Overnight Sensation (2 page)

When the bus finally vanished into the driving rain and surrounding forest, Ivy stopped, her shoulders sagging in defeat. Great. Her larger suitcase had contained the majority of her clothing and cosmetics. The smaller suitcase, now lying open to the elements like a split melon, held mostly her underclothes, nightwear and three swimsuits.

Peering through the torrent, she saw she’d been deposited at the beginning of a narrow road that was little more than a rutted path through the dense undergrowth. A low stone wall curving alongside it was the only other sign of civilization. The bus driver had said this was Pancho Viejo, but there wasn’t so much as a shanty in sight. How was she supposed to get to the hacienda? The passengers who had disembarked before her had seemingly melted into the surrounding vegetation, leaving Ivy completely alone. A hundred different thoughts raced through her mind, each one more disturbing than the last. Impossible as it seemed, the bus had left her in the middle of nowhere. Pushing down her rising panic, Ivy turned back to her suitcase—and stopped dead in her tracks.

Despite the deluge of rain, the man was hard to miss. He was bending over her damaged luggage and it looked as if he was rifling through her belongings.

With a gasp of indignation, Ivy swiped the wet hair back from her eyes and blinked rapidly as the rain pelted her face. If the man was aware of her presence, he gave no indication, and Ivy was torn between confronting him and slinking into the vegetation in hope that he wouldn’t notice her. Were there bandits in Mexico? Or, worse, guerrillas? Surely Finn MacDougall wouldn’t shoot a movie in a dangerous area. Would he?

She wished now she’d spent more time paying attention to world events and less time reading the celebrity pages of the newspaper. Her imagination surged with all kinds of lurid scenarios. She could almost see the headlines: B-List Actress Abducted By Mexican Bandits. Wealthy Director Refuses To Pay Ransom.

As she stood there, uncertain and wary, the man swiveled his head in her direction. With his eyes still on her, he flipped her small suitcase shut, then lifted it and tucked it beneath his arm, pressing it against his body to keep it closed. He rose slowly to his feet. Dark-red mud clung to the suitcase and stained his white shirt, running in rivulets down his pant legs, like blood.

Despite the fact that he stood perfectly still, the air around him thrummed with energy, like the hum of high-voltage current. Even through the downpour, she felt his eyes on her.

She shivered.

They stared at each other for a long moment, before Ivy gestured helplessly at the piece of luggage he carried.

“That’s—that’s my suitcase you have there,” she said, struggling to keep her voice from wobbling. “There’s nothing in it except lingerie. I—I doubt it will fit you.” She had a insane urge to giggle at the idea of this man donning her intimate apparel. When his expression didn’t change, she instantly sobered. “But you can keep it if you want to.”

He didn’t answer—he probably didn’t even speak English. His black hair was long and framed a jaw covered by at least two days’worth of dark growth. He reached up and pushed his fingers through his hair to slick it back from his square forehead. Rain sluiced down the chiseled planes of his face and glistened on his cheekbones and throat. His soaked white shirt was plastered against his body. Through the thin material, she could see every ridge of muscle that layered his chest and stomach.

The wet fabric emphasized the wide thrust of his shoulders and the impressive bulge of his biceps as he held her suitcase. He wore a pair of khaki cargo pants, also soaked, that hugged his trim hips and strong thighs.

He bent to where her sandal was anchored in the mud and plucked it free. Dangling it from the end of one finger, he began walking toward her.

Ivy shifted her weight. The toes of her bare foot squished in the soggy ground and her wet clothing clung to her skin, but she barely noticed. She hugged her overnight bag tighter against her chest and watched him approach. He had a slightly uneven gait, but she couldn’t tell if he was limping or he was compensating for the awkward suitcase he carried.

Despite his dark hair and tanned skin, he didn’t really look like a bandit. At least, he didn’t look like the Mexican bandits she’d seen in any Hollywood movie, unless you counted Zorro, she amended silently.

The guy was a total hunk.

As he drew closer, she realized he was bigger than she’d first thought. It wasn’t so much his height—he was probably just over six feet—but he radiated strength. He could probably bench-press her with one hand and never break a sweat.

She swallowed hard.

He stopped less than a foot away, and it was only then that she noted there wasn’t anything remotely Mexican about him. Unless, of course, you counted his eyes, which were such a light shade of brown that they reminded Ivy of Aztec gold. As she stared at him, something stirred deep in her subconscious—a recognition of sorts. She couldn’t put her finger on it, but his eyes disturbed her. And right now, they were traveling over her in a way that could only be called predatory.

Hungry.

Ivy shivered and her heart rate kicked into overdrive. Her breathing quickened and she was acutely conscious of a fight-or-flight response surfacing within her. But even more alarming was her awareness of the male appreciation in this man’s heated eyes, and that secretly she thrilled to it.

As his gaze traveled lazily over her, a small voice urged her to neither fight nor flee, but surrender willingly to whatever it was he might have in mind for her.

GARRETT STOKES KNEW he made her nervous, but, damn, he couldn’t stop staring at her. He knew he should introduce himself, assure her that Finn MacDougall had sent him to transport her to the Hacienda la Esperanza. But the ability to form words had suddenly abandoned him. Seeing Ivy James in the flesh exceeded every erotic fantasy he’d ever had about her, and he’d had his share.

She stood watching him with a mixture of apprehension and curiosity in her wide eyes. The rain plastered her dark hair to her head in a sleek cap, while her clothing had taken on the appearance of wet tissue paper. Too bad she’d shifted her overnight bag around to her front. He’d really appreciated the view before she’d hidden her body from his sight.

She was taller than he remembered, and more slender, but her eyes were what really did it to him. Looking into them was like having somebody sucker punch him in the gut.

He felt winded and a little weak.

He couldn’t recall having had this reaction to her the first time he’d seen her two years earlier. Then again, he’d been too busted up and hazy from the pain meds they’d given him to feel much of anything. But his own injuries had been insignificant compared with those of the soldier in the bed next to his at the Walter Reed Army Medical Center. Devon James had been a tank gunner deployed with the 10th Marine Regiment in Iraq when an IED—an improvised explosive device—had hit his convoy. The explosion had taken his right arm and shredded his body. He’d lain in bed with wires and tubes protruding from what remained of him.

On Devon’s second day at Walter Reed, his sister had arrived at the hospital, pale but determined, reassuring her brother that he’d be okay. Devon had been conscious, but heavily sedated. Through the gap in the curtain that had separated their beds, Garrett had observed her. Even in his own foggy state, he’d thought her beautiful. Her calm demeanor had been so impressive; he’d almost believed she could be right and that her brother would survive. But when she’d left the room to confer with one of the doctors, her brother had turned his face toward Garrett.

“I’m not going to make it, man,” he’d said, his voice little more than a whisper. “She won’t accept it, though. Always was a stubborn brat.”

“Hang in there,” Garrett had croaked.

“No, man,” Devon had said, closing his eyes. “It’s no good. I worry what’s going to happen to her when I’m gone. She’ll be alone.”

“There must be someone,” he’d responded. “Some family or friend.”

“No. It was just the two of us.”

Garrett had been silent. He couldn’t make a promise to watch over some chick he didn’t even know, no matter how gorgeous she was. Besides, she appeared more than capable of taking care of herself.

“I’ll keep an eye on her.”

Devon had looked over at him, and Garrett had flinched at the hope he’d seen flare in his gaze. “You swear? She doesn’t even have to know. Just do it for me.”

“I swear.”

Less than three hours later, while his sister had looked on in dismay, Sergeant Devon James had flat-lined. Nurses had hustled Ivy out of the room while medical personnel had tried to resuscitate her brother, but their efforts had been futile.

The weight of Garrett’s promise had settled heavily onto his shoulders, but it had also given him something to live for. He’d latched on to the promise with all the desperation of a drowning man clinging to a lifeline, determined to be there for the girl in the future.

Now here he was, two years later, standing in front of the woman he’d promised to keep an eye on, completely kicking himself that he’d never made contact with her before now. Back then, just the knowledge that she might someday need him had been enough of an incentive to push him to recover. Throughout the long months of rehabilitation, he’d followed her career. He’d kept tabs on her activities and had been prepared to step in and help her if necessary, but an opportunity had never arisen.

Until now.

He should say something to her, tell her about his connection to her, if you could even call it that. Instead, he stared speechlessly, wondering how she would react if she knew the truth. Ivy James had saved his soul, and she wasn’t even aware of it.

He still wasn’t sure how he felt about having his combat experiences made into an action-adventure movie, but there was one thing he’d always been certain of: he’d wanted Ivy James to play the part of the leading lady. It was just one way he could fulfill the promise he’d made to her brother.

When Garrett’s brother-in-law, Finn MacDougall, had initially approached him about the venture, he’d adamantly refused to give his consent. He still had nightmares about those last horrific days in Colombia when a covert narcoterrorism mission had come apart like a five-dollar shirt.

He’d allowed himself to be captured in order to provide the rest of his team a chance to escape. It had worked, but the three days he’d endured in the hands of the brutal Escudero cartel had just about sapped his belief in the goodness of mankind. It wasn’t so much what they’d done to his body that had nearly killed him; it was what they’d done to his spirit.

If anybody knew just how tough his recovery had been, it was Finn. After all, Garrett had spent nearly a year living in Finn’s home while recuperating from injuries that included multiple gunshot and stab wounds. His body still bore the scars from where he’d been tortured by the cartel. Despite having pushed himself to the max to regain his strength, he had to live with the knowledge that his abilities were now compromised to the point where he’d never again serve as part of a Green Beret “A-Team,” the twelve-man basic unit that could carry out any number of deadly covert operations.

Even after he’d managed to escape, two more days had passed before he’d found refuge, then another six days before he’d been airlifted out of the steaming Colombian jungle to an American hospital. His only satisfaction was knowing the information he’d brought back with him had been enough for the Colombian military to target the cartel and put an end to their reign of terror and drug smuggling.

Now, looking at the woman who would play Helena Vanderveer, the Dutch missionary responsible for rescuing his sorry ass, he wondered if he’d been wrong. There was a sensuality about Ivy James that was undeniable, yet at the same time she looked so goddamned…fragile. The real Helena might fool some with her small stature and sweet smile, but beneath it all she was as tough as Kevlar. Nobody could ever call her fragile.

Ivy was still staring at him. As he tried to formulate the right words to introduce himself, the rain suddenly stopped, and a warm burst of sunlight fell over the spot where they stood. Ivy tilted her face up toward the clearing skies and smiled.

Garrett felt something in his chest shift.

“Oh, wow,” she breathed. “It’s over. Just like that.”

She turned her gaze back to Garrett. Her eyes were the same rich, dark-chocolate shade he remembered, thickly fringed with spiky dark lashes. She used her fingers to wipe the moisture from her face as she again focused on the suitcase he carried.

“La maleta…la sandalia,” she said haltingly. A small frown creased her forehead as she pointed first toward the luggage, then toward the sandal he held. “Es mina.”

Her pronunciation was terrible, her grammar worse. But even if he hadn’t spoken Spanish fluently, there was no mistaking her meaning. Glancing down at the mud-covered shoe that still dangled from his hand, he swiped it against the wet fabric of his cargo pants until most of the mud was gone, then handed it to her.

“Yeah, I know they’re yours.”

“Oh! You speak English! That’s great.” Her face cleared as she accepted the shoe, and then she balanced on one leg as she slid her bare, mud-covered foot into the sandal. “For a second, I wasn’t sure if you understood me.”

Garrett smiled. “I’m American. Finn sent me to meet you.” He gestured over his shoulder at the rutted lane that intersected the main road. “I have a Jeep parked just down there. I’ll drive you out to the hacienda.”