12
Rourke was working surveillance on a small business that was suspected of involvement in an international kidnapping ring. Young women would be lured in with prospects of exciting work and travel, and then sold into prostitution all over the world. It was a sordid business, especially when some of the women they handled were barely fourteen years old. There was a tie to drug trafficking, as well, because the women were usually heavily medicated before they were put to work in brothels, to make sure they didn’t protest.
He was in San Antonio, taking a lunch break, when he spotted Clarisse walking out of a high-end baby boutique. She was alone, he noted, as she went toward the new Jaguar sedan she’d bought. Odd, how he felt when he looked at her.
He hated the idea of other men watching her, touching her. He’d accused her for years of being promiscuous. It was why he’d asked her, sarcastically, if she knew who had fathered her child. But she didn’t dress like a siren. She didn’t act like one. Why did he class her in that company?
So many questions, he thought miserably, and no answers. He’d avoided K.C., avoided the States, even avoided his friend Jake Blair in recent months until he’d come over for this assignment. Perhaps he didn’t really want to remember the recent past. Which provoked another question. Why?
Tat’s marriage was still a puzzle. He remembered Ruy Carvajal from years past. The Manaus physician had attended Tat’s mother when she died. He’d taken care of Tat when her father and sister were killed on the river. He was always around, a kindly sort of man with no real fire or spark. And he was well over twenty years older than Tat. So why had she married him? It had to have been after she went rushing to Nairobi to see Rourke when he was shot.
That was a very unpleasant memory, one which did him no credit. He’d raged at her, accused her of stealing his mother’s ring, thrown her out of the house. He grimaced. Her child was only a few weeks old, and it had been months ago that he’d been shot. He did the math. Tat had been pregnant. She’d been pregnant when he’d made her feel small for caring about him, for worrying. His eye closed on a wave of shame. He could have caused her to lose her child.
Had she been married to Carvajal at the time? But if she had, why had she been wearing that engagement ring, the one Rourke’s father—rather, the man he’d thought was his father—had given his mother before they were married?
He drew in a breath. It hurt, trying to remember. It hurt more, looking at Tat as she paused to smile at a young child on the street, holding its mother’s hand. She’d loved kids. He remembered her in a refugee camp, holding a baby. He scowled. Ngawa. Yes. She’d been in Ngawa and he’d gone to get her out. Since she was eight, he’d been her protector, her hero. Any tragedy in her life drew him, immediately. But if he hated her—why had he always gone?
He kept getting flashes of memory. A Latin dance club. He and Tat were dancing together. He only remembered doing the tango at one such club, and it was in Japan, years before. He hadn’t danced with Tat then, either. There was another memory, of a wedding gown and a shadowy priest.
He laughed. He was getting fanciful. His mind, the neurologist had told him, would most likely create new pathways to memories he’d lost, in time. Well, perhaps it was creating false ones. He was certain that he’d never contemplated marriage until now, with Charlene. He grimaced. The girl was juvenile. Worse, she was obviously attracted to her father’s young business partner. Not that Rourke really wanted to marry her. He’d made sure all his friends knew he planned to marry her, though, so it would get back to Tat. He scowled. Why did he want to hurt her?
She was on the move again, opening the door of her Jaguar. Just as she got in, he noticed a movement behind her. A man in a dark sedan pulled in behind her. Rourke had spent his life following people, on the job. He knew surveillance when he saw it.
He told his team leader he had to go out for a bit. He radioed another operative and gave him a description of the Jaguar and its direction of travel. Then he went looking.
* * *
Tat went into a small bed-and-bath boutique and found a shower curtain she liked. She smiled at the young clerk as she paid for it and carried it outside in a bag. She’d had to park almost half a block away. As she walked, a man fell into step behind her.
She must have left the baby with her housekeeper, or with Tippy Grier, Rourke reasoned. He followed along behind her unknown shadow, his pale brown eye narrow with subdued anger. Nobody was hurting Tat on his watch.
He rounded a corner. She was going into another shop, this one an exclusive coffee shop. The tall man surveilling her was paused in an alley, quietly watching, not drawing attention. He didn’t even hear Rourke come up behind him until he felt the cold metal of the .45 Colt ACP shoved into his spinal column.
Rourke felt the man tense and moved back. “You try it, and you’ll be a few grams heavier, mate,” he said curtly, because he knew the counterattack the man was pondering.
“Rourke!”
His surprise was visible as the man turned. “Who the hell are you?” he demanded.
“I’m Kilpatrick. I work for Eb Scott.”
Rourke made a face and lowered the pistol. “Then what in the seven hells are you doing shadowing Clarisse Carrington?” he demanded.
“Mrs. Carvajal, you mean?”
“Ya.” He hated her married name.
Kilpatrick shrugged. “I can’t tell you,” he said. “Eb just said to keep her under constant surveillance or he’d stick lighted matches under my fingernails.”
“Who ordered the surveillance?” Rourke persisted.
“Cash Grier. Go figure.” He chuckled. “I guess he and Tippy are worried about her settling in here.”
Sure. That was why men were watching her, he thought sarcastically. But he didn’t say it out loud. “Thanks, mate. Sorry about the...well, you know,” he added sheepishly as he shoved the pistol back into the holster under his jacket.
“No problem. I’ll just go change my trousers now,” Kilpatrick said with a wicked grin.
Rourke clapped him on the shoulder and walked off.
* * *
He wormed his way into Cash’s office during the lunch hour. Carlie Farwalker was eating a sandwich at her desk, as she did when her husband, Carson, was doing overtime at the local hospital as an intern. She was obviously pregnant and beaming.
“Is he about?” Rourke asked with a smile, nodding toward Cash’s office.
“Yes. You can knock and go in, he’s just doing paperwork,” she said.
“Thanks. You look blooming,” he added.
She laughed. “We’re so, so happy.”
“So your dad told me. Nice of him to give me a room,” he added. “I’m so sick of hotels.”
“He likes the company. He’s lonely since I moved out.”
“He told me that, too. Give your husband my regards. I’ll try to make time to see him before I leave town.”
“Do that. He’d love to see you.”
Rourke remembered Carson as he had been. Amazing, the change in that lobo wolf, to end up married with a child on the way, working his way through an internship at Jacobsville General Hospital. But then, life was surprising.
He smiled at Carlie, knocked on Cash’s office door and went in.
* * *
Cash wasn’t as friendly as Carlie. In fact, he glared at Rourke with pure venom.
“Did you teach your wife that expression, then?” Rourke mused as he closed the door behind him. “Because I can feel a rash breaking out all over my backside already!”
“Embarrassing Clarisse will land you in trouble if you try it again,” Cash promised him. “And if you think you’ve seen the extent of my wife’s temper, you’re badly mistaken.”
Rourke sighed. He sat down in front of Cash’s desk and crossed his legs. “I don’t know why I hit out at her,” he confessed.
“Neither do I,” the other man replied. He put aside a stack of reports. “I thought you were getting married.”
Rourke looked uncomfortable. “She’s very young and infatuated with her father’s business partner,” he said. “I sort of pushed her into the engagement.”
“Why?”
He shrugged. “I knew it would get back to Tat,” he said solemnly.
“Good God,” Cash said softly, because he knew how Clarisse felt about Rourke. Surely, Rourke did, too. “Is that your idea of entertainment? Torturing a woman who’s just lost her husband, and almost her life?”
Rourke felt the flush high on his cheekbones. “Tat and I go back a long way,” he said without answering the question. It made him sick to contemplate how far he’d gone in his attempts to push Tat out of his life.
“Don’t make it hard for her,” the older man said, and his eyes were like ice. “Or you’ll have more trouble than you can handle. Finish your project and go home.”
“How would you know what my project is?” Rourke mused.
“Get real. I may not do covert jobs anymore, but I know people who do.”
Rourke shrugged.
“What do you want?”
Rourke leaned forward, his one pale brown eye narrow and intent. “I want to know why you’re having one of Eb Scott’s men shadow Tat.”
Cash hesitated. “And how would you know that I am?”
“I walked up behind him and stuck a .45 in his ribs,” he replied. The eye narrowed. “Why?”
Cash didn’t dare tell him the truth. There was always the chance that Rourke might let something slip because of that traumatic injury and put Clarisse in greater danger. He lifted his chin. “She’s had a problem with a persistent admirer,” he said finally.
Rourke drew in a breath. That he could believe. She was beautiful enough to cause men to obsess. “I see.” His eye narrowed. “Would it be that Jack Lopez character who works for Luke Craig?” he added. “Because he seems to be everywhere she is lately.”
Cash frowned. “No. It’s not him. He looks out for her.”
Rourke didn’t add that he was uncomfortable with the idea of another man signing on as Tat’s protector. That was his job. It always had been.
“Who told you I was behind it?” Cash asked abruptly.
“Birds,” Rourke said easily, nodding. “They speak to me. Usually, it’s crows, but I have had the odd piece of intel from grackles... Why are you laughing?”
Cash waved a hand at him. “Go back to work, and let me finish these damned reports before I’m buried in them.”
Rourke got up. “I did apologize, you know,” he said after a minute. “I had no idea that Tat was married. Certainly I didn’t know what she’d been through.”
“An amazing young woman,” Cash said. “To survive the death of her entire family, kidnapping, torture...and still be able to smile.”
“She was always like that,” Rourke said, an odd softness in his voice. “She looks like a cream puff, but she’s got grit.”
“Yes.”
Rourke paused at the door. “Who’s after her?” he asked.
“Someone local,” Cash said. “Not anyone dangerous,” he added, lying with a smile, “just a boy who’s overly infatuated. We don’t think he’d harm her. We’re just being careful.”
Rourke nodded. He went out the door, closing it behind him.
* * *
It was a long week. He was sick of black coffee and darkened rooms and spotting scopes and listening to endless rounds of audio tape as they tried to get enough evidence to arrest the suspect in the trafficking ring.
On Saturday, there was a dance in Jacobsville in the park. A local band played for it. There were concession stands and a wooden platform had been constructed to double as a dance floor. Whole families came, enjoying the warm spring weekend. Tat was there, with the woman who kept the baby for her. She was dancing with a tall, good-looking cowboy when Rourke leaned against a tree to watch. That Lopez man again, he thought disgustedly.
He was wearing khakis. He looked, and felt, out of place in a town where most men wore jeans and boots and big hats. But he was right at home in the small-town atmosphere.
He didn’t like that man dancing with Tat. He didn’t know why. He had no reason to feel jealous of her. The man didn’t seem dangerous. He was pretty sure he wasn’t a stalker. Still, there was something oddly familiar about him. Disturbing.
Tat was wearing a long denim skirt with a short-sleeved blue-checked blouse and flat shoes. She looked young and beautiful in the fading sunlight as lights came on automatically in the park and the dancing platform lit up with fairy lights.
Tat, dancing. Why did that disturb him?
The dance ended. She and the cowboy went back to the table where Mariel was holding the baby.
On an impulse he didn’t even understand, Rourke went to the bandleader and had a brief conversation with him.
The rhythm changed. Rourke went to the table where Tat was sitting with her cowboy friend and the woman who was holding the baby.
He didn’t ask. He caught her hand in his and tugged her along with him to the wooden platform.
The song was a tango. Cash Grier and Tippy were on the dance platform turning heads. Cash’s eyebrows raised as Rourke drew Tat against him, and an amused smile touched his mouth.
Rourke didn’t see the look. His pale eye was riveted to Tat’s soft blue ones.
“This isn’t a good idea,” she began.
He only smiled. He drew her slowly into the soft, sensuous rhythm. And it became clear, all at once, that even Cash Grier was not in Rourke’s class. He moved Tat along with him, expertly, through intricate twists and turns, with quick, graceful steps that brought a sudden silence to the people around the platform.
Oblivious, Rourke smiled down at Tat while they set a new standard for the elegant, exquisite dance in Jacobsville.
“You still dance well,” he said softly.
“So do you,” she replied, but she felt uneasy. She didn’t understand why he was dancing with her at all. He’d been so antagonistic that she hadn’t expected him to even speak to her again.
He made a quick turn. She followed him effortlessly. It was like being back in Manaus, when they’d danced into the wee hours of the morning at the Latin dance club. Except that here, they were drawing attention. Very few local citizens could manage this intricate dance. Matt Caldwell and his Leslie could, but they were out of town. Cash and Tippy certainly could, but even they were standing on the sidelines, entranced as Rourke and Tat swept across the wooden platform to the passionate rhythm of the dance.
Clarisse kept her eyes on Rourke’s broad chest. She’d tried so hard not to look back. But it was impossible not to, as they moved together like one person. The feel of his powerful body against her was intoxicating. She loved the thrill it gave her to hold his hand, to have his arm around her, drawing her gently close to him. She loved his skill at this most difficult of dancing styles. She loved everything about him, and fought to keep it hidden.
“We were at a Latin club in Japan,” he said suddenly, scowling. “We were both doing the tango. But we weren’t dancing together...”
Her indrawn breath was audible.
He looked down into her eyes as he made another quick turn. “It’s like strobe lights,” he faltered. “Memories that flash, places, people. It’s like pieces of a puzzle, but scattered.”
She bit her lip.
“Why do I hurt you?” he asked in a husky whisper. “I don’t mean to. I don’t want to...”
She averted her gaze to his chest. “Don’t be silly. You haven’t hurt me,” she lied with a smile. “We’ve known each other since I was a child, that’s all. I’m familiar to you.”
His hand contracted around hers as the dance wound to a close. “Familiar...”
Her heart was racing when he turned her across his tall, powerful body and leaned her down against his arm for a finish. He drew her back up, very gently, so that he didn’t cause her any pain with the stitches she was still carrying from the C-section.
Applause shocked them apart. Rourke chuckled. “Sorry,” he murmured. “I didn’t realize we were on show.”
“It’s all right.”
Cash and Tippy came up to them as the music started again, a modern rhythm this time that the younger set danced to.
“I thought I knew how to dance, until I watched you do it,” Cash chuckled.
Rourke shrugged. “I used to teach the tango,” he said simply. “I lived in Buenos Aires for a few years, doing covert work. I needed a cover. That was it.”
“You dance very well,” Tippy said with reluctant admiration.
He pursed his lips and his pale eye twinkled at her. “Thanks.”
“You never told me you could do the tango,” Tippy said, smiling at Clarisse.
“My father was an ambassador. He thought I should have all the usual social graces, so he hired a dance instructor to tutor me.”
“There was a club in Manaus,” Rourke said suddenly, frowning. “A Latin club. They had waitresses wearing red flamenco dresses...” He put a hand to his head and grimaced.
Clarisse winced. “Are you all right?”
He drew in an uneasy breath. “Strobe lights,” he murmured. “I don’t know where that memory came from. I was only in Manaus once or twice. When your mother died. When your father and sister were buried...”
“Yes.” She averted her gaze. She’d hoped for an instant, just for an instant, that he might remember another time he’d been there.
The tall cowboy, Jack Lopez, came up to them. “You sure can dance, Mrs. Carvajal,” he said, grinning. “How about letting me stomp on your feet again? If you’ll excuse us?” He drew Clarisse onto the dance floor.
Rourke’s eye flashed murder.
Tippy and Cash saw it and Cash ground his teeth together.
The housekeeper, Mariel, was cuddling the baby at the table. He was fussing.
Rourke paused beside Mariel with Cash and Tippy.
“What’s wrong with the little fellow?” he asked.
“The colic,” she said, smiling. “Something that babies get.”
“Oh, yes,” Tippy agreed. “We had our sleepless nights with Tris when she was that age.”
Rourke stuck his hands in his pockets and stared at the child intently. There was something about kids. He wished he could remember why he had a sudden hunger for one of his own. That child was the product of Tat’s passion for a man old enough to be her father. He grimaced, excused himself and left the dance.
* * *
Rourke and Jake Blair were playing chess Friday evening a week later. It was an old pastime for the two men, who used it to work out strategies in the old days. Now it was just fun.
In the middle of the game, the phone rang. Jake picked it up and grinned. It was his daughter.
“Yes, I thought you might call. How did the exam go? Really?” He chuckled. “You’re sure you don’t want to know if it’s a boy or a girl? No. I don’t blame you.” He paused. He glanced at his companion. “Rourke and I are playing chess. I’m beating him.”
“Like hell you are,” Rourke said with a grin.
“You wash your mouth out with soap,” Jake said, pointing a finger at him. “What was that?” he said into the phone. “No, I don’t have the radio on.” He frowned. “AB Negative? No, I don’t remember anyone in our congregation mentioning that they have it. They’ll have a time finding that. They’ll probably have to relay some down from San Antonio...”
“AB Negative blood?” Rourke interrupted, frowning.
“Yes. There’s a patient who needs emergency surgery at the hospital. Carson says they don’t have any blood on hand and the patient’s AB Negative.”
Rourke got up. “My blood type is AB Negative. I’ll drive over to the hospital and donate some.”
Jake told Carlie. He smiled. “She says to tell you that they’ll be very grateful. It’s Micah Steele’s case. He’s operating.”
“Tell her I’ll be right there. And don’t move those chess pieces until I get back,” Rourke cautioned facetiously.
Jake just made a face at him.
* * *
Rourke was ushered back into a treatment room where blood was drawn for a transfusion. He waved at Micah Steele as they asked questions and filled out paperwork. He and Micah had often done covert work together in the old days.
Fortunately for the patient, whoever it was, Rourke hadn’t had malaria in the past three years or they wouldn’t have allowed him to donate blood at all. It had been longer than that since he’d had a bout of it. He didn’t have the recurring sort, and that was pure luck.
“Damned decent of you to do this,” Micah Steele told him when they’d taken the blood and he was sitting up and drinking orange juice. “I can operate at once.”
“No problem,” Rourke said. “It really is a rare blood type. K.C. and I share it,” he added with a grin.
“I heard.”
Rourke clapped him on the shoulder. “Go to work. I have to finish beating Jake at chess.”
“You’ll have your work cut out for you,” Micah chuckled as he left the cubicle.
* * *
Rourke was on his way out of the hospital past the emergency room waiting area when he spotted Tat sitting with Tippy Grier.
“What are you two doing in here?” he asked. “Somebody hurt?”
“It’s the baby,” Tippy said, glancing worriedly at Clarisse, whose face was contorted. “A hernia. They have to operate, but they don’t have any AB Negative blood...”
“I just donated it,” Rourke said. “Micah’s getting ready to operate. It’s the boy?” he asked Tat, scowling.
She looked up with red, wet eyes. “Yes. Thank you...!” Her voice broke.
“God!” He scooped Tat up and sat down in the chair with her in his lap, cradling her against his chest. He kissed her disheveled blond hair. “Now, now, it’s all right. Micah’s damned good at what he does. The baby will be fine.”
A sob shook her. “Oh, damn,” she choked. “Damn! Why this? Why now? There’s been so much...!” She collapsed in tears.
Rourke’s face contorted as he held her closer, rocking her in his arms, his face in her throat. “I don’t know, baby,” he whispered. “I don’t know why.”
Tippy was fascinated by the look on his face. The man who’d verbally flayed Clarisse in the pharmacy bore no resemblance to this man, whose expression told her things he never would have.
“He can’t die,” she choked. “He just can’t! I’ve lost everything else, my family, my husband, I can’t lose my child, too!”
Rourke’s arms contracted. The mention of her husband was like a knife in his ribs, but he didn’t let it show. He just comforted her, his big hand lying against her wet cheek, his lips on her forehead, her eyelids, her nose.
“You’ll get through it,” he said quietly. “We all have storms, Tat. They pass.”
Her hands clung to him. She hadn’t had comfort, real comfort, in so long. The feel of his powerful body, the scent of him, were so familiar. She’d loved him most of her life. And he’d always been there, during the most traumatic times she’d experienced.
“That’s what you said when my father and sister died,” she managed weakly.
He drew in a breath. “Ya. I guess I did.”
“I got through it. I always seem to live in spite of the odds. Like when the viper got me...”
He drew in a breath. “My God, I thought you were a goner that time. I ran with you in my arms to the clinic. It must have been half a mile. I never thought I’d get you to a doctor in time. And you were busy comforting me,” he added, lifting his head to smile at her. “Me, a tough kid of fifteen, being comforted by a little tomboy ten years old.”
“You’ve known each other a long time,” Tippy said.
“A very long time,” Rourke said. He dug in his pocket for a handkerchief and dabbed at Tat’s eyes with it. “She was eight and I was thirteen when her parents moved next door to K.C.” He chuckled. “I’d been fighting in militias since I was orphaned at ten. K.C. had himself appointed my legal guardian, but he was off on missions all over the world, so I did pretty much what I pleased. Then he came home and Tat here told him that I’d gone out with a group of mercs to liberate prisoners from an enemy camp in the bush.” He glared down at her.
“After that, he had you watched,” Clarisse agreed, nodding. “You’d have been blown to pieces on one of those wild-eyed exploits if I hadn’t.”
“Landed you with a nickname, too, didn’t it, little Tattletale?” he teased softly. He glanced at Tippy. “She’s been ‘Tat’ ever since.”
Tippy was watching them curiously. “Eighteen years,” she said quietly. “That’s quite a history.”
“It is, isn’t it?” Rourke replied.
Micah Steele came out to the waiting room. “We’ve got Joshua prepped. We’re going to fix that hernia. He’ll be fine.” He smiled at Clarisse. “Don’t worry. I know what I’m doing.”
“Saved Colby Lane’s life,” Rourke added with a smile for the big blond man. “Did an amputation under fire, in Africa, after we walked into an ambush.”
“Lucky for us that Colby was garden variety type O Positive,” he chuckled. “And very lucky for us tonight that you and the baby share a blood type,” he added.
“Jake would call that an act of God,” Rourke said with a grin.
“How long will it take?” Clarisse asked.
“Not long. I’ll come out and talk to you when it’s done.”
“Thanks,” she said softly.
He nodded, faintly amused at the easy way Clarisse was lying in Rourke’s arms without a single protest. In fact, Rourke showed no sign of being willing to let her go. Micah went back though the swinging doors.
* * *
Endless cups of coffee later, Micah came out smiling. “He’ll be fine,” he assured Clarisse. “We’ll keep him for a few days, just to make sure, and we’ll have a rollaway bed put in the room for you, so you can stay with him.”
“Thank you so much!” Clarisse said huskily.
“I love my job,” he replied, grinning.
Rourke touched Clarisse’s cheek gently. “If you need me, call Jake’s number. If I’m not there, he’ll know where to find me. For a few more days at least.” He sighed. “Then I have to go back to Nairobi. My case is almost wrapped up.”
Clarisse was good at hiding her feelings. She smiled at him. “Thanks for everything,” she said.
He searched her blue eyes quietly. It hurt him to look at her, to see the pain in her face. “He’s a sweet child,” he said.
“Yes. He’s my whole life.”
“Take care of yourself.”
“You, too, Stanton,” she replied. “Tell K.C. I said hello. Is he all right?”
“He’s dealing with it,” he replied. “Not very well, I’m afraid. He keeps trying to sneak off with his men, but so far I’ve managed to talk him out of it with veiled threats.”
“He loved her.”
“Yes.” Love, he was thinking, seemed very painful, if K.C.’s response to his loss was any indication.
He was certain that he’d never felt that sort of obsessive love. Except sometimes at night, when he was alone, and he had flashes of memory accompanied by excruciating emotional pain. A shadowy woman, anguish at leaving her, almost a physical pain, loss, because he couldn’t find his way back to her.
When he looked at Tat, he felt something tugging at him, some violent emotion that made him want to run. How very odd.
He managed a smile. “Get some rest. You’ve had a hard night.”
“Thanks for staying with me,” Clarisse said quietly.
“I’ve always been around when you needed me,” he returned without realizing what he’d said. He drew in a breath. “Well, I’d better go. Jake is probably hiding my chess pieces as we speak. He hates to lose.”
Clarisse smiled sadly. Tippy was watching him with curiosity and a lack of antagonism. She smiled, too, as she followed Clarisse back toward the intensive care unit.
Rourke climbed into his rented car and drove back to Jake’s house.