Sand, Sun...Seduction!
Page 18
“A reporter? What on earth makes you ask that?”
Armando scrutinized her. She looked innocent enough—well, except for those full, sensuous lips, which didn’t look the least bit innocent—but then, Jennifer had looked innocent, as well. “You have a camera.”
“And reporters are the only people in the world who are allowed to have cameras? Why would you even assume that? Is there some breaking news story in the middle of the rain forest that I should know about?”
He ignored that last part. “If you’re not a reporter, what are you doing out here?”
“I’m here,” she said, “for the swallow.”
He raised his eyebrows. “Swallow?”
She held up her camera. “The rare, red-throated Costa Rican swallow. I’m an avid bird-watcher.”
Hmm, not what he expected from a woman who looked like she could double for a cover model, but he’d been surprised by women before. “Red-throated, huh?”
Her face lit up. “Have you seen one? Because I thought I saw one. Which is how I got separated from my bird-watching group. I wanted to be the first one to get it on camera, so I struck out on my own and didn’t tell the rest of the group where I was going.”
“I didn’t know bird-watching was so competitive.”
“You have no idea.”
“Well, San Pablo waterfall is the best place to look. And dusk is the best time.”
“That’s what I read on the Internet. It sounds as if you know a thing or two about bird-watching yourself.” She gave him a dazzling smile.
“I know the falls.” He cocked his head and studied her, suspicion still prodding the back of his brain. “You don’t look like a bird-watcher.”
“What? Bird-watchers can only be little old ladies or nerdy guys in safari hats? That’s insulting.”
“That’s not what I meant.”
“What did you mean?”
“You look like you’d be more comfortable on the arm of a dignitary at some kind of celebrity ball.” Armando knew this because he’d been one of those dignitaries and she would have been exactly the kind of woman he’d have latched on his arm—smart, beautiful, confident. “Bird-watching seems too sedate a pastime for someone like you.”
Her smile enchanted him. She was forgiving him for being rude. “It calms me. My grandfather used to take me bird-watching. He taught me bird calls, too.”
“A woman of many talents.” Armando kept his tone light, but there was something dangerous about the way she was making him feel. Her T-shirt, damp from the humid air, had molded itself around her full breasts. And the V-neck exposing just a hint of cleavage kicked his libido out of the cold freeze he’d shoved it into after that mess with Jennifer.
“So what are you doing here?” She canted her head, lowered her eyelashes in a seductive expression. “Looking all Tarzan?”
“I live here.”
“In the jungle? So you really are Tarzan?”
His tongue stuck to the roof of his mouth. He wasn’t about to tell her how he’d ended up here. Instead, he nodded. “Yeah, that’s me. Tarzan.”
“Well,” she said, “I better see if I can find my bird-watching group. I’m sure they’re wondering where I got to.”
“Where are you staying?”
“The Coronado Bed and Breakfast in El Marro Lindo,” she said.
“Do you know how to get back to the main path?”
“I don’t,” she admitted with a playful grin. “Would you mind showing me?”
Armando hesitated, struggling to resist the effect her smile was having on his body. Not to mention those emerald-green eyes. Captivating. The woman was lithe and toned. His groin tightened and he involuntarily licked his lips.
An image of Jennifer popped into his head. Letting his hormones rule had gotten him into this fix. He wasn’t about to do it again. Leading this woman back to the main road wasn’t smart. Best to just send her on her way and forget he’d ever met her.
“Got a pen and paper?” he asked. “I’ll draw you a map.”
“Oh, yeah, sure.”
Was it his imagination or did she looked disappointed?
She dug around in her impossibly large knapsack and finally came up with a pencil and a small spiral notepad. “Okay.”
“You do have a compass, right?”
She patted the left side pocket of her cargo pants. “Check.”
He reached for the pencil and paper and their fingers brushed in the transfer. A hot flush blasted up Armando’s neck and he found himself slowly blowing out his breath through pursed lips. Hicarumba, what was this feeling she stirred inside him?
Quickly he drew a map for her, complete with compass points. “Here’s how you get back to the main path,” he said.
She leaned close to get a better look at the map and he caught a whiff of her scent. She smelled like daisies. Fresh and sweet and all girl-next-door. Something else about her that was unexpected.
He cleared his throat and used the pencil to point out landmarks on the map he’d drawn. “Here’s the way to the main path, but just in case you don’t meet up with your group, I’ve added direction back to El Marro Lindo and the Coronado.”
“That’s so kind of you.” Her appreciation appeared as twin dimples in her right cheek.
“You better get a move on. It’s a four-mile hike back and when the sun sets in the jungle, it sets quickly,” he advised. “Then you really will have to worry about jaguars.”
“Thanks for the warning.” She took his map and stuck it into her back pocket, tucked the pencil behind her ear and shouldered her knapsack.
He couldn’t stop himself from watching her push her way through the vegetation, admitting that it wasn’t often a woman aroused him the way this one had. He noted with a sense of disquiet that she looked every bit as good walking away as she had from the front. Luckily, the forest swallowed up the sexy bird-watcher after just a few steps, and all that remained of her was the sound of her feet tromping through the brush.
* * *
“GOODNESS,” AMELIA Pettigrew exclaimed when Macy accidentally caught up with the bird-watching group. Her plan had been to circle around, end up back at the waterfall and pretend she was hopeless at reading a map so she would have an excuse to interact with Cutler again. Instead, she’d run smack-dab into the bird-watchers. “Are you okay?”
“Fine.” Macy forced a smile. “I’m fine.”
“You don’t look fine,” Harry put in. “You look—”
“Flushed,” Amelia interrupted. “You look all hot and flushed and flustered. Like you’ve been running.” Amelia narrowed her eyes and scrutinized Macy’s face. “On second thought, you look the way I felt when I first met Harry in the rec room at the Robson Ranch Retirement Center. Definitely hot and flushed and flustered.”
Harry blushed.
“See?” Amelia crowed to Macy as she pointed at Harry’s reddened cheeks. “That’s how you look.”
Macy raised a hand to her forehead. She did feel a bit overheated. “It’s the humidity,” she explained. It had nothing at all to do with brushing up against Tarzan.
“People, people,” Stratford Kingman said. “We don’t have much daylight left. This is your last chance today for a glimpse of the red-throated Costa Rican swallow. I suggest you close your mouths and put your binoculars to your eyes. We’re heading back to the B and B in twenty minutes.”
Yay! Now all she had to do was slip away from the group again and scurry back to the waterfall to find Cutler.
“Come on,” Amelia motioned her to follow them.
“Um…” No excuse popped into her head. “I’m not going to stay with the group.”
Amelia looked alarmed. “It’s getting dark. You can’t stay out here alone. It’s too dangerous. I’m going to have to tell Stratford.”
“Please don’t.” Macy put out a hand to stop her.
“He’s responsible for us.”
“Just tell him I’m staying with a friend and not to worry about
me,” Macy said.
Amelia’s eyes widened. “You met someone in the jungle? You modern young women are so daring.”
“No more daring than you,” Harry said, slipping his arm around her waist. “I remember what we did—”
“Shh.” This time it was Amelia’s turn to blush.
“It’s not that daring,” Macy confessed. “I came here to find him.”
“Reconnecting with an ex-lover?” Harry guessed.
“Something along those lines,” Macy hedged. “So you don’t have to worry about me. Have fun with the swallows.”
“You go on, dear,” Amelia said, looking gleeful to be serving as matchmaker. “We’ll make sure Stratford doesn’t get alarmed and come searching for you.”
“Thanks so much.” Macy smiled back at Amelia, and then slipped into the forest again.
CHAPTER THREE
IT TOOK MACY less time to find the falls again, but when she got there, Cutler was gone.
What? You expected him to spend the entire day taking a shower?
The shadows deepened and the sounds of forest creatures grew louder.
Okay, don’t panic. His cabin has got to be around here somewhere.
In the daylight hours it was not a daunting prospect. But in the gathering twilight, visions of predatory animals danced in her head. She thought of Dorothy’s chant from The Wizard of Oz and changed it a bit to suit her situation. Pumas and jaguars and panthers, oh my.
What direction should she go? She took her compass from her cargo pants to ascertain north. But what good did that do when she had no idea in what direction Cutler’s cabin lay?
Dumb plan. Dumb, dumb, dumb. Pressing a palm to her forehead, she looked up.
And that’s when she saw him.
Tarzan in all his half-naked glory, performing yoga on the cliff above and to the right of the waterfall, the remaining daylight bathing his body in a bronze glow. He was in the middle of the warrior pose, arms outstretched, body perfectly straight and still.
Macy’s stomach fluttered the way it always did when she was about to unearth a great story.
He shifted his pose and in that moment he looked down and their gazes connected. His steady, black-eyed stare stole her breath and told her those butterflies in her stomach had very little to do with the unfolding story and everything to do with the enigmatic man himself.
Feigning air-headedness, she smiled, raised a hand and waved. “Yoo-hoo!”
He shook his head, and then gracefully jackknifed off the edge of the cliff into the mossy green pool below. He hit the water smooth as a missile. Small droplets spattered her skin.
Seconds later, he broke the surface, floating on his back and giving her a laconic smile. “You’re back.”
She shrugged. “I got lost.”
“You can’t read a map?”
“I get my directions mixed up.”
“What about your compass?”
She had the compass still clutched in her palm. She put her hand behind her and dropped the compass on the ground. “Lost it.”
He climbed out of the swimming hole, slinging water from his hair in the process with a provocative movement and then he slowly sauntered toward her. Her heart pounded, her mouth went dry. She tried not to stare at his chest, but damn, it was so honed and ripped and tanned she couldn’t help herself.
“It’s too late to send you back out into the forest alone.”
“Yes,” she agreed.
He stood peering at her with such a suspicious look in his eyes that for the longest moment she thought he’d figured out who she was and what she was doing there.
But finally he stuck out his hand. “Armando Cutler,” he said.
“Macy…um…Mason,” she said, using her ex-husband’s last name so she wasn’t telling a total lie. “It’s a pleasure to meet you, Armando.”
“I figured since I have little choice but to take you home for the night, we may as well know each other’s names.”
“Take me home?” She laughed nervously, even though this invitation was exactly what she’d been angling for when she’d concocted her scheme.
“It’ll be completely dark out here in twenty minutes. The Coronado is over an hour’s walk away and I’m not wearing my hiking shoes. The rain forest is not somewhere you want to be unprepared at night.”
“No,” she whispered.
With that, Armando stepped over to a nearby rock, picked up the gray T-shirt she hadn’t seen lying there and wrestled it over his head. He jammed his feet into a pair of thick-soled, black flip-flops and turned back to her. “Come with me.”
For a split second, Macy hesitated. Why was she hesitating? This was exactly what she’d been aiming for. But something about Cutler was raising red flags all over the place. Why did he so readily offer to take her back to his place? Did he have seduction on his mind?
She thought of the dossier she’d built on him. He’d been something of a ladies’ man at one point in his life, but his mother’s battle with cancer seemed to have changed him. Or maybe not. Maybe a woman was behind the secret scandal that had sent him into hiding in Costa Rica. Macy suspected as much.
Cutler held out his hand again, this time to help her over the rocks surrounding the pool. He looked her squarely in the eyes. Macy touched him and a blistering wildfire of sensation blazed up her forearm. To regain her composure, she lowered her lashes, averted her gaze from the sexy man beside her and focused her concentration on picking her way over the rocks.
She gulped, struggling to combat the way his nearness affected her. He smelled so good. Like rain forest and tropical fruit and masculine musk. Macy couldn’t recall the last time a man had made her feel this way. Her ex-husband had never made her feel like this—so aware. So attuned. So aroused.
“Give me your knapsack,” he said.
“Wh-what for?” she stammered, thinking about the press badge and passport she had tucked away inside.
“Because it looks heavy.”
“Oh.”
“You’re not accustomed to men being chivalrous?”
She forced a laugh and handed him her knapsack. “I’m too independent.”
“So, Macy-who’s-not-used-to-chivalrous men,” he said, shouldering her knapsack and escorting her through the thickening dusk, “since we’re going to be spending the night together, I’m thinking maybe we should get better acquainted.”
Ulp. Just what did he mean by spending the night together?
“What do you do when you’re not bird-watching and getting lost?” he asked.
“Online business,” she said, hoping that was vague enough. And it was true. Gotcha was an online magazine.
“What? Selling stuff on eBay?”
“Something like that. How about you? What do you do when you’re not splashing around in waterfalls?” she asked, eager to shift the conversation away from her.
“I’m between careers right now.”
“Oh?”
“Midlife crisis,” he said.
“Aren’t you a little young for that?”
He shrugged. “You’re never too young to reevaluate your life.”
“I guess that’s true.”
“Where you from?” he asked, leading her around the falls.
“Oklahoma. Ever been there?”
“Sure,” he said. “I’m a Texan. Been up to Turner Falls many times when I was a kid. I’m originally from Austin. Went to the University of Texas. Go Longhorns.”
“No, no, go Sooners,” she said, referring to the fierce rivalry between the Universities of Texas and Oklahoma. “I’m an OU alumna. School of—” She almost said journalism, but quickly bit it off and finished with, “business.”
He looked over at her and grinned. His teeth flashing white in the darkness. It was the first time she’d seen him genuinely smile.
“Did you move to Costa Rica?” she asked. “Or is this just a vacation?”
“I’ve taken a sabbatical. That early-midlife-crisis thing. I still h
ave my condo in Houston, but I’m not sure I’m keeping it.”
“No? I thought Houston was booming these days with all the drilling for natural gas,” she said, tiptoeing around the subject. She had to be careful. It was a fine balance, eliciting information from him without giving herself away.
“It is. That’s what makes it a perfect time to sell.”
“You’re not in the oil business?” She held her breath, hoping she wasn’t pushing too far.
“Not anymore,” Armando muttered, then said, “Up you go.”
She raised her head, surprised to see a set of stone stairs leading upward. The foliage around the steps was so thick and the darkness so deep she couldn’t see how far up they went.
“You go first,” Armando said. “I’m right behind you.”
She grabbed hold of the metal railing and started up, acutely aware of the man behind her. Low-hanging branches brushed her face, sending shivers down her spine. This place was damned spooky. She would hate to be out here by herself at night.
“This forest could do with a trim,” she grumbled.
“It’d just grow back the next day.”
“Seriously?”
“It is a rain forest. Sometimes when I’m lying in bed at night I swear I can hear it growing.”
Macy had a sudden image of Armando in bed at night, lying naked under crisp white sheets, the sultry summer breeze blowing in through his open window. She felt herself flush hot all over.
They climbed the rest of the way in silence and it seemed like an hour, but it was actually less than a minute by the time they reached the top.
And then she saw the cabin, set on a mossy bank of rocks and soil. It was made of stone and couldn’t have been more than six hundred square feet total.
It had a wraparound porch, also made of stone. On the porch sat a rocking chair and two or three camp chairs. A whimsical windsock flew from the roof, and wind chimes tinkled gently in the surrounding jacaranda trees.
While she stood taking it all in, Armando walked around her, headed for the door. Once he reached the porch, he stopped, looked back. “You coming?”
* * *
SHE JUST NEEDED a place to crash for the night, Armando rationalized as he stood aside and let her cross the threshold into his stone bungalow. That’s all this was. Jungle hospitality. He was just being kind to a ditzy bird-watcher who’d lost her way.