“Yes. But keep your questions low-key. Don’t push. That incident with Baker and the thug in Miami still worries me. We don’t know yet why or with whom Tommy might be here. Until we do, we don’t want to rattle the same cages that got your detective into trouble. In Colombia, no one with any sense asks too many questions about anyone with any connection whatever to the drug scene. Which may include Tommy.”
“And may not,” she added quickly.
“He’s in the cocaine capital of the world, and he’s with a guy who travels with protection. You figure it out.”
She didn’t want to figure it out. “I’ll start in on the hospitals first thing in the morning.”
“Be careful who you talk to on the streets. The city is crawling with dangerous scam artists. While you tackle the medical community, I’ll check out the hotels where a visiting American is likely to stay. I already spoke to the manager of our own hotel. It’s the largest in the city. I thought Tommy might have stayed here.”
“I take it you had no luck?”
“No. Their computer files showed that the only guest named Grant who’d stayed there lately was a woman.”
A well-dressed Bogotano who’d been sitting in the rear of the small restaurant got up to leave. As he walked past their table, he slowed and gave Cara an appreciative smile. “Buenas noches, señorita.” Even though Cara ignored the man, he seemed inclined to linger.
“Adiós, señor, ” David said flatly.
The man looked at the cane leaning by David’s chair and at the stiffly bent leg, and insultingly ignored him.
David’s eyes narrowed into slits. “Adiós,” he growled.
She’d already seen the effect of David’s withering look on Baker. Apparently deciding there might be more to this gringo than he was willing to deal with, the man adiósed.
She rather liked the idea that it irked David that a man would come on to her.
On the walk back to the hotel, her jacket wasn’t enough to cut the chill wind sweeping down from the enormous Andean chain. Folding her arms tightly over her chest didn’t do much to keep her warm.
“You’re cold,” David said. “Come here.”
She dutifully stepped closer. He carefully fastened every button on her jacket, and flipped up its collar. The tantalizing brush of his fingers against her nape skipped a shiver of delight through her. She thought she’d learned just about all there was to know about the human body. But no medical text had warned that a man’s touch—this man’s touch — could send her blood rushing hotly through her veins.
“Better?”
She could only nod. What she really wanted was to be closer to him.
He rounded an arm over her shoulders and drew her protectively into the windbreak of his body.
He’d been doing that increasingly often lately: reading her mind. That intangible connection he seemed to be forging between them was unsettling. Yet it continuously tempted her into wanting more of it.
It felt wonderful to be pulled up close to the heated wall of his chest, wonderful to breathe in his clean, already comfortingly familiar scent.
They reached the hotel much too quickly. She could have happily stayed within the enlivening circle of David’s arm all night, no matter how low the temperature dropped.
He clicked on the light and saw her safely inside her room.
With a tenderness that ran straight to her heart, he stroked his knuckles slowly down her cheek.
“I hope you find what you’re looking for here.”
It was a second or two before she could call up breath enough to speak. “Thank you, David.”
“Right now, it’s into bed with you. That’s an order.”
An order she realized she wouldn’t hesitate to comply with if it included him. “Yes, Commander.”
He smoothed the backs of his fingers under the curve of her chin. Her pulse raced into overdrive. The soft, warm whisk of his lips on her forehead sent a sparkling mantle of electrifying sensations cascading over her.
His breath caressed her cheek. A quiver started up inside her chest. The pads of his fingers, rough from splitting logs or whatever other outdoorsy things he did up there on his mountain, dripped an energizing heat into the little hollow at the base of her throat.
She’d never felt anything so pleasurable.
All her senses were springing to inflaming life. She should open the door for him and tell him good-night, but a deep ache to know his mouth—a yearning that had been growing for days—held her back from ending their closeness.
His lips parted slightly. His head bowed a little closer.
Oh, yes. She desperately needed to feel his arms tight around her, desperately wanted to feel his mouth on hers. She tipped her head back, offering her lips.
Her eyes drifted shut.
A shock of cool air rushed between them. The door clicked shut.
Her eyes flashed open. She’d done everything but carry a sign saying she wanted David to kiss her, and he’d just walked away.
Leaving her aching for him.
Trembling between twin urges to hurl a string of curses at him and to run after him begging for the embrace he’d denied her, she slumped against the door.
Cara tossed her crumpled list of hospitals and clinics, every one crossed out, on the small table in front of the window in her room.
“Nothing.” She dropped disconsolately into a chair.
Three days of covering the obvious places where a man with medical training might be working had brought her several offers of personal tours of the facilities, two invitations to dinner and one request that was considerably less polite. Other than that, she’d gotten exactly nowhere.
David had fared no better.
“No one at any of the hotels or restaurants I visited remembered seeing the guy in the photos at all,” he reported. “I’m beginning to wonder if that private investigator of yours hasn’t sent us off on a wild-goose chase. As Baker pointed out, you can’t rely on the ravings of an addict to be the truth. If Grant is in Bogota at all, he’s keeping a very low profile.”
Running the edge of a thumb back and forth along the hard line of his jaw, he considered the problem. “Could be he’s out of sight because he’s haunting the underground drug scene.”
Cara bit her lip.
“Sorry, Cara, but it’s a possibility. We’re not exactly searching for a candidate for sainthood here. If Grant is using drugs in Bogota, he’d better be doing it quietly. No matter that cocaine fuels much of the economy, the local authorities come down hard on open drug using.”
David heaved a sigh of frustration. “I wanted to avoid bringing myself to the notice of the police, but I guess I’d better go down to headquarters tomorrow and see if they’ve got our boy in jail. You have to be prepared, though. If Tommy’s in prison, we probably won’t be able to get him out.”
“I understand, David. I’ll just have to deal with that situation if I come to it.”
The year-long depression over Tommy that David’s vital presence had warded off, began to creep back. He might be right about her having brought them all this way for nothing. She raised her hands to the back of her neck to rub out tightness caused as much from the tension of finding no trace of her friend as from exhaustion.
David came over to stand behind her. He nudged away her fingers to replace them with his own. Her whole body immediately tensed. Her instinct was to get up and run away from the stimulating touch. But moving away would look as if she were afraid of it. And that idea was just plain silly.
David had already made it clear that he wasn’t on for any romantic scenes by totally ignoring her all too blatant request to be kissed the other night. A good thing, because she really was no more interested in him than he was in her.
Telling herself that often enough might eventually make it true.
The warm strength of his fingers subdued the ache at the base of her neck, but incited a different kind of tautness in the rest of her.
“Aside
from checking with the cops,” she said, with as much coolness as she could muster, “what will our next step be?”
David’s thumbs stopped drawing soothing circles at the top of her shoulders. He didn’t answer immediately. She dropped her head back to look up at him.
“What do we do next, David?”
“I’d better handle that part alone. We’ve already covered the trendy bars and nightclubs without success. This evening I intend to start checking out some of the less fashionable rumbeaderos in areas where you won’t feel very comfortable.”
“You mean the red-light district.”
He nodded. “Colombia is a very conservative country, nevertheless there are putas, prostitutes, everywhere.”
She was about to argue that Tommy wouldn’t frequent those places, but she was no longer sure of anything about the man with whom she’d once been ready to spend her life.
“The streets I have in mind are where much of that activity is concentrated. You won’t want to see it, and the area isn’t safe. While I’m out, you can spend a nice relaxing evening here in the hotel. They’re putting on an exhibition of Latin American dance this evening. I’m sure you’ll enjoy it.”
His fingers picked up where they’d left off. It was all she could do not to collapse into a fluid heap under his gentle stroking. If he thought the action would lull her into agreement, he had another think coming.
“No way. I’m not going to just sit here by myself while you are out doing what is, after all, my work. Do you think I’ve never seen a prostitute? I’ve treated several of both sexes at the free clinic. This is my search and I’m coming with you.”
He gave up his massage and stalked around in front of her.
“Believe me, Cara, you won’t like it.”
“Probably not, but I’m not a child. I can handle it.”
David glowered at her for a moment and then shrugged. “As you wish. But don’t say I didn’t warn you.”
He still had a tendency to order her around as if she were one of his recruits. Maybe he was finally learning that tactic wouldn’t work with her.
“All right then,” he said. “The nightlife around here doesn’t get started until late. We can have a leisurely dinner at the hotel and then head on out.”
On a Friday evening, it seemed as if the whole city was in the streets partying.
The area in which the taxi deposited them was considerably less well manicured than the streets around their hotel. Radios and TVs blasted a cacophony of noise from every open door and window for blocks. Groups of men clutching bottles of beer loitered against the graffiti-splattered walls of low, seedy buildings. Yet another beggar came up and asked for money. David had a few pesos ready for him.
A slight young man jingling under the weight of several heavy gold chains sidled up to David. The man’s pants matched the spiky punk shock of fluorescent yellow hair marching down the center of the black head. With a predatory grin, the mestizo of mixed Spanish-Indian blood murmured something to David. Cara had a feeling it was just as well she didn’t quite hear what the man said.
David shook his head, but held out a photo of Grant and evidently asked if the man had seen him. The man spat out a no and hurried on to collar another potential customer for his girls.
They had no choice about entering the first rumbeadero they came to. The group of laughing party-goers in back of them swept them right into the enormous hall pulsing to strobe lights and earsplitting music.
A bevy of giggling young women descended on David and pulled him into a seat at a long table where the night’s festivities were well under way. Before she could follow, a couple of young men sat her down in the chair between them.
On every available inch of the floor in the smoky room, men and women, all swaying bodies and revolving hips, flaunted themselves in a flagrantly joyous celebration of sex. Intimately and suggestively they slid their bodies up and down those of their partners in blatant imitation of lovemaking.
The men sitting on either side of her shouted twin invitations to dance. She smiled and shook her head at each of them.
David leaned across the table to be heard above the din.
“Go ahead and dance if you’d like to, Cara. I can do the questioning here.”
The pounding beat of the salsa, the sight of so many sweaty bodies writhing in the sizzling dance made her wish she could do the same with David. His were the only arms she wanted to feel around her. His the only body she longed to feel pressed up close to hers.
Her gaze flew to the cane hooked over the back of his chair.
She and David could never hold each other close and sway together romantically on a dance floor. His injuries prevented it. The man seemed so completely capable, she’d almost forgotten his wrecked leg.
A sharp sense of the depth of his physical and emotional loss swept over her. Her throat tightened.
He bought a round of drinks for the crowd at the table and passed around the photographs that elicited only a mass shaking of heads. They followed the same scenario in several more rumbeaderos, showing Tommy’s pictures to waiters and customers, with equal lack of success.
After a few hours, both the noise and the repugnant solicitation of David by the putas who apparently found the woman with him completely invisible finally did her in. That the search for Tommy had led her to such an area left her feeling tired and dejected.
David, on the other hand, seemed to have the stamina of the pink bunny endlessly drumming in the commercial. Despite his damaged leg, he brimmed with more personal energy than anyone else she knew.
He must have noticed her flagging steps, because he led her to a table at an outdoor café. “I’ll pick up coffee for us both,” he said, and headed inside.
Even the limp didn’t prevent him from holding his back warrior-straight as he walked. Simply watching him move brought her a surprising pleasure.
Not that she wanted it to.
Through the grime-streaked glass of the café window, she saw a tiny old Indian woman shuffle into line behind him at the counter. He bowed slightly and stepped back to let the elderly lady go ahead of him.
The courtly action tugged at Cara’s heart. That was the real David Reid. Hidden beneath the toughness that was no mere pose was a kind and considerate man. Look how far he continued to put himself out for a woman who held no claim on him whatever.
She cut her gaze away. She was with him, she reminded herself, for the sole purpose of finding Tommy.
Nevertheless, the man so arousingly crowding her every daytime thought and nighttime dream was David Chandler Reid. When she was with him, all she knew were the heated, exciting feelings he continuously called up in her. She couldn’t go on pretending that those feelings stemmed only from sympathy, from gratitude, from admiration. Try as she might to deny it, what she felt for David was pure, unadulterated desire. A craving she’d never felt even for the man whose ring she wore.
David returned with two mugs and set one in front of her. “Do you mean to cover very many more places tonight?” she asked.
“No. I’ll just do a couple more blocks. Then we can call it a night.”
“If you don’t mind, David, I’d like to just sit here and wait for you.”
To his credit, he refrained from actually speaking the phrase, I told you so. “I’ll send you back to the hotel in a cab.”
“No. That isn’t necessary. I’ll be fine here. You go ahead by yourself.”
He flicked his gaze around the crowded tables. “All right. The next blocks are the worst yet. I’d hate to take you there. You should be safe enough with all these people around. I won’t be too long, maybe forty-five minutes or an hour.”
He pushed back his chair and got up to leave. She reached for his hand. His strong fingers immediately enveloped hers. That alone was enough to make her feel better.
“Thank you, David, for doing so much for me.”
“I haven’t done a whole lot so far.”
He’d done more than h
e knew. And not all of it had anything to do with the search for Tommy. Maybe it wasn’t right, certainly it wasn’t very intelligent of her, but the fact that they hadn’t yet found her fiance didn’t dismay her as much as it should. The longer it took to find Tommy, the longer she could stay with David. A little frightening to admit how important he’d become to her in only a week.
She knew full well that her partner didn’t share the feeling. He was concerned only with what he called their mission, and held no personal interest in her.
Quick pain squeezed her heart.
David caught the sudden slump of Cara’s shoulders. He didn’t like to see her looking dejected. “Don’t give up hope, Cara. Maybe all this questioning will eventually pay off.”
“You’re right. Maybe word will get to someone who knows Tommy and he’ll get in touch with me.”
Sure he would, David thought. Just like he’d gotten in touch with her since his disappearance. That their questions would lead to anything solid, he very much doubted. He’d suggested it simply to cheer her up a little. Everything he’d learned about Grant implied that the man was working hard not to be found. Hearing that someone was looking for him might just drive him further underground. Not that he had any problem with that. Cara would be better off if she never found the brainless boyfriend.
He was getting mightily fed up with everything about Dr. Thomas Grant, especially with Cara’s single-minded focus on the man.
“Let’s hope this next round of questioning comes up with something,” he said. “While I’m gone, you’re to stay right here. Don’t go wandering off on your own in this neighborhood.”
“I won’t budge.” She crossed her heart and shooed him away. “Go on. I’m a big girl, David. You don’t have to worry about me.”
David forced himself to let go of the feminine fingers electrifying his skin and sliding a ribbon of heat down to wrap around his groin. How it would be with any other woman, he couldn’t say. Wasn’t even interested in finding out. But for sure this one could light the beginnings of a fire in him without half trying.
That intriguing talent of hers left him both glad and wary at the same time.
Unbroken Vows Page 8
