Into the Wild (14 page)

She was walking down the aisle. He was standing at the altar. He looked nervous. Her own stomach fluttered.

Butterflies.

She was nervous, too. A lifetime of stability. A lifetime with David. She should be giddy with excitement. Brimming with love. Burning with lust. Instead she felt queasy. Fretful.

More butterflies.

She could hear their wings beating. No, that was her heart. Racing. Zooming.

Buzzing.

Ears buzzing. Something buzzing. Something creeping. Crawling.

Bugs!

River's eyes flew open. Her sluggish mind fought through the panicked daze. She'd been sleeping. Dreaming. Where was she?

Ecuador.

Jungle.

Lodge.

Heart thudding, she clutched the cool sheet to her chest. She was locked in her bungalow. Tucked into bed.

Safe.

So, why did she feel at risk?

She breathed deep as her eyes adjusted to the moonlit room.

She listened to the foreign sounds coming from outside. Monkeys? Birds? In the branches? On her roof? Closer still, a faint buzz. What—

Bugs!

Sweating buckets, River squinted up at the mosquito netting draped over her bed. It was moving. Oh, no. Oh, hell. Ninety percent of the animal species in the Amazon were insects. Not all of them flew, but by God they crawled. Spiders, beetles, ants…

That couldn't be right. What about the insect screens over the windows?

Mosquitoes.

She couldn't see them, but she sensed them.

And something else. Someone else.

The floor creaked.

Spenser?

Then she smelled the stink. A familiar stink. Road-bandit stink.

Oh. God.

She tried to scream, but nothing came out. What did he want?

The map.

Don't give it up! Don't give in!

Chest tight, River's right hand balled beneath the covers. Her knuckles brushed against something cool and hard.

Her camera.

Before drifting off, she'd scrolled through the pictures just as someone would skim the pages of a book.

She grasped the Nikon, aimed at the stink…and shot.

Flash!

A bright explosion of light in a mostly dark room.

The intruder flinched and faltered. He thudded to the floor, yelped in pain, then
coughed
. Bandit number two!

River reached for the bedside lamp, meaning to throw it at him, got tangled in the netting.

Bugs!

The netting broke from the ceiling and covered her like a bug-infested shroud.

Shrieeeeeeek!

She squeezed her eyes shut, frightened and repulsed by the countless insects. Would they sting? Bite?

She felt hands, human hands.
The intruder.
She fought for all she was worth. “Get off. Get.
Off!
”

“Shit!” he hissed when her fist connected with his face. “Calm down, angel.”

Spenser? She opened her eyes. He'd turned on the lights. Suddenly she was eye to antenna with a big-as a-Buick beetle! “Bugs! Get them off! Get them—”

“Stop fighting me, dammit. You're making it worse.”

River forced herself to be still, even though her heart galloped and her skin crawled. Spenser freed her and immediately flung the bug-laden netting outside and
over the terrace. “How did those things get in here?” he asked as he moved back inside.

Another man burst through the door.
Duke.
“What the hell?”

“River got tangled in her mosquito netting,” Spenser said. “Goddamned thing was covered with beetles and moths.”

Butterflies.

He stooped to help her to her feet. She saw the concern in his eyes, saw the annoyance on Duke's face.

She'd freaked out. Over bugs. But it wasn't just the bugs.

“No wonder,” Duke said as he strode to one of the windows. “Where's the screen?”

“He must've taken it off,” River said, cursing the nervous hitch in her voice. “Guess that's how he got in…and out.”

“Who?” both men asked.

“The bandit. I woke up and he was…here.”

“Someone was in this room?” Spenser grasped her shoulders. “Did he touch you? Hurt you?”

She shook her head. “I shot him. With my camera,” she clarified. “Blinded him. Then I screamed. I guess I scared him off. I'm not sure. It happened so fast and I was…disoriented.”

“Disoriented from a nightmare, maybe?” Duke asked. “This is an exclusive resort, River. The property's secure—”

“But not a fortress, right?” She glared at the man
doubting her word. “I'm telling you someone was in here!”

Spenser threw his friend a look.

Duke cursed. “Fine. Stay with River. I'll check outside.”

“Wait!” she called. “What if he has a gun? What if—”

“Duke can handle himself,” Spenser said as the man disappeared into the night.

“The way Mel handled himself? The way Professor Bovedine—” She broke off, fought tears.

“Who's Professor Bovedine?”

Desperate to gather her wits, River pushed away from Spenser and bolted for the bathroom. She craved a hot shower, but settled for the sink. She soaped up a washcloth and scrubbed her face, hands and arms. She could still feel the netting, those bugs. Still worried that the coughing bandit was contagious. Common cold? Bronchitis? Tuberculosis?

Scrub. Scrub.

She glanced up and saw Spenser standing on the threshold, filling the doorway with his big body. His chest was heaving. His eyes were bloodshot. He smelled of liquor. She remembered then. “Are you drunk?”

“I was. Apparently a rush of adrenaline is as sobering as a cold shower.”

“I'm sorry I scared you. I'm sorry I freaked. Between the bandit and the bugs—”

“You mean the road bandit from this morning?”

“Yes.”

“That's impossible, River. How would he know you were here unless he somehow followed us? And to what purpose? Aside from your camera and the clothes on your back, he stole everything—”

“Not everything.”

“What—”

“No one's out there,” Duke called. “Except for a couple of concerned guests and employees. Roused a lot of people with that scream.”

Blushing, River followed Spenser back into the bedroom.

“Found the screen, though,” Duke said as he moved to the open window. “Damn monkeys.”

“You think a monkey pulled off that screen?” Spenser asked.

“Happened before. Once. Some are more curious than others. More bold.”

River shook her head. “It was a man.”

“Twelve-foot drop outside this window, sweetheart.”

“He could've climbed up the side of the bungalow,” River said. “Or swung over from a tree branch.”

“Like a monkey?” Duke asked as he refitted the screen.

She bristled. “He stank.”

“Monkeys stink.”

“Do monkeys slather themselves with some sort of strong-smelling herbal salve?”

“I caught a whiff of that,” Spenser said to River. “Thought maybe you were sore from zip-lining.”

“I'm hunky-dory,” River snapped. “More than I can say for the bandit. He has an awful cough. An
unmistakable
cough,” she said, driving home the point that her intruder had indeed been the road bandit from this afternoon.

Duke raised a skeptical brow.

River grabbed her Nikon from the bed. “I took a picture.” She scrolled back one frame. “Damn.” The shot was distorted. A wash of light. An indistinguishable shadow. It proved nothing.

Spenser looked over her shoulder. “You said you were disoriented. Maybe…”

“I could swear.” River sank onto the edge of the mattress. Had she dreamed it? Imagined it?

“I'll walk around the grounds,” Duke said. “Put the staff on alert as a precaution.” He eyed River and Spenser. “Want me to send over some coffee? Cola?”

Maybe he thought she was still high on coca tea. Or maybe he smelled the liquor on Spenser. Maybe they'd been drinking
together.
Had she been the topic of conversation? Had Spenser mentioned her “quirks”? The run-in with the road bandits? How she'd gotten lost? Combined with the coca tea/zip-line incident and now
this,
Duke no doubt thought she was a nut.

“We're fine. Thanks, Duke.” Spenser walked the man out, then locked the door. He turned and regarded River with an enigmatic look. “I'm staying.”

“I'm glad.”

“All night.”

After that scare, he expected her to argue? “Good.”

“I'm in no mood to sleep on the floor or in a chair.”

“It's a queen-size bed,” River said. “We're adults.” They could keep their hands to themselves. They could honor that no-kissing pact. Right?

She sat. He stood. They stared.

Her mind rewound and replayed the past few days. Spenser had saved her from one crisis or another, no less than five times. “I know what you're thinking.”

“I doubt it.”

“You're thinking I'm not cut out for a trek into the Llanganatis. You think I'll wimp out.”

“I think you'll tough it out.”

She blinked. “You do?”

Spenser crossed his arms and leaned back against the door. He looked a little drunk, a lot frustrated and unbelievably gorgeous. She tried to imagine David, here, now. Tried shifting her lustful thoughts and desires to the man she supposedly loved.

She couldn't.

“I have it on good authority that your dad kept disappearing up Cerro Hermoso,” Spenser said. “That's a fifteen-thousand-foot volcano in the Llanganatis, the rumored burial grounds of that legendary treasure we talked about. We'll have to hike for two or three days to get there. You'll have to endure altitude sickness, rain, sleet, earthquakes and fog so thick you won't know up from down, let alone left from right. Parts of the cloud forest are so dense and gnarled, we'll need a machete to cut through. There are bugs. Lots of bugs. At fourteen thousand feet we'll hit high Andean plateau country.
The
páramo
is famous for its quaking bogs.” He lifted a brow. “Marsh and mud. Andean quicksand. Still want me to take you?”

In more ways than one.

Good Lord. She'd just had a hair-raising fright and all she could think about was jumping Spenser's bones. She didn't trust herself to speak. Babbling wouldn't do. She nodded.

“Just as I thought.” He pushed off the door and rubbed the back of his neck. “You're riddled with phobias, yet you're willing to face your fears to find a man you don't even like!”

River tensed. David lurked in the back of her brain, lamenting her quirks. “I'm sorry if that's annoying.”

“It's not annoying, dammit. It's impressive. Christ.”

His warped compliment warmed River more than the mushiest Hallmark card on the planet. She didn't protest when Spenser shot forward and pulled her into his arms. Didn't struggle when he kissed her—hard, deep and much too brief.

He backed away, jammed a hand through his hair. “Shit.”

“The agreement,” she rasped, her mind whirling from the taste of him, the feel of him. She wanted to take back that no-kissing pledge. She wanted another kiss, a longer kiss. She wanted…

“I know. I slipped. I'm not perfect, but I'm honorable.” He blew out a breath. “Won't happen again.”

The disappointment was crushing. In the split second that River mentally scrambled, wondering how
to address her sudden and crushing need for intimacy, Spenser pulled farther away.

“We'll leave at dawn,” he said, double-checking the door and windows. “It's late and today was relentless. We should turn in.”

She wanted nothing more than to crawl into bed with this man, to rip off his clothes, to ravage his mouth, to… “Spenser—”

“Forget what I said before. I'll take the floor.”

She grappled for a way to ease the tension, a safe topic that would keep him from shutting down. The map. She needed to show him the map. The map hidden in her pillowcase along with the letter and amulet. They could lie in bed and discuss a plan. “I need to tell you what I remember of Henry's journal.”

“And I need to hear it. But with a clear head. I need to sleep off this fucking buzz. Right now all I can think about is stripping you naked and kissing every inch of your sweet body.”

River's mouth fell open.

“I know. You're in love with David.” He untied and toed off his hiking boots. “I'm going to take a long shower. Go to bed, angel, and don't worry. Remember.” He quirked a self-deprecating smile. “Old-fashioned sensibilities.”

She stood there dumbstruck, lust-struck. She glanced at the bed, thought about joining him on the floor. How was she going to control her erotic urges?

“Don't worry about the lack of netting,” he said,
misinterpreting her anxiety. “You've been taking primaquine tablets, right?”

“Yes, but, they're in the hands of the bandits now. I took one this morning as scheduled, but tomorrow…” Why had he reminded her?

He moved to the four boxes stacked by the door. Someone had brought them up earlier, but she figured they were Spenser's personal hiking supplies. She was surprised when he rooted through and handed her a month's supply of antimalarial medicine and… “You bought me Skin So Soft Bug Guard?”

“Also a few bottles of the local version of Purell and some other supplies—clothes, toiletries.”

Tears burned her eyes. Instead of making fun of her obsessions, he'd supplied her with the means to ease them. Earlier today he'd loaned her his GPS. “That was really thoughtful, Spenser. Thank you.”

“You're welcome.” He brushed her curls from her face, focused on her mouth, then turned abruptly and disappeared into the bathroom.