Man of Passion (10 page)

"Tell me about your mother's dream," he urged, steering the houseboat toward where the rivers merged. Inwardly,
Rafe
chastised himself for his nosiness. But Ari invited such close inspection whether he wanted to acknowledge it or not. All around them, currents swirled in clockwise and counterclockwise currents as the two rivers joined one another. It was always a little chaotic in this stretch, but
Rafe
was used to traversing the currents with his trusty, sturdy houseboat.

Ari told him about her youth. When she got to the part about Janis dying, her voice ebbed to a painful whisper. "Janis was several years older than me.
My big sister.
She was such a daredevil. She loved to ride horses. My parents gave her a horse when she was five. And by nine years old, she was entering jumping competitions in her age group—and winning!" Ari smiled sadly as she felt his gaze settle on her. When she looked over, she met and held his eyes for a moment. Quickly looking away, she said, "Janis took a dare from a boy at the stable where her horse was boarded. He dared her to jump a four-foot stone wall." Flailing her hands helplessly, Ari continued, "Janis had never jumped four feet with Rosebud, her horse. But she loved challenges and she tried to make the jump. Rosebud balked at the last moment, throwing her into the wall." Closing her eyes, Ari whispered, "Janis died of a broken neck on the spot. I learned about it later that day. I was so shocked."

Rafe
saw her knitting her hands nervously in her lap atop the leather-bound journal. "That must have been very hard on you. Did you have any other siblings?"

"Yes, Kirk.
He's the oldest. He was fourteen at the time Janis died. Everyone was devastated, as you can imagine."

"Especially you?"
Rafe
inquired gently. He saw the terrible loneliness and grief etched in her sky-blue eyes. Wanting to reach out and cup her
cheek,
let her know that someone else felt the pain of her loss,
Rafe
quickly squelched the impulse. Being around Ari was disconcerting. His protective instincts were on full alert. But the last thing he wanted to do was get involved with any woman again. Justine had wounded him too deeply for him to allow his feelings to resurface. Normally he was in tight control of himself. With Ari, he found himself aching to touch her, just to give her solace, or to share a joyful moment with her. And yet she was so painfully shy and timid. He was beginning to understand that losing her big sister as a vulnerable eight-year-old had taken a lot of vitality out of her.

"We were close. Really close," she admitted hollowly. "After that…well, my mother fell ill.
Really ill.
About six months after Janis was buried, she fainted. They took her to the emergency room at the closest hospital. The doctors said she had a particularly aggressive form of leukemia. They didn't give her more than a year to live, even with chemotherapy treatments."

Rafe
stared at her, his jaw dropping momentarily. He quickly hid his reaction from Ari. Her eyes were huge and sad now. "That's a tragedy," he murmured, meaning it. To lose a parent was particularly devastating.
Rafe
knew from personal experience.

"She died a year later, to the day," Ari said, gazing around at the muddy expanse of the Amazon as they began to drift closer to the right bank. Forcing a smile she didn't feel, Ari looked up at
Rafe
. His black brows were drawn down and she was shocked to see anguish, for just a second, in his eyes. Her father never showed his grief over her mother's passing. She had never seen him cry. He had stood at the funeral tall, strong and unmoving. It was she, Ari, who had sobbed for the two stoic males in her family. She'd cried for weeks after that, without end. To realize that
Rafe
was showing his feelings was a shock to her.

Mesmerized by that discovery, Ari simply stared up at him. So men could feel and emote. It was a wonderful discovery to her. The boys at
Georgetown
University
were nothing like this man who stood so tall and knightly before her. But then, Ari reminded herself,
Rafe
was not a boy. Clearly, he was a mature man, even emotionally. That thrilled her.
Scared her.
She had no idea how to react to a man who could share his feelings with her so openly. They barely knew one another, yet he was unveiling his vulnerability to her. Trust…he trusted her. The concept was euphoric.
Frightening.

Rafe
felt her inspection of him. He purposely didn't turn to meet her eyes, though. Let her look him over real good. He knew to treat her just as he did the wild animals he encountered. In the forest, when he came upon a herd of wild pigs, they wouldn't flee unless he looked them squarely in the eyes. Instead, he'd halt, remain motionless and allow them to gauge him with their senses. When he did that, they would remain and continue digging for roots, or they'd amble off without squealing in fear. Ari was just like a wild animal in some respects, he was discovering. Still, her nervousness told him that she didn't know what she was getting into in spending months in the Amazon.

"Losing two of the most important people in your life when you were eight had to be a special hell." He shook his head, his hands tightening momentarily on the aged wooden wheel he stood over. If he didn't grip hard, he was going to reach out and gently curve his hand across the top of her wispy golden hair, to soothe the grief he heard in her soft voice. The impulse alarmed
Rafe
. How could this waif inspire such a powerful feeling in him so suddenly?

"It's been hard," Ari admitted. Patting the journal on her lap, she said, "Mom asked both of us to come to her bedroom every day. Kirk didn't want to. I think he was afraid and couldn't stand the thought of losing her, or seeing her slip away from us, month after month."

"But you did?"

"Yes. And you know what my parents did? It was the most wonderful gift of all. They took me out of school for that last year of my mom's life. She tutored me at home, on her bed. On good days, if she felt like it, we'd be in the living room and she'd sit on the couch. On bad days, she'd stay in bed and I'd sit cross-legged on the quilt, just listening to her, or reading to her from one of her favorite books."

Satisfaction soared through him. "That was a beautiful parting gift." Try as he might,
Rafe
could no longer see Ari as rich, spoiled and inexperienced, though he struggled to hold that view of her. He had to.

"It was my father's idea."

"He saw how close you were to your mother and probably realized the loss of Janis had so devastated you that you needed that time with her.
Time to help heal yourself and say your goodbye to your mother."

Shrugging, Ari said, "I don't know. My father is like a fortress,
Rafe
. He doesn't cry. He doesn't show emotion, except for his anger and disgust over my bad decisions. That's the only way I've ever seen him." She almost added
,
I wish he was more like you,
but bit her lower lip instead. Sometimes she gushed too spontaneously. Her father often accused her of hoof-in-mouth disease.

"Men can be stoic,"
Rafe
agreed. He pointed ahead. "Look, another flight of macaws. This has to be your day."

Excitedly, Ari slipped off the chair and walked outside the cockpit on the upper deck. The humid air swirled around her, embraced her, and it felt wonderful to her. In her imagination, it felt like a loving embrace. The river smelled clean, despite the odor of mud that lifted to her nostrils. There were other faint fragrances and she wondered if they were from orchids hiding in the trees on shore. Lifting her chin, she looked in the direction
Rafe
had pointed.

Eight yellow-and-blue parrots were flying swiftly, barely twenty feet above the water's dark chocolate surface, directly toward them. They flew with short, stubby wings, in a caliper formation. To her delight, they came within ten feet of the bow of the houseboat. "Oh! I wish I had my camera!" Their bright turquoise feathers and stunning sun-gold plumage coupled with the white flesh around their eyes and powerful beaks made her gasp with delight. "They are so beautiful!" She threw her hands skyward in joy.

Rafe
wished he'd had a camera, too—to take a photo of her innocence and spontaneity. As she turned, a whimsical look on her features, he laughed deeply in surprise and wonder. When he did, he saw redness stain Ari's cheeks. She instantly changed. Instead of holding her head up and her shoulders back, she shrank into her old self—head down, shoulders rounded, eyes downcast on the deck of the boat. Cursing himself,
Rafe
realized she'd interpreted his laughter as poking fun at her spontaneity. As she walked slowly back to the cockpit and quietly resumed her chair, he spoke.

"I wasn't laughing
at
you, Ari. You thought I was making fun of you, didn't you?"

Stunned, she jerked her head up and met his dark, stormy-looking eyes. "Well, uh, yes…yes, I did. My father says I'm too spontaneous—that I'm supposed to be twenty-five years old, not eight years old."

Suddenly,
Rafe
didn't give a damn about his own distrust of women. He reached out and gently rested his hand upon her slumped shoulder. "Listen to me, my wild nature child, you should
do
what you just did out there on the deck when those parrots flew by. Do it often." He saw her eyes widen with shock. Moving his fingers in a grazing motion across her shoulder, he added, "Wait until you meet the
Juma
Indians. You'll feel right at home. They are adults and yet they hold the awe of children in their hearts and heads, too. You are exactly like them, so let that side of you strut its stuff." He grinned a little and forced himself to stop touching her. Her skin beneath the cotton tank top felt deliciously smooth and firm. "Is that a deal? Will you promise me to jump up and down? Throw your hands to the sky? Yelp? Yell? Be a wild woman?"

Her flesh tingled hotly where he'd touched her. There was such controlled strength in
Rafe's
touch. Ari couldn't have torn her gaze from his dark, incisive one if she'd wanted to. Something warm and strong in his deep voice moved through her like the low growl of a jaguar to its mate. Her heart swelled. Her pulse skittered. "Well, sure…I thought I'd embarrassed you or something. Father always gets nervous and uncomfortable if I do things like that."

"Thank goodness,"
Rafe
said dryly, "I'm
not
your father. So you just go on and
be
the child of Mother Earth. Okay?"

Smiling tentatively, Ari felt herself arch inwardly as she heard his deep, rolling laugh. "Okay."

"The
Juma
have a saying,"
Rafe
continued as he angled the boat about a hundred feet off the reddish bank of the river where the current was less feisty. "They say that to really live, to touch the fire and passion of your soul, you must have the heart and head of a child."

Ari opened the journal and quickly scribbled down his words verbatim. "That's wonderful. Thank you."

"You can live your life as an adult. You can behave in a mature manner when it's demanded,"
Rafe
said conversationally, "but believe me, every time I get a chance to revert back to being a big kid, I do it. I play grown-up when I have to. Otherwise—" he gave her a wicked, teasing look "—I'm really a ten-year-old boy inside this man-size frame of mine."

Laughter bubbled up from Ari's chest and into her throat. She absorbed the deviltry and teasing in his cinnamon-colored eyes. The smile he shared with her was absolutely devastating and catalytic to her. Did
Rafe
realize that when he rewarded her with that brilliant smile, showed her those even white teeth, she felt like swooning like a woman from Victorian times? Ari thought not. He seemed to be unaware of his powerful effect upon her.

"And so the man I saw back at the airport, that Hollywood
Hunk,
is a facade?
Just a mask?"

Raising his brows,
Rafe
said, "Hollywood Hunk? Where did
that
come from?" And he barely resisted laughing with her.

Heat flamed into Ari's cheeks, though he took her teasing gracefully and without rancor. Emboldened, she said, "Well, I certainly wasn't expecting to see this man who stood head and shoulders above the crowd, like a knight out of old
England
, waiting to meet me. You looked like a
Hollywood
star to me when I first saw you.
With those dark glasses."
Ari looked away. "I have such a runaway imagination!"