Dangerous to Hold Page 4

  Sarah Chandler sat on a fifty-pound sack of dried beans, an arm around Ricci’s small body. Teresa clutched at her other sleeve with both hands, while Eduard, his face solemn in the sweltering haze of the hut, stared at her with wide black eyes.

  Desperately Sarah tried to stifle the fear that had gripped her since the stutter of machine-gun fire had torn her from sleep so many hours ago and even now made her hair slick with sweat under the limp veil. Despite her best efforts, a series of tremors racked her.

  Oh, God, what was she doing here? How had her life turned upside down like this in such a short time?

  Humid, suffocating heat seared her lungs with each gulping breath. She glanced around the hut in mounting dismay. The panic she’d held at bay all through the long, terrifying night clogged her throat.

  Her father was right! She could have worked out her shattering guilt over the consequences of her actions at home just as well as in the Peace Corps. She could’ve done community service in D.C., or in their home state of North Carolina, for that matter, anywhere other than some remote little village in the middle of the jungle. Sarah squeezed her eyes shut, seeing Orwin Chandler’s big, hearty figure as he paced the paneled library of the Bethesda home they shared, puffing on the one cigar he allowed himself each day.

  If she’d listened to her father, if she hadn’t pitted herself against him for perhaps the first time in her life, she wouldn’t be here in an airless shack, pretending a medical knowledge she didn’t possess. She wouldn’t be bound by horrible chance and circumstance to a steel-eyed mercenary who—

  “Sarita?”

  Ricci’s wobbling voice pulled Sarah back from the brink of a hysteria engendered by delayed shock and total exhaustion.

  “Sarita, tengo que ir al baño.”

  She stared at him, uncomprehending. Her formal Spanish, sketchy at best, seemed to have deserted her completely. Nor had she been in country long enough to gain any real understanding of the local dialect. The people she’d lived with these past weeks had hidden their smiles at her faltering attempts to communicate and replied politely in English. Even these children had a better command of her language than she did of theirs. Somehow, that made Sarah feel even worse.

  “I’m sorry, Ricci,” she said shakily. “Please, tell me again.”

  “I have to make the pee,” he announced in English.

  “Oh.”

  “Me also,” Teresa chimed in.

  Their simple needs steadied Sarah as perhaps nothing else could have. After a dark night of terror and a morning that had brought them to the grim reality of the rebel camp, they needed to make pee. Sarah reined in her incipient panic, reminding herself that she’d promised Maria she’d watch over these abandoned children until the church authorities came for them.

  Maria! A stab of regret lanced through Sarah for the woman she’d grown so close to in such a short space of time. Strong, competent, no-nonsense Sister Maria, with her skilled hands and sympathetic brown eyes. Maria, who’d died so needlessly, so tragically, just two days ago after the Jeep she’d been hauling medical supplies in hit a tree root and overturned, crushing her underneath.

  Ricci tugged impatiently on her sleeve. “Sarita!”

  “Okay, honey, okay.”

  The…the gringo had said not to go outside. Biting down on her lower lip, Sarah glanced around for a vessel the children could use. The hut was too small and too airless for them to just relieve themselves on the hard-packed dirt floor.

  Aside from the stacked wooden crates she’d been warned away from, the only contents of the hut were sacks of coffee, rice, and the black beans that formed the main dietary staple in this region. Some dirty, ragged bedrolls had been tossed in one corner, along with a wadded pile of mosquito netting. Her gaze fell on the gringo’s backpack, propped against the wall. Maybe there was something inside she could appropriate.

  Tugging her arm free of Teresa’s clutching hands, Sarah pushed herself off the cot and crossed to the bulging brown-and-green knapsack. Inside she found a cache of items necessary for survival in the tropics—quinine, a first aid kit, snakebite antidote, a plastic bottle of water-purifier capsules. There was also a shaving kit that held a few toiletries, as well as two small travel toothbrushes. Greedily grabbing one of the toothbrushes, Sarah set it and a squeezed-up tube of toothpaste aside, then dug deeper. She pulled out a poncho, vital in a country where torrential rains pounded out of the sky for at least an hour every day during rainy season, and a spare pair of the high, flexible rubber boots with thin soles necessary for walking any distance through the streams and soggy layers of vegetation in the rain forest.

  Frustrated, Sarah turned to the side pockets. Her rummaging fingers extracted a clean, if wrinkled, khaki shirt from one pocket, a thick wad of socks from another, and from the last a couple of pairs of white cotton men’s briefs.

  Sarah fingered the soft cotton. To her consternation, a flush added to the heat bathing her cheeks as she stared at the Jockey shorts. Size 34, she read on the label. Unadorned, utilitarian, and utterly masculine.

  For the first time, Sarah visualized the man she’d spent the past five desperate hours with as…as a man. A startling mental image of his lean, muscled body clothed only in these briefs gripped her. She remembered suddenly how his sweat-dampened shirt had clung to wide shoulders and delineated the taut muscles of his upper arms. How the web belt sporting a long, lethal-looking machete and a plain leather holster had hung low on his narrow hips. How…

  “Saritaaaa!”

  At the small, desperate wail, Sarah jumped. She crammed the briefs back into the side pocket and scrabbled in the dirt for the likeliest receptacle.

  “They used my boot?”

  The gringo’s voice rose incredulously. He stood just inside the hut, canteens dangling from one arm, a mounded plate of beans and rice in either hand.

  At the sound of his harsh exclamation, Teresa whimpered. Sarah wrapped an arm around the girl’s thin shoulders and pulled her into her side.

  “Well, they had to use something,” she pointed out.

  “They used my boot?”

  “Oh, for—” Sarah bit off the impatient exclamation. What was the big deal? “You can rinse it out in the stream. After you provide something more suitable for the children to use.”

  He slammed the tin plate down on one of the crates. “There’s a whole damn jungle right outside. They can use that!”

  “You said not to leave the hut,” she retorted, then belatedly remembered her role. “And I must ask you to refrain from taking the Lord’s name in vain.”

  Under the dark stubble that shadowed his face, his jaw worked. Narrowed gray eyes glittered with an anger he made no effort to disguise. “Look, lady—Sister—we’re going to lay a few ground rules here.”

  The unmistakable menace in his voice turned Teresa’s whimpers to outright sobs. She burrowed into the smothering folds of the black robe and sent sharp little elbows poking in Sarah’s side.

  The scowl on the man’s face deepened at the girl’s sobs. He looked so fierce and threatening that Sarah’s brief spurt of defiance evaporated. She gripped Teresa with a sudden feeling of panic.

  His effect on the boys was no less dramatic. Little Ricci whimpered that they would die and buried his face in the thick black skirt. Eduard rose from his cross-legged position on the floor, sidled next to Sarah, and put a hand on her shoulder.

  She wasn’t sure whether the eight-year old meant to draw comfort from her or reassure her. Eduard rarely spoke. Even the skilled, patient Sister Maria hadn’t been able to draw the boy from the silent shell he’d encased himself in since one of the villagers found him in the jungle several years ago, thin-ribbed, hollow-faced, and starving. His flat black eyes gave no hint of his thoughts or his emotions.

  The touch of Eduard’s small hand on her shoulder sent a wave of confused emotions through Sarah. She was ashamed of her sudden panic, yet too exhausted to summon the courage to combat it. And, worse, she was swamped
by the enormity of the responsibility that had been thrust upon her.

  She didn’t know anything about children! She knew even less about jungle survival. How could she hope to escape and make it back to civilization dragging three kids? How could she defend herself, let alone them, from the furious man who confronted them? She wanted to burst into tears and bury her face in Teresa’s tangled hair.

  The gringo must have seen that he’d pushed her to the limit of her resources. The glittering anger in his eyes gave way to disgust. He rattled off something in Spanish that Sarah didn’t catch and turned to dump the canteens beside the plate he’d slammed down a few moments ago. Reining in his temper with a visible effort, he shrugged off the weapon slung over his shoulder and propped it against the wall next to his backpack. He settled himself on the wooden box, his long legs sprawled out and his back against the stack behind him.

  Whatever he’d said seemed to reassure the children. Or maybe it was his less threatening stance. In any case, Teresa’s cries dwindled to gulping hiccups. Ricci’s face appeared from the folds of Sarah’s skirt. He glanced at the gringo, then at the food. After a moment, he pulled himself up and waddled over to the plates. Digging a grubby hand into the combination of rice and cold black beans, he proceeded to stuff the mixture into his mouth.

  Wearily Sarah unwrapped her arm from the little girl’s body. “Go on, Teresa. You must eat. You too, Eduard.” She sent the older boy a glance she could only hope was calm and confident.

  “You, also, Sarita,” Teresa insisted, refusing to relinquish her tight grip on her sleeve. “You come, too.”

  Sarah nodded and started to push herself to her feet.

  “Sarita?”

  The deep voice rasped like rough sandpaper along Sarah’s frayed nerves. She froze, wondering wildly if she should tell this man her real name. Did she dare trust him with the knowledge that she wasn’t the medical sister he believed her to be? She straightened and brushed the straggling veil out of her face to look at him.

  No. No way. Not this hard-eyed mercenary. If he bartered his despicable skills for the drug dollars these rebels paid him, she shuddered to think of the price he’d demand for the daughter of a United States senator.

  “Sarita is what the children call me.” Pulling the first name she could think of out of the air, she met his gaze. “I’m Sister Sarah Josepha. From the convent of Our Lady of Sorrows.”

  She managed to roll the convent name off confidently enough. In the few weeks they’d worked side by side in the small clinic Maria ran, Sarah had learned a great deal about her companion’s religious background. Open, friendly, at times blunt and outspoken, Maria had held nothing back. Sarah had found herself envying the woman her dedication and sense of purpose.

  “Our Lady of Sorrows,” he murmured. “Appropriate.”

  Sarah stiffened. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  He flicked a glance at the children, now crouched down in front of the food and busy filling their empty bellies. “Only that we’re both going to experience a lot more sorrow than we can handle if we don’t keep a real cool head for the next few days.”

  A sharp splinter of hope pierced Sarah’s heart. “The next few days? Do you mean we’ll only be here a few days? Then you’ll let us go?”

  “I don’t know how long you’ll be here,” he replied flatly.

  The hope in Sarah’s chest exploded into tiny shards of a disappointment so painful she choked.

  His brows drew into a dark slash. “Look, Sister Sarah, if it was up to me, I’d put you and the kids on a packhorse right now and get you the hell out of Dodge. I’m not exactly thrilled to have the four of you on my hands while I’m trying to conduct a…business operation.”

  The hesitation was so slight that Sarah almost missed it. Bitterness and frustration curled her lip. “A business operation? Is that what you call it? There’s a word for people like you, you know, and it’s not entrepreneur.”

  He rose to his feet and took a slow step toward her.

  Sarah swallowed, but refused to back away.

  “You’ve got a real mouth on you, for a nun,” he commented softly.

  He was so close Sarah could smell the tang of healthy male sweat emanating from his chest. She stared up at him, seeing the hard line of his jaw under the stubble that shadowed it. She realized suddenly that tall and lean translated into overpowering and rather dangerous at such close quarters. Rubbing damp palms down the sides of her skirts, Sarah took a deep breath and summoned up the last tattered remnants of her courage.

  “Is that so? Just how many nuns do you know?”

  Something glimmered in his eyes. Sarah couldn’t tell whether it was surprise that she refused to let him intimidate her, or reluctant admiration at her stand, or amusement. The thought that her desperate struggle to contain her fear might amuse him sent her chin up another notch.

  “Not many,” he admitted. The ghost of a smile tugged at his lips. “In fact, I’ve only met one other. She caught me snitching fruit from the corner grocery store and whacked me over the head with her umbrella. When she marched me home, my staunch Methodist father agreed with the good sister that I needed a little more forceful guidance and took me out behind the garage. Since then I’ve tended to avoid your kind.”

  Waves of relief coursed through Sarah. She just might make it through this mess after all. Lifting her chin, she gave a disdainful sniff. “Obviously, both the whack over the head and your trip to the garage failed dismally to curb your ways.”

  “Obviously,” he drawled, turning away. “Go eat. Then we’d better get what sleep we can before the heat gets too unbearable. I’ll string some hammocks for the kids, and we can make do with the bedrolls.”

  “You’re going to sleep here? With us?”

  “Right the first time.”

  “I don’t think that’s either necessary or appropriate, Mr…. Gringo.”

  He didn’t even bother to turn around. “What you think in this instance doesn’t matter a whole lot, Sister Sarah. You see, that ferret-faced little runt out there who leads this band of so-called revolutionaries isn’t exactly pleased that I dragged you back here. He’s made me personally responsible for you, and I’m not a man who takes his responsibilities lightly.”

  Ignoring Sarah’s inelegant little huff of derision, he looped the end of a hammock rope around an exposed wooden roof support. “Go eat,” he ordered, in a voice that brooked no further argument.

  While he moved about the small hut, Sarah joined the children. They scooted aside to make room for her around the impromptu table. Remembering his warning about things that went boom in the night, she lowered herself gingerly onto the edge of the crate, then glanced around for something to eat with. There wasn’t anything except her fingers. Sarah wiped them on her robe and tried not to think of what might be clinging to either her skin or her skirts.

  Her first scoop of cold beans and rice lodged in a throat still dry with the residue of fear and exhaustion. Sarah unscrewed the plastic top of one of the canteens and washed the lump down, grimacing at the taste of tepid water laced with chemical purifiers. She wiped the mouth of the canteen with her sleeve and passed it to little Teresa, then scooped up another few fingerfuls of food. Within moments, she was gobbling the hearty fare down as hungrily as the children.

  After half a lifetime of dining at Washington’s elegant restaurants and quaint eateries, Sarah had been surprised at how well she adapted to the steady diet of rice and black beans that formed the basis of every meal in this part of the world. In the evening the villagers augmented the dish with chicken or, occasionally, pork cooked in a spicy tomato sauce. When scooped up in still-warm corn tortillas and finished off with the plentiful fruits of the area, the food was nutritious and filling.

  Or maybe Sarah’s easy adjustment to it had stemmed from the fact that, for the first time in her life, she wasn’t giving much thought to either her weight or her appearance. The humidity had wreaked such havoc on her once-shining
cap of long platinum blond hair that she’d taken to simply dragging it back with an elastic band. Moreover, she’d found a degree of comfort and a strange sense of freedom in the baggy cotton trousers and shirts her Peace Corps sponsor had told her to bring. Sarah smothered a silent groan, wishing she could shuck the hot, sticky black habit and pull on one of those lightweight shirts right now.

  Even Maria herself had rarely worn these suffocating robes, donning them only for infrequent visits to her chapter house in the capital city. In the interior she wore sensible lightweight cotton work clothes—and the bright red ball cap with the Washington Redskins logo emblazoned on the front that Sarah had given her.

  At the memory of the ball cap, Sarah’s fingers stilled halfway to her mouth. She closed her eyes against the familiar wave of pain and guilt that washed through her. André had bought the ball cap for her on one of their delightful, illicit outings. Sarah had thought to use the anonymity of the huge crowd at a Skins game to teach the suave, sophisticated Frenchman a little about the American national pastime. Instead, he’d shaken his head at her incomprehensible enthusiasm for what he considered a slow, pedestrian sport and whisked her away during the third quarter to a discreet little hotel to demonstrate what he laughingly called the French national sport.

  She’d been so in love with him, Sarah thought in despair. She hadn’t stopped to think about the pain and tragedy her selfish need for him could cause. She’d believed him when he caressed her and adored her with his skilled hands and clever mouth. She’d—

  “Don’t forget to shake your bedroll out before you lie down.”

  Sarah blinked and slewed around to see the gringo stretched out, his long legs crossed at the ankle and a floppy-brimmed camouflage hat covering his eyes.

  “What?”

  “Shake out the bedroll,” he murmured, without removing the hat. “It’s a safe bet the last inhabitant was a snake, either the slippery, slithery variety or one of his two-legged cousins.”

  Sarah eyed the stained mat beside his in distaste. “Maybe I’ll share a hammock with Teresa.”