Different Dreams (14 page)

Just saying his name to herself made an indefinable taste appear at the back of her mouth. She had first tasted it deeply only last night and now knew it for
what it was—the taste of desire. Nervousness fluttered through Malou as she faced this expedition for what
it
was—the journey of a woman rushing to meet her lover. For, after last night, there was no longer any question that Cam intended to be just that in the fullest sense of the word. And she did not intend to stop him. It was all so new. Not the physical mechanics, but the emotional upheaval. That was what was strange and a bit frightening. That was what she had sheltered herself from so successfully for so many years, away in remote stations with only monkeys to steal her heart.

Malou had to abandon all reflection as she entered the outskirts of the city and San Antonio traffic began to crowd around her. She found Loop 410 West, as the receptionist had directed, and followed it around until she hit the right exit. Cam's headquarters were in an elegantly subdued office building set back from the road in a tropically landscaped refuge. An inconspicuous sign beside the drive quietly announced Landell Development.

“You must be Malou Sanders,” chirped the receptionist, an older woman with a ready smile, as Malou walked in. “You're in luck. Cam's back from the job site. He didn't know when you'd arrive, so he kept a racquetball appointment. You're to go right over and disturb him.”

“Is the court far from here?”

“Only if you consider a short walk down that hall far,” the receptionist answered, pointing to her left.

Malou took the hall she indicated, wondering how on earth Cam had been able to fit a racquetball court into what appeared to be a fairly small complex. The answer turned out to be not “on earth” but under it. At the end of the hall, Malou found herself staring over a railing into the pit of a racquetball court dug into the ground.

Cam was center court below. A bandanna headband caught the sweat that poured from his brow even in the air-conditioned court. He wore a gray sweatshirt with the sleeves cut off that revealed broad shoulders and supple muscles. His opponent looked to be a good ten years younger than Cam. He was blond, with a dark tennis tan. Their sneakers squeaked across the wooden floor as they lunged after the hard rubber ball ricocheting from one high wall to the next.

They broke for service and the blond went to the back of the court. Cam moved nearer the front wall. While the blond bounced the ball and took a breather, Cam tugged at the front of his sweatshirt, pulling a few puffs of air in to cool his chest. He ran his forearm across his upper lip, then prepared to receive the serve. He crouched down and bounced lightly from foot to foot, staring at the wall ahead with an unyielding concentration. His posture reminded Malou of that first time she'd watched him through her binoculars.

The blond bounced the ball several unnecessary times to try to break that iron concentration. He failed.
Malou remembered that the first thing that had impressed her about Cam was his predatory intensity. He was a hunter, a stalker, one used to either bringing down his prey or going hungry. And it had been a long time since Cameron Landell had gone hungry. She knew that she could forget those facts only at her own peril. Hers and that of the monkeys of Storm Mountain.

The blond served the ball with a cracking sweep. Cam was up and moving practically in synch with the ball blasting forward. The smooth rush of motion thrilled Malou. Everything worked together in that one sprint. The deep gullies of muscle above Cam's knee bunched, then lengthened explosively. His right arm flowed back, bringing muscles into play from his shoulder to his cocked wrist. The ball caromed off the front wall, a perfect, devastatingly low serve. Cam swept down to scoop it up and send it rocketing back.

The blond pounded forward to return the volley, sending it spinning off of a side wall. Then he sagged back for the rest that was sure to come. There was no way Cam could reach the ball on the other side of the court.

Cam worked out the game's impossible geometry quickly enough to position himself precisely where he needed to be to peel the killer shot off the side wall and send it slicing back up into the front right corner.

With a startled grunt, the blond lunged forward, diving for the corner where Cam had placed his shot. He
stretched out his racket, but his arm was about two feet too short. He tottered, then went sprawling out on the court. The ball thunked to a dead halt. Cam had won the serve back. He'd bagged his prey.

Cam rushed up to give the blond a hand getting back onto his feet. Malou saw the bitterness of defeat sour the man's handsome features, pinching them white beneath his tan. Cam had soundly romped him. Malou imagined that Cam was used to sound romps and uncomfortable with anything else.

“Supreme effort,” Cam said with a casual ease, his hand still clutching the other man's. “I don't think I would have even tried for that one.”

“I shouldn't have given you the chance to make it,” the blond replied. “I should have put you away with my last shot.”

“And next time you will,” Cam said.

The tightness cracked and the man smiled, already savoring a future triumph.

That small exchange ran counter to the direction of Malou's thoughts and stirred up yet another memory. “No losers, no tears.” It seemed to be Cam's motto, and she'd just gotten a firsthand demonstration of how he made it work. He'd given the blond man back his dignity and reframed the entire game so that he wasn't a loser; he was a man who was simply still working toward victory.

The collision of perceptions dizzied Malou. Which was the real Cameron Landell? The hunter who must win or go hungry? Or the man who believed there should be no losers?

Cam paced back to the service area, brushing the back of his hand across his forehead and bouncing the ball off of his racket. He took his position in the service box, leaned over, shook out his arms to loosen his shoulders, bounced the ball, reared back, and swatted it forward. The ball cracked off like a rifle shot, and as Cam followed through, Malou entered the edge of his vision.

“Malou! You're here!”

The blond scrambled for the serve, slamming it off the front wall. The returned ball whizzed by Cam's head as he stared up at his visitor.

Malou basked in his open delight.

Cam's racket dangled forgotten off of his wrist, the ball dribbled unnoticed across his feet, and still he continued to stare.

“Yo, Cam, you want to play that point over?” the blond man asked.

Cam held up his hand, flagging surrender. “No, it's yours. The whole game's yours. I forfeit.”

“That doesn't sound like you, Landell. You feeling all . . . ?” The blond man's question went unasked as he followed Cam's gaze up to the balcony above the court
where Malou watched. “Oh. Listen, give me a call next time you want a game. You owe me a chance to clean your clock.”

“You got it, Jeff,” Cam promised the man as he left. Then he turned back to Malou. “My receptionist told me you were on your way. I didn't expect you so soon. You make good time, woman.”

“When I have the proper motivation.” Malou could barely believe that she'd spoken such flirtatious words. Cam seemed capable of evoking all manner of uncharacteristic responses from her.

A large grin cut across Cam's face at her saucy riposte. “Stay right where you are, Lou-Lou Belle.”

Lou-Lou Belle? Malou wondered as Cam disappeared out the court door. A few seconds later, a door opened and he was beside her. His presence was overwhelming. It surrounded and pressed against her, making her feel short of breath and mildly claustrophobic.

“Lou-Lou Belle, indeed,” she scolded, trying to hide how flustered she was behind mock ferocity.

“Would you prefer Malou the Monkey Girl?” Cam asked, moving closer. “Or perhaps Mary Louise?”

“Okay, Lou-Lou Belle wins over Mary Louise. But I'm still not wild about either one.”

He put a hand, still warm from the exertion of his sport, on her shoulder. “I'm happy to see you.” All jocularity was gone. His tone was intimate.

Malou turned from the power of his touch to grip the railing and look down into the now empty racquetball court. Her thoughts were ricocheting just as wildly as any ball ever hit in that court. She fought to steady them, just barely managing to recall the purported reason for her visit.

“Yes, well, I . . . I came because Dr. Darden wants you to call him immediately.”

“Dr. Darden,
the
Father of American Primatology?” Cam's hand slid down her arm, then back up, the pads of his fingertips lightly raking a pattern. “Is that the only reason you rushed up here? I certainly hope not. Not after yesterday.”

No, yesterday had changed things. Irrevocably. Malou felt that in her bones. But now that she was here, with Cam beside her, the implications of those changes loomed very large. She chased them away and tried to concentrate on her mission. “Dr. Darden sent me a text. He has a plan he'd like to discuss with you. You were out of the office when I called, so I drove up.”

“And now that you've delivered your message you'll simply turn around and rush back home?” Cam teased.

“That's probably not a bad idea,” Malou conceded.

“Are you kidding? That's a wretched idea. Why don't you go on into my office and give me ten minutes to shower and call Darden. Then I want to take you out for the best dinner San Antonio can produce. Now, scoot.
It's at the far end of the hall. I have magazines, television, and liquor in there. That should be enough to keep you occupied for the two minutes I'm in the shower. After that, I intend to keep you fully occupied for as long as you'll allow.”

Malou stood listening to the brisk tattoo of his steps as they faded down the stairwell. Cam's office was a true entrepreneur's lair, right down to a desk large enough to roller-skate on. She'd barely completed a perfunctory inventory when Cam burst in still toweling beads of water from his hair and wearing a casual outfit of charcoal gray slacks and a black polo shirt.

“Did you find the liquor cabinet?” he joked.

“I managed to restrain myself from cleaning it out.”

“How about some juice? A beer? Bloody Mary? You name it,” Cam offered, walking to a rosewood cabinet. Malou opted for orange juice. Cam popped the top on an imported beer and sank into a high-backed swivel chair.

The cold juice cut through the dust in Malou's throat from the drive up.

“Do you always play racquetball that way?” she asked.

“And what way might that be?” Cam answered, gulping down a long draught.

“Oh, I don't know. To win, I guess.”

“Doesn't everyone?” Cam queried back.

“After their own fashion. I suppose it's just that most people's fashions aren't as openly ferocious as yours.”

“You'd better get the stars out of your eyes,” Cam teased. “Ferocity is the name of the game in my business. Although, you're right, most people do put bigger smiles on their games than I do.”

Malou put a hand to her hair, wondering how many kinds of a fright she looked.

Cam watched the small gesture, wishing that it were his hand touching those sun-streaked waves, those sun-browned legs, those lips. Before he knew it, his heart was raging again within his chest, stirred by the wanting that had deviled him from the first moment he'd set eyes on this puzzling and provoking woman. They had been so close last night, ready to share all a man and a woman could share. And now, today, she seemed like a timid doe ready to flee if he breathed too loudly. He wasn't used to shyness, to reserve. To someone like Malou, whose world couldn't be summed up in three lines in a society column describing the new gown she'd worn to the latest gala along with the name of the powerful man escorting her.

His money, the position he had scrambled to attain, meant nothing to her. Her work was and always would be foremost. She would never be content to be that woman in the new gown on his arm at the gala. That knowledge acted upon him like the most potent of aphrodisiacs.
What there was between them came from a more powerfully primitive place than any attraction he had known before. And there
was
something between them. He felt the chemistry even now, sitting in his office, and, cast as many downward glances as she might, Cam would bet his soul that she was feeling it too.

He drained his glass. There were hurdles, far too many hurdles, to be gotten over—her reluctance, that infernal troop of monkeys, his own financial entanglements. But get over them he would. He put the glass down.

“Shall we find out what the Father of American Primatology's plan is?”

M
alou watched Cam as he
spoke with Edward Darden. He clearly felt none of the awe that afflicted her. She doubted if there were many people in the world who could awe Cameron Landell. Her thoughts kept drifting away from the conversation she should have been paying attention to, fixing instead on details like the way his fingernails wrapped clean and square around the sturdy tips of his fingers. Or the way sandy brown hair tufted at his bottom knuckle. Or how he kept raking her with his gaze when she least expected it.

And then she thought of those strong, capable hands on her, doing the wondrous things they had done last night. A flush of heat swept through her, and she looked down as if something fascinating were happening amid the ice cubes in her orange juice. Bits of Cam's responses filtered through her discomfiture, enough so that she caught the drift of the conversation. Darden's plan was
an exciting one, so exciting that her eyes were gleaming by the time Cam hung up.

Malou eagerly recapped her understanding of the discussion. “He wants you to turn Los Monos into a tourist park?”

“That's about the size of it.”