Troubleshooters 04 Out of Control

by Suzanne Brockmann

  “I know,” she said.

  “Anyway, the boyfriend had a sister who was a lawyer. They couldn’t press charges against me because about twenty people saw him go for me first. But Adele later emailed me and told me they had talked her into getting the restraining order. It wasn’t really her idea, she said. But she did it, and that was it for me. Just like that, it was over. We couldn’t play our game anymore without me breaking the law, and you know, even when you love somebody a solid ten you don’t do that. A restraining order is some serious shit. And this was only a three or a four, so . . . End of game.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “I’m not. You know, she called me. After she emailed and I didn’t write back, she called to say that the time limit on the restraining order had run out and she wasn’t going to renew it—or whatever you have to do to keep a restraining order active. So it was okay if I dropped by some time. Yeah, right, huh? She said she wanted to see me because she was thinking about getting married. But I knew what she really wanted was to spend the next ten years jerking me around some more. So I declined her invitation, wished her luck and got myself a three-month OUTCONUS—out of the country—assignment.

  “She finally did get married. She still emails me sometimes, but I don’t write back. I couldn’t, you know. And now I don’t want to.”

  Ken stopped talking, but Savannah didn’t say anything. He was anxious, he realized, about what she was thinking after hearing all that. “So. Kind of pathetic, huh?”

  She breathed for a little while longer, and then said, “No wonder you got so upset when I told you I got your address from Adele. I had no idea.”

  Fuck it, he was just going to ask. “So are you nervous now, being stuck in the middle of the jungle with some asshole who needed a restraining order to stay away from his old girlfriend?”

  “No.”

  He started breathing again. “That’s good.”

  “She was the asshole.”

  “Yeah, well, like I said, I’m glad—now—that she did it.”

  “I used to get so angry with her,” Savannah told him. “I remember meeting you, and, well . . .” She laughed softly. “Infatuated lust, indeed.”

  “Really?” Ken rolled his eyes in the darkness. Could he sound any more lame? Really? What an idiot. He had to just be cool and listen and maybe he’d learn something that would give him the nerve to move toward her in the darkness. To kiss her the way she’d kissed him out on the smuggler’s airstrip. Ah, Jesus, he wanted to kiss her again.

  “Really,” she said. “Maybe it was because you were so different from the boys who went to Yale. But I met you, and it was so clear to me that Adele didn’t have a clue. She didn’t know what she had. God, I hated her from that moment on. But I never let her know, because I wanted to be invited to the parties she threw whenever you were in town.”

  “No kidding?” It slipped out and he silently cursed himself. Just let her talk.

  “I had these fantasies where you would come to visit,” she admitted with a soft laugh. “I would somehow intercept you before you got to Adele’s room, and I’d tell you the truth about what she did when you weren’t around.” She laughed again. “And then I’d comfort you and we’d end up naked and you’d never so much as think about Adele again.”

  Ken had to clear his throat. “Wow.” Wow was even more stupid than Really?, but he was floored.

  “Sleeping with you was probably my longest-running fantasy, not counting going for a ride in Chitty-chitty-bang-bang, the flying car,” she told him. “That’s one of the reasons I couldn’t resist making it a reality that night. I mean, imagine getting a chance like that?”

  Imagine.

  She was quiet, and he knew that it was his turn to talk. After admitting something like that, she needed to hear what he was thinking. So he opened his mouth and told her.

  “That’s a lot of pressure for a guy. I’m glad you didn’t tell me before we made love that night, because I would’ve been intimidated. How do you live up to someone’s hugely inflated expectations? That’s pretty terrifying. Jesus.” He both wished he could see her face and was glad that he couldn’t. What was she thinking? What did she want him to do? “I suppose I shouldn’t take it as a very good sign that after sleeping with me once, you decide never to sleep with me again, huh?”

  He heard her move, but she didn’t touch him. God, he wanted her to touch him.

  “I was angry when I said that,” Savannah said. “I didn’t really mean it. You’re the one who’s still pushing me away.”

  Ken laughed his disbelief. “Yeah, I pushed you away because you kissed me while we were completely exposed. Anyone flying overhead could have seen us there. Anyone taking a stroll through the jungle could have, too. Holy Mary mother of Jesus. You want to try it again now that we’re safely hidden? I can guarantee you’ll get a very different response, because right now I’m dying to kiss you again.”

  Savannah tried on a number of responses before she spoke. Okay. That was a good one. Brief and to the point. He’d be all over her before she closed her mouth. And then what? They’d make love. That was a given. But eventually the sun would come up and then what?

  I love you. She could tell him that, giving him her heart and soul along with her body. But what an enormous risk that would be.

  I don’t want you to kiss me unless you’re willing to make our relationship more than just about casual sex. Perfect. Make her love conditional. It wasn’t even true. She wanted whatever he was willing to give her. Even if it turned out to be just one kiss, just one more night in his arms.

  “I was wrong back in San Diego,” Ken said, his familiar voice sliding around her in the darkness. “I wanted to fall in love with you—a number ten kind of love—and I pretty much convinced myself that I had. But that was stupid, because love doesn’t work that way. You’ve got to be really lucky to get a ten at first sight. But that’s what I wanted with you. I didn’t even know you, though. I mean, I liked what I knew, but I just kind of filled in the blanks the way I wanted you to be, so that you’d be perfect. And of course, the sex was incredible, which made it even harder for me to see the truth—which is that whatever we had, it was just starting.

  “So when you told me you’d come to San Diego looking for me, well, your having withheld that from me the night before didn’t fit with the perfect Savannah I’d imagined you to be. What I should have done was hear you out, give you a chance to explain in a way that I would be able to understand. Jesus, people make mistakes, right? You made a bad judgment call because you were so hot for me.” He laughed. “I don’t know what I was thinking. It was definitely temporary insanity, because I find it very hard to get upset about that now.”

  “You believe me?” she dared to ask.

  “Yes, I do.”

  “You’re not just saying that because you want to have sex with me?”

  “Savannah, I’ve been talking my ass off for more than an hour now, telling you shit no one’s ever heard anything about, hoping that I’ll say something, Jesus God, anything that will convince you to have sex with me. But everything I’ve told you is God’s truth. I swear.”

  “Do you think,” she said, “instead of having sex, we could make love?”

  “I’d love that,” Ken whispered.

  But still, neither of them moved.

  “Why are we waiting?” she whispered.

  “Because we’re scared?”

  “What are you scared of?” she asked. Damn, he had to stop saying the first thing that popped into his head.

  But he was scared. Of her. Of the way she made him feel. Of putting too much stake in hope. Of love. Yeah, he was scared of love, scared of loving her too much. Scared he’d find this really was a genuine ten, when all she felt for him was a wimpy little one point five.

  “Everything,” he told her.

  “I’m a little scared that once we start making love, we won’t be able to stop and we’ll eventually eat all our food and all the bugs in the
area, too, and they’ll find our mummified bodies locked together about fifty years from now.”

  Ken laughed. “We’ll have to stop. We’ll eventually run out of condoms.”

  “That won’t stop us. We’ll just have oral sex.”

  Giddy, he reached for her, finding her leg, the smoothness of her thigh, in the darkness. Oh, yes. “Do you have an answer for everything?”

  “Usually, yes.”

  “I like that about you. It used to drive me nuts, but recently I’ve been finding that it really turns me on.”

  Once he found her leg it took him almost no time to trail his fingers up, all the way up to her face. And then somehow she was in his arms, and he was kissing her.

  She was liquid fire—he could feel her shaking with need. For him. After just one kiss and a whole lot of talk. He didn’t blame her—he was like a rock for her, and had been, pretty much since she’d kissed him that afternoon.

  She started tugging at both his clothes and hers, and he helped her out of her shorts, aware that the only thing between them and the bug-filled dirt were the bug-filled branches he’d cut. Instead of laying her down on those branches, he went onto his back, lifting her up and on top of him so that she was straddling his chest. He slid down and pulled her up at the same time and then . . .

  “Oh, my God, Kenny,” she gasped, laughter in her voice as she struggled to get away. “What are you—?”

  He didn’t waste his energy trying to explain. He just held her down and kissed her.

  And with a moan, she stopped trying to pull away. In fact—oh, yes!—she moved closer.

  God, she was so sweet. He’d been wanting to do exactly this for way too many days, but reality was twenty million times better than his wildest imaginings. Except for the darkness. He wished he could see her from this unique vantage point. He wanted to watch her come undone.

  Which was going to happen very soon. She was making little noises, little sounds of intense pleasure in between gasps of his name, the sleek coolness of her thighs deliciously tight against his face.

  He knew exactly where to kiss her to make her detonate, and sure enough, it happened instantly.

  She exploded with a cry, and Ken laughed his pleasure as he just kept on kissing her, drawing out her orgasm as long as he possibly could.

  Finally, gasping and laughing, she pulled slightly away and he let her go.

  “Oh, my God,” she kept saying over and over. “Oh, my God!”

  She’d told him that it wasn’t just anyone who could make her do this. It was him. She’d said he’d been her personal fantasy for years.

  Which worried him a little—well, he was as worried about it as he could force himself to be at the moment, with her sitting on his chest and her scent on his face.

  Truth was, he didn’t want to be the object of her desire. To put it bluntly, he didn’t want to be her fantasy fuck.

  Like his daydreams of Sarah Michelle Gellar. They weren’t based on anything more than infatuation and lust. He didn’t know squat about Sarah Michelle. And for what he’d always imagined them doing together, well, he didn’t particularly need or want to know. He liked the image that was in his head—part Buffy, part exotic Hollywood star.

  It was all fantasy. It was never going to happen, not in a million years.

  Except for Savannah, it had happened. She’d lived her fantasy, got it on with her fantasy man. So who was she making love to right now? Her fantasy Ken, or the real, flesh and blood man with all his flaws and imperfections?

  She’d finally caught her breath, and made as if she were going to move off of him, but he caught her hips, and pulled her back to him.

  “I’m not done here,” he said. “Is it all right with you if I take it nice and slow this time?”

  Savannah laughed her surprise. “You’re not going to do something really obnoxious and start counting my orgasms, are you?” she said breathlessly.

  He stopped kissing her long enough to say, “One.”

  She laughed again. “You’re such a jerk!”

  “Exactly,” he replied, pleased she should recognize that. Fantasy guys were never jerks. Therefore . . .

  He returned his full attention to the long, slow kisses he was giving her, and he felt her shiver, heard her sigh. Her fingers were in his hair and she was no longer trying to pull away from him.

  “Kenny, I could get really used to this,” she breathed.

  “Gee, I hope so.”

  Jones was still awake at 0230, otherwise he wouldn’t have heard it.

  A single soft rap.

  He grabbed his handgun as he rolled out of bed and moved silently to the door.

  He rapped twice on the sturdy metal, and got the correct response in reply. Three soft raps.

  Weapon held at ready, he turned on the light and unlocked the door.

  It was Jayakatong, just as Jones had thought, and he’d brought the part for the Cessna.

  Jones opened the box, examined the alternator. It was what he needed. Come the break of dawn, he could fix the engine in his airplane and fly away.

  “So many candles,” Jaya said. “And flowers. If I didn’t know you better, I’d think—”

  Jones cut him off. “Amazing what a man will do to get laid.”

  “Amazing what a man who’s in love will do,” Jaya countered.

  “Yeah, well, I wouldn’t know about that. What’s new?” He changed the subject as, keeping his eyes on Jaya, he got the money—local currency only—to pay him.

  “Couple of Americans lost in the jungle,” Jaya told him. “A woman and a man. Seen ’em?”

  He looked the other man in the eye. “No.”

  “Rumor has it they’re carrying a lot of money.”

  Jones shrugged. “Rumors have been wrong before.”

  Jaya smiled. With his skinny face, it made him look ghoulish. “Rumor has it the woman is worth millions.”

  Millions. Jones kept his face carefully expressionless. Perpetually disbelieving.

  “General Badaruddin was told she’s some kind of royalty,” Jaya said.

  “Great, except America doesn’t have royalty,” Jones pointed out as he slapped the money into Jaya’s hand.

  The Indonesian man counted it carefully. “If you see them, the Americans, the general’s offering a hundred-dollar reward.”

  “I’ll keep that in mind.” Jones unlocked his door again, and Jaya slipped out.

  He relocked the door, but didn’t turn off the light. He sat down at his table with a bottle of warm beer, thinking about the money that was no longer buried in the jungle outside. No, he’d dug up the attaché case this afternoon and took out the cash, putting it into a duffle bag—easier to carry—and bringing it into his Quonset hut for safekeeping. It was hidden inside the packing craft upon which the box with the alternator rested.

  He’d counted it.

  Inside that duffle, there was two hundred and seventeen thousand dollars.

  As Jones drank his beer, he thought about what a man could do with money like that. He thought about how long it would take him—once there was some small amount of daylight to work in—to get the Cessna ready to fly.

  And he thought about Molly.

  Who was leaving for Africa in less than a month.

  “We can’t fall asleep like this,” Kenny whispered. He was running his hand up and down and up and down Savannah’s bare back and it felt decadently delicious.

  Her head was on his shoulder, her legs straddling his hips. It shouldn’t have been all that comfortable, but it was. “I’m okay,” she murmured.

  “I’m still inside you,” he said.

  “I noticed.”

  “That’s not good.”

  “Speak for yourself.”

  Ken laughed. She loved the sound of his laughter. “Let me rephrase. It’s dangerous, unless you want to get pregnant.”

  “I do.” She paused. “Someday.” She lifted her head and kissed him on the side of his face. “Scared you for a minute the
re, didn’t I?”