One Touch of Topaz (3 page)

“How old are you?” he asked abruptly.

She looked at him in surprise. “Twenty.” Her brow wrinkled in a frown. “No, that’s not right. I must be twenty-one. We never thought much about birthdays here.”

Another emotion rained through him, this one more maddening and far more poignant. Tenderness. A child with no birthdays, a child who lived in a cave surrounded by violence and fear, a child alone … No! He
wouldn’t
feel like this. This entire scene was completely unlike him, and so were his reactions to Samantha Barton. She had not been alone. She was Ricardo Lazaro’s woman, a camp follower who had chosen
her way of life. “How long have you been with Lazaro?”

“Six years.”

That would have to make her about fifteen when she first bedded Lazaro. How could she have made any kind of voluntary choice at that age? Another emotion flashed through him, much stronger and now clearly recognizable as jealousy. The image of her coupling with Lazaro, lying beneath him, those slim fingers clutching his bare shoulders as he—

“How old are you?”

He was jerked back to the present. “Thirty-seven.”

“I thought you were older.”

Compared to that damn Adonis she was sleeping with, he was a Methuselah. “I’m old enough.”

She laughed. “That was rude, wasn’t it? It’s not that you look old. As a matter of fact, you’re sort of ageless. Like that Ayers rock in Australia, or maybe one of those Easter Island statues.”

“Thank you.”

She paid no attention to the irony of his words as she gazed at him thoughtfully. “No, that wasn’t the reason I thought you were older. You’ve accomplished so much with your life in those thirty-seven years. I read all about you in the paper when you arrived on St. Pierre. Are you really a billionaire?”

“Yes.”

“I bet you don’t give yourself much time to spend all that money.” She was still studying him, and he was reminded of the curiosity of a small child. “I think you’re the kind of man who likes the battle more than the prize.”

His lips curved with sudden humor. “It depends on the prize. I assure you I have quite sybaritic tastes on occasion. For instance, under normal circumstances I’d find your pretty cavern tolerable for all of thirty minutes.”

“It grows on you.” She laughed suddenly, her topaz eyes dancing as she gestured around
her. “Like those stalactites. Lord knows, I’ve sometimes felt I was turning into one when we were forced to stay in here weeks at a time.” She shot him an impish sidewise glance. “I’ll try to get you out of here and on that helicopter before you truly turn to stone.”

“Me? You’re speaking in the singular. There’s no reason why you can’t come with me. There’ll be plenty of room on the helicopter tomorrow night.”

“I can’t leave yet. Paco still has to be gotten off the island.”

“You said Lazaro sent him to his home.”

“It was the only solution at the time. Dr. Salazar will probably be safe in his village, but Paco was Ricardo’s first lieutenant and someday someone will find out who he is and expose him to the junta.”

“But my helicopter was supposedly your last chance of getting anyone off the island.”

Her jaw set with determination. “I’ll just have to find another way.”

“And get yourself captured while you’re
trying to rescue him?” He could hear the harshness in his own voice, but he didn’t try to temper it. She intended to stay here alone; the realization filled him with a panic as un-explainable as the other emotions that had assaulted him since she had stepped into the pool of light at the helicopter. “What a stupid thing to do.”

“Maybe.” Her lips were trembling as she tried to smile. “But I have to do it.” She quickly changed the subject. “I won’t make you walk much farther. There’s a place up ahead where you can make yourself comfortable. It’s like a lovely, huge room. There are several areas similar to it in the caverns, but this is the largest.” She hurried on ahead, her voice echoing back to him. “It gets awfully cold in here at night, but we have blankets and can build a small fire.”

“Samantha, you can’t stay …” His words trailed off. She wasn’t listening and was walking so swiftly, he had to lengthen his stride to keep her in view.

He turned the corner and stopped in
amazement. The expanse before him
was
similar to the huge, high-ceilinged room to which she had compared it—providing that room had been located on another planet. It was a good fifty feet long, forty feet wide, and the stalactites hanging far above him gave the entire area the appearance of an alien landscape. A cave on the moon might have looked like this, he thought. It would possess the same sterile beauty, the same chilling magnificence.

“The pool over there is fed by a fresh spring that empties into a lake after it leaves the cavern.” Samantha lit a large candle affixed to the stone wall by a crude black iron sconce. “It’s ice-cold but adequate for bathing.”

The signs of human habitation were sparse, a shortwave radio against the far wall, several khaki canvas backpacks, two battered metal trunks, a tin coffeepot and dishes stacked by a pile of beige army blankets. Small stones encircled the blackened ashes that was all that remained of a
campfire, and wood was stacked in readiness beside it. She had lived here for two years, he realized. How would it feel to live in this soulless emptiness for that length of time?

“And these blankets are clean,” she said earnestly. She took four of the beige blankets from the stack against the wall and hurried back to spread two of them, doubled over, on the hard stone floor before the ashes of the campfire. She then spread the other two blankets on the other side of the circle of stones against the cavern wall. “There. At least that’s better than the ground. Are you hungry?”

“I could eat.”

“We have bread and cheese.” She hurried to one of the canvas bags and extracted a quarter of a loaf of bread and a bit of Swiss cheese wrapped in foil. She placed them both on the blanket and then straightened. “You can start on that. There are plenty of rations in another room of the cavern. I’ll go get them.”

“That’s not necessary.”

“It’s no trouble.” She flashed him another smile as she picked up the lantern. “Eat. I’ll be back soon.”

She walked quickly out of the room in the direction from which they had come, and he heard her footsteps echo and then fade away.

Loneliness. Fletch was suddenly conscious of a terrible aloneness as he stood there in the immensity of stone and space. Aloneness, silence, and an awareness of his own vitality, the blood running through his veins, his humanity in a place that seemed inhuman. Lord, he was growing imaginative, he thought in disgust. This was just a cave, Samantha Barton was merely a woman, and day after next he’d be done with both of them and back to his own life.

He crossed the room and dropped down on the blankets Samantha had spread for him. He had missed dinner, and his stomach was now reminding him of that omission. He reached for the bread and cheese and began to eat.

________

She had to face it, there was a possibility she would die before she managed to leave the island.

Samantha breathed in the warm night air, trying to fight down the fear that persisted in rising within her. She couldn’t hide forever from the knowledge just because it made her sick with fear. She had been frightened before but never like this. Then it had been a shared fear with Ricardo and the others, an emotion she could deal with if she found something to laugh about or had someone to reach out and touch when the panic came. Now she was alone, and no one knew better than she how dangerous the next few months would be. Her chances of surviving were pitifully slim.

Unless she got on that helicopter the following night.

Why not? She wanted to
live
, dammit. It was like a wild hunger in her. There were so many things she wanted to do and see and
feel. She had done nothing but run and hide for as long as she could remember. Didn’t she deserve something?

But Paco deserved to live, too, and she couldn’t desert him and go her way. Their friendship had been forged in the most enduring flames of all. Ricardo and Paco had shared their laughter and their meager rations, as well as the danger, since they had taken her from the Abbey six years ago. Even while fear and wild rebellion were clawing at her, she knew she couldn’t change her decision. She had to stay on St. Pierre.

It was no good standing here daydreaming, she thought, suddenly impatient with herself. There were some roads a person was forced to travel, and this was one of them. She would just have to find a way to crush the cowardice that held her in its thrall. She checked her wristwatch. She had given Fletcher Bronson over an hour, and that should be enough time.

She picked up the lantern she had set on the ground beside the entrance of the cave
and began to wend her way quickly toward the room where she had left him. Relief surged through her as she realized she wasn’t yet alone. Tonight, at least, she would have this man, stranger though he was, for company. She would get him to talk to her, and that should help stave off her fear.

A tiny smile curved her lips as she thought how annoyed Fletcher Bronson would be to know she intended to use him as a distraction. She had the impression that he allowed no one to use him in any fashion whatever.

What an unusual man he had turned out to be. She was accustomed to tough men, but he was more than tough. His physical prowess was matched by a depth of inner strength she could only sense, and he protected himself with a wall of barbed sharpness that allowed no one near. He was blunt to the point of rudeness and evidently said exactly what he thought and no more. His bluntness had amused and intrigued rather than offended her, and for a moment she
wondered why, before dismissing it as unimportant. No matter how difficult the man might be personally, he had come when they needed him, and for that reason alone she was desperately grateful.

She turned the corner and saw him sitting on the blankets, his arms looped around his knees. Every muscle of his big frame breathed impatience and pent-up tension, and she was suddenly aware of the power of his large body. The massive muscles of his thighs were outlined, rather than concealed, by the fabric of his jeans, and his brawny shoulders strained against the cream-colored shirt as if fighting to get free. The sleeves of his shirt were rolled up to the elbow revealing the strength of his forearms. Looking at him, she felt a strange tingling in her palms and the arches of her feet.

She tried to smile and found herself breathless. Stranger still. “I’m sorry I was so long. I was searching for the rations, but I’m afraid they weren’t any good any longer, so I had to toss them out. Did you have enough?
Perhaps if there aren’t any patrols around, we can find some fruit in the jungle tomorrow morning. Sometimes we can—”

“There’s no more food?” Fletch’s question cut through her words like a machete.

“None?”

She shook her head, avoiding his gaze as she moved across the room to set the lantern on the ground beside the blankets. “But I can build a fire now and make coffee. Perhaps that will satisfy you. I’m really very sorry.”

“Will you stop apologizing?” His voice was so harsh, her gaze snapped back to him. She inhaled sharply as she saw his face. A flush was mantling the broad line of his cheeks, and his eyes were blazing pale fire at her. “Dammit, you
lied
to me. Do you think I’m some kind of idiot that I can’t read you? There was never any more food, was there?”

“There’s no need to be angry,” she said soothingly, taking an involuntary step back. She could feel the waves of power radiate
from him, power that was now charged with rage. “It’s not important. Tomorrow—”

“To hell with tomorrow.” He was on his feet and moving toward her. “And I’ve every reason to be angry.” He grasped her shoulders and shook her. “That was the last of your rations, wasn’t it? You lied to me. You gave me that food and went away, knowing I wouldn’t eat it if you sat there and didn’t take a bite or—”

“I wasn’t hungry,” she said, interrupting, trying to stem the flow. They were so close, she could feel the furnacelike heat emanating from his body and the smell of clean soap and a woodsy aftershave. “I had something to eat this morning.”

“What?” he fired at her.

She moistened her lips nervously. “Fruit, I think. Something.”

His hands tightened on her shoulders. “You’re not telling me the truth.”

“All right. Maybe it was last night.”

“Maybe,” he repeated with soft menace.
“Or maybe not. When did you eat last, Samantha?”

She gave up. “Yesterday afternoon.” Then, as she saw his face darken, she hurried on. “But I had all the melon I wanted then. It was only because the patrols showed up that I didn’t eat after that. There were only enough rations for the prisoners in the cavern. They were in much worse shape than Ricardo and me, so we—”

“Gave them your food,” he said grimly, finishing her sentence. “And was I in worse shape, too, that you felt compelled to give me your last bit of food? Look at me, I’m built like a bull, and if I miss a meal, it’s because I forget or I’m too busy, not because there’s no food to eat.” His fingers spread on her shoulders, testing their fine-boned frailty. “And you … Dear Lord, you’re skin and bones. Do you know how this makes me feel?”

“I didn’t mean to make you feel guilty.” Her voice was gentle. “I’m sorry.”

“If you don’t stop saying that, I’m going
to throttle you.” His eyes were blazing down at her. “Why, dammit?”

She raised her head and looked him directly in the eyes. “You were my guest,” she said with dignity. “It was only right that I offer you what I had.”

A look of stunned disbelief spread over his face. “Your idea of hospitality is carried to the extreme. Where the hell is your common sense?”

“I guess I don’t have any.” She smiled faintly. “I’m pretty impulsive, and I often leap before I look.” Her smile faded. “But I didn’t do that this time. I always try to pay my debts. I can never adequately repay you for saving Ricardo and the others, but I have to do what I can.”

“I don’t take food from starving women.”