A lost, ditzy bird-watcher who also happened to be one of the sexiest brunettes he’d ever clamped eyes on. Showing off a pair of world-class legs that made even cargo pants look good. And smelling of hothouse flowers, rich volcanic Costa Rican soil and heady, feminine musk.
Briefly, he closed his eyes and bit down on his tongue to keep from groaning out loud.
“Armando?”
“Uh-huh?”
“Are you all right?”
“Never better.” He lied smoothly.
“You look like you’re in pain.”
“Muscle cramp.” He lifted his left leg and rubbed his calf.
“Please, let me.” She crouched on the floor beside him and reached for him.
Armando lowered his leg. The minute her soft fingertips sank into his skin, he knew he was in over his head. She kneaded him like an expert masseuse, digging into his calf with accomplished motions. He hadn’t realized how tense his muscles were until she started the clockwise technique.
This time he did groan.
He dropped her knapsack and it fell to the floor with a solid plop.
“Better?” she asked.
Hell no. The desire tugging at him was much worse now.
“Better,” he croaked and reached his hand down to help her to her feet.
Alarm butted against the inside of his chest. What was going on here? How could he be so strongly and completely engrossed with this woman? The last time he’d been instantly attracted…well, it was Jennifer.
Why had he invited Macy to stay at his cabin? What had he been thinking?
You were thinking she could end up as jaguar prey if she spent the night alone in the forest. Never mind that she’d be utterly terrified.
He was too soft. This kind of misguided chivalry was how he ended up here in the first place. If he hadn’t stopped to change Jennifer’s tire in the employees’ parking lot that very first time they met, he might never have noticed her, and he’d be on the fast track to becoming CEO of Hollister Chemicals. It would be his patent making the headlines, not Bond and Martin’s. Of course, he realized now it had all been a setup.
All because you didn’t know when to keep your pants zipped. Can’t you be chivalrous without being stupid?
Then again, how much lower could he sink? He was out of a job, hiding out in Costa Rica licking his wounds. What else could she take away from him?
Privacy. Her very presence here had already stolen that.
“You hungry?” he asked, desperate to keep busy and not think about how dumb he’d been to bring her into his tropical hideaway.
“Starved.” She placed a palm to her stomach.
“Grilled mahimahi?”
“Sounds excellent. How can I help?”
The cabin was one big room—bed in the middle, stove in the far corner. No living room. No couch. No television. Just a few camp chairs, a bookcase, the kitchen table and a battered old refrigerator. When he’d walked into the place he’d seen the sparseness as a godsend. Now, looking at it through her eyes, he was aware of how bare the place was. Definitely not built with the fairer sex in mind.
“Grill’s outback,” he said, grabbing a bottle of chardonnay off the kitchen counter and two glasses from the cabinet. He handed them to her, along with plates and cutlery. “You take these and I’ll grab the fish.”
She waited while he took the fish from the fridge. He’d caught the mahimahi the previous evening when he’d gone fishing with his uncle.
Armando led her out the back entrance to a stone patio covered by a rattan awning. High on the bluff, the backyard overlooked his uncle’s banana plantation in the valley below. But in the darkness, all that could be seen of the plantation were a few lights dotting the landscape.
“It smells so good out here.” She took a deep breath. “Like hothouse flowers.”
“That’s jasmine,” he said, naming the flowers that grew in abundance along the side of the cabin.
Armando set the fish on the sideboard and fired up the propane grill. Once it was going, he stepped back to light the tiki torches lining the patio. The flames flickered in the breeze.
The evening air smelled heavy. Armando’s nose twitched. More rain was on the way. Hopefully, not before he got his bird-watching tourist out of here the next morning.
He finished with the tiki torches and turned back to see Macy seated on the patio, a glass of wine in her hand, another one sitting on the table waiting for him.
He sat down across from her. She tilted her head back, stared up at the sky. “Look at all those stars. You don’t see stars like that back in the States.”
“You don’t,” he agreed.
The pale, rising moon gave him hope that the heavy rains were still a day or more away.
Macy’s face glimmered in the moonlight and he found himself sliding frequent glances in her direction. He studied the shape of her narrow nose, the bow of her mouth, the high cheekbones.
The wine tasted sweetly tart on his tongue. The smell of grilling fish mingling with the scent of jasmine teased his nose. The sound of the waterfall was carried even up here, a soft, soothing rushing in the darkness. He never realized how romantic this place was. It had a guy thinking thoughts he shouldn’t be thinking about an errant tourist.
“What shall we have to go with the fish?” Macy took a sip of wine and eyed him over the rim of her glass.
“Grilled fruit?” He nodded at the bowl of fruit on the picnic table between them—bananas, pineapple, mangos, passion fruit.
“Mmm, sounds delicious.”
The way she said “mmm” strummed a response inside him like vibrating guitar strings. He took a small knife from the pocket of his swim trunks and went to work carving up the fruit.
While he tended to the food, Macy got up and strolled around the patio. In the light from the tiki torches, he noticed she’d taken off her hiking boots and socks and that her toenails were painted a glistening shade of pearly pink.
She tilted her head back, eyes on the sky, wineglass clutched in her hand, and slowly spun around. “Isn’t this just the most perfect thing on earth?”
Bedazzled, Armando stared. The breeze tousled her hair, mussing it about her shoulders. Her T-shirt hugged her breasts so closely he could make out the hard pebbles of her nipples showing through her thin bra. The little ties at the hem of her cargo pants dangled provocatively against her knees, moving with her, swaying against her smooth, taut skin.
“Yeah,” he murmured, trying to ignore the lump in his throat. “Perfect.”
“A toast,” she said, raising her glass and sauntering closer.
“To…?”
“The perfect tropical hideaway.” She clinked the rim of her glass against his.
“The perfect tropical hideaway,” he echoed, and took a big swallow of wine, praying the alcohol would soothe his frayed nerves.
She set down her glass and picked up the plates. “Dish up the grub.” She smiled and extended a plate. “The food smells ready.”
“It smells ready?”
“That’s how I cook,” she said. “With my nose.”
She seemed so earnest he laughed. “Okay.”
He flipped the food from the grill and onto the waiting plates. He turned off the propane and sat down at the table. She plunked down next to him—not across from him as he would have preferred. This way she was far too close.
“Omigosh, this is sooo good.” She made a soft little moaning sound of pleasure.
Armando picked up his fork, forcing himself to focus on the delicious tidbits on his plate, instead of the delicious tidbit beside him.
She was right. The night was perfect. The taste of the tropical feast, the restful sound of the waterfall, the shimmering moonlight, the air rich with the smell of flowers, volcanic soil and intoxicating woman. Being with her like this made him forget that the rest of the world existed, which was exactly what he’d been aiming for when he’d come to Costa Rica.
The redemption of forgetf
ulness.
“Penny,” she said.
“What?” He blinked at her.
She had her head angled toward him, a pensive expression on her face, the tines of her fork resting against the tip of her little pink tongue. “Penny for your thoughts. You looked a thousand miles away.”
He shook his head. “Nothing. Never mind.”
“Anything you want to discuss?”
He shrugged.
“Sometimes it’s easier to talk to a stranger than someone you know. I’m a good listener.”
He laughed because he didn’t know what else to do. “I don’t have any deep, dark secrets.”
“No?”
“You don’t believe me?”
“Everyone has secrets.” Macy picked up a grilled pineapple ring with her fingers and took a bite.
“Do you?”
“I do.”
He leaned in closer, mesmerized by the impish twinkle in her eyes. “You can whisper it into my ear. No one else ever need know.”
She giggled and the sound had a dizzying effect on him. Or maybe it was the wine. He’d drained his glass.
“If I told you, it wouldn’t be a secret, would it.”
That comment spiked his curiosity. The woman intrigued him, no doubt about it. She sure didn’t seem like a bird-watcher. Maybe that was her secret. She wasn’t really here to watch birds.
“You tell me one of your secrets and I’ll tell you one of mine,” he said as an enticement.
She pursed her lips as if she was considering his proposition.
“Well?” he said. Why was he pushing this? Did he really have a secret desire to unburden himself to a stranger?
“I have a tattoo,” she said.
“What’s secret about that?”
Her grin grew sly. “The location of the tattoo.”
“Hmm, now you’ve piqued my interest. What’s the tattoo of?”
“That’s another part of the secret.”
“How do I find out more?” He inched closer and she didn’t move away. His heart pounded. Her little game was driving him crazy and she knew it.
“You gotta give to get,” she teased.
He liked her more with every passing moment. When was the last time he’d experienced such an instant rapport with anyone? Sure, he’d been sexually attracted to Jennifer from the moment he’d met her, and while that had been hot, there hadn’t been this…this…what was this?
The chemistry was undeniable, but it went beyond that. Armando felt as if an invisible string connected them. It was a bizarre sensation, and while he didn’t want to feel it, he didn’t want it to go away, either.
“Your turn,” she murmured.
“Huh?”
“You owe me a secret.”
“You only gave me a hint of a secret. So I only owe you a hint.”
“Fair enough,” she said. “What’s your hint of a secret?”
“I’m hiding from something. That’s why I’m here,” Armando said, amazed at how easily the admission fell out of him.
“Ooh.” She didn’t seem the least bit intimidated by his confession, but rather intrigued. “Are you an outlaw on the run from justice?”
“Nothing that colorful.”
She leaned in, touching her shoulder against his. “What are you hiding from?”
“You tell me where your tattoo is located and I might be persuaded to share that information.”
“Guess.” Her smile was wicked.
He arched an eyebrow. “Your breast?”
She shook her head.
Heat arrowed straight through him. Armando gulped. “Your belly?”
Again, she shook her head.
Okay, he wasn’t going to guess again. He wasn’t going to say what was popping into his head. It was too…dangerous.
She pressed her lips to his ear and whispered huskily, “Lower.”
“You like to tease.”
“A little,” she admitted with a flutter of her eyelids, but something in her gaze told him it was all bravado. She liked to act brazenly, but underneath it ran a streak of shyness.
The paradox of her captivated him. His body was so hard he could barely draw in air. His every primal instinct was telling him to kiss her, but he knew it was wrong. Somehow he managed to hold on to his control.
“Some secrets,” he murmured, “are better kept buried.”
CHAPTER FOUR
MACY LET OUT a pent-up breath. For a split second there she thought he was going to kiss her, and she had a sneaking suspicion that being kissed by Armando Cutler would be like getting shaken by an earthquake. Involuntarily Macy reached up to finger her lips, as if she could feel the impact.
Great, now he was backing out of the game, just when she was getting somewhere with her investigation. “Don’t you want to know what and where my tattoo is?”
He got up from the table, began collecting cutlery and plates. “Not tonight.”
“If not tonight, then when?”
“Some fantasies are better left to the imagination,” he said.
“You’re pretty philosophical.”
“Recently I’ve had a lot of time to think, and I’ve decided prudence is underrated and acting on instinct is overrated.”
“Now we’re back to secrets again,” she said lightly, but her stomach was crammed with nervous, fluttering butterflies.
“You’re probably tired and will want to make an early start of it back to the Coronado tomorrow. The cabin doesn’t have a shower, but you can take a bath if you want before you hit the sack.” He was talking like an auctioneer, fast and sharp.
Had she tipped her hand somehow? Given herself away?
Her head spun from the romantic atmosphere, the wine and, most of all, him.
He wasn’t looking at her, just standing there with the dirty dishes in his hand. “Could you open the back door?”
“Yeah sure.” Macy knew she wasn’t going to get anything more from him tonight. But there was still tomorrow. Perhaps he’d leave her alone in the cabin and she’d have time to do a little snooping.
She got up from the picnic table and sauntered toward the screen door. She opened it and stood aside as Armando brushed past. His hip accidentally grazed hers.
Simultaneously they sucked in audible breaths and then both tried to act like it had never happened, Armando heading for the sink, Macy skittering across the room to where her knapsack lay. She picked it up, fished around inside and came up with a change of clothes—a white, baby-doll muscle shirt with an OU logo on it and a pair of gray flannel short shorts.
“I think I’ll take you up on that offer of a bath,” she said. “Spending the day searching for the red-throated swallow has left me feeling a bit grimy.”
He nodded.
She paused a moment outside the bathroom door as it occurred to her that there was only one bed in the cabin. There was two of them and no couch in sight. “Um, what are the sleeping arrangements?”
He grinned and wet his lips.
Their gazes locked.
The air vibrated between them. She wanted the story. Wanted it badly. But not like this. Cutler made her feel too out of control.
“Hammock,” he said.
“What?”
“You take the bed. I’ll take the hammock in the backyard.”
“Oh.” She hadn’t seen a hammock in the backyard, but then again, she hadn’t been looking for one. “Listen, I could take the hammock. I don’t want to throw you out of your own bed.”
“You’re the guest,” he said. “Besides, how would that look? Making you sleep in a hammock?”
“Gallant of you,” she said, “but honestly, I’ve slept in worse places than a hammock. I don’t mind.”
“I do. You take the bed. End of discussion.”
All rightee then. “Fine,” she said, hand on the doorknob, clothes tucked under her arm. “I’ll take the bed. So good night.”
“Good night,” Armando echoed. “I hope you get that photo.”
/> “Photo?” For a moment she didn’t know what he was talking about.
“The red-throated swallow.”
Oh, yes, the bird had flown right out of her mind. “I’m sure I will,” she said, her pulse quickening and her stomach tightening. Great, now she was feeling guilty about lying to him.
Drop the guilt. You’re only doing what you have to do to land your dream job.
So why did she feel like such a Benedict Arnold?
Macy locked the bathroom door behind her. Sitting on the side of the tub, she adjusted the faucets to the right temperature and let the water flow. What had happened to her tonight? Why was she having so many conflicting feelings? What was this unexpected chemistry between herself and Cutler? And most important of all, why was she letting it get to her?
When the tub was filled, she stripped off her clothes and sank into the warm, inviting water. A bar of sandalwood soap rested in the soap dish on the side of the old claw-foot tub. She picked it up, held it to her nose. It smelled of him. Clean and masculine. Tarzan in all his treetop glory.
She laid her head back against the cool porcelain. Closing her eyes, she luxuriated in the moment.
Suddenly a deliciously erotic fantasy overtook her.
Against the back of her eyelids, she saw Armando, the dark-eyed stranger she’d come here to betray. “Macy,” she imagined him whispering her name in his sultry, velvet-smooth voice. It sent shivers down her spine.
Her heart slammed against her rib cage at the thought of Armando stepping cockily into the bathtub with her. Her nipples hardened and her breasts swelled. Heat pooled deep inside her.
She envisioned Armando’s hands, broad and flat and gentle, caressing her skin, skimming down her throat, cupping her naked breasts, moving lower, circling her naval, teasing her mercilessly.
Just thinking about him made Macy feel achy and wet and hot. She slid her fingertips over her tender skin.
In her mind’s eye, his hand dipped between her legs, caressing, rubbing her swollen sex. He drew small circles against her inner thigh with his thumb.
She pictured him in the bath with her—his caress, his hand kneading the delicate bud, dangling her on the edge of pleasure. She envisioned his mouth covering hers, his tongue tasting, exploring. Her heart raced and her mind spun out of control.
Sand, Sun...Seduction! Page 19
