Man of Passion (3 page)

Groaning, Morgan thanked the tall, graceful secretary, whose red hair had become peppered with silver since he'd last seen her. In her mid-fifties, Becky had been working for Ben Worthington for a long time, and she was more than just an assistant, she was his right hand.

"I need that coffee cake like I need a hole in my head," Morgan confided to Ben as Becky quietly closed the door to the office to leave them in complete privacy.

Ben raised his thick, sandy-colored brows as he sipped his coffee.
"Makes two of us.
I don't get out and exercise like I used to." He looked around the office. "Maybe it's this place."

"Or the pressures and crises that keep popping up to throw you off your scheduled maintenance," Morgan said, his mouth twisted wryly.

"I see you know that one, too."

"My middle name is crisis," Morgan agreed with a chuckle. He eyed the coffee cake. "I shouldn't, but I'm going to…." Rising to his full height, he unbuttoned his dark blue pinstripe jacket and moved over to the coffee table. Twisting to look over his shoulder at Ben, he asked, "Want to join me in collusion?"

Laughing, Ben patted his girth. "I'm twenty pounds over right now, Morgan. I don't dare."

"I just thought I'd have some company so I wouldn't feel so guilty about cutting such a huge piece for myself," he murmured as he sliced off a healthy portion and placed it on a china plate. Picking up the plate along with one of the forks and white linen napkins Becky had thoughtfully left
behind,
Morgan moved back to the wing chair and sat down.

"What's on your mind, Ben?"

Scowling, Ben put his coffee aside and picked up one of several gold-framed photographs on one side of his massive desk. "How long have we known one another?"

Morgan sat back and chewed on the sweet, mouth-melting coffee cake. "Almost as long as
Perseus
has been in existence," he replied, referring to the covert government organization he headed.

Moving his hands over one small photo, Ben studied it. "That was ten years ago. Arianna was only fourteen years old when you formed
Perseus
." He looked up. "She's my youngest of three children." Turning the photo around, he placed it so that Morgan could get a good look at her.

"Pretty young lady," Morgan commented. The photograph showed a woman of perhaps twenty-four or-five sitting among a number of potted plants in a greenhouse. She was delicate looking, with short, blond hair and her father's sky blue eyes in an oval face. She was dressed in a pair of jeans, a pink tank top and tennis shoes. The expression on her face was one of pure joy.

Ben leaned back in his chair, his hands folded across his belly. "Arianna was only eight when her mother died of leukemia. She was the youngest and it was very hard on her. She was too young to understand…and her mother's death changed her forever…. I tried to help, but I was hurting so much myself that I'm afraid I didn't do a very good job of being a parent at that time…."

Morgan lost some of his joviality as Ben turned another framed photograph around for him to look at. It showed Ben and his wife, Ellen. "I'm sorry for your loss," he murmured sincerely. In some respects, Ellen reminded him of his own wife, Laura, who also had blond hair. "Arianna really takes after your wife, doesn't she?"

"In
every
respect," Ben muttered. "
Which is why I asked you to drop by and see me.
" Ben waved his hand. "I know you have other appointments today, equally important, and I'm grateful you could squeeze this impromptu visit into your schedule."

Morgan finished the tasty coffee cake. He blotted his lips with the napkin and picked up the cup of coffee. "I'm glad I could do it. I gather this involves something personal instead of professional?"

Ben sat for a moment, his square face stern, his jowls set, his gaze pinned on his daughter's photograph. Rousing himself, he nodded. "Yes…it concerns Arianna. And what she thinks she's about to do."

Morgan heard the pain in the man's somber voice and
sympathized,
though he had a feeling he knew what was bothering him. Ben was a hard-hitting Type A personality—a born leader, who liked to control every nuance of his life. As secretary of the Navy, his commanding leadership was a good thing. But Morgan wondered how Ben's controlling personality might have impacted his family. He'd seen too many military men who were far too rigid with their wife and children.

"Fill me in on how I can help you," Morgan said.

Ben sighed and picked up the picture of his daughter, holding it as he spoke. "Arianna is so much like her mother that since she's grown up, I sometimes forget and think Ellen's in the town house whenever Arianna comes over. Arianna's twenty-five now, and has just graduated from
Georgetown
University
with a degree in business and a minor in Spanish."

"Impressive," Morgan murmured. He thought of his own children, who were growing up quickly. Jason was ten now, and little Katy wasn't far behind. And the fraternal twins, Peter and Kelly, were a year old. "I've got a college fund already established for my four kids. I'm hoping they'll see the
benefits of a college education like your daughter, Arianna, has
."

Worthington
's mouth tightened slightly. "I forced her into getting a degree in business. Maybe it was wrong of me, but I wanted Ari to have a solid foundation, so she could earn money and control her own life instead of having it controlled by others. She's a very intelligent girl, if she'd just settle down."

Touching the frame, Ben continued unhappily, "She's a dreamer, not a hard-core business type, Morgan. My wife was a dreamer, too. Lord, she had so many dreams. Ellen loved to travel. She wanted to go around the world. She loved orchids, and I had a small greenhouse built for her. Ellen and Arianna spent hours out in that little steamy box where she grew all those orchids. In fact, the year before Ellen
died,
she made a concerted effort to be with Arianna. They spent a couple hours every day, up until the last two weeks before her death, out in that greenhouse."

Touched, Morgan murmured, "It was a parting gift of love that Ellen gave to her then."

Ben's normally hard face softened somewhat. "Yes…Ari was all she had left. Our son, Kirk, was at the
Naval
Academy
at the time." He gave Morgan a pained look. "I think you already know our middle daughter, Janis, died at age thirteen. She took a stupid dare from a boy at a riding stable. He bet that the horse she was riding couldn't jump a four-foot fence. It didn't, and she fell off and broke her neck, dying instantly. It was a blow to all of us, but especially Ellen." Rubbing his neck, Ben muttered, "I sometimes think that the shock of her death—the trauma of our loss—triggered Ellen's leukemia. She contracted the disease six months after Janis died. It's too coincidental, in my book."

"And Ari got shunted aside during that time?"

"Yes, but she was the kind of little girl who would go off to her room and play for hours in a make-believe world." Ben roused himself and gave Morgan a half smile. "She still does. And that's the problem."

"How?"

"One of the things my wife wanted to do more than anything else was
take
a trip down to the Amazon in
Brazil
to find orchids and draw them. My wife had a master's degree in art. She was an incredible artist. She talked to Ari endlessly about all her dreams, and urged her to fill her life with exploration, with adventure, with going places."

"All the places Ellen hadn't gotten to go, right?"

"Yes." Grimly, Ben sat up and said, "Ari has it in her head to go down to Brazil, to that damned jungle, and do exactly as her mother said—find orchids, draw them and have a book published on them. The only problem is that Ari is a delicate child. She hasn't got any backbone. She's painfully shy and has low self-esteem. Yet," Ben growled in frustration, "she wants to traipse off to
Brazil
and do this crazy, stupid thing."

"She's twenty-five," Morgan said. "Old enough to make up her mind on what she wants to do."

"That's the point!" Ben shot out of the chair and began to pace, his hands resting on his hips. "Ari has been a good girl. She's been responsible. She's done everything I've ever asked of her. Then, all of a sudden, she comes for a visit and tells me—
tells me
—that she wants to fulfill this crazy dream for her mother."

"Why not let her?" Morgan asked. He could easily understand what was fueling the daughter's rebellion. In making her mother's dying wish come true, she would help to heal herself from the loss of her beloved parent.

"Because," Ben said, turning and glaring at Morgan, "she's not an artist! She has no degree in art. Oh, she dabbles with her colored pencils, and her mother did teach her some art techniques…but to think that she's got the kind of artistic professionalism that a book demands? No. No way. I just don't want to see her set herself up for disappointment. And risk her neck by running around a foreign country alone."

Ben sighed. "Ellen used to read Arianna books on
Brazil
. They would sit for hours with five or six orchid books spread all across her bed, and they'd make plans about which species should be drawn for the book. Ari has it in her head that she can go gallivanting off to the jungle and draw those orchids."

Shrugging, Morgan finished the coffee and said, "I haven't met a twenty-something yet who didn't rebel, didn't want to go out and knock heads with life, Ben. If this is her rebellion, I'd say it's a pretty healthy one, from my perspective."

"Don't side with her on this," Ben warned. "There're drug runners down in
Manaus
. There's as much cocaine being funneled up through that country as there is rainwater pouring down on the Amazon jungle. I'm worried about her. She's been a homebody. She's not an explorer. She's not worldly or even practical, Morgan."

"In other words, Ari needs a babysitter and a guard dog? Is that why you asked to see me? You want me to assign a
merc
to her while she's down there, to keep her out of trouble?"

"Out of harm's way," Ben added fiercely. He raked his fingers through his short, neatly cut hair. Sitting down, he sighed. "Ari is a mouse, Morgan. She's a shadow. She
clung
to Ellen. She was afraid to do anything unless Ellen cajoled her into it. Ari was happy to stay at home, work with my wife on the orchids,
be
in the greenhouse with her. She doesn't have the drive my son or I have. She doesn't have a game plan for her life. Ari goes around in this idealistic,
spacy
kind of state, believing good of everyone and everything. She's too damned trusting.
Too forgiving."

Sighing, Morgan said, "Life has a way of giving us more backbone, more reality-based perspectives, Ben. But to get that, you have to go out of the home and through life's revolving doors into the fray we call the real world. You know that. It sounds like Ari is ready to do it. I don't see that as bad, do you?"

"Why the hell couldn't she just take the job I got her on Wall Street? I have a major stock brokerage firm that wants her right this minute. But she said no. She wants to take a year off, go to the Amazon and draw orchids and create this book. Hell, it'll fail. She'll fail."

"Failing is a part of living," Morgan said. "Failing gives us strength, endurance and backbone." When Ben's face flushed with anger, he held up his hand. "I think I've got just the man for this personal mission to protect Arianna from herself."

"Who is he?" Ben demanded, getting up again. He poured himself more coffee and filled Morgan's cup while he was at it.

"Name's
Rafe
Antonio.
He's what they call a
mateiro
or a backwoodsman, in
Brazil
. In our country, he'd be known as a forest ranger. He has a territory about three hours east of
Manaus
, down the
Amazon River
, that he protects from poachers, miners and drug runners. His main care is for the Indians in that region. He's a good man, Ben. Someone you can trust."

"And you've worked with him before?"