The most dangerous man is the only one she wants...

Stanton Rourke lives life on the edge. The steely mercenary is dangerous in every way...especially to Clarisse Carrington’s heart. She and Rourke were playmates as children, but she’s not the innocent girl he once knew. When tragedy robbed Clarisse of her entire family, her life was changed forever. Besides, she’s a grown woman now, and there are secrets that hold her back from succumbing to her pursuer. As she struggles to keep her distance, sparks as hot as a Texas summer fly between them. But danger is following Clarisse, leaving her no choice but to rely on Rourke, even as the old wounds lying dormant between them flare up again...

Praise for the novels of New York Times and USA TODAY bestselling author

DIANA PALMER

“The popular Palmer has penned another winning novel, a perfect blend of romance and suspense.”

—Booklist on Lawman

“Diana Palmer is a mesmerizing storyteller who captures the essence of what a romance should be.”

—Affaire de Coeur

“Readers will be moved by this tale of revenge and justice, grief and healing.”

—Booklist on Dangerous

“Diana Palmer is one of those authors whose books are always enjoyable. She throws in romance, suspense and a good story line.”

—The Romance Reader on Before Sunrise

“Lots of passion, thrills, and plenty of suspense... Protector is a top-notch read!”

—Romance Reviews Today on Protector

“A delightful romance with interesting new characters and many familiar faces. It’s nice to have a hero who is not picture-perfect in looks or instincts, and a heroine who accepts her privileged life yet is willing to work for the future she wants.”

—RT Book Reviews on Wyoming Tough

Untamed

Diana Palmer

www.millsandboon.co.uk

Dear Reader,

Stanton Rourke has been one of my favorite characters since he showed up in Tough to Tame, helping protect Cappie Drake from her abusive ex-boyfriend. Since then, he’s been in a lot of books. Bits and pieces of his life have emerged, most especially in Courageous, when he went to help General Emilio Machado face down an usurper.

It was there that Clarisse Carrington, whom he called Tat, was introduced. His feelings for her were mixed and obviously violent. In this book, the reason becomes clear. It is a tapestry of love and loss, selfishness and unselfishness, and, at the last, sacrifice. I have rarely loved a hero as much. I hope that you enjoy reading his story as much as I have enjoyed writing it. There has been one odd side effect from the writing process. I have a sudden yen to learn how to tango...

As always, your biggest fan,

In memoriam:

For Dr. Sherry Maloney, who took such wonderful care of our son when he was small, and who painted the most beautiful canvases I have ever seen. You brought joy to so many lives. May God hold you safely in the palm of His hand and lead you home.

Contents

Cover

Back Cover Text

Praise

Title Page

Dear Reader

In Memoriam

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

11

12

13

14

15

16

Extract

Copyright

1

It took forever to get anywhere, Stanton Rourke fumed. He was sitting at the airport on a parked plane while officials decided if it was safe to let the passengers disembark. Of course, he reasoned, Africa was a place of tensions. That never changed. And he was landing in Ngawa, a small war-torn nation named in Swahili for a species of civet cat found there. He was in the same spot where a small commercial plane had been brought down with a rocket launcher only the week before.

He wasn’t afraid of war. Over the years, he’d become far too accustomed to it. He was usually called in when a counterespionage expert was wanted, but he had other skills, as well. Right now he wished he had more skill in diplomacy. He was going into Ngawa to get Tat out, and she wasn’t going to want to let him persuade her.

Tat. He almost groaned as he pictured her the last time he’d seen her in Barrera, Amazonas, just after General Emilio Machado had retaken his country from a powerful tyrant, with a little help from Rourke and a company of American mercs. Clarisse Carrington was her legal name. But to Rourke, who’d known her since she was a child, she’d always been just Tat.

A minion of the country’s usurper, Arturo Sapara, had tortured her with a knife. He could still see her, her blouse covered with blood, suffering from the effects of a bullet wound and knife cuts on her breast from one of Sapara’s apes, who was trying to force her to tell what she knew about a threatening invasion of his stolen country.

She was fragile in appearance, blonde and blue-eyed with a delicately perfect face and a body that drew men’s eyes. But the fragility had been eclipsed when she was threatened. She’d been angry, uncooperative, strong. She hadn’t given up one bit of information. With grit that had amazed Rourke, who still remembered her as the Washington socialite she’d been, she’d not only charmed a jailer into releasing her and two captured college professors, she’d managed to get them to safety, as well. Then she’d given Machado valuable intel that had helped him and his ragtag army overthrow Sapara and regain his country.

She did have credentials as a photojournalist, but Rourke had always considered that she was just playing at the job. To be fair, she had covered the invasion in Iraq, but in human-interest pieces, not what he thought of as true reporting. After Barrera, that had changed.

She’d signed on with one of the wire services as a foreign correspondent and gone into the combat zones. Her latest foray was this gig in Ngawa, where she’d stationed herself in a refugee camp which had just been overrun.

Rourke had come racing, after an agonizing few weeks in Wyoming and Texas helping close down a corrupt politician and expose a drug network. He hadn’t wanted to take the time. He was terrified that Tat was really going to get herself killed. He was almost sweating with worry, because he knew something that Tat didn’t; something potentially fatal to her and any foreigners in the region.

He readjusted the ponytail that held his long blond hair. His one pale brown eye was troubled, beside the one wearing the eye patch. He’d lost the eye years ago, in a combat situation that had also given him devastating scars. It hadn’t kept him out of the game by a long shot, but he’d turned his attention to less physical pursuits, working chiefly for K. C. Kantor’s paramilitary ops group as an intel expert, when he wasn’t working for a covert government agency in another country.

K.C. didn’t like him going into danger. He didn’t care what the older man liked. He suspected, had long suspected, that K.C. was his real father. He knew K.C. had the same suspicion. Neither of them had the guts to have a DNA profile done and learn the truth, although Rourke had asked a doctor to do a DNA profile of his assumed father.

The results had been disturbing. Rourke’s apparent father had been K.C.’s best friend. Rourke’s mother had been a little saint. She’d never cheated on her husband, to Rourke’s knowledge, but when she was dying she’d whispered to the doctor, Rourke’s friend, that she’d felt sorry for K.C. when the woman he loved had taken the veil as a nun, and things had happened. She died before she could elaborate. Rourke had never had the nerve to actually ask K.C. about it. He wasn’t afraid of the other man. But they had a mutual respect that he didn’t want to lose.

Tat was another matter. He closed his eye and groaned inwardly. He remembered her at seventeen, the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen in his entire life. Soft, light blond hair in a feathery cut around her exquisite face, her china-blue eyes wide and soft and loving. She’d been wearing a green dress, something slinky but demure, because her parents were very religious. Rourke had been teasing her and she’d laughed up at him. Something had snapped inside him. He’d gathered her up like priceless treasure and started kissing her. Actually, he’d done a lot more than just kiss her. Only the sudden arrival of her mother had broken it up, and her mother had been furious.

She’d hidden it, smoothing things over. But then Tat’s mother had taken Rourke to one side, and with quiet fury, she’d told him something that destroyed his life. From that night, he’d been so cold to Tat that she thought he hated her. He had to let her think it. She was the one woman on earth that he could never have.

He opened his eye, grinding down on the memories before they started eating him alive again. He wished that he’d never touched her, that he didn’t have the shy innocence of her mouth, her worshipping eyes, to haunt his dreams. He’d driven her into the arms of other men with his hatred, and that only made the pain worse. He taunted her with it, when he knew it was his own fault. He’d had no choice. He couldn’t even tell her the truth. She’d worshipped her mother. She had passed away from a virus she’d caught while nursing others. Now Tat was alone, the tragic deaths of her father and young sister still haunting her months after they’d drowned in a piranha-infested river on a tour of local villages.

Rourke had been at the funeral. He couldn’t help the way he felt. If Tat was in trouble, or hurt, he was always there. He’d known her since she was eight and her parents lived next door to K.C., who was by that time Rourke’s legal guardian, in Africa. Since Tat was ten years old and Rourke was fifteen, and he’d carried her out of the jungle in his arms to a doctor, after letting her get bitten by a viper, she’d been his. He couldn’t have her, but he couldn’t stop taking care of her. He knew his attitude puzzled her, because he was usually her worst enemy. But let her be hurt, or threatened, and he was right there. Always. Like now.

He’d tried to phone her, but he couldn’t get her to answer her cell. She probably knew his number by heart. She wouldn’t even pick up when he called.

Now she was here, somewhere close, and he couldn’t even get information from his best sources about her condition. He remembered again the way she’d been in Barrera, bleeding, white in the face, worn to the bone, but still defiant.

The steward walked down the aisle and announced that the rebels who held the airfield were allowing the passengers to leave after a brief negotiation. He even smiled. Rourke leaned over and unobtrusively patted the hide gun in his boot. He could negotiate for himself, if he had to, he mused.

* * *

He called his contact, a man with a vehicle, to drive him to the refugee camp. This man was one of his few friends in the country. It was Bob Satele, sitting beside him, who had given him the only news of Tat he’d had in weeks.

“It is most terrible, to see what they do here,” the man remarked as he drove along the winding dirt road. “Miss Carrington has a colleague who gets her dispatches out. She has been most sympathetic to the plight of the people, especially the children.”

“Ya,” Rourke said absently. “She loves kids. I’m surprised that Mosane hasn’t had her killed.” He was referring to the leader of the rebel coalition, a man with a bloodthirsty reputation.

“He did try,” his contact replied, making Rourke clench his teeth. “But she has friends, even among the enemy troops. In fact, it was one of Mosane’s own officers who got her to safety. They were going to execute her...”

He paused at Rourke’s harsh gasp.

Rourke bit down hard on his feelings. “NATO is threatening to send in troops,” he said, trying to disguise the anguish he felt. At the same time he didn’t dare divulge what he knew; it was classified.

“The world should not permit such as this to happen, although like you, I dislike the idea of foreign nations interfering in local politics.”

“This is an exception to the rule,” Rourke said. “I’d hang Mosane with my own hands if I could get to him.”

The other man chuckled. “It is our Africa, yes?”

“Yes. Our Africa. And we should be the ones to straighten it out. Years of foreign imperialism have taken a toll here. We’re all twitchy about letting outsiders in.”

“Your family, like mine, has been here for generations,” the other man replied.

“We go back, don’t we, mate?” he said, managing a smile. “How much farther?”

“Just down the road. You can see the tents from here.” They passed a truck with a red cross on the side, obviously the victim of a bomb. “And that is what happens to the medical supplies they send us,” he added grimly. “Nothing meant for the people reaches them, yet outsiders think they do so much good by sending commodities in.”

“Too true. If they’re not destroyed by the enemy, they’re confiscated and sold on the black market.” He drew in a breath. “Dear God, I am so sick of war.”

“You should find a wife and have children.” His friend chuckled. “It will change your view of the world.”

“No chance of that,” Rourke said pleasantly. “I like variety.”

He didn’t, actually. But he was denied the one woman he did want.

* * *

The refugee camp was bustling. There were two people in white lab coats attending the injured lying on cots inside the few big tents. Rourke’s restless eye went from one group to another, looking for a blond head of hair. He was almost frantic with worry, and he couldn’t let it show.

“She is over there,” Bob said suddenly, pointing.

And there she was. Sitting on an overturned crate with a tiny little African boy cradled in her arms. She was giving him a bottle and laughing. She looked worn. Her hair needed washing. Her khaki slacks and blouse were rumpled. She looked as if she’d never worn couture gowns to the opera or presided over arts ceremonies. To Rourke, even in rags, she would be beautiful. But he didn’t dare let his mind go in that direction. He steeled himself to face her.

Clarisse felt eyes on her. She looked up and saw Rourke, and her face betrayed her utter shock.

He walked straight to her, his jaw set, his one brown eye flashing.

“Look here,” she began before he could say a word, “it’s my life...”

He went down on one knee, his scrutiny close and unnerving. “Are you all right?” he asked gruffly.

She bit her lower lip and tears threatened. If she was hurt, in danger, mourning, frightened, he was always there. He’d come across continents to her, across the world, around the world. But he didn’t want her. He’d never wanted her...

“Yes,” she said huskily. “I’m all right.”

“Bob said you were captured, that they were going to kill you,” he ground out, his scrutiny close and hot.

She lowered her eyes to the child she was feeding. “A necklace saved my life.”

“That cross...” he began, recalling that her mother had given it to her and she never took it off—except once, to put it around Rourke’s neck in Barrera, just before he went into the capital city with Machado and the others, for luck.

“No.” She flicked open the top button of her blouse. She was wearing a seashell necklace with leather thongs.

He frowned.

“This little one—” she indicated the child in her arms “—has a sister. She was dying, of what I thought was appendicitis. I commandeered a car and driver and took her to the clinic, a few miles down the road. It was appendicitis. They saved her.” She took the bottle away from the child’s lips, tossed a diaper over one shoulder, lifted the child and patted him gently on the back to make him burp. “Her mother gave me this necklace, the little girl’s necklace, in return.” She smiled. “So the captain whose unit captured me saw it and recognized it and smuggled me out of the village.” She cradled the child in her arms and made a face at him. He chuckled. “This is his son. His little girl and his wife are over there, helping hand out blankets.” She nodded toward the other side of the camp.

He whistled softly.

“Life is full of surprises,” she concluded.

“Indeed.”

She looked at him with eyes that were quickly averted. “You came all this way because you thought I’d been kidnapped?”

He shook his head curtly. “I didn’t know that until I got here.”

“Then why did you come?” she asked.

He drew in a long breath. He watched her cradle the child and he smiled, without sarcasm for once. “You look very comfortable with a child in your arms, Tat.”

“He’s a sweet boy,” she said.

His mother came back and held out her arms, smiling shyly at Rourke before she went back to the others.

“Why did you come?” she asked him again.

He stood up, jamming his hands into his khaki slacks. “To get you out of here,” he said simply. His face was taut.

“I can’t leave,” she said. “There isn’t another journalist in this part of the country. Someone has to make sure the world knows what’s going on here.”

“You’ve done that,” he said shortly. He searched her eyes. “You have to get out. Today.”

She frowned. She stood up, too, careful not to go close to him. He didn’t like her close. He backed away if she even moved toward him. He had for years, as if he found her distasteful. Probably he did. He thought she had the morals of an alley cat, which would have been hilarious if it hadn’t been so tragic. She’d never let anyone touch her, after Rourke. She couldn’t.

“What do you know, Stanton?” she asked softly.

His taut expression didn’t relent. “Things I’m not permitted to discuss.”

Her eyes narrowed. “Something’s about to happen...?”

“Yes. Don’t argue. Don’t hesitate. Get your kit and come with me.”

“But...”

He put his finger over her lips, and then jerked it back as if he’d been stung. “We don’t even have time for discussion.”

She realized that he knew about an offensive, and he couldn’t say anything for fear of being overheard.

“I’m taking you home,” he said, loudly enough for people nearby to hear him. “And no more argument. You’ve played at being a photojournalist long enough. You’re leaving. Right now. Or so help me God, I’ll pick you up and carry you out of here.”

She gave him a shocked look. But she didn’t argue. She got her things together, said goodbye to the friends she’d made and climbed into the backseat of the car he and Robert had arrived in. She didn’t say another word until they were back at the airport.

* * *

He seated her beside him in business class, picked up a newspaper in Spanish, and didn’t say another word until they landed in Johannesburg. He bought her dinner, and then she got ready to board a plane for Atlanta. Rourke had connections back to Nairobi, far to the northeast. They got through passport control, and Clarisse stopped at the gate that led to the international concourse. “I’ll get on the next flight to DC from Atlanta and file my copy,” she told him as they stood together.

He nodded. He looked at her quietly, almost with anguish.

“Why?” she asked, as if the word was dragged out of her.

“Because I can’t let you die,” he bit off. “Regardless of my inclinations.” He smiled sarcastically. “So many men would grieve, wouldn’t they, Tat?”

The hopeful look on her face disappeared. “I assume that I’ll read about the reason I had to leave Ngawa?” she asked instead of returning fire.

“You will.”

She drew in a resigned breath. “Okay. Thanks,” she added without meeting his eye.

“Go home and give parties,” he muttered. “Stay out of war zones.”

“Look who’s talking,” she returned.

He didn’t answer her. He was looking. Aching. The expression on his face was so tormented that she reached up a hand to touch his cheek.

He jerked her wrist down and stepped back. “Don’t touch me,” he said icily. “Ever.”

She swallowed down the hurt. “Nothing ever changes, does it?” she asked.

“You can bet your life on it,” he shot back. “Just for the record, even if half the men on earth would die to have you, I never will. I do what I can for you, for old time’s sake. But make no mistake, I find you physically repulsive. You’re not much better than a call girl, are you, Tat? The only difference is you don’t have to take money for it. You just give it away.”

She turned while he was in full spiel and walked slowly from him. She didn’t look back. She didn’t want him to see the tears.

He watched her go with an expression so full of rage that a man passing by actually walked out of his way to avoid meeting him. He turned and went to catch his own flight back to Nairobi, nursing the same old anguish that he always had to deal with when he saw her. He didn’t want to hurt her. He had to. He couldn’t let her get close, touch him, warm to him. He didn’t dare.

* * *

He flew back to Nairobi. He’d meant to go to Texas, to finalize a project he was working on. But after he had to hurt Tat, his heart wasn’t in it. His unit leader could handle things until he got himself back together.

He drove out to the game ranch with his foreman from the airport in Nairobi, drooping from jet lag, somber from dealing with Tat.

K. C. Kantor was in his living room, looking every day of his age. He got to his feet when Rourke walked in.

Not for the first time, Rourke saw himself in those odd, pale brown eyes, the frosty blond hair—streaked with gray, now—so thick on the other man’s head. They were of the same height and build, as well. But neither of them knew for sure. Rourke wasn’t certain that he really wanted to know. It wasn’t pleasant to believe that his mother cheated on his father. Or that the man he’d called his father for so many years wasn’t really his dad...

He clamped down on it. “Cheers,” Rourke said. “How’re things?”

“Rocky.” The pale brown eyes narrowed. “You’ve been traveling.”

“How gossip flies !” Rourke exclaimed.

“You’ve been to Ngawa,” he continued.

Rourke knew when the jig was up. He filled a glass with ice and poured whiskey into it. He took a sip before he turned. “Tat was in one of the refugee camps,” he said solemnly. “I went to get her out.”

K.C. looked troubled. “You knew about the offensive?”

“Ya. I couldn’t tell her. But I made her leave.” He looked at the floor. “She was rocking a baby.” His eyes closed on the pain.

“You’re crazy for her, but you won’t go near her,” K.C. remarked tersely. “What the hell is wrong with you?”

“Maybe it’s what the hell’s wrong with you, mate,” Rourke shot back with real venom.

“Excuse me?”

The pain was monstrous. He turned away and took a big swallow of his drink. “Sorry. My nerves are playing tricks on me. I’ve got jet lag.”

“You make these damned smart remarks and then pretend you were joking, or you didn’t think, or you’ve got damned jet lag!” the older man ground out. “If you want to say something to me, damn it, say it!”

Rourke turned around. “Why?” he asked in a hunted tone. “Why did you do it?”

K.C. was momentarily taken aback. “Why did I do what, exactly?”

“Why did you sleep with Tat’s mother?” he raged.

K.C.’s eyes flashed like brown lightning. K.C. knocked him clean over the sofa and was coming around it to add another punch to the one he’d already given him when Rourke got to his feet and backed away. The man was downright damned scary in a temper. Rourke had rarely seen him mad. There was no trace of the financial giant in the man stalking him now. This was the face of the mercenary he’d been, the cold-eyed man who’d wrested a fortune from small wars and risk.

“Okay!” Rourke said, holding up a hand. “Talk. Don’t hit!”

“What the hell is wrong with you?” K.C. demanded icily. “Tat’s mother was a little saint! Maria Carrington never put a foot wrong in her whole life. She loved her husband. Even drunk as a sailor, she’d never have let me touch her!”

Rourke’s eyes were so wide with shock and pain that K.C. stopped in his tracks.

“Let’s have it,” he said. “What’s going on?”

Rourke could barely manage words. “She told me.”

“She who? Told you what?”

Rourke had to sit down. He picked up the glass of whiskey and downed half of it. This was a nightmare. He was never going to wake up.

“Rourke?”

Rourke took another sip. “Tat was seventeen. I’d gone to Manaus on a job.” Rourke’s deep voice was husky with feeling. “It was Christmas. I stopped by to see them, against my better judgment. Tat was wearing a green silk dress, a slinky thing that showed off that perfect body. She was so beautiful that I couldn’t take my eyes off her. Her parents left the room.” His eyes closed. “I picked her up and carried her to the sofa. She didn’t protest. She just looked at me with those eyes, full of... I don’t even know what. I touched her and she moaned and lifted up to me.” He drew in a shaky breath. “We were so involved that I only just heard her mother coming in time to spare us some real embarrassment. But her mother knew what was going on.”

“That would have upset her,” K.C. said. “She was deeply religious. Having you play around with her teenage daughter wasn’t going to endear you to her, especially with the reputation you had in those days for discarding women right and left.”

“I know.” Rourke looked down at the floor. “That one taste of Tat was like finding myself in paradise. I wanted her. Not for just a night. I couldn’t think straight, but my mind was running toward a future, not relief.”

He hesitated. “But her mother didn’t realize that. I can’t really blame her. She knew I was a rake. She probably thought I’d seduce Tat and leave her in tears.”

“That could have happened,” K.C. said.

“Not a chance.” Rourke’s one eye pinned him. “A girl like that, beautiful and kind...” He turned away. He drew in a long breath. “Her mother took me to one side, later. She was crying. She said that she’d seen you one night at your house, upset and sick at heart because a woman you loved was becoming a nun. She said she had a drink with you, and another drink, and then, something happened. She said Tat was the result.”

“She actually told you that Tat was your half sister? Damn the woman!”

Rourke felt the same way, but he was too drained to say it. He stared at his drink. “She told me that. So I turned against Tat, taunted her, pushed her away. I made her into something little better than a prostitute by being cruel to her. And now I learn, eight years too late, that it was all for a lie. That I was protecting her from something that wasn’t even real.”

He fought tears. They played hell with the wounded eye, because it still had some tear ducts. He turned away from the older man, embarrassed.

K.C. bit his lip. He put a rough hand on Rourke’s shoulder and patted it. “I’m sorry.”

Rourke swallowed. He tipped the last of the whiskey into his mouth. “Ya,” he said in a choked tone. “I’m sorry, too. Because there’s no way in hell I can tell her I believed that about her mother. Or that I can undo eight years of torment that I gave her.”

“You’ve had a shock,” K.C. said. “And you really are jet-lagged. It would be a good idea if you just let things lie for a few days.”

“You think?”

“Rourke,” he said hesitantly. “The story she told you was true,” he began.

“What! You just said it wasn’t...!”

K.C. pushed him back down on the sofa. “It was true, but it wasn’t Tat’s mother.” He turned away. “It was your mother.”

There was a terrible stillness in the room.

K.C. moved to the window and stared out at the African darkness with his hands in his pockets.

“I got drunk because Mary Luke Bernadette chose a veil instead of me. I loved her, deathlessly. It’s why I never married. She’s still alive and, God help me, I still love her. She lives near my godchild, her late sister’s only living child. I told you about Kasie, she married into the Callister family in Montana. Mary Luke lives in Billings.”

“I remember,” Rourke said quietly.

He closed his eyes. “Your mother saw what I was doing to myself. She tried to comfort me. She had a few drinks with me and things...happened. She was ashamed, I was ashamed...her husband was the best friend I ever had. How could we tell him what we’d done? So we kept our secret, tormented ourselves with what happened in a minute of insanity. Nine months later, to the day, you were born.”

“You said...you weren’t sure,” Rourke bit off.

“I wasn’t. I’m not. I don’t have the guts to have the test done.” He turned, a tiger, bristling. “Go ahead. Laugh!”

Rourke got up, a little shakily. It had been a shocking night. “Why don’t you have the guts?” he asked.

“Because I want it to be true,” he said through his teeth. He looked at Rourke with pain in his light eyes, terrible pain. “I betrayed my best friend, seduced your mother. I deserve every damned terrible thing that ever happens to me. But more than anything in the world, I want to be your father.”

Rourke felt the wetness in his eyes, but this time he didn’t hide it.

K.C. jerked him into his arms and hugged him, and hugged him. His eyes were wet, too. Rourke clung to him. All the long years, all the companionship, the shared moments. He’d wanted it, too. There wasn’t a man alive who compared to the one holding him. He respected him. But, more, he loved him.

K.C. pulled back abruptly and turned away, shaking his head to get rid of the moisture in his eyes. He shoved his hands back into his slacks.

“Don’t we have a doctor on staff?” Rourke asked after a minute.

“Ya.”

“Then let’s find out for sure,” Rourke said.

K.C. turned after a minute, looking at the face that was his face, the elegant carriage that he knew from his own mirror.

“Are you sure?”

“Yes,” Rourke said. “And so are you.”

K.C. cocked his head and grimaced as he looked at Rourke’s face.

“What?”

“You’re going to have a hell of a bruise,” K.C. said with obvious regret.

Rourke just smiled sheepishly. “No problem. It’s not a bad thing to discover that your old man can still handle himself,” he chuckled.

K.C. glowed.

2

Rourke spent the night getting drunk. He was out of his mind from his father’s revelations. Tat had loved him. He’d pushed her away, for her own good, but in doing so, he’d damaged her so badly that he’d turned her into little better than a call girl.

He remembered her in Barrera, her blouse soaked in blood that even a washing hadn’t removed, the stitches just above one of her perfect small breasts where that animal, Miguel, had cut her trying to extract information about General Emilio Machado’s invasion of the country.

Rourke had killed Miguel. He’d done it coldly, efficiently. Then he and Carson, a fellow merc in the group that helped Machado liberate Barrera, had carried the body to a river filled with crocodiles and tossed it in. He hadn’t felt a twinge of remorse. The man had tortured Tat. He would probably have raped her if another of Arturo Sapara’s men hadn’t intervened. Tat, with scars like the ones he carried, with memories of torture. He closed his eyes and shuddered. He’d protected her most of her life. But he’d let that happen to her. It was almost beyond bearing.

He got up, nude, and poured himself another whiskey. He almost never drank hard liquor, but it wasn’t every day that a man faced the ruin of his own life. He’d been protecting Tat from a relationship that was impossible, because he’d been told that there was blood between them, that Tat was really his half sister. And it was a lie.

He’d never even questioned her mother’s revelation. He’d never dreamed that the religious, upright Mrs. Maria Carrington would lie to him. She loved Tat, though. Loved her dearly, deeply, possibly even more than she loved Matilda, her second child. The woman had been a pillar of the local church, never missing Mass, always there when anyone needed help, quick with a check when charity was required. She was almost a saint.

So when she told him that K.C. had seduced her in a drunken stupor, he’d believed her. Because he believed her, he pushed Tat away, taunted her, humiliated her, made her hate him. Or tried to.

But she wouldn’t hate him. Perhaps she couldn’t. He put the whiskey glass against his forehead, the cold ice comforting somehow. When he’d gone with the others to invade the capital in Barrera, Tat had pulled him to one side and linked the cross she always wore around his neck, asking him to wear it for luck. The gesture had hurt him. He wanted to pull her against him, bury his hard mouth in hers, let her feel the anguish of his arousal, show her how much he wanted her, needed her, cared for her. But that was impossible. They were too closely related. So he’d worn the necklace, but when he’d given it back, he was deliberately cold, impersonal.

When he’d left Barrera, what he’d said to her had shuttered her face, made her turn away, hurting. He’d hurt her more with his venomous comments at the airport in Johannesburg after he’d taken her out of Ngawa.

And that, all that, was for nothing. Because there was no blood between them. Because her mother had lied. Damn her mother!

He barely resisted the urge to slam the glass of whiskey through his bedroom window. That would arouse all the animals in the park, terrify the workers. It would bring back memories of another night when he got drunk, the night after Maria Carrington’s revelation. He’d gone on a week-long bender. He’d trashed bars, been in fights, outraged the small community near Nairobi where he lived. Even K.C. hadn’t been able to calm him, or get near him. Rourke in a temper was even worse than K.C. They’d stood back and let him get it out of his system.

Except that it wasn’t out. It would never be out. He finished off the whiskey and put the glass down on the bureau. The tinkle of ice against glass was loud in the quiet room. Outside a lion roared softly. He smiled sadly. He’d raised the lion from a cub. It would let him do anything with it. When he was home, it followed him around like a small puppy. But let anyone else approach him, and it became dangerous. K.C. had said he needed to give it to a zoo, but Rourke refused. He had so few amusements. The lion was his friend. There had been two of them, but a fellow game park owner had wanted it so desperately that Rourke had given it to him. Now he had just the one. He called it Lou—a play on words from the Afrikaans word for lion, leeu.

He closed his eyes and drew in a long breath. Tat would never forgive him. He didn’t even know how to approach her. He imagined Tat’s mouth under his, her soft body pressed to his hardness, her hands in his thick hair as he loved her on crisp, white sheets. He groaned aloud at the arousal the images produced.

And just as quickly as they flashed through his mind, he knew how impossible they were. He’d spent eight years pushing her away, making her hate him. He wasn’t going to be able to walk into her home and pick her up in his arms. She’d never let him close enough. She backed away now if he even approached her.

He thought of her with other men, with the scores of them he’d accused her of sleeping with. His fault. It was his fault. Tat would never have let another man touch her if she’d ever really belonged to Rourke; he knew that instinctively. But he’d pushed her into affairs. Her name had been linked with several millionaires, even a congressman. He’d seen photos of her in the media, seen her laughing up into other men’s faces, her body exquisite in couture gowns. He’d pretended that she was only playacting. But she wasn’t. She was twenty-five years old. No woman remained a virgin at that age. Certainly not Tat, whom he’d baited and tormented and rejected and humiliated.

But he had to get near her. He had to know if there was any slight chance that she might not hate him, that he could coax her back into his life. She’d never let him in the door in Maryland, where her home in the US was located. She had security cameras—he’d insisted on them—placed all around the house she owned there, the house that had belonged to her father.

Tat’s father had worked for the US Embassy. His people had been wealthy beyond the dreams of avarice. He’d married Maria Cortes of Manaus, a woman who had Dutch and highborn Spanish heritage who was also an heiress. It had been a marriage of true love. They had houses in Africa and Manaus and Maryland. Tat had inherited the lot, and their combined fortunes. Tat had loved her mother. It had devastated her when Maria died of a fever she caught nursing a friend.

He knew how Tat revered her mother. How could he tell her what the woman had done? It would shatter her illusions. But he would have to tell her something, to try and explain his behavior.

How to get near her, near enough to make her listen, that was the problem. His eye fell on an invitation on top of the stack of mail one of the workers had left on the bureau for him to go through. He frowned.

He picked it up and opened it. Inside was a formal invitation to a gala awards ceremony in Barrera. It was a personal invitation from General Machado himself. Now that his country was secure once more, all the loose ends tied up, it was time to reward the people who had helped him wrest control away from the usurper, Sapara. Machado hoped that Rourke could come, because he was one of several people who would be so honored. He went down the list of names on the engraved invitation listing the honorees. Just above his name was that of Clarisse Carrington.

His heart jumped. Machado had promised that she would be recognized for her bravery in leading two captured college professors to safety and giving the insurgents intel that helped them recapture Barrera’s capital city and apprehend Sapara.

Tat was going to be in Barrera, in Medina, the capital city. She would certainly go to the awards ceremony. It was a neutral place, where he might have the opportunity to mend fences. Certainly he was going to go. The date was a week away.

He took the invitation back to bed with him, scanning it once more. Tat would be in Medina. He put the invitation on the bedside table and stretched out, his hands behind his head, his body arching softly as it relived the exquisite memory of Tat half-naked in his arms, so many years ago, moaning as he touched her soft breasts and made the pretty pink nipples go hard as little rocks.

The memories aroused him and he moaned. Tat in his arms again. He could hold her, kiss her, touch her, have her. He shuddered. It would take time and patience, much patience, but he had a reason to live now. It was the first time in years that he felt happy.

Not that she was going to welcome him with open arms. And there was the matter of her lovers, and there had to have been many.

But that didn’t matter, he told himself firmly, as long as he was her last lover. He’d bring her here, to the game park. They could live together...

No. His expression was grim. Despite her diversions, Tat was still religious. She would never consent to live with him unless he made a commitment. A real one.

He got up from the bed and went to the wall safe. He opened it and took out a small gray box. He opened it. His hand touched the ring with tenderness. It had belonged to his mother. It was a square-cut emerald, surrounded by small diamonds, in a yellow gold setting. Tat loved yellow gold. It was all she wore.

He closed the case, relocked the safe and tucked the ring into the pocket of a suit in the closet. He would take it with him. Tat wasn’t getting away this time, he promised himself. He was going to do whatever it took to get her back into his life.

He lay back down and turned out the lights. For the first time in years, he slept through the night.

* * *

Three days later, K.C. came into the living room, where Rourke was making airline reservations on a laptop computer.

“You’re going to Barrera, then?” K.C. asked.

Rourke grinned. “You’d better believe it,” he chuckled. “I’ve got my mother’s engagement ring packed. This time, Tat’s not getting away.”

K.C. sighed and smiled tenderly. “I can’t think of any woman in the world I’d rather have for a daughter-in-law, Stanton.”

Something in the way he said it caught Rourke’s attention. He finished the ticket purchase, printed out the ticket and turned toward the other man.

“Something up?” he asked.

K.C. moved closer. He was looking at the younger man with pride. He smiled. “I knew all along. But the doctor just phoned.”

Rourke’s heart skipped. “And...?”

K.C. looked proud, embarrassed, happy. “You really are my son.”

“Damn!” Rourke started laughing. The joy in his eyes matched the happiness in his father’s.

K.C. just stared at him for a minute. Then he jerked the other man into his arms and hugged him. Rourke hugged him back.

“I’m sorry...about the way it happened,” K.C. said heavily, drawing back. “But not about the result.” He searched Rourke’s face. “My son.” He bit down on a surge of emotion. “I’ve got a son.”

Rourke was fighting the same emotion. He managed a smile. “Ya.”

K.C. put a hand on Rourke’s shoulder. “Listen, it’s your decision. I’ll do whatever you want. I was your legal guardian when you were underage. But I would like to formally adopt you. I would like you to have my name.”

Rourke thought about the man who’d been his father, who’d raised him. Bill Rourke had loved him, although he must have certainly thought that Rourke didn’t favor him. Bill had been dark-haired and dark-eyed. The man he’d called his real father had been good to him, even if there hadn’t been the sort of easy affection he’d always felt for K.C.

“It was just a thought,” K.C. said, hesitating now.

“I would...like that very much,” Rourke said. “I’ll keep my foster father’s name. I’ll just add yours to it.”

K.C. smiled sadly. “Your father was my best friend. It tormented me to think what I did to him, to your mother. To you.”

“I think it tormented her, too,” Rourke said.

“It did. She loved me.” His face hardened. “That was the worst of it. I had nothing to give her. Nothing at all. She knew it.”

Rourke’s one good eye searched his father’s. “Nobody’s perfect,” he said quietly. “I have to confess, I wished even when I was a boy that you were my real father.” He averted his eye just in time to miss the wetness in K.C.’s. “You were always in the thick of battles. You could tell some stories about the adventures you had. I wanted so badly to be like you.”

“You’re very like me,” K.C. said huskily. “I worried about letting you work for the organization. I wanted to protect you.” He laughed. “It wasn’t possible. You took to it like a duck to water. But I sweated blood when you left me and went with the CIA.” He shook his head. “I agonized that I’d let you get US citizenship, even though you kept your first citizenship.”

“It was something I wanted to do.” Rourke shrugged. “I can’t live without the adrenaline rushes.” His good eye twinkled. “I must get that from my old man.”

K.C. chuckled. “Probably. I still go on missions. I just don’t go on as many, and I’m mostly administrative now. You’ll learn as you age that your reaction time starts to drop. That can put your unit in danger, compromise missions.”

Rourke nodded. “I’ve had so many close calls that I’ve been tempted to think about administrative tasks myself. But not yet,” he added with a grin. “And right now, I have another priority. I want to get married.”

K.C. smiled warmly. “She’s really beautiful. And she has a kind heart. That’s more important than surface details.”

Rourke nodded. His face hardened. “It’s just, the idea of those other men...”

“You’ve had women,” K.C. replied quietly. “How is that different?”

Rourke looked vaguely disturbed. He turned away with a sigh. “Not so very, I suppose.”

“Tell Emilio hello for me,” K.C. said. “I knew him, a long time ago. Always liked the man. He’s not what you expect of a revolutionary.”

Rourke chuckled. “Not at all. He could make a fortune as a recording artist if he ever got tired of being President of Barrera. He can sing.”

“Indeed he can.”

Rourke turned at the door and looked back at the man who was the living image of what he’d be, in a few years.

He smiled. “When I get back, maybe you could take me to a ball game or something.”

K.C. picked up a chair cushion and threw it at him. “Get stuffed.”

Rourke just laughed. He picked up the cushion and tossed it back.

“You be careful over there,” K.C. added. “Sapara has friends, and he’s slippery. If he ever gets out of prison, you could be in trouble. He’s vindictive.”

“He won’t get out,” was the reply. “Just the same, it’s nice that my old man worries about me,” he added.

K.C. beamed. “Yes, he does. So don’t get yourself killed.”

“I won’t. Make sure you do the same.”

K.C. shrugged. “I’m invincible. I spent years as a merc and I’ve still got most of my original body parts.” He made a face as he moved his shoulder. “Some of them aren’t up to factory standards anymore, but I get by.”

Rourke grinned. “Same here.” He searched K.C.’s hard face. “When?”

“When, what?”

“When do you want to do the paperwork?”

“Oh. The name change. Why not get it started tomorrow? Unless you’re leaving for Barrera early?”

“Not until Thursday,” Rourke replied. His face softened. “I’d like that.”

K.C. nodded.

Rourke went back to his room to start packing.

* * *

The paperwork was uncomplicated. The attorney was laughing like a pirate.

“I knew,” he said, glancing from one to the other. “It was so damned obvious. But I knew better than to mention it. Your old man,” he added, to Rourke, “packs a hell of a punch.”

Rourke fingered his jaw, where there was only a faint yellow bruise to remind him of his father’s anger when he’d accused him of being Tat’s real parent. “Tell me about it,” he laughed.

K.C. managed a bare smile. “I need to have a few classes in anger management, I guess,” he sighed.

“No, Dad,” Rourke said without realizing what he’d said, “you’ll do fine the way you are. A temper’s not a bad thing.”

K.C. was beaming. Rourke realized then what he’d said and his brown eye twinkled.

“Nice, the way that sounds, son,” K.C. said, and his chest swelled with pride.

“Very nice.”

“Well, I’ll have this wrapped up in no time,” the attorney told the two men. “You can check back with me in a few days.”

“I’ll do that,” K.C. said.

* * *

Rourke walked out the door of his house with a suitcase and a suit bag, in which he had a dinner jacket, slacks, shirt and tie. He was going to look the best he could. He was so excited about the day to come that he hadn’t slept. Tat would be there. He’d see her again, but not in the same way he’d seen her for eight long years. Tomorrow night was going to be the best of his life. He could hardly wait.

* * *

The flight to Barrera was long and tedious. Rourke caught the plane at the Jomo Kenyatta International Airport in Nairobi. It was sixteen hours and eight minutes to the Eduardo Gomes International Airport in Manaus. He tried to sleep for most of the flight, only fortifying himself with food and champagne in between. He was impatient. He had to conduct this like a battle campaign, he thought. Tat wasn’t going to be welcoming, and he couldn’t blame her. He’d spent years tormenting her.

Finally the plane landed. The tropical heat hit him in the face like a wet towel, and it was something he wasn’t accustomed to. Kenya was mild year-round.

He went through passport control and customs, with only the carry-on bag and his suit bag. He always traveled light. He hated the time spent waiting for luggage at baggage claim. Much easier to travel with only the essentials and buy what he needed when he arrived. He didn’t advertise it, but he was quite wealthy. The game park kept him in ready cash, from tourism. Not to mention what he’d made for years as a professional soldier, risking his life in dangerous places. It was wonderful that K.C. was his father, but Rourke didn’t need his father’s financial support. He’d made his own way in the world for a long time.

He walked through baggage claim and looked for the appropriate sign, which would be held up by a limo driver he’d hired from Nairobi on his cell phone. He could easily afford the fees and he hated cabs.

The man spotted him and grinned. Rourke, dressed in khakis, tall and blond and striking, with the long ponytail down his back could never be mistaken for anyone except who he was. He looked the part of an African game park owner.

He smiled as he approached the man.

“Senhor Rourke?” the small dark man asked with a big grin.

Rourke chuckled. “What gave me away?” he asked.

“You do not remember?” the little man asked, and seemed crushed.

Rourke had an uncanny memory. He stared at the man for a minute, closed his eye, smiled and came up with a name. “Rodrigues,” he chuckled. “You chauffeured me around the last time I was in Manaus, just after the Barrera offensive. You have two daughters.”

The man seemed to be awash in pleasure. “Oh, yes, that is me, but, please, you must call me Domingo,” he added, wringing Rourke’s hand. Imagine, a rich cosmopolitan man like this remembering his name!

“Domingo, then.” He drew in a breath. Jet lag was getting to him. “I think I need to get a hotel room for the night. I’m flying out to Barrera in the morning. General Machado is having an awards ceremony.”

“Sim.” The man nodded as he climbed in under the wheel. “Several people are to be honored for their part in overthrowing that rat, Arturo Sapara,” he added. “My cousins were tortured in Sapara’s prison. I danced with joy when he was arrested.”

“So did I, mate,” Rourke replied solemnly.

“One lady from Manaus is to be awarded a medal,” Domingo said with a smile. “Senhorita Carrington. I knew her mother. Such a saintly lady,” he added.

“Saintly,” Rourke said, almost grinding his teeth as Domingo pulled out in traffic.

“Creio que sim,” Domingo replied, nodding. “She was kind. So kind. It was a tragedy what happened to her husband and her youngest daughter, Matilda,” he added.

Rourke drew in a long breath. “That was truly a tragedy.”

“You know of it?” Domingo asked.

“Yes. I’ve known Tat...Clarisse,” he corrected, “since she was eight years old.”

“The senhorita is a good woman,” Domingo said solemnly. “When she was younger, she never missed Mass. She was so kind to other people.” His face hardened. “What that butcher did to her was unthinkable. He was killed,” he added coldly. “I was glad. To hurt someone so beautiful, so kind...”

“How do you know her?” Rourke asked.

“When my little girl was diagnosed with lymphoma, it was Senhorita Carrington who made arrangements for her to go for treatment at the Mayo Clinic. It is in the United States. She paid for everything. Everything! I thought I must bury my daughter, but she stepped in.” Tears clouded his eyes. He wiped them away, unashamed. “My wife and I, we would do anything for her.”

Rourke was touched. He knew Clarisse had a kind heart, and here was even more proof of it.

“You will see Senhorita Carrington in Barrera, yes?” Domingo asked with a wise smile.

Rourke nodded. “Yes, I will.”

“Please, you tell her that Domingo remembers her and he and his family pray for her every single day, yes?”

“I’ll tell her.”

Domingo nodded. He pulled up at the best hotel in Manaus and stopped. “What time shall I come for you tomorrow, senhor?”

“About six,” Rourke said. “I’ve got a ticket for the connecting flight to Medina.” He yawned and signed the slip Domingo handed him, retrieving his credit card and sliding it back into his expensive wallet.

“Sleep well,” Domingo said as he carried the bags to the bellboy’s station inside the luxury hotel.

“Thanks. I think I will.”

* * *

Rourke had strange dreams. He woke sweating, worried. There had been a battle. He was wounded. Tat was standing far away, crying. Tears ran down her cheeks, but not tears of joy. Her face was tormented, the way it had looked at their last meeting. She was pregnant...!

He got up and made coffee in the small pot furnished by the hotel. It was four in the morning. No sense in going back to bed. He swept back his hair, disheveled from the pillow. He took off the hair elastic and let his hair fall down his back.

Absently, while the coffee was brewing, he ran a brush through it. Probably he should have it cut completely off, he was thinking as he looked at himself in the mirror. He’d worn it that way for years, partly out of nonconformity, partly because he shared some beliefs with ancient cultures that there was good medicine in long hair. He’d been superstitious about cutting it. But he looked like a renegade, and he didn’t want to. Not tonight. He was going hunting, for lovely prey. Perhaps cutting his hair might show Tat that he was changing. That he was different.

* * *

He postponed his flight for five hours and had Domingo take him to an exclusive hair salon. He had his hair cut and styled. He was impressed with the results. It had a natural wave, which fell out when his hair was halfway down his back. The wave was prominent. The cut made him look distinguished, debonair. It also made him look amazingly like K.C., he thought, and chuckled as he studied himself in the mirror.

Domingo raised both eyebrows when he walked out of the salon.

“You look very different,” he said.

Rourke nodded.

Domingo smiled, but it wasn’t a happy smile. He opened the door of the limo for Rourke, and then climbed in under the wheel.

“What’s bugging you?” Rourke teased.

“It is that you have cut your hair,” he remarked. He laughed self-consciously. “I’m sorry.”

“You think I’ve damaged my ‘medicine,’” Rourke said with pursed lips and a twinkling eye.

Domingo flushed over his high cheekbones. “I am a superstitious man. What can I say? But you are a modern man, senhor,” he laughed. “You do not believe in such things, I am sure. Now we go to the airport, yes?”

Rourke was feeling something similar to Domingo’s apprehension as he ran a hand through his short, thick hair. In all the years he’d been a merc, there had been precious few close calls. He’d been shot a few times, never anything serious, except for the loss of his eye. He’d always felt that his hair had something to do with that. It was a primitive superstition, though. He was sure he was just being dumb.

“Yes, Domingo,” he said, and smiled. “To the airport. I have a busy day ahead.” And a busier night, he was hoping, if he could coax Clarisse into bed with him.

His hand felt in his pocket for the ring. It was still there. He knew she wasn’t going to be easy to convince, especially about the bed thing. But he had an ace in the hole. He was going to propose first.

He hoped he wasn’t going to have to go back to Nairobi alone. But, then, whatever it took, he was going to do it. If he had to follow her back to Manaus and court her like a schoolboy, he would. He was never going to let her get away from him. Never.

* * *

Medina, Barrera’s capital, was like most other South American cities, cosmopolitan and remote at the same time. The people were a mixture of races, and the official language was Spanish.

There was a regional airport and a bus terminal. There were no limousines here. Not yet. The general was only beginning to repair the damage to the infrastructure that Sapara had caused. The usurper had done a lot of damage during the time he’d been in power. Most of the money had gone into his own pockets and he’d spent lavishly on himself. The presidential mansion was worth many millions. Machado had wanted to tear it down, but the grateful populace, much of which he’d rescued from Sapara’s prisons, wouldn’t hear of it. Powerful foreigners would come here to help rebuild the country, one of his advisers had said. A luxurious presidential residence would reinforce the notion that Barrera was worth aid.

He didn’t agree at first, but he finally gave in. If he demolished it, he’d have to spend the money to rebuild it. He did, however, have all the solid gold fixtures that Sapara had imported melted down and minted. That had earned him much praise, especially in light of the social programs he’d implemented to give free health care to the poor. Machado was a good man.

Rourke checked into the only luxury hotel in the city. He wondered if Tat would be staying here, too. He hoped so.

He put his suitcase down and unpacked his dinner jacket. He smiled as he thought of the evening ahead. It was going to be the best night of his life.

* * *

Five doors and a floor away, Clarisse Carrington was looking at the dark circles under her eyes as she thought about the night to come. Rourke’s name was on the list of honorees, but she was certain that he wouldn’t show up. He hated society bashes, and he was a modest man. He wouldn’t be interested in having people make him out to be a hero, even though he was one.

Clarisse had hero-worshipped him from the age of eight, admired his courage, loved him to the point of madness. But Stanton Rourke hated her. He’d made it crystal clear for years, even without the horrible things he’d said to her when he got her out of Ngawa.

He was never going to love her. She knew that. But she couldn’t help the way she felt about him. It seemed to be a disease without a cure.

She studied her face in the mirror. The bullet wound had left evidence of its passage in her scalp, but a little careful hair-combing hid it well. The scars on her left breast were less easy to camouflage. Sapara’s henchman, Miguel, had put a knife into her, over and over again while trying to make her tell about General Machado’s offensive. She hadn’t talked. That was why she was getting a medal tonight. For bravery. Because she’d survived the torture and rescued not only herself, but two college professors, as well. They said she was a heroine. She laughed without humor. Sure.

She was standing there in a long slip. It would go under the elegant white gown she’d bought from a boutique for the event. It had simple lines. It fell to her ankles. The bodice wasn’t even suggestive. It was high enough to cover the scars on her breast. It had puff sleeves that reminded her somehow of a gown she’d seen in a period movie about the Napoleonic era. She looked good in white.

She thought how Stanton would have laughed to see her in the color. He would think it should be scarlet. He thought she was little better than a call girl. That was ironic, and it would have been amusing except that it was tragic.

She’d never been with a man in her life. She’d never been intimate with anyone, except Stanton, one Christmas Eve long ago, when she was seventeen. She’d loved him then and every day since, despite his antagonism, his mockery, his taunting.

She knew he hated her. He’d made it obvious. It didn’t seem to make any difference, though. She couldn’t get him out of her mind, any more than she could permit any other man to touch her.

She’d made a play for Grange, the leader of Machado’s insurgent troops. But that had been an act of desperation, and mainly due to antianxiety drugs that she’d taken after the tragic deaths of her father and her little sister, Matilda. Her life had been shattered.

Rourke had come running, the minute he heard about it. He’d handled the funeral arrangements, organized the service, done everything for her while she walked around numb and brokenhearted. He’d put her to bed, holding her while she sobbed out her heart. He’d called a doctor, her doctor, Ruy Carvajal, and had him sedate her when the crying didn’t stop.

She thought of Ruy and a question he’d asked her before she came here. She’d invited him to come, too, just on the chance that Rourke might show up. He’d had to go to Argentina, to treat a longtime patient who was also a friend. But he’d asked her to consider marrying him; a marriage of friends, nothing more. He knew how she felt about Rourke, that she couldn’t permit another man to touch her. It wouldn’t matter, he assured her, because he’d been badly wounded in a firefight on a mission with the World Health Organization. Because of the wounds, he could no longer father a child. He was, he added solemnly, no longer a man, either. He was unable to be intimate with a woman. This had led to many suspicions among his people, who revered a man’s ability to beget children above all other attributes.

He would be happy to put an end to the gossip. He could give Clarisse a good life. If she was certain, he added, that Rourke would never want her.

She told him that she’d consider it, and she had. Rourke didn’t want her. She couldn’t want anyone else. She was twenty-five, and Ruy was kind to her. Why not? It would give her some stability. She would have a friend, someone of her own.

It sounded like a good idea. She thought she might do it. It might sound like an empty life to some people. But to Clarisse, whose life had been an endless series of tragedies, the prospect of a peaceful life was enticing. She didn’t need sex. After all, she’d never had it. How could she miss something she’d never experienced?

She mourned Rourke, but that would end one day, she thought. She gave her reflection a grim smile. Sure it would. When she died. She turned and went to put on her gown for the gala evening.

3

Clarisse walked into the building where the awards were being held, and several pair of male eyes went immediately to her slender, beautiful figure in the clinging white dress she wore. Her blond hair curled toward her face like feathers, emphasizing her exquisite bone structure, her perfect skin and teeth, her wide blue eyes. She was a beauty. In the gown, she looked like some Grecian goddess come down to earth to taunt mortals.

She didn’t even notice the attention she was getting. Her eyes were on the podium where the general would speak. There was an orchestra. It was playing soft, easy-listening sort of music while people gathered in small groups to converse. Most of the conversation was in Spanish here, not Portuguese, because Spanish was Barrera’s official language.

She smiled sadly at the little cliques. To Clarisse, who was always alone, it seemed like just one more gathering where she’d stand by herself while men tried to entice her. Sometimes she hated the way she looked. She didn’t want male attention.

She paused by a table where drinks were being served when her arm was taken by a tall man she recognized as one of General Machado’s advisers. He smiled at her. “We were hoping that you would come, Miss Carrington,” he said in softly accented English. “We have the other honorees backstage. The awards ceremony will be first, followed by dancing and drinking and utter pandemonium.” He chuckled.

She smiled up at him. “The pandemonium sounds nice. They shouldn’t have done this for me,” she added. “I didn’t really do anything except get shot and captured.”

He turned and smiled down at her. “You did a great deal more than that. All of us who live here are grateful to you and the others, for giving us back our country.”

“Are Peg and Winslow here?” she asked hopefully.

“Alas, no,” he replied solemnly. “Her father had to have surgery, just a minor thing, but they were both uncomfortable with the idea of not going to sit with him.”

“That’s like Peg,” she said softly, and smiled. “She’s such a sweet person.”

“She thinks quite highly of you, as well, as does her husband. And El General, of course,” he added with a chuckle.

“Where is the general?” she wondered.

He nodded his head toward where a tall, distinguished Latin man in a dinner jacket towered over a tall brunette in a striking blue gown.

“It’s Maddie!” she exclaimed. “She treated Eduardo Boas, who was shot before I was kidnapped.”

“Yes. She and the general are, I believe, getting married soon,” he whispered, laughing at her delighted smile. “But you must not mention this. I am not supposed to know.”

She smiled up at him. “I know absolutely nothing. I swear,” she added facetiously.

“Not true, Tat. You’re plenty smart enough,” came a deep, husky voice from behind her.

Her blood froze. Her heart started doing the tango. She didn’t want to turn around. She hadn’t dreamed that he’d show up.

“Señor Rourke will escort you to where the others are gathered backstage,” he said, nodding and bowing. Then he deserted her.

“Aren’t you going to turn around, Tat?” he asked very softly.

She took a deep breath and faced him. He looked different. She couldn’t understand why at first. Then she realized it was because his hair was short. He’d cut his hair. She wondered why. It had been in that long ponytail for years.

“Hello, Stanton,” she said quietly. “I didn’t expect you to be here.”

He looked down at her intently, his one eye narrowed and piercing as he drank in the sight of her, the memory of her in his arms making his heart race. There were no more barriers. He could have her. He could hold her and kiss her. He could make love to her...

He shook himself mentally. He had to go slow. “I was at a loose end,” he said carelessly.

“I see.” She was uneasy. She kept looking around, as if she wanted to be rescued. In fact, she did.

He looked around, too. “Did you come alone?” he asked suddenly, and there was a bite in his voice.

She swallowed. “I’d asked Ruy to come with me, but he had to fly to Argentina to treat an old friend.”

“Ruy... Carvajal, your doctor friend.”

“That’s right.”

He scowled. “You aren’t dating him, for God’s sake?” he asked curtly. “My God, Tat, he’s twenty years your senior!”

She couldn’t meet his eyes. “He’s older than I am, yes.”

He felt his muscles tighten from head to toe. She couldn’t be getting involved with the doctor. Surely not!

His silence coaxed her into looking up. His expression confounded her. In another man, it would look like jealousy. But Rourke would never be jealous of her. He hated her.

She moved restlessly. “We should go backstage.”

“Are you going to be here overnight?” he asked as they walked.

“I fly back to Manaus in the morning,” she replied.

“I’m here overnight, as well.”

She didn’t say anything. She knew that he was going to avoid her like the plague, as usual.

“Which hotel are you staying in?” he asked abruptly.

“Why? Do you want to make sure you can get one at least half the city away from it?” she burst out.

He stopped dead. “I’ve got a lot to make up to you,” he said solemnly. “I don’t even know where to start. I’ve done so much damage, Tat,” he added in a husky tone. “Far too much.”

She looked up at him, shocked.

He reached out toward her face, only to have her jerk back from him and avert her eyes.

It hurt more than he’d ever dreamed anything could.

“Tat,” he whispered roughly, wounded.

“Don’t you remember?” she bit off. “You told me...never to touch you. You said that I was repulsive...” Her voice broke. She walked around him and moved blindly to the back, where a man in a suit was motioning to them to get with the other honorees. She didn’t look to see if Rourke was coming behind her. She didn’t want to see him.

He followed her, his heart torn out of his body at her words. Yes, he’d told her that; he’d been brutal with her. How could he have forgotten? He’d hurt her so badly. Now, after years of tormenting her and himself, he finally had a chance to start over with her. But judging by what she’d just said, it was going to be a very hard road back.

* * *

The award ceremony was lengthy. General Machado made a speech. His director of the interior made a longer one. The presenter made an even longer one. By the end of it, Clarisse’s feet hurt. She was glad she was wearing low-heeled shoes.

One by one, the honorees went out to receive their awards, made a short speech and shook hands with the general. Clarisse did the same, smiling up at him as he bent to kiss her cheek, the medal in its velvet case held tightly in one hand.

“Thank you for coming,” he whispered in her ear.

“Thank you for inviting me,” she whispered back.

She shook hands with him and carried her award off the stage.

She waited while the others received their medals. Rourke joined her, somber and quiet. He hadn’t liked the general kissing her. He was fuming inside.

Clarisse saw his expression and felt her heart sink. He was angry at her again. It was familiar, though. Nothing really changed, least of all Rourke’s bad opinion.

* * *

She left her award with her coat in the cloakroom and nursed a rum drink. She’d already refused half a dozen requests to dance. She bristled at the thought of strange hands on her skin, and the dress was low cut in back. So she stood by herself, watching other people enjoy the music on the dance floor.

She felt heat at her back and stiffened. She always knew when Rourke was close. She wasn’t sure how. It was rather uncanny. She turned, her whole posture defensive.

“You’ve never danced with me, Tat,” he said, his voice deep and velvety as he drank in the exquisite sight of her.

She sipped the rum, for something to do. “Have you had all your shots?” she asked with quiet sarcasm.

There was a pause. He drew in a breath. “How about a truce, just for tonight?”

She studied him with apprehension, her face wary, her eyes wide and worried.

“I won’t hurt you,” he said. His face was taut, and not with revulsion. He looked as if he was hanging in midair, waiting for her to answer. At his side, his big hands were curled into fists. “Just for tonight,” he repeated in a voice so soft that she had to strain to hear it.

He’d tormented her for so long. The pain, the memories, were in her wide blue eyes, in her sadness. She bit her lower lip, hard, and twisted her small evening bag into an unrecognizable shape in her cold hands.

He moved a step closer, so that he was almost right up against her. His breath caught as he breathed in the floral perfume she wore, just a hint of it. His hands came up, very slowly, and went to her waist. He was hesitant.

“Trust me,” he said at her forehead. “Just this once.”

“You don’t like me to touch you,” she managed in a choked tone.

His eye closed on a wave of pain. “I lied.” He looked down into her shocked face. “I lied, Tat,” he whispered. “I want your hands on me. I want you close, as close as I can get you.” He drew in an unsteady breath. “Humor me.”

She hesitated. It would start the addiction off, all over again, just when she was thinking that she could finally get over him.

“Come on.” He took the drink from her cold hands and put it on the table. Then he caught the other small hand in his, linking his fingers into hers, and led her into the large room where the orchestra was playing. Couples were moving slowly to a bluesy tune.

He turned and curved one long arm around her waist. He slid his fingers in between hers and rested them over his spotless white shirt. He moved closer and led her, to the rhythm of the music. He could hear her breath catch, feel the tenseness in her young body slowly give way to the seduction of the slow movements.

“That’s more like it,” he said roughly at her temple.

She thought she felt his mouth there. Surely he wouldn’t do that, though, she reminded herself. She should pull away. She should run. He was going to hurt her. This was the way it always was. He was kind, or seemed to be. Then he pushed her away, taunted her, tormented her...

She pulled back and looked up at him with anguish in her face.

“No,” he whispered, wincing as he read the apprehension there. “I meant it. I swear to God, I won’t hurt you, Tat. Not with words, not any other way. I give you my word.”

That was serious business with him. If he made a promise, you could bet money on his keeping it. She searched his hard face. “Why?”

He let out a breath from between chiseled, very masculine lips. His gaze went over her head to the wall beyond. “I...heard some gossip, years ago. Malicious gossip. Long story short, I thought we were related by blood.”

She stopped dancing. She gaped at him. “Wh...what?” she asked, and started to jerk away from him.

His arm curled her into his tall, muscular body and held her there. “It wasn’t true,” he said. “I had it checked out. Your mother’s blood type was O positive,” he said through his teeth. “And your father’s blood type was B positive. I’m AB Negative, like K.C. You’re B positive.” He hesitated. “I had a covert DNA scan done from a sample of your blood. Don’t ask how I got it,” he said when she opened her mouth. “I’m a spy. I have ways. I spoke to a geneticist. There is no way in hell we could be related. Not even in the most distant way.”

She was standing very still. All of a sudden the past eight years made absolute sense. He’d behaved sometimes as if it was tormenting him to be near her, as if he wanted her but he wouldn’t permit himself to touch her, or her to touch him.

The realization made her face change, made her expression change.

His jaw tautened as he looked down at her. “Oh, God, don’t you think I wanted you, too?” he whispered in anguish. “Wanted you, ached for you, for years! And I couldn’t... I didn’t dare even touch you...!”

Tears welled up in her eyes. It was like dreams coming true. She couldn’t believe it.

“Oh, baby,” he whispered, and suddenly dragged her body against his, holding her. He started shivering, from the force of desire, so long denied.

She pulled back abruptly, her eyes horrified. “Are you all right, Stanton?” she asked at once. “You’re shivering! It isn’t the malaria recurring?” He’d had it years ago. She’d nursed him through one bout of it when she was a child, in Africa. She reached up hesitantly to touch his face. “You do feel a little warm...”

He was almost in shock. He was shivering with desire and she didn’t know it. But she was experienced. She’d had men. How could she be ignorant of something so basic?

He scowled. Impulsively, his hand slid down to the base of her spine and pulled her very close, letting her feel the sharp, immediate arousal of his body.

She went scarlet and tried to get away from him, struggling to escape the intimate contact, which she’d only ever felt once, the Christmas Eve that she’d almost given in to his ardor. No man had been allowed to touch her that way since. It was still embarrassing.

Rourke felt as if Christmas had come. He let her move away, but his one good eye was brimming with joy, with exultation.

He bent his head a little, so that he was looking right into both of her eyes. “You’re still a virgin, aren’t you, Tat?” he asked in a rough whisper.

“Stan...ton!” she choked, and averted her eyes.

He slid his cheek against hers. He shivered again. “I don’t have malaria,” he whispered. “That part of me is looking for a soft, warm, dark place to hide in.”

It took her a minute to work that out. When she did she colored even more. She hit his chest. “Stanton!”

He laughed softly, with utter delight, nuzzling his face against hers. “You couldn’t do it with anyone else, could you, Tat?” he teased.

And there it was. Assumptions. Arrogance. He knew how she felt. He’d said it would be a truce, but it really wasn’t. He was moving in for the kill. Now that he knew what she really was, he’d never relent. He’d stalk her until he seduced her. He might sound pleasant; he might even sound as if he cared about her. But at the end of the day, he just wanted sex. He’d desired her for years, but thought he couldn’t have her. Now he knew that he could. And it was true. She had no defense. Except one.

“Ruy asked me to marry him,” she said quietly, without looking up at him.

He went very still. “What?”

She swallowed. “He may be much older than I am, but he’s a good, kind man.” She closed her eyes. “I said yes, Stanton,” she lied. It was the only protection she could give herself from a one-night stand that she didn’t want, couldn’t bear. She loved him too much. “So if you’re thinking in terms of a night in bed with me, think again. I won’t cheat on my fiancé.”

His whole world exploded. He stared at her with anguish that he couldn’t even hide. He started to speak, but before he could get a word out, General Machado appeared beside them with Maddie beaming at his side.

“We are getting married,” Machado said, laughing softly as Maddie actually blushed. “I wanted you both to know.” He shrugged. “I am years too old for her, but what the hell. I love her.” He looked at the pretty brunette with eyes that worshipped her.

“Almost as much as I love him,” Maddie tried to joke, but her eyes were eating him.

“Congratulations,” Rourke said, hiding his own misery. He shook hands with the general and kissed Maddie on the cheek. “I’m happy for both of you.”

“So am I,” Clarisse choked, repeating his gestures. “I hope you’ll be so happy together.”

“Same here,” Rourke added.

They smiled, then laughed, then talk revolved around the awards and how they came to be. The general mentioned that his son, San Antonio police lieutenant Rick Marquez had wanted to come, but his wife was in the early stages of pregnancy and wasn’t doing well; Rick couldn’t bring her with him, or leave her, so he sent his regrets via Skype. The general and his son spoke often these days.

Rourke went through the motions of paying attention, but he was dying inside. He was too late. Tat had finally given up on him. She was going to marry the damned doctor in Manaus.

* * *

He wandered away. Tat noticed him dancing with a ravishing blonde, laughing down at her. She smiled sadly to herself. Why did she ever expect things to change? There was Rourke, being himself, coaxing women to his bed. She imagined the ravishing blonde would give him what Clarisse wouldn’t, a single night of pleasure.

It disturbed her that he’d found a replacement so quickly. Well, what had she expected? That when he realized she wasn’t a blood relation, he’d declare eternal love and produce a wedding ring? Fat chance of that ever happening. She’d had a lucky escape, because it wouldn’t have been possible for her to refuse him. She loved him too much, despite everything.

She turned with a sad little smile and went out of the building, caught a cab and went back to her hotel room. It was just as well not to trust in dreams.

* * *

She was sleeping. She woke suddenly, just after an attack of some sort, bombs going off, a rifle shot. She was wet with sweat, even in the air-conditioned room. She still had nightmares from her ordeal in Barrera. The phone was ringing off the hook.

She answered the phone, noting that it was three o’clock in the morning. “Yes?” she asked, surprised at the call at this hour.

“Miss Carrington? It’s O’Bailey. You remember me?”

She searched her memories. “You’re the computer hacker. You were with us when General Machado led the counterrevolution.”

“That’s me, ma’am.” He cleared his throat. “The general said you were here for the awards ceremony. I was, too, but I arrived late. I heard a commotion downstairs and when I looked in the bar, well, it’s really bad. He’s going to kill somebody or get himself arrested. That would really upset the general with all the international press here, and I thought...”

“He?” Clarisse asked.

“Rourke,” he replied. “He’s totally out of control. I’ve only ever seen him drunk a time or two, and he’s dangerous when he drinks. Somebody has to get him out of there, or the general’s policemen are going to arrest him and put him in jail.” He hesitated. “There are reporters in the hotel, too. If one of them sees him...”

“Rourke is drunk?” She was dumbfounded. “O’Bailey, he doesn’t drink hard liquor. Well, maybe he drinks, but he never has enough to make him lose control...”

“Ma’am, he just threw one of the bouncers through a glass window.”

“Oh, good Lord!” she exclaimed.

“I was wondering if you could come down here and maybe talk to him.”

She hesitated. She was afraid of Rourke in a temper.

“Ma’am, there’s always one person that a drunk person can be controlled by. With my dad, it was my little sister. She could just lead him by the hand, when he’d kill another man for trying to make him stop drinking. I don’t think Rourke would ever hurt you. But I’ll be there if he tries to. Please?”

“Are you downstairs?” she asked.

“Yes, ma’am.”

“I’ll meet you in front of the bar.” She hung up.

* * *

She put on slacks and a yellow pullover blouse. She didn’t wait to make up her face. She met O’Bailey outside the lounge downstairs, where a vicious loud voice was cursing in Afrikaans. She winced.

“He’ll listen to you,” he said. “I know he will.”

She gave O’Bailey a grim look. “I’ll try,” she said.

She walked into the bar. There was another man, one who looked about half as drunk as Rourke. He spotted her and got up, grinning from ear to ear.

“Well, look what a pretty little fairy just walked in the door,” the man exclaimed. He caught her by the arm and tried to pull her to him. “Precious, how about coming up to my room...?”

In an instant, Rourke had him by the throat. His one eye was dark with rage. “You touch her again and I’ll kill you!” he said through his teeth. He threw the man backward. He fell over a table and picked himself up and ran out of the lounge, holding his throat.

“Stanton,” Clarisse said softly.

He looked down at her. He was breathing roughly. He reeked of whiskey. He peered at her, frowning. “Why are you here, Tat?” he asked in almost a whisper.

“I came to get you.” She slid her cold, nervous hand into his. He’d frightened her when he grabbed the man by the throat. But he didn’t look violent at all now. “You have to come with me.”

“Okay,” he said easily.

She tugged on his hand. He let her lead him right out of the room, to where O’Bailey was waiting. She could hardly believe it. The bar was a wreck. Men, big men, were against the wall, behind tables, as if they were hoping Rourke wouldn’t notice them. Grown men were afraid of him, but he was following along with Clarisse like a lamb.

“I’ll talk to him. Is he staying at this hotel?” Clarisse asked the Irishman, grimacing as she noted the bartender just peering over the bar and looking hunted. “He’ll pay for the damage,” Clarisse said.

O’Bailey nodded. “Rourke’s in room 306. I imagine the key’s in his pocket.”

“Thanks,” she said.

“No, ma’am, thank you!” he replied, and she smiled.

He nodded, grinned, gave Rourke an apologetic smile and went into the lounge.

Rourke looked down at Tat. “Why are you here?” he asked angrily. “Won’t your fiancé miss you?”

“He’s in Argentina with a patient,” she reminded him. “He won’t be home for several weeks.”

“What a tough break for him,” he said, looking down at her with barely hidden hunger. “God, you’re a knockout,” he said huskily. “I ache just looking at you!”

She flushed. She turned and led him into the elevator. They rode up in silence to the third floor. He was watching her with unnerving intensity.

She led him to his door. “You need to get out the key card,” she said.

He leaned against the door. “No.”

“Stanton,” she groaned.

“Once I open the door, you’ll leave,” he said heavily.

She nibbled her lower lip.

“I can always go back to the bar,” he said cagily, shouldering away from the door frame.

“No!”

“Promise you’ll stay with me until I fall asleep, then,” he said, his voice only slightly slurred. “Give me your word, Tat.”

She ground her teeth together. He wasn’t quite in control of himself and she was afraid of him. Not of his temper, but that he might try to continue where they’d left off when she was seventeen. That had been a near thing. Not until she was in her twenties did she realize just how near.

“I won’t...do anything you don’t want,” he promised.

She drew in a slow breath. “I’ll hold you to that, Stanton.”

He smiled. He drew out the card and pushed it into the lock. There was a click and a tiny green light went on. He pulled the card out and slipped it back into his pocket. He opened the door. “After you.”

She walked into the room, a poem about spiders and flies teasing around the edge of her mind.

The room flooded with light as he touched a switch.

She turned to him. He looked harder than she’d ever seen him. His handsome face was tense with some powerful emotion as he stared down at her with his one good eye.

She looked back, wincing at the eye patch.

He misread the look. “Ya,” he said coldly. “I’m disabled. That what you’re thinking?”

“I was remembering when it happened,” she said softly.

The tension grew worse. “I’d just...been told something that upended my life,” he said evasively, avoiding her quiet gaze. “Like a rank beginner, I walked right into an ambush.” He laughed coldly. “Lost an eye, took a bullet in the chest...” His eye cut back around to her face. “You were there, sitting by the bed when I came out from under the anesthesia.”

“K.C. called me,” she said. She lowered her eyes to his chest. “He was scared to death, and he didn’t want to start gossip all over again by sitting with you. Nobody thought it unusual that I did. I knew most of the hospital staff in Nairobi.”

He drew in a breath. He felt sick. Sweaty. “There was a lot of gossip after that.”

“I never noticed. Neither did you.”

He studied her downcast face. “As soon as the stitches came out, I invited Anita out to the game farm and sent you home to DC.”

She bit her lip. “Yes.”

He closed his eye, anguish in his whole body as he recalled that act of cruelty. “I didn’t even thank you, for what you did. I wanted to die when they told me I’d lost an eye, that I might go blind. You made me want to live.”

She didn’t say anything, but her posture was eloquent.

He swayed a little. She caught him as he reeled.

“I’m drunk, Tat,” he managed with a breathy laugh.

“You don’t do this much.”

“Only rarely,” he agreed as she helped him toward the bed. “I don’t like being out of control.”

“You never did.”

He eased down onto the bed, shoes and all. He looked up at her quietly. “Help me undress. I can’t sleep in my clothes.”

She stared at him while the soft plea made her flush.

He held out a big hand. “Come on, chicken,” he said with a faint smile. “Tat, I’m drunk,” he reminded her when she hesitated. “I can’t get hard. If I can’t get hard, I’m no threat.”

The flush got deeper.

He laughed huskily. “And all these years, I thought you’d had one man after another,” he said. His face twisted. “Damn me for what I did to you!”

She didn’t understand the anger. She didn’t understand his change of attitude. She didn’t really trust it, either.

“Don’t,” he said, seeing the debate going on in her mind. He shifted and winced. “Help me, Tat. I just want to sleep.”

She moved closer to the bed. Hesitantly, she pulled off his shoes, and then his socks. He had beautiful feet, for a man.

He sat up. She dropped down onto the bed beside him, still wary. He pulled her hands to the buttons of his shirt. He stared into her wide eyes. “Take it off,” he whispered, his voice like deep, soft velvet.

She felt her heart run wild. It had been years since she’d been this close to him, since he’d wanted her this close.

“Come on,” he whispered again, coaxing her fingers to the first button while his mouth hovered just above her eyes.

The tone, the proximity, got to her. She worked buttons out of buttonholes, noting the thick hair that covered his bronzed chest as she pushed the shirt back over his broad shoulders. There was a raised place just to the left of his breastbone, where he’d been shot when he lost his eye. It was hardly noticeable now.

He felt his body going taut as the shirt fell off. Her eyes were so expressive. She loved looking at him. He loved letting her. He was getting aroused, despite his protests to the contrary. So many years. A lifetime.

“You can...do the rest, I’m sure,” she said, and tried to get up.

“No, I can’t.” He smoothed her cold hands to his belt. “Help me, Tat,” he whispered.

He lay back down. When he did that, she relaxed, just a little.

She managed a shaky smile. “I’ve never undressed anybody except myself,” she blurted out.

She unfastened the belt and pulled it out of the loops, noting the expensive leather it was made of as she dropped it into the chair beside the bed. She hesitated.

He pulled her hands to the fastening of his slacks. “I can’t sleep in my best clothes,” he said gently. “Keep going.”

“Rourke...”

“Shhh,” he coaxed. His hands smoothed hers down on the fastenings. “Just a little more. That’s it. Now put your hands under the waistbands and pull. That’s all you have to do.”

His voice was seducing her. She shouldn’t. She should get up and run. She was embarrassed and nervous. Her hands were shaking.

“You can’t be...that drunk,” she began.

“Hold on to that,” he said softly, and he lifted his hips and pushed both waistbands down.

She was looking at him without realizing what she was seeing for several shocked seconds. During them, he slid out of his slacks and boxer shorts and lay back down on the bed, his eyes on her wide-eyed, shocked face as she looked and looked.

He laughed with pure delight. He was aroused. Very aroused, despite the liquor. Her eyes were enhancing what was already a magnificent hunger. He shifted on the clean sheets and groaned softly.

“I’ve dreamed of this,” he whispered huskily. “Of letting you look at me like this, feeling your eyes on me.”

She was too shocked to reply or even to try to leave.

“Tat, at your age, you’ve surely seen photographs of men like this, even if you haven’t seen the real thing,” he chided.

“Well...yes,” she said in a choked tone.

“But...?”

“None...none of them looked like...like that,” she whispered, fascinated. “You’re...you’re beautiful,” she blurted out.

His face changed. He shifted again on the sheets and shivered.

“I should... I should...go,” she choked.

One long arm snaked gently around her waist and pulled her across him and down on the bed beside him.

He wasn’t aggressive. He didn’t demand. He unbuttoned her blouse and pulled it aside. His fingers went to the front catch of the lacy little bra and unfastened it. He moved it away and looked at her beautiful, pink-tipped breasts, the crowns hard.

“You were beautiful at seventeen like this,” he said quietly. “But you’re more beautiful now.”

She couldn’t even manage words. Her heart was beating her to death.

“What...are you going to do?” she asked with helpless apprehension, because she knew that she couldn’t stop him, didn’t want to stop him. She was almost shivering with a hunger that had eight years of abstinence behind it.

“I’d very much like to put my mouth on your breast and suckle you until I made you come,” he whispered. “The way I did when you were seventeen. Remember, Tat?” His voice was soft and sensual as he looked at her bare breasts. “You were shocked at first, and after you went over the edge you cried. I kissed you and moved on top of you. I had your lacy little panties halfway down your legs and my pants unzipped. And we heard footsteps.”

She was trembling. “Yes.”

“I hurt like hell. I never thought I could stop, even then.” He drew in a long, unsteady breath. “I lived on that night for years.”

“Before or after you started going through beautiful women like tissues?” she asked with weary cynicism.

He wasn’t going to get into that. “You don’t understand what it was like,” he said quietly. “Have you ever wanted someone so much that it was like physical torture to be near them at all?”

Her head rocked on the mattress. “Not really,” she confessed.

“I wanted you to the point of madness, Tat,” he said softly. “And I couldn’t even touch you.” He smiled, but it was a hollow smile.

“So that was why...”

“That was why.” He drew in another breath. He stared down at her relaxed body, at the taut little breasts open to his eye. “So beautiful,” he whispered.

“You...haven’t touched me,” she said.

“I know. I’m not going to.”

Her expression wasn’t easily read. “Is it...because of the scars?”

His eye went to the scars, faint white lines where that butcher, Miguel, had cut her when she was a prisoner in Sapara’s jail. His face was dangerous. “I killed him, Tat. I wish I could have spared you what happened.”

Her fingers went up to his mouth and pressed there. They were cold.

He kissed them tenderly. “Those scars are marks of honor,” he whispered. “And I want very much to kiss them. But I can’t.”

“You...can’t?”

He moved away from her, just a little, and coaxed her eyes down to the raging masculinity below his belt line.

She flushed.

“I can’t,” he repeated. “Because our first time isn’t going to be when I’m too damned stinking drunk to do justice to you.”

He sat up, tugged her up and put her bra and blouse back on. He nuzzled his nose against hers, but he didn’t kiss her. “Don’t take this the wrong way. But get out of here.”

She got to her feet. He pulled the sheet across his hips and lay back with a smile.

She didn’t know what to say. He wasn’t offering anything but a sensual experience at some point in the future. He could take her and walk away. She would die a thousand deaths.

She bit her lip. “Stanton, I’m engaged...”

He studied her intently. “You want me,” he whispered. “I want you. How is the beloved physician going to feel when we go at each other like starving wolves?”

“That won’t happen,” she said, clenching her teeth.

The tension left his face. He looked at her quietly. “It will. And you know it. I can’t walk away from you again, Tat. I’m not even going to try. I’ll sober up in the morning.” It was almost a threat. His eye narrowed. “And when I do, there won’t be any place on earth you can go to get away from me.”

“I’m going...to be married,” she said harshly.

“To a man you neither love nor want,” he said. “You’ve never really seen how aggressive I can be when I want something. You’re going to find out.”

She flushed. The past few minutes had been entirely too stimulating. “I’m going home!”

He nodded slowly. “For now.”

She turned and almost ran from the room. He watched her, his eye full of longing as she closed the door firmly behind her. He smiled to himself.

* * *

All the way to Manaus, Clarisse kept going over the night before in her head. Rourke wanted her. It was almost unbelievable that he’d let someone convince him that she and he were related. She tried to see it from his point of view. She grimaced. If that had been reversed, if she’d thought they were related... Her eyes closed on a wave of pain. She’d have done the same. She would have wanted him to hate her, so that she didn’t give in to her hunger, so that she didn’t slip.

He’d been different last night. Tentative, when Rourke was never tentative. Then he’d treed a bar. She couldn’t recall that he’d ever done anything like that. He’d threatened the man who came on to her; he’d been violent. She’d never seen him so out of control. Why had he been drinking in the first place?

Then she remembered. She’d told him she was marrying Ruy Carvajal. Had that set him off?

And was it just that he wanted her? Could he feel something for her, too, something powerful and overwhelming, the way she felt about him? She laughed silently. No. Rourke didn’t love her. He was fond of her, of course; they had a long history. And he certainly wanted her. He’d gone hungry for eight years, so now that the barriers were down, he was full of expectation, full of plans to seduce her. She wanted him, too, but once he had her, he’d go on to the next conquest. It wasn’t that he wanted her so much, it was that she’d been inaccessible to him.

But he’d had her in bed with him, half-naked, and he hadn’t even touched her. She flushed, recalling what he’d shown her, how aroused he’d been. Surely if it had been only physical, he’d never have hesitated. Of course, he’d been drinking...

She took the glass of champagne the stewardess offered and drained the glass. It made the hurt a little easier. She’d told Rourke no. Now she was going home to get married. She’d tell Ruy when he came home. He’d said he’d be away for three weeks. She’d tell him when he got back. He would be delighted. She’d help him regain his status in his community. She’d protect herself from being tempted to give in to Rourke’s hunger. It would benefit everyone.

The stewardess offered a refill. She accepted it. She drained the second glass. She was pleasantly numb. She didn’t drink, so the champagne affected her strongly. She closed her eyes, drifting away. Rourke wanted her, at last, at long last. But all he really wanted was one night in bed with her, after which he’d walk away and probably be just as abusive, just as taunting as he’d ever been in the past. Except this time he’d have real ammunition. He would be able to taunt her with giving in to him, if she was crazy enough to let him into her bed. She’d become what he’d always accused her of being.

Her heart jumped when she remembered what he’d said to her, while they were dancing and later, in his room. He knew she was innocent. But he’d known when they were dancing. How had he known?

She closed her eyes and let herself drift away. She was going home. She would marry Ruy. Rourke would return to Nairobi. She would be safe. Yes. Safe.

* * *

What she didn’t know was that a tall, blond man with a bloodshot pale brown eye was even at that moment buying a plane ticket to Manaus.

4

Clarisse took a cab to her small house, the one that her parents had bought so many years ago. She’d been staying at hotels when she was in the country, when she’d brought Peg Grange here, because the memories were too stark. But she had to face the past someday. The house was part of it.

She put down her suitcase and purse and walked into the living room. She’d replaced the couch where Rourke had almost seduced her eight years ago. But the memories were still there, so exciting, so hot, that she flushed just recalling them.

It had been Christmas Eve. She was seventeen years old. Rourke had been in Manaus on a job, and he came by to pay his respects to Clarisse’s parents. He and her father had been friends, despite the difference in their ages. Her parents and K. C. Kantor had been close since Clarisse was a child, playing with Rourke when her father was stationed in Kenya.

Rourke had teased her while they decorated the Christmas tree. She’d been wearing a slinky dress that her mother hadn’t approved of, but she knew Rourke was coming by the house and she’d wanted so much to look grown-up, to make him see her as a woman.

And he had. He’d looked and looked. While they spoke, while he teased her, while they put the ornaments on the tree.

Her father and sister had been doing last-minute shopping. Her mother had been home, but a neighbor had come by and asked her to step next door and look at a small child with a fever. Maria had been a nurse and she was still the last refuge of people with little money. Reluctantly, because she knew Rourke’s reputation, she’d let herself be talked into leaving the house.

Clarisse could still see the expression in Rourke’s brown eyes, because it was before he’d lost one of them, as the front door closed behind her mother. He’d moved toward her with intent, for the first time since she’d known how she felt about him.

Without a word, he’d lifted her off the floor in his strong arms and his mouth had settled with exquisite tenderness on her trembling lips.

He brushed them softly with his and smiled when she looked at him from wide blue eyes. “You’ve never done this,” he whispered.

She shook her head.

“Lucky, lucky me,” he whispered back, and bent again to her lips. “Don’t be afraid, Tat. I won’t hurt you. I promise.”

He’d spread her out on the couch while he unbuttoned the silk shirt he was wearing and pulled it out of his slacks. She watched him like a cat, with wide-eyed wonder.

He slipped out of his shoes and slid alongside her on the long leather couch.

“Mama,” she whispered worriedly. “She won’t be gone long...”

“I’ll hear her,” he promised.

While she was worrying, his big hands went to the wide straps that held up the dress and slid them with sensual mastery right down over her soft little breasts. She opened her mouth to protest and his mouth went down right on one breast and began to suckle it.

She had to bite her lip almost through to keep back the helpless cry of pleasure as she felt desire for the first time in her life. It was more than desire. She arched up to his lips, clutched at the back of his head, where the hair was thick, and tried to bring his mouth even closer. The suction increased suddenly and she threw back her head, arched her back and climaxed in his arms.

She cried then. It shocked her that she was abnormal. But Rourke had only laughed, softly, with pure delight, and comforted her. She loved him, he whispered, that was why. It made her extremely sensitive to his lovemaking.

Her eyes had opened wide as his body slowly overwhelmed hers. He let her feel the slow, building tension of his body, let her feel it swell against her flat belly. That, too, he whispered, was the most natural thing in the world. And how would she like to feel it inside her?

She flushed, but his mouth covered hers and she shivered, her legs parting as he moved between them, her voice breaking as she encouraged him. She felt his hands under her dress, moving the lacy little briefs down, touching her in a place and a way she’d never been touched in her life. And all the while, he fed on her breasts, working the hard crowns with his tongue. She was pleading then, begging him. His hand moved between them in a heated rush as he felt for the zipper and tugged at it with something like desperation...

And they’d heard the door open and her mother’s footsteps.

Barely in time, they were dressed and apparently putting decorations on the tree when she walked in. But Clarisse’s mother could see quite easily what had been going on. She hadn’t approved—that was obvious. She’d lectured her daughter after Rourke had left, minutes later, without a word to Clarisse or even a backward glance. That man, Maria said coldly, had a string of lovers, and he was not adding her precious chaste daughter to them! She would make sure of it.

Clarisse didn’t think of Rourke that way. Not until Rourke had been wounded soon afterward in a conflict that cost him his eye and almost his life. She’d flown to Nairobi and sat by his bedside for days, nursing him, forcing him to live, to cope with the loss of the eye. His reaction to her had been heartbreaking. He’d been ice-cold, withdrawn. He acted as if he hated her. The minute he was allowed to leave the hospital, he took an old girlfriend home with him and didn’t even thank Clarisse for being there when he needed her most.

But that was only the beginning. Later that year, he flatly refused her invitation to a party in Manuas. Even then, she didn’t get the idea. He stopped answering her letters and refused to pick up the phone if she was on the other end.

Not until the next time they met, at some fund-raiser in Washington, DC, when he was so cold and mocking about her behavior that she was certain he hated her. He called her an immoral little tramp who was any man’s. Nothing had ever hurt so much. He was the only man she’d ever been intimate with. Had her behavior with him made him think that she was any man’s, that she was immoral? Was that why he suddenly hated her? She hadn’t known. She hadn’t understood. But his hateful attitude had caused her to avoid him, off and on, ever since.

But every time there was a tragedy in her life, he was there. It had never made sense. Now, perhaps, it did. He’d wanted her beyond bearing and he’d heard gossip that they were related. She couldn’t help wondering if her mother had anything to do with that gossip. Then she swept aside the suspicion. The mother she loved would never have been that cruel, even to save her daughter’s innocence. Of that she was certain.

Perhaps K.C. had told Rourke something. He seemed to like Clarisse, but perhaps he had someone else in mind for his employee—or his son, some people said. Rourke and K.C. were so alike that she’d wondered for years if they weren’t related.

Well, it didn’t matter now. Rourke was not going to take her to bed and walk away. Whatever she had to do to protect herself, even if it meant marrying Ruy, she would do.

She loved Rourke far too much. She’d just gone on the endangered list, if he’d meant what he said. So she had to start making plans. She didn’t love the Manaus physician, but he was kind and she could live with him as long as there were no physical demands. It would protect her from Rourke, who would never coerce a woman into forsaking her marriage vows. He was quite old-fashioned in that sense. There had never been a single instance when he’d been seen with a married woman, not even one who was separated from her husband. He was, in his own way, something of a Puritan.

Besides all that, she thought that it had just been the alcohol talking. Rourke had been very inebriated. Probably he was just teasing her, as he had for years.

* * *

She thought that until she answered a knock at the door that evening and found an amused, blond man leaning on the door frame facing her.

She caught her breath.

“And you thought I didn’t mean it,” he mused, smiling through bloodshot eyes. “Come dancing, Tat.”

She was all at sea. “We danced last night,” she began.

He smiled. “There’s a Latin Club in town. It just opened.” He leaned toward her. “I can do the tango.”

She flushed. It was her favorite dance. She’d been dancing it with a handsome Latin at a club in Osaka, Japan, one night when she’d gone to a society wedding to which Rourke was also invited. The club was where the crowd had gone for supper after a rehearsal dinner. Rourke had shown up there with a date. He hadn’t danced with Clarisse, of course; he was his usual mocking, sarcastic self. But he drew his date onto the dance floor and Clarisse watched with wide-eyed wonder as he held the audience enthralled with his skill. She thought she’d never seen anyone dance like that in her life. He hadn’t said a single word to Clarisse, much less danced with her.

“Come on. Give in,” he teased. “You know you want to.”

“I was going to watch television...”

“Put on something sexy and come dancing. You can watch television when you’re alone.”

She opened the door, with obvious apprehension. “I’ll have to get dressed.”

He tilted her face up to his with a thumb under her chin. His expression was very solemn. “I’ll make you a promise, Tat. I won’t touch you, in any way, until you tell me you want me to.”

She colored. “That’s new.”

“Isn’t it?”

“I’ll get dressed,” she said.

* * *

She came back into the living room dressed in a black cocktail dress with sequins around the hem, with strappy tango shoes and carrying a small black purse.

“Leave the purse here,” he said, smiling at the picture she made. “I’ve got money.”

“Okay.” She tossed it onto the side table. “Oh, my house key...”

She dug it out and looked at herself. The dress fit closely and there were no pockets.

He took the key from her and slid it into the expensive slacks he was wearing with a black silk shirt open at the neck and an expensive dark jacket.

His fingers linked into hers. “Do you mind?” he asked softly.

She tingled all over. “No,” she faltered. “It’s all right.”

He smiled and led her to a stretch limousine that she hadn’t even noticed in her excitement.

“Oh, it’s Domingo, isn’t it?” she exclaimed when the driver got out to open the back door for them. “How is your family? Your daughter...?”

“Doing very well, thanks to you, senhorita,” he said with feeling. “I am happy to see you again!”

She grinned at him and let Rourke ease her into the seat.

“Where are we going?” Domingo asked when he climbed in under the wheel.

“El Jinete,” he said, laughing. “An Argentina native runs it. We’re going to teach the locals how to tango.”

“Ah, such a dance,” Domingo said with feeling. “My mother is from Argentina, you know. She and my father, they danced it together. Not like these silly movies you see...”

Which brought up another subject of conversation, and that took them all the way into Manaus.

* * *

The Latin club was decorated with images of flamenco and furnishings that were reminiscent of both Spain and Latin America.

A young woman wearing a red flamenco dress escorted them to a table near the dance floor and left menus with them.

“They serve food, too,” Rourke said with a grin. “I’m starving!”

She laughed. “Me, too,” she confessed.

They had seafood salads followed by a fruity dessert and coffee.

“I’ve almost forgotten how to dance,” she confessed when he took her onto the dance floor.

“So have I,” he replied. He was remembering the club in Osaka and the hurt look on Clarisse’s face. “I got drunk after you left the club that night in Osaka.”

“Wh...what?” she faltered.

He drew her against him. “Do you think I enjoyed hurting you?” he asked huskily. He averted his gaze to the far wall. “I was scared to death to let you get this close.”

She was fascinated by his expression.

He looked down at her hungrily. “You’ve never been much good at hiding how you feel, Tat,” he said as he began to move her to the lazy, seductive rhythm. “It was a very good thing that I’d had so much to drink last night.”

She flushed and lowered her gaze to his throat.

“Of course, I was still capable,” he mused, and laughed when she stiffened. He hugged her close, with rough affection. “I don’t deserve it. But I feel ten feet tall.”

“You do? Why?”

His mouth teased her ear. “Because you’re still a virgin, Tat.”

His arm brought her closer as he turned her.

“Couldn’t you, with another man?” he asked.

She swallowed. “You’re a hard act to follow,” she managed.

His chest rose and fell a little unsteadily. “If your mother had waited another ten minutes to come back home...”

“I’d have gotten pregnant, most likely,” she interrupted him. “That would have been the end of the world, for you.”

“Why?” He lifted his head and looked into her wide eyes. “I love kids, Tat. So do you.” He smiled. “I remember you giving a bottle to that little boy at the refugee camp,” he said. “It was so poignant that I had to grit my teeth to keep from reaching for you, all the way to the airport.”

He was confusing her. She didn’t understand.

“Don’t look so worried,” he said, brushing his lips over her hair. “We’ve just met. I’m a former secret agent. I have a game park and a pet lion in Africa named Lou. I love beautiful blue-eyed blondes, and I enjoy dancing the tango.”

She laughed. “Do you have one of those permits, too? So you can shoot people...?”

“I never shoot people.” He hesitated. “Almost never.”

She was recalling Miguel and the feel of the knife at her breast. Involuntarily, her fingers went to her bodice.

His arm tightened around her. “He’ll never hurt another woman.”

“He was scary,” she recalled with a tiny shiver. “A big man, very muscular...”

He pursed his lips. “So am I, Tat.”

“Yes, but he had sloppy muscles. You’re...” She recalled how he looked under his clothes and she blushed. “I can’t believe I let you talk me into that.”

He laughed. “I can’t believe it, either. I’ll carry that memory around with me for the rest of my life.”

“Why?”

“Because of the way you looked at me,” he said. He averted his gaze. “I’m touchy about my disability, Tat,” he said. “When you looked at me, you weren’t seeing it.”

“I never see it,” she said. “Stanton, there are men missing arms and legs, in all sorts of conditions, coming home from wars and conflicts. Many of them are married or in relationships. People cope, you know?”

“I had a woman tell me once that it would be creepy to go to bed with a one-eyed man,” he said, trying to make a joke of it.

She stopped dancing and winced.

“I didn’t,” he said at once, because he knew why she winced.

“Because she wouldn’t?” she asked.

“No. Because I...couldn’t,” he said. He drew her close again and danced.

She didn’t understand.

His big hand grew caressing on her back. “While you were under the influence of those anxiety meds, you thought you wanted Grange. But would you have slept with him?”

“No,” she said at once.

“Why?”

She drew in a shaky breath. “I can’t... I don’t...” She closed her eyes.

“Because you only want me, that way,” he whispered for her.

“Yes,” she said miserably, her pride gone.

He tilted up her chin and searched her blue eyes. He wasn’t smiling. “And I only want you, that way.”

“Pull the other one,” she laughed. “That was a gorgeous blonde you were dancing with at the awards ceremony when I left the room...”

“She’s married to the presenter,” he said quietly.

“Oh.”

“Why in the hell do you think I went out and got drunk?” he asked at her ear.

“Because I wouldn’t go to bed with you,” she bit off.

He lifted his head. He sighed. “We’ve got a long way to go,” he said after a minute. “But, then, I knew it wouldn’t be easy.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Dance,” he said, smiling. “There’s only tonight.”

“Really?”

“Well, not really. I thought I’d take you on a tour of Manaus tomorrow,” he added. “We’ll go look at the opera house and see some of the street performances. We might take in a show. I’ll see what’s in town.”

“You’re not going right back to Africa, then?”

“No.”

She followed his steps so easily, as if she could read his mind and knew exactly what he was going to do next. But it wasn’t that way except for dancing. “When?” she asked.

“How long is your fiancé going to be out of town?” he asked.

“Three weeks, he said.”

He lifted his head and looked into her eyes. “I’m going to be here for three weeks,” he said.

“Stanton...”

“When I take you home tonight, I’m going to leave you at your front door,” he said quietly. “But I’m going to kiss you in such a way that you’ll lie awake all night wanting me.”

Her lips parted on a husky breath.

“Of course, I’ll also lie awake all night wanting you,” he mused, and laughed to break the tension.

The music ended. He took her back to their table and ordered champagne.

“Are we celebrating something?” she asked when the waiter poured it into flutes.

“Yes,” Rourke replied, smiling tenderly. “To beginnings.”

Well, that was innocuous enough, she supposed. He didn’t really look threatening. She smiled and raised her glass to touch to his.

* * *

Domingo waited in the car while Rourke walked Clarisse to her door.

He paused just in front of her, producing her house key. She unlocked the door, leaving the key in it.

“I had a lovely time,” she said. “Really lovely. Thank you.”

“I did, too. I don’t get out much these days,” he confessed. “Never dancing. I’m usually up to my neck in some project overseas.”

That brought back to mind what he did for a living, and she felt uneasy. “You’re always at risk.”

He shrugged. “I can’t live without it, sweetheart,” he said softly, smiling when she flushed a little at the unaccustomed endearment. He never used them to her. Not in the past. “I have to have those adrenaline rushes.”

“I suppose it’s like men who play sports or go into law enforcement work.”

“Something like that.”

She searched his face with quiet, resigned eyes. “Try not to get killed. I hate funerals.”

He chuckled. “I’m sure I’d hate my own. But you’d look gorgeous in black lace, Tat. I used to dream about you in a long, lacy see-through black gown. I’d wake up sweating.”

That was surprising. “You dreamed about me?”

“Just as you dream about me,” he said, as if he knew.

“It was eight years ago,” she began.

“No. It was yesterday.” He looked down at her. “This may get a little rough,” he said apologetically as he drew her slowly to him. “I don’t mean it to, okay?”

“I don’t understand,” she faltered, already on fire from just the contact with his powerful body.

“I’ve kept to myself...for a while,” he whispered as he bent to her mouth. His hands slid to her hips and drew her against him. He shivered as his body reacted immediately, explicitly, to just the touch of her. “Sorry,” he added unsteadily.

“It’s all right,” she said. She stood very still as his head bent, his mouth coming to brush hers very softly. He nudged her top lip away from the lower one and teased it with brief, soft little kisses that made her body go tense.

He felt that. He felt her nails biting into his upper arms as she held him.

“I’ll bet—” he breathed into her mouth “—that your nipples are like little stones right now, Tat...”

She opened her mouth, shocked, and his went down against it with furious hunger. His hands on her hips were hurting but he didn’t move them, he didn’t try to bring her closer. He just kissed her, with hunger, almost with desperation.

He groaned against her lips. “I’m going to die when I have to step away from you,” he said huskily.

He pulled back, shuddering.

“I’m sorry,” she said.

“What for?”

“Making you hurt,” she said, wincing at the strain on his face.

He straightened a little jerkily. “It will go down eventually,” he said with graveyard humor. “An ice pack might help...”

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