River of Eden

by Tara Janzen

  “I think you could have gotten better work in the States,” she said. “Tattooing is all the rage there now.”

  His gaze shifted away from hers. “All the rage.” He let out a short laugh. “Yeah, I’m sure I could have gotten better work in the States.” He lifted his beer to his mouth and drained the last of the bottle.

  With impeccable timing, the waiter returned with drinks and their food. Annie took the respite and waited until they were both mostly finished before she broached their impasse again. She could get off the Sucuri; the Salesians would give her a night’s lodging at the mission, she was sure. But she was also sure that Travers would not give up her guns. Not when returning them to Fat Eddie would go a long way toward getting him back in the fat man’s good graces.

  He was going to be disappointed. She’d spent her life savings on those crates, and she wasn’t at all sure she could get her orchids and get back in one piece without them. There was too much gold on the Cauaburi for the area to be secure, too big a chance of running into Vargas. A year ago, the mining had just been starting. It would be utter chaos now, and she wasn’t walking into chaos without protection. There would be no repeat of Yavareté. None. On that one fact, she was undeterrable.

  “There isn’t going to be a plane,” she said, repeating her earlier prediction. “So we have to decide what’s going to happen here.”

  He looked up from his plate, and the light fell across his face, delineating the dark wings of his brows and the expressive curve of his mouth, and Annie had to admit he was dangerous in more ways than one. Despite a reputation that even at its worst was undeniable, and that damned tattoo that told her he was definitely more trouble than she needed, maybe even more than she could handle—and that was saying quite a lot for a woman with her plans—he fascinated her on levels she had no business thinking about.

  “Solano wants the directorship of RBC,” he said, sitting back in his chair. “He can’t afford to have you show up dead right now. Dead scientists are an anathema to pharmaceutical companies and their research money. He’ll send the plane.”

  “And if he doesn’t?”

  “Then we’ve got a problem.”

  “Which needs to be addressed,” she said, agreeing with him and adding the bonus of a smile that was meant to tell him they could work together on this. It was her bargaining smile, a smile to ease any uncertainties he might have about the outcome of their discussion.

  Will grinned back. He couldn’t help it. She was going into Girl Scout mode again.

  “Okay. It’s time to level with you,” she continued, still smiling, so candid he could see right through to her ulterior motives.

  His grin broadened. “That would be refreshing.”

  “Yes, well, in the interests of RBC—and I have to hold their interest even above my own, even with Fat Eddie involved—I can’t tell you what project I’m working on, and I can’t walk away. It’s simply not an option.”

  “The project you need all the guns for, not the one where Father Aldo is sitting next door watching you count peach palm fruit.”

  “Yes, I guess that’s one way to put it,” she finally said, after a long pause.

  “I see.” She was in trouble up to her pretty little neck.’

  “Yeah, well, I think it’s important here to point out that we’re only a day’s travel from Santa Maria, and I have already paid you.”

  “True.”

  Obviously surprised by the ease of his concessions, she relaxed her smile into a genuine expression of pleasure—and Will’s heart slid to a slow stop, his easy mood disappearing.

  He hadn’t seen her smile before, not like this. He hadn’t thought her particularly beautiful, only haphazardly cute in a way that attracted him—but when she smiled, he saw beauty, that little cat beauty of hazel eyes and ditzy hair, of fine cheekbones and a turned-up nose, the kind any man would want, and suddenly he felt a surge of possessiveness that could only make his life difficult. He didn’t need or want his emotions tied up in what he had to do to Corisco Vargas. He didn’t want to be thinking about what Vargas had done to her.

  Merda, he swore to himself.

  “Well, given that we agree on the basics, I don’t see any reason why we can’t—”

  “Wait a minute,” he interrupted, shoving his plate out of the way and leaning onto the table. “I want to backtrack a bit.”

  “Okay.” Her smile wavered, and an uncertain light came into her eyes.

  “If you’re going to try to talk me into taking you to Santa Maria, when I’ll be the last person to see you alive if Fat Eddie gets a hold of you, I want a little more information.”

  “I can’t give you any information. Like I said, RBC’s interests preclude—”

  “Personal information,” he interrupted.

  The look she was giving him turned wary as hell again, but she was the one who had offered to level with him, and he doubted she would back down just because the going got a little tough, not while she still had a chance to win.

  “What kind of personal information?”

  “Simple stuff, like what’s your backup plan if things start going bad? How are you going to keep yourself from getting killed out there once you’re on the river alone?”

  “The same way I always have,” she said bluntly. “I’ve been taking care of myself for a long time.”

  “True,” he admitted. “But I bet you never had anyone like Fat Eddie on your case.”

  “Try Corisco Vargas.” She angled a look at him from over the tops of her glasses.

  “Oh, right. I forgot,” he lied smoothly.

  “Believe me, Vargas makes Fat Eddie look like a choirboy, piranha teeth and all.” She brought her soda to her mouth for a drink.

  “Pretty nasty character?”

  She nodded, setting the bottle on the table. “You’ve been on the river a long time, too. You must have heard the stories.”

  “Like the one about him sacrificing virgins on a bloody altar made of beaten gold hidden somewhere in the jungle?”

  Her gaze slid away, and she let out a short burst of nervous laughter. “Yeah, right, that one. Thank God I wasn’t a virgin when he got a hold of me.”

  Of course she hadn’t been—and there Will was again, wanting to shake her, and then shake her again, because Vargas had gotten a hold of her, beaten her and God knew what else, and she’d come back. She was crazy. Certifiable. It took every ounce of strength he had not to jump over the table and grab her.

  “Yeah, right,” he said, sitting back in his chair and forcing himself to calmly take another drink of beer. “I guess you’re a little better protected this time.”

  She gave him another suspicious look, but nodded, and his mood darkened to a dangerous shade of black. A handgun was a viable form of self-defense for a woman. If she was the nervous type, a woman might also get herself a rifle, maybe a semiautomatic. But only a woman hell-bent on going out and taking on the devil himself would buy two high-tech Israeli Galils and a Kalishnakov with four thousand rounds of ammunition and then back it up with grenades and twenty friggin’ sticks of dynamite.

  “So,” he started in again, unable to help himself. “How did he know?”

  “Know what?” She gave him a quizzical glance.

  “That you weren’t a virgin.”

  She was fast, but he was faster. He had a hold of her before her butt even came off the chair.

  “Bugger off,” she growled.

  “Anytime, Annie.” He was so furious, he could hardly see straight. “But not until you’re out of here.”

  “This is none of your business.”

  “I’m making it my business.” He tightened his grip on her wrists. “You’re not here doing research, no matter what your damn proposal said. You’re here to get back what you lost in Yavareté, and you want the man who took it from you. Corisco Vargas.”

  “You’ve got a wicked imagination, Will Travers, but you are way off the mark on this.” She was spitting mad, strung t
ighter than a bow. For as small as she was, she was strong, and though he wasn’t worried, he definitely felt like he had a tiger by the tail.

  “I know Vargas beat you. Gabriela told me.”

  “Well, that’s all he did, you jerk, and believe me, it looked worse than it was.”

  Jerk? In all his life, no one had ever called him a jerk. But then, in all his life, he’d never manhandled a woman the way he was manhandling Annie Parrish.

  Yet he didn’t let her go.

  He didn’t dare.

  He thought back to those garimpeiros she’d tussled with over the damned woolly monkey, and the results of that escapade gave him pause. He could take her, but maybe not without hurting her, not if she was going to fight him—and wasn’t that the damnedest thing. God, he had seventy pounds on her, if he had an ounce.

  A silver flash out on the river behind her caught his gaze, a fractured beam of light dropping out of the sky. In seconds, the murky silhouette behind the light resolved itself into wings and a fuselage.

  “Are you going to kick my butt, if I let you go?” he asked, returning his attention to her.

  “Maybe,” she said through gritted teeth.

  “I don’t want to hurt you.”

  “I can’t say the same.”

  Definitely angry.

  Quickly, before he could change his mind, he released her and stepped back.

  She didn’t so much as budge. Not a muscle. Just held him with a steely-eyed glare, until she heard the same thing he’d just seen—a Cessna 106 floatplane taxiing down the Rio Negro toward the Barcelos dock.

  CHAPTER ~ 12

  She whirled around, her expression one of utter disbelief. For himself, he was disgustingly ambivalent. Yes, it was best all around if he got rid of her immediately, especially best for her. But damn, she’d cross-wired then hot-wired a whole slew of his illogical, rather loudly clamoring male impulses and natural instincts—all of which were telling him to keep her.

  Keep her for what? his intellect demanded to know—and he’d be damned if he had a reasonable answer for that.

  “I could shoot you,” she snapped, turning back around, her frustration palpable. “Just shoot you and steal your damn boat.”

  She was still wearing her gun, but Will wasn’t too worried. She was crazy in some ways, but not in that way.

  The plane was about two hundred yards off and closing in.

  “Okay,” she said suddenly. “Okay. Let’s deal. I’ll give you all the information you want.”

  He was tempted. Whatever she was working on had to be amazing.

  “All right,” he said, trying to sound noncommittal enough to keep her from calling him a liar when he put her on the plane anyway. “Tell me what you’ve got.”

  She let out a deep breath, still hyped up, but visibly relieved, and he felt a twinge of guilt for getting her hopes up. If he knew what she was after, he could help her out, but she wasn’t staying in Brazil, not as long as Fat Eddie breathed.

  “Okay,” she repeated, as if steadying herself for a confession. Then she confessed, all in one breath, all with appropriate reverence. “Aganisia cyanea.”

  “That’s good,” he admitted slowly. “That’s real good, but not worth risking your life for.”

  Her expression told him she disagreed. “It’s only been collected half a dozen times”—she leaned in closer over the table—“and I found hundreds of them, hundreds, all blooming the first week of March up on the Rio Marauiá.”

  “Hundreds?” He was impressed, damned impressed. No one had ever found more than a single blue orchid anywhere. “Where on the Marauiá?”

  “Toward the headwaters.”

  “And how in the hell did you get up there?” Over a hundred miles off the main river, the headwaters of the Marauiá were born in the lost world straddling the Brazil-Venezuela border, a wild land mostly uninhabited, except for the Yanomani to the east, and farther west, between the Marauiá and the Cauaburi, by the nomadic Dakú when he’d first encountered them, or rather when they’d chosen to encounter him. He sure as hell hadn’t been looking for a tribe known more by rumor than account, and he most certainly had not been looking for a man like Tutanji.

  Tutanji, though, had been looking for a man like him—a man exactly like him.

  “The last time I did research here, RBC had a river launch that docked in Santa Maria about every two months.” She glanced over her shoulder, talking fast. “Sometimes Gabriela would put it at my disposal for a week or so.”

  “I didn’t know anyone was mining up on the Marauiá. The whole damn river is infested with caimans. Most miners won’t go near the place. Too many crazy stories about monster jacarés, real man-eaters.”

  “I didn’t know anyone was up there at the time, either.” Her gaze flicked again to the incoming plane. “Come on. Do we have a deal, or not?”

  “Aganisia cyanea at the headwaters of the Marauiá,” he mused aloud, then shook his head. “No. I’m not going to let you die for blue orchids, not even a hundred of them.”

  “I don’t have to die for them,” she insisted. “I just have to go and get them.”

  “Give me the exact location, and I’ll do what I can. I’ll send all the specimens I collect to Gabriela with your name on them.”

  The blank look she gave him would have been comical, if she hadn’t been so serious.

  “You?” she said. “You’ll go get them?”

  “Yeah. I’ll fight my way through all the Crocodilia and send any blue orchids I find to RBC through your peach palm project.” He repeated his offer. “No one needs to know.”

  “I’ll know,” she begged to differ. “They’re my orchids, and I’m going to be the one collecting them.”

  “Not after I put you on that plane.”

  It was the truth, and as it settled in, she got a look in her eyes he didn’t quite trust, a look that seemed to question his ability to put her anywhere.

  “Yes I can,” he assured her, reaching in his pocket and pulling out a few bills to throw on the table.

  Glancing back at the plane, she ran her hand through her hair, making it all stand on end. And somewhere within the space of that movement, she made a decision he was sure he didn’t like.

  “Then that’s it,” she said. Without sitting down, she finished off her soft drink, then set the bottle on the table and took off walking across the patio with a very purposeful stride.

  Will worked his way around the table, getting slowed down by a batch of potted plants he hadn’t noticed on the way in.

  “Damn.” He speeded up his steps, catching her just at the edge of the courtyard, by the wall.

  He took her by the arm; she turned—and suddenly the night was different than it had been before. She didn’t seem to notice, but he felt it with his very next breath. The darkness was richer, deeper, enveloping them in a curve of night-shadowed adobe and trailing vines lush with bougainvillea and vanilla orchids. She shifted her stance, the subtlest of movements, but he knew it was the moment she became aware of the change, aware of the scent of flowers infusing the air, aware of him.

  “No,” he said. “That’s not quite it.” Her skin was soft beneath his fingers, her eyes growing warier by the second—with good reason.

  He wanted a kiss.

  He wanted to feel her mouth beneath his—just once.

  Just once before she was gone and his two days with Amazon Annie, terror of the river basin, were nothing but another wild story to add to the tally.

  “So you changed your mind about the plane?” There was a slight hesitation in her voice, a slight breathlessness that brought a brief curve to his lips. She wasn’t immune to what he was feeling.

  “No. I haven’t changed my mind.” He shifted his weight closer to her, lifting his hand to cup her chin.

  She went very still within his light grasp, her eyes widening behind her glasses. Soft, diffuse light streamed through the orchid vines, casting her face in a delicate tracery of shadows, darkening her
irises to a jungle-green. In contrast, her hair was a riotous halo of white and gold blond.

  “This,” she said softly, “is a terrible idea.”

  “I know,” he admitted.

  But he did it anyway, smoothed his fingers along the curve of her jaw and lowered his mouth toward hers.

  “Um... maybe you better rethink this,” she said when he was less than a breath away.

  “No,” he murmured. “I’ve done enough thinking.” She smelled sweet, like her soft drink, and he wanted to lick the taste off her lips.

  “Dr.... uh, Travers. Will, I—”

  “Shh, Annie. It’s just a kiss.”

  And a bolder lie he’d never told. He touched her mouth with his, softly, so softly, capturing the small gasp of her response and tunneling his fingers up into the silky disarray of her hair.

  Her hand came up between them, pressing against his chest, and he stopped with his mouth on hers—but it wasn’t enough. It wasn’t nearly enough.

  Just a kiss, he’d said, but he hadn’t even gotten that yet.

  Slowly, he slid his other hand down the length of her arm and twined his fingers through hers. Then he moved both of their hands to the base of her spine and pressed her forward, into his hips. His response was joltingly physical, one of those flashes of heaven and hell. It was heaven to have the pressure of her body up against his, and hell knowing he wasn’t going to get much more—but this moment, this moment was about a kiss, and he wasn’t going to be denied.

  He rocked against her, bringing her tight against him, and she groaned, a barely spoken word sounding a lot like “disaster,” before her mouth parted and her fingers curled into the fabric of his shirt. It was all the encouragement he needed. Opening his mouth over hers, he claimed her as his own.

  The kiss was instantly hot, and sweet, and wet, sending a wave of pleasure sluicing down his body to pool in his groin, and as quickly as that, he forgot the plane, the guns, the boat. All of it was lost in the taste and the surprisingly sensual wonder of Annie Parrish’s mouth. She fit against him so perfectly, her small breasts pressed against his chest, the wondrous curves of her buttocks, her bunda, filling his palm. Her mouth was delicately formed, her lips soft, her tongue shy, until coaxed by his into a tantalizing exploration that left him wanting a lot more than he could get with her backed up against the wall in a public cantina.