by Tory Cates
“I’m sorry, Malou. I’m really, really sorry,” Cameron whispered soothingly. The feel of the two bodies in his arms—Malou’s warm and supple against his own and convulsing with grief, and then this minuscule monkey clinging to his chest and trying to burrow into his shirt—was almost more than he could bear.
The monkey baby looked up at Cameron and searched his face for an answer, an explanation. Those eyes. Its tiny face seemed consumed by nothing but two huge pools of bewilderment. Tears and pain—Cameron could not deal with them. His own pain, certainly—he’d had to learn how to deal with that, to save it up and use it to drive himself. But someone else’s pain, someone else’s tears . . . Cameron was defenseless. He ached inside for both the suffering creatures he carried in his arms.
“It’s okay,” he whispered into the golden cap of hair, breathing in the intoxicating scent of clean pink scalp and sun-warmed hair. The baby-fine strands felt like the softest of down against his cheek. He turned his head ever so slightly and the silken mass caressed his lips. Malou, her sobs subsiding, turned her face to him. It was as filled with puzzlement as the little monkey’s had been. Her eyes sparkled with tears in the morning sunshine. As he stared into that questioning face, the tears receded, but the sparkle and the questions remained.
A stab of regret plunged through him. How could he have ever been fooled that first day by her games of one-upmanship? She might, as his Google search had revealed, be a world-respected scientist, but she was a child where these damned monkeys were concerned. A child whom he had inadvertently wounded very badly.
“It’ll be all right,” Cameron soothed again. “We’ll try to work something out.” He would have promised anything to wipe those terrible questions away. But still that look of slightly dazzled wonder remained. Then, in a motion so nearly indetectable that Cameron almost missed it, she moved toward him. For a second, he was sure he’d imagined that slight inclination in his direction, thought he’d brought it into being through the sheer power of wishful thinking. He’d gone several steps before his mind reconfirmed the evidence and produced the stupefying verdict—she wants me to kiss her.
Terrified lest he’d grossly misinterpreted her look and gesture and that he’d unloose the snarling wildcat who’d threatened the other day to tar him in the press, he stopped and leaned tentatively forward, one half of his being anticipating the feel of those deliciously swollen lips beneath his own, the other already wincing from the sting of a slap.
It was all happening with the same inevitability as in her dream, Malou realized, with the one difference that, this time, she had started it. This and a dozen other thoughts darted through her mind as Cameron stopped, bent his head down to bring his lips a scant few inches from hers, then halted, almost as if he were deliberately tantalizing her. Malou’s lips parted as her pulse and breathing accelerated. She inhaled his warm, sweet breath and pleaded silently for his lips to continue their journey downward. His eyes, so hard and cutting five days before, were clouded and soft now with questions.
The questions were banished as Cameron held his lips above Malou’s. They hovered there stealing breath, antagonism, and all sense from Malou. This kiss she hadn’t yet tasted, that she could almost feel, was already more devastating than any she had ever received.
Like a plant drawn to sunlight, Malou lifted her lips up to meet his.
Cameron’s heart lurched as he felt Malou shift within his arms. After that, no power on earth could have halted the descent of his lips, could have stilled him until he had known the feel and taste of those lips.
Held secure in his arms, the kiss had the same weightless quality as in her dream. His lips seemed to suck all her secrets from her. They seemed to touch her in a thousand delirious places at once, but in fact, they only touched her lips and that one virgin spot within her soul that no man, no matter how ardent, had ever gained access to before. And Cameron Landell had reached it with one gentle, almost chaste kiss.
For a long moment after their lips had parted they stared into one another’s eyes trying to figure out what had happened and why on earth it had happened to them in, of all places, the middle of a monkey ranch.
“I’d kiss you properly if I weren’t scared of crushing junior here.”
Malou laughed her first real laugh in five days as her hand went to pat the frail monkey clinging to Cameron’s shirt. The tiny creature was glancing from him to her, trying to figure out the strange human ritual she’d just witnessed.
“I can walk now,” Malou said.
With her feet firmly planted on the earth, she removed the monkey from Cameron’s shirtfront and let the baby attach herself to her shoulder. Suddenly Malou began to doubt the wisdom of her command to be placed on her feet. She swayed forward and was caught within the steadying bonds of Cameron’s arms. She leaned gratefully against his chest. His great, strong heart pounded against her ear, her pulse beating back with the same impassioned rhythm.
The sun beat down on her back, warming her just as Cameron’s body warmed hers. Off in the distance, three young monkeys scampered across the prairie, chasing each other in an endless game of tag. They seemed very far away.
“I could get to like holding women with monkeys on their shoulders. What’s the little nipper’s name?”
Malou was disconcerted by Cameron’s jocular tone. The kiss that had so undone her had obviously not had any measurable effect on him. She pulled away from his embrace and felt for the baby’s featherlight weight on her shoulder. With an effort, she steadied her breathing and answered in an even voice, attempting to match his joking lightness.
“I named her Bambi for the big eyes.”
“Bambi,” Cameron repeated, reaching out for the newly christened baby. Bambi went to him with an eagerness that surprised Malou, wrapping her tiny arms around Cameron’s wrist. Cameron held her up and grinned into the little monkey’s face.
Malou told herself that, objectively, she had known men technically more handsome than Cameron Landell, but she had never known another who made her feel as if her insides were a sandbar dissolving beneath the course of some current, a current that flowed out of a place within her, a current that she hadn’t suspected and certainly couldn’t control. She didn’t like any of this. Not the feeling of being out of control, not the inexplicable yearning that had made her lean toward Cameron for that one mistake of a kiss, not the awkward, adolescent discomfort that was gnawing at her now. She didn’t know what to say, to do.
Abruptly she turned away from Cameron and strode back toward the research station. Escape, that was the one solution that never failed her. She’d learned early that tangling in the morass of human complications was something that she was simply not suited to handle. How could she have forgotten that essential fact long enough for Cameron’s lips to find hers, to find that one unguarded spot within her that no man before had ever found?
“Mary Louise, you want to slow down a minute and tell me what’s happening?”
Cameron easily kept pace with her blistering stride. Cursing herself for ever revealing her full name, Malou kept right on striding.
“Okay then, let me guess. One, this is the first leg of a new Olympic event—speed-walking with small monkey perched on your shoulder. Two, I’ve offended you. Now which is it?”
Malou stopped and pivoted toward Cameron. What on earth did women say to men in this kind of situation? She wished she had a clue. Under no circumstances, deep instinct told her, must Cameron Landell learn of the devastating effect he had upon her.
“Offended?” she asked as if unfamiliar with the meaning of the word. “How could you have offended me?” Good, she liked that. She’d struck exactly the right note of casual indifference. Or had she? Why then was Cameron grinning?
Fortunately, she was saved from pondering that mystery by Ernie bolting out of the research station and calling to them, “Why do you have the baby?” The rays of the sun caught his thick glasses and turned them into two silver orbs blocking out his eyes
.
Malou closed the distance between them. “Jezebel,” she said softly, her grief welling up within her again as she pronounced the name, “she’s dead.”
“Dead,” Ernie echoed dully, his eyes still unreadable behind his glasses.
Malou placed a comforting hand on Ernie’s shoulder. Jezebel had been one of the three or four monkeys he’d worked with most closely.
“Any idea what caused it?”
Malou shook her head no.
“Guess I’d better bring her into the lab and find out. Where did you find her?”
Malou described the spot where she’d left Jezebel, and Ernie set off. Inside the research station, with Cameron watching her every move, she mixed up a batch of infant formula and poured it into a tiny bottle. Bambi resisted the rubber nipple until enough of the formula had trickled between her lips to convince her that the stuff was edible; then she put every ounce of her fragile being into sucking out the nourishment she needed.
“Such a gigantic will to live for such a tiny creature,” Cameron said, as the infant drained the miniature bottle with a loud slurping noise.
Malou debated within herself whether or not to press her advantage. She decided to take the risk. “Yes,” she answered. “Wouldn’t it be a shame to subvert that will?”
Cameron caught her eye and arched a brow in her direction to indicate that her meaning had not been lost on him. “I promised you that I’d try to work something out.”
Malou smiled.
With the furry baby cradled in her arms, its lids fluttering closed sleepily, Cameron reflected on what an odd sort of madonna she made. She was so at peace, so serene and happily in her element with monkeys and so prickly and unpredictable with humans. At least with him. Cameron wondered why. More important, he wondered why he cared so blasted much. She placed the monkey gently onto a nest of terry cloth towels that she transferred into a clean cage along with a softly ticking alarm clock.
“That’ll make her think she’s lying next to her mother’s heart,” Malou explained. For a few quiet seconds, they watched the baby sleep.
“I wonder what monkeys dream about,” Cameron asked.
“Storm Mountain,” Malou guessed, but had no chance to theorize further because Ernie burst in carrying a dried piece of a shrubby bush with a few bright berries still attached.
“Look what I found not ten yards from where Jezebel was lying.”
“Coyotillo,” Cameron identified the plant.
“Not a bad botanical analysis for a businessman,” Ernie said, eyeing Cameron sharply.
“The stuff’s a plague to livestock,” Cameron elaborated. “The berries are deadly poison. Costs me a fortune to keep it off property where I run cattle.”
“Unless I’m seriously mistaken, this is what killed Jezebel,” Ernie went on.
“But how?” Malou asked. “We’ve been over every acre inside the enclosure, wiping the weed out. Not only that, but the monkeys learned long ago not to eat that plant.”
Ernie shrugged, turning the bit of brush over in his hand. “Beats me, but here’s the evidence. What’s odd is, look here.” He indicated the broken end of the branch. “This is how I found it. Obviously ripped off the plant.”
“What’s so odd about that?” Cameron questioned.
“That’s something you wouldn’t know about,” Ernie answered in what Malou felt was an unnecessarily snide tone. “Macaques rarely uproot plants. They feed on the sprouts, buds, and berries and leave the plant itself intact.”
“No, I wasn’t aware of that,” Cameron admitted.
“I didn’t think you would be.”
There was a peculiar intensity in Ernie’s comment. It infected Malou with unhealthy suspicions that rankled beneath the surface. She was certain that she had not left any coyotillo plants within the enclosure.
Ernie was strafing Cameron now with unconcealed dislike. Cameron was returning the hostility in full measure. His eyes had hardened again until they reflected nothing but frozen glints of steely determination.
Malou was astonished by the change. Or had Cameron merely reverted to his true nature?
Behind her, in a voice so soft that only she could hear it, Bambi whimpered in her sleep.
Chapter 3
Watching Ernie and Cameron glare at one another made Malou acutely uncomfortable. If they were macaques, she thought, fur would have flown or the dominant male would have chased off his underling by now. Such tension could never be supported in the wild.
“If you need me, I’ll be in the lab.” Ernie broke first, stomping away and slamming the door behind him. Cameron had prevailed. Dominance does not mean right, Malou reminded herself. She was certain that Cameron Landell had not gotten to where he was in his world by making a habit of backing down. Or of being overburdened with scruples.
In the silence that followed, Bambi’s whimpers seemed to grow louder. Huddled tightly against the clean towel, her parchment-thin eyelids twitched as she followed the course of a nightmare.
“There must be a storm on Storm Mountain,” Cameron commented. Malou was surprised that he’d remembered her references to the monkeys’ ancestral home. She warned herself that she would do well to keep in mind the fact that Cameron Landell didn’t miss much and that he forgot even less. As the bad dream receded, the baby monkey’s whimperings subsided and she relaxed.
“Your friend certainly had a burr up his . . . under his saddle,” Cameron continued.
“He was pretty upset,” Malou replied noncommittally. “I think it’s understandable.” She recognized in her own voice the arid, detached quality it took on when she was attempting to be scientific, objective. Cameron noticed it too.
“Highly understandable,” he repeated. “Listen, I don’t know what the options are here for keeping the troop intact, and you sure didn’t present any viable ones at our first meeting. Want to give it another shot?”
It took Malou all of five seconds to drop her suspicions and her pose of scientific detachment. “You mean it? You really want to hear my ideas for keeping the troop together?”
Her breathless eagerness caused the hint of a smile to flicker across Cameron’s lips. “Something like that, yes. You are still interested, I presume.”
Malou had to take a moment to collect herself. But only a moment, for all the wild schemes she’d conjured up in the long sleepless hours of the past five nights bubbled close to the surface. “Grants,” she blurted out. “Given the unique family records we have on the troop, there’s no reason why we shouldn’t be able to get all kinds of grants for genetic studies. Then there’s the whole incredible topic of the troop’s adaptation. From piney, snowy mountains to cactus prairie. That’s at least a dozen studies right there. And all the social interaction, the dominance structure. We’re only just beginning to understand that. Then there’s—”
“Whoa. Hold on there,” Cameron broke into her pell-mell inventory of possibilities. “With grants, you’re talking foundations, bureaucracies. It would be months, years, before agencies like that could come up with funding. We’re going to need a few speedier solutions than that. Something on the order of three weeks, when my note falls due at the end of May.”
“Oh,” Malou said, her enthusiasm draining away.
“Look, don’t go all glum and wimpy on me. If we’re going to work together on this, there’s one thing you need to know—Landell Acres takes precedence over everything.” He fixed her with a gaze of deadly intensity. “It’s the project I’ve been working toward my whole life. Before this, I’ve only been developing land. For the first time, I’ll be building on it as well. The stakes are high. In this particular case, they’re a bit too high. Do you understand?”
Malou nodded weakly.
“Good, because no man, and certainly no monkey, is going to stand in the way of my completing Landell Acres.”
“We might be able to get some kind of an emergency award if we let the foundations know what the situation is.”
“Go
to it. Get on the phone and start calling around.”
Malou was already pulling her cell phone from her pocket when she remembered one significant detail. “I can’t get a signal down here.”
“What about the ranch house? There’s supposed to be a land line. You can make your calls from up there.”
Malou looked around her. The baby—she’d have to stay for the baby. No, Ernie could certainly mix up formula as well as she could. Observation notes? Clearly the survival of the troop was more important than a few hours of missed notes. No, she really had no excuse for not going with Cameron Landell. No excuse other than fear of being alone with him. She scratched out a quick note to Ernie giving him Bambi’s feeding schedule and explaining where she’d gone. “Let’s hit the road,” she said, taping the note to a spot where Ernie was sure not to miss it—the front of the refrigerator.
The interior of the Escalade was all rosewood, with pewter leather seats that felt like a kid glove against the bare backs of Malou’s legs. She drank in its deep, rich smell as the barely perceptible hum of the finely tuned engine sent smooth vibrations purring through her. After so many months of no-frills living at the research station punctuated by dusty, jarring jeep trips into Laredo for supplies, she sank gratefully into this moment of luxury. The main road leading to the ranch house was lined with wildflowers—bluebonnets, Indian paintbrushes, wild daisies. It was a riot of unending color.
Cameron scrutinized the passing landscape. Slowing down, he arched his torso slightly forward so that he could jam a hand into his jeans pocket. Malou was not unaware of the play of strongly developed muscles beneath Cameron’s shirt and trousers as he wriggled a hand into his pocket and brought forth a crudely drawn map. “I got directions over the phone from Stallings’s foreman, Jorge, and since his English is about as bad as my Spanish, I’m not terribly confident of this map I drew. You’ve never been to the ranch house, I take it.”
