by Diana Palmer
“So is my new sedan. We can go shopping up to San Antonio when you have another free day.”
“Translated, when I have another free day that Rory also has a teacher workday, like today,” came the amused reply. “He’s just the greatest babysitter.”
“He’s really sweet,” Clarisse added.
“I’ve always thought so.” She glanced at Mariel, who came smiling to take the baby from Clarisse, who was looking worn. “You need to have an early night,” she added, concerned. “You’ve had a rough few weeks.”
“I know. I’m low on the malarial pills, too. I’ll run by the pharmacy first thing tomorrow and pick up the refill. I called it in yesterday, but I was just too tired to go there today.”
“I could go for you,” Tippy offered.
“I’ll go. Would you like to have lunch at Barbara’s tomorrow? If you would, I’ll pick you and Tris up after I stop at the pharmacy.”
“Cash is off tomorrow, so I’ll be on my own. You can pick me up before you go to the pharmacy and I’ll hold Joshua while you pay for the pills.”
“Ooooh, do I sense an underlying motive here?” Clarisse asked with almost the first flash of her sense of humor since her ordeal had begun.
“You certainly do!”
“In that case, I’ll see you about fifteen until eleven in the morning.”
“Okay!”
* * *
“But I could keep him for you,” Mariel fussed when Clarisse, dressed in jeans and a long-sleeved beige sweater and loafers started for the front door, with Joshua in a blue footed fleece suit wrapped in a blanket in his car seat.
Clarisse just smiled. “I’ll get used to leaving him, but right now, it’s too soon after Manaus,” she explained. “I’m...what’s the word? I’m twitchy.”
“Ah,” the other woman said, and smiled sadly. “You have had a very hard time. But it will be better. It takes time.”
“Yes. Thanks for offering, though.”
“That is what you pay for me for, yes?” she replied and laughed as she went in to start work on cleaning the bedrooms.
* * *
Tippy went to look for a new lipstick, carrying Joshua, while Clarisse stood in line at the pharmacy counter. Tippy had just come back when Clarisse turned her head, and her heart stopped cold in her chest. She couldn’t even manage words.
“Son of a...!” Rourke burst out. He moved closer, wearing jeans and a knit shirt and a shepherd’s coat. His one pale brown eye flashed murder as he saw Clarisse. “And just what the bloody hell are you doing here, then?” he demanded hotly. “Found out I was working here and came over to see the sights, did you?” he accused. His eye looked up and down her with pure hatred. “Sorry, but I don’t see myself taking a number to take my place in your bed!”
Aware of murmurs around her, because the pharmacy was crowded, Clarisse handed her credit card to Bonnie, who was glaring at the blond man. Bonnie rang up the purchase, handed back her credit card, waited while she signed the slip and handed her the prescription medication for the malaria.
“Here’s your son, Clarisse,” Tippy said, coming forward with a taut face to hand the baby to her friend.
“Your son?” Rourke felt his whole body explode. He’d never known such grief in his life, and he didn’t know why. He looked at the child in her arms with blazing rage. “You had a child? Got careless, I see. Do you even know who the father is, Tat?” he added with pure venom.
Tippy moved forward. “If you say one more word to her,” she said in a voice thick with anger, “I will have my husband arrest you and prosecute you for harassment, and I’ll testify in court if I have to! I don’t imagine it would be difficult to find a few other willing witnesses, either!”
“Damned straight,” Jack Lopez, one of Luke Craig’s new cowboys, agreed. He was tall and good-looking, with black hair and a faint Hispanic look. He’d had lunch with Clarisse at Barbara’s and he’d helped her find Mariel to keep the baby. He smiled at Clarisse. “It would be my pleasure, Miss Clarisse.” He gave Rourke an odd look, but Rourke paid him no attention at all. He was glaring at Clarisse for all he was worth.
“Let’s go, Clarisse,” Tippy said, shooting a venomous look at Rourke, who met it with studied amusement.
She herded a shell-shocked Clarisse out of the pharmacy and back into the new Jaguar. “You get in,” she said. “I’m driving. I’ll put Joshua in the backseat.”
Rourke had picked up the prescription Jake Blair had asked him to get, amid icy-cold looks, and walked out just in time to see Tippy put the baby in its carrier into the backseat. She climbed into the driver’s seat beside Clarisse, slammed the door. Seconds later, they drove away. Neither woman had looked at him again.
He stared after Tat with his heartbeat almost smothering him. He felt betrayed. It was the most incredible feeling, because he knew he hated her. He’d hated her for years. He couldn’t remember why. But there was something, an anguish, a sensation of utter loss, that overlaid the resentment. It hurt him to look at the child. Why?
He put a hand to his head. There was a memory there, somewhere, but he couldn’t reach it. He didn’t understand why he’d gone after her so savagely. But it irritated him that she’d followed him to America. Well, she did live in America, most of the time. Or he thought she did. He remembered her in a political background, at cocktail parties. Washington, DC, perhaps? But she’d never been to Texas. Had she? And why did she turn up here just as he was back in the country on a new assignment, one that would keep him here for several weeks.
He went back to Jake Blair’s house and put the prescription in its bag on the dining room table. He was so quiet and subdued that Jake scowled.
“What’s wrong?”
“Tat’s here.”
Jake winced. “I’m sorry. I should have told you that she was living here...”
“Living here?! What in hell for?” Rourke burst out.
Jake let out a long sigh. “It’s complicated. I can’t tell you much. She was living with the Griers until she bought a house of her own and had it furnished.”
“That was Tippy Grier in the pharmacy, then,” he said after a minute. “I thought she looked familiar.”
“In the pharmacy?” Jake was feeling uneasy.
“Tat had a baby with her. Her son, Tippy called him.” His face was harder than stone. “She had a kid with some poor sucker. I asked if she knew who the father was... Why are you looking at me like that?”
“Sit down, Rourke,” his friend said gently.
Rourke scowled, but he did as he was asked.
Jake went into the kitchen and came back with cups of black coffee. He gave Rourke one, took the other and sat down at the table with him.
“I don’t know if K.C. told you anything about what’s happened to her recently.”
“I wouldn’t have her name mentioned around me,” Rourke said bitterly. “She came to the damned compound, right into my own bedroom when I got home after I was wounded. She was wearing my mother’s engagement ring! She had to have stolen the damned thing. I jerked it off and kicked her out. I didn’t even speak to K.C. for months afterward. He actually had her flown there...!”
Jake closed his eyes. It was even worse than he thought.
“Okay, what’s that look about?”
Jake sipped coffee. “She was married, Rourke,” he said quietly. “To a friend of hers in Manaus, a doctor named Ruy Carvajal.”
“Married...” He felt his breath catch deep in his throat. He lifted the cup to his mouth. The coffee was hot and it burned his lips, but it helped disguise the anguish he felt. “She married Carvajal? My God, he was twenty years older than her, at the least!”
“They had a child,” he said, and he didn’t look at Rourke as he said it.
“The one she was carrying. A boy
. A son.” His face tautened. “I see.” He drew in a long breath. “So, is he living here with her?”
Jake shook his head. “He died. Of cerebral malaria. A few weeks ago. In Manaus.”
Manaus. There was something about Manaus. Why did the place seem so familiar to him? He’d only been there a handful of times, mostly because of Tat. When her mother died. When her father and sister were killed on the river...where the hell did that memory come from? He held his head. It throbbed.
“You okay?” Jake asked, worried.
Rourke lifted his eyes to the other man’s. “Ya,” he said after a minute. “So she came over here. Why?”
“She has nobody left in the world,” Jake said. “She had the same strain of malaria that her husband did. Peg and Winslow Grange contacted a tropical disease specialist in Great Britain and had him flown to Manaus to treat her. It was touch and go. They did a C-section because they thought she couldn’t live...”
“Dear God!” Rourke got to his feet and turned away, his heart shaking him. The reaction he felt to the news devastated him. Why? He hated Tat. He didn’t care if she died...if she died...she could have died. He didn’t know about the marriage, about the baby, about the fever...
“She lived, against the odds,” Jake continued solemnly. “But she was afraid for the baby. She wanted to be somewhere that he could be cared for, if...something happened to her.”
He turned back. “She’s all right now?” he asked worriedly. “The fever won’t recur?”
Jake sipped coffee. “You’ve had malaria. You know what it’s like.”
“I had several kinds, none of which recurred.”
“This one does,” Jake replied. “We saw it when we were in Asia, and Africa, and even far back in the Amazon, if you recall. It was almost endemic in certain areas. Plasmodium falciparum.”
“From the anopheles mosquito,” Rourke replied heavily. He’d seen cases of it. Cerebral malaria was invariably fatal. He bit his lower lip. “How in hell did they get infected from that one?” he burst out. “You live in a country where it occurs, you take precautions!”
“He did,” Jake replied. “He had the grounds sprayed constantly.”
“Well, not good enough, obviously,” he shot back, “and why the hell didn’t he recognize the symptoms? He was a doctor, for God’s sake!”
“There had been an outbreak of virus in the community. He was working eighteen-hour days, and he was exhausted. He thought he’d caught the virus. It had much the same symptoms. He waited until it was too late to do anything. Clarisse nursed him. She caught the fever. She was burning up with it when he died.”
Rourke looked away. Clarisse, all alone, with nobody who cared for her when the baby came, when her husband died.
“She didn’t want to move here,” Jake added. “They—” he almost said K.C. and had to catch himself “—had to browbeat her into it.”
“Why?”
“She thought you might come over again,” Jake said shortly. “Everyone said you’d mentioned that you were getting married and you’d be taking cases in Europe from now on.”
“She didn’t want to risk running into me,” Rourke said aloud. It hurt to put it into words. His hands, in the pockets of his khaki slacks, balled into fists.
“Would you look forward to seeing someone who did nothing but belittle you, torment you?” Jake asked softly.
“No. Of course not.” He stared at his feet. “She nursed him.”
“Yes. She had the infection, too, but sometimes it takes a week or two to present symptoms—you know that. By the time it did, she was in labor. Her fever was over a hundred and five and climbing. The doctors did what they thought they had to. She fought so hard to live,” he added, having had the story from K.C. “She was worried about the baby.”
The baby. Carvajal’s baby. He felt bile in the back of his throat. He hated the idea of Clarisse with another man. Although why he should, when he hated her...
He drew in a long breath. “I said some harsh things to her,” he said after a minute. “It was the shock, of seeing her unexpectedly. I’ve avoided her for months. Ever since...” He hesitated. He scowled. “I don’t understand how she got my mother’s ring, you know? It was in the safe, and I had the only combination. I never left it lying around. Never!” He turned, his face flushed with feeling. “The only time she was even in the compound was when she came to see about me, when I was wounded, and the only room she was in was my bedroom. There was no way...!”
“You’ve spent years hating her,” Jake replied. “Some habits are hard to break.”
Rourke stared at the wall. “I don’t know why I hate her so much,” he confessed. “She was always tagging after me in Africa, when she was little.” A faint, tender smile bloomed on his hard mouth. “She wasn’t afraid of anything. I was part of a merc group when I was ten. I wanted to go back, the year after K.C. became my guardian, but I hesitated because I knew Tat would follow me. Even then, she was my shadow.” His head hurt suddenly, violently. He put a hand to it. “Why can’t I remember?”
“Stop forcing it.” Jake got up and clapped him on the shoulder. “You’re remembering a few things, aren’t you? Things that had gotten lost over the past few months.”
“I remembered that K.C. was my father,” he returned. “He was packing his guns when I got home. Mary Luke died.” He winced. “He loved her desperately. He’d have married her, but she became a nun. He was going to go with his men on a mission. I remembered then, remembered who he was, what he was to me. I got in front of him and dared him to try and commit suicide.” He chuckled. “That took guts, let me tell you. He knocked me over a sofa...” He stopped, frowning. “He hit me. I’d said something to him, something about Tat.” He ground his teeth together. “I can’t...remember what.”
“The neurologist said that you might regain some of those memories,” Jake told him. “But it’s going to be slow. Just relax. Take it one day at a time, the way you’ve been taking it. Don’t try to force it.”
“I asked him about letting people tell me what happened.” He laughed shortly. “He said it wouldn’t matter—it wouldn’t make sense to me. It would be like listening to a story.” He shook his head. “It’s driving me mad.”
“You’ll get through it.”
“I guess.” He drew in a breath. “I’ll apologize to Tat, when I see her,” he said slowly. “That was a hell of a way to treat someone who’s been through what she’s been through. That cold-blooded so-and-so tortured her in Barrera for information on the offensive, but I put a knife in him...” He gasped, staring at Jake.
“Yes,” Jake said, nodding.
“Why didn’t K.C. tell me she’d married?” he wondered aloud.
“You wouldn’t let anyone talk to you about her,” Jake replied.
Rourke sighed. “I guess not.” He shook his head. “So much pain. I wouldn’t have hurt her like that deliberately. Or would I? I’ve spent years making her pay...making her pay...for what?” he added, almost to himself. “Damn it!”
“One day at a time,” Jake interrupted. “I think it may come back.”
“Do you?” Rourke sat back down. “Well, I can hope, I guess.”
Jake didn’t reply. He knew something that he didn’t dare impart to Rourke, not yet. Sapara had sent a cleaner after Clarisse, and nobody knew what the man looked like. Nobody except Rourke. He’d seen Sapara’s chief assassin long before the assault on Barrera. He knew what the man looked like. And he might be the only chance Clarisse had, if his memory returned in time.
But that was unlikely. In any case, Cash and Eb Scott had things in hand. Anybody who made a step toward Clarisse would find himself on the business end of whatever weapon several covert operatives could produce. She was safe enough. For now.
* * *
Clarisse had taken Joshua to t
he city park. It was mid-March, a beautiful day in the beginning of spring, and there was a performance by the local high school band for the community. It was one of many cultural events sponsored by local merchants in cooperation with the Jacobs County Chamber of Commerce.
She had a thick quilt lying on the dry grass, with Joshua lying on it in his little blue fleece footie suit. She was wearing jeans and a sweatshirt, without even a trace of makeup. She loved being Joshua’s mother. She didn’t want to pick up men, so she did nothing to make herself more attractive.
She couldn’t know that, to the man watching her covertly, she was beautiful without artifice. Rourke stared at her from a few yards away, taking in the tenderness with which she handled the little boy, the freshness of her complexion, the quiet grace of her movements.
He’d started over badly with her, and he felt guilty. She’d been through hell. He was sorry for the things he’d said to her in the pharmacy. She’d probably snub him, but he didn’t care. He wanted to apologize.
She felt him. It was uncanny, how she always knew when he was close by. Even in the pharmacy, she’d felt a tingling just before he confronted her. She looked up with faint fear in her eyes. She started to reach for Joshua, to run away.
“Don’t go,” Rourke said gently. He went down on one knee, his eyes on the little boy. Odd coloring, he thought, for the child of a man who was visibly Hispanic. He recalled Carvajal, who had black hair and eyes and a dark olive complexion. But the child resembled Clarisse, and he did have her coloring.
“What do you want?” Clarisse asked tautly.
He shrugged. “To apologize. I didn’t know about your husband.”
She didn’t look directly at him. It hurt too much. She didn’t speak, either.
“He’s a good child, isn’t he?” he asked after a minute. The sight of the child was painful. He didn’t understand why.
“Yes,” she said.
“Jake said you were staying with the Griers.”
She nodded. “They were a lot of help. The stitches still pull...” She broke off.
