Wild Orchids (6 page)

"Oh, no." The mere sound of water flowing threatened to be her undoing. She clamped her thighs even tighter.

"What are you moaning about?" He turned to face her as he spoke, his eyes glittering points of light in the darkness. She could feel them moving down over her body and then back up to her face again. Her hands tightened on the wheel; she did not like the speculative way he was looking at her body. Of course, he could merely be trying to decipher the cause of her obvious discomfort, but along the way he was making no bones about eyeing her curves. Lora slowed the car to a crawl as the quickening droplets turned without warning into sheets of pouring rain; modesty and fear battled with urgent need. Need won.

"I have to stop."

He snorted. "We'll stop when I say stop. It's not raining that hard."

Lora stared out into the raging downpour. He probably would call a hurricane a little rainstorm, she grumbled inwardly. But in any case that was not her problem at the moment.

"I need to stop," she said tightly, without looking at him.

"You heard what I said."

"I have to go to the bathroom!" The words burst out of her mouth. Furious that he had made her admit something so intimate, she shot a glare at him. His eyes moved swiftly over her once again, and then he settled back into his seat. To her angry embarrassment, she caught the glimmer of a faint grin as it came and went on his mouth.

"Oh."

When, after a few minutes, it became obvious that that was all the response he meant to give to what was rapidly becoming the driving force of her life, she shot him another furious look.

"Is that all you can say?"

"What do you want me to say? In case you haven't noticed, it's raining cats and dogs out there. I would say that you are welcome to stop the car and go behind a bush if you like, but I'd have to get out with you and I'm damned if I'm going to get soaked to the skin. You'll just have to exercise some self-control."

"Self-control!" Lora Spluttered, thinking of the miles that she had been doing just that. He looked over at her, and once again she caught that faint, glimmering grin before it disappeared and his mouth became as hard and uncompromising as ever.

"Unless you have a jar in the backseat."

"A jar!" Words failed her. She seethed silently, steering the car through the driving rain with gritted teeth, not really caring whether or not they stayed on the roadway. More by good luck than by good management they did, but she was at the point where it made not the slightest difference to her. She had to go to the bathroom!

The gun was lying in his lap, its nose pointed toward the dashboard, his hand resting negligently on the handle. Even if it had been pointed directly at her, she wouldn't have cared. There were no restrooms or even any buildings in sight, nor had there been for miles, there was no jar in the backseat, and there was no way she was going to wet her pants.

"I'm stopping," she said through her teeth, suiting the action to the words. "You can shoot me if you want to, but I have to go to the bathroom!"

He turned to stare at her as she threw the car into neutral, set the brake, and opened the door, stepping out into the downpour. She heard him curse, and saw his brown hand tighten on the gun as she shut the door behind her with a bang. He got out onto the roadway, clapping the sombrero on his head as he emerged, and stood scowling at her over the roof of the VW. The gun, pointed directly at her, was in one hand while with the other he tried to hold the folded sarape over it to protect it from the cascading torrents.

Lora ignored both him and the gun, walking away from the car into the quagmire at the side of the road. She was already soaked to the skin. Water streamed over her face and hair, and her dress was plastered to her body. Mud oozed slimily over the sides of her sandals, sucking at her feet with every step. A most unaromatic smell assaulted her nostrils. She sniffed, barely avoided getting a nose fall of water, and identified the odor's source. Mexican farmers fertilized their fields with human excrement. Shuddering, she stopped in her tracks. There was no way she was venturing into one of those fields,

She narrowed her eyes against the rain and peered back toward the car. He had walked around it and now stood with feet braced apart and the gun pointed in her direction. With only the car's headlights behind him for illumination, she could not see his face but the rest of him looked very big and dark and dangerous. She caught the mutter of his voice over the pouring of the rain, and guessed that he was cursing her with expert fluency.

"Turn your back!"

He didn't hear her the first time, so she cupped her hands around her mouth and shouted. For a moment he stood irresolute, staring at her, but then he must have decided that she had no intention of doing what needed to be done while he stood and watched her. He turned his back. Lora had a brief moment of thankfulness that she wasn't wearing pantyhose, and then the whole business was concluded with satisfying speed. Feeling much better despite the fact that she was soaked to the skin, she stood, adjusted her clothing, walked around him back to the car, and got in. The thought of running did briefly occur to her, only to be quickly dismissed. When he caught her—and he would—he would be in a filthy temper, and she had already learned a healthy respect for his temper. Besides, the idea of slogging through acres of mud teeming with the source of that smell was off-putting in the extreme.

"I ought to shoot you. I'm wet as a drowned duck." Those were his first words as he got back in beside her. The gun was raised threateningly, but even its shiny blue-black barrel was not as ominous as the scowl on his face. The straw sombrero had been no match for the rain; he threw it and the soaked sarape into the backseat with a gesture of disgust. He was as wet as she. Water still ran from his soaking hair down his face and dripped from the end of his thick eyebrows and mustache. His shirt clung wetly to his broad chest and his drenched jeans hugged his thighs, emphasizing taut muscles and sinews. Through the wet closeness of his shirt, she saw the dark shadow of body hair. Hairy chested men had always secretly appealed to her… Lora's eyes flickered at the thought. Averting her face with a belligerent lift of her chin, she reached to yank the car into first. It bucked forward, then, as she shifted with a loud grinding of gears, lurched on down the wet road.

"Goddamn it!" He clutched the dashboard for support, and let the gun drop into his lap. Running his hand over his wet face, he sluiced away what water he could. Lora didn't even look at him as some of the droplets struck her arms and neck. She was so wet already, she couldn't get any wetter.

They drove that way for perhaps fifteen minutes, while Lora grew clammier and clammier. He shut off the air conditioner, but that wasn't much help. He must have been as cold and uncomfortable as she was, because finally, with a muffled growl, he reached over and flicked on the heater. A musty smell was the only tangible result. Lora waited vainly for some evidence that the car was getting warmer, but if it was she couldn't tell.

"Pull over," he ordered moments later, sounding fed up to his back teeth. Lora cast him a quick look. For some reason the black scowl that greeted her was almost reassuring. He nearly always looked like that; she imagined that, if he was planning to kill her for her temerity in making him get wet, he would wear quite a different expression.

When she had done as he ordered, he reached out to grab her roughly by the arm and leaned forward so that his face was only inches away. Lora was very conscious of the rough masculinity of him as he loomed so near. She stared at him wide-eyed, and tried not to wonder how the bristle on his chin would feel against her skin…

'If I'm not mistaken, there's an
ejido—
a cooperative farm— down that track," he said with a jerk of his head in the direction he meant. "We're going to drive down there, and if they'll have us we're going to spend what's left of the night. You're my wife, and I'm Brian Harding. Have you got that?"

Lora stared at him, then nodded jerkily. She wasn't sure, but she thought that this new arrangement might be something that could be turned to her advantage. If they were to be in the company of other people, surely she would have the opportunity to acquaint them with her plight…

"If you try anything," his voice lowered, became the menacing growl he had used when he had first abducted her, "if you try anything, so help me God, I'll kill you and them too. Understand me?"

He meant it. Lora's eyes widened as she registered that, and she shrank as far away from him as she could in the close confines of the car. She was no longer even remotely curious about how his unshaven chin would feel. He was an animal, a murderous brute, and she had temporarily allowed herself to forget that fact. How could she have felt even briefly attracted to him?

"Good." Her shrinking must have told him all he wanted to know, because he nodded as if satisfied. With a gesture he ordered her to start the car again. She did, and at his direction turned left onto a gravel track, only the track seemed to be more mud than gravel.

They had gone only a little way before the car plowed to a halt. Lora hit the accelerator, but the only response was the sound of spinning wheels. They were stuck in the mud. Lora licked her lips, and looked nervously over at her captor, who was scowling.

"Hell, what next?" The hand on the gun tightened, and Lora shrank back toward the door.

"I couldn't help it!" she protested hurriedly, and his scowl intensified.

"Did I say you could?" He reached toward her, and she shrank even further, but he only turned off the ignition and removed the keys, putting them in his pocket.

"So we walk," he said, leaning over again to open her door and push her out into the rain. Lora tumbled out, instinctively grabbing for her purse, nearly falling in the mud surrounding the car as he pulled the door closed again. She heard the faint click as he locked it after her. Then, before she even had time to think of trying to run, he was out of the car and closing the door behind him. The soaked and useless sombrero was plopped on his head, and the sarape was once again folded over his arm and hand to protect the gun.

"Come on." He was beside her now, catching her arm in that same rough grasp and propelling her through the downpour. She struggled through ankle-deep mud as they waded down the track toward a cluster of low, dark buildings that were just visible through the pouring rain. Would the people here help her? she wondered as they slogged ever closer to the quiet houses. Did she dare even ask for help? She cast a scared glance up at the man who was dragging her along beside him like a recalcitrant dog on a leash. The answer was: she just didn't know.

Chapter IV

After their initial surprise and wariness at being disturbed in the middle of the night by
gringo
strangers was soothed by her captor's glib explanation—he spoke functional Spanish, of which Lora understood no more than two words in a hundred—and some of her own cash, which she was slightly affronted to watch him fish out of his pocket and hand out so liberally, their impromptu hosts were hospitality itself. Her captor's sombrero was taken from him—he smilingly rejected all attempts to remove the sarape, too—and both he and Lora were exclaimed over as they were ushered inside the small, cinderblock dwelling.