Hunter's Woman

“He’s the one who contacted OID in the first place,” Catt agreed, though she felt like fleeing. Just being this close to Ty Hunter was like hell itself. Only it was a hell filled with sweet longing—the kind of longing Catt never would have thought she’d feel if they’d ever met again. Ten years had hardened her heart against him. Or so she’d thought.

“Yes,” Ty said tentatively. “He’s got a houseboat, which is how he gets around to the various tribes that live in the backwater channels off the Amazon. Casey wanted me to fill you in on the Juma and get you up to speed on the politics of what’s going down presently in Brazil regarding them.”

“Since when did you become a South American Indian expert?”

Her sarcasm assaulted him. Frowning, Ty refused to let her anger toward him distract him from what he needed to share with her. “I’ve batted around the world a lot since you knew me,” he said slowly and carefully. Noting her surprise, he added, “I left the Marine Corps five years ago. Now I work for the federal government as an expert on outbreak epidemics, with a specialty in South America and Africa.” He didn’t mention that his real knowledge was in bioterrorism. That would tip Catt off, and he didn’t need her knowing the truth—at least, not yet, and maybe never. If Morgan was wrong about this being a Black Dawn experiment, and this was an outbreak situation only, there was no reason to needlessly put more stress on Catt and her team. They’d have enough danger to handle with the epidemic alone, without the possible threat of bioterrorists in the vicinity.

Catt frowned. “I see.”

“I was also chosen for this team because I speak Portuguese. I’ve spent a lot of time in the Brazilian jungle the last three years.” He looked around, his voice softening. “It’s a beautiful place. Like a Garden of Eden. There’re so many plants and animals within the jungle itself. It’s like a living, evolving laboratory right before your eyes….”

She tried to remain immune to Ty’s unexpected vulnerability, to his obvious love of this humid jungle environment—an environment that only made her feel miserable and hot. “Pretty to you. Dangerous to us,” she accused sharply.

Shrugging, Ty studied her. Despite her personal dislike of him, Catt was gradually being less defensive and prickly as they spoke to one another. For that he was grateful. Opening his hands, he said, “No disagreement from me. Rafe will meet us at the head of the channel. He’s got a green houseboat with white trim.” Looking at his watch, Ty said, “We’ll be about an hour late, but that’s no big deal. He’ll be waiting, and he’ll guide us back to the village.”

“I just tried to raise him on the cell phone,” Catt said. “No answer.”

“I’m not surprised,” he told her in a low voice. “Cell phones don’t work real well out in the jungle. Around Manaus,” he continued, looking back upriver, where the skyline of the modern city had disappeared from view, “they work fine. Out here, I’m afraid you’re going to find that old-fashioned pony express will be the communication of the day.”

Nodding, Catt said, “No different from any other outbreak situation we’ve been in before—cut off from the outside world except by Jeep, Land Rover, horseback or a good pair of hiking boots.”

Ty nodded and grinned a little. Thrilled that Catt was settling down now and speaking to him without such rancor, he breathed an inner sigh of relief. How badly he wanted to reach out and touch her long, elegant fingers. How badly he wanted to tell Catt that the coals of his love for her were still there after all this time. It was a surprise to him, one that made him feel unstable and unsure of himself. He’d thought the love he’d had for Catt had died long ago.

“You should set your lab up near Rafe’s houseboat,” he suggested. “You don’t know what kind of epidemic we’re facing yet, and his boat is about as safe as it will get.”

“I’d already thought about that. Do you know how far back from the channel the Juma village sits?” Catt found herself falling into companionable conversation with him—once again. Oh, Ty Hunter had always been easy to talk with. How many times had she replayed those wonderful, stolen moments from the past? Far too many. Catt recalled the endless tears she’d cried when he’d abandoned her. In her greatest hour of need, when she’d craved Ty’s comfort, his arms, his support, he hadn’t been there for her. Tears pricked the backs of her eyes now, and she blinked several times to push them away. Looking at him, she dropped her gaze to his strong, capable mouth. Hotly, she recalled how wonderful his kisses had been. How his mouth had moved with such silken power across her lips, taming her, guiding her, cajoling her and meeting her hunger with his own.

Taking a shaky breath, Catt closed her eyes and rubbed her brow.

“Headache?” Ty asked gently, as she continued to gently massage her wrinkled brow. He ached to reach out and rub the tension out of her shoulders as he had in the past.

“Yes,” she muttered uneasily. “It’s a migraine coming on.”

“Some things don’t change, do they?” And he smiled a little as she opened her dark blue eyes and stared at him. The silence stretched between them. Ty recalled that headaches, the migraine variety, had always plagued Catt. In the past, when they had been going together, he would turn her around and gently knead and massage her tight neck and shoulders, and miraculously, the oncoming migraine would disappear. And when he looked in her eyes now, he saw that she remembered, too, how he had cared for her. And then he saw anger wash the warmth in her gaze away. Realizing he’d overstepped the bounds of their present, tenuous relationship, he said, “Sorry, I just don’t like to see you in pain.”

Her fingers slipped from her brow and she sat up, fury sizzling through her. “Really?” Sarcasm made her voice brittle, nearly acidic.

Heat raced up his cheeks. Ty realized he was blushing beneath her blistering stare. Well, didn’t he have it coming? “I have a friend, a homeopathic doctor,” he said, trying to steer their conversation back on track. “She saved my life with this alternative medicine when I contracted Congo fever in an outbreak over in Africa. They had flown me to London to die. The priest had already given me the last rites when Dr. Rachel Donovan-Cunningham came in, gave me one of her little white pills and told the priest to go away, that I wouldn’t be needing his services.” Ty’s mouth stretched a little as he held Catt’s furious gaze. Already, as he began his story, he could see her anger fleeing, replaced with curiosity. That was one of the many things he had loved about Catt: her emotions were so open, so easily read on her face. Yes, she had a temper, but it never lasted long. She was like a Texas thunderstorm, erupting suddenly, but quickly returning to calm. In some ways, she hadn’t changed at all, and he gloried in that small discovery.

“I’ve heard of homeopathy. So it saved your sorry neck?”

Hunter chuckled. “For better or worse, yes, it did.” He gestured toward her left shoulder. “I remember you got migraines from a tight neck and shoulders. Dr. Donovan-Cunningham taught me a lot about homeopathy as I recovered in that London hospital. As a parting gift, she gave me a repertory and materia medica on the medicine. Over the years, I’ve gotten more training when I could. I’m not at her level, but I can use it for acute situations like your migraine if you’re interested.”

Catt didn’t like the idea of Ty helping her. All too vividly, she recalled how he’d made her migraines go away before—with his marvelous, kneading fingers that worked a special magic on her tight flesh. Glaring at him, she said, “With you on board, my migraine is coming back. I’ll take anything to make it and you go away.”

Ty understood. “If I thought jumping overboard and swimming back to shore would cure it, I would.”

“Try it.”

Stung, but trying not to show his hurt, he took out a pad of paper and pen from his shirt pocket. “If you can answer a few questions about your symptoms, maybe I can find the right remedy to get rid of it. But unfortunately, I won’t be able to rid you of myself just yet.”

“Fire away,” she muttered, as she ruefully rubbed her neck to ease the tension.

He opened the pad and asked, “What does it feel like?”

Grimacing, Catt growled, “Like someone is pulling all the skin on the back of my head and neck so tight that it’s going to crack and break.”

He wrote some notes down. Pleased that she was going to cooperate despite the fact that she saw him as her archenemy, Ty asked, “The pain? Can you describe it?”

“Dull and aching. Why are you asking me so many questions? Why can’t you just give me the pill for migraines?”

“Because in homeopathy, we take all the symptoms of your case first, look them up in the repertory as a unit and then find the one single remedy that fits most of your major symptoms.”

“Humph.”

“This isn’t like the pharmaceutical drugs you’re used to,” he warned.

“Obviously. What else? This thing is coming on slow but sure.”

“When did it start?”

“When I saw you.”

He nodded and looked at his watch. “So it’s a slow-moving migraine?”

“You know it is.”

Unruffled, he said, “What makes it feel worse?”

“Having you sit here. Having you on this tug with me.”

The corners of his mouth rose slightly. “I won’t find those symptoms in my repertory. Any others?”

She tried to remain immune to his charm, to that little-boy smile lurking around his mouth. Why did Ty have to be so damned ruggedly handsome? He could charm a snake if he wanted to. Nostrils flaring, she lifted her head and rubbed her neck. “I just had a cup of coffee, and that helped ease it a little.”

“So, it gets better with stimulants?”

She eyed him. “I guess you could say that. Coffee is a stimulant of sorts.”

“That’s right,” he agreed. “What else?”

It hurt to think at this point. Catt wished Ty would go away, and at the same time, her heart was absorbing his nearness like a desert that hadn’t seen rain in years—a decade to be exact—and that made her scared of her own emotions toward him. Fumbling for a response, she muttered, “Bad news.”

“Me,” he said, scribbling again. “Anything that makes your symptoms worse?”

“With this damned humidity cranking up, I always feel horrible. So I guess you could say heat and sunlight like we’re having right now, okay?”

Ty finished writing and got up. “I’ll be back in a bit with a remedy.”