The Fall of Maggie Brown (11 page)

It was growing dark. The rain was still falling, a steady drizzle that kept Maggie’s clothes drenched and her shoes squelching in the mud. She wondered what would happen if she simply sat down and refused to take another step.

Except that she knew what would happen. Ben would give her one last mocking look and abandon her, and it wouldn’t matter at all that she’d asked him to bring her up here, paid him to do it.

And so she kept on, counting the steps as she went, so blindly wretched that she could barely speak. It didn’t matter—there wasn’t much to say. Sooner or later she’d simply drop in her tracks and that would be the end of it. No one would ever find her body, and she’d become a family mystery. Stella’s grandchildren would always wonder what happened to their great-aunt Maggie, who disappeared in the mountains of San Pablo looking for…

What the hell was she looking for? Did she even care anymore? Could she walk one more step?

A tree branch slapped her in the face, and she had her answer. She went down, and this time she stayed down, sitting in the middle of the rocky path, trying to catch her breath.

She’d underestimated him. As soon as he realized she’d fallen behind he came back, looming over her in the gathering dusk. “We’re almost there, Maggie,” he said gruffly.

“Almost where?” Or at least that was what she’d tried to say. Her breath was wheezing, her words barely discernible.

“The place where we’re stopping for the night.”

She shook her head. “I’m…stopping here…” she gasped.

She wasn’t expecting sympathy, or patience, which was a good thing because those two commodities were clearly in very short supply. She also wasn’t expecting him to haul her straight up, into his arms.

“Put me down!” she said, struggling.

“If you don’t hold still I’ll send you after my long-lost Jeep,” he said grimly. An empty threat—they were nowhere near the cliffs anymore. “There’s a ruined farmhouse somewhere up ahead where we can find shelter. It’s too far to Segundo tonight, and the accommodations wouldn’t be much better. I’m tired and I’m hungry and I’m in one hell of a bad mood, so don’t push me. Lie still and be quiet.”

He’d started back up the steep pathway, seemingly unaffected by her solid one hundred and twenty three pounds in his arms. He was still carrying the duffel bag, and she knew that was a fairly hefty proposition as well. He didn’t seem the slightest bit fazed by it. He was much stronger than she realized, much stronger than his lean, sinewy body suggested. She opened her mouth to voice one more protest, then shut it instead. What was that saying? Wisdom was the better part of valor?

Being carried was a lot less comfortable than it looked in the movies, she thought dismally. When Richard Gere swooped someone up in his arms it looked divinely romantic. When Ben Frazer swooped her up in his arms to carry her up a steep, rocky pathway it was jarring and uncomfortable, his grip on her was as impersonal as a baggage handler’s, and each step made her teeth rattle.

She didn’t say a word.

It was full dark by the time he set her down, and she was past noticing anything more than the basics. They were in some kind of shelter, and the rain had stopped. She curled up where he placed her, huddled and miserable, beyond words. She watched him as he built a fire in a pit in the center of the room, content to simply doze, when he finally spoke to her.

“Do you want to change first or eat?”

She roused herself. “Change into what? All my clothes went over the cliff with the Jeep.”

“Mine didn’t. You’re caked with mud, sugar. There’s a stream out back where you can wash off—it’s not that cold. You’ll feel better if you do.”

“I doubt it.”

“I can wash you myself.”

She glared at him. It was probably an empty threat—he had to be almost as exhausted as she was, though he still appeared to be brimming with energy. It took all her effort to rise to her feet, but he wisely made no attempt to help her. “All right. Where’s the stream?”

“Out back. I’ll take care of dinner while you’re gone.”

“How domestic,” she said with a trace of her usual fire, taking the pile of clothes he handed her.

The stream was easy enough to find—she just followed the sound of gurgling water. There was even a shallow pool, and it wasn’t as icy as she’d feared.

They’d stopped at the ruins of an old farmhouse. Ben had chosen the one room that was reasonably intact, although most of the roof was gone. He’d built the fire in the middle of the floor, the smoke going straight out into the starry night. The rain clouds had finally cleared, and the night was still and beautiful. On any other occasion Maggie would have been awestruck by the sheer physical beauty of it. Right now all she could worry about was getting clean and dry.

The pool was marginally warmer than the running stream, and as quickly as she could she stripped off her muddy, rain-soaked clothes and jumped in. The water came to her thighs, and she sank down, shivering, rubbing the dirt away from her skin briskly. She even dunked her head under the water to wash away the stray blood from her forehead. The cut above her eye stung, but she was past caring.

No towel, of course. No underwear, either, though she could have hardly expected that Ben would come equipped with panties and a bra. Her own were too wet and muddy to even consider wearing, so she simply yanked on the baggy jeans, then grabbed the soft khaki shirt.

One button. One damned button and no bra underneath. He must have another T-shirt somewhere, but he hadn’t bothered to give it to her, the pig. She had no choice but to tie the long tails of the shirt together and hope the one button would preserve what tiny amount of modesty she had left.

He was busy by the fire when she came back, and he didn’t even bother looking up at her as she took a seat as far away from him as she could, on the other side of the blissfully blazing pit. Heat was wafting out of it, reaching into her icy bones, and her icy mood was beginning to melt as well.

She made one last effort to hold onto it. “Don’t you have any shirts with buttons on them?”

He looked up, across the flames, and his innocent smile looked saturnine. “Not for you, sugar.”

“Pig,” she said without any real antipathy.

“You make a real nice swashbuckler yourself, Maggie,” he drawled. “Or a pirate wench. How’s your head feel?”

“Could be worse.”

He came around the fire to her, so quickly she didn’t have time to scamper out of the way. He caught her chin in his hand, pushing her wet hair away from her forehead with an impersonal touch. “It doesn’t look too bad. Might leave a scar though. If you want I could try to stitch it.”

She shuddered, and it had nothing to do with his hard, warm hand holding her chin, his cool, dark eyes staring down at her. “I thought you told me you couldn’t sew.”

“I save my tailoring talents for field dressings.”

“I’ll pass, thank you. Every good swashbuckler needs a scar or two.”

An odd expression flitted across his face. In another man she might have called it tenderness, but Ben Frazer didn’t have a tender bone in his body. He was still cupping her chin, and a strange silence had fallen between them, broken only by the sound of the crackling fire. He bent closer, and she had the craziest notion that he was going to kiss her, that he was going to put his firm sexy mouth against hers for no other reason than that he wanted to. And she wanted him to. Badly.

She panicked. She slid away from him, backward until she came up against the old stone wall of the room. “What’s for dinner?” she asked breathlessly.

His eyes were opaque, giving nothing away, and she wondered if she’d imagined that strange, erotically charged moment. She must have.

“Freeze-dried beef Stroganoff,” he said mildly. “Since you rejected the notion of chili. Washed down by whiskey.”

“I don’t think so.”

“The whiskey’s optional, though you’ve still got a chill,” he observed with clinical detachment. “The Stroganoff is an order. If you want to keep going you’ll need to get a decent night’s sleep and some food in your belly. Otherwise you’ll probably collapse on the path again and this time I won’t haul your ass anywhere.”

“Charming,” she said sweetly. She must have imagined that moment. “I’ll eat.”

“You’ll sleep better with a couple of shots of whiskey as well.”

“I’d sleep better in a nice warm hotel room on a real mattress.”

“Wouldn’t we both? Just be grateful I grabbed my duffel. We have two blankets between us. You can wrap yourself in one and hope for the best. Or we can team up and share them.”

She didn’t even dignify that with a response. The whiskey was sounding better and better. The idea of curling up on the hard ground with nothing but a thin blanket was about as appetizing as the tin plate of hot mush he handed her, but she didn’t have much choice in the matter. Besides, it tasted surprisingly good. Maybe she’d sleep better than she expected. She was certainly tired enough.

The room was so small he could lean against the far wall and still be near enough to enjoy the heat of the fire. A little too close to her, but she was getting used to that. He’d eaten his dinner with methodical concentration, like someone taking medicine, and then he’d washed it down with some of the contents of a small, battered flask.

“You sure you don’t want any?” He held it up in offering.

“I’m sure.” She was leaning against the opposite wall. A little too far away from the fire for ultimate comfort, but a little too close to Frazer for her peace of mind. He’d managed to wash up as well, and in the flickering firelight he looked both beautiful and dangerous. Why in heaven’s name had she ever gone off with him? She knew he was trouble the moment she laid eyes on him.

She must have been out of her mind.

* * *

F
RAZER KNEW SHE’D BE
trouble the moment he laid eyes on her. He had to have been out of his mind to continue with this little expedition.

If he’d thought clearly he could have dumped her anywhere along the way. Left her with Elena while he took off to warn The Professor.

Not that she would have been safe. Salazar had already known of her existence, and it had only been his own dubious protection that had kept her safe. If he abandoned her she would have been considered fair game.

Not that there was any reason he should feel responsible. She had chosen to come to San Pablo. She’d walked right into the lion’s den with a singular disregard of the current political situation, and it would serve her right if she met with disaster.

He had too damned much conscience, that was his problem. He couldn’t abandon a woman in those circumstances, not any woman. It didn’t matter whether she was an American or not, or Stella’s sister. It didn’t matter that she brought out a crazy, protective, irritated streak in him that most people never came close to. He’d do the same for anyone.

So now that they were up here, less than a mile from the hidden valley where The Professor and his followers had set up headquarters, how the hell was he going to ditch her long enough to get a warning to them?

He could get her drunk, though she didn’t seem terribly interested. He could try to sneak out while she was asleep, and if he didn’t get back before she woke up he’d give her some embarrassing biological excuse that she couldn’t very well question.

Or he could simplify matters, tie and gag her and simply go. It would keep her safe and out of the way, and while she’d be mad as hell when he came back, this whole wild-goose chase would be close to being finished. The elections would be over. Morales would be the newly elected democratic president, the
Generalissimo
would have no choice but to get the hell out of the country, and there’d no longer be any need to keep Maggie from finding out just what happened to her sister, Stella.

The one thing he wasn’t going to do was sleep with her.

It was tempting, of course. He’d lain on the mattress last night, listening to the soft sound of her breathing, and it had taken all his considerable willpower to keep still. He could still taste her mouth, feel the heat of her skin. She was sitting there, looking half-dead, his clothes enveloping her, and if he had any excuse in the world he’d take her, here and now, and make her forget about her responsibilities and her sister and her bank and her life in Philadelphia.

How in the hell could he want someone who chose to live in Philadelphia? He was a wanderer, a free spirit, a man who’d made a new home and a new life in San Pablo, and she was a dutiful Quaker, by nature if not by religion. He belonged with someone like Stella, someone wild and free, not with an uptight little mouse of a woman who looked at him as if he were a pirate. A swashbuckler, she called him. And she was a far cry from a pirate’s wench.

But he did want her. It was that simple, that basic, and it was taking all his self-control to keep from doing anything about it.

She’d finished eating, setting the metal bowl down on the dirt floor beneath her. As she moved, the unbuttoned shirt exposed a creamy expanse of breast, and he wanted to groan. He was only making things harder on himself.

She yawned, a huge, extravagant yawn that was annoyingly appealing. “I’m tired,” she said.

“Yup. Hard work, kicking a Jeep over a cliff and being carried up a mountainside,” he drawled, looking for trouble.

But she was too weary to deliver. “I’ll replace the Jeep, of course. When we get back to Las Palmas I’ll get you the money…”

“Don’t worry about it. It wasn’t my Jeep.”

That was enough to startle her. “Whose was it?”

“No one you’ve met,” he said, thinking of The Professor’s reaction when he found out the Jeep was gone.
No one I want you to meet if I can help it.

“How are we going to get back to Las Palmas?”

“Aren’t you worried about finding your sister?”

“Can we find her?” Maggie asked. “I’m beginning to think it’s a lost cause.”

“I could have told you that days ago,” he drawled. “She’s a grown-up, you’re a grown-up. Time to go your separate ways.”

“But she’s feckless, wild and crazy…”

“And you’re responsible, sane and boring,” he said.