The Stealth Commandos Trilogy (51 page)

And she allowed it. Invited it, if she was being truthful. Sins of the flesh, she thought, shuddering. She had probably committed almost all of them with Geoff Dias in just one unforgettable night. Maybe they’d even invented a few. Was that why she couldn’t find the strength to stop him now? Because he’d done all this to her and much, much more?
Because she knew how good a man he was?

“How safe do you feel now, Randy?” he asked, feathering the fine hair that was curling damply to her temple.

“Not very safe at all.”

He smiled knowingly and released her, remounting the bike. As he twisted the ignition key he glanced over his shoulder at her. “Feels good, doesn’t it?”

The bike jerked forward and Randy grabbed hold of his vest. This can’t be happening, she told herself as the powerful vibrations of the revving engine surged through her. She was on the back of a massive motorcycle with a man she’d had the appalling judgment to have a forbidden fling with ten years ago. A mysterious drifter. A veritable stranger! And now fate had arranged it so he was the only man who would or could take her into the wilds of Brazil to find her finance.

A thin, hysterical giggle slipped from her throat as she buried her head in Geoff Dias’s back.
This can’t be happening.

By the next morning Randy had lost her sense of humor and regained her sanity. Perhaps it was the cold whites and grays of the international airline terminal that sobered her up as she waited for Geoff Dias to arrive for their flight to Brazil. More likely it was the sleepless night she’d spent convincing herself that finding Hugh was the most important thing in her life, and nothing could deter her. She could handle
ten
like Geoff Dias if that’s what it would take to accomplish her goal.

Cooler heads will prevail, she promised herself, staring out the terminal windows at the huge 747 they would soon be boarding. At least
her
head would be cool. That’s what had brought her this far in life, and it would get her wherever else she needed to go. She hadn’t devoted her entire adult existence to improving her situation just to throw it all away for another fling with a rogue on a motorcycle.

Ignoring the dull throb above her right eye, she smoothed the lapel of her sand-washed silk jumpsuit. She would need nerves of space-age steel to keep Geoff Dias in line. Still, it could be done. And
she
could do it. She’d done everything else in life she’d put her mind to, hadn’t she?

And he was, after all, just a man ...

“I dreamt about you last night.”

The husky male voice seemed to breathe the words into her consciousness. Geoff Dias had come up behind her, and the sensation that washed over Randy was as much weakness as surprise. The rigidity in her spine began to topple like a row of dominoes, vertebrae loosening all the way to her tailbone. She could feel his presence everywhere. He was as close to her, as enveloping, as if he’d slipped his arms around her waist, and yet he wasn’t touching her.

“I hope it was in color,” she said, congratulating herself on how nonchalant she sounded.

She turned around to a pair of mirrored sunglasses identical to the ones she’d stared into a decade ago. They flashed with the dazzling light from the windows, hurting her eyes. For a second she was transfixed by her own startled reflection, and then by the certainty that this man must surely be the personification of her worst fears, a demon sent to test her.

“Technicolor,” he said. “With Dolby stereo.”

“I prefer Sensurround. How did it end?”

“He got the girl.”

“Too pat.” Randy knew by his smile that she’d scored a point. She was putting up a reasonably good fight so far, blocking his advances, returning his jabs. But as she bent to pick up her carry-on, her hands were shaking.

A half hour later they were in the air and soaring toward Miami, their first connection in the long flight to Rio. The throbbing above Randy’s eye had worsened. Not only was she crowded in a tiny airplane seat between Geoff Dias and the window, but she was faced with an unnerving task. They had never discussed the “price” for his services since that day in his office. She wanted to believe he wouldn’t hold her to that bargain, but she couldn’t take anything for granted with a man like him. She had hired him, in a manner of speaking, and the form of payment had to be discussed.

He was drawing something when she turned to him, sketching what looked like the outlines of a face on his drink napkin. She couldn’t quite make out what it was. “I’m willing to pay you what I promised,” she said. “Twice your normal fee.”

He didn’t look up. “Keep your money. You can’t afford me.”

Randy was tempted to let it go at that, but she didn’t want any surprises down the line. “If you don’t want to be paid, why are you doing this, out of the goodness of your heart? I didn’t know mercenaries did pro bono work.”

He set the pencil down and reached into an inner pocket of his vest. “I told you why,” he said, drawing out a snapshot she’d given him of Hugh. “I’m going to bring Mr. Fortune Five Hundred back alive so you can take a good long look at his Armani suits and his little round glasses and quit kidding yourself. You don’t want pinstripes, Randy. You’d be bored silly.”

And who do I want, Mr. God’s Gift? Mr. Holes-in-Your-Pants Mercenary? You?
Randy curbed the impulse to voice the question. Wisely, she didn’t bring up his “price” again either. He hadn’t mentioned it, and she would leave it that way. As for not wanting Hugh back, Geoff Dias couldn’t have been more wrong. By the time they found her fiancé, she was going to convince the golden one next to her that she was in love with Hugh and totally committed to him.

She rubbed her forehead, wincing as she touched tense muscles and tender nerves.

“PMS?” Geoff asked, smiling faintly.

“Headache,” she muttered, closing her eyes and settling back in the seat. “I’ll be fine. I have a relaxation technique that relieves the tension.”

“This might be quicker.” He drew the silver flask from his vest and offered it to her.

Randy flinched back. “Not if I were dying of thirst in the desert! What is that stuff?”

“Two parts Gatoraid, one part Tang.” He grinned. “Hey, if it’s good enough for the astronauts ... ”

Randy settled back and closed her eyes again, pointedly ignoring him as she concentrated on relaxing the muscles in her scalp and neck. She would have guessed the drink was an exotic love potion from the jungle, designed to turn women into glassy-eyed nymphomaniacs. At least he had a sense of humor.

When she opened her eyes a short time later, Geoff was still preoccupied with his sketch, and she was pleased to know he could entertain himself. Maybe this trip wasn’t going to be such an ordeal after all, she decided, pulling a magazine from the pocket on the chair in front of her. She leafed through it, coming to an article on Rio.

“Did you know that Rio de Janeiro means ‘River of January’?” she asked him. “It was named in 1502 by the Portuguese sea captain who discovered it. That’s beautiful, don’t you think?”

He glanced up, studying her features, gazing at the line of her jaw, the arc of her eyebrows, her mouth. “Yeah, beautiful.”

She smiled, surprised by the compliment, and pleased.

He resumed sketching almost immediately, and though Randy tried to get a look at what he was doing, she still couldn’t make it out. Spurred on by his praise, she felt compelled to talk to him. Maybe she could make him understand how important this trip was to her. She wanted him to know how her life had changed since she’d been with him, and how her relationship with Hugh symbolized that change.

“You know I’m a West Side kid. I grew up in a neighborhood not far from your office.”

“Ummm,” he murmured, “rough part of town.”

“It was,” she admitted, realizing she’d never shared the darker details of her childhood with anyone, not even Hugh. “My mother raised me by herself. She had to work all hours—two, sometimes three, jobs.”

“Looks like she did all right by you.”

He glanced at her briefly, something that might have been admiration lurking in his expression.

“Well, that’s just it,” Randy said, encouraged to go on. “Edna had these dreams she was never able to make come true, about how the perfect man would show up one day and sweep us both away and change our lives.”

“Sounds like Cinderella stuff,” he said, not unkindly.

“Yes, it was, but she believed it completely.”

As Geoff continued to sketch, Randy found herself opening up even more. She confided the harsh realities of her childhood, the men who came and went in Edna’s life, her mother’s illness, and their increasingly sordid existence. “I promised myself I’d do things differently, that I’d make something of my life,” she told him, her voice softening as she hesitated. “Hugh Hargrove is part of that something.”

The pencil went still in Geoff’s hand. “Do you love him?” he asked.

“Yes ... in my way, I do. He really is the perfect man for me. Prince Charming in the flesh, Edna would have said. Maybe that’s as close as anyone ever gets to love.”

Geoff made a series of quick slashes with the pencil, then handed the napkin to her. “Perfection has nothing to do with love, Randy.”

She stared at what he’d drawn, her throat going dry.

“What is this?” she asked, knowing full well. It was a sketch of a young woman’s tear-streaked face, and her expression was so full of sweet, wanton yearnings, so hungry for love, that Randy felt exposed just looking at her. The young woman was her, and the sketch had captured her feelings that night with painful clarity. It spoke of the flaring desire she’d felt for a beautiful stranger, and of the incredible pleasure he’d given her.

“I don’t know what you feel for this Hargrove character,” Geoff said, “but that’s what you felt the night we were together.”

Randy’s head had begun to throb again, but it couldn’t compete with the pounding of her heart. The napkin slipped from her fingers, fluttering to the floor.

“I don’t want to talk about that night,” she said, turning away from him and staring out the window. She tried to focus on the terrain below, the clouds, but she couldn’t see anything but that anguished face. Her own face. She barely knew who that young woman was, but she could feel the force of her needs, the depth of her emotion. Those feelings were stirring inside her now, and they frightened her, frightened her badly.

“Please,” she said sharply, “don’t
ever
bring that night up again.”

T
HE WOMAN TOOK
no prisoners.

That thought flashed through Geoff’s mind more than once as he lounged in a settee in the lobby of a luxurious Rio de Janeiro hotel and watched Randy do battle with the Brazilian reservations clerk. They’d arrived at the hotel a short time ago, only to find that the rooms she’d booked had not been held despite everything she’d done to lock in the reservations. Worse, it was Carnaval in Rio. The hotels were overrun with tourists and revelers come to take in the annual pre-Lenten orgy. There wasn’t a room available in the city.

“Go to a
barato
?” Randy cried softly, aghast as the clerk suggested she try the Brazilian equivalent of a flophouse. “I’ll camp out in your lobby first! I’m in the hotel business, and I know you have rooms. At the very least you’re holding a suite open for emergencies—and this
is
one.”

Her voice was hushed but it carried like wind chimes in an icy breeze. What was it they called women like her? Geoff wondered idly. Tough cookies? Brass cupcakes? Just about any combination of steel and softness would do. Her appearance was deceptively feminine, with her supple dancer’s build, velvet-black eyes, and equally dark hair. She looked delicate enough to be a Barbie doll, but there had to be cast-iron reinforcements in her backbone.

“No suite,” the clerk insisted, his English becoming less intelligible with his agitation. “Es no room leff.”

“I meant it when I said I’d camp out in the lobby,” Randy warned him, her fingernails clicking on the marble countertop that separated them. “I hope your guests won’t mind that I sleep in the nude.”

Geoff grinned and settled in, kicking his feet up on the table in front of him. He’d always enjoyed a good fight, and Randy fought good. Back in the good old days when women were property, she would have been the kind of wife a man kept on a short leash. Or tried to, poor jerk. Despite all her attempts at cool professionalism, she was headstrong and willful by nature, which probably had a lot to do with why he was attracted to her. If he’d been her husband, he wouldn’t have been foolhardy enough to resort to a leash, but he might not have wanted to let her out of his sight for very long.

“Are you prepared for a scene out of
Nightmare on Elm Street
right here in this lobby?” Randy asked ominously.

The telephone began to jangle and as the harried clerk picked it up, Randy glanced around at Geoff, steely determination written in the bones of her lovely face. Apparently the sight of him stretched out didn’t please her greatly. She abandoned her post at the desk and headed his way.

“We may be sleeping on the streets,” she said, looking as if she’d like to kick his legs off the table. “You might have the decency to look concerned.”

“Decency was never my strong suit.”

The way her nostrils flared made Geoff think of a small fierce animal. Everything about her shouted, “Up yours, mister,” and that kind of defiance had always stirred his blood. He had the strongest desire to grab her wrist and pull her down on his lap. With her, anger could turn to passion with one hot, steaming kiss. He knew that from experience. Damn near “religious” experience.

“Are you completely devoid of social skills?” she whispered, then shook her head. “Why am I asking? Of course you are. We’re in a foreign country, faced with a lodging crisis, and you can’t even muster up the energy to help me deal with the reservations clerk.”

He cocked a shoulder. “I wouldn’t want to cramp your style, sweetness. You’re doing fine from where I’m sitting.”

“Cramp my style?” she yelped softly, disbelieving. “You couldn’t cramp my style on your best day. In fact, grab hold of your pants, Conan, because you haven’t seen anything yet.” She zapped him with a dark look as if to make sure he got the message, then spun around to resume her duel with the clerk.