And Babies Make Four (11 page)

“But that’s exactly—” He paused, looking at her sharply. “Hold it. You thought I apologized. I thought you apologized. But if you didn’t, and I didn’t, then who …?”

They stared at each other, the answer occurring to them both at once. “Einstein!”

Dr. Noel Revere could say more without saying anything than any woman he knew, Donovan thought as he watched his boss pour herself a cup of morning coffee and stride purposefully across the campsite. In the three days since they’d arrived her conversation had consisted of little more than “move X piece of equipment over here” and “read me the calibration on that dial.” She’d kept him busy—the array of technology she’d brought measured everything from magnetic resonances to soil content, all of which had to be continually and precisely logged. It was boring as hell, but the pay was heaven and he’d have done it gladly—if the woman he’d been working with hadn’t been doing her level best to imitate an igloo.

Unfortunately, the dreams keeping him up at night starred a Noel who had more in common with a blowtorch than a block of ice.

“Donovan, could you come over here, please?”

“The sound of his master’s voice,” he muttered as he set down the ancient seismograph he’d been lubricating. He walked toward her, roughly wiping the grease from his hands with an old bandanna. She was bent over a folding table, studying a topological map of the area. In her designer khaki walking shorts and her spotless Peter Pan shirt she looked about as survival ready as a Barbie doll.
Christ, what have I gotten myself into?
“Whaddaya want now?”

She looked up, stiffening at his surly tone. “You could at least be civil.”

“Civil costs extra,” he stated as he stuffed his bandanna in his back jeans pocket. “You’d better learn to live without it … unless you’re willing to make it worth my while.”

Her jaw tightened at the thinly veiled come-on, and her eyes snapped with a murderous fury. At least I got a rise out of her, he thought as she turned back to the table and the topological map. Dammit, I’ll take her passion any way I can get—

“What do you know about these caves in the southern part of the valley?” She pointed to a quadrant on the survey.

He stepped behind her and looked over her shoulder. “I know enough to stay away from them. Those caves are pockets in the limestone bedrock of this area, eaten out by water and carbonic acid from decomposing plants. They honeycomb this area and have a bad habit of collapsing on people who are dumb enough to explore them.”

“Well, we won’t be exploring them. We’re just
going to set electromagnetic monitors in their entrances. Judging by the distance, I figure that if we start now, we can reach the caves and be back by late afternoon.”

“Unless we get squashed like a bug on a windshield.”

“We will not!” She turned around to glare up at him. “Einstein assures me that we won’t be in any danger from rockslides.”

Donovan gave a short, ugly laugh. “Yeah, like I believe it. That little computer lies like a rug.”

“He and PINK made a mistake. Haven’t you ever made a mistake before?”

Mistake? he thought as he gazed at her ripe lips and unforgiving expression. You haven’t got a clue. I’ve made more mistakes in a year than you’ll make in a lifetime. And the worst is closing my eyes at night, and letting dreams of you all hot and wanting make me crazier than—

He stepped back, shaking his head. “Okay, we’ll put your damn detectors in the caves. But you’re staying outside while I do it. You’re paying me to take the risks, remember?”

Her resolute expression faltered. “I don’t think that’s entirely fair.”

“Not much is, sweetheart,” he said grimly as he stalked away.

For Noel, the southern part of Eden Valley was spectacular in an almost indescribable way. The forbidding
mountains of the interior were twin, smoke-blue peaks in the distance, and the forest-shrouded valley floor rose sharply to meet them. All around them was a riot of vegetation, from the wide, spreading ferns, to the larger mountain guavas and blue mahoe, to the graceful bloodred bromeliads that made their homes in the treetops.
The Place Where the Gods Walked.

The overwhelming, potent beauty of the raw wilderness poured through her like sunshine, making her forget the heavy equipment strapped to her back, and the dull ache in her knees and shoulders. Unfortunately, it did absolutely nothing to relieve the ache in her heart.

She shaded her eyes, looking ahead at the broad back of the man who climbed the path a few yards ahead of her. The equipment he carried was twice as heavy as hers, and she wondered if his joints hurt as badly. Then she remembered that she wasn’t supposed to care, that caring about a man like Donovan was more dangerous than quicksand.

Initially, she’d tried to keep a wall between them by throwing herself two hundred percent into her work. It hadn’t helped. Try as she might, her gaze kept slipping back to his broad, muscular shoulders, his unruly mane of tawny hair, and his sensuous lips, which stirred up memories she’d give her diplomas to forget. Failing that, she’d tried another tack, by counterfeiting the upper-class indifference that her grandmother had always shown toward the servants.

Noel had always hated that part of her grandmother’s personality, but she needed to maintain the
charade for the sake of sheer survival. It was the only way she could keep herself from melting under the heat of Donovan’s devastating gaze, or grinning at his sincere but hopeless attempts to cook a palatable meal, or wanting to reach out and soothe the haunted expression that too often shadowed his heaven-blue eyes.

A petulant electronic voice interrupted her thoughts. “Aren’t we there
yet?
”

Noel glanced down at the walkie-talkie hanging from her belt, smiling softly. PINK’s heavier CPU console was still safe at camp, but the radio communicators allowed the computers to give and receive instructions without making their human friends carry the additional weight. “We’re getting close, PINK. Just be patient.”

“Don’t want to be patient. Want to be there!”

Noel started to answer, but stopped as she heard a deep chuckle on her right. She turned and saw Sam standing above her on the pathway just beyond the thick, rust-red trunk of a châtaignier tree that had fallen across the path. “Glad you got to carry the female.”

“It’s no laughing matter. PINK’s been acting strange lately.”

He pulled off his glove and reached out to help her over the trunk. “You can tell?”

“Very funny.” She glanced up at the heavy load on his back, then down at the steep, rock-strewn slope falling away beneath her. A brief, sickening image of a body tumbling down the slope and smashing to bits
on a boulder flashed through her mind, but she quickly stifled it. She set her boot on the lowest ridge of the trunk, ignoring his hand. “Thanks, but I don’t need any help.”

“Suit yourself.” He shrugged and started back up the path.

Well, the least he could do was wait for her, she thought as she struggled to hoist herself and her equipment over the breastbone-high trunk. “Not that you care,” she exclaimed loudly, “but PINK’s been very moody lately. She’s been using up twice her normal amount of energy during routine processing. I think she may have blown something on her mother—”

Her words stopped abruptly as her foot slipped and she lost her grip on the trunk. Overbalanced by the heavy equipment, she was pulled backward toward the treacherous slope. Panicked, she reached out for a hold, but her hand found nothing but air. For a heart-stopping instant she started to topple into deadly oblivion—until iron fingers locked on her forearm and yanked her back to safety.

“Hell, what is it about you and trouble?” he cursed as he pulled her over the log and against his chest.

She didn’t answer. She couldn’t. For what seemed like an eternity the only sound she could hear was the thunderous pounding of her heart. Then other sounds crept in—the trill of a bird, the lazy rustle of the wind through the trees, the, watery rush of a nearby stream. She felt the golden touch of the sun on
her face, and drank in the intoxicating freshness of the clean mountain air. The whole world seemed clearer, like a picture brought suddenly into sharp, revealing focus.

Nothing had changed, and yet everything had changed. In her entire thirty-two years she’d never been as close to death as she’d been a few moments before. The experience had at once shocked and energized her, making her realize just how much of her life had been lived in the past or the future, but not the present.
But all I have is this moment, this now … with him.

“Don’t let go.” The words came out as more of a croak. “Please, hold me.”

“Try and stop me,” he murmured as he pulled her close. “You’re safe. I’m not going to let anything happen to you, sweetheart.”

Sweetheart. For the first time she let herself believe in the endearment, to pretend that the tenderness in his voice was love and not comfort. The brush with death had obviously addled her wits, but she didn’t care. Suddenly she became greedy for the sensations of life, like a starving man at a feast. She let her eyes drift shut, savoring the feel of the hard-muscled planes of his chest against her cheek, and gorging on the unyielding strength of his corded arms circling her back. She breathed in the sharp, salty smell of his skin, and barely restrained herself for sampling an almost irresistible taste. A strange, sweet madness laced through her blood. Physically she was safe, but emotionally she felt she was hurtling down a slope a hundred
times more dangerous than the one beside her.
Nothing had changed, yet everything had changed.

“Hell,” he cursed again, though this time it came out more like a groan of pain. With a force that was both rough and gentle he pushed her away and stood up, smoothing back his sun-tangled hair. “You could have gotten us
both
killed. I tried to help you, but no … you were too damn proud to soil your lily-white hands on—”

“I wasn’t too proud,” she said quietly. “You’re carrying twice as much equipment, and have twice the chance of being overbalanced by the load. I was worried you’d fall.”

“You were worried that I’d—” For a long moment he stared at her as if she’d just spoken Swahili. Then he cupped her chin with his gloved hand, the coarse burlap material rough against her tender skin. “Listen up, sweetheart. I stick my neck out for
nobody
. If I offered to help you, it was only because I could do it without risking my own neck. Trust me, I’m no hero.”

But as she watched him walk away and rubbed the sensitive, tingling skin on her arm where he’d gripped her, pulling her back from certain death, she realized that’s
exactly
what he was.

The cave was much less impressive than the rest of the sights in the valley. Low, misshapen, and weed-choked, it looked more like a hole for an economy-size gopher than the entrance to an underground world. Donovan swung down his heavy pack with a
decisive thump, then rubbed his jaw, studying the landscape for signs of seismic instability. It looked safe and stable, but looks could be deceiving. God knew he’d had enough lessons in that truth recently—

He heard a small grunt of effort behind him. Turning, he saw Noel trying to shrug off her pack as he’d done a few minutes before, and failing miserably. In two steps he was behind her, lifting the pack from her contorted shoulders.

“I can manage,” she protested.

“You can manage to break your back,” he stated, though not as harshly as he’d have liked. It was damn hard to be angry with a woman who was doing her best to imitate a pretzel. A vulnerable, adorable, incredibly desirable pretzel.

“Stop arguing and start setting up your monitors,” he ordered. “You’ve already cost us enough time.”

He turned away, trying hard to ignore the wince of pain in her proud, trusting eyes. But that’s what you’ve got to do, he reminded himself. You’ve got to keep her at a distance. You can’t let her know how you felt when you saved her and held her in your arms, as if this half-life you’ve been living since you lost Gina had suddenly become whole.…

“You’re an idiot, Donovan,” he muttered as he knelt down beside his pack and began taking out the equipment. “A first-class, gold-plated, prizewinning idiot.”

“Why should one seek prize for stupidity?” inquired an electronic voice on his right.

Sam glanced down at the walkie-talkie he’d set on
the ground beside his pack. “Don’t start with me, E. I’m not in the mood.”

“Was not aware I was starting … Ah, statement is ironical,” the computer said, apparently catching on. “Understand entirely. You are still unsettled over almost losing the woman you love.”

Sam stared at the innocent-looking box as if it had suddenly grown fangs. He looked quickly over at Noel, but her back was to him and she was too far away to hear. Still, he bent down close to Einstein’s unit as he answered. “Now get this, you overgrown calculator. I am not in love with Dr. Revere. I don’t even like her. I’m her hired guide, that’s all.”

“I am not an overgrown calculator,” E corrected. “And you are not just her guide. You are also her husband.”

“How did you … never mind,” he moaned, shaking his head. He’d spent the three days since they’d arrived trying to forget the fact that he was “technically” her husband while she was on this island. Three days, and three very long, restless, hot-blooded, sweat-soaked nights.