Man of Passion (11 page)

"What else did you think?" he asked. "I like the way you see me. Who wouldn't?"

Waving her hands nervously, Ari muttered, "Who wouldn't? No one ever reminded me of a movie star until I saw you. It's this sense of power—something—around you…."

"Charisma?"

"Yes, that's it! You have an almost magnetic kind of charisma. When I was searching the terminal for you, I instinctively felt pulled to look in a certain direction, and there you were!"

"Your
Hollywood
Hunk?"

Giggling, Ari met his smiling eyes. "That's what I thought—guilty as charged. Just blame my flights of fancy. My mother always said I was very creative, and she encouraged me to look at things, at people, in that way. Some people remind me of a steel-and-glass building.
Others of gnarled old oaks."

"
Pwhew
, I got off lucky. I'm the Hollywood Hunk."

Her laughter grew until it floated around her musically. Wiping the tears from her eyes, she muttered, "I can't recall laughing so much, so often."

He touched his chest with his hand. "I'll accept the blame." Did Ari realize how incredibly beautiful she was when she laughed? Did she know that her wide, sky-blue eyes shined with gold highlights, as if the sun itself had taken up residence within her? Her mouth was soft, full and delicious looking when she laughed, so alluring, tempting him to kiss her and absorb that smile through his own lips and into himself. It was a perfectly selfish desire.
One that gnawed insistently at him.
He studied her as the breeze ruffled her golden hair and the afternoon sunlight glinted through the clouds to touch her. For a moment, her face was framed in sparkling sunlight and she looked more angelic than earthbound. And then, just as quickly, the sun was hidden once again by the ever-present, low-hanging cumulus clouds. For once in his life
Rafe
was at a loss for words.

"How knightly of you," Ari teased back as she pressed her hand to her heart, her chest aching with spent laughter. She watched as
Rafe
gave her a suave smile. Getting to know him was like opening up a treasure chest of gold, emeralds, sapphires and diamonds; he was an endless bounty of gifts to her heart and wounded soul.

"Ah, the knight part."
He gave her a courtly bow. "Tell me more, milady, of how you see me in this guise?"

"You're such an egotist!"

"Me? No. You're the one calling me knightly. I just want to hear more of how you see me," he cajoled, and met her smiling eyes.
Rafe
knew he shouldn't be engaging her on a personal level like this. He wanted to think of her as rich, spoiled and pampered. He didn't want to get close to her.

"After I got over thinking you were a movie star, and as you drew closer, so tall and seemingly untouched by the crowd around you, in my imagination I saw you as a knight.
A knight from old
England
who went around saving the weak and protecting the underdogs from harm.
There was this wonderful sense of protectiveness that I felt…still feel…around you,
Rafe
." Nervously, Ari opened her hands, unsure of how far to go with her creative musing. At this point, her father would have been giving her a thundercloud look for such ramblings. Risking everything because Ari remembered that
Rafe
liked her spontaneity, she blurted, "I imagined you as Sir Galahad who sought the Holy Grail. Your face has deep, cutting lines in it—slashes around your mouth, wrinkles on your brow. That tells me you've been through a lot, but that even if you have been wounded by life's trials, you still keep your dream of finding the Grail.
No matter what."

Rafe
gave her a look of praise. "Do you read minds?"

"What? Me?" Ari laughed uncomfortably. "No. Why?"

"Because," he murmured, impressed, "you hit the proverbial nail on the head, to borrow a
norteamericano
saying." His hands steadied on the boat as the shore grew closer. They were now drifting about fifty feet from the dry, sandy bank.

"How?"

"Well,"
Rafe
continued with a sigh, "it's my turn to share a little of my family history with you. My father owns, roughly, twenty-five banks in
Brazil
. I come from a very rich, powerful and influential family. I was the firstborn son, and naturally, my father expected me to get an MBA and learn the banking business from him and eventually, when he retired, take over his empire."

Ari stared up at him. Right now, she felt
Rafe's
sadness. It was expressed in the line of his mouth, now compressed, and in the way his deep voice was serrated with old, unresolved grief. "You didn't do that, though? You went to Stanford and got a Ph.D. in biology instead."

"I defied my father from the time I was old enough to know what the word
no
meant," he said.

Laughing politely, Ari said, "Kirk, my brother, was a lot like that, too, growing up."

"Maybe it's a boy thing?"
Rafe
mused, enjoying talking with her. There was a surprisingly deep maturity and understanding he hadn't thought possible in Ari. Realizing she was old beyond her years made him hungry to converse with her.

"I don't know about that. I wanted to say no, but when I watched Kirk and Janis get it from my father, I knew better."

"Ah, yes, the knock-down, drag-out fights…I know them well."

"You didn't turn out to be like your father at all?"

"No, I am like my mother. She is a medical doctor and a fine scientist. Her love is virology and microbiology. It was she who taught me the love of the jungle surrounding
Manaus
. My father disapproved of her taking me with her on her field trips to find new viruses in the rain forest. I fell in love with the trees, with the land, the animals…the people. From the time I was eight years old, I knew what I wanted to be—a backwoodsman."

"A forest ranger?"

"One and the same, yes."

"Did your father finally understand? Did he bless your decision to do what you're doing now?"

Brows knitting,
Rafe
looked down at his long, large-knuckled hands. There were so many scars on them, white and pink ones, older and newer ones. "No…" he admitted slowly, pleased at Ari's understanding of him
. "
When I told him I was going to Stanford—that I wouldn't be following in his footsteps—he disowned me."

"No!" Ari gasped. She nearly came out of the chair,
then
stopped herself, staring at his rock-hard profile and seeing the anguish clearly evident in his face. "Surely he eventually forgave and forgot?"

Shaking his head,
Rafe
gave her a rueful glance.
"No, not to this day.
My mother sent me money to go to Stanford. I held a lot of odd jobs to make the rest of my tuition. She couldn't always send me money because if my father had ever found out, all hell would have broken loose, for sure. He never understood my love of the people who live in the basin." He made a wide, sweeping gesture toward the bank, where thousands of trees, palms and ferns lined the river like an unbroken corridor in different hues of green, ranging from evergreen and olive to chartreuse.

"How terribly sad."
Ari felt hot tears steal into her eyes. She saw him give her a sharpened look. "Sorry, I cry at the drop of a hat. My father
hates
to see me cry."

Leaning over,
Rafe
slid his fingers along the clean line of her jaw. Her eyes flared with shock, surprise and something else…pleasure, perhaps. But that was not why he'd followed his heart and touched her. "The Jaguar Clan has a saying, my wild woman. That if we cannot shed tears from our heart for those who suffer, then we are made of stone." Grazing her flaming cheek, his fingers tangled briefly in the gold of her hair along her temple. If he didn't stop, he'd kiss her. Shocked,
Rafe
pulled away and moved uncomfortably back to the wheel. Where had the words
wild woman
come from? He'd spoken them like an endearment, something intimate and private that he wanted to share only with her.

Without thinking, Ari put her hand to her cheek where he'd touched her like a butterfly grazing a sweet, honey-filled flower. The tenderness in
Rafe's
normally hard expression shook her to her soul. This man…this
person
who seemed to know the very center of her heart, had touched her as she'd never been touched before. No one had ever sent burning tingles of pleasure across her sensitized flesh as he had. No one had held her heart with such tenderness. Blinking back tears, Ari could only sit there and absorb the moment. She couldn't think, could only feel. Her heart throbbed like a rainbow burning high in the blue sky above them. Surely this was how a rainbow felt, she thought as she moved her fingers lingeringly across where her heart lay, open and vulnerable.

Gathering her courage, Ari whispered, "In my eyes—my heart—you're a knight in shining armor. Look how you care for and protect the Indians in the territory you have responsibility for. The people must love you for your dedication to them. I'm so sorry your father can't realize your dream, your vision. I hope someday he will."

Quirking his mouth,
Rafe
said, "Not a chance, Ari. He's set in stone.
The stone that the Jaguar Clan refers to.
He's all head. He's buried his heart and feelings a long time ago. I'm afraid he's got an ego the size of
São Paulo
, and
São Paulo
has fourteen million people in it."

"But," she said, opening her hands, "how do you stay in touch with your family, then?"

"I have my ways." He smiled a little savagely. "My two younger sisters and brothers live in
Manaus
beneath his shadow, doing what he wants them to do with their lives. My mother and I have a secret code so that when I call her on a certain phone line, she knows it's me. I usually meet her at my home, which sits on the outskirts of
Manaus
."

"At least you get to see them." Still, Ari saw the damage that his father had done to him. Saw the agony in his eyes and the way he stood rigidly at the wheel. Her heart ached for him. "I didn't know you had a house in the city. I thought you lived here," she said, gesturing to the houseboat.

"I do live out of this," he told her. "When I'm not tracking illegal miners, drug runners or drug lords on the land, I use a small aluminum skiff with a motor to move around in the back channels of the Amazon. I keep the houseboat tied up in a channel near the
Juma
village. They watch over it when I'm away on a mission."

"Then the house in
Manaus
is…"

He smiled. "I work for the State, so I have to have residency there. About twice a year I go in and report on what's happening in my territory, create a budget and tell the board how the money will be spent for the coming year.
That kind of thing.
It usually takes a week to do that."

"And that's when you see your family?"

"Yes."

She heard the satisfaction in his voice. "In my eyes, you're still a knight," she said, and gave him a small smile.

Rafe
nodded. "A tarnished knight banished from his land and from his family. Not exactly storybook material, am I?
More of a disappointment."

Frowning, Ari shook her head. "You have problems with your father just like I do." She rested her elbows on the journal and planted her chin in her cupped hands. "We're lucky to have the moms we did—or do."

"My mother's a pearl,"
Rafe
said. "My father doesn't deserve her, but for whatever reasons, she hasn't walked out and left him."

"
Mmm
, I understand. Maybe our fathers should get together?"

"From the sounds of it, World War III would start."
Rafe
snorted and then gave her a wry smile. He looked down at his watch. "Well, in another hour we'll be at the village…and your new home." How would she react?
Rafe
was curious.