He realized that he’d mistaken weariness for weakness. It was a mistake made easily enough. Cara was, after all, little more than five feet tall, just the size to inspire a fierce protectiveness in a certain sort of man. The discovery that he might be that type of man had irritated him almost as much as her unannounced arrival.
But whether he considered it brave or foolhardy, the fact was she had displayed the impressive ingenuity and stamina necessary to find him. With what he knew required rugged determination, she had made her way over rough, unfamiliar ground to reach the camp. She had reacted with uncommon composure to the gun he’d brandished at her. She had stood up well to his glaring countenance. She had barely flinched at his rudeness.
In fact, he thought with a low chuckle, she’d given every bit as good as she got. If Cara Scott needed protecting, it was only from her own impetuousness.
Reluctantly, he began to admit her resemblance to Scottie. Not that at first glance she looked much like him physically. Scottie was tall and big-boned, a robust man with curling red hair threaded with silver. His daughter looked as though a strong wind would carry her away. But on closer inspection the comparisons were there for anyone who took the time to look.
There was Cara’s chin, for instance. With its stubborn thrust, that was Scottie through and through. She hadn’t said a single word when she fell, nor had she shed a tear. She was, however, glaring up at him now with a look meant to kill, and that proud chin was held high. Those blue eyes, a shade deeper than her father’s, glinted with the same fire. He’d seen it on countless occasions, when Scottie was up against a particularly dim-witted or difficult opponent.
The memories made him smile. Recalling her earlier attempt at a truce, he offered one of his own. He held out a hand. With predictable defiance, she ignored it. She picked herself up with incredible dignity under the circumstances, then stalked off, fully clothed, straight into the river as if it were a perfectly normal thing to do.
Rod watched her graceful submersion in the water with an amazed expression on his face. In that instant he liked Cara Scott more than he’d liked any woman in a very long time. With a divorced bachelor’s instinct for self-preservation, he quickly dismissed the feeling.
But he couldn’t take his eyes away. When the water was up to her neck, she ducked her head underwater. When she surfaced, her hair was no longer curling damply around her face. It was slicked back in a shimmering blond cap that accented the delicacy of her features. His gaze lingered on the full curve of her lower lip, the arch of golden brows over eyes the color of a brilliant autumn sky, the slender column of her neck.
Then she began stripping off clothes. Rod leaned against a tree and watched with undisguised interest as her jacket was hurled to shore. Her skimpy pink tank top clung revealingly to her breasts. He caught just a glimpse of a jutting nipple before she sank back into water up to her chin. She closed her eyes, a look of sheer sensual pleasure lighting her face. That expression, absolutely innocent of any feminine guile, set off an aching need deep in his gut.
When she opened her eyes and found him staring, the faint smile that had curved her lips instantly became a frown. “Are you just going to stand there gawking?” she snapped.
“Is that an invitation?” he asked in what was meant to be no more than a teasing, audacious inquiry. But instead of wanting to laugh at her look of outrage, he found that his blood surged wickedly as the idea of joining her took hold. Obviously, it had been too damn long since he’d been around a woman, if this little slip of a thing was causing his pulse to race.
Those blue, blue eyes of hers widened and danced with fire. “It is most assuredly not an invitation,” she said through clenched teeth. “I was hoping you’d be gentleman enough to leave me alone.”
Still lounging where he was, he gave her a lazy smile. “I see you’ve misjudged me already. I’m no gentleman.”
She muttered, “I should have listened to Scottie.” Louder, she merely said, “Then bring me a towel. You might as well make yourself useful.”
The unexpected display of regal command delighted him. Too bad she wasn’t going to be around long enough for him to remind her how to treat the common folks. Not that he would have tried, he told himself nobly. He cared too much about Scottie to get involved with his daughter, even if she was a spoiled brat who would probably benefit from a stern hand.
How many times in the early years of their association had he listened to Scottie talking wistfully about his little princess? She was the reason he’d left the work he loved to tie himself down in an office. For an energetic, hard-living man like Scottie, it must have felt like being trapped in a cage. Yet Rod had never heard him complain when he’d been saddled with the full responsibility of a daughter he barely knew, a daughter already into her irksome teens.
Scottie had never talked about his marriage, but Rod had always assumed it to be an uneasy alliance. Why else would a man stay away from home months on end, dash in for a week or two, then fly off again? It was the sort of relationship with which Rod was all too familiar. His own parents had been indifferent to each other and, most of the time, to him, as well. He recognized the pattern with an expert’s eye. He’d followed it himself.
But when Scottie’s wife had died after a brief illness, Scottie had abandoned the fieldwork at which he excelled and had gone home to rear his child. As far as Rod knew, he’d never looked back. Well-meant suggestions about boarding schools had been ignored. Rod wondered if the little spitfire in the river had any idea exactly how great her father’s sacrifice had been. His resentment toward her on Scottie’s behalf returned.
Just look at her now, he thought. She’d taken off on this irresponsible jaunt when her place was by Scottie’s hospital bed, where she could watch over him. It was unnatural for a daughter to want to be anywhere else. To his jaundiced eyes, her sins were mounting again. He stomped down the idea that she’d actually come a couple of thousand miles from home just to put her father’s mind at rest. To admit that would mean to accept his own share of guilt. If he’d sent the preliminary report in on time...
He waved off the twinge of conscience. Well, he hadn’t, and that was that.
Why hadn’t she just sent a message? Someone in Palenque would have gotten it to him sooner or later. The delayed report wasn’t that big an emergency. Turning up here herself, dropping in as casually as she would on one of her classy East Side friends, was probably typical of her selfish, unthinking behavior.
Her arrival was damn inconvenient, too. There were a lot of things about this Mexican dam project that weren’t quite right. The government had ordered the study, but Rod’s efforts to conduct the appropriate surveys had been met with stony resistance from the scattered inhabitants in the area. The Lacandones, with their dark-eyed stares, watched him suspiciously when they chanced upon him. Some of his equipment had been sabotaged. The men he’d hired to help him had long since vanished. The archaeologists he’d met in Palenque had been blatantly hostile. Those he’d visited at the site of their dig farther downstream had been only slightly more receptive to his friendly inquiries. Altogether, it had been an irritating couple of months. Now he was going to have to baby-sit Scottie’s blond princess and get her out of here before some of the elusive danger he’d sensed became a reality.
“I’m waiting.” Her soft voice carried to him. He did not like the zinging effect it had on his libido.
“For what?”
“The towel.”
The royal command was back in her attitude. With a muttered curse, he went to the tent and grabbed a towel for her. When he returned to the riverbank, he noticed that more of her clothes were scattered along the shore, including some very provocative scraps of lace. Perversity kept him from hanging the towel from a nearby branch and leaving her. He stood dangling it from one finger.
“Drop it there.”
“It’ll get muddy.”
“If you think I am coming out of this river with you watching, you’re out of you
r mind.”
He grinned insolently. “You’re not going to like it there after dark. You won’t be able to see the snakes.”
Her eyes widened at that, but if the image he’d aroused unnerved her, she hid it well. “Oh, for heaven’s sake,” she retorted, slowly emerging. The water receded from chin to tempting shoulders. Her cheeks turned a becoming shade of pink. She hesitated. “At least turn your back.”
He gave a short bark of derisive laughter, but he turned around without catching so much as a glimpse of bared breast. He felt a strong urge to break his unspoken promise not to peek when she lifted the towel from his grasp. The intensity of that urge disturbed the hell out of him.
“Do you have other clothes?”
“In my bag.”
“Then take them into the tent and put them on,” he ordered gruffly, “I’m starting dinner.”
He expected her to scamper away still flushed with embarrassment, but she passed him with her head held high, her haughty dignity intact. His body tightened and his blood surged through his veins as he watched the sway of her hips beneath the towel that barely covered her curved buttocks. For a petite woman, her legs were long, longer and far more shapely than he’d realized when they’d been covered in loose-fitting khaki. He swallowed hard and began to build a fire, trying to force his thoughts to less dangerous things.
It didn’t work. His gaze kept drifting to the closed flap of the tent as he envisioned the scanty towel falling away from Cara’s body. He groaned. What the devil was a healthy man supposed to do when temptation turned up on his doorstep?
“Damn!” If that pilot didn’t show up as promised tomorrow and get that woman away from here, he might very well strangle the man himself when he caught up with him. Somehow the prospect of a good, old-fashioned brawl cheered him, and he was whistling tunelessly when Cara emerged from the tent.
He was surprised to see that she was dressed sensibly and not in some stylish idea of appropriate jungle wear. She was even wearing the hiking boots, though he knew they must be miserably uncomfortable since their soaking in the river.
“What can I do to help?” she inquired, her mood pleasant once again. That ability to shift from blazing temper to sunny disposition caught him off-guard. He’d expected her to pout. The fact that she wasn’t sulking somehow restored his overall irritation.
“Just stay out of my way,” he growled.
“Fine with me. I’ll clean up afterward.”
She wandered down to the riverbank. He followed her movements with avid fascination, then cursed himself for it. He grabbed a tin of hash, then turned the can opener with jerky, uncoordinated movements. When he’d dumped the contents into his iron skillet, he added seasoning with a heavy hand, then scraped off a layer of pepper in disgust.
“Where’s the proposed site?” she called over her shoulder. He almost dropped the pan. Her ability to rattle his composure while remaining utterly cool herself infuriated him. Before he could respond calmly, he had to remind himself that she was expressing professional interest, not just indulging feminine curiosity. For Scottie’s sake, he owed her straight answers.
“I’ve just about settled on a spot about five miles upstream, but—”
She interrupted him. “Perfect. That’s not so far. We can go first thing in the morning and I’ll still be back in plenty of time to meet Carlos. After dinner I’d like to go over the work you’ve done up to now.”
He gritted his teeth against another irrational stirring of resentment. “Fine.”
To his astonishment, dinner passed with a minimum of animosity. Cara chatted with casual ease about the company’s work, American politics, theater in New York. In fact, Rod never had to open his mouth for more than an occasional murmur of assent.
Her practiced conversational skill must come from all those high-society parties, he decided. He couldn’t imagine Scottie at one of those events, done up in a tuxedo rather than blue jeans. No wonder the man had suffered a heart attack. He’d probably been living on filet mignon and rich French sauces just to keep his elegant daughter happy. What Rod couldn’t quite reconcile with that bleak scenario was Cara’s apparent enthusiasm for the canned hash he’d prepared for their dinner.
When she’d eaten the last bite, she sat back and sighed contentedly. “That was wonderful.”
“That?” he said skeptically, wondering with a touch of irony how his own stomach would stand up to the overdose of spices.
“It reminds me of the way Scottie used to fix it.”
“He fixed you a meal of this stuff?”
“More than once,” she said, chuckling with real enjoyment at his disbelieving stare. “It’s true. Whenever he’d come home from one of his jobs, we’d go on our own ‘assignment.’ Of course, our backyard was never as exotic as this, and we had a barbecue grill instead of a camp fire, but this was the meal he’d fix. He even overdid the spices just the way you did.”
Rod avoided her laughing gaze.
“I loved it,” she continued. “It was a special time, just for him and me. It was the only time I felt like part of his life.”
Her suddenly wistful tone struck a responsive chord deep inside him. He didn’t like this feeling any better than he had any of the others she’d aroused. He’d already predetermined his opinion of Cara Scott as the willful, selfish daughter. That opinion had been shaken once today. He wasn’t prepared for the discovery that she might have been hurt by Scottie’s wanderings. The image of her as a lonely little girl flashed through his mind and was just as quickly banished.
“Tell me about Scottie,” she asked suddenly, deepening the crack in his reserve.
“He’s your father.”
“But there were all those years when he was gone. You knew him better, then, than I did.”
He wondered what it had cost her to make that admission, but he couldn’t tell from her expression. She was sitting there with legs tucked under her, an elbow propped on one knee, chin in hand. Her hair had dried to a golden halo. Her eyes, in the glow of the camp fire, sparked with genuine interest. She looked like a child anticipating an exciting bedtime story. Increasingly puzzled by her and by his own reactions, Rod found he couldn’t deny her.
“What would you like to know?”
“Everything,” she said simply.
His heart lurched. Without knowing how he knew, he had a feeling he’d just lost it. He also knew he’d do everything in his power to get it back.
A slow smile, the first genuine one Cara had seen, came over Rod’s face. With a sense of amazement, she watched the transformation of his hard features as he sat back and, for the first time since she’d arrived, seemed to relax. She hadn’t fully understood the instantaneous tension between them, but she welcomed its disappearance. Rod’s forbidding expression faded. The stern line of his lips softened. His body’s coiled intensity eased.
“Your father is probably one of the finest engineers I’ve ever met,” he began. There was no denying the admiration in his voice. “I went to the best schools, trained under some of the best instructors, but I didn’t learn anything until I’d hooked up with Scottie. He has an uncanny ability to size things up, to work with people. Hell, he put up with me, and I’m not the easiest man to get along with.”
Cara bit back a quick retort, and he grinned an acknowledgment of her restraint.
“When it came to work, your father was all business. Nobody slacked off when he was around. He put in sixteen-hour days if that’s what it took and he commanded enough respect to get the rest of us to do the same without a murmur of complaint. He never asked us to do a thing he wouldn’t do himself.”
“He does the same thing now,” Cara said, but her comment was made with regret. “I’m convinced that’s why he had the heart attack. He never lets up. I was tempted to insist they keep him in intensive care so he couldn’t get to a phone. Right before I left I had to snatch a stack of reports out of his hospital room so he’d rest.”
She chuckled and confided,
“I can hardly wait to hear what happens when he finds out I hid them where that secretary of his won’t be able to find them.”
A look of complete understanding crossed Rod’s face, but he shook his head. “It won’t work. Louise has the instincts of a private eye and none of the objectivity where Scottie’s concerned. If the files are anywhere in the building, she’ll find them for him.”
“I’m not that naive. They’re not in the building. They’re in the back of my linen closet. Not even Louise would break into my apartment.”
Rod bestowed a lazy, surprisingly sensual grin on her. “I think you underestimate Scottie’s power over her.”
“Not a bit. She’s crazy in love with him, though he’s too blind to see it.”
“I rest my case. She will not let a little thing like breaking and entering stand in the way of making Scottie happy.”
“Oh, I think she will.” She couldn’t resist a smug smile.
“You seem awfully confident.”
“I am.”
“Care to share your technique for keeping Louise in line? I’ve tried everything, from flattery to candy and roses. She’s even immune to outright bribery.”
“You obviously missed blackmail. I told her if I discovered those files in Scottie’s hands again, I’d tell him how she felt about him.” Still delighted with her ingenuity, she chuckled at its success. Louise had been horrified. She’d hidden those feelings for fifteen years.
“Frankly, I’m not sure I won’t anyway,” she said thoughtfully. “It’s about time he woke up and gave her the attention she deserves. Besides, he needs a woman in his life.”
That hard expression was back on Rod’s face in an instant. “Playing matchmaker, princess? I doubt your father would approve. He’s more than capable of finding a woman for himself, if he wants one.”
“Were there women when you knew him?” she asked hesitantly, not sure she wanted to know the answer. The man she knew had been a doting father, a loving husband... when he was home.
In Too Deep Page 3
