Proposition: Marriage

He spoke English. American English. Relief made he limp, and she managed to shake her head in spite of the bruta grip of his hand.

At last that hand left her mouth, though his arm stayed wrapped around her. She held her breath, trying to reassun him with her silence that she had the sense to be very, very quiet.

When he let go, she nearly toppled over backward. His hand on her shoulder steadied her. Taking care not to splash she stood, turned—and almost forgot the need for silence.

His glasses were gone. Everything else was the same—the loose white shirt, baggy chinos, and straight brown hai pulled back in a ponytail—but the glasses were gone, and with them had gone the man who’d worn them. It was the eyes, she thought. Those cold, blue-as-heaven eyes meeting hers didn’t belong to a shy professor. No. The man standing in front of her now, his pants wet from the thighs down, was something else; something so far outside her experience, she couldn’t put a label on him. She stood, mute and shaken staring at the stranger in front of her.

He held a finger to his lips in the age-old gesture for quiet and she realized his hands were the same. The same long fingers and palms, the same calluses and small nicks. Even though the man was different, the hands were the same. I was absurdly reassuring.

She nodded her understanding.

He turned.

She started to follow, but paused, looking down at the water that came up to her thighs now that she was on he feet. The bug was still swimming valiantly, but it was con fused. It was going in circles. She hesitated, but for only a second. The stupid thing was going to drown itself.

Quickly she scooped up the horrid creature, using the hand it had already touched. Ugh. Bug legs. Her face scrunched up in disgust, she dumped the glistening monster-bug onto the relative safety of her bush, and turned.

The man who was not a professor had stopped five feet away. He stared at her, an odd expression on his face. He probably wanted to ask if she was nuts. That was what Doug used to ask her whenever she did something he thought was dumb, which had happened rather often in the last couple of months of their ill-fated engagement.

She shrugged apologetically and tried a smile. It hurt her cheek.

He didn’t smile back. He turned and started for the shore—the western shore, which made no sense to her. He’d said there was another soldier in those woods, so why was he going that way?

Because she had no idea what else to do, she followed him.

Jane felt as frightened and confused as the bug must have been when it swam in circles, looking for land. She wanted to cry. On the one hand, she wanted the boyish professor back. An odd pang of loss assailed her over a man who had never existed. Yet she had to admit that the person she’d thought existed behind those gold-framed glasses wouldn’t have known what to do in this situation. This man, with his cold blue eyes and elegant hands, apparently did.

They reached the drowning trees first, then the muddy shore. He gestured at her, indicating he wanted her to hide behind one of the larger trees and wait.

She shook her head. The safety he offered was precarious, but at least he knew what to do. Jane hated not knowing what to do even more than she hated bugs. So she smiled and refused silently, but the smile made her face hurt where his long fingers had dug into her flesh.

She had actually fantasized about those hands. Her face heated when she remembered that. To her dismay, the rest of her body heated, too.

He moved quickly, startling a gasp out of her, stopping so close to her that she could feel the heat from his body all up and down her own wet, too-aware flesh. One strand of his hair had come loose from his ponytail, and it tickled her neck when he bent his head. “I have to take out the other soldado ,” he whispered so softly she scarcely heard him, even with his lips brushing her ear. His breath was as gentle and warm as his words were cold. “I’d rather not kill him. It will be easier to avoid that if you aren’t trotting along behind me.”

She swallowed, nodded, and went to wait behind the tree he’d indicated. And she tried to convince herself that her goose bumps came from fear, or from being wet. From anything except the remembered thrill of his lips brushing her ear.

Two

The second soldier was as easy to surprise as the first one had been. The watcher came up behind his quarry, silent as a shadow, and locked his forearm across the soldado’s throat, his right hand finding the carotid artery with deadly speed. His victim didn’t struggle long. Cutting off the blood flow to the brain was a faster way of knocking a man out than trying to throttle him, and a good deal quieter and more certain than hitting him over the head.

After seven carefully counted seconds, he lowered the unconscious body to the ground, then lightly felt the artery again. He held his breath, then let it out, relieved, as soon as he felt the pulse.

Killing some poor SOB accidentally would have been a hell of a note on which to end his career with the agency.

It took only a moment to use the man’s belt to tie his arms behind him. That wouldn’t hold him for long, but they couldn’t expect a long delay, anyhow. There were other searchers, and not all of them were Ruiz’s poorly trained, poorly equipped guerrillas.

Not all of them were after the woman, either.

He straightened and looked down at his victim, who wasn’t really a man at all, he saw. Not yet, anyway. Sixteen or seventeen, at a guess. Scarcely old enough to grow a beard. Had soldiers always been so painfully young? Or was he getting old?

Of course, he was himself capable of looking both young and innocent, though he couldn’t remember being the former, and wasn’t sure he’d ever been the latter. It was a useful skill, but he doubted he could manage it if he were the one unconscious.

He made his silent way back to where he’d left the woman. She was peering around the trunk of the tree, looking in the wrong direction. Her gauzy sundress had originally been long and loose and white; it was still long, dragging about her ankles, but now it was wet and dirty and nearly transparent He had a marvelous view of her rounded rump and white bikini panties beneath the clinging fabric.

He smiled and gave in to a rare impulse. “Boo,” he said conversationally.

She jumped half a mile.

He had his impulses under control and his smile tucked back out of sight by the time she spun around. She was really kind of cute, even half-drowned as she was right now; small and cute and round all over, like a kitten. Her face was round and innocent Her body was nicely rounded, too, if not so innocent looking, with plenty of curves and softness in just the places where a man liked to find curves and softness. Even her big brown eyes were round at the moment

Then they narrowed. “You scared me on purpose. I take it the other soldier is, uh—unconscious?”

He shrugged dismissively. Let her wonder what he’d done. It might make her jump more quickly when he wanted her to jump. “There’s no one close enough to hear us at the moment.” They needed to put some distance between them and Ruiz’s men while they could. He turned away. “Come on.”

“Where?”

He headed for his mango tree.

“Dang it,” she said. The rubbery squish of wet tennis shoes hurried along behind him. “Where are we going?”

“To get my gear, first.” He reached the tree, crouched, and jumped, catching the lowest branch. He heaved himself up.

“Then what happens?” She tilted her head back, watching him.

“We go to a village I know about on the old Camino Real—that’s the royal highway.”

“I know what it means. What I want to know is—”

“That’s right, you speak Spanish, don’t you? I hope we can reach the village before dark, but I’m not sure of the route. Between Ruiz’s troops and the new lake, my choices have become limited.” He grabbed his backpack from the crotch of the tree. “Watch out.” He tossed it down.

She jumped back just in time.

He swung down to land beside her. The sight of her from the front was just as appealing as it had been from behind. A little gold locket lay in the valley formed by full, pretty breasts. Her lacy white bra kept him from seeing as much of her nipples as he would have liked, but he could see their shadows beneath the two layers of wet cloth.

It was probably just as well she had on the bra, he decided. The low hum of arousal he felt now was pleasant More would be distracting.

Either she liked letting him look, or she was too upset to realize how transparent her dress was. “But the old Camino Real is in the high country to the east,” she said earnestly. “Shouldn’t we head south, back where we came from? Or west? There’s a decent-size town to the west—Narista, I think it’s called. I’m sure they’d have a garrison of the national police there.”

He raised his brows. Apparently she’d done some homework on San Tomás. “There’s a man in the village where we’re headed who can be trusted to get you back to the capital.” Which was where she should have stayed. The local government made great efforts to keep the beaches safe for tourists from the cruise ships. “Going south is out. Ruiz will have his troops watching the road.” He shouldered his backpack.

She frowned. “Who’s Ruiz?”

“The man who sent soldiers to kidnap you. Let’s go.”

“Wait a minute.” She laid her hand on his arm. It was a small hand, surprisingly warm, with rounded fingernails that had been neatly manicured before she soaked them in a lake while hiding from guerrillas. Now the pretty pink polish was chipped. “Who are you? I mean, I saw you on the bus, but we weren’t introduced.”

“John,” he said. It was as good a name as any, and the man he was taking her to thought of him as “John.”