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“Don’t apologize. That was gutsy to lead into a guy with a gun. Three guys with guns actually. Ouch!”
“Sorry.”
He turned to look at her, and the moment shifted and changed, tension sparking between them. She reached down to touch his jaw lightly, aware of each tactile sensation that should have been insignificant because they were slight. The bristles on his jaw prickled her fingertip mildly. His skin was warm. He was close, so close, his dark eyes taking her breath. She tingled, the reaction stirring a warmth in her body. She turned his face away from her and continued working on the cut.
She bandaged it and braced her hand on his shoulder as she stood up. He came to his feet easily and took the first-aid kit from her. “Thanks. Can you keep going?”
“Yes,” she answered, shouldering her bag.
He took it from her. “I can carry that bag better than you can. You should have told me about your injuries. You have a lot of bruises.”
“I figure we’re lucky to be alive.”
He nodded and swung his pack on his back along with his rifle. “Angelica, let me carry you,” he said, lifting her up in his arms.
“Do you have a little girl?” Sophie asked him from behind.
“No, I don’t. I don’t have a little boy, either.” He glanced back at Raffaela. “Let me know when you have to stop.”
She nodded and held Sophie’s hand as he led the way.
Raffaela followed him doggedly, knowing he wasn’t keeping as fast a pace as he had earlier. Even so, she hurt with each step, although her headache had eased slightly after taking the pill. After a time he looked back at her. “All right?”
“Yes,” she answered, and he nodded.
“If you can keep going for another hour, I’d like to. We need to find a stream.” He studied her a moment, and she gazed back. He looked powerful and determined which should have been reassuring, but instead was disturbing.
When he moved ahead, she followed, wondering how he had found them in this wild land and how he knew where he was going. The thick canopy of leaves hid the sun, and she had lost all sense of direction.
When necessary, Micah hacked a path for them, moving steadily west. He figured the men who had approached Raffaela had to be close to a village or a guerrilla band and he didn’t want them to come back with reinforcements. The pretty lady would be an inducement, and he had seen the covetous gleam in their eyes as they’d looked at his automatic weapons.
Raffaela Granillo hadn’t looked exactly like her picture, but Micah chalked that up to the lack of makeup, days in the jungle, and going through a plane crash. The little girls resembled their pictures, though. But what had happened to the bodyguard?
Micah glanced over his shoulder. Raffaela was following him, alternately carrying Sophie and then letting her walk. At least some of the distrust had faded from her eyes since they had stopped. He had slowed his pace, and they seemed to be keeping up. He knew he was pushing them by the grim set to Raffaela’s face. Better to exhaust them trekking through the brush than to have to fight off ten or twenty lust-filled men.
Raffaela looked slender and frail, and he had formed an unfair judgment of the Webster women from Luke, thinking he had to rescue two spoiled darlings. After trekking hours with her, he was changing his mind. She was keeping up without complaint, even though he knew she was exhausted, grieving the loss of her sister, hungry and hurting badly. He felt a growing admiration, knowing she was doing as well as many soldiers he had known.
Finally Micah halted and turned, swinging Angelica down to set her on her feet. “We’ll stop for the night. There’s a couple of hours left before dark.”
“Thank heavens!” Raffaela exclaimed, bending down to talk to the girls.
“I want my bottle!” Angelica exclaimed, bursting into tears, and Raffaela pulled the child into her arms to hug her.
“This is the last can of formula. Angelica, this will be the last bottle.”
“Mama! Carry me. Carry me,” Sophie suddenly sobbed. Both girls were wailing loudly enough to stir birds from the lower branches. They wanted Raffaela to hold them, and he felt a sense of panic at what to do to calm the children.
Raffaela sat down and pulled the girls into her arms, hugging and rocking them as she talked softly to them. Her gaze met his, and they stared at each other. Doubt rose in his mind as he remembered Luke staring out the window, sounding as if he had almost forgotten Micah’s presence as he said, “It’s Rachel who’s the real mother. She’s the one the girls run to. Unfortunately Raffaela doesn’t give a damn about children, not even her own.”
If he was with Raffaela Granillo, she was handling the girls with love and tenderness. They were becoming calm as she petted them.
“I want my bottle,” Angelica cried.
“Shh, love. One last bottle and then we’ll just have bananas and water now,” Raffaela said, meeting Micah Drake’s gaze again. He swung his pack off his back and knelt beside it. The fatigue trousers pulled tautly over his long legs as he rummaged in the pack and pulled out packets of food. He snapped covers off and held them out. “I imagine this will look good right now.”
“Angelica, Sophie, look.” Her hands shook as she reached for the packets, finding a treasure of dried beef, crackers, cheese and dried apples.
Micah put water purifier tablets into a canteen, filled it with water from the stream and passed it around. “This is a feast,” she said with relief.
While they ate, Micah watched Raffaela out of the corner of his eye. She was nervous, which could be her nature or the circumstances, but for someone who had been rescued, she wasn’t swamped with relief. And where was the bodyguard? Something wasn’t right, and he had sensed it before her strange answer to him that they would talk later. Something had happened that she didn’t want to discuss in front of her children.
“Mama, I want to go home,” Angelica cried and rubbed her eyes with her fists.
“We’re trying to go home,” Raffaela said patiently. “Mr. Drake is going to get us back.” She poured the last can of formula and handed the bottle to Angelica.
“There’s a stream nearby. We’ll go wash and then come back here to sleep,” Micah said.
“Why don’t we sleep by the stream?” Raffaela asked.
“It’ll be a watering hole at night. This is safer.”
She nodded, picked up Angelica and took Sophie’s hand to follow him. Only yards away she spotted water trickling over a narrow streambed. With relief she washed her face and washed the girls’ faces and hands. Micah Drake left them alone for nearly an hour and finally returned. His dark hair was wet, pulled sleekly back and tied behind his head. His shirt was open to the waist and Raffaela looked at the narrow expanse of muscled chest. Realizing she was staring, she glanced up to find him watching her.
She straightened and turned, stumbling when her foot caught in a tree root. Instantly strong hands steadied her, and Micah was at her side. Only inches from him, she looked into his dark eyes.
“Thanks,” she whispered, her pulse skittering. He looked tough, unapproachable, yet her skin tingled with a strange awareness of him.
When they returned to their campsite, he pulled a bedroll from his backpack, spreading it for the girls, covering them with mosquito netting. Within minutes they were asleep, Angelica with her thumb in her mouth and Sophie curled into a ball. He handed the square of canvas to Raffaela and she spread it, sitting and leaning against a palm.
He placed the rifle where he could reach it and sat on the damp ground, crossing his legs while he settled a few feet from Raffaela. She met his gaze with wide green eyes. Briefly Micah wondered about her husband. The Bolivian industrialist was a fortunate man. Micah knew if his family had crashed in a Central American jungle, he would have flown home from a business engagement. The father and brother had come forth, ready to do whatever they could, but the husband was strangely absent from the arrangements Luke Webster had made with Micah. Were relations less than good between Raffaela and her husband?
“Now we talk. I have some questions,” Micah said. “What happened to Burr Brogan? And why aren’t you wearing your wedding rings?”
“I regained consciousness with the plane burning and the girls clinging to me and crying,” she said quietly, looking more worried by the minute, and he wondered what had happened back there at the site of the crash. “I don’t know a Burr Brogan and there was no one around but the three of us.”
“I have a passenger list,” he said impatiently. “Burr Brogan, the Granillo bodyguard, and Jose Escajedo, the Granillo pilot, were on that plane. I found Jose Escajedo’s remains.”
She flinched slightly and bit her lip, looking at her hands and touching her fingers as if realizing she should be wearing rings. When she looked up, he felt his stomach tighten, and a gut feeling swamped him that something was terribly wrong.
“You called me Raffaela Granillo,” she said.
“Aren’t you? Was that Rachel or Raffaela who died in the crash? Which one are you?”
She took a deep breath and shook her head. “I don’t know. I can’t remember.”
Two
Stunned, Micah looked at her and swore softly under his breath. “You still have a bump on the back of your head from a blow you must have received in the crash. Have you had headaches since the crash?”
“Yes. They were blinding at first.”
“I assumed you’re Raffaela Granillo, the married twin.”
“The woman who died was my twin sister?” she asked in a tight voice. “Do I look like her?”
“Exactly.”
She closed her eyes, and Micah reached out to grasp her shoulder, wondering if she was going to faint. The moment his hand closed over her, her eyes flew open. As she gazed up at him, he leaned closer. Her lips parted. There was still daylight, and he gazed into the cool depths of frightened green eyes. He saw the moment she became aware of him as a man. Her eyes widened and pink suffused her cheeks. He felt a stirring of want, looking again at her mouth. Her lips were full and curved, and he wondered if they were as soft as they appeared.
Annoyed with himself and struggling for control of his impulses, he met her gaze. “Are you all right?” His voice was husky, and his fingers closed a little tighter on her shoulder. Her bones felt delicate beneath his hand, a contact that he didn’t want to end.
“Yes, I’m okay. I was just surprised by what you told me,” she said in a small, breathless voice that revealed she was having as much reaction as he.
He told himself to move away from her, yet he sat there staring at her while she gazed back with a strange searching look in her eyes. As if drawn by an unseen force, he leaned closer. Then he realized what he had just done and scooted away from her.
“When you’re with your husband and family, it will come back to you,” he said gruffly, swearing silently at himself. He remembered Luke saying she cheated on her husband, and he felt a stir of contempt. He might be old-fashioned in her circle, but he thought wedding vows were forever. She was a beautiful woman who drew men like bees to pollen, and his reaction was normal. He told himself that, but he didn’t believe it. He had been around beautiful women since Shawna died and he hadn’t had the reaction he was having to Raffaela Granillo.
“I can’t recall anything that’s happened. I remember the girls. I couldn’t remember their names until they told me. Angelica calls me Mama and Sophie calls me Mama or Aunt, but as time goes by, she’s addressing me as Aunt Rachel less often.”
He frowned, studying her. The three-year-old would be more likely to know her own mother, yet in the chaos of the crash, and with mother and aunt being twins, the child could be confused. He had heard Sophie call her Mama more than once since he had been with them. Was he rescuing Hector Granillo’s wife or Hector’s unmarried sister-in-law?
Micah slammed shut that line of questioning. He knew he had damned well better assume he had the wife and mother with him. Certainly there had been a flare of lust or attraction pass between them, but he didn’t want any complications with a married woman who was the mother of two little girls. If she was Rachel, the single nanny, he could deal with that when he was back in Texas. But for now, out here in the wild, he was going to assume he had Raffaela Granillo, the married one.
He glanced at the bag she carried. It was resting on the ground near his backpack. “Don’t you have identification and pictures in your purse?”
She shook her head. “That’s the bag with the girls’ things. After I regained consciousness, I gathered what I could find that I thought we might need, but I didn’t find any identification for anyone.”
He curbed the impulse to swear. She looked worried and uncertain enough without him adding to the problem. “Do you know why neither you nor your twin is wearing any jewelry besides the necklace you had on?”
She shook her head. “I don’t remember jewelry. I can’t remember my name or my home or my family.” She looked stricken, and he heard the thread of fear in her voice. “If I’m the mother of the girls, I don’t remember their father. I don’t remember a husband.”
He wanted to groan as he stared at her. Her skin was flawless, her throat slender. Tendrils of auburn hair had escaped her braid, and he battled the urge to tuck one behind her ear. “Usually amnesia doesn’t last long,” he said, realizing hers had already lasted longer than usual. “I think we should assume you’re Raffaela Webster Granillo, mother of Angelica and Sophie.”
“Raffaela Webster Granillo,” she said frowning.
“Your father is Atlee Webster. He has an oil company in Houston, Texas. I’m a friend of your brother, Luke.”
“Why am I in this jungle? Where were we going?”
“If you’re Raffaela, you’re married to Hector Granillo. He has tin mines and one of the largest textile plants in Bolivia. Your sister Rachel was not married and she was nanny for your two girls, so she was traveling back to La Paz, Bolivia, with you.”
“How long have I been married?”
He shrugged. “I don’t have details of your marriage. Your brother hired me to try to rescue any survivors. He didn’t give me your past history.”
“If you’re good friends with my brother, you should have been a guest at my wedding,” she said, giving him a wary look.
He shook his head. “We were army buddies. After we got out of the military, we occasionally ran into each other because we both settled in Houston. That’s all. He came to me for this job because he knew what kind of business I’m in.”
Feeling a mounting sense of panic, Raffaela could not dredge up any memories of family or husband. The only reason she knew the girls was because they were there with her, but she couldn’t recall their births or babyhood. The woman she had covered with branches and leaves had been her twin sister. It disturbed her to be unable to feel the loss.
Micah Drake reached out to tuck stray hairs behind her ear. When his warm hand brushed her skin, she looked at him. He was rugged, handsome. His dark eyes studied her with curiosity, and beneath his gaze she felt her pulse jump. What was there about the man that was so disturbing, when he was doing nothing more than looking at her? For a moment she had thought he was going to lean down and kiss her. And, heaven help her, she had wanted him to. Upset by her reaction to Micah, she struggled to conjure up memories of a husband or home.
She didn’t remember being a mother, yet she knew she loved the little girls. It felt natural and right to be with them. Sophie addressed her as Aunt and Mama. Sophie should know, yet even she didn’t seem certain.
If amnesia usually cleared up swiftly, she would have her answers soon.
“Sophie is old enough to talk and tell you some things. Has she mentioned a man who traveled with you?”
Raffaela shook her head, worry returning about Sophie. She glanced at the sleeping child who looked serene. “The day of the crash she was hysterical. I don’t know whether it was from the crash or the plane burning or the loss of her aunt. Or her mother. You heard her today when she started crying and holding out her arms to me.”
“Yes, she called you Mama when she did.”
“She might have been calling for her mama and reaching for me,” she replied solemnly. “How long will it take to get back to civilization?”
He shook his head. “Too many variables to predict. We’ll follow the stream tomorrow and look for a village. The rivers and streams are highways in this jungle. They flow to the ocean, so we just keep following them. When we arrive in a town, I can get us out of here. This country has revolutionaries who are fighting. I want to avoid them. They won’t care who we are or why we’re here.”
Suddenly aware of the wild country around them, she rubbed her arms.
“You didn’t head in the best direction when you left the crash scene, but we’ll be safe when we reach any sizable town,” Micah remarked, knowing he was frightening her. But she needed to know what the dangers were.
Her teeth caught her lower lip. “I couldn’t decide whether to stay with the plane in case someone searched for us, or try to get to a village. It seemed wiser to try to get to a village.”
He nodded. “I would have done the same,” he admitted, although if she had stayed at the crash site, he would have been able to get her out more quickly.
“My sister died in that crash, and I didn’t even know she was my twin,” Raffaela remarked with regret.
“It’ll come back to you.”
She studied him with curiosity in her eyes. “You do this for a living?”
“That’s right.”
“It must be terribly hard on your wife.”
“I’m not married now,” he said stiffly, wondering how long he would still feel pain, answering questions about Shawna.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to intrude.”
“Forget it,” he answered perfunctorily, his mind on the plane crash. “You sure you don’t remember a man who survived the crash?”
“No. I never saw anyone except the two girls. When I regained consciousness, the plane was burning and the girls were clinging to me and crying. Before that time, I’m blank.”
Micah rubbed the back of his neck while he thought about the crash. “There was a man with you, Burr Brogan, the Granillo bodyguard.”
“Why did they need a bodyguard?”
“Your husband, as well as your father, is enormously wealthy. Particularly your husband. You should have on more carats than a jewelry shop window display. I’m wondering where all the jewels are.”
“I had my sister for a nanny and I have a bodyguard?” She sounded as if she was having difficulty accepting the facts.
Barely hearing her question, Micah wondered about Brogan. The man was an ex-cop. He was supposed to be one of the good guys, on the side of law and order. And he should know better than to take the rocks and expect to get away with it. Yet Raffaela had a bad blow on the back of the head. In the confusion of the crash, how easy it would have been to knock her unconscious and take the jewelry. Perhaps the sister was already dead, killed in the crash. Yet Brogan probably would have been better off trying to get them rescued and hope for a reward.
Why he had left the necklace behind was speculation, too. He could have been rushed or not cared about the ruby. Or he could have overlooked it because of her long hair.
Micah thought about Sophie again. Three-year-olds could be very bright, and Sophie didn’t have amnesia. “Sophie is old enough to tell you what happened. When you regained consciousness, did she say anything about the crash or Brogan?”
Raffaela frowned as she laced her fingers together. “As I said before, that first day the girls were hysterical. I quieted Angelica. Something frightened Sophie, but she wouldn’t tell me what. I found the woman’s body and both girls seemed torn, so I got them away and covered the body as best I could. I didn’t want to stay in that place. The girls were terrified and hurt—if the woman was my sister and their nanny, they loved her very much. But I may be the nanny. I remember Sophie screaming Mama over and over. After we began to walk and get away from there, they calmed. I didn’t ask her questions about what happened.” Raffaela glanced over her shoulder at the two httle girls. ”I don’t want to question her now. And I don’t want you to ask her. The bodyguard is gone. There’s nothing you can do about him. There’s nothing to gain by bringing back terrors to Sophie.”
“I won’t question her about it,” Micah promised, knowing it was best. He wouldn’t scare the child or dredge up bad memories, but Sophie might hold answers if they could get them from her. “There’s room for you with the girls,” he said, scooting to a tree to lean back against it and stretch out his legs.
She moved beside the children, and when he glanced at her again, his pulse jumped. She had unfastened the thick braid of hair and was combing her fingers through it. A cascade of auburn hair tumbled over her shoulders. She shook her head, brushing her hair back. It was a dark cloud around her head and he could imagine its silkiness. For an instant his gaze raked over her, and then he looked away.
Mrs. Raffaela Granillo. He was taking her home to her husband. And if there was a chance she was the unmarried twin—he reminded himself to wait until they were in Texas to even consider the possibility.
Night came swiftly, and his eyes adjusted. He stared into the darkness, listening to the screech of birds and night sounds, reassured by the noise around him that they were alone. He was far more concerned about rebels than wild animals or snakes.
He leaned back against the palm and closed his eyes, knowing he would only take catnaps until they reached safety. Pockets of rebel insurgents infested all this part of the land, and he wanted to avoid close encounters with any of them. If a band of the wrong kind of men found them, the lady was pretty enough to cause all kinds of trouble. She moved restlessly, and he studied her a moment. What was disturbing her sleep? The crash, the amnesia, the wilds?
Raffaela shifted. She lay on her stomach because her legs and back stung and hurt from the cuts and bruises. Staring into the night, she wished she could remember, trying to envision the husband in her background. With a hollow feeling she thought about her twin sister who had died in the crash. Mourning the loss of her sister would come when memory returned. Right now she felt numb and blank and had no memory of a sister. What she had was a vivid and intense recollection of Micah Drake’s fingers moving over her to give first aid. He had caused her pain, but she knew it had been unavoidable. The rest of the time, his hands were gentle. And she remembered that he was no longer married. He had answered her gruffly, so he must have bad memories.
He thought she was Raffaela, the married one. She didn’t feel married. But she guessed he was right. She knew without a doubt that she loved the little girls.
As she fell asleep, memories taunted her of Micah’s dark eyes.
In early morning Micah opened his eyes and glanced across their campsite. His heart missed a beat.
Raffaela was nowhere to be seen. He came to his feet swiftly, swinging the M-16 over his shoulder, dropping his hand to check the pistol on his hip. He looked around, wondering if she was answering a call of nature or if she had gone to the stream to wash. The only other choices were not good. He glanced at the girls who were both asleep. He hated to leave them alone, but the stream was only yards away.
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