Tango in Paradise (17 page)

For all of two seconds she was tempted to roll back over and doze off, with scenes of last night to keep her in warm company. But the meeting was in less than three hours, according to the travel clock by the bed, so on a huge groan she forced herself to sit up. Call room service, take a hot shower, drown herself in hot tea, then work on her speech, she decided, years of scheduling her days making the thought process automatic.

Titillating visions of working in some time with Jack died when she stood and the muscles in her inner thighs protested loudly at being asked to support her weight. Glad Jack wasn’t there to watch her very untitillating waddle, she gingerly made
her way to the bathroom, her scheduled priorities shifting order.

Fifteen minutes later, her hair wrapped in a white hotel towel, she pulled on one of Jack’s T-shirts and dialed down for some tea. If she was lucky, it would get here before they checked out tomorrow. Thankfully, she recalled Jack saying he’d bring back breakfast, so she didn’t bother pushing her luck by asking for something as complex as food.

She wandered out to the small living room and settled on the couch, her muscles not protesting quite as loudly after her wonderfully steamy shower. She emptied her head of all that had transpired the night before and tried to work on her speech. Only fifteen minutes had passed before she allowed herself to admit that the stupid grin on her face had nothing to do with the plight of the local Indians, and she dropped the legal pad back on the coffee table.

She thought about getting dressed, but even with air-conditioning the room was humid and she decided it would be best to wait until it was closer to the meeting. Her gaze strayed back to the bedroom and she acknowledged with a wry grin that it would also be easier to make love with Jack if he returned in time.

The grin broadened to a smile and she pulled a throw pillow from the couch and hugged it to
her body. She didn’t feel awkward in the least this morning, and she knew it was because Jack had removed any and all doubts very thoroughly last night. She had no idea what lay in store for them, but for the first time in ten years she felt as if she could handle whatever life threw at her.

Wandering into the bedroom, she noticed one of Jack’s nylon gear bags lying open on top of the desk. Without conscious thought, only the need to know more about what made him tick, she walked over to it. There were pictures wedged in the inside pocket, the corners poking up at odd angles, as if he’d stuffed them in there only recently. Her curiosity more than piqued, her need to look at them struggled against the knowledge of what had happened last time she’d given in to the temptation to look at his work.

Surely after what they’d shared, he wouldn’t mind. Even if they were of her, she wouldn’t care. Not anymore. Jack had been incredibly supportive and understanding the night before when she’d bared her ugly past. Nothing could change that, or her conviction that he was being honest with her about his reasons for being at the Cove. Besides which, she argued with herself, Jack may have done everything in his power to help her heal last night, but he kept his own problems to himself. Maybe seeing his work would help her to understand, to know what questions to ask. More than anything,
she wanted to be there for him, the way he’d been there for her.

Wiping her suddenly sweaty palms against his yellow T-shirt, she gingerly slid the photos out of the pocket.

NINE

Jack balanced the paper bag and his camera gear on his left arm and opened the door to their room. “Sorry it took me so long to get back, I got caught up shooting some of the local kids playing. I hope you like fresh fruit, it’s all I could—” Jack stopped dead in his tracks, clutching the brown bag tightly against his ribs, not caring if he smashed the tender fruit inside. “What are you doing?” He didn’t bother to disguise his sudden unease; it was plainly obvious in his flat voice.

He was prepared for a sudden look of guilt and a hurried explanation, so the slow shifting of her attention away from the photographs she held in her hand to his face sent him reeling even further off balance. Her stunned expression knocked
him down completely, rendering him incapable of speech. It wasn’t possible she’d guessed the importance of those photos.
Was it?

“Jack, these are …” Her speech faltered and her gaze returned to the glossy prints in her hand. He watched with something that was a cross between heightened anticipation and pain as she started to go through the small stack.

He was far enough away that the pictures themselves were little more than a blur of color, but it wasn’t necessary to see them. Each one was etched in his heart in painstaking detail. He found his complete attention riveted on her face, knowing by the tiniest nuance of expression which one she was looking at. A hint of a smile, with a sad light entering her soft eyes; must be the one of the child rolling a hoop with a stick while her dog chased merrily along.

While it sounded like something from a Norman Rockwell rendering, the only similarity was the spirit of the child and possibly the dog. Her dress could only kindly be called a rag, the hoop was made out of a rusted rim from a hubcap, and the bandy-legged little dog’s heritage had been blurred generations ago.

April tucked that one at the back and he saw her eyes widen a tiny fraction with pleasure. To look at her, it was as if the sparkling spray of water from the waterfall had just misted her skin. She couldn’t
know that a mere mile away people were blowing each other up. But Jack knew.

The next shot made Jack shift uncomfortably. A rigid bolt of lightning like a jagged slash across the glossy sheet made her stiffen, as if she’d not only heard the reverberating crash of thunder that followed but understood how humbling it was to witness the amazing power of nature.

It was as if she understood exactly how he’d felt when he’d taken the picture, his need to capture that precise moment. And yet there was no way she could understand. She had never been compelled, as he had, to become completely absorbed in something that powerful, something that far beyond the control of a human being, in order to discover the possible existence of a higher order in the chaos that was a fact of life on earth.

But somehow she did. He stilled as she put that one aside, then felt his blood run hot as she absorbed the impact of the next one. The unguarded look of desire that flashed across her face involved him as completely as her previous expression had.
My God!
She did know. She understood.

“April, come here.” He moved to stand next to her even as he spoke. She didn’t look up, didn’t give any indication she’d even heard his hoarse plea, and he fought down the urge to pull her into his arms.

He knew the photo was simply of a bird and
a flower. Most people would have appreciated the rich color of the crimson hibiscus, maybe have been amused at the rapid beating of the tiny hummingbird’s wings. But that’s not why he’d waited hours for that shot. And one look at her rapidly dilating pupils told him she knew why he’d chosen that instant in time to release the shutter.

He knew she saw the crystalline morning dew beaded on each soft vermilion petal. She felt the quiver of the tiny wings as intimately as if they’d brushed against her skin. She responded in an elemental way, as he had, to the long, spearlike beak, brought into sharp focus as it thrust into the center of the exotic bloom in search of life-giving nectar. Jack stared hard at her, shaken beyond action by her response to his work, his vision. He willed her to look at him, and very slowly she tilted her gaze to meet his.

Nothing he’d ever photographed in his life, or would from that point on, would ever match what he found in her eyes. Respect, desire, a deep yearning. All those things were there. But it was the innate understanding, shining as clearly as a beacon on a storm, welcoming him inside, telling him that, yes, she’d found the other half of herself in him as well.

Raising a shaky hand to cup her chin, he dropped a heartbreakingly gentle kiss on her lips.
I love you, April Marie Morgan de la Torre
. He wanted to whisper
the words out loud, but his throat had closed the second she’d looked at him.

Desire quickly eclipsed all the other emotions swirling in her eyes, except the one he had to believe was her love for him. Dropping his parcels and camera gear on the table, he pulled the now-forgotten photos from her hands and lifted her into his arms. Nuzzling her neck as he walked toward the bed, he managed to say, “How late can you be for that meeting?”

“It’s not for hours,” she whispered back, her hand tracing a delicate line over his face.

He sat on the edge of the bed with her in his lap, letting her continue her sensual tactile exploration of his face. It was as if she was truly seeing each feature for the first time.

He found he didn’t mind, even if her inspection did make him smile a bit self-consciously. His soul had just been completely exposed to her and he realized that he should feel nervous. Maybe the fact that he wasn’t proved he was truly in love with her. His trust ran so deep that just knowing his soul was in her tender care made him feel more free and relaxed than he’d been in his entire adult life.

“What exactly are you looking at?” he queried softly, grabbing her fingers and kissing their tips softly.

Her brown eyes bore into his, demanding total attention. “I think I’m looking at a man who has
had to work increasingly harder at finding the beauty in a world slowly going mad. A man who has, by the nature of his work, had to bury the very sensitivity that makes him so good at his job, in order to survive without losing his own sanity.”

His lips stilled on her fingers, his eyes frozen on hers. There was no pity in their warm depths, only a trace of compassion from someone who’d been forced to make her own serenity, build her own beauty, when her own world was torn apart and made too ugly to survive in.

“And you heal me,” he whispered, his breath mingling with hers. “When I came down here, I wasn’t sure what the problem was. Or if I even had one. But I did. And catching up on sleep and taking time out from the pressure isn’t the answer. I don’t know if I can go back to that kind of life, April. What I do know is that with you I feel like the search for my own peace has ended.”

He pulled her arm around his neck and fell back on the bed, pulling her down on top of him. His kisses were fiercely gentle at first, but as she responded with a quiet fervor of her own he became more and more demanding, until he tore at her clothes and she at his because they couldn’t be close enough.

“Love me, Jack.”

“
Sí, mi tesoro, mi corazón
. Always.” Jack pulled her under him and pushed into her in one fluid
thrust. She bucked against him, meeting him thrust for thrust, gasping his name over and over until they both rode right over the edge.

April held on to the loose door handle of the pickup truck in a vain effort to save her sore backside a few extra bruises. She glanced over at Jack, who somehow felt her gaze and shot her a quick wink before returning his attention to the rutted road that led back to the Cove. A small smile crossed her face as she realized her achy tenderness couldn’t all be blamed on bad shocks.

“You look like the proverbial cat,” Jack said. “Of course after that heartrending speech you gave yesterday afternoon, you deserve to.”

If he hadn’t specifically mentioned the time, she might have questioned which speech he was referring to: the one she made to him in their room after seeing his photos, or the one she gave to the committee later that day. Her smile broadened as she recalled the looks on the officials’ faces. Prejudice against the local Zapotecs and other Indians wouldn’t be overcome easily, but she felt she’d made some headway by gaining the bureaucrats’ agreement to allow her to continue to hire them.

She glanced back at Jack, smiling as she recalled the way he’d hounded her with endless questions about the area, the meeting, and the plight of the
local tribes. He’d seemed truly interested in her struggle to help them. “
Your
smile might be considered a bit smug as well.”

“Hey, I just spent two days, almost all of it in bed—” At her raised eyebrows he laughed and added, “Well, we usually made it to the bed. And I was with the most incredible woman I’ve ever met. You’re lucky I’m not singing.”

Except for a change in gender, April had been thinking the same thing, but hearing him say it made her pulse speed up in a delicious spiral. Could she actually love this man? A man on the verge of making life-changing decisions? Decisions that could very well not include her, regardless of what he felt, or thought he felt, now? She was very much afraid the answer to all of it was a loud, resounding yes!

“Getting hot,
mi tesoro
?” he said, his smile on full-charm. “Your skin is turning the most wonderful shade of pink. Maybe we should find some shade somewhere and see if I can’t cool you down.”

April laughed as she looked at the dry, dusty landscape all around them. “Why do you think I went to so much expense to specially design Paradise Cove to support all that lush tropical foliage? The only shade between here and there is inside the cab of this truck.”