The laughter died, and his eyes grew thoughtful again. “I just keep remembering the last thing Quinn McCall ever said to me. It was after the last interview, the tape recorders were turned off, and we were packing up, saying goodbye. I asked him what he was going to do with himself, now that it was all over.”
“And?” Lucy prompted. “What did he say?”
“He said, ‘I’m gonna find me a beach. A long, long way from here.”’
They came to the hotel on the shores of Lago Bacalar late in the afternoon. They’d missed the turnoff specified in their instructions on the first pass and were halfway to Chetumal before they realized they’d gone too far. Then they’d had to ask directions twice before they found it, to McCall’s obvious irritation.
It had amused Ellie, actually, to discover that her new partner had such a tender ego-and oh, how that incident with the car had ticked him off, her knowing about that switch and being the one to find and fix the VW’s problem. Somehow, though, that common male malady only made him seem more human. Less…mysterious. In an odd way, more likeable. Maybe.
“Yes, Señor and Señora Burnside, your room has been reserved for you,” the desk clerk assured them, in the cordial but haughty manner of hotel desk clerks the world over. “And will you be staying more than one night?”
Ellie shot a quick glance at McCall, who was gazing around the lobby as if he hadn’t heard a word. She felt her cheeks grow warm. Dammit, why hadn’t she thought of this? Why hadn’t he? Clearing her throat, she stepped closer to the counter and inquired in a low voice, “Excuse me, but do you have any vacant rooms? My husband-”
The desk clerk looked alarmed. “Yes, señora, we do have rooms, but surely-”
“We have friends who may possibly be joining us later,” McCall interrupted in a voice as smooth as silk. “They weren’t certain what day they’d be arriving. Just checking…”
Ellie turned her head to stare at him. He was smiling at the desk clerk, showing more teeth than she’d have guessed he possessed, and carefully not looking at Ellie.
The desk clerk returned the smile-fleetingly. “Ah yes-I see. This time of year there should be no problem. Later, after the Day of the Dead…that is our busy time. Right now…plenty of rooms. Will you be paying with your credit card, Señor Burnside?”
McCall turned his smile on Ellie with a breezy, “Pay the man, dear.”
As she handed over the credit card that had been issued to her and her partner by the United States Government, her mind was racing jerkily to and fro-like a rabbit in a cage, she thought. Trapped. Nowhere to go.
Why didn’t I think of this? Spend the night in the same room with him? Impossible. No way. But he’s right, we can’t ask for two rooms. How would it look? We’re supposed to be married.
Funny thing was, it had never bothered her to share a room with Ken. Anyway, not like this. Of course, she and Ken had always had separate beds…
“Excuse me,” she said as she calmly and without a visible tremor signed Rose Ellen Burnside on the registration slip, “is that one bed or two?”
“One bed,” said the desk clerk with obvious satisfaction. “Queen size.”
Ellie nodded and became very involved, suddenly, with the task of putting the credit card back in her wallet, and the wallet back in her purse.
“Will that be all right, señora?”
“Yes, that’s fine.” But her mind was doing the frightened rabbit thing again. Impossible. A king…maybe. But a queen? No way. She could feel McCall close beside her, casually turned a little toward her so that his Panama hat, squashed under one arm, brushed against her shoulder. She could feel the heat from his body. Smell his scent-like hers, mostly insect repellent. She could feel her own pulse thumping in the hollow at the base of her throat. One of us will just have to sleep on the floor. I will…
The desk clerk had turned away to look for their room key. In desperation, Ellie gazed upward, as if somehow the answer to her dilemma might be found written on the wall above the registration desk.
And-lo and behold, there it was. A sign, neatly hand-lettered in both Spanish and English. The English part read: Hammocks Available on Request.
“Oh, look, dear,” she said in a sweet girlish voice that was nothing like her own, and with a breathlessness that was more relief than excitement, “they have hammocks! I used to love hammocks when I was a little girl.” Turning toward McCall, she twined herself around his arm and purred, “Let’s get one, shall we, darling? Just for fun?”
Was it her imagination, or did his breathing catch-just a little? At any rate, his voice, when he spoke, was thick with gravel-though admittedly, that wasn’t unusual for McCall.
“Sure, why not? Anything you want, dear.” His teeth were showing again. She couldn’t see his eyes.
The clerk disappeared through a door behind the desk and came back with a tightly rolled webby bundle, which he placed on the counter. “There you are, señor…señora. You will find hooks on your veranda. And there is a message for you, Señor Burnside.” He handed McCall a sealed white envelope. Ellie could hardly keep herself from snatching it out of his hands. “Perhaps it is from your friends…”
“Perhaps,” said McCall as he tucked the envelope in his shirt pocket.
The desk clerk gave them the key and directions to their room, which turned out to be not in the main hotel but one of a string of tiny cottages arranged along a path overlooking the lakeshore. McCall passed the key to Ellie and tucked the bundled hammock under one arm. They thanked the hovering desk clerk, who beamed at them as they turned to go and said something in Spanish that Ellie didn’t quite understand.
“What did he say?” she muttered as soon as they were out of earshot, glancing up at McCall. His face was curiously deadpan. “It definitely wasn’t ‘Enjoy your stay.’ I understood feliz and luna, but what’s miel?”
His lips twitched slightly, and it was a moment before he answered, in a voice as determinedly devoid of expression as his face. “It means honey. He was wishing us happiness on our honeymoon.”
“Oh,” said Ellie, and her heart did an odd little stumble-step. She gnawed her lip and frowned at the ground, trying hard to think of something to say. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d felt this self-conscious…walking close beside McCall, not touching him but aware of every breath and muscle twitch, his heat and scent melting into her very pores. Both of them carefully not looking at each other and her feeling as though the eyes of the entire world were watching them, even though not a soul was in sight. “I’m sorry,” she finally said on a shaken exhalation. “I should have thought of this.”
You should have thought of a lot of things, McCall thought grimly but didn’t say. Before you elected a complete stranger to stand in for your absent husband. Before you dragged me into your life…your mess. Before you kissed me…
He cleared his throat and said aloud, “Couldn’t be helped. Look-this is a remote part of the world. Everybody around here’s probably related-hell, for all you know, that desk clerk could be the head smuggler’s brother-in-law. We’re supposed to be husband and wife-how’s it gonna look if we’d asked for separate rooms?”
“Well,” said Ellie, getting a staunch, determined look he was beginning to recognize, “I’ll sleep in the hammock. It’s the least I can do.”
She wouldn’t get any argument from him there. So why was he arguing? He wondered about that as he heard himself say, “Come on, you’ll get eaten alive by mosquitos.”
“Maybe we can rig up some netting. Besides, I’ll douse myself with plenty of repellent. Don’t worry about me.” And she gave her head an intrepid little toss as she jerked open the door to the VW and plunked herself inside.
“Sister, you’re the last person I’m worried about,” he muttered, going around to the driver’s side and easing in under the wheel.
But why did that always get to him-that arrogant, overconfident little way she had that made him want to either kick her in the butt or gath
er her into his arms and shield and protect her? Maybe because he knew it for what it was? Because he’d worn it often enough himself in a past life…the mask of bravado people wear to hide the fact that they’re really scared to death…and bound and determined to go ahead anyway.
Some people might have said that was the definition of courage. As far as McCall was concerned, it was just plain stupidity.
Neither of them said anything more as he drove the VW to a parking space as close as he could get to their cottage. The silence held while he was hauling their overnighters out of the back seat, along with Ellie’s purse and a big cloth beach bag that held her sun visor, flashlights, insect repellent, bottles of water, and of course, a dozen or so bars of chocolate. It persisted while Ellie stood in the VW’s open doorway with her elbows resting on the roof, one hand holding down her wind-ruffled hair as she gazed out across the lake…and while McCall tried every way he knew how not to look at her, or notice how rich and warm the colors of her skin and hair were against the cool greens of the jungle, the vivid blues of water and sky.
Then he heard a soft sound, a deeply inhaled breath. “Mmm…you can smell the sea,” she murmured.
“Huh,” he said, scowling at the overnighter he’d just wrestled out of the car. “Wind must be just right. Probably that tropical storm moving in.”
She turned her back on the car and the lake and lifted her face to the sun, which retaliated by making a coppery halo of her hair. Wind stirred through orange and mango, oak and banana leaves, and a flock of small green birds-parrots of some kind-flitted, chattering, from tree to tree. McCall caught the scent of orange blossoms.
“It’s so beautiful here,” she said softly, as if to herself. “It would be a lovely place for a honeymoon.”
It wasn’t so much the words, as the way she looked when she said them. A kind of wistful innocence, McCall thought, like a young girl gazing at bridal gowns. He didn’t know what it was about it that made his throat tighten up, what made anger flare hot behind his eyes…or what made him pounce almost without thought, like a cat smacking a paw down on a hapless mouse.
“One to a customer,” he said in a rough, rude tone, and then, firing her a challenging stare, “Where’d you go for yours, Mrs. Burnside?”
He didn’t know what he’d expected to accomplish by asking that, except perhaps to punish himself by stirring up the little worm of jealousy that kept popping up so unexpectedly from dark cupboards in his subconscious mind. What he did not expect was the look that flitted across her face. Blank, pale panic, as if she had no idea whatsoever how to answer him.
And then… “Lake Tahoe!” she blurted it out angrily, almost defiantly. And he absolutely knew it was a lie.
“Really? Lake Tahoe…” he said in a calm, musing tone, aware suddenly that his pulse had quickened and that it was taking all his concentration to keep his breathing from doing the same. “I know it very well. Where, exactly?”
“None of your business,” she snapped, then shot it right back at him. “Where’d you go on yours?”
She was standing very close to him, drawn up to her full height, such as it was, head thrown back so she could look him straight in the eyes. He gazed down at her, refusing to let himself dwell on how lush and lovely her mouth was. Suddenly feeling old and indefinably sad.
“What business is it of yours?” he said with sneering cruelty. “By my calculations you were probably in kindergarten at the time.”
She inhaled sharply through her nose. “You know, McCall, I’m getting really tired of these little digs about my age. I’m twenty-eight years old. And you’re what…thirty-five?”
“Forty,” he admitted gloomily.
She let a couple of long, slow beats go by while her eyes shimmered into his and a sweet flush ripened under her freckles. He felt his own eyes burn and heat crawl beneath his skin, as if he’d been out in the sun too long.
“I don’t know very many twelve-year-old fathers,” she said in a soft-rough voice like a kitten’s purr. Then she turned a shoulder toward him and walked away up the graveled path.
As he seemed to find himself doing so often, he stood there and just watched her, watched her going away from him, looking, in her shorts, T-shirt and Nikes, every inch the teenager he knew she wasn’t. She was a full-grown woman with a strong will and a mind of her own-bull-headed and lion-hearted, a terrifying combination-a fact he’d known all along, he now realized. He knew, too, with a frightening little sense of loneliness and loss, that he’d tried so hard to convince himself otherwise in order to make it easier to accept that he couldn’t have her. Now here he was, thrown into forced intimacy with her, and only his conscience and a moral code she didn’t seem to share to keep him from doing something shameful.
To keep him from doing…what? Seducing her?
The fear inside him grew as he acknowledged the thought, and realized it had been there in his mind for a while now. Disgraceful, but…what if he could? Married or not-and how could he know or judge what kind of marriage hers was?-she was susceptible to him in that particular way. He knew it. He could feel it.
The fact was, for reasons he couldn’t begin to understand she seemed hell-bent on committing God knew how many felonies and dragging him right along with her. And for the life of him he couldn’t figure out a way to stop her. He knew for darn sure he wasn’t going to be able to talk her out of it, and if he pulled out she was just going to go ahead on her own, and how was he going to live with himself if something happened to her? Physical force might work-hog-tying her, maybe, or locking her in a closet-but then what? What proof did he have that he was doing it for her own good? He could very well wind up in jail himself, on kidnapping charges, no less.
Seduce her? It seemed a long shot, at best, but maybe…just maybe, if he could get her all soft and vulnerable and acquiescent in his bed, he might be able to talk some sense into her…get her to listen to reason. Get her to listen to him, and forget that absent husband of hers and this crazy suicidal plan he’d gotten her mixed up in. It could work…couldn’t it?
Forget it, McCall. All you’re trying to do is justify doing what you want to do anyhow. But it’s still not right. And it’s not who you are. Forget about it.
But as he hitched his load and set off after her, all his senses were still on red alert and tuned to her wavelength, and his body was humming in ways it hadn’t in…so many years, aching and tingling like long-frozen tissues coming back to life.
Chapter 8
“Are you sure you want to do this?” McCall asked. They were standing together on the veranda. Twilight was coming down and he’d just finished putting up the hammock and was testing the tension in the anchor rope, plucking it like a guitar string. “Look,” he heard himself gruffly say, “why don’t you take the bed? I’ll sleep on the floor.”
“What about those lizards and scorpions?” Ellie gave him a solemn look that had laughter lurking in it.
He rejected the laughter with an angry gesture. “The chair, then.”
“No-really, I’m looking forward to this. Unless you-” she hurriedly and politely added, lifting her eyebrows and making an offering gesture with her spread hands.
He shook his head and shuddered. “Damn things remind me of giant spiderwebs.”
“I used to love playing in one of these when I was a kid,” she said musingly, setting the hammock to swaying, gazing at it but obviously seeing something else. Something long ago and far away. “In the summertime we had one strung between these two big trees in our yard. The one we had was different, though, not woven like this. It was canvas-green and white stripes-and really tippy. You had to be careful getting in and out, and you had to get balanced just so or it would dump you. My brother Eric and I used to play this game, sort of King of the Mountain only it was King of the Hammock. We’d play Rock-Paper-Scissors to see who’d get to be in the hammock first, and then the other person would try to dump him out and claim it for himself. It could get pretty rough-about the only thi
ng that wasn’t allowed was the garden hose-squirting with water, I mean. Or mud-throwing-that was a big no-no.” She gave McCall a sideways look and a wicked little smile that let him know how well she’d stuck to those rules.
He smiled back, trying, as he had all through dinner, as she’d talked about her family and her childhood on the farm, to see her the way she must have been back then. Trying now to see her as a laughing, squealing little girl roughhousing on a farmhouse lawn on a hot Iowa summer day, with bits of grass and mud in her hair. But the image wouldn’t come. The top half of her was covered by a tank-type bathing suit in an unbecoming dark shade of blue, some silky fabric that molded itself to her body like paint, and from waist to six inches above the knees by that wraparound shorts or skirt thing she’d worn before, with no regard whatsoever for color compatibility. A soft breeze was blowing and the humid air smelled sweet, a heady mix of flowers and foliage and the distant sea. The last of the sunset colors were fading from a sky full of billowing thunderheads, darkness was folding itself like a warm embrace around one of the most beautiful places on the planet, and all he could think about was how the woman beside him smelled like the night, and how warm her body would be, and how much he wanted to put his arms around her and breathe in the sweet scent of her hair.
“You know what I really loved most, though?” Her voice was soft as the air, and almost lost in the awakening chorus of frog song and insect hum. “The times when I was all by myself, with my book, maybe an apple. And I’d lie there and be really, really quiet…and after a while the birds and animals would forget I was there. Birds would be sitting and singing right above my head, sometimes even on the hammock’s strings, close enough to touch. Squirrels would be digging in the grass for acorns right underneath me. One time this rabbit came hopping onto the grass with three of her babies, and they just sat there, munching away, not even seeing me…”
Right then McCall thought he knew how she must have felt. She’s so close to me, he thought. If I move just slightly, if I even draw a deep breath, I’d be touching her…
The Seduction of Goody Two-Shoes Page 12
