit him again. He'd killed his best friend and nearly raped an innocent woman. Maybe his mother wasn't far wrong. He was an uncivilized gorilla.

Tears streaked the dust on Penelope's cheeks. She wasn't crying entirely for him, he suspected. “What did you mean, that you knew how I felt, only a million times worse?”

She dropped his hand and wiped at her eyes as she walked away. “Never mind. How do we get out of here? We need to notify the police. Tammy will be waiting for us.”

She'd slammed the lid closed on her emotions again. The porcupine had returned. He'd like to shake her. He'd like to do a damned sight more. Mostly, he wanted to jog her back to the woman of passion who'd wrapped her legs around him and demanded satisfaction.

With his best friend's murdered body a charred skeleton in the jungle, passion was the last thing he needed right now. There was a time for caution, and a time for revenge.

“Tammy,” he groaned as another thought struck him. “What the hell will I tell Tammy?”

He flushed at Penelope's look of surprise. So, maybe he wasn't entirely an insensitive clod. She didn't need to know that. He answered her last question curtly. “We have to follow the ridge down to the road. We can hitch from there. This isn't Miami.”

He sounded like a Nazi jerk, but his balls still ached, his head spun with memories of Raul, and a manic voice inside him screamed for justice.

Maybe he could develop a split personality to accommodate all the splintering parts of his soul.

They caught a ride in the back of a farm truck hauling chickens to market. Feathers flew as the birds protested behind their wooden bars, but Penelope bumped along without complaint, figuring each squawk and feather brought her that much closer to civilization and leaving the morose man sitting across from her, wrists propped on knees.

She didn't need bones in the jungle, dead men, and international intrigue in her life. She definitely didn't need Charlie's pain or that moment of electricity between them. If she concentrated on any of this at all, she would run screaming to the airport or swim for home. She didn't have that option. She had a job to do, and she would focus on it much more easily with Charlie out of the picture.

Surely he would go home now. He didn't need her any longer. Maybe he would meet his sister at the dock and the two of them could take a water taxi to the airport. She didn't know how she'd explain the loss of the jeep and her supposed husband to Mr. Henwood. The resort manager would probably think she'd killed her louse of a spouse and pushed him over a cliff in the car.

She'd never gotten her kicks from excitement before. Surely her odd reluctance to lose the adrenaline-induced pace of the last few days had nothing to do with Charlie. Spending twelve-hour days at a desk so she could drag home a paycheck, pay the bills, and stuff the remainder in a savings account might not be very exciting, but surely she could find something less dangerous than Charlie Smith's company.

Still, she couldn't rationalize that explosive kiss. She'd never done anything like that in her life. She didn't even
like
sex—but a howling banshee inside her head warned she'd never had sex with Charlie Smith before. Shutting out banshees while fighting the memory of two dead men was a difficult juggling act.

As the truck rattled to a stop at Soufriere's version of a farmer's market, Charlie lifted his head, blinked, scanned their surroundings, and scowled.

Leaping down from the flatbed, he held out his hand to Penelope. “Come on, let's get out of here. I think we may be a lot better off if we're not seen.”

She took his hand to climb down, then released it immediately as if she'd held a burning brand. “Don't be ridiculous.” She spoke more sharply than she'd intended. “We need to go to the police, and we agreed to meet Tammy at five. It's past that now.”

Aware of the stares their white faces and rumpled clothing attracted, she hurried toward the narrow path she figured was a street that might lead into the town center.

Charlie grabbed her wrist and pulled her toward an alleyway between two narrow houses. “From the looks of those vines, Raul's been dead for over a week. That dynamite could have been meant for us.”

“Don't be ridiculous,” Penelope protested again, mostly because she didn't want to believe him. Dynamite and murder happened only on TV news, not to her. “No one knew we'd be taking that road.”

“Anyone who knew I was here looking for Raul could figure I would take that road sooner or later.” He pulled her deeper into the darkness of the trash-strewn alley.

“Well, we can't very well lurk in shadows forever. Let's go to the police.” Penelope tried to twist her wrist from his grip, but Charlie paid no attention to her efforts. He was busy peering into the yards on the other side of the houses.

“Jacques lives not too far from here. I need to see if he's back. I'll trust Jacques over the police any day.”

“He ran away when you needed him,” she scoffed. “Fat big help he is.”

“He was protecting his family. He'll be back. Come on, there's no one out there right now. We can get across these yards and go in the back way.”

“I don't want to. I want to go back to the hotel. I need a shower. Charlie...”

Ignoring all her protests, he yanked her into someone's littered backyard, through a broken fence, across a vegetable plot, and zigzagged through more fences and empty lots, until he reached the shrubbery surrounding a more secluded home. Pushing underneath a brilliant purple bougainvillea, he stopped and waited at the edge of the next open space.

“Charlie, this is nuts,” she whispered in desperation. “I haven't played hide-and-seek since I was a kid, and I was never any good at it.”

“Look, I'm sorry I got you into this. I'll try to get you out. Just be quiet and let me think.”

Heart beating unsteadily, Penelope waited. She didn't know which she feared more, Charlie or his mysterious enemies. She just had this wild idea that if she could return to the resort, everything would be normal again. That idea was fading as rapidly as the setting sun. Even now, shadows spread beneath the bushes and between the houses where they hid. She could hear laughter floating through a distant window. The house Charlie studied remained ominously quiet and dark.

“Wait here.”

He released her wrist and eased from beneath the bougainvillea branches. Penelope considered following him if for no other reason than that she didn't like being left behind. But if there were murderers waiting in that house, she didn't want to encounter them. This was all Charlie's fault. Let him deal with them.

She picked up a beer bottle lying near her feet and watched intently as Charlie's silhouette slid between the shadows and toward the back door.

A warbling whistle startled her into almost dropping the bottle until she realized it came from Charlie. Swell. Now he had secret signals.

The back door popped open, and a head topped by Rastafarian braids peered out.

“Get yourself in here, mon, before you get your brains blown out!”

Charlie turned and signaled for Penelope. She contemplated running in the opposite direction. As far as she was concerned, if this was Jacques, he was more terrifying than anyone else they had encountered all day. Reluctantly, she slipped from beneath the bush, still carrying the beer bottle.

The back door had already closed. No light shone from within. Charlie grabbed her arm again and pulled her forward. “Interesting souvenir,” he commented grimly as his fingers brushed the bottle.

She dropped it and glared at him, for all the good it did. “Is this where I get to go home?”

He didn't answer, but she figured the hug he gave her was answer enough. It was one of those “Sure, honey, whatever you say” hugs that men used when they didn't have the right answer but wanted her to shut up anyway. She considered taking a large bite out of his shoulder to compensate, but she was too rattled to do more than follow.

Inside, Jacques waited for them at the Formica kitchen table. To Penelope's utter surprise, Tammy waited for them too.

Charlie's half sister looked up with relief and a degree of wariness. “Thank goodness! I thought you'd fallen off the mountain. Did you find Raul?”

Penelope bit her lip and glanced at Charlie. They hadn't discussed this. Maybe Charlie was certain that was Raul up there, but they didn't have positive identification.

She could see Charlie's hesitation and held her breath. Surely he wouldn't blurt it out like this and break Tammy's heart.

“The shack's gone,” he finally admitted. “I didn't find him.”

Penelope let out her breath. The damned man continually surprised her.

“Gone? What do you mean, gone? It was there two weeks ago. He had it all fixed up....” Tammy shut up beneath her brother's withering glare. Everyone in the room could guess why Raul had fixed up the shack and under what circumstances she had seen it.

Jacques waded into the ripples of silence. “Get yourself and your ladies from here, mon. Sell that land and don' come back. You don' need this.”

Penelope watched in fascination as the two men exchanged glances. She had the oddest feeling that Jacques knew what Charlie had found up on the mountain.

“I'm not leaving,” Charlie insisted. “Take us to the airport and I can get Tammy and Penelope out of here. They can take your family too, if you want. But I'm staying.”

“You crazy, mon. There nothing you can do. Go home where you belong,” Jacques insisted, though his protests had lost their luster beneath Charlie's determination.

“I can't go home yet.” Penelope tried to be reasonable in the wake of Charlie's sudden desire to be rid of her. “I have work to do. I have nothing to do with whatever's going on. Just take me back to the hotel, and I'll be happy.” She didn't want to whine. She just wanted her sane life back.

“I'm not going until we find Raul.” Tammy crossed her arms in imitation of her brother.