Morgan's Mercenaries: Heart Of The Warrior (12 page)

He moved along the trail back to their hiding place. A sound—someone crying possibly—drifted into earshot. Halting, Roan keyed his hearing. Yes…there is was again: a soft, halting sobbing. Where? He turned and slowly allowed his ears to become his eyes. Turning off the trail, he moved quietly down a slight incline. Below were six silk-cotton trees, their winged roots splaying out around them. The grove looked like a darkened fortress in the twilight. The sound was coming from there.

Scowling, Roan lightened his step. It
was
someone cry
ing. A woman weeping. Who? Frowning, he stepped down into the clearing among the trees. As he rounded one of the huge, winglike roots, he stopped. Shock jolted through him. It was Inca! Crouched there, her head bowed upon her arms, she was crying hard. Taken aback, Roan stood, unsure of what to do. He felt embarrassed for her, for coming upon her without her knowledge. Why was she weeping? Stymied, he cleared his throat on purpose to let her know he was there. Every particle of him wanted to rush over and embrace her and hold her. He felt her pain.

Sniffing, Inca jerked up her head. Roan stood no more than five feet away from her. Shaken and surprised, she quickly wiped her face free of tears. Why hadn’t her guardian warned her that he was coming? Feeling broken and distraught, Inca knew emotionally she was out of balance with herself. When she was in this state, her guardian often had a tough time trying to get her attention. She was, after all, painfully human, and when she allowed her emotions to get the better of her, she was as vulnerable as any other person.

“What do you want?” she muttered, humiliated that he’d seen her crying.

“Stay where you are,” Roan urged softly. Taking a chance, a helluva big one, he moved over to her. He slowly crouched down in front of her, their knees barely touching. “I don’t care if you are the jaguar goddess,” he whispered as he lifted his hand and reached out to her. His fingers grazed her head, the thick braid hanging across her left shoulder. Her hair felt crinkly from the high humidity.

Inca wasn’t expecting Roan’s gesture and she stiffened
momentarily as his long, scarred fingers brushed the crown of her head. Warmth flowed down through Inca. She was shaken by his continued, soothing stroking of her hair. At first she wanted to jerk away, but the energy in his touch was something she desperately needed. Forcing herself to remain still, Inca leaned back against the trunk of the tree and closed her eyes. An unwilling sob rose in her. She swallowed hard and tried to ignore her tumultuous feelings.

Roan moved closer, sensing her capitulation to his grazing touches. He saw the suffering in her face, the way the corners of her mouth were pulled in with pain. “I’m glad to see you this way,” he said wryly. “It’s nice to know you are human, that you can cry, that you can let someone else help you….” And it was. Each time his fingers stroked her soft, thick hair, a burning fire scalded his lower body. Roan wanted to lean down and brush her parted lips with his, to soothe the trembling of her lower lip with the touch of his mouth. More tears squeezed from beneath her thick, black lashes.

“I cry for Julian,” she managed to whisper hoarsely, in explanation of her tears. “I felt his pain so sharply. Julian adores his father, and yet his father does not even realize he exists.” Sniffing, Inca wiped her nose with the back of her hand. She looked up at Roan’s dark, heavy features. His eyes were tender as he leaned over her. She felt safe. Truly safe. It was such an unusual feeling for Inca. Her whole life was one of being on the run, being hunted, with no place to let down her guard. Yet she felt safe with Roan.

Smiling gently, Roan settled down next to Inca. It was a bold move, and yet he listened to his heart, not his head.
He eased himself behind her, placing his legs on either side of her.

“You’re crying for Julian. Tears for the boy who needs a father.” Roan whispered. He allowed his fingers to caress the back of Inca’s neck. Her muscles were tight. As he slowly began to massage her long, slender form, he felt her relax trustingly.

Everything was so tenuous. So fragile between them. As if an internal thunderstorm was ready to let loose within him, Roan felt driven to hold her, to comfort her, to be man to her woman.

Inca trembled. Roan’s fingers worked a magic all their own on her tight, tense neck muscles. She leaned forward, her head bowed, resting her arms on her drawn-up knees so that he could continue to ease the tension from her.

More tears dribbled from her tightly shut eyes as he massaged her neck. “Julian is sweet. He is innocent, like the children I try to help and heal. He tries so hard to please his father. Back there, I watched him. He was a man. More of a man than his father. And he is right about the path. I was surprised he accepted my route.”

Roan could smell her sweet, musky odor and inhaled it. She was like a rare, fragrant orchid in that moment. It would be so easy to pull her into an embrace, but his heart warned him that it would be rushing Inca and could destroy her growing trust in him. No, one small step at a time.

“If Julian knew you were crying for him, I think he would cry, too.”

Choking on a sob and laughter, Inca nodded. “I like him. He is a kind man. He reminds me of Father Titus, the old Catholic priest who raised me for a while.”

“You don’t see many of those kind of men down here, do you?” Roan moved his hand tentatively from her neck to her shoulders and began to ease the tension from them.

Inca moaned. “You have hands like no one else.”

“Feel good?” He smiled a little, heartened by her unexpected response.

“Wonderful…”

“You let me know when you’ve had enough, okay?” Roan knew it was important for Inca to set her own emotional boundaries with him. She trusted him, if only a little. His heart soared wildly. He was close enough to press a warm, moist kiss on her exposed neck. What would her flesh feel like? Taste like? And how would she respond, being such a wild, natural woman?

Lifting her head, Inca gave him an apologetic look. “Much touches my heart.”

“You just don’t let others know that about you,” Roan murmured as he moved his hand firmly against her shoulders. “Why?”

“Because the miners, those who steal the timber and those who put my people in bondage will think it is a sign of weakness.” Inca wrinkled her nose. “What do you think Colonel Marcellino would do if he saw me crying over how he treated his devoted and loving son? He would put that pistol to my head faster than he tried to today.”

“I can’t argue with you,” Roan said heavily. “How do your neck and shoulders feel now?” He gave her a slight smile as she turned sideways and regarded him from beneath tear-matted lashes.

“Better.” Inca managed a broken, trembling smile. “Thank you…” She shyly reached out and slid her fingers across his large hand, which rested on his thigh. It
was an exhilarating and bold move on her part and she could see Roan invited her touch. She’d never had the urges she felt around him. And right now her heart was crying out for his continued touch, but she felt too shamed and embarrassed to ask him to do more.

“Anytime.”

“Really?”

He grinned a little. “Really.”

She lifted her hand from his, her fingertips tingling pleasantly from the contact. The back of his hand was hairy. She felt the inherent strength of him, as a man, in that hand. Yet he’d been so incredibly gentle with her that she felt like melting into the earth.

“I think you are a healer and do not know it yet.”

Roan lifted his hands. “My mother wished that her medicine had moved through me, my blood, but it didn’t. Sorry.” Giving Inca a humorous look, he told her conspiratorially, “If I can ease a little of your pain, or massage away some tight muscles, then I’m a happy man.”

She snorted softly and wiped the last of her tears from her cheeks. “It takes very little to make you happy, then, Storm Walker.”

“I don’t consider what we share as little or unimportant,” he told her seriously. “I like touching you, helping you. You carry the weight of the world on those proud shoulders of yours. If I can ease a little of that load, then it does make me happy.”

Inca considered his words, which fell like a warming blanket around her. She craved Roan’s continued closeness. She liked the way his bulk fit next to her. In some ways, he was like a giant tree whose limbs stretched gently overhead, protecting her. She smiled brokenly at
the thought. The warmth of his body was pleasant, too, with the humidity so high and the sun gone away for the night. The night hours were always chilly to her. What would Roan think if she moved just a few inches and leaned her back against his body? Frightened and unsure, Inca did nothing. But she wanted to.

“What is it about you that makes me feel as I do?” she demanded suddenly, her voice strong and challenging.

Eyebrows raising, Roan stared down at her. The way her petulant lips were set, the spark of challenge in her eyes, made him smile a little at her boldness. “What do you mean? Do I make you feel bad? Uncomfortable?”

“No…just the opposite. I like being close to you. You remind me of a big tree with large, spreading branches—arms that reach out and protect people.”

“That’s my nature,” Roan said in a low tone. He saw her eyes narrow with confusion for a moment. Her tentative feelings for him were genuine and his heart soared wildly with that knowledge. Roan knew instinctively that Inca was an innocent. He realized she was a virgin, in more ways than one. Her relationship skills were not honed. Yet the honest way she had reached out to him touched his heart as nothing else ever could.

“You make me feel safe in my world—and in my world there is no safety.” Inca’s lips twisted wryly. “How can that be?”

“Sometimes,” Roan told her gravely, “certain men and women can give one another that gift. It is about trust, too.”

Inca sighed. “Oh, trust…yes, that. Grandfather Adaire said until I could trust someone else with my life, that I would never grow. That I was stuck.” She frowned and
leaned her head back, looking up at the silhouettes of the trees in the darkness surrounding them.

“And what did Grandmother Alaria say?”

Surprised, Inca twisted to look up at him. His eyes gleamed in the darkness, rich with irony and humor. “How do you know she said anything to me?”

“She’s the leader of the village, isn’t she? I’d think that she’d have something positive to say to you while you’re working on the emotional blocks that were created by your being abandoned at birth.”

His insight was startling. Inca found herself not feeling alarmed about it as she normally would. Raising her hands, she said, “Grandmother Alaria said my heart wound was stopping me from trusting, but that, at some point when I was a little older, more mature, I would work on this blockage. She said she had faith in me to do it.”

“Because you have a magnificent heart, Inca. That’s why she said those words to you.”

Deeply touched by his praise, she said, “I am a bad person, Roan. Grandfather Adaire has said that of me many times. A bad person trying to fulfill the Sisterhood of Light’s plan to help all my relations here in Amazonia.”

Reaching out, Roan captured some errant, crinkled strands of her hair and gently tucked them behind her ear. He saw her eyes mirror surprise and then pleasure. Good, she was beginning to see his touch as something positive in her life. Tonight Inca had opened her heart to him. The trust in him that inspired that made him feel like he was walking on air. The joy that thrummed through him was new and made him breathless.

“You’re a good person, Inca. Don’t listen to Grandfa
ther Adaire. Good people make mistakes.” He frowned and thought of how he hadn’t given Sarah his medicine necklace to wear on that fateful climb. Why, oh why, hadn’t he followed his instincts? “Guaranteed, they do. Sometimes really disastrous mistakes. But that doesn’t make them bad.” Just sorry for an eternity, but he didn’t mouth those words to Inca. She was suffering enough and didn’t need to know from what experience his words came.

Inca gave him a flat look, her mouth twitching. “Then what? If I am not bad, what am I?”

“Human. A terribly vulnerable and beautiful human being…just like me. Like the rest of us….”

“T
hey are going to have many of their men injured or killed going through the swamp,” Inca said the next morning as she stood beside Roan on a hill that overlooked the thin, straggling column of men a good half mile away. They were well camouflaged by the rain forest. Luckily, the floor of the forest was clear of a lot of thick bushes and ferns, due to the fact that the triple canopy overhead prevented sunlight from reaching the ground. It made marching faster and easier.

“The colonel is bullheaded,” he said, turning and looking at her. This morning he felt a change in Inca. Oh, it was nothing obvious, but Roan felt that she was much more at ease with him. It was because of the trust he was building with her. “I wish he’d listen to his son.”

Snorting, Inca adjusted the sling of the rifle on her right shoulder. “Julian has more intelligence than his father ever will.”

“You like him, don’t you?”

With a shrug, Inca said, “He is a gentle person in a machine of war. He does not fit in it. I like his energy. He is a man of peace. My heart aches for him, for all he wants from his father. The colonel is lucky to have Julian. But he does not know that.”

“You don’t find many men like that,” Roan said, partly teasing. “The peaceful type, that is.”

“You are like that.”

“Yeah?” He baited her with a growing grin. Just being next to her was making him feel happier than he had a right to be. Roan recalled that Sarah had made him feel that way, too. There was something magical about Inca. She was completely naive to the fact that she was a beautiful young woman. Not many of the men of the company had missed her beauty. Roan had seen them staring open-mouthed at her, like wolves salivating after an innocent lamb.

Inca liked the warm smile he turned on her. “Sometimes I think you have been trained by the Jaguar Clan. You handle yourself, your energy, carefully. You do not give it away. You conserve it. You know when to use it and when not to.” She found herself wanting to reach out and touch Roan. That act was foreign to her, until now. He stood there in his fatigues, the shirt dampened with sweat and emphasizing his powerful chest and broad shoulders. Recalling his touch, Inca felt warmth stir in her lower body like sunlight warming the chill of the night. An ache centered in her heart as she lifted her gaze to his mouth, which was crooked with that slight, teasing smile. She liked the way Roan looked. His face was strong and uncompromising, like him. When he’d moved to her back
and drawn his pistol to protect her from possible harm by the soldiers as she confronted the colonel, she’d been grateful. Not many men would stand their ground like that. Though badly outnumbered, he’d been good at his word; he had protected and cared for her when it counted. He
could
be trusted.

She smiled a little as she watched the army column below. The men were slipping and falling on the damp, leaf-strewn rain forest floor. Inca wanted the colonel to make twenty miles a day, but the men of this company were too soft. They’d be lucky to make ten miles this first day.

“With the way they are crawling along, the Valentinos will be well prepared for them when we finally make it to that valley.”

Roan nodded. “The troops aren’t in good shape. It will take at least five days to toughen them up. We’ll lose a lot of time doing that.”

Inca’s eyes flashed with anger. “And Colonel Marcellino said these were his
best
troops. Bah. My people would embarrass and shame them. The Indians are tough and have the kind of endurance it takes to move quickly through the forest.”

“Well,” Roan sighed, his gaze brushing her upturned features, “we’ll just have to be patient with them. I’m more worried about what’s going to happen when we hit the edge of that swamp two days from now.”

Giving the column a look of derision, Inca growled, “Marcellino is going to have many of his men injured. The swamp is nothing but predators waiting for food.”

Roan reached out and briefly touched her shoulder. Instantly, he saw her features soften. It was split seconds
before she rearranged her face so that he could not see her true feelings. “Do you want to move ahead of the column?”

“Humph. They are many at the pace of a snail,” Inca complained as she started gingerly down the slope. “I think I will move ahead to where I think they will straggle to a stop at dusk. We need meat. I will sing a snake song and ask one of the snakes to give its life for us as a meal tonight.”

Roan nodded. “You’ll find us, I’m sure.”

She flashed him a grin as she trotted down the last stretch of slope to the forest floor below. “I will find you,” she promised, and took off at a slow jog, weaving among the trees.

Roan smiled to himself. Inca moved with a bonelessness that defied description, her thick braid swinging between her shoulder blades. He thought he saw a black-and-gold jaguar for a moment, trotting near her side. When he blinked again, the image was gone, but Roan knew he wasn’t seeing things. His mother had been clairvoyant and he’d managed to inherit some of that gift himself.

Moving along at a brisk walk, Roan opened the blouse of his fatigues, his chest shining with sweat. The humidity was high, and the cooling breeze felt good on his flesh. Planning on moving ahead and remaining with the point guards out in front of the column, he already missed Inca’s considerable presence. Yes, he liked her. A lot. More than he should. His heart blossomed with such fierce longing that it caught him by surprise. Inca was like a drug to his system, an addiction. Roan had thought his heart had died when Sarah left him. But that wasn’t so,
he was discovering. And for the first time in two years, he felt hope. He felt like living once more, but squashed that feeling instantly. The thought of ever falling in love again terrified Roan. The fear of losing someone he loved held him in its icy clutches. He fought his feelings for Inca. He didn’t dare fall for her. She lived her life moment to moment. Hers was not a world where one was guaranteed to live to a ripe old age. And compared to Sarah’s love of climbing, Inca’s career was even more dangerous.

Inca squatted down in front of the open fire. She had found Roan at dusk. He was in the midst of making sure the colonel’s column was getting set up for the coming night. As he left the company, she met him near one of the moundlike hills and led him to her chosen hiding spot for the night, in a grove of towering kapok trees. It was easy to hide among the huge, six-to-eight-foot tall, winglike roots. There were smaller trees nearby, and she’d already hung out two hammocks for them to sleep in.

Just seeing Roan made her heart soar. Inca had found that as she traveled the rest of the day without Roan at her side, she had missed him more than she should. His quiet, powerful presence somehow made her feel more stable. Protected. And that scared her. In her panic, she had left him with the troops instead of staying with him. She was afraid of herself more than him, of the new and uneasy feelings she was now experiencing. No man had made her feel like he did, and Inca simply didn’t know what to do with that—or herself.

Inca had called a snake to give its life so that they could eat. It had come and she had killed it, and after praying for the release of the spirit, she had skinned it and placed
it on a spit. As it cooked, she looked across the fire at Roan. The shadows carved out every hard line in his angular, narrow face. “I thought about you a lot today after we split up,” she said. “It feels odd to me to work with someone.” She squarely met his blue eyes, which were hooded and thoughtful looking after she tossed the bombastic comment his way.

“You’re used to working alone,” he agreed. “My job here is to be your partner.” Roan lifted his chin and looked down at the clearing where the Brazilian Army continued to set up camp for the night. They could see the company, but the men there could not see them.

Snorting, Inca tried to ignore his deep, husky baritone voice. Fear ate at her. She decided to bluff him, to scare him off. “I told you before—I was abandoned to die at birth and I will die alone. I work alone. My path is one of being alone.” But she knew, whether she liked it or not, she had felt a thrill race through her that Roan had chosen to be at her campsite and not remain with the colonel’s company. Pursing her full lips, she concentrated on keeping the four-foot-long snake turning so it would not burn in the low flames. She liked the warmth of the fire against her body as she worked near it. “I do not need you. Go back to the company. That is where you belong, with the other men.”

Roan swallowed his shock. Where was this coming from? Until now, Inca had seemed happy with his presence. What had changed? Had he said something to her this morning? Roan wasn’t sure. Seeing the fear in Inca’s eyes, he realized she was pushing him away. If he didn’t have the directive from Morgan Trayhern, he’d respect her request, but leaving her alone was not an option. Roan
had given Mike Houston his word to protect Inca, and he sure couldn’t do that if he was half a mile from her campsite at night. Clearing his throat, he said softly, “Everyone needs someone at some point in their life.”

Inca scowled as she continued to deftly turn the meat over the fire. Her heart thudded with fear. Her bluff was not working. “That is not my experience. Jaguars, for the most part, live alone. The only time they see one of their own kind is during mating season, and they split shortly thereafter. The female jaguar goes through her pregnancy and birthing alone, and raises her cubs—alone.” She lifted her head and glared across the fire at Roan. “I do not need a partner to do what I do here in Amazonia.”

“Because?”

Anger riffled through Inca. The expression on Roan’s face told her he wasn’t going to budge on this issue. Her black brows dipped. “You have an annoying habit of asking too many questions.”

“How else am I to know how you feel?” Roan decided to meet her head-on. He found himself unwilling to give up her hard-earned trust so easily.

“I am not used to showing my feelings to anyone.” She raised her voice to a low, warning growl. Usually, such an action was enough to scare off even the bravest of men. Inca recalled vividly how Roan had found her weeping yesterday and how his touch had been soothing and healing to her. When she looked up again, she saw his blue eyes had softened with interest—in her. That set her back two paces and she felt panicky inside. Roan was not scared off like the male idiots she’d had the sorry misfortune to encounter thus far in her life. And maybe that was the problem: Roan Walker was
not
the usual
male she was used to dealing with. That thought was highly unsettling.

“I’m not either, so I know how you feel,” Roan murmured. “Sometimes, when we’re in so much pain, we need another person there just to hold us, rock us and let us know that we’re loved, anyway, despite how we’re feeling.”
Love?
Where had that word come from? Reaching out, Roan placed two more small sticks of wood on the fire. Light and shadows danced across her pain-filled face. A flash of annoyance and then fear laced with curiosity haunted her lovely willow-green eyes. He smiled to himself. Roan felt her powerful and intense curiosity in him as a man. He sensed her uneasiness around him and also her yearning.

More than anything, Roan needed to continue to cultivate her trust of him. Unless he could keep her trust, she would do as she damned well pleased and would leave him behind in an instant—which was exactly what Mike Houston and Morgan Trayhern didn’t want to happen. Especially with that trigger-happy Brazilian colonel looking for Inca’s head on a platter and the multimillion dollar reward he’d collect once he had it. And then the colonel would have his revenge for his eldest son’s death at Inca’s hands. No, it was important Roan be able to act as her shield—another set of eyes and ears to keep danger at bay, and Inca safe.

The snake meat began to sizzle and pop as the juices leaked out. With a swipe of her index finger, Inca quickly began to catch them before they fell into the fire. Each time she put her finger into her mouth and sucked on it, making a growling sound of pleasure.

“This is good….”

Roan smiled a little, enjoying her obvious enjoyment of such small but important things in her life. “So tell me,” he began conversationally as he watched her sit back on her heels and continue to expertly turn the meat, “why do you distrust men so much?”

Inca laughed harshly. “Why
should
I trust them? Many of them are pigs. Brazilian men think they
own
their wives like slaves.” She glared up at him. “No man owns a woman. No man has the right to slap or strike a woman or child, and yet they do it all the time in Brazil. A woman cannot speak up. If she risks it, her husband can strike her. If she so much as looks at another man, the husband, by law, has the right to murder her on the spot. Of course, any married man is allowed to have all the affairs he wants without any reprisal. To other men, he has machismo. Pah.” Her voice deepened to a snarl. “I see nothing good in that kind of man. All they can do is dominate or destroy children and women. I will not be touched by them. I will not allow one to think that he can so much as lift a hand in my direction. I will not allow any man to dictate what I should or should not say. And if I want to look at a man, that is my right to do so, for the men here stare at women all the time.”

“That’s called a double standard in North American.”

Curling her upper lip, she rasped, “Call it what you want. Men like that mean destruction. They manipulate others, and they want power
over
someone else. I see it all the time. I walk through one of my villages, and I see what drug dealers have done to those who will not bend to their threats and violence. I see children dead. I see women shot in the head because they refuse to give these men their bodies in payment for whatever they need.”

“That’s not right,” Roan agreed quietly. He heard her stridency, saw the rage in her eyes. It was righteous rage, he acknowledged. And while he was a stranger to Brazil, he had heard of the laws condoning the shooting of a wife who looked at another man. And he’d also heard from Mike Houston that husbands here often had a mistress on the side, as a matter of course.