Dangerous to Hold (12 page)

Jake's muscles tensed. “As well as can be expected,” he replied evenly.

“Good. Given her background, I was afraid you'd have your hands full.”

S
till shaken by the intensity of what had passed between her and Jack, Sarah sat cross-legged on the flat rock. She barely heard the children's splashing pursuit of an orange-colored frog or Eleanor's murmured response to their gleeful shouts. All she could think of was the way she'd responded to the raw hunger she saw in the mercenary's eyes.

She couldn't want him, she told herself fiercely. She
couldn't!

Her fingernails dug into the bar of soap she clutched as she tried to convince herself once more that what she felt for him sprang from hostage-dependency syndrome. From the emotional upheavals she'd been through. From sheer proximity!

She couldn't be on fire for a man who refused to take her and the children to safety because he still had some blood money to earn. She couldn't want to feel his mouth against hers, his legs entwined with hers.

She
couldn't!

Oh, God, she could! She did!

Sarah gave a silent groan and buried her face in her hands,
overwhelmed by the all-consuming desire that coiled in her stomach.

What was wrong with her? Hadn't she learned anything from her busy, brittle, empty life? She'd been courted and flattered and stroked by men of charm. Men of power and wealth. But none of the men who'd said they loved her—not even the one she had loved so desperately in return—could make her pulse hammer and her thighs clench together in a spasm of desire with just a look. How could this one man wake instincts in her she'd thought well buried? He was grimy and hard and made his living in a way she despised. He…

“Sometimes it's best for a woman not to fight what happens.”

The soft murmur pierced Sarah's swirling, chaotic thoughts. She lifted her head sharply and turned to find Eleanora watching her. To her surprise, she saw that the woman's brown eyes had lost their dull flatness and held a deep, soul-shattering awareness.

“He is much a man, the gringo. At least if he takes you to his bed, you will find pleasure in it.”

Sarah gaped at Eleanora, translating and retranslating the older woman's words in her mind. “He…he won't take me to his bed,” she answered in halting Spanish. “He thinks I'm a… I mean, he respects that I'm a sister.”

Something incredibly close to amusement flickered across Eleanora's face. “We are all sisters,” she said softly. “Here, give it to me.”

“Huh?” Sarah struggled stupidly with the other woman's thick mountain accent and her own astonishment.

“The soap. Give me the soap. I will wash your hair for you. Then we will wash the children, yes?”

Dazed, Sarah passed her the yellowed bar of soap. At Eleanora's nod, she slipped off the rock and sank to her knees in the shallow basin. Miraculously cool water eddied around her thighs.

Sarah sat back on her heels, then slowly bent forward and dunked her head under the surface. She was too confused to
sort out the emotions whirling through her right now. She decided not to think, not to try to understand anything that had happened in the past few minutes. She'd just remove her layers of sweat and dust, one by one. She'd let Eleanora wash her hair. She'd play with the children. That was about all she could handle at this particular moment.

 

Sarah sensed rather than saw Jack's return a half hour later. One minute she was sitting quietly on the flat rock, her knees tucked under her chin, her hair clean and damp under the veil that covered it once more. The next moment the skin on the back of her neck began to prickle.

Sarah didn't move for a long moment, alarmed but not unduly frightened by the odd sensation. When it didn't go away, she swiveled slowly on the rock, trying to discover its source.

At first she didn't see anything that would account for it. Two squeaky-clean children sat on the bank and made cakes out of wet, soggy fern leaves with Eleanora's quiet assistance. Eduard dozed, his back against a tree trunk and his still-bandaged arm cradled against his chest.

Sarah swiveled a few more degrees.

For the second time in less than an hour, she met Jack's eyes across the width of the pool. Only this time they didn't glitter with a searing masculine desire that called to the woman in her. This time they held a deadly rage that made Sarah's throat go dry. She stared at him, stunned by his anger.

A shadow moved behind him, and then Xavier appeared at his shoulder. Jack's expression became so swiftly, so carefully, blank that for a moment Sarah thought she'd imagined the cold fury in his eyes.

“Eduard,” he called softly.

The boy sat up, rubbing a hand over his face.
“Sí?”

“Xavier will take you and Eleanora and the children back to camp.”

Both Sarah and the slope-shouldered rebel stared at him in surprise.

“I will stay with the
religiosa
while she gathers the white
fungus that she needs for treating fevers,” he said, in a low, deliberate tone that rasped along Sarah's nerve endings. She didn't understand why just the sound of his voice should suddenly make her so nervous.

The guerrilla glanced from her to Jack, then shrugged and walked toward the boy. Sarah knew that the men weren't quite sure about her relationship with the mercenary, but no one had challenged him or tried to molest her since the big, beefy lieutenant. After catching a glimpse of his face, Sarah wasn't surprised.

“Go with Xavier, Eduard.”

The boy rose, clearly not happy at leaving them.

“Now.”

The absolute authority in the single syllable convinced Eduard. He walked over to Eleanora, who stood watching the scene with the children. Lifting Ricci onto his hip, Eduard turned without another word and started back down the trail. Eleanora hesitated, then took Teresa's hand and followed silently.

The small sounds they made as they left seemed unnaturally loud to Sarah. Teresa's protest that she hadn't finished making her cake echoed hollowly. Ricci's sleepy murmur seemed to reverberate in Sarah's ears. The flap of a toucanette's wings as it soared off the branch Eleanora brushed against sounded like a rattle of distant thunder.

Then there was only stillness.

And Jack.

He watched her with the silent intensity of a predator that had spotted its prey. Just as silently, he began to move toward her. His lean, taut body radiated an aura of barely leashed power.

The nervous tension that had collected along Sarah's nerve endings seemed to explode in tiny, stinging pinpricks. She tried to think of something to say to break the tense silence between them, but no words came.

Never taking his eyes from her face, he circled the edge of the pool. Slowly, deliberately, he stalked her.

With each step, Sarah felt the fluttering of some primitive inner fear. She wet her lips nervously, not understanding either his menacing approach or her reaction to it. The sunlight reflected from the pool cast his face in hard, uncompromising planes and angles. His eyes glittered with a fierce light that seemed to sear her skin wherever it touched. A maleness so raw, so potent, emanated from him that Sarah reacted instinctively.

She whirled and tried to flee.

Before she'd taken three steps, his fingers closed over her wrist and spun her around. She struggled against his hold, panting with fear and some indescribable, undefinable emotion.

“Jack, what—what is it?”

The noise he made far back in his throat sent ripples of sensation down Sarah's spine. Without speaking, he pulled her slowly toward him.

Sarah battled his hold, like a frightened creature staked out at the end of a rope. She resisted his pull with all her strength, but knew even before his other arm wrapped around her waist that it was hopeless.

Still without saying a word, he hauled her up against him. His arm tightened, banding her, molding her. His free hand reached up and tore the veil away. Sarah gasped and flung her head back.

“Jack, for God's sake…”

“Oh, no,” he snarled. “This is for my sake.”

The hand tangled in the fall of her hair. Wrapping a length of it around his fist, he held her steady while his mouth took hers.

There was no other way to describe it. Sarah had kissed and been kissed by her share of boys and men in her time. She been made love to by a skilled, considerate Frenchman. But she'd never felt so
taken
before. This was a kiss meant to dominate, to subdue, to possess. And it did.

Thoroughly alarmed now and deeply ashamed of the liquid heat that rose inside her, Sarah wedged both hands against his
chest. Using all her strength, she managed to lever her upper body a few inches away. She was bent backward over his arm and her hips were thrust intimately up against his, but at least she could see his eyes. What she saw in them made her heart trip.

“What are you doing?” she panted. “Have you lost the last shred of decency you possessed? I'm a nun! A—a bride of Christ!”

A sharp, slicing derision hardened his eyes to tempered steel. “Some bride,” he sneered. “No, don't bother to protest. I know all about you,
Sister Sarah.
”

“Wh-what do you know?”

“I know that three months ago you were caught in bed with a French diplomat. A very married French diplomat.”

Sarah felt the blood drain from her face.

“I know that the wife who'd come to Washington to surprise him ended up being very surprised herself. She subsequently tried to OD on sleeping pills.”

Sarah fought to force some sound out of her closed throat. “Jack, how did—?”

Relentlessly he ignored her feeble whisper. “I also know that the son of a bitch returned to France with his wife. At which point the spoiled, pampered little socialite he'd been screwing felt so sorry for herself she went on a bender and slammed her Mercedes into a busload of Girl Scouts who were touring the capital.”

For a bleak, endless moment, Sarah felt as though she were back in Washington. She cringed as she relived those moments of devastating shame when she'd realized that André had never told his wife he wanted a divorce, as he'd led her to believe. When his young wife's shocked, stunned face had burned itself into her conscience forever.

She could see again her father's pain as he'd come to the darkened bedroom she'd retreated to, bringing her the news that Madame Foutier was in Georgetown Medical Center's emergency room and had linked Sarah to her hysterical, sobbing suicide attempt.

She saw the flash of cameras, heard the shouts of the reporters who'd dogged her every step for weeks, until she'd refused to leave the house. Until, finally, alcohol had brought a stupid, foolish bravado that made her say to hell with them.

She gave a little moan as she heard the sickening sound of metal crunching and glass shattering.

His arm tightened around her waist, bringing her up on her toes, until her face was within inches of his. “You want to tell me I'm mistaken,
Sister Sarah?
You want to deny that was your picture plastered across the front page of the
Washington Post?
”

She wanted desperately to deny it. Staring up at his hard, chiseled face, she would have given her soul to deny it. Instead, she could only press her lips together and, to her shame, make a little whimpering sound far back in her throat.

“Oh, no,” he growled. “Don't get all white-faced and piteous on me. Not now. Not when we've got something to settle between us.”

He loosened the fist that had tangled in her hair and released her. Sarah stumbled back a pace or two, her legs unsteady and her heart aching. She sucked in a long, ragged breath, then let it out again in a rush. Swallowing, she gaped as Jack began to unbutton his shirt. He shrugged out of it and tossed it onto the springy mat of ferns at his feet. His hands moved to the buckle that held the web belt slung low on his hips.

“Wh-what are you doing?”

The belt thudded down on top of the shirt. “What does it look like?” He lifted a foot and planted it against a rock, bending to untie the laces.

Sarah stared at his dark head, stunned. Her lips worked, but she couldn't force any word out.

One boot, then the other, followed the belt. He peeled off thick white socks and straightened.

Sarah couldn't breathe as she watched his hands work the fastening at his waist. A thousand tumultuous emotions surged through her—astonishment, incredulity, heart-hammering dis
belief. But not fear. One small corner of her psyche noted that fact, and her rational mind grabbed it with both hands.

“You won't rape me,” she said, in a small, breathy voice. “Not after these past days together. I don't know much about you, but I know that much. You won't rape me.”

His hands paused on the zipper. One corner of his lip lifted in a smile that made shivers race along Sarah's nerve endings. “No, I won't rape you. I won't have to.”

That stiffened her spine a little. She lifted her chin a small notch. “Listen, Mr. Macho Mercenary, you may think…”

“Save it,
Sister Sarah.
I've done all the listening to you I'm going to do.”

“Stop calling me that!”

“I felt your heart thumping against my cheek when you held me last night.” His voice low and harsh, he stepped toward her. “I saw the look that flashed into your eyes when I held you.”

Sarah stepped back.

He took another forward. “I saw the way you displayed yourself to me a little while ago.”

Heat surged into her face. She clenched her fists and refused to move another inch.

“I didn't know what it meant then,
Sister Sarah,
that little display of yours. Those tender little touches. Like a fool, a blind, stupid fool, I assumed your actions were those of a woman who didn't know what she was doing to me. A woman who didn't realize that her slightest touch made my nerves sizzle. That one look from those eyes of yours tied my gut into knots.”