TRAPPED (13 page)

“She associated the fragrance with her friend’s absence?”

“She knew her friend would never have run away, because there was a family that had expressed interest in adopting her. Mia was very grateful to have been adopted. She knew that this girl also wanted to be adopted more than anything. Mia connected the fragrance and the girl’s unexpected leaving and came to me. Thank God she trusted me enough to tell me.”

“What did you do?”

“I had to be sure. I arranged a party at the school, a fund-raiser, and invited all the donors from previous events. Jamas was on that list. He came and I made sure there was an opportunity for him to talk with Mia. He gave her another gift, a signed photo of a popular band in Brazil.”

“Something that most adolescent girls would see as valuable.”

“Exactly. When he gave her the gift, he told her that he had something even more special that he wanted to show her and that his sister would pick her up from school on Monday of the following week. I wanted to confront Jamas but I knew that it would be a mistake. I didn’t know who I could trust. He’s a very powerful man with ties to the local police and government. I conferred with Father Taquero and at his suggestion, I contacted the FBI. At that time, I thought these were kidnapping cases. Let’s just say that my inquiry sparked quite a bit of notice. Within hours, I had talked to several people from different agencies. I didn’t realize it but Jamas was a known figure to many, but no one had been able to personally connect him to any crimes. He had made a big mistake in approaching Mia directly.”

“What happened next?”

She hesitated and he got scared. “What happened, Elle?”

“I had been assured that only a very tight circle of people were aware that I had contacted authorities. But the next night, I was attacked on my way to see Father Taquero. Two men were pulling me into a waiting car when Father Taquero and his dog, his very big dog, came around the corner. One of the men got bit and the other tried to shoot the dog. But by that time, we had attracted some attention and the men drove away.”

Brody felt a chill run down the length of his body. Elle had been manhandled by goons and likely would have been killed. Lost to him forever. He had never been a particularly violent man, but he was filled with the urge to kill those responsible for hurting her.

She must have sensed his emotion because she didn’t wait for him to ask the next question. “With Father Taquero’s help, I arranged for Mia to go to a safe place that same night. No one will be able to find her, I’m confident of that. The story I told you about taking books to a teacher in Fortaleza was partially true. There are books in those boxes. There is a teacher at the school that I know. But the reason I was going there was that I had contacted the one person that I believed I could trust, told him that I thought he had a leak, and he had promised that he would meet me in Fortaleza and arrange safe passage for both Mia and me back to the United States.”

“So when our plane didn’t land, the person you were supposed to meet should have immediately sensed that something might be wrong.”

“Yes. That’s why when I heard the helicopter, I was so excited. I figured that he had come for me. But he would never have shot at me. Mia and I are his key witnesses.”

“What’s his name?”

“Flynn O’Brien.”

Brody smiled at her. “I imagine he’s not Irish.”

“I suspect he is, based on the accent I heard when I talked to him. I don’t really care. What’s important to me is that he can safely get Mia and me back to the United States.” She yawned, covering her mouth with the back of her hand.

He smiled at her and gathered up the plastic plates and the wine bottle. “You need some rest,” he said.

She nodded and slipped down in the bed. “This could all be over tomorrow,” she said.

He didn’t want his time with Elle to be over. But he wasn’t sure if he was ready to tell her that yet. First he needed to understand why she’d left so many years before. “Elle,” he said.

There was no answer. Her breathing was steady and deep.

He settled in next to her, pulling her in tight to his body. He could wait. He could do most anything as long as Elle was in his arms.

Chapter Thirteen

Elle woke up feeling warm and comfortable and, oddly enough, content. That was not an emotion that she was generally up close and personal with. She’d spent a lifetime searching, looking for the thing that was going to make her feel whole, make her feel as if she’d truly left her childhood behind.

Contentment might be an elusive emotion, but right now it filled her, surrounded her, even led her to do something that she might normally not do. She turned in Brody’s arms. He was awake.

“Make love to me,” she said.

His eyes widened. “Well, hell,” he said.

“Huh?”

“I want the last fifteen minutes back, because I spent them thinking about how I was going to convince you to let me do just that. You’re easy.”

“But still worth it,” she countered as his lips traced her collarbone.

He lifted his head. “That, darling, is not even worthy of discussion.”

An hour later, they lay in bed, him on his back, her on her side, nestled close. She was stroking his bare stomach. “We should get up,” she said. “Leo said he’d be here by noon. But if he comes early, I don’t want him walking into this.”

Brody didn’t answer. He was staring at the ceiling.

“Penny for your thoughts,” she teased.

He shifted so that he could look her in the eye. His face was very serious. “Why did you leave?”

She’d expected the question. How could he not ask it? How could she not answer it now, after all this.

“The first night that you came into the bar, I noticed you. I wasn’t even waiting on your table and still I noticed you. You have this way of bringing light into a room, making everything around you brighter, making everything look better. I know it sounds crazy but I could
feel
you in the room.”

“You never said a word to me.”

“Of course not. But I watched you. And then when you came back and I was your waitress, I thought,
Wow, he’s as nice as he looks.
You were polite and funny and I heard you tell your friend to clean up his act after he let loose an F-bomb in front of me. And you left very generous tips.”

“I was trying to get your attention.”

“You had it. And when you asked me out, I couldn’t believe it. And I meant it when I said no. But you were persistent and...it was probably wrong but I wanted what you were offering, I wanted a chance to be
that
girl. The girl with the incredible boyfriend that everybody admired and respected. Even if it couldn’t last.”

“But—”

She held up a finger, stopping him. “You amazed me. So well educated, so confident, so emotionally whole. I would lie in bed at night and think, how does one get to be Brody Donovan? Then when we visited your parents over the holidays and I saw how perfect they were, it made sense to me. You were destined to be perfect. Destined that everything you did or touched for the first twenty-five years of your life would be golden.”

“You left because I had a good life?” he asked, unable to keep the disbelief out of his tone. “Because I had nice parents?”

“No. Of course not. I left because I saw how different we were. How different we would always be.”

She saw the look on his face and knew that he was never going to understand unless she told him the truth, the whole truth. “Brody, I grew up in a series of trailer parks.”

“It’s no crime to be poor, Elle.”

“You’re right.” She swallowed hard. “When I was twelve, I was molested by my stepfather. He touched me. Made me...touch him. Do things to him.”

She could see the shock, the revulsion, on his face. “Rivers?” he asked.

“Yes.”

“I hope the bastard spent time in jail,” he said.

“No charges were pressed even though it happened many times. I told my mother and she didn’t believe me. She said that if I told anyone else, we would all be in big trouble.”

“How could she say that?”

“I don’t know. At twelve, I didn’t understand how wrong it was for her to respond that way. I did know that I hated what Rivers was doing to me. I lived in constant fear that my bedroom door was going to open. I stopped sleeping, I was failing school.”

“What happened?” he asked, his voice subdued.

“A teacher contacted a social worker, who called my mother. I don’t think my mother ever admitted to the social worker what was happening, because Rivers was never arrested. But it evidently scared my mother enough that she decided that she and I were leaving. That night we packed the car while Rivers was working second shift at the factory. I was so grateful that I didn’t ask many questions. It was only years later that I realized that we left because my mother was afraid that she was going to be arrested because she’d allowed it to happen.”

“I’m...so sorry,” he said.

She could see the distress on his face. She put a hand on his cheek. “It’s okay. It’s over. It’s been over for a long time.”

He didn’t respond. Probably because he knew her words were empty. Things like that were never really over.

“We moved to Utah. To another trailer park. My mother said she wasn’t angry with me, but I knew she was. She blamed me.”

“You know that’s ridiculous?” he said.

“I do now. At twelve, I figured she was right. She and Rivers got divorced and my mother never remarried. I think that somehow she blames me for that, too. That she’s had to spend her life alone because of me.”

“Just because a person is an adult, it doesn’t mean she has mature thinking skills,” he said.

“Very true. It was a difficult environment to live in. I quit school when I was sixteen and left home.”

She stopped and looked at him expectantly.

“That was probably a really scary thing to do,” he said.

She waved a hand impatiently. “Brody, I never graduated from high school. You were already in med school, about to graduate at the top of your class, and you were engaged to a high-school dropout. I always made a joke about not being ready for college. It had nothing to do with being ready. I couldn’t enroll because I didn’t meet the minimum entry requirements.”

“I wouldn’t have cared,” he said. “I would have helped you.”

She shook her head sadly. “I wanted to tell you. When you asked me to marry you, I told myself that I deserved you and all the happiness that you’d brought into my life. But then you started interviewing for positions. A couple of the hospitals invited us to dinner. And I realized that in the world that you were entering, people would make judgments about you based on their impressions of me.”

“You made a wonderful impression. Everyone loved you.”

“I have a criminal background, Brody. I was arrested six days after I turned eighteen. I spent thirty-two days in jail.”

He swallowed hard, probably because he wasn’t totally unaware of what young girls on the street did to earn money for food and shelter. “For what?”

“I vandalized a man’s car. I was working at a bar. Those are the only jobs a young girl without a high-school diploma can get. This guy kept coming on to me. Wouldn’t take no for an answer. One night, after he’d put his hand up my skirt, I went a little crazy. I took bottles and bottles of alcohol and broke them open inside his vehicle. The interior of his Audi was a mess of broken glass and liquor.”

“He deserved it, Elle. He was a jerk. And it makes sense. You had a history of abuse. It was no wonder that you reacted that way to unwanted advances.”

She shrugged. “There were too many things. At some point, at some time, it was all going to come out that Dr. Brody Donovan was married to a high-school dropout with a criminal record. I could not be the first not-perfect thing in your life. I could not let the man who never made a mistake make a real whopper. I just couldn’t.”

* * *

B
RODY
WAS
STUNNED
. Speechless. She’d left to protect him.

He stood up and walked around the small room. He felt as if there was energy bubbling up in his body and that the top of his head would blow off if he couldn’t expel some of it. His heart was pounding in his chest.

The thirteen-year-old mystery was solved. She hadn’t left because she didn’t love him enough; she’d left because she loved him too much.

It had never seemed more important to say the right words. He stopped walking and faced her. Her face was pale and streaks of fresh tears ran down her cheeks.

She was beautiful.

“Elle, I am not perfect. And I’m sorry that you ever felt that you needed to be perfect for me. I don’t expect that, I don’t want that.”

“But—”

He held up a hand to silence her. “Please, let me finish,” he said. “You are very smart and probably the most courageous and giving woman I’ve ever met. You survived something that no child should have to survive. How you managed that, I’ll never know but it tells me that you can survive anything.” He shook his head at her. “You do realize that you were on your own at an age where I still needed my mother to iron my shirts. I’m the one who’s not worthy.”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” she said.

“You say that to me a lot. I don’t care if I’m ridiculous. Not as long as you’re there to witness it. You’re an amazing woman, Elle. I thought that thirteen years ago and I still think it today. I love you, Elle.”

She launched herself into his arms. “Oh, Brody. What did I ever do to deserve you?”

“We deserve each other. We’re perfect for each other.”

He kissed her, his tongue in her mouth, his body holding her tight. And then he backed her up until the back of her knees touched the end of the bed. He gently pushed her backward and when she collapsed, he followed her down onto Leo’s wrinkled sheets. And he made sweet love to her.

* * *

W
HEN
E
LLE
WOKE
UP
, she could feel the jungle heat seeping into the small hut. Brody was cutting slices of mango, arranging them on a tray with hunks of cheese and bread.

“Hungry?” he said, turning toward her.

“Yes. I’m still having thoughts of cheeseburgers and fries,” she said.

He shrugged. “I’m sorry. That’s what they’re having in the hut next door. You, unfortunately, landed in the fruit, cheese, bread and peanut butter hut.”

“Better than the Brussels sprouts and eggnog hut.”

“For sure.” He handed her a piece of bread with peanut butter. “Once we land in the States, I’ll take you for a cheeseburger and fries. Maybe a chocolate shake if you’re really nice.”

They’d talked a lot about what had brought them to this place but not much of what was next. As horrible as the trek through the jungle had been, these last hours had been an almost miraculous interlude, something that she had never anticipated, never even hoped for, because it just wasn’t going to happen.

But it had. And it would soon be over. “What are your plans when you get back to the States?” she asked.

“I have a job waiting for me in San Diego. I’m joining a group of orthopedists. I hope that I never see another bombing victim.” He ate a piece of cheese. “What about you?”

“I need to find a place for Mia and me to live. Then get her enrolled in a school. Then find a job.” She smiled. “I guess I have about a thousand things to do, all equally important.”

He stared at her and she felt herself get even warmer. His gaze was intense. “San Diego has really great weather—good for a kid who is used to a warm climate with lots of sunshine. I mean, you wouldn’t want to go to Seattle or Buffalo or someplace like that.”

His tone was challenging. “I wasn’t thinking Seattle or Buffalo,” she said.

“San Diego has the ocean, too. And a great zoo. I’m sure there are some wonderful schools for Mia and probably lots of jobs for teachers.”

What the heck was he saying? Did he want her to come to San Diego? Did he want her and Mia to be with him?

“I guess there’s more to San Diego than I realized,” she said. “Maybe I should check it out.”

“I wish you would,” he said, his voice cracking at the end. He cleared his throat. “You and Mia could stay with me. While you’re looking,” he added.

Baby steps. He was acting as if they should take a few baby steps after they’d run the 100-yard dash in less than five seconds. But he was right. The sweaty jungle sex, even if it had been spectacular, had been serendipitous. Living together, making a life together—that required careful planning, careful consideration.

It was enough to know that he wanted to see her again, to meet Mia. It was enough to know that somehow he’d found a way to forgive her for all the hurts she’d inflicted upon him so long ago.

It might take a little longer for her to forgive herself. She’d never considered that Brody would question that she hadn’t loved him. She’d been so wrapped up in doubting that she was good enough that she hadn’t even considered that he might question his own worth.

It said something that Brody, so confident, so smart, so damn together, had come a little undone. And that something gave her the confidence to say what definitely needed to be said.

“I’m sorry for what I did thirteen years ago, Brody. It was selfish and inconsiderate and I don’t blame you for being very angry with me.”

He shook his head. “Everything happens for a reason, Elle. We were together and then we were apart and now we’ve found each other again. All of that happened for a reason.”

“It’s almost noon. Leo should be here shortly,” she said. “I’m going to step outside,” she said, “and take care of some things. Fortunately, it appears that I am fully rehydrated.”

“Be careful,” he said.

“I won’t go far,” she promised. While she hated to do it, she slathered on mosquito repellant. Even a short time outside warranted some protection.

When she opened the door, the oppressive humidity and heat of the jungle hit her hard. She climbed down the steps and walked twenty feet into the trees. She looked around before squatting and taking care of business. She was pulling up her pants when she heard a noise off to her left. She advanced toward the edge of the tree line cautiously.

There was a man, heavily armed, approaching the hut.

Leo was not with him.

She had no idea whether he was friend or foe. All she knew was if he was the enemy, she was not going to let him surprise Brody.