“Where were you before you came here?”
He had a feeling she was only making conversation to extend their rest, but he didn’t mind. It had been a long time since anybody had bothered to ask about his past.
“Here and there,” he answered. “School, grad school. I went to college in Florida.”
“You probably grew up traipsing around in the jungle.”
He laughed. “Not quite. We don’t have a lot of tropical rain forests in the Utah backcountry.”
That clearly took her by surprise. Her blue eyes widened and she stared at him. “Utah. Really?”
“Tiny town called Moose Springs. You’ve probably never heard of it.”
“No, I’m sorry. I went to Park City skiing with friends once a few years ago but that’s all I know.”
“Moose Springs isn’t far from Park City. About thirty miles or so. One of my brothers is still there. He’s the sheriff, if you can believe that. His wife’s the town doctor.”
“The sheriff? Really?”
“Just like in an old western. He wears a badge on his shirt and everything.”
And he was fiercely in love with his wife, he didn’t add. The last time Ren had been home to Moose Springs had been for Daniel’s wedding to Lauren Maxwell. He almost hadn’t gone, since it had only been three months after Mercedes died, when he was still lost in the grips of guilt and pain.
He would have been much happier here in Costa Rica, still stuck in a bottle and fighting with anybody who moved, but Anna, their little sister, had guilted him into it. She was very good at bossing the whole world around and especially enjoyed tormenting her brothers.
He remembered sitting in the little chapel in Moose Springs, hungover and jet-lagged. As he watched Daniel and Lauren and their radiant joy in each other, he had been quite sure his guts had somehow been ripped out and thrown there on the floor for everyone to see.
He let out a breath, pushing away the memory. Instead, he focused on Olivia Lambert as she sipped the rest of her water bottle and dabbed at the perspiration on her forehead with the sleeve of her T-shirt.
Leaves rustled high overhead, probably in a breeze they couldn’t feel down here. Their slight movement sent a shaft of sunlight to encircle her and he couldn’t seem to look away. She looked lovely here in the wildness of the rain forest, softer than the delicate orchids around them.
She met his gaze and for a moment, something flared between them, something bright and fragile. Then she looked away, leaving him curiously bereft.
“So tell me how a small town in Utah became the breeding ground for a turtle scientist who ended up in the wilds of Costa Rica,” she asked after a moment.
He pushed away his odd reaction. “My dad had a brother who lived in central California. One summer when I was eight or nine, my parents packed us all up to visit my uncle and his family. While we were out there, we drove to the ocean and…I fell in love.”
It seemed a mild understatement when he remembered standing on the seashore for the first time, a little kid from Utah who’d never seen a body of water bigger than the barren Great Salt Lake.
He had stood on the beach in Capitola staring out at the vastness of the ocean, the undulating waves and the sunlight glinting off the water and the white crests, and had been enchanted.
Captivated, entranced, completely bewitched.
During the same trip, he and his family had gone to the Monterey Aquarium and then whale-watching on Monterey Bay. By the time they returned to the wharf, he knew without a doubt he would spend his adult life studying the ocean and the creatures who lived there.
He had never regretted it, even during those worst days after Mercedes died.
“What about you?” he asked. “What do you do in real life, when you’re not roughing it in the jungle on your solo honeymoon?”
She mumbled something but a jacana called at the same time.
“Sorry. I missed that.”
“Nothing important,” she answered, her voice stiff and the open curiosity gone from her eyes. “I work in human resources at my…at a large pharmaceutical company in Dallas. Or I did, anyway. I resigned right after I broke my engagement.”
“Whoa,” he exclaimed. “You don’t do things halfway, do you?”
She made a face. “Obviously, you don’t know me very well. My whole life has been about doing things halfway. Just ask my father.”
If he had ever had a chance to talk to her father, he couldn’t imagine the man would be very thrilled with him for putting his daughter in this kind of danger.
“I’ll do that. I’ll call him for a chat after I get us both safely to Puerto Jiménez and you on a plane bound for home.”
She looked less than thrilled, though he wasn’t quite sure whether it was at the prospect of him talking with her father or at the idea of catching a ride home.
“I’m sorry, but we should really get moving again.”
She gazed at him for a long moment, then nodded slowly and stood, doing her best to hide a wince as she stood.
“I’m thinking we’ll try a shortcut I’ve heard about a little ways ahead. It might cut off a couple miles of hiking for you. What do you think?”
“As long as we don’t have to climb across a swamp full of alligators, a shortcut sounds wonderful.”
* * *
Shortcut or not, the trail didn’t get any easier.
Olivia plodded along, distracting herself from the burn in her thighs and the ache in her feet by focusing on the wild, exotic scenery around them.
She had always envisioned the rain forest as being lush and thick, nearly impossible to penetrate, much like the landscape at Suerte del Mar. The higher in elevation they climbed, though, it seemed the more open the understory became.
She wouldn’t call it sparse, exactly, because low ferns, vines and bromeliads grew in wild abundance, but it wasn’t like walking through the jungle in a Rudyard Kipling story, either. They had a fairly clear view ahead of them of fifty feet or more.
When she asked about it, Ren had explained that the canopy was so thick here that little light reached the forest floor.
Still, the rain forest teemed with life. Every inch of space seemed to be occupied by something living, from exquisite flowers to translucent blue morpho butterflies, to the monkeys screeching in the treetops.
And the trees and vines alone were incredibly beautiful. Some had twisted, crisscross shapes, others were spiraled and another had an accordion shape like a piece of hardtack Christmas candy.
Even though she was hot, tired and undeniably frightened, Olivia couldn’t help being enthralled by the place, by the sheer wildness of this exotic place.
Take away the homicidal maniac chasing them, and she imagined plenty of people would pay big bucks for a guided tour like this. Ren was a walking font of information.
He had explained to her that the Gulfo Dulce Forest Reserve, where they were hiking, was a corridor to National Park, the gem of Costa Rica’s park system.
The Osa Peninsula was home to a staggering biodiversity, Ren told her—an estimated fifteen hundred plant species, eight hundred kinds of trees, nearly four hundred bird species and six thousand kinds of insects.
And that wasn’t even counting the rich marine waters offshore, both on the Pacific and the Dulce—Sweet Gulf—on the other side.
She found herself fascinated by everything she passed, wanting to ask questions the entire way.
The whole thing seemed surreal. Forty-eight hours ago, she was in her climate-controlled condo in Fort Worth trying to decide which of her swimming suits showed the least amount of flab and picking through her to-be-read pile for paperbacks to take along.
She found it ironic now that she had boarded that plane at DFW feeling her life sucked and things really couldn’t get much worse.
Her father wasn’t speaking to her, she had no job, no fiancé and had just spent two weeks returning early wedding presents and sending notice to the six hundred people who had been
invited to the wedding.
The idea of leaving by herself on her honeymoon, of facing that empty seat beside her on the airplane, had been overwhelming, and she had thrown a major pity party for herself.
Now here she was, her feet pinched and probably bleeding again in too-small boots as she hiked through the hot tropics to God knew where with a machete-packing mad scientist—who just happened to be the most gorgeous creature she had ever encountered.
She felt wilted and completely out of shape and knew she had to be slowing him down dramatically, but Ren went out of his way to be encouraging and to laud her for keeping up with his pace.
She had a feeling she would never be Nature Girl, but there was a peculiar sense of accomplishment in this, in seeing this exotic part of the world most people would never have the chance to experience.
She wouldn’t precisely say she was enjoying herself, but how could she help but appreciate the raw beauty they walked through?
Or the raw beauty of the man in front of her, who just now stopped on the trail with a frown.
“What’s the matter?” she asked.
“I’m not sure we’re going the right way.”
“I thought you knew a shortcut.”
“It’s marked on my map, but the trail seems to be getting more and more narrow. Have you noticed that? I hope I haven’t led us down a dead end.”
He glanced at her, worry in his dark eyes. “Let’s stop here a minute. You can put your feet up and I’ll head down the trail a little farther and see how things look. No sense you walking more than you have to.”
Under other circumstances, she would have objected strenuously and argued that they should stick together. But she had suddenly discovered an urgent need to use el baño, so pressing she realized she must have been ignoring it for at least the last mile.
The thought of being alone out here in the jungle while Ren did a little reconnaissance work up the trail was only slightly less horrifying than having to announce her dilemma to him and having him accompany her into the bushes.
“Will you be okay?”
“Just come back.”
He smiled. “I will, I promise. You need anything while I’m gone? Another water bottle or something?”
More liquid was the last thing she needed right now. “Um, no.”
“Okay. I’ll leave the pack here. Feel free to raid the pockets for whatever you need.”
Please, God, let there be toilet tissue, she prayed. She managed to keep from digging into the pack until he walked out of sight. Then she furiously ripped through the outside pockets and breathed a huge sigh of relief when she found a roll of biodegradable tissue in the second place she looked.
Five minutes later, she returned to the trail feeling a million times better. Amazing what an empty bladder could do for her mood. She found a moss-covered log on the side of the trail, which ran along a small tributary. She was almost content as she listened to the sounds of the rain forest and tried to count the different species of birds and butterflies she could see in a ten-yard radius.
She had reached thirty when she suddenly heard a huge blast rip through the stillness.
She rose, her heart pounding. That sounded like a gunshot. What else could it possibly be?
Oh dear heavens. Had Rafferty found them? Her bones were frozen in an agony of indecision—she didn’t know whether to climb the nearest tree, huddle here by the stream or run after Ren as fast as her aching legs would carry her.
Before she could reach a decision, two men suddenly materialized out of the jungle, stealthy as pumas.
She gasped, her brain quickly recording several salient details. Even without the shotguns, no way could she mistake this pair for a couple of nature lovers out for a pleasant hike through the jungle. These men were roughly dressed and filthy. They were young, she thought, possibly early twenties. One had a pitted, scarred face and cold dark eyes, and the other was huge, with a torn dirty shirt and a slightly vapid look on his features.
More important than their physical description, the smaller one carried a big, terrifying shotgun. They both stared at her as if she were the one who had just appeared out of nowhere, then they started yelling at her in rapid-fire Spanish.
She couldn’t understand most of their words, but their body language clearly expressed outrage at her presence here on the trail, for reasons she couldn’t begin to figure out.
Scarface brandished his shotgun at her suddenly as they advanced on her, and her heart rate picked up another notch. Through it was a glimmer of anger. What was it with men in this blasted country, always shoving some kind of weapon in her face? She was getting darn tired of it.
He growled something harsh and guttural at her. When she didn’t answer, he repeated the same words, his voice even harder.
“I’m sorry,” she said, hating the tremble in her voice. “I don’t understand. No comprendo.”
He raised the shotgun as if he was going to hit her with it, and she cowered against the trunk of a huge tree.
Were they Rafferty’s men? Would the suave and smooth gambling mogul actually employ two men who looked so unkempt and who smelled as if they hadn’t bathed in months?
Where was Ren? Her gaze shifted down the trail and she wished desperately for him to return.
“Who are you?” the scarred man asked in heavily accented English. “Why do you come here?”
“I wish I knew,” she muttered.
He brandished the shotgun again, apparently unhappy with her flip answer and she tried to draw air into her lungs.
“I…my friend. Amigo. He brought me here.”
“¿Donde esta?”
Where is he? At least that’s what she thought they asked. Somewhere safe, she hoped, but since she couldn’t say that, she simply shrugged.
“You lie. You are spy.”
Aspy? Her? She was the most unlikely spy in the universe. She would have laughed if she wasn’t so terrified. She managed to shake her head. “No spy,” she answered.
The smaller one stepped back, and she thought for a moment they would leave her alone. Then he said something quickly to the other one, the large, dense-looking one.
He grabbed her shirt suddenly with hands as huge as the leaves of the palmetto trees around and shoved her against the tree.
She nearly gagged at his rank, almost feral, body odor as the rough bark scraped her through the cotton of her shirt.
He pulled out a knife and held it to her throat, and she whimpered. She could only be grateful again for her now-empty bladder. “Please don’t hurt me,” she begged. “Whatever I did, I’m sorry.”
“Uno mas,” his voice deadly hard. “What do you do here?”
She was weak-kneed with fear, afraid she would pass out at any moment now. Before she could summon an answer, a new voice intruded on the tableau.
“She’s with me.”
Ren! She nearly sobbed with relief and looked over the massive shoulder of the brute holding her, to find Ren standing behind Scarface with his machete across the man’s neck.
He looked big and rough and dangerous, as if he would yank the machete across his throat without the slightest provocation, and she had never seen anything more wonderful in her entire life.
He spoke rapidly in Spanish to the men in a voice she had never heard from him before, one hard and fierce. The smaller man responded and for several moments they volleyed words back and forth. She could only pick up a few words here and there—tortugas, turtles, was one.
She wished to heaven she could understand more, but she clearly picked up the tension between them as they stood frozen—Ren with his machete at the smaller man’s throat and his partner with a blade at hers.
How could they possibly win? He was one man against two, one armed with a shotgun and the other with a knife as sharp as that machete.
But to her surprise, a moment later Scarface dropped his shotgun to the dirt and gave a sharp command to the other man. The cold tip of the blade lifted from her neck,
and the man stepped away so abruptly she stumbled to her knees.
As abruptly as this little drama began, it ended. Ren dropped his machete to his side though he didn’t sheathe it again. The man whose neck it had recently adorned started to laugh and the other one did, as well.
Scarface came to her and reached a hand to help her to her feet. “Lo siento, señora,” he mumbled, then he and the other man slipped away back the way they had come.
She stared after them, wondering why she suddenly felt so woozy and odd. The heat pressed in on her, and the blood seemed to rush from her head.
“Are you okay?” Ren made it to her side in two steps. “Did they hurt you?”
“No,” she mumbled, then the world started to fade and turned to black.
CHAPTER 7
He’d say this for her—Olivia Lambert certainly knew how to faint with grace.
One moment, she stood on the trail looking with baffled relief as her second set of kidnappers in twelve hours were swallowed by the rain forest; then she blinked once, twice, then crumpled as if someone had yanked the stuffing out of her.
He swiftly wrapped his arms around her, catching her before she could hit the ground. Fighting back his own relief that the men had left—and the lingering effects of the gut-clenching fear he had felt when he found her backed against a tree with a knife at her throat—he took her weight in his and lowered her with care.
“Olivia? Come on back, Liv.”
Her sable lashes fluttered against the smooth, creamy skin of her cheeks but she didn’t open her eyes.
Her skin was pale and covered with a fine film of perspiration and she had a smudge of dirt across her cheek. Despite it, she looked ethereal in his arms, like some kind of lush, sensual fertility goddess.
As he gave her a quick visual check to make sure the rough men hadn’t hurt her, the tenderness welling up inside him scared the hell out of him.
“Olivia? Come on, sweetheart. Talk to me here.”
She still didn’t respond and his arms tightened. “I’m sorry but we don’t have time for this. We’ve got to move before the rains hit. Come on, baby.” He finally gave in to temptation and traced a thumb down her soft cheek, wiping away the dirt.
Rainforest Honeymoon Page 8
