To Love a Man (9 page)

She eyed him silently for what seemed like a long time. He returned her look with interest. Her attempt to threaten him with the consequences of his actions had gone flat, like stale Coke. But maybe there was another way. . . . After all, he was here in Rhodesia because he was being paid. Perhaps she could pay him to leave—taking her with him, of course.

“All right, so you don’t care who my grandfather is,” she acknowledged in as reasonable a tone as she could muster. “But that doesn’t alter the fact that he is very, very rich. And he loves me. What would you say if I told you that he would pay you whatever you ask—thirty thousand dollars, forty, you name the price—if you were to take me home safely—now?”

She dangled the carrot before him hopefully.

“I would say no, thank you,” he said coolly. Lisa stared at him, aghast.

“Why not?” she demanded. “You don’t want me here. I don’t want to be here. You want money. I have money. So why not?”

“Because I don’t choose to.” He sounded as if he was beginning to lose patience.

“All right, you don’t have to leave yourself, if you don’t want to,” she bargained desperately, seeing her best chance to get safely away from this whole horrible mess disintegrating before her eyes. “If you could just get somebody—Riley—to take me to the nearest airport, I’d see that you were paid, I swear it. And I’d be out of your hair.”

“No.” The single word was brutal. Sam stood up, shifting his attention back to his papers. It was clear that he considered the discussion closed.

“I won’t stay here with you!” Lisa practically screamed the words at him. He said nothing. He didn’t even appear to hear.

“You can’t make me!”

At this he turned to look at her. The expression on his dark face was not nice.

“Ah, but I can,” he said softly. “But I won’t. I’ll give you a choice instead. You can shut your damned mouth and do as you’re told, or you can get the hell out of my camp and look after your own ass. It’s up to you.”

IV

L
ISA
glared at him furiously, on the verge of telling him that nothing on this earth would give her greater pleasure than to leave his camp, and, not incidentally, himself, when a tiny niggle of common sense stilled her tongue. After all, they were in the middle of a vast nowhere with a guerrilla war being waged all around them. As a woman on her own, with absolutely no training or experience in survival under such conditions, she would be easy prey for the sometimes harsh climate, wild animals, and, worst of all, the brutish men who roamed the countryside in packs calling themselves soldiers. The land hereabouts was sparsely populated, she knew, and her chances of coming across a farm or dwelling where she might shelter were iffy at best. Even if she did, what was to stop the owner of the establishment that took her in from demanding the same price for her care that Sam was? And that was probably the best fate that she could expect. It was far more likely that she would fall prey to the same kind of animals who had attacked her earlier in the day. They would use and abuse her body for as long as it amused them, then probably kill her without a qualm. Lisa remembered the horror that had befallen the Blasses, and shuddered inwardly.

“You don’t mean that,” she said at last. Her tone had become noticeably milder.

“Don’t I?” The blue eyes taunted her. “What misguided reason could you have for thinking that?”

“You wouldn’t do a thing like that. You—you saved my life.” She felt absurd saying that last after the way she had been screeching at him not three minutes ago, but she was suddenly terrified that he might be serious—that he might actually throw her out of his camp and leave her to fend for herself.

“More fool me,” he murmured wryly. “As I said, you have a choice: you can live here in this tent with me, on any terms I care to dictate, or you can get out—now. I don’t give a damn either way.”

“That’s blackmail,” Lisa said slowly, but she knew she didn’t really have a choice. Clearly, he meant what he said, and anything, even becoming his mistress, was better than being left on her own in a world gone mad.

“You’re welcome to call it anything you like. Well?” He sounded impatient.

Lisa swallowed convulsively. “I’ll—I’ll stay.”

“I thought you would.” The words were cynical. “Don’t bother to pretend you’ll find it any great hardship to share my bed. We both know better. Don’t we?”

Lisa didn’t answer that. God, she hated him! Would he leave no shred of her pride intact? But she needed him, too. With a flash of insight, Lisa thought that she hated him most of all for that.

Lisa was so lost in her own thoughts that, when Sam straightened abruptly and took a step forward, she started. He gave her a derisive look.

“Don’t worry, you’re safe—for now,” he said. “Come on, let’s go get chow. I’m starving, and after all the excitement you’ve had today, you must be too.”

Whatever Lisa had been expecting, it had certainly been nothing as prosaic as that. She was conscious of a ridiculous sense of anticlimax as he headed for the flap. She started to follow him, then stopped. She couldn’t bear to go out there and face them all—the two men who had attacked her and the others who had watched Sam carry her naked and struggling through the camp.

He had paused just inside the entrance, frowning as he looked back at her.

“Come on.” He sounded impatient.

“I’m not hungry,” she said, unaware that her face was flushed a bright pink.

Sam looked at her consideringly. “Yes, you are. You’re just feeling embarrassed. Don’t worry, I intend to make it very clear that you’re now my woman. The men won’t give you any trouble after that.”

“I’m not your woman!” Lisa protested suffocatingly, hating the possessive male term.

“Yes, you are. As long as you’re here in my camp, anyway. It’s not precisely what I had planned, but it will serve as well as anything else to keep you out of trouble. Now come on. Let’s go.”

He turned and ducked out of the tent. Lisa, after a moment’s unhappy hesitation, followed him.

The night was dark and clear, the sky a canopy of midnight-blue silk studded by hundreds of glittery silver stars. With the setting of the sun, the land came alive. Lisa could hear the cries of birds and mammals in the distance as they hunted or were hunted, killed or were killed. She shivered as she walked along beside Sam toward the small campfire in the center of the circle of tents. She was trapped in a primitive society, where only the strong could survive. And she was not particularly strong. . . .

The men were seated on whatever perches they could find around the fire, rocks and overturned crates and even the ground. They were, for the most part, busy eating. Lisa hoped they would be so engrossed in their food that they would not notice her following meekly in Sam’s wake. Her presence was bound to cause quite a lot of surprise and probably some lewd comments as well. Always before tonight, she had stayed hidden away in her tent, with Riley grudgingly bringing her her food.

Lisa’s hopes of going unnoticed were in vain, as she had secretly known they would be. One by one the men looked up, saw her hovering nervously behind Sam’s tall body, and suspended activity, staring. Sam appeared oblivious to the interested looks being cast their way and sauntered over to the campfire. Lisa trailed him, her eyes fastened on a spot midway between his shoulder blades so that she wouldn’t accidentally meet the alternately worried, amused, or frankly lascivious looks that followed their progress. At least she could be thankful that the two who had attacked her were not present.

“She eatin’?” Riley inquired sourly as he ladled a particularly noxious-looking mixture of what appeared to be beef stew into a plate for Sam.

“Yes.” The reply was laconic, but the look out of those blue eyes was not. Riley said nothing more, but filled a plate for Lisa. His expression was grimly disapproving as he handed it to her.

“Coffee?” Sam held out a tin cup filled to the brim with the brown liquid.

“Thank you.” Lisa took the cup, carefully avoiding any contact with Sam’s fingers.

“You want me to take her breakfast in the morning, or will she be eatin’ with us from now on?” Riley’s tone said clearly that he resented Lisa’s presence.

“She’ll be eating with us from now on,” Sam confirmed. The words were even, and his tone was mild enough, but something in the gravelly voice silenced Riley and sent the men’s eyes flickering back down to their plates. By the time Sam turned away from the fire with Lisa following him, they all seemed to be busily engaged in stuffing their faces. Despite herself, Lisa was impressed. These tough customers must hold Sam in considerable respect. Which, when she thought about it, she could certainly understand: he was as big as a gorilla and as strong as an ox, and had a disposition meaner than either!

Lisa almost cannoned into Sam’s back when he stopped, so engrossed was she in her own thoughts. As it was, she had to frantically juggle the overfilled plate she held in one hand and the sloshing coffee in the other to keep from pouring them down the back of Sam’s shirt. Which she would not have minded doing, except for the uncomfortable suspicion that he wouldn’t take too kindly to it.

When Sam turned to look at her, she had just managed to save the major portion of her dinner from ending up on the ground, and she was feeling decidedly cross. His mouth twitched up in an involuntary half-grin as he read her expression. Setting his cup on a nearby rock, he moved to take Lisa’s from her hand. She flashed him a venomous look but allowed him to take the coffee. Sam indicated a large, flat rock to his left with a jerk of his head.

“Sit,” he said.

Lisa’s eyes flared at the command, which sounded for all the world as if it had been addressed to a dog. But, bit by painful bit, she was gradually growing wiser: she now knew better than to provoke Sam in front of his men. So she sat on the rock, feeling as sulky as she looked. She only hoped that the stiffness of her movements adequately conveyed her dislike of his tone.

Sam handed her her coffee cup without a word, then effortlessly sank to the ground beside her, balancing his plate and cup seemingly without effort. Lisa watched him disgruntledly as he began to tuck into his food as if he didn’t have a care in the world. Hateful man, she thought blackly.

Her stomach chose that moment to tell her loudly that it was ready for sustenance. She flushed, hoping that Sam hadn’t heard, and picked up her fork to still the ravening organ. The stew, if that was indeed what it was, looked terrible and tasted no better, but she was growing used to camp food. The trick was to swallow it as quickly as possible, before her tastebuds had time to lodge a violent protest. This Lisa tried to do with her first mouthful, only to discover, as the sure-to-be-indigestible lump was halfway down her throat, that that same throat hurt abominably.

After a few more tries she gave up. Her throat hurt too badly to allow her to eat. Vividly she remembered the feel of her attacker’s hands closing around her neck, cutting off her breath, squeezing the life from her. Another few minutes and she would have been dead. . . .

Lisa took a sip of the scalding coffee, refusing to allow her mind to dwell on what might have been. The incident was over, and she had suffered no worse than a few bruises to her body—and, not incidentally, her pride. As she thought that, Lisa’s eyes shifted to Sam. He had been responsible for most of the damage to her pride.

His black-haired head was on the level of her shoulder although he was sitting flat on the ground and she was elevated perhaps eighteen inches by the rock. Not for the first time she registered what a large man he was. . . . He was positioned slightly in front of her, and Lisa was able to watch him as he ate without his being aware that she was doing so. The flickering firelight painted his harshly carved features an orange bronze, accentuating their hard masculinity. For just an instant Lisa compared that uncompromising nose and jutting chin with what she remembered of Jeff’s conventionally good-looking features. Jeff was undoubtedly the more handsome, but he lacked something that Lisa couldn’t quite put her finger on, something that Sam possessed in abundance. Was it virility? Good, old-fashioned animal magnetism? Probably . . .

“Tell me something.” Sam was looking at her over his shoulder. Lisa was embarrassed to have been caught staring at him. Hastily she took another sip of the hot coffee.

“What?”

“What the hell is A. Herman Bennet’s granddaughter doing caught up in the middle of a civil war in Rhodesia?”

He sounded genuinely curious. Lisa shrugged.

“I work for a newspaper. They wanted someone to do a series of features on the effect the war was having on the lives of Americans living here. I volunteered.” She grimaced. “It was supposed to be perfectly safe. I only planned to stay two weeks.”

“Perfectly safe, huh?” He shook his head. “Whoever let you come over here has to be crazy. You’re lucky you’re still alive and in one piece. Didn’t your grandfather try to stop you? Or your husband?”

Lisa shook her head.

“Why the hell not?” Sam’s voice suddenly had a violent undertone.

Lisa looked at him, then looked away. She didn’t feel like going into the whole, awful story—and it was none of his business anyway.

“They thought I needed to get away.”

“To
Rhodesia
?” He sounded incredulous.

“Why not? The French Riviera is too crowded at this time of year.” Her voice was flippant. Sam’s face darkened.

“Anything for a kick, huh?” he muttered sarcastically, and turned back to his food. He swallowed a few more mouthfuls before casting her another assessing glance.

“How long have you been a journalist?”

“About a year.”

“What did you do before that?”

He shot the questions at her as if he were conducting an inquisition. Lisa was taken aback.

“Why, nothing,” she said with some truth. “Uh, I mean, I kept house. . . .”

“You and about five servants, I reckon.” Contempt was plain in his voice. “I suppose you went to some fancy eastern college?”

“Bryn Mawr.”

“What kind of classes did you take? What did you major in?”