Man of Passion

by Lindsay McKenna

  Ari nodded and gripped her purse. “Yes. Scared but ready, Rafe.” His name rolled effortlessly off her tongue. She saw his mouth draw into a one-cornered smile. Again that sense of sunlight pierced through her and she felt unaccountably euphoric, as if lifted out of the morass of her own lingering anxiety and humiliation at stumbling to her hands and knees earlier. Rafe made her feel good. He was the first man to make her feel that. It was a wonderful, unexpected feeling, one that she absorbed like a thirsty sponge.

  “Courage is taking a step at a time through your fear,” he told her. Opening the door for her, he said, “Come, we must get a cab.”

  Ari was taken with his manners. He opened the cab door for her, too, and insisted she get in while he took care of the luggage. She felt overwhelmed by Rafe—his power, his charisma and good looks. When he slid into the seat next to her, he looked at her curiously, as if he were still trying to figure out what species of insect she was. His black brows had been drawn downward since he’d met her. With displeasure? Ari thought so and felt badly. She didn’t want Rafe to feel like he was babysitting her. Perhaps she could show her mettle and tenacity at the camp and not be so much of a hindrance to him.

  “Welcome to Manaus, Ari. It is a city that grew up from the rubber tree plantations earlier in this century. When the norteamericano companies created synthetic rubber, the boomtown here died. It has since resurrected itself mining gems, gold and other precious metals, plus a little tourism.”

  He barely fit into the dark green cab, but his large, masculine presence felt wonderful to her. Their arms and elbows touched in the cramped space, but Ari didn’t mind. When he spoke in Portuguese to the driver, she smiled a little.

  “How many languages do you know? You speak fluent English, Spanish and Portuguese, from what I can tell so far.”

  Rafe folded his large hands between his opened thighs as the cabby took off at high speed from the terminal. “I was raised in a family where knowing many languages was expected,” he told her, meeting and holding her gaze. Now, instead of darkness in the depths of her eyes, he saw something else. Happiness? Perhaps a sense of safety now that she was away from the madding crowds of foreigners? He knew that being in a strange country made most people feel a little more vulnerable.

  “Morgan Trayhern, your boss, sent me your résumé. It’s impressive. I’m so thrilled you’ve got a Ph.D. in biology. And from Stanford. That is really something.”

  He nodded. “My knowledge of biology will help you a great deal in your quest for your orchids, Ari.” As he said her name he realized how much he liked it. He liked saying it, and he was glad she wasn’t a stickler for protocol, that she hadn’t asked him to address her more formally, as they did in South America. She had surprised him in that regard. She wasn’t some arrogant, rich brat with snobbish manners. Instead, she was simply herself. Or was she? Rafe knew time would yield that final answer.

  “It must have been difficult to leave your family to come to the U.S. for your education,” she said.

  “Yes, I had to argue with my father to allow me to come to the States. I’m not sorry I did. I got an excellent education at Stanford.”

  Rafe was so easy to talk to, yet as Ari watched him, she realized that despite his relaxed state, he was keenly alert. She noticed that he watched everything in a casual, yet attentive sort of way. She felt an edginess within him, too. What was that all about? Was he disappointed with her? With the fact that she was such a klutz and a loser? That she was a woman he’d have to babysit? Determined to find out over time, Ari tried instead to focus on the joy bubbling in her heart as the cab sped rapidly onto a massive freeway. The tall buildings of Manaus were in the distance, the airport behind them. Ahead, she caught glimpses of a dark, tea-brown river. Was that the Amazon? Her pulse quickened. She was really here. She was on her mother’s journey, the one they’d planned in such detail the last year she’d lived. Clasping her hands, Ari closed her eyes and took a deep breath, a wobbly smile tugging at the corners of her mouth.

  Rafe felt Ari retreating within herself when she clasped her hands, sighed and closed her eyes. The flush in her cheeks had subsided and he noticed the porcelainlike quality to her skin. Blue veins were faintly visible beneath her eyes. She wore absolutely no makeup. It would be hopeless where they were going, anyway, with the rains and humidity. It made him feel good that she was so natural. Women who had to paint their faces into a mask were not their true selves, and Rafe admired Ari for her unspoken stand on the issue. Justine had insisted upon wearing makeup when she’d visited his camp. It had run and spotted, yet she was miserable without it. Why? Rafe would never understand why a woman couldn’t be happy with her natural state, just as nature was with her bounty.

  He saw that Ari wore simple gold hoops through her dainty earlobes. Around her neck was a fine gold chain holding an oval amethyst, to complement the skirt and sweater she wore. Everything about Ari spoke of delicacy.

  Was she a hothouse flower? he mused. More than likely. Women with degrees from GeorgetownUniversity, who lived in Washington, D.C., were not equipped for jungle living. Would she be able to bear a life of hardship, without many amenities? Rafe doubted it. Justine had cried every morning because there wasn’t electricity for her hair dryer. Would Ari see the jungle as her friend or her enemy? Probably an enemy, as his ex-fiancée had. Justine had been afraid to walk to the village with him, for fear of a snake biting her or some big bug whizzing by her head. Morgan had said Ari would be with him three to six months, depending upon how her sketches for the book came along. Rafe hoped it was a much shorter duration. Yet Ari intrigued him. So shy, yet with that childlike look of joy and anticipation written across her features. She was twenty-five, but she reminded him of a gawky fourteen-year-old who was just finding out who she was, just tapping into her femininity. He had no idea where his feelings and instincts about her came from; he’d lived so long on his instincts out in the jungle that he no longer tried to explain his sense of intuition about people. And he was rarely wrong about such perceptions because, over the years, his life had depended upon it. The one time he’d been wrong had been with Justine but she’d been a master of artful disguise and manipulation.

  As the cab screeched to a halt some twenty minutes later, Ari looked out the window in anticipation. There was a huge river, at least a mile wide, spread out before her. Wobbly, poorly kept wooden docks jutted out from the raised, red dirt bank like dark dominos in the water. At one a huge white houseboat with black tires hanging off the sides was docked. That must be Rafe’s. Before he could leave the cab and come around and open her door, she was out and walking quickly toward the riverbank. Hands clasped to her breasts, she looked around, absorbing all she saw.

  The sky was clearing of soft white clouds that hung low over the dark green jungle along the river. She gasped when a flock of brightly colored scarlet macaws flew in a V formation right over her head toward the jungle in the distance.

  Rafe came and stood next to her. “I see the goddess of the river has welcomed you to her breast.”

  Ari turned and looked up at him, a quizzical expression on her face. “River goddess?”

  As the cabby came up with the luggage, Rafe told him to take it aboard the houseboat. Returning his attention to Ari, he saw the soft tendrils of her hair curling in the humidity. The maddening urge to tunnel his fingers through that thick, blond hair was almost his undoing. Instead, he cleared his throat and pointed to the quickly disappearing flight of parrots.

  “The Juma believe that the mighty Amazon is a goddess. They pay her tribute by gifting her with bits of cornmeal or other food. The legend is that when she wants to leave her watery confines, she turns herself into a macaw to fly over her domain, to look after it, care for it and all her beings, including the two-leggeds. If Chief Aroka was here, he’d be shouting for joy that that squadron of macaws zoomed over your head at such a low altitude. He’d take that as a sign, a blessing, that the Amazon River goddess is welcoming you to her br
east.”

  Sighing, Ari closed her eyes. “How wonderful…how absolutely beautiful! That must go in the book. Oh, how I wish my mother could be here….” She opened her eyes and held his dark gaze. “I know she’d have sighed with joy over what you just told me. These are the kinds of stories I want for my book, Rafe! Please, just keep sharing these legends and myths with me, will you? This is what I’ve come down here for.” She flung her arms open and stepped forward. “The Amazon is so beautiful! So wide. So grand! And how powerful she feels to me!” Whirling around, the wind catching her skirt and lifting it to reveal her slender ankles, Ari laughed. It was a laugh of joy, of surrender to the eternal beauty of the Amazon jungle that now surrounded her. “I’m in love! Truly in love! This all feels so wonderful to me!”

  Rafe stood there, enthralled by her spontaneity, by the sunlight dancing in her wide, luminous eyes and the soft parting of her lips into a smile that made his heart pulse hard in his chest. The wind picked up strands of her hair for a moment, as if she were being caressed by the river goddess herself. He smiled tentatively. Surely this was no act on Ari’s part.

  “I see I don’t have to worry about you fitting in to our jungle. You’re right at home, aren’t you?”

  Eagerly, Ari followed him to the rickety wooden dock. “Yes, this is my home. I feel it here, in my heart. I feel this energy, this sense of being alive for the first time in my life, Rafe. I can’t explain it, I can only feel it.” She gazed lovingly out across the expanse of the mighty Amazon River, which looked smooth and swirling, one moment a muddy color like chocolate milk, the next a clear tea color. Ari could swear she felt the goddess of the river touching her heart, opening it; her chest expanded like sunlight to chase away the dark of the night she’d lived in all her life. She squelched the urge to throw her arms around Rafe’s broad shoulders and hug him because she felt so incredibly happy. She didn’t think he’d take kindly to such spontaneity.

  When they reached the plank that led from the dock to his houseboat, he put out his hand to her. “Allow me?”

  Automatically, Ari gave him her hand. There was no hesitation on her part, just a sense of that trust he inspired in her. As his strong, callused fingers closed around hers, she breathed in deeply. “I feel like I’m about to board this boat and step into another world!”

  Rafe led her up the plank and onto the worn deck of the houseboat. “You’re more right than you know, Ari.” He pointed to the cabin. “Down there are your living quarters. The cabby put the luggage there. If you want to change into something more comfortable for our trip downstream, why don’t you? I’m going to cast off the lines and get underway.” When she saw the disheveled living conditions, he was sure she’d be disappointed. He wondered if she’d wail and cry like Justine had when he’d picked her up at this very dock to take her back to his camp.

  Ari nodded. “Do you mind if I watch you cast off?”

  “No, not at all.” He grinned a little. She was like a wide-eyed child who had never seen a boat before.

  “So much for my Manaus visit,” he told her as he crossed the plank.

  Stymied, Ari stood there and felt the gentle rocking of the boat beneath her feet. “What do you mean, your ‘Manaus visit’?”

  Untying the stern, Rafe threw the hemp rope onto the deck. Then he hurried forward and unknotted the bow line. “I come to Manaus in an official capacity for the city, for whom I work, as few times a year as I can get away with.” He leaped onto the boat, picked up the boarding plank, placed it on the deck and tied it down. “Most of the time I’m in the jungle, my real home. Coming to the city is painful to me. I don’t like the sounds, the noise or the congestion.” As he rose to his full height, he held her gaze. She was still standing there, her hands clasped to her breast. There was something innocent and pure about Ari that he’d seen only in children—never in a woman. And she was certainly a woman.

  “And you prefer your jungle home?”

  He climbed the ladder to the cockpit, situated on top of the galley and living quarters and protected on three sides by wood and glass panels. “How do you say it? I’m a country boy at heart? That is norteamericano slang for where my spirit lives.” He took a key out of his pocket and inserted it into the console. With one twist of the key the motor began to growl and white water began to churn at the stern.

  Suddenly, Ari wanted to join him in the cockpit. But she realized Rafe was right: she had to get out of her skirt. If she tried to climb that ladder, she’d trip and hurt herself. She’d shown him her awkward side already and she wasn’t about to do it again.

  “Hey, wait just a minute? Let me change. I want to join you and see how you get out of here.”

  Rafe nodded as he watched her bolt across the deck and hurry down the wooden steps. “Sure,” he called. “Take your time. We’re in no hurry.” Stunned that she obviously relished being on the boat and looked forward to seeing more of the river and jungle, he shook his head. Was he loco? Or was she? Ari’s reaction to everything seemed genuine. Her enthusiasm was infectious, and he found himself feeling a tad better about her being at his camp.

  As he gazed across his beloved river at the dark green jungle on the other side, Rafe sighed deeply. He felt smitten, a little giddy with joy. All because of Ari. What a wild and natural woman she appeared to be. Was she really? That would be too much to hope for. He wasn’t sure she really even knew herself. She was more spontaneous child than conservative adult. He grinned sourly. He hadn’t known what to expect with Ari. Since she was the daughter of a powerful man in the U.S., he’d thought she’d be confident, arrogant and very socially conscious. Well, scratch his assumptions; Ari was none of those things.

  As he looked around, the gentle movement of the boat comforting him like a welcoming lover, Rafe smiled again. Life was full of surprises. He didn’t know what he’d done to deserve the gift of Ari Worthington, but one thing was for sure, he was going to give the river goddess her due for such an incredible surprise. If Ari was a gift and not a lie wrapped up in a beautiful package. Life had never looked brighter—or more hopeful to him on one hand. On the other, he was wary of Ari and her reasons for being here. In his business, he was alone most of the time. Women of his station would refuse to have a relationship with him—much less think of marriage—because he was never in Manaus. He lived and worked in the jungle—where his heart was, where his soul thrived.

  Glancing below, Rafe placed his hand lovingly on the wooden wheel and waited patiently for Ari. She was worth waiting for because he would now see the Amazon through her eyes. The eyes of a child-woman who was enthralled with the beauty of this incredible place on the Equator, a beauty few people knew of. Yes, life was more hopeful, more tempting, than he could ever recall. Then again, Justine had acted just as enthralled about the journey to his camp, too. In due time, Rafe would begin to see the real Arianna Worthington. One way or another.

  Chapter Four

  Breathless with anticipation, Ari hurried up the teakwood steps. She noted that they were sadly in need of sanding and revarnishing. The houseboat was very old, well-worn and lived in, she realized, now that she’d had a chance to see the living quarters. Rafe was obviously neat and clean, despite his disheveled appearance at the airport, though everything was cramped down below. There was a sofa that doubled as a bed. The shower was tiny. The galley kitchen was spick and-span, but small. Still, it would be her home away from home for the next three to six months. That made her feel giddy. She had been expecting to rough it, but the houseboat was a wonderful surprise.

  Quickly trying to smooth her hair into place because she’d mussed it while haphazardly shrugging into a crimson tank top and jeans, she found herself more than eager to be with Rafe. In her hand, she had her faithful leather-bound journal and a pen—just in case he had another story to tell her.

  Rafe heard Ari clambering noisily up the stairs. Against his better judgement, he grinned a little as she emerged. Her hair looked flyaway, an unruly golden mop around her f
ace and shoulders. Still, it did nothing but make her look more beautiful in his eyes. She wore a brilliant red tank top that nearly matched the flush on her cheeks. He saw with pleasure that she wasn’t going to be a fashion dresser. That was a surprise to him. Instead, she wore a pair of soft, serviceable blue jeans that were loose enough that she could comfortably hike in them. He liked the dark brown leather belt with the sterling silver heart clasp that she wore. Yes, he suspected grudgingly, Ari was all heart, all passion. His emotions reeled from this possibility. Rafe kept trying to reject her because she came from a rich, powerful family, as Justine had. And as he had.

  “Whew! That was the fastest change I’ve ever done,” she confided with a glowing smile as she stood nervously outside the cockpit.

  Rafe pointed to the other chair, which was bolted to the deck next to him. “Come on in. Sit down.”

  “Thanks,” Ari whispered, barely able to meet the curious warmth burning in his eyes. Her heart skittered as her left elbow brushed against his dark, hairy arm. Settling herself in the well-worn wooden chair, she looked around. “I’m so excited! This is a dream come true, Rafe. You have no idea….”

  “I’m getting there,” he murmured dryly, draping his fingers across the twin throttles on the console. When he reversed the engines, the houseboat began to slowly back away from the dirt bank and the rickety old dock.

  Ari held the large journal in her lap, gripping it firmly. She liked the quiet way Rafe nudged the houseboat out into the river. The gentle floating motion of the craft was soothing to her fractured nerves. “This feels so nice,” Ari said, then sighed as she gazed at the incredible expanse before them. “The rocking of the boat reminds me of the times my mother would hold and rock me when I was feeling bad, or when I was sick.”