Taste of Love: A Romance Sampler

by Susan Connell

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  Two hours later they had crossed the Rio Verde and were standing several yards from its bank. Reilly had pointed out the trailhead twice, but she’d lost it in the tangle of vines and bushes. For one overwhelming moment she wanted to tell Reilly she wasn’t going. That it would be better if she stayed at the hotel in Pucalli while he went in there for Tony. She looked across the half-mile-wide river to Pucalli and then at her watch. If they didn’t start soon, she was going to lose her nerve completely.

  "How’s he doing?" she asked, interrupting the spirited conversation in Spanish that Reilly was having with Chico.

  Chico answered before Reilly could. "Not good, lady. And it’s your fault."

  "My fault?" She looked at Reilly. "Why is it my fault that he missed his father again?"

  "You tell her, Reilly," Chico said before smearing his tears across his cheeks and walking away.

  "He thinks we should all wait in Pucalli until his father shows up again. That could be three or four days."

  "And this is my fault?" she mumbled to Reilly.

  "Of course it’s not your fault," he said, hooking Puddin’ Head’s leash to his belt. "Look, I can’t leave him in Pucalli and I can’t drag him into the jungle either."

  "I know that," she said indignantly. She took a step back as the monkey reached out from his perch on Reilly’s shoulder. "Maybe I should try talking to him."

  "Let me handle this. Man to man."

  She rolled her eyes, then tapped her watch. "You said if we get started soon, we can make it to shelter before the afternoon rains begin. You’ve been handling this for twenty minutes."

  "I heard that, lady." Giving her a thoroughly disgusted look, Chico stomped over to her. "Reilly says Pucalli is no place for ladies. He says we gotta take you in the jungle so you can be safe and then later he will bring me back to Pucalli." Wringing his hands and shaking his head, the boy appeared to be on the verge of tears again. "We gonna miss him, Reilly. We gonna miss mi padre, and it’s her fault."

  "Chico, it’s not her fault."

  Wrenching her shoulders from her backpack, she dropped it at Reilly’s feet. "Woman to boy," she said to Reilly as she grabbed Chico’s hand and walked him to the riverbank. She pointed to a dry spot, and when he sat down, she took the place beside him. "I’m going to tell you a story."

  Chico looked over his shoulder at a doubtful Reilly and shrugged. "Is this gonna take a lotta time, lady?"

  "It could," she said, turning the boy’s face toward her. "But we have a long walk ahead of us, so I’ll give you the short version."

  "Hurry up."

  "Do you know what a whale is?"

  "Yeah, sure," he said, brushing the hair out of his eyes. "I saw one in a book."

  "Well, once, when I was your age, I was sailing with my father and a whale crashed into the side of our boat," she said, watching the boy’s eyes suddenly rivet to her face and grow bigger. "My sister was screaming. I was crying. The whale kept crashing against the boat. We didn’t know what to do, but my father reminded us that he was the captain and that we had to trust him to do the right thing." She took an enormous breath and let it out slowly.

  "We’re all alive today because we listened to the captain. Chico, Reilly is our captain."

  "Yeah, but what happened to the whale?"

  "It’s too long a story to tell now. Maybe later when we stop for the rains," she said, walking back to Reilly and the monkey. Chico was on her heels.

  "Reilly, come on. Let’s go," he said, pointing toward the jungle.

  Shrugging into her backpack, she adjusted the weight and looked up at him. "The boy said, ‘let’s go,’ so let’s get this show on the road, bwana," she said, knowing she was going to savor Reilly’s look of surprise for a long time.

  "How did you do that?" he asked, still looking dumbfounded while he pointed to Chico. The boy was scurrying over to the trail-head while struggling to put on his backpack.

  "I used a business technique that we in the civilized world call negotiating. Something he wanted in exchange for something I wanted. You ought to try it sometime," she said, slipping her hands into her pockets. She smiled modestly. There was nothing quite like a clean kill. They walked wordlessly toward Chico and the trailhead. Her moment of triumph was short-lived when she saw the boy’s skeptical expression.

  "Lady, that story about the whale better be good," he said before disappearing into the wall of vines and bushes.

  Allison winced.

  Pushing back a leaf the size of her desk pad, Reilly raised his eyebrows. "The whale?"

  Trying to ignore his candy-eating grin, she took her first step into the jungle. She could have kept on walking, but she made the mistake of stopping to look at him. Now was the perfect opportunity for a flippant remark, but she couldn’t get the words to come out. And the longer she stared into his eyes, the more breathless she became. Like the exotic jungle palette behind him, every shade of green seemed to be reflected there.

  He leaned closer, his voice resonating with unspoken promises. "I’d love to hear that story. Maybe we could negotiate." One side of his mouth curled in a teasing smile. "Something you want for something I want. What do you say?" He winked, and she closed her eyes.

  A recalcitrant ten-year-old.

  A breast-obsessed monkey.

  And a man who made her want to fling responsibility aside and indulge every one of her fantasies. And then every one of his.

  Was it true that God gave you only what you could handle? she wondered. High in the green canopy above, a bird screamed with laughter.

  "It’s going to be a very long trip."

  ###

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  Pagan's Paradise

  Susan Connell