The Treasure (9 page)

He hoped to hell that Pandora had found
Paraíso
because he needed a stroke of luck. Only a fool would believe its mysterious stories of buried treasures, but a buried treasure worth a mint would solve a lot of his problems right about now. He hated to do it, but if they found riches, he was going to take it, his growing attraction to her aside. Only a blind man would miss the way she stared at his mouth or the way her blouse pulled tight over her perfect breasts. For all her ridiculously inappropriate clothing, she was one sexy woman. Stubborn, willful, tenacious. Yeah, she was more like Pandora than she thought.

If he was smart, he would walk away right now. Cut his losses, disappear like Jeremy had, and put South America in his rear view. Go to the tropics. Fiji, maybe. Where the waters matched Amelia’s eyes.

Christ.

Her eyes were green. Just green, damn it. And she was just another woman chasing a pipe dream. Yet he couldn’t shake the feeling that history was repeating itself.

Brody raked a hand through his hair. Pipe dream or not, he had a stake in finding
Paraíso
. Thanks to his friend, he was now doing the one thing he swore he’d never do again.

He only hoped Amelia forgave him when he paid off his debts with the treasure.

• • •

Amelia woke up to find her face pressed against Brody’s chest. Somehow she had climbed half onto his lap while she slept. The fact he hadn’t pushed her away made her pulse dance. His arm was around her waist, warm and strong, his hand resting on her hip. Wind howled outside the plane. Rain beat down hard, but it was warm and steamy inside the small space. Or maybe it was the heat radiating off Brody.

Not wanting to move from her comfortable position, she risked a glance upward to see Brody’s eyes closed, his head tipped back against the wall of the plane. She took the opportunity to stare at him, wanting to rub her hand along the stubble on his jaw set at a stubborn angle even in sleep.

“Go back to sleep.”

Embarrassed at being caught practically sitting on his lap, she went to move away, but his arm tightened.

“Sleep,” he ordered.

“But shouldn’t we get moving?”

“Still storming outside.”

The arm around her waist held her in place, not allowing her to move away. She was perfectly content to stay right where she was, so she placed her head back down on his chest. “You don’t think we’ll wash away, do you?”

“No.”

His voice rumbled through his chest, making her pulse speed up. He sounded certain so she relaxed against him. The steady rise and fall of his chest lulled her back to sleep. She could stay like this forever.

“Brody?” she murmured a few minutes later. “Why are you letting me cuddle with you?”

“I don’t cuddle,” he said gruffly, making her smile, because that was exactly what they were doing.

“It’s just … you said I wasn’t your type.”

“You’re not.”

“But — ”

“Quiet.”

With a sigh, Amelia let it drop. He wasn’t going to answer her anyway. What would her sisters think if they could see her now? In the middle of the jungle, in a crashed plane during a thunderstorm, sitting on the lap of a handsome stranger with questionable manners. Not to mention the bad men chasing them trying to steal her map.

Instead of being scared, Amelia smiled. She was doing it. Having a real adventure. The past couple days had been dangerous and she lived through it without any serious injuries.

Elation filled her. Maybe someday she would tell her sisters everything that happened here, but not anytime soon. They wouldn’t be able to hear it. To them, she was still that clumsy, foolish girl who did stupid stunts in order to be like her aunt. A silly girl who thought she would pretend she was swimming with sharks in the Atlantic and almost drowned in the lake behind her parent’s house. Or thought she would parachute from the tallest tree using a homemade parachute of sheets and rope because Aunt Pandora jumped from planes all the time. That one landed her in the hospital with a broken leg.

Caroline and Brit would never understand this.

They certainly wouldn’t understand Brody or her attraction to the gruff rough-and-tumble man. His military background would gain him points, but not his attitude. He didn’t handle her with kid gloves like her sisters did.

Why was she thinking about this? Her sisters were never going to meet Brody. He was part of her adventure. Once it was over she would go home and he would go back to his business.

An unexpected wave of sadness washed through her. Why did the thought of leaving Brody make her sad? He was everything she didn’t want in a man. He lived in the jungle and flew planes for a living. She was a pastry chef at her sister’s bed and breakfast. Their worlds didn’t mesh, in any way. She doubted there was a big demand for pastry chefs in the middle of jungle.

Confused, she sighed and pushed her thoughts away. Spending too much time thinking about the end would defeat the purpose of her trip. Here and now, that was Aunt Pandora’s motto. It would be hers too. And since Brody was part of that here and now she wanted to know everything about him.

“Stop fidgeting.”

Amelia lifted her head to look at him. He cracked an eye open and let out a long-suffering sigh.

“What is it now?”

“Do you think we’ll find it?” she asked quietly.

“If it’s there, we’ll find it.”

“If? You still don’t believe
Paraíso
exists?”

“No.”

“But you’re helping me anyway.”

“You need protection. I’m your protection.”

Amelia shuddered and pressed closer, his arms tightening around her. Thinking about the men after her didn’t ease her worries any. In her heart, she knew Aunt Pandora hadn’t sent her on a wild goose chase. She wouldn’t do that.
Paraíso
existed. Amelia was certain of it.

“You’re a good man, Brody Kern,” she said on a yawn. “Why are you down here? In the jungle, I mean? Don’t you have family somewhere?”

He went rigid. The change was subtle, but she was pressed so close that she felt his muscles tense. A silent indication that she crossed the line into personal and he wasn’t happy about it, just as she suspected.

When he answered, she was surprised, but hid it as best as she could so she didn’t push him away.

“No, no family,” he said, in a low, gruff voice.

Amelia resisted lifting her head to look at him. “None?”

“None.”

“What happened to them?”

Brody shrugged. “Don’t know. I was left on the doorstep of an orphanage when I was six weeks old.”

A gasp escaped before she could stop it. “How horrible. Oh, Brody.” Unable to stop, she wrapped her other arm around him, holding him now. “Did you ever look for them?”

“No reason to. They didn’t want me.”

He tried to put some space between them but Amelia held tight, unwilling to let him go. How awful to grow up an orphan with no family to love him. She couldn’t imagine what that would be like. Her sisters might smother her but she would never want to be without them. A life without them — or her parents — or Aunt Pandora — was incomprehensible.

No wonder he had no family photos or memories hanging on his walls. He had no family to put there. Not like her little house back in Michigan that was filled with family photos and mementos from her childhood.

Hearing him say his parents didn’t want him broke her heart. How could a mother give up her child?

“Maybe they had no choice,” she said, wanting to ease his pain. “Maybe — ”

“Amelia. Let it go. It’s the past. It doesn’t matter.”

“It does matter.” Adamant, she sat up and clutched his face with her hands, a palm resting on each cheek. “It does matter,” she said again, softly. “Your past is who you are, can’t you see that?”

He tried to pull away, but had nowhere to go in the small space. “Miss Sawyer, you’ve spent the last two days complaining about my treatment of you.”

Amelia shook her head. “No, you can’t call me that now. You aren’t distancing yourself just because you don’t want to talk about your past.”

“I don’t have a past. I was a foster kid. Went into the military at eighteen. Retired from the military. Came down here and started a charter business. End of story.”

Amelia let go of his face and sat back to look at him. “Don’t you want to know?” she asked quietly, wondering how he could be so blasé over the fact he never knew his parents or had a place to call home.

Brody rubbed his forehead as if he had a headache. “No, I don’t. Drop it.”

He wasn’t seeing reason, the stubborn man. How could he sum up his life so abruptly? Why did she want to know so badly? Brody made it clear he wasn’t interested in her. But that didn’t stop her heart from aching for him.

“Will it stop raining soon?” she asked and let the subject drop before he pulled away physically as well as emotionally.

“Maybe.”

“We’ll walk from here, right?”

“Yes.”

“How long do you think it will take us to get there?”

“Day and a half without trouble.”

“And we’re expecting trouble,” she sighed.

This time Brody sighed. “I’ll handle the trouble. You worry about getting sleep so we can move out when the rain stops.”

“Right. My bodyguard,” she murmured and settled against him once again. He didn’t protest or push her away so she wrapped an arm around him, laid her head on his shoulder and closed her eyes.

Once Amelia fell asleep, Brody gently lifted her off his lap and on to the floor. She shifted, sighed, but didn’t wake up. Grateful, he rubbed a hand over his face. When she started shivering in her sleep, he’d relented and moved her beside him for warmth. She climbed on his lap and wrapped herself around him like a blanket and he let her stay there. Now, her questions had him thinking about things he didn’t want to think about. Things he’d put behind him a long time ago.

His parents didn’t want him. Why would he seek them out? He had considered them dead his entire life and Amelia Sawyer was not going to make him second-guess that. He had enough problems right now. Adding his past into it would only make things harder. The situation was complicated enough.

Amelia thought he was a good man. She trusted him. And he was going to betray her if they found
Paraíso
.

The thought settled uneasily in his gut. He needed a buried treasure to bail him out of a dangerous situation, but part of him hoped it didn’t exist so he wouldn’t have to hurt the pretty redhead sleeping soundly next to him. She risked her life for him when she pulled him out of the plane. She was going after her dream with the same determination he’d seen in Pandora. Amelia thought she was a coward, but her actions showed him differently. Not everyone could do what she did.

Studying the delicate lines of her profile, Brody groaned.

Like it or not, it looked like she just might be his type after all.

A complication he didn’t need.

• • •

“Give me your hand.”

Amelia poked her head out of the plane and the earthly scent of wet rainforest hit her full on. Brody stood in a puddle of murky water a foot away, hand outstretched. His pack was slung over his back, his shirt already damp from the humidity.

Sunshine filtered through the heavy canopy above, driving up the early morning temperature to an uncomfortable level. It had rained through the night. When Amelia woke this morning, she was lying on the floor. Alone. She didn’t let herself think about what that meant.

Thick air entered her lungs. Putting her hand in Brody’s, she let him help her out of the plane. Her boots splashed in water, though she tried to jump over the puddle.

“Don’t bother,” Brody said. “The entire jungle floor is saturated.”

She hitched her bags higher on her shoulder and let go of his hand so she could pull out her map. Turning it right side up, she studied it, searching for their location. After a few moments Brody spoke.

“Need help?”

“No, I just need my compass.” She wasn’t about to ask him for help. He’d never let her live it down if she couldn’t read the map. Besides, she wanted to do this on her own.

She dug in her bag and found her compass, then turned until she faced north. Then she looked at the map again. Now what? So she knew which direction was north. It didn’t help her pinpoint her location on the map. What she needed was a GPS. But getting a signal out here would be impossible.

“We’re here,” Brody said, pointing a finger on the map.

“I was getting there,” she muttered, studying the area he marked with his finger. They were a little off course and needed to go one inch east. Oh, who was she fooling? She had no idea how to go an inch east so they could find the next landmark, which was the river. Next to it was what looked to be a rock shaped like a turtle.

Looking around, all she saw were trees and bush. Thick and rich and green and impossible to get through. Without her compass, it would be difficult to know what direction they were going.

“We go that way.” She pointed her compass east.

Brody wrapped his hand around her wrist and moved her hand northeast. “That way,” he corrected.

Bristling, Amelia pulled her arm away. “The river is east,” she argued. “And the turtle rock is next to the river. That’s where we have to go.”

Brody studied her with his usual aloof, stoic expression. “If you look at the map more closely, Miss Sawyer, you’ll see the clearest route is northeast. The jungle is denser due east.”

Amelia frowned down at the map. How did he know that? Aunt Pan’s map was elegantly drawn, but not very detailed. It showed the path they should take, the landmarks, vague scenery and where the treasure was buried. Not much more. How could he tell by the map that the jungle was denser here and not there?

Looking up at him, she said, “You can’t really tell that by the map, can you?”

The corner of his mouth tilted in what she supposed was a smile. Brief and devastating. If Brody Kern ever really smiled, she would probably melt into a puddle of goo.

“No, I can’t,”
he said. “But I know this jungle, and northeast is the way to go.”