Forbidden (6 page)

“I know only what Liam knew,” she said. “I think there’s probably a whole lot more you never told him.”

There was the faintest flicker in Cal’s eyes, but he looked away before she could tell whether or not she had imagined it.

“You know about me, but I don’t really know you at all,” he said. “Where’d you grow up? Are you from Boston?”

“Boston suburbs,” she said. “Let’s see, my childhood in a nutshell: No sisters, one brother—older than me by five years, a dog named George—younger than me by five years. Dad worked in middle management at an insurance company in the city, and Mom stayed at home, did volunteer work at the church. I had a classic American sitcom upbringing—without the cheesy laugh track. Every episode had a happy ending. I graduated from high school and went to Boston University—English major, Spanish minor. I was going for my teaching degree.”

He was watching her steadily, as if well aware that all of her information had been superficial. “But now you’re a social worker. What made you switch from teaching?”

Kayla gazed back at him, wondering how vague she should make her reply. Something in his pale blue eyes dared her to tell him,
really
tell him something personal about herself, tell him who she was.

So she told him. Bluntly. No apologies, no gentle words of warning to soften the truth. “I was raped.”

She could see disbelief flash into his eyes, followed quickly by the realization that she was dead serious. He didn’t try to hide his shock and his horror, and he didn’t look away in embarrassment the way some people did, as if her admission were something of which to be ashamed.

So she told him even more. “Sophomore year of college. I went out on a date with an upperclassman who didn’t believe me when I said I didn’t want to get it on with him.” She took a deep breath. She had his total attention, so she went on. “It was date rape. At the time I didn’t even know there was a name for it. I was too ashamed even to tell my roommate. It’s amazing the things you think when something like this happens to you. You think, it must’ve been my fault, I must’ve done something wrong, I must’ve said something to make him think I wanted this…. It really messed me up. I wanted to climb into my bed and hide for the rest of my life.

“But I was hurt badly enough to need to go to the health center,” she continued softly. “The doctor there knew I’d been raped, and she asked me if I wanted to notify the police and press charges. I said no. Who would believe me? The boy was incredibly popular. He was smart and rich and a great athlete. Girls were dying to go out with him. God, I’d thought I was so lucky when he asked me to the movies.” She laughed—a snort of disbelief loaded with twenty-twenty hindsight. “So I just…never told anyone. At least not for about a year. I spent that year hiding from the world.”

For the first time since she’d started telling her story, Cal shifted in his seat. “You don’t strike me as the kind of woman who hides from her problems.”

“You’d be amazed what something like rape can do to even the strongest of women.”

“What happened?” he asked softly. “What helped you learn to deal with it?”

Kayla gazed into this man’s eyes, and found herself telling him something she’d never admitted to anyone. “In some ways I can’t deal with it,” she said. “In some ways I don’t know if I’ll
ever
be able to deal with it.” Like when it came to making love, to sharing intimacies. “I have managed to convince myself that what happened to me was not my fault though, that what that boy did was
wrong
. And that’s a solid start.”

She looked away from him, suddenly terribly self-conscious. “So now you probably know a whole lot more about me than you wanted to know, huh?”

“I still want to know how you got hooked up with the Boston Women’s Crisis Center,” he said quietly.

“About a year later, the man who’d raped me was arrested,” she said. “Another girl pressed charges, and they went to trial. The Boston Women’s Crisis Center helped her post flyers—looking for other women who might’ve been assaulted by the same guy, to help with her case against him. I saw the flyer and called the hotline number. The woman I spoke to talked me into coming down to the center for a visit.” She glanced up at him. “I can’t tell you how incredible it was to talk to women who’d been right where I was. It was such a relief to be allowed to be angry and finally to acknowledge the fact that when that boy raped me, I wasn’t simply getting what I deserved.” She paused. “I wanted to help other women the way the center workers helped me. So I switched my major, did an extra year of study in social work and…here I am.”

Cal was silent for a moment, turning his hat around in his hands. And when he spoke, his words surprised her. “Last night…” He met her eyes. “I hope I didn’t frighten you.”

He was talking about when he’d kissed her.

“If I did, I’m truly sorry,” he continued.

“There was no way you could have known,” she said. “And besides, you didn’t. Frighten me.” On the contrary—she’d frightened herself. He was the first man in an eternity that she’d even halfway considered becoming intimate with. The thought still unnerved her enough to consciously change the subject. “We should talk about the best way to try to locate Liam.”

Cal shifted again. “You got something in mind besides just asking questions?”

“The people I spoke to thought it might be best if we don’t announce our arrival in Puerto Norte,” Kayla told him. “They thought we should pretend to be tourists and take a look around before we contact any officials. If the government
is
hiding Liam, we don’t want them to bury him so deep that we’ll never find him.”

He was silent, still turning his hat around and around and around.

“We should wait,” she added, “and go through official channels only if we don’t find out anything any other way—if we need to shake things up.”

He nodded slowly, glancing at her, and she knew he was thinking the same thing she was. Their presence in San Salustiano could very well put Liam in even more danger.

“So we’re tourists,” he said, his eyes suddenly as cold and as grim as the thin line of his lips, “coming to a war-torn island for a fun-filled vacation. Who the hell is going to believe
that
?”

Cal watched Kayla smile sunnily at the customs official as the dour-faced man perused both of their passports.

Despite what he’d thought, there was a surprising number of vacationers going through customs. But despite the country’s desire for a brisker tourist trade, the customs officials were unfriendly, and escorted several people to a private room for a thorough body search.

Cal didn’t want that to happen. He was carrying copies of the documents he’d received from the San Salustiano government concerning Liam’s death. His alleged death. But if he and Kayla were going to pretend to be tourists and not tip anyone off as to the real reason they’d come to the island, it was important those papers weren’t uncovered in a strip search.

He didn’t know what papers Kayla had hidden under her lightweight jacket, but he suspected she was carrying something equally incriminating.

“We don’t want to be strip-searched,” he breathed into her ear. She nodded, her smile never faltering. God, after what she’d told him on the plane, she may not have wanted to be strip-searched for an entirely different reason.

The customs official said something to them in Spanish, and Kayla replied, rapid fire, going on and on and on—about what, Cal didn’t know. She stopped just as quickly as she’d started and smiled up at Cal, slipping her arm around his waist.

The shock of the sudden full body contact was nearly overwhelming, and he started to pull away—until she pinched him, just above the waistband of his jeans, her hand hidden underneath his jacket.

“Act like you like me, for God’s sake,” she hissed through still-smiling teeth. “Pretend that you want me.”

Pretend that he wanted her.

Cal was a lousy actor, but this was something he could handle. Because despite all his attempts to convince himself otherwise, he
did
want her.

He pulled her in front of him, encircling her with his arms, letting his hands wander the curve of her hips, across and up her taut stomach, his thumbs brushing the soft undersides of her breasts. Her derriere was pressed against him, and he pulled her even closer as he nuzzled her neck. Sweet God, she smelled good and tasted even better.

“What did you tell him?” he breathed into Kayla’s ear.

She turned to face him, slipping her arms up around his neck, and the sensation of her breasts pressed against his chest was nearly too much to handle.

“I said we’d come here because this was the last place my father would think to look for us,” she whispered breathlessly. “I said you’d talked me into running away with you, and that even though you had a terrible reputation as a Don Juan, I was certain you were going to propose marriage any minute.”

She stood on tiptoe to kiss him, pulling his head down until his lips met hers.

He shouldn’t be kissing her—for more than one reason, not the least of which was that story she’d told him on the plane. But he had to help her fool the customs official into thinking they were harmless vacationers. He
had
to kiss her, whether or not either of them wanted to.

But God knows he
did
want to kiss her. And this could very well be the last time he’d ever have such a good excuse. He deepened their kiss, gently claiming the soft sweetness of her mouth with his tongue, carefully holding back, careful not to overpower her, all the while wishing with quiet desperation that he could indeed be some kind of ruthless Don Juan, uncaring of little besides his own selfish needs.

Kayla was trembling when he released her, and to his surprise, he saw a reflection of his own guilty pleasure in her eyes.

It was better than seeing fear and revulsion, but not by much.

He glanced over at the customs official. The man was watching them with unabashed interest, and Cal smiled and gave him a slow wink as he let his hands stray over the soft curve of Kayla’s rear end, pulling her closer one more time.

The man winked back and stamped the passports, waving them away from the uniformed men and women handling the more detailed body searches and toward the airport door.

Arm in arm they headed toward the taxi stand, one small step closer to finding Liam.

         
6
         

Kayla went into Cal’s hotel room through the balcony. “These rooms are enormous. They must’ve given us two of their royal suites. I guess despite their advertising campaign, the tourist trade is still way down these days. This entire hotel is only a quarter full.”

Cal was standing in the middle of the opulent room, and he turned to face her as she came in.

“We need to rent a car,” she said briskly, thinking aloud, “and go up into the m—”

“The first thing we need to do,” Cal interrupted, “is try out that big old king-sized bed over there on the other side of the room.”

Kayla took an involuntary step backward as he moved toward her, an unmistakable glint in his eye. “But—”

He tossed his cowboy hat onto the desk and pulled his T-shirt over his head. “I’ve been waiting to get you alone for weeks,” he said.

Weeks? But he’d known her only a matter of days.
Hours
.

He tossed his shirt so that it draped over the top of the television. He moved even closer to her, and this time Kayla couldn’t move, mesmerized by the sight of his smooth, tanned skin. She was unable to block the memory of the night he’d saved her from the storm—the night he’d kissed her and she’d run her hands across the muscular expanse of his back and…

“And now that your daddy’s not around to stop us…” he said, looking hard into her eyes.

Instantly, she knew that Cal hadn’t gone stark raving mad. For some reason, he was playing along with the story she’d given the customs official at the airport. But why? They were alone in the room.

Or were they?

He glanced toward the desk, and following his gaze, she saw that he’d taken a writing pad out from the drawer. It lay on top, the words “Room bugged—video camera built into TV set” written clearly in his big, bold handwriting.

They were being watched. How had he known to look for a camera?

Cal put his arms around her waist, pulling her close, pressing her hips against his, bending down to catch her lips in a kiss that made her blood pound through her veins. It was a kiss that meant business, and her arms went up around him as if of their own accord. His bare skin was as satiny smooth as she remembered.

He tugged her own shirt free from her shorts, his callused fingers rough against her skin as he kissed her again. It was a kiss meant to look passionate, but his lips were gentle, his mouth impossibly sweet. It was a kiss meant to convince the people watching through the camera lens that had been cleverly hidden in the ornate façade of the big television. And it
would
convince them that she and Cal had only one thing on their minds—it very nearly had Kayla herself convinced.

And as for Cal…She could feel how much he was holding back. But she could also feel his arousal. She could taste his need.

She felt his hands travel up her back, underneath her shirt, felt his fingers touch the back strap of her bra as if checking to be sure that she even had one on.

“I’m going to take off your shirt, okay?” he breathed into her ear.

Take off her…?

He gently pulled her shirt up. “Come on, Kayla,” he coaxed, louder now, her name sounding like music in his soft western drawl.

He must have had a reason for wanting to take her shirt off, but Kayla couldn’t for the life of her figure out what that reason was. Was he intending to make love to her purely for the benefit of the camera? Would he do such a thing?

Would
she
?

She gazed up into the blue and gray swirl of his eyes as he tugged at her shirt again, needing her help to get it off her arms, over her head. A familiar surge of fear shot through her. “Cal, no—”

“It’s okay,” he murmured as if he were gentling a horse. He kissed her lips again, leaving a trail of kisses across her face until his mouth was only a whisper away from her ear. “Just your shirt,” he breathed almost silently. “I need it to cover the camera lens.”

He pulled back slightly, looking into her eyes questioningly, and she nodded. Yes. She lifted her arms, helping him pull her shirt up and over her head.

Her bra was black stretch lace and nearly transparent. She heard Cal draw in a quick breath, his eyes flashing with a heat that was all too real as he looked down at her.

He quickly turned away, throwing her shirt next to his on top of the TV. It hung down, over the control panel, and Kayla knew his seemingly casual toss had been well planned and well aimed.

“Is there only one?” she asked, and he sharply shook his head, holding one finger up in front of his mouth.

“I don’t know who you’ve been with before, darlin’, but one’s all I’ve got—and one’s all I need,” he said loudly, quickly crossing to the notepad and pen. “Go ahead and touch it. It won’t bite you.”

What? Was he talking about…?

In his bold block writing he quickly printed a message on the notepad.

“Microphone or listening device somewhere in this room,” Kayla silently read. “Keep talking while we search.”

He wanted her to make noise, Kayla realized. He wanted her to help him fool whoever was listening into thinking that she and Cal were, indeed, making love.

“Oh,
yeah
,” he said, crossing the room and opening the zipper of his leather bag. “Oh, baby, it feels
good
when you touch me like that.”

He took a clean T-shirt from his bag and tossed it to Kayla, who quickly pulled it on.

“Oh, yeah,” Cal continued as he began to search the desk and the dresser for a hidden microphone. “Oh, yeah, don’t stop what you’re doing….”

His voice was velvet. It was pure, smoking sexuality, and Kayla felt heat pool in her stomach and start to spread throughout her entire body. The muscles in his back and arms flexed as he lowered himself to the floor to search underneath the desk.

He was gorgeous as sin—every last muscular inch of him. He was gorgeous, and his words were outrageously sexy, yet his words and his actions were thoroughly incongruous. He wasn’t anywhere near her, and she was equally far away from him. The entire situation seemed utterly absurd.

“Oh, darlin’, ever since I first set eyes on you,” he murmured, “I had a fantasy about what that mouth of yours could do to me….”

Kayla clapped her hand over that very same mouth to keep from laughing aloud. A tiny strangled squeak escaped, and Cal glared up at her from his position on the floor, where he was looking underneath the desk. “Come on,” he silently mouthed. “Help me.”

Despite his glare, he couldn’t hide the glint of amusement in his eyes. It curled the corners of his mouth, softening the harsh plane of his face, making him look younger but no less dangerous.

“Ooooh,” Kayla moaned as she began searching the wall near the front door. “Oh, baby!”

From across the room Cal snorted with laughter, turning it quickly into a very authentic-sounding groan of pleasure.

There was nothing on the wall or the door frame, nothing along the baseboard. Of course, she wouldn’t know what she was looking for if it came up and bit her in the butt.

“Oh, Cal, Cal,
Cal
!” She lifted the spread of the bed, looking underneath. The floor was smooth Mexican tile, and the bottom of the box spring was covered with a piece of fabric. If a microphone were hidden in there, they’d never find it without taking a knife to it.

But…if the microphone were hidden in there, then whoever was listening was about to get an earful.

Kayla jumped on top of the bed, bouncing it up and down, up and down. “Oh, yes!” she cried. “Yes! Don’t stop!”

She couldn’t keep from grinning at Cal as he swiftly moved across the room to search the bedside table. To her surprise, he actually returned her smile, even giving her a glimpse of very white teeth as he went past.

She kept jumping on the bed as she turned to watch him examine the small cabinet. The top and sides were smoothly finished wood. An old-fashioned rotary-style telephone sat on top. Cal quietly and carefully lifted the phone to look underneath. Nothing.

“More!” Kayla cried. “Oooooh, Cal!”

He silently slid open the single drawer and looked inside. Nothing. At least not on the inside of the drawer.

Cal pulled the drawer the rest of the way out and peered up into the frame. He shifted position, lying on his back on the floor to get a better look. Then he sat back up, looking sharply up at Kayla, nodding and pointing to the darkness inside the bedside table. They found it. Someone was definitely listening.

Cal pulled himself to his feet in one smooth motion. She watched as he picked up the notepad and pen and wrote her another message. He handed the pad up to her.

“If we got a radio, and placed it near the mike, the music would mask our voices so that we could talk without being overheard,” he had written.

She gestured for him to hand her the pen. “Why not just smash it?” she wrote.

Her handwriting was barely legible, but somehow he understood and wrote a reply.

“Then they’ll know we know—and they’ll just replace it with another, hidden somewhere else. We’d have to search the room again.”

She held out her hand for the pen again. “How did you even know to look?”

“I read a lot,” he wrote back. “I’ve read everything published on San Salustiano since Liam died. The government likes using electronic surveillance. Knowing that, along with the hotel bumping us up into these fancy rooms…”

He winced slightly, shaking a cramp out of his hand as he handed her the notepad. This was obviously an inefficient way of communicating. They needed to get a radio so they could talk.

“Cal,” she moaned. “Oh, Cal, Cal,
wait
!” She stopped her jumping, flopping down on the bed, gesturing wildly at him to respond.

“Darlin’,” he said, not quite following her train of thought, but doing his best to keep up anyway. “Darlin’, darlin’—what’s wrong?”

“Music,” Kayla said. “I can’t…I simply can’t make love without music.”

The look on Cal’s face was so incredible, Kayla lost it. She had to turn and bury her face into a pillow to keep her giddy laughter from being overheard.

“You want me to turn on the TV?” Cal’s voice sounded very, very strange as he, too, fought to keep from laughing. He now knew exactly where she was heading.

She peeked out at him. “The TV’s not very romantic,” she somehow managed to say. “Besides, I don’t think it would be loud enough. I like my music
loud
.”

“How about we get us a radio?”

Kayla made her voice syrupy sweet. “Oh, Cal, honey, would you do that for me? Now? I mean,
right
now?”

“Right
now
…?!” He made his voice crack with sheer disbelief. It was perfect, and funny as hell. She hadn’t realized he’d had much of a sense of humor before this.

He grinned at her, trying desperately to contain his own laughter. Hardly able to breathe, Kayla hit him with her pillow. He grabbed her, pinning her back against the bed and…

She saw it happen. One moment he was smiling at her, his eyes warm with laughter, his leg thrown across hers, his hands holding her hands up above her head. But the very next moment realization had struck. Just like that, the warmth and the laughter were gone, leaving behind only the molten heat of his very real desire. And just as quickly as the desire appeared, it was followed by shame.

He pulled himself off her quickly, as if he were burned by her touch.

“Let’s…get dressed and…go into town. Try to find you a radio.” He turned and vanished into the bathroom, leaving her alone.

“What do you think?” Cal asked, pushing the brim of his cowboy hat back on his head.

Kayla stared at him. “You want me to
ride
that thing?” she asked incredulously, turning to gaze at the rickety-looking old motorcycle. “Don’t they have anything real? Maybe something with
four
wheels instead of one and a half…?”

“Aw, Kayla, you’re disappointing me,” Cal drawled, the edge of his mouth curling up into what for anyone else would have been no change of expression, but for him was a major smile. “I thought a city girl like you would be into riding a bike.”

Claiming to be hot and sticky from their flight, Kayla had showered and changed while he’d gone in search of transportation. She stood before him now, dressed in an extremely short black skirt and a snugly fitting white T-shirt. She wore her same funky black boots on her feet and a pair of equally funky oval-shaped purple sunglasses on her nose. Her hair was still slightly damp from her shower.