Escape Out of Darkness (11 page)

“Home sweet home,” Mack announced, dropping the knapsack in the chair.

“It looks like paradise to me,” Maggie said, shoving a filthy hand through her wispy hair and leaving a streak of dust on her sweating face. “I’m going to find the shower and scrape some of this dirt off me. What about you?”

He leaned against the door, and his eyes were distant, almost thoughtful, as they swept over her. “Why don’t we meet in the
lobby in a couple of hours? You look like you could use a nap, and I want to do a little exploring.”

“Not without me,” she said, struggling to sound professional in the thick afternoon heat. “It’s too dangerous—”

“No one knows we’re here, Maggie,” he said patiently. “I want to check out the neighborhood, see if I can find a store that has a travel guide and cigarettes. I’ll check into what kind of flights they have. At least we could probably rent better transportation in a town this size.”

She wanted to argue, knew she should put up a fight, but she was too damned tired. “Suit yourself. But watch out. I didn’t get this far to lose you.”

“You aren’t going to lose me, Maggie.” Again there was that curious note in his voice, a thread of promise that was both frightening and reassuring. Before she could rouse herself enough to push him, he was gone, and she was left staring at the thin pine door with its flimsy lock.

The water was lukewarm, rusty, and not much more than a halfhearted dribble in the semiprivate bath, but Maggie didn’t give a damn. The salty residue of their dunking made her skin itch, her scalp flake, and even if her change of clothes were still stiff with salt, they at least didn’t smell of sweat and dirt.

She walked barefoot down the deserted hallway, her long blond hair hanging like a wet curtain down her back. She promised herself that once she got to L.A. she’d give in to her mother’s blandishments for the first time and give her poor abused body over to the best hairdresser, masseur, and beautician Sybil Bennett could find.

The narrow bed was surprisingly comfortable. The room was shadowed with the late afternoon light, and the trade winds blew gently across her body as she stretched out for what she promised herself was only a short nap. She stayed awake long enough to wonder if Mack was going to stay in his own bed tonight, and then sleep claimed her.

She awoke exactly one hour later, her internal alarm clock efficient as always, and the room was dim and shadowed. Suddenly
she was completely alert, knowing that she wasn’t alone. She could see Pulaski sitting in the one chair the room boasted, his long legs stretched out in front of him, his expression brooding.

“I didn’t hear you come in,” she murmured sleepily, sinking back down on the bed. “Did you find anything useful?”

“I did,” he said, still watching her with that odd intensity. And then he shook himself, an infinitesimal movement that Maggie nevertheless noticed. “I’ve got the latest edition of
Fodor’s Guide: Central America
, published about five years ago, toothbrushes, toothpaste, and an airline schedule. There are flights to Tegucigalpa almost every hour from the airport just out of town.”

“I don’t know if I trust your abilities as a travel agent,” Maggie said, stretching, her lazy smile taking the sting out of her words. “I think poor old Lonesome Fred left a little bit to be desired.”

“That’s why I didn’t make the reservations. Someone stole the Jeep, by the way.”

“What?”

“Don’t worry, we can get a taxi out to the airport. I figure it was our gain, their loss. I agree with you, I’d rather not have to drive that monstrosity again. Come on, Maggie, stir your buns. Or aren’t you hungry?” He rose, stretching, and in her sleepy state she allowed herself the luxury of staring at his lean, sexy body.

“Pulaski, I could eat a horse,” she said, not thinking of food at all.

He grinned, and she wondered if he was reading her mind again. God, she hoped not! “Maggie May, I know a place where they make the best horse in Central America. Come on, kid. Let’s do the town.”

This night out was just what they needed, Maggie thought several hours later as she stared dreamily out into the harbor. The lobster stuffed with local Cuyamel fish, the odd, sweet-starchy vegetables, the salad, and the local
cerveza
left her replete and happy. The town was noisy, cheerful, and colorful, and the company could not have been improved upon. Mack was in an expansive mood, out to charm her out of any lingering paranoia, and she went gratefully, tired of looking over her shoulder, tired of worrying about the future.

Tomorrow would take care of tomorrow’s problems, she told herself with a shrug. Tomorrow they would board a flight for Tegucigalpa and be linked up with Van Zandt in probably less than twenty-four hours. For now she could lean back in her chair on the terrace of the oceanfront cafe, sip her wickedly strong coffee, and enjoy herself.

“So tell me more about growing up as Sybil Bennett’s daughter?” Mack questioned, his voice low and rumbly, his eyes warm and relaxed and flattering in the candlelight. “And don’t tell me any more superficial Hollywood stories, tell me about you.”

She grinned in silent acknowledgment of his perspicacity. She had a supply of stock answers about growing up in Hollywood. None of which would do for Mack Pulaski.

“Wonderful, exciting, exhausting, depressing. Sybil’s always been a romantic—she never feels alive unless she’s desperately in love. God only knows when it started—she was twenty when
I was born and I’ve always had the suspicion she’d been busy before me. She’d meet someone, fall in love, and of course have to marry him. That was the early fifties, and she’d seen what happened to Ingrid Bergman when she didn’t follow Hollywood’s idea of morality. So Mother would fall in love, get married, and immediately present the current husband with proof of her adoration in the form of an offspring. By the time said offspring was a year old, Mother would have lost interest, both in the husband and in the child, and gone on to new conquests.”

“That mustn’t have been pleasant.”

“It was all right. Sybil is a very loving woman—it’s just that children bored her once they got past the stage where they posed successfully. I think she thought of us as fashion accessories—pretty little girls to smile up at her adoringly, with or without cameras around. She didn’t care much for grubby hands and blue jeans and sticky kisses.”

“So who got the grubby hands and sticky kisses?”

“Granny Bennett, for as long as she lived. And Queenie, Sybil’s housekeeper. And then me.”

“You?”

“I brought up the other three. Kate and Holly and Jilly. I was a very maternal older sister, a little domineering, I suppose. By the time I was twelve, even my mother was coming to me with her problems.” Maggie laughed, a wry, accepting sound in the warm night air. After a moment Maggie looked distracted and sad. “My ex-husband told me I was too much for any man to live up to. Peter Wallace said pretty much the same thing.”

“Do you think that’s true?” He was toying with his brandy glass, and his hazel eyes were warm and tender in the reflected lights from the street.

Maggie shrugged. “Close enough. I scare the hell out of men, and there’s nothing I can do about it. I scare even you.”

“Who says?”

“You did. Last night, on the beach.”

Mack considered it for a moment, then nodded. “Yes, I suppose
you do scare me. But I’m willing to bet it’s not in the same way you scared the others.”

“How do I scare you?”

He grinned. “As you said last night, that’s for me to know and you to find out. Would you like more coffee or would you like to go for a walk along the water?”

“Neither,” she said with a yawn. “It’s after eleven already, and we need to get to Tegucigalpa as early as we can tomorrow. I want to go back to the hotel, take another shower, and go to bed.”

“Another shower? You just took one.”

“Yes, but you brought me lavender soap, shampoo, and conditioner. I’ve never appreciated the pleasures of civilization so much in my entire life, and I intend to take full advantage of them. Once we get to Tegucigalpa, God knows what will happen.”

“Does this mean I get spared the Holiday Inn?”

“Nope. But it means we may not be in the Holiday Inn any longer than we were in the Travers Hotel. I want to take my creature comforts while I can.”

“Sounds reasonable. Let’s go.” He rose, tossing a handful of paper money down on the table, and Maggie looked up at him for a long, pensive moment before following.

It wasn’t until she’d stepped under the shower a few minutes later that Maggie realized what was bothering her. Mack had been warm, charming, and infuriatingly distant. Clearly he didn’t feel the same strong sensual pull that she’d been fighting all night. It was probably the fault of the unaccustomed good food and alcohol, she told herself, rubbing the sweet-smelling shampoo through her tangled hair. She’d sat there, staring at his strong, lean body lounging comfortably in the chair across from her, trying to fight the insidious attraction that was threatening to overwhelm her. She was becoming weak in her old age, her strength and resolution wavering in the face of almost continual disasters. With Peter’s death her life had undergone a change that she could no longer deny. Life and death were
indelibly imprinted on her brain. Tomorrow Mack could be dead. Tomorrow she could be dead. It was useless to miss chances that might never come again.

Life needed to be lived to the fullest, Maggie told herself when she stepped from the shower, wrapping the threadbare towel around her tall body. And the next time Mack made one of his halfhearted passes at her, she was going to take him up on it. Because even if he was only marginally attracted to her, he was becoming an obsession with her.

She wasn’t one for spending a great deal of time looking in mirrors, but tonight was different. She saw that she was attractive, with her wide-spaced aquamarine eyes, her Danish corn-silk hair, which was now hanging wet and shiny down her back, her good nose, high Nordic cheekbones, and generous mouth. And her body was strong and sleek and healthy, a good body for loving. But maybe Mack liked petite brunettes full of soft curves. After all, he’d said he’d always had the hots for Sybil Bennett. Maybe he’d settle for bedding someone with the same eyes.

“You’re an idiot, Maggie,” she said out loud, grimacing at her mirror. “You only get into trouble when you go after someone. Look at Deke. Look at Randall. Look at your marriage. Forget about sex and concentrate on a good night’s sleep. Pulaski looks good to you only because there’s no one else around.”

Which was a fat lie and she knew it, but she stuck to it anyway, turning her back on the mirror and rubbing her body briskly with the towel before pulling her wet jumpsuit back on for the dash down the hallway. She’d washed all her clothes in the sink, with the hopeful thought that they’d dry by morning. Even in the heat of the Honduran summer the wet cotton chilled her flesh, and she shivered as she ran barefoot down the hall to her room.

There was a light burning by the narrow bed as she closed and locked the door behind her. A light that illuminated Mack
lying on her bed wearing his jeans and nothing else. Waiting for her.

She held herself very still, pressing her shoulder blades against the thin wooden door behind her. “What’re you doing there?” Her voice came out admirably controlled. “That’s my bed.”

Mack smiled up at her—a sweet, understanding smile. “I’m sleeping here.”

“And where am I supposed to sleep?” Stupid question, she thought.

But Mack was still curiously gentle, almost reassuring. “Here,” he said.

“Isn’t the bed a little small?”

“We’ll manage.”

So why was she standing there, frozen like a panicky virgin? Hadn’t she just stood staring at herself in the mirror, telling herself that the next time Mack made a halfhearted pass, she was going to take him up on it. So what was she doing cowering against the door and trying to find her way out?

“Uh, Pulaski …” she began nervously.

“I never thought I’d see you turn into a coward, Maggie.”

“I’m not a coward. I’m just not sure if this is a good idea.”

“It’s an excellent idea. What’re you frightened of, Maggie? That you’ll scare me off like you scared all the others? Or that you won’t?”

That moved her away from the door. “Go to hell, Pulaski. I don’t need your two-bit psychoanalysis tonight.”

“I know you don’t. You need love.”

That shut her up for a moment. When she’d gathered her wits back about her she laughed. “Isn’t that a euphemism? Aren’t you talking about sex?”

“No,” he said flatly, his voice low and sexy in the still night air. “I’m talking about love, and you know it as well as I do. Come here, Maggie.”

She could stand there, shivering in her wet jumpsuit, and keep arguing. She could order him from her room, and he’d go
with that damnable, easygoing smile of his. Or she could reach up and begin to undo her top button.

The wet material made the button tricky to unfasten, and her hands were trembling. She managed the first one, her eyes looking into his shaded ones with a fearless gaze, then her fingers moved awkwardly to the next one. And then he was off the bed in one fluid movement, and unaccountably she remembered Snake’s serpentine grace. He was standing in front of her, his hands brushing hers out of the way, and he was warm and strong and so very close.

“I can take care of it, Maggie May,” he whispered, his fingers making quick work of the buttons that traveled down her chest, past her waist. When he pushed the jumpsuit off her shoulders and down to her waist, she just stood there naked, waiting.

“Oh, Maggie,” he said, his voice a caress, a raw breath of emotion, and his eyes glazed as he watched her. “Maggie, Maggie, Maggie,” he whispered, pulling her into his arms, her chilled flesh scorched by the heat of him. And suddenly she was shivering, trembling all over with heat and cold and light and darkness, with a wanting that she’d thought was gone forever from her life, and she slid her hands up his smooth chest to clutch at his shoulders, swaying against him with a quiet little moan of delight.

“This is a mistake,” she whispered, her mouth pressing lightly, curiously against the warm, smooth skin of his shoulder.

“This is the smartest thing we’ve done so far,” Mack murmured back. “You told me last night how sexually healthy you are. Why don’t you show me?”

His hands slid down her back to her hips, pulling her up against him, and the wet jumpsuit slid to the floor around her feet. It was an odd erotic sensation to feel her naked hips pressed against the heavy denim of his jeans, to feel his strong, rough hands on her smooth skin, molding her to him. Suddenly she felt gloriously, wickedly, wonderfully alive, and she raised her face to his, laughter and delight and wanting filling her
aquamarine eyes. Her hands boldly slid down the taut length of him to press against the heat that surged against the zipper of his jeans.

And Mack’s hands left her hips to cup her face, holding it up to his as he stared down at her with wonder and longing and something distant and indefinable. “God, Maggie,” he whispered. “Why didn’t we do this days ago? Why didn’t we stop long enough in the cabin in Moab and get this settled?”

“Pulaski,” Maggie said. “Stop talking so damned much.” And she reached up and pressed her mouth against his.

She’d never known kissing to be such an overwhelming erotic adventure. If there was an Olympic event in kissing, Mack would have walked away with the gold medal. He did things with his tongue and teeth and lips that Maggie would never have even thought of, till she was gasping and burning in his arms, and her hands were tearing at his jeans.

The narrow bed sagged beneath their combined weight, the dip in the center throwing them together. Mack had dumped his jeans on the floor beside her wet jumpsuit, and Maggie spared a moment to consider how uncomfortable they were going to be when they got dressed in the morning. And that was the last rational thought she had for hours.

The small pool of light from the bedside lamp threw shadows around Mack’s face, making him appear dark and mysterious as he bent over her. But Maggie was beyond childish fears at that point. She arched her back as his mouth traveled down her smooth skin, tasting, teasing, arousing, and soothing. Her nipples were painfully tight with longing, and when his mouth caught one and then the other, she moaned with desperation as her fingers twined in his long hair and pulled him down against her.

His hands stroked down the smooth skin of her stomach, across her hips, his rough calluses another sensation of delight. She arched her hips against his hand in mute supplication, and he laughed, low in his throat.

“For someone who put up such a fight,” he said, “you sure are in a hurry.” And his hand slid between her legs.

She reached out and touched him, stroking the hot, surging length of him, her fingers gentle, knowing, inspired. She could feel his reaction, the sudden trembling that vibrated through his body, the tension in his muscles that matched her own and told her they had waited long enough.

With the silent understanding that usually comes only with long-term lovers, he knew that she was ready. He was above her, shadowed against the darkened room, kneeling between her legs. He hesitated for a moment, and with a sudden, matching clarity she knew what he was thinking. He was wondering whether she still needed to be in control.

And without a word she reached out her arms to him, pulling him toward her, against her, into her, taking him on his terms in a sudden rush of love and gratitude and sensuality that threatened to split her apart.

If she expected the filling of that aching, empty part of her to assuage her longing, she was wrong. It drove her past wanting into a kind of madness of desire that he matched, surging against her, his body shaking as he tried to control the steady, powerful thrusts into her.

And then suddenly she was talking, words tumbling out of her mouth—feverish, pleading, impassioned words, love words, sex words, begging him, praising him, moaning against him. Until his mouth silenced hers, his tongue driving deep into her mouth as his body drove into her warmth. And there was nothing she could do but cling to him as explosion after explosion wracked her body. She was distantly aware of him stiffening in her arms, the sudden exhalation of breath against her sweat-streaked face, and then he collapsed against her, cradling her head against him as he lay there, his pounding heartbeat a twin to hers, slowing in tandem, as they sank back to a semblance of reality.