Dangerous to Hold (15 page)

She drew in a deep breath, as though steeling herself for some unpleasant task. Jake sensed that he was about to learn what had kept her—and him—awake so long into the night.

“I don't want you to do it, Jack. I don't want you to blackmail my father. I don't want you to sell yourself to the scum you're working with. I have some money of my own. Not a lot, but enough to stake you until you find some…some other line of work.”

Jake's eyes narrowed. A sudden, incredible suspicion curled in his belly and wound its way up to his heart. “What makes you think I want some other line of work? What if I told you I make a good living at what I do?”

“Look at you!” she exclaimed, flinging out her arms in exasperation. “You call this living? You haven't shaved in three days, your shirt looks like something that…that lizard wouldn't even wear. Obviously you haven't had a good whiff of yourself from downwind, and…and…”

“And?” he prompted, his pulse pounding a slow, heavy rhythm.

“And you act about as civilized as some jungle creature,” she finished in a huff. Then she sighed, and put a hand on his arm. “All the money in the world isn't going to make up for what this place and these people you work with are doing to you, Jack.”

Jake stared down at the small, fine-boned hand. He remembered suddenly that that was the first glimpse of Sarah he'd had in the daylight, that morning after the raid—her work-roughened fingers trembling as she lifted a black sleeve to wipe her face.

He remembered, also, how that same hand had touched him yesterday. How it had speared through the hair on his chest. Slid up to his neck. Pulled his head down for her kiss. The pounding rhythm of his blood grew more intense.

He smiled down at her, wanting to hear just how she'd decided to reform him. “You didn't have any complaints about my uncivilized actions yesterday.”

She sucked in a quick breath and snatched her hand away. “Okay, so I didn't exactly scream in maidenly outrage when you touched me. So I, uh…”

“So you went up in flames, and took me with you.” A
grin tugged at Jake's lips. “I've been in the arms business a long time, Sarah, but I've never seen or felt a detonation quite like that one.”

Flushing, she turned away. “Let's not get too technical here.”

Jake laughed and slid his arm around her waist, drawing her back against his chest. “It was good between us, Sarah. More than good. I couldn't sleep last night, either, thinking about it.”

She laid her head back against his shoulder, sighing. “I don't know how or why I let that happen between us. I'm confused by it. I'm confused by you, and by my responses to you. I only know that I can't run away from it, like I've run away from everything in my life.”

She twisted in his arms and placed her palms on his chest. “Let me help you, Jack. Don't extort money from my father. Don't do whatever it is these men want you to do with that arms shipment. Have this contact of yours arrange to pull you out of here at the same time he pulls me and the kids and Eleanora out.”

Jake smiled. He'd known she would consider it a package deal. Her and the kids and Eleanora.

“I can't do that,” he told her gently. “I can't leave with you.”

“Why not?”

“I have a job to do here.” He firmed his hold when she would have pushed herself away. “No, not the one you think. I'm here on government business.”

“Right,” she said bitterly. “You and Ollie North.”

“Sarah, listen to me….”

“No, you listen to me. My father heads the Senate Intelligence Subcommittee on Latin-American Affairs, remember? I know darn well that no government agency would be selling arms to this scruffy little band of guerrillas, not when official U.S. policy is to support the Cartozan government.”

“We're not selling. We're trying to stop the sale. I've been undercover with this group for almost three weeks now.”

Sarah's face registered first disbelief, then skepticism.

Jake kept his voice low and deliberate, trying to convince her. “My mission is to take out the middle link in the international chain that trades stolen U.S. arms for drug dollars. I intend to do that tomorrow night, when he makes his drop.”

“My God!” she breathed, staring up at him. “You're…you're serious?”

This, time when she pushed away from him, he let her go. Jake felt a wrench at the dazed expression in her eyes.

“I'm deadly serious. You know how shaky this country is. If we don't stop the arms flow, fast, Cartoza will probably see the same wave of political assassinations and drug wars that have torn Peru and Colombia apart.”

“You…you really are under cover? With the CIA?”

“Close enough.”

Jake felt a curious sense of relief to have it out at last. He waited for some confirmation, some sigh of relief, or a welcome laugh.

“You
bastard!
”

Jake was so surprised by her explosive fury that he didn't even see the punch coming.

In any other circumstance, a blow from Sarah's small fist wouldn't have even dented stomach muscles that were conditioned to take karate kicks and powerhouse punches. But she hit him with just enough unexpected speed and force to send him stumbling backward.

His heel thumped against the fallen tree trunk, and his momentum carried him the rest of the way over. Jake landed on his duff on the dense, springy layer of vegetation, his breath whooshing out of his lungs.

Chest heaving, fiery blue-green sparks shooting from her eyes, Sarah clambered over the log.

“You rat! You despicable, chauvinistic, arrogant rat!”

Jake levered himself up. “What in the—?”

Her foot planted itself square on his chest and shoved him back down. “How dare you! How dare you let me think you were the scum of the earth!”

“Sarah…”

“Don't
Sarah
me. You made me ache with wanting you, and I loathed myself for it!”

“Well, I wasn't exactly thrilled to find myself lusting after a nun.”

“And that's another thing. Where did you get off being so angry over
my
disguise? I can't believe all the bristling male indignation you displayed yesterday. The way you stalked me. The way you made
me
feel guilty about
your
unbridled lust!”

“Unbridled lust?” Despite himself, Jake felt his shoulders shake.

“Don't you dare laugh!” She spit the words out. “If you do, I swear, I'll…I'll…”

She looked around wildly. Jake saw her glance fall on the machete stuck in the dirt beside the tree trunk.

“Oh, no,” he warned. His hand snaked out and caught her ankle, just in case. She kicked her foot, trying to break his hold.

“How could you make love to me yesterday and not tell me the truth?”

Jake hung on to her flailing leg while he scooted back and pushed himself into a sitting position. “Look, I'm sorry about yesterday.”

“You should be!”

“It was a mistake,” Jake admitted.

She halted in midkick. “What do you mean, it was a mistake?”

“I should never have allowed myself to lose control like that. It was stupid and dangerous.”

“Stupid and dangerous,” she repeated blankly, taking a little hop to maintain her balance. “Making love to me was stupid and dangerous?”

“In the middle of a mission, yes. I won't let it happen again, at least not until we get out of here.”

“
You
won't let it happen again?” She closed her eyes. “Let go of my leg.”

Jake decided he'd better hang on until he figured just what was putting that choked quality in her voice.

Sarah opened her eyes and pinned him with a scathing look. “You know, Mr. Gringo-Creighton-Jack-whatever-your-name-is, I'm beginning to think I liked you better as a sleaze. At least I had hopes of reforming you then. This new you might just turn out to be hopeless.”

At that moment, with his butt planted in a bed of jungle vegetation, his stomach throbbing and his fist wrapped around the ankle of the woman hovering over him like a vengeful angel, Jake knew he loved her.

This Sarah wasn't the heartless socialite the media had crucified. She wasn't the spoiled daughter of a powerful senator who protected her at every turn. Whatever she might have been before, this woman with the jewellike eyes and the straggling hair was magnificent.

In the time Jake had known her, she'd spent every waking moment caring for three kids who had no claim on her. She'd championed a battered, helpless woman. She'd given herself to a mercenary, with an open, searing passion that still stunned him, then set out with Sarah-like determination to reform him.

Jake would just have to convince her that the real him was far from hopeless. Admittedly, he might have one or two rough edges that needed filing down. When he got them all out of Cartoza, he intended to give her plenty of opportunity to work on them. Right now, however, he needed to soothe her ruffled feathers.

“You may prefer me in my undercover persona, Miss Sarah-Josepha-Sarita Chandler, but I much prefer knowing you're not a nun.”

Grinning, he gave her ankle a little yank, pulled her off balance and tumbled her down on top of him.

S
arah's bottom landed with a solid
whump
on Jake's stomach. He was prepared for the blow this time, however, and barely registered her weight as he rolled over, taking her with him. Before she could do much more than utter a few sputtering protests, he pinned her against the verdant earth.

Holding her easily with one leg thrown over hers and an arm across her waist, Jake waited patiently for her halfhearted struggles to still. When they did, he lifted a hand to smooth away the strands of pale blond hair that had twisted across her cheek.

“Don't write me off as hopeless just yet, Sarah. I must have one or two salvageable traits.”

She glared up at him. “I haven't seen any.”

“Is that so?” He brushed the back of a knuckle along her chin. “What about the fact that I'm a great cook? Are you forgetting those bananas and cold beans you scarfed up?”

Folding her lips together, Sarah declined to respond.

“And I carve a pretty decent mango root, if I do say so myself.”

That won a grudging response. “Well, it wasn't bad.”

He smiled down at her. “When we get out of here, you'll have all the time in the world to find some sterling character traits among my less admirable tendencies.”

She frowned up at him for a moment or two longer, but then the fight went out of her in a long, huffy sigh.

“When we get out of here,” she repeated slowly, as if testing the feel of the words, the concept of some time and some place after these days in the humid jungle and the squalid little hut. “Jack, I… What
is
your name, anyway?”

Jake smiled down at her. “Does it really matter?”

Sarah searched his eyes. Their gray depths held lingering laughter, a rueful tenderness, and something deeper, something that made her heart suddenly slam against her ribs. The doubts and uncertainties that had haunted her for so long melted away. Whatever else she'd done wrong in the past, however poor her judgment had been, she knew she wasn't mistaken about what she saw in his eyes and felt in her own.

“No,” she said, after a long, breathless moment. “It doesn't really matter.”

Jake told himself he couldn't kiss her. He warned himself that if he bent his head and covered those soft lips with his, he might not be able to stop there. The tendons in his neck corded with the effort of holding back.

Sarah took the matter out of his hands. Curling an arm around his shoulders, she pulled him down.

The touch of her mouth on his sent slow, sweet tendrils of desire spiraling through Jake's chest. He let himself savor them for as long as he dared, then raised his head. He drew in a harsh, ragged breath.

“Sarah, let's just consider the options for a moment.”

She planted a line of little kisses along the underside of his chin. “You consider them.”

“This is too dangerous. I can't let myself lose control again like I did yesterday.”

“So stay in control,” she murmured against his skin. “If you can.”

“The kids are just a shout away. They might—Hey!”

She laved the little bite she'd given him with her tongue. “You told Eduard to call if there's trouble. He'll call.”

“You could get pregnant.”

She went still under him, then laid her head back on the springy grass. For once Jake couldn't decipher the expression in her luminous eyes.

“I could,” she acknowledged at last. “If I'm lucky.”

Jake almost lost it then. He hadn't thought in terms of a family for years. Since his divorce, he'd immersed himself in his work, in OMEGA, in teaching newer, less experienced agents the skills they needed to survive in the dark worlds they inhabited. But the idea of Sarah swelling with his child stirred some long-buried, atavistic need. For the first time, he realized that his feelings for her went beyond desire, beyond the tentative, hazy emotion he'd identified as love earlier. He wanted to mate with her in the most elemental, essential way. He wanted to merge his body and his life with hers. But first, he reminded himself savagely, he needed to make sure they had lives to merge.

Disentangling the arm she had wrapped around his neck, Jake sat up. He ignored her reproachful look and drew her up beside him.

“We don't have much time,” he said quietly. “We need to talk about tomorrow.”

Sarah wasn't ready. She didn't want to shatter the sweet, sensual moment with the fear his words engendered, but she knew she had no choice. She'd run away from her fears too many times in the past. She couldn't, wouldn't, run away from these.

“Yes, we do,” she agreed.

“When I leave for the drop site, my contact will…”

“When you leave?” She swallowed. “Sorry, just a small panic attack. Go on.”

He raked a hand through his dark hair. “I've been through this a thousand times in my mind. I don't like it any more
than you do, but it's the safest extraction I can arrange for you and the kids.”

“And Eleanora,” Sarah added. “I'll talk to her as soon as you tell me it's safe, but I know she'll want to go with us.”

“And Eleanora,” Jake said. “Look, Sarah, the choices were simple. The first was to risk an assault on the camp while the men were still there. I could've held them off until the team landed, but it would've meant a heavy firefight.”

She thought of the arsenal of deadly weapons that each man carried and suppressed a shudder.

“The second choice was to get you away from camp and try an extraction through the jungle canopy.”

Sarah tilted her head back to look up at the dense, leafy roof. So little sunlight penetrated that she couldn't see through it to the sky. She estimated that the overhead carpet must be three hundred feet above the ground.

“What you're seeing is only the first layer, the canopy,” Jake told her. “Above that is the emergent layer, where the crowns of the tallest trees stick out. The chopper would have to hover above that, which is dangerous in itself. This hot, sticky humidity increases density altitude and reduces the rotor blade's lift. Which makes it doubly dangerous to try to hoist anyone through that thick, impenetrable screen. I've seen it tried several times. I've seen it done. Once.”

She swallowed. “So what's the third choice?”

“The third choice is for me to take all but a few of the men out of camp to reduce the opposition. My contact will lead the extraction team in moments after we depart.”

“He better be good,” Sarah mumbled.

A smile lightened the shadows in Jack's eyes. “She's the best. I trained her myself.”

Sarah told herself that the spurt of jealousy that shot through her was childish and unreasoning. There was too much at stake here to let personal feelings interfere.

“Tell me exactly what will happen,” she said evenly.

She was glad he didn't insult her intelligence by minimiz
ing the risks. Rubbing her damp palms down her thighs, Sarah memorized every detail, every brief instruction.

Jack had her repeat the procedure in her own words, then run through it one more time.

When she had it down to his satisfaction, he eased back against the log and drew up one knee. His dark brows knit, as if he were examining the plan yet again, looking for holes.

Sarah let the silence between them spin out like a gossamer web, until it surrounded them in a silken cocoon, shutting out the sounds of the birds in the trees overhead and the faint echo of childish laughter. For this moment, at least, there was just her and this man whose name she didn't need to know.

He looked so hard, she thought, studying the angles of his face. So self-contained and withdrawn. His flinty eyes were distant behind their screen of black lashes. Driven by a need to bring him back to her, Sarah reached out to touch him.

She froze with her hand half-out, startled by the flash of color that flew past. A huge bird swooped down on what looked like a wild avocado plant a few feet away and plucked a fat ripe fruit with its bill.

“What is it?” Sarah whispered, mesmerized by its long, streaming emerald tail feathers and brilliant red breast.

“It's a quetzal,” Jack murmured. “Pretty rare around here.”

“I've never seen anything like it.”

He smiled at her awed expression as the bird tilted its head back, puffed out its shimmering ruby chest and swallowed the fruit whole.

“Indian legend says its breast wasn't always red.”

She slanted him a quick, amused look. “More prehistoric lore?”

“No, this tale's more modern. Supposedly the Spaniards who invaded this area in the 1500s attacked a Mayan chief. The quetzal swooped down and landed on the dying man's chest, either to protect him or to mourn him. When it flew away again, its breast was colored with the chieftain's blood.”

Sarah glanced back at the exotic creature, feeling her plea
sure in its exotic beauty slowly fade. When it took off with a flap of emerald wings, she sat still for a long moment. Then she reached up and began to work the fastenings on her robe.

Jake eyed her lazily, reluctant to see this interlude of quiet between them end. She was right, though. They needed to get back to the kids. Back to camp. Jake straightened, only to realize that she wasn't hooking the few fastenings she'd undone earlier to fan herself. She was unhooking the remaining ones.

“What are you doing?”

She pulled another hook open. “I'm taking this off. Then I'm going to make love to you.”

“We talked about this earlier,” Jake said gently. “I can't let myself lose control like that again. Much as I want you, I can't cross that line again—not until I get you out of here.”

“What makes you think the decision is yours alone to make?” She jiggled her shoulders. The black gown slid down her arms and pooled around her hips.

Lord, she was beautiful, Jake admitted ruefully. He'd never seen anyone so small and perfectly proportioned. All gold and tan and white in places he damn well shouldn't be staring at.

“Sarah, this isn't smart.”

“No,” she replied, leaning forward to brush the edges of his shirt aside and lay her palms against his heart. “But it's necessary. Maybe not for you, but for me. I need you, Jack. I need you to hold me and kiss me and know that, whatever happens tomorrow, we had this time together.”

He felt the soft touch of her fingertips against his bare skin and drew in a ragged breath. “I don't think I can just hold you.”

Her lips curved in a slow, wicked grin. “Why don't you put your arms around me and find out?”

Maybe it
was
time for him to find another line of work, Jake thought. He couldn't ever remember making a conscious decision to put his own desire ahead of operational needs before. The thought worried him for the few seconds it took to reach out and pull Sarah into his lap.

She nestled against him, her arms wrapped around his waist, her head tucked under his chin. He breathed in the sun-warmed scent of her hair. Her skin was damp with the humidity of the jungle and incredibly soft against his.

Jake rested his chin on the top of her head, content for the moment just to absorb the tactile sensations Sarah's mere touch generated. Content, that is, until her hands began to move on his back. With feather-light strokes, she explored his skin, his spine. Her hips shifted, and the lazy sensuality of the moment suddenly sharpened. He felt himself hardening against the rounded curve of her bottom.

She straightened, leaning a little bit away from him. Her eyes gleamed up at him, as shimmering and brilliant as any of the birds that swooped through the canopy.

“Well, I guess that settles that,” she declared solemnly. “Holding is definitely not an option for us.”

Jake groaned and bent his head.

Sarah responded by wrapping her arms around his neck and kissing him with all the warm eagerness that characterized her. Her lips opened under his. She tasted and explored his mouth with a hunger that matched his. Her breasts pressed against his chest, their small, round centers peaking against his flesh.

This time, when they shed their clothes and rolled onto the green, springy carpet of ferns, their loving wasn't hard and fast and furious. This time it was slow and indescribably sweet. At least at first.

Sarah herself set the pace. Smiling, she pushed Jake onto his back. She stretched out at his side and explored him, tasting, touching, teasing with her hands and mouth. Her hair formed a silvery puddle on his stomach as she left a trail of kisses from his navel to his chin, then back down again. Her fingers speared through the light mat of hair on his chest, twisting it and tugging lightly.

Jake lay with one knee bent, the woman he now considered his own cradled at his side. He closed his eyes, savoring the feel of her body pressed to his and wondering at the crazy
junction of time and circumstance that had brought them to this place and this moment.

“Are you going to sleep?”

He opened one eye to see Sarah propped on her elbow, staring down at him with a rueful smile.

“No, ma'am. I'm just lying here thinking about that nun who whacked me over the head all those years ago.”

“The one with the umbrella?”

“Mmm….”

She pursed her lips. “I'm not sure I want to hear why you're thinking of her at this particular moment.”

He grinned and reached up to twist a strand of her hair around one finger. “If she hadn't scared the bejesus out of me, I might not have been so intimidated by your little disguise for so long.”

“And?”

He tugged gently on her hair, bringing her face closer to his. “And I might not have been so angry when I discovered that the woman who'd been twisting me in knots wasn't little Sister Sarah Josepha after all.”

“And?”

He brushed his lips across hers. “And I might not have forced the issue between us yesterday.”