Solitaire (23 page)

The beans were tasty, maybe because she was starved. Alvin was a fine cook, Cat admitted. She smiled at him. “Well, I know you aren’t going to try and poison me with your cooking, Alvin. This stuff is pretty good.”

Alvin gave her an effusive grin, pleased by her praise. “I’ll make you a real ‘welcome to the Verde mine meal’ tomorrow night, Miss Cat. I’ll even throw in the horse-thief special for dessert. Hell, there ain’t a cowboy alive who wouldn’t ride hard like a horse thief to get a bowl of it.” He winked conspiratorially at Slade. “We’ll have her puttin’ a few pounds on that skinny frame of hers in no time.”

“Alvin, I’m not a heifer to be fattened up,” Cat warned. “I like being thin.”

“I like her that way, too,” Slade agreed, laughing.

Alvin looked at them and said nothing, a knowing gleam in his eyes. “I’ll only make half the amount of horse-thief special, then.”

“No, make all you want,” Slade countered quickly. “I’ll eat the leftovers.”

“See what I mean, Miss Cat? Men will do anything to get that dessert.”

“I can hardly wait until tomorrow night,” she promised him.

Conversation gradually drifted to the equipment, the work timetable and a long business discussion. The sun dropped behind the saddle formed by the two mountains, and the surrounding jungle suddenly came alive with the songs of insects. The mosquitoes had been pesky earlier; now they were vicious. The trio saturated themselves with insect repellent so they could sit around the fire without being attacked by the bloodthirsty insects.

By eleven o’clock, Cat was barely able to keep her eyes open, despite the interesting conversation. She got up, brushing off the seat of her pants.

“Which way is my cot, Alvin?”

Both men stood. “You and Slade share that larger tent on the left. The smaller one on the right is mine. Slade says you know how to live in jungles.”

She smiled. “As long as you’ve got a mosquito net over the cot, that’s all I’ll need.”

“You got it, Miss Cat.”

“Are the guards set?” Slade asked.

“Yeah.”

“Can they be trusted?”

Alvin grinned tightly beneath his silvery mustache. “Didn’t I tell you? I brought some of my boys down from one of my Texas ranches.”

“How’d you get them to come?” Slade asked admiringly.

“I’m payin’ them double what they’d get to sit on a cow pony back home. They don’t mind totin’ around a rifle and standin’ watches to make sure we don’t get our throats slit.”

Cat shivered as unpleasant reality settled over her. Seeing her shiver and rub her arms, Slade came over, placing an arm around her waist.

“We’ll see you in the morning, Alvin.”

“G’night, you two.”

“Good night,” Cat responded, casting a worried look up at Slade. Even so, she felt safe with him near. He guided her over to their tent, which was illuminated by a lantern hung inside.

“I told you this was going to be a rough place,” Slade warned her in a low voice. “You can still back out, Cat.”

She shook her head. “A Kincaid never backs out. We only know one direction, Slade: forward.”

He opened the flap for her and ducked in after she entered. The floor was made of plywood in an effort to keep most of the insects, snakes and rodents out. A cot sat on either side and Cat tested the sturdiness of one of them, then sat down, unlacing her boots. A porcelain basin filled with warm water sat between the cots.

“I hadn’t counted on El Tigre being here,” Slade muttered, stripping off his damp, sweaty shirt. His chest gleamed with perspiration as he quickly washed up.

“Can’t you call in the Colombian police to capture him?”

Cat sat there watching Slade, realizing once again how beautiful a man he was. Then she smiled, because Slade didn’t like that term applied to him. Nudging off her boots, she peeled off the heavy white cotton socks, waiting until Slade had finished with his spit bath.

Slade scrubbed his face vigorously, the cooling water a blessing against the humid heat. “Alvin and I are going to try and operate Verde like Chivor: a private mine with no state influence.” Drying his face and arms, Slade threw the water out the door and refilled the basin from a five-gallon plastic jug that sat beneath the rickety table. He motioned that it was her turn to wash up.

“We haven’t even begun mining operations, so what is El Tigre going to do?” she wondered, sending a worried look to Slade.

But Slade’s mind was on other things. Taking off his khaki trousers, he dropped them at the end of his cot. Cat had shed her blouse, revealing her golden tan now deepened by the kerosene lamp above them. His body hardened for her all over again. Their living quarters might be spare, but that wasn’t going to stop him from loving her. He’d like to time a trip to Bogotà after the mine was under construction, taking Cat back to civilization every once in a while. That way they could spend a night in a real bed with sheets, a hot shower and air-conditioning. Now, all that seemed like real luxury. Slade smiled, watching as she washed her arms and shoulders. His gaze moved slowly up and then down her tall, graceful body, and the stirring heat in his lower body became an aching reality. Slade was amused at himself. Cat made him hungry no matter what she was or wasn’t wearing.

“El Tigre will watch, catalog and send his spies down to talk with our newly hired miners,” Slade said, sitting down on his cot. “He’s going to see who’s the boss and who might know where the emeralds are located.”

Cat toweled off, standing on the wooden floor in only her lingerie. She saw the cobalt flare in Slade’s eyes and swallowed hard. How was it possible that only one smoldering look from him set her on fire? No man had ever made her feel her feminine power as he did. No man had ever made her feel so cherished. Shakily, Cat placed the folded cotton towel near the basin. Before she could turn, Slade had captured her hand, pulling her over to him. He guided Cat to his lap and she smiled languidly, placing her arms around his neck.

“Let’s forget about the bandits, sweetheart,” he told her thickly. “This is more important…”

As his hand slid lightly up her rib cage to cup her breast, Cat gasped, dissolving into his arms. Desire coursed through her as his thumb caressed her nipple, and she was lost to his warm, knowing mouth. Cat hungrily matched Slade’s mounting desire with her own.

With a groan, Slade eased his lips from hers. Cat’s languorous smile went straight to his heart as she rested weakly in his arms. “I want you,” he growled.

“I know…” With a sigh, Cat sat up, running her fingers through his unruly hair.

Slade patted her nicely rounded rear, the silk of her panties driving him closer to total loss of control. He saw the exhaustion in her eyes and admitted he was equally fatigued by the long trip. As much as his heart and mind were willing to carry Cat over that delicious edge and love her, Slade put a check on his desires. He didn’t want to take her to his bed when he was this groggy. No, he wanted both of them awake and eager. Right now, they were both ready to keel over. He contented himself with holding and sharing this precious time with Cat instead. Moments later, he whispered, “Come tomorrow morning, we’re going to be putting in twelve- to sixteen-hour days. I may not be able to hold or kiss you out there, but remember how I feel about you. We’ll make up for it here in the tent every night. Deal?”

With a small laugh, Cat embraced him. “Deal. But by the time we drag ourselves into the tent to sleep, we might be too tired to do anything.”

“No, we won’t,” Slade promised, trailing a series of moist kisses from her throat to the provocative swell of her firm breasts. “Even when I’m eighty, you’ll still turn me on. Come on, let’s get some sleep. We’re going to need it.”

Reluctantly, Cat knew he was right. Slade’s words filled her heart with unexpected joy. “I’ll see you in the morning, Slade,” she said, rising from his cot to return to hers.

After getting the mosquito netting in position, Cat settled down to sleep. Slade turned off the lantern, and a consuming blackness quickly descended on them. The sounds of insects mingling with the howl of monkeys provided a strange symphony. Cat barely heard them, since her head and heart centered on Slade’s last comment. They were growing closer to one another, and Slade was becoming her friend as well as her lover. As her eyes closed, Cat recognized that theirs was an ideal combination. She had known men in the past who only wanted her as a lover. Others she had liked well enough to call friend, but they hadn’t stirred the embers of her heart or body to vibrant life. Slade did both. She felt a never-ending thirst to satiate herself with him in every way possible. As Cat sank into the oblivion of sleep, she found herself glad, despite her own personal fears about entering a mine, that she had come to Colombia.

* * *

Cat silently asked the earth to forgive their invasion as the first bulldozers roared to life. They would clear away the jungle over the site of the open pit location for the Verde mine. She stood on a small rise, white hard hat in place, watching as the powerful, growling noise of the huge machines reverberated through the surrounding jungle. Slade was down there with the dozer operators, making sure each man knew what he was doing. Alvin was coordinating other activities with the hired miners. As soon as the earth had her green mantle scraped free, the miners would carefully go over the newly shorn earth and walk it, an inch at a time. They would be looking for emeralds before another foot of overburden was scraped away.

Cat turned and went back to the newly erected shack, which would serve as her headquarters during the entire venture. The Indians had built her a small building composed of
pao d’arco
, or trumpet tree. The wood from the sometimes-two-hundred-foot giant would be the prime source for shoring beams in the mine. As Cat spread out her next blueprint on the roughened drafting-board surface, she smiled. Some of her fear left as she focused on the complexities of starting up such a project. With the throaty sound of bulldozers in the background, Cat took off her hard hat and sat down on the stool. Her final calculations would prepare for the excavation that would eventually become the mouth of the Verde mine shaft.

Night did not fall until after nine o’clock. Cat was still in her office on the hill, struggling with figures on her calculator, when the door opened. Thinking it was Slade, she turned, squinting from the light of the lantern that hung on the wall in front of her. She froze, her hand automatically moving to the Colt she carried on her hip.

“Do you want to die,
señorita
?”

Cat’s mouth went dry as she stared at a dark-skinned man barely her height. He was dressed in black-and-gray military fatigues. Two bandoliers of ammunition crisscrossed his thin chest and an array of knives, grenades and other military hardware were held in web belts. Two more men, less well equipped, slipped inside, shutting the door quietly behind them. Her gaze moved back to the leader.

“What’s going on?” she forced out. Her pulse was racing, her throat growing dry. The look on the leader’s oblong face was anything but friendly.

He smiled, showing his crooked yellow teeth. Motioning to the maps, he said in halting English, “These are the maps where the emeralds are?”

Cat’s fingers closed over the handle of the Colt, but she knew she would be foolish to try anything. All three soldiers carried weapons.

“No,” she lied, “I’m an engineer. I build mines. These are construction blueprints.”

His smile remained fixed as he slowly approached her. “I’m El Tigre,
señorita
. You have heard of me, no?” He twisted one drooping end of his greasy mustache, which hung down over his mouth.

Cat nodded carefully. “Yeah, I’ve heard of you.”

“Then you know enough not to lie.” He let his hand fall on an eight-inch sheathed blade in a black leather belt at his waist.

“I’m not lying.”

El Tigre’s brown, feral eyes glittered and he ruthlessly assessed her in the thick, mounting silence. “No? Then who knows where the emeralds are to be found?”

Cat slowly turned, letting her hand move away from her pistol. “Listen, the owners don’t even know if there are emeralds here, Señor Tigre.”

He laughed; it was a curt, harsh sound. “No one gathers this kind of equipment and men if there aren’t emeralds,
señorita
. Don’t think me stupid!”

There was no way to escape; only one door had been built into the shack. The portable radio was set on the drafting board, but she couldn’t signal Slade or Alvin that she needed help. Cat had the feeling if she made even the slightest move to escape, the Colombian guaquero would turn violent, like a rabid dog.

“I’ve been hired to build, that’s all. I’m not a geologist.”

El Tigre stepped up to her. “Then who is?”

Cat winced, assailed by the sour, unwashed smell of his body. “The geologist is still up in the States.”

“Maybe, maybe not…” He reached out to touch her cheek.

Cat reacted out of instinct. The sound of the slap she delivered to the man shot through the shack. She scrambled out of the chair, her back against the wall, braced for whatever retribution might come.

El Tigre cursed, holding his injured jaw, glaring at her. “You,” he snarled softly, “will live to regret this. I’m not done with you,
señorita
.” He grabbed several sets of blueprints, turned and snapped orders to his men. They opened the door, disappearing into the gathering night. Before he left, El Tigre lifted his finger, waving it at her threateningly. “No one touches me, especially a gringo woman. Sleep lightly,
señorita
, for I’ll be back. And next time, have the information I want or your pretty face will look like this.” He jerked the knife from its scabbard and stabbed it into the drafting board, tearing long, deep scars through the remaining maps and wood.

* * *

Slade had noticed three men go up to the construction shack on the hill. He had climbed down from the bulldozer he’d been manning to give the driver a break. By the time he had gotten to the Jeep and driven up the rutted excuse of a road, they were gone. He walked in the open door and immediately saw Cat slumped against the drawing board, her head resting in one hand. And then he saw the destroyed blueprints beneath her elbow and the damage made by the knife.