Different Dreams (11 page)

“She was apologizing for not having something ready to eat and promised that lunch would be early and dinner special. You are staying, of course.”

“Cam, I should be getting back to the station. Ernie will start to wonder what's happened to me.”

Cam pressed his lips together. “I can't for the life of me understand what Ernie's opinion could mean to you one way or the other.”

“I have to work with him, Cam. He may not be the most scintillating human, but up at Los Monos, he's the only human for miles.”

“I guess he just hasn't worked very hard to endear himself to me. I resent his insinuations.”

“Primatologists aren't famous for their social skills,” Malou admitted. “It's one of the reasons we do what we do. We prefer the company of the lower primates.”

Cam stopped and looked at her thoughtfully.

Afraid that she'd exposed too much about herself in explaining Ernie, Malou moved briskly away toward the office at the end of the hall. “This must have been where Mr. Stallings worked,” she said brightly as they entered the room. It was by far the homiest room in the house.

“The rest of the place was probably just for show,” Cam observed, picking up a gold-framed photo that showed a young and handsome Mr. Stallings with a shy, willowy woman by his side. “But this was the old man's lair.” A large partner's desk sat in the middle of the room with a console phone on each side. “No worries about phone lines,” Cam said, pulling out a comfortably upholstered swivel chair and seating himself at the smaller half of the desk. He gestured toward what had obviously been Stallings's chair. “Be my guest.”

Malou, feeling like a child playing in her father's office, seated herself in the high-backed chair. A cozy intimacy wrapped the two of them together as they sat facing one another across the double-sided desk. A window behind Malou let in streams of morning light that played across Cam's
dark hair, lighting it up with highlights of red as he bent his head over the pile of contracts he pulled from his case. Malou had to forcibly prod herself into action as she turned back to the phone and picked up where she'd left off yesterday, working her way down the list of foundations and other possible grantors. Soon they were both absorbed in their tasks, each one conducting their phone business without self-consciousness.

The low-slanting morning sunlight had long since climbed away from the office's east window when Señora Maldonado timidly knocked on the frame of the open door to tell them that lunch was ready.

It was a light, tasty, and swift affair of quesadillas and a glutton's array of fruit from the bountiful Rio Grande Valley. And then they were back at work.

The afternoon sun was already beginning to cut into the west window when Malou paused long enough to realize that the day had been amazingly productive and that Cam had been responsible. She had caught his sense of urgency as he machine-gunned his way through stacks of papers and a volley of concise calls. It was no longer any mystery to her why Cameron Landell had risen so far, so fast. The man was indefatigable. And so handsome. Her appraisal was sabotaged by that observation. By the thick fringe of lashes shadowing his hard-planed cheeks. By the seductive intensity that wrapped his features in an aura of contained energy. She marveled at how, even
sitting at a desk, Cam exuded a sense of motion only barely leashed.

Cam glanced up and caught Malou watching him. Amusement at her embarrassment crept over his face for a few seconds before he turned back to his work. Trying not to sound as flustered as she felt, Malou made her next call.

Her voice had been honed to a rasp by the time Señora Maldonado appeared to shyly announce dinner.

Two places were set at the end of the banquet-length table. They swam in a pool of candlelight. A crystal bowl of red hibiscus complemented the sprightly colors of the Mexican place settings gaily painted with birds. A carafe of white wine cast an amber gleam across the linen tablecloth.

Cam held Malou's chair out for her with a courtly flourish that added a light note to the gesture. He exchanged a few words with Señora Maldonado, who had appeared with a cart laden with domed serving trays, then excused herself.

“I told her we could manage ourselves if she wanted to take the rest of the evening off,” Cam explained as he lifted the lid from a steaming tray. Prawns grilled in butter lay curled up against one another in a succulent pink line. Cam transferred several to Malou's plate, then added rice pilaf and marinated vegetables.

“Señora Maldonado mentioned that Stallings had
sent her to a cooking school in Mexico to be trained. They certainly did a superb job,” he concluded, finishing off a prawn.

“Mmm,” Malou murmured, her thoughts elsewhere. They'd been drawn again into that dangerous zone that had Cameron Landell at its center. A cooking school in Mexico was the last thing on her mind as candlelight glanced across Cam's buttery lower lip.

“Turn up any promising prospects?”

It took Malou a second to process the words formed by those mesmerizing lips. “Oh. Prospects. Yes, actually I did. Won't know anything firm though for a week or two, which is breakneck speed for foundations.”

“Ah, bureaucracy. If I added a hundred people to my organization, I'd cut efficiency in half.”

“What did you major in at school? Business administration?”

“That question,” Cam answered, his eyes gleaming, “is based upon the false assumption that I majored in anything at all. No, I got my degree in hard work, with special courses in being in the right place at the right time. Land development is a game people are either born with an instinct for or not. It's not something you can pick up at school. Motivation helps. Real, bone-deep drive. That, I'd acquired by the time I was old enough to ride a bike. Not that I ever had one growing up.”

“Never had a bike?”

“No bike. No degree. What kind of Martian am I?” Cam asked with a slightly bitter laugh.

“That wasn't what I meant. It's just that, for me, a bike was my salvation. My way to get out of my house.”

Cam's mildly affronted expression softened. “Yours wasn't a happy childhood?”

“It wasn't unhappy. Just sort of . . .” Malou searched for a word to describe her airless, controlled upbringing. “Claustrophobic?” she tried, hoping Cam would understand.

“And so you grew up reading about Jane Goodall and dreaming of escaping to the African savannah.”

“Pretty much,” Malou said with a chuckle. Cam's perceptiveness bridged the gap that had opened up between them. It gave her the courage to voice her own insight. “And you grew up dreaming of escaping to the world I was running from.”

Cam's laugh floated easily on the candle-warmed air. “I guess it was inevitable, then, that our escape routes would intersect.”

“Oh, predestined, I'm sure,” Malou quipped back, enjoying the ease that was enfolding them again. She tried to remember exactly why she'd been suspicious of Cam, but all the reasons suddenly seemed very distant and dusty with age.

“Shall we take our coffee out by the pool?” he asked, grabbing the pot off the warmer. Malou gathered up cups
and saucers. As they left, Cam paused to snatch a bottle of Kahlua off the sideboard.

The evening was the silken deliverance of spring's promise. The air caressed Malou with vapors of a thousand flowers. Malou closed her eyes and drank them all in. “A person could get tipsy just breathing on a night like this.”

Cam relieved her of her burden, placing the cups and saucers on a small table between two chaise longues, then stood close beside her. “It is intoxicating.”

His voice was a growl that vibrated through Malou, striking chords buried within her deepest center. She looked up, and their gazes met with the same inevitability that had brought their lives colliding together. Malou felt herself teetering, a sensation that called to mind Cam's shattering words about the imbalance between them. “You have too much to gain and I have too much to lose.” That was still true.

She dragged her eyes from his. “Oh, coffee,” she announced inanely, darting away toward the pot. “Can't let it get cold.” She settled herself into a chaise, the giddy shrillness of her words still echoing tinnily.

Cam watched her bolt away from him like a frightened fawn and felt the nick of regret again, knowing he had caused her skittishness. He knew that, from a business standpoint, his entire involvement here was one long series of mistakes. The loan to Stallings had been
a mistake, his promise to allow Malou time to save the troop had been a mistake, but he was committing the biggest mistake of all by being here with her tonight and feeling what he was feeling. Good sense demanded that he offer to take her back to Los Monos immediately and stop flirting with the danger that he was allowing to lick away at his control.

Yes, Cam told himself as he went to the other chaise and stretched out on it. They would finish their coffee, and then he absolutely must return her to the research station. He had far too much to lose in this situation.

“Cream or sugar or just a shot of Kahlua?” Malou asked.

“Just the Kahlua.”

She held the cup out to him. Her hair, silver in the moonlight, had curled again in the humidity into those elfin petals, Cam noted with an inward groan as he took the cup. Their hands touched beneath the saucer. It was only for an instant, but no more time was needed for Cam to learn again the velvet touch of her skin, its maddening effect upon him. His heart felt like a wild creature uncaged. He drank the coffee hoping it would steady him, would stop the infernal, adolescent pounding of his pulse. He breathed in the coffee vapors wanting the smell to drive away her scent.

“Oh, look, a shooting star,” Malou said, and he looked over.

She was a slender curve of tawny ivory against the midnight blue of the chaise cushions. Before Cam had time to censor the image, he imagined her nude, imagined the feel of the full, high breasts thrusting up beneath her blouse. In direct defiance of all his most prudent wishes, he felt his body responding. This was madness, Cam knew. He had to do something.

“The sky is
that
way.” Malou pointed to the spot where the shooting star had long since charted the fiery course of its destruction. He was looking at her as if he too felt the same churning desire that she was attempting to suppress.

“Ah, right. Ummm, quite spectacular.” He looked off vaguely at the stationary stars glittering above them. “How about a swim?” He jumped up with a rush of heartiness that convinced Malou she must have been mistaken. He was with her simply because he had to be. Because the mistake of his loan to Mr. Stallings had thrown them together. Period.

“No suit,” she shrugged off the suggestion.

Cam strode over to a louvered wooden door and opened it. Inside were shelves of towels and an assortment of swimwear. “Take your pick,” he announced, holding a one-piece in one hand and a bikini in the other. “I'd heard stories that the old man had a flock of nieces and nephews. Surely one of these will fit.” He disappeared into a stall with the only man's suit available, a
slim racer's band of blue nylon. Malou hesitated a moment, then put her coffee aside and went to change into the more modest of the two suits, the one-piece.

Cam was already in the pool when she emerged. Parabolas of moonlight arced across the water around him. His wet hair fell in dark waves around his face. Malou was uncomfortably aware of how emphatically she was silhouetted in the light from the changing room. She turned and switched it off and was cloaked in a sheltering darkness. The water was just cool enough to be refreshing without jarring her nervous system.

“This was an inspiration,” she exulted, jackknifing into a dive that took her into the cool depths. She had almost forgotten how much she loved swimming. She pushed off from the bottom and jetted to the surface with a splash.

Cam watched her frolicking like a happy otter. She was a sprite, he decided, a lovely, innocent sprite, more creature than human and more spirit than creature. She belonged in the world of animals that she loved. His reflections were scattered by a well-aimed blast of water that Malou splashed into his face.

“Why you little otter,” Cam sputtered. Malou's answering laugh sounded as if it had come from the rosebud mouth of a mischievous water nymph. He lunged out after her and she easily evaded his clumsy pursuit. Cam whirled around, searching the inky water for the merest
hint of a bubble. It seemed as if Malou had escaped forever to some mythic underwater kingdom, until Cam felt the gentlest of currents rippling against the hairs on his legs and he realized that she had swum between them.

Cam dived after her. In the watery darkness, Malou was just a tantalizing shadow as elusive as the mermaids whose siren songs had tempted ancient sailors to their deaths. She was quick and agile, as if the water were her natural element. Each time he thought he'd cornered her, she vanished. Again and again he lunged for a shadow. His lungs burning, Cam finally surrendered and popped to the surface.

“You almost had me a couple of times there.” Malou was beside him. Where she had come from, Cam had no earthly idea.

“You are one slippery customer,” he gasped, still trying to catch his breath. “But not slippery enough.” In one fluid motion, he whirled around and trapped her in his arms.

“That's not fair,” Malou protested.

“All's fair in . . .” He left the phrase uncompleted, knowing only that he had just committed his latest and possibly most fatal mistake. Now that he had her in his arms, Cam knew how wrong he'd been—Malou was no sprite, no creature of myth and innocence. She was a woman, every delectable, achingly desirable inch of her.

At the moment of contact, Malou felt the emotional
current change just as surely as a riptide current changed the ocean's staid rhythms. That moment tore the mask of detachment away from them both. They came together with such an inarguable rightness that neither could pretend any longer that their joining was an impossible mismatch.