glint in her eyes told him that she had found a steel core somewhere deep down, a core he’d do better not to trifle with.
But how he wanted to. Trifle with her. Preferably while they were both naked.
“I don’t think that’s a good idea.” There. He still had some common sense left, and his response to her proved it.
He took another look at her lips. Then he stood and walked away from her before he could do something colossally stupid, like kiss her again.
Chapter Three
Jase strode to the stairs without looking back. Who knew that with all the cold-blooded killers inside the hacienda, Melanie’s room would be the most dangerous part of the house? He wasn’t scared of the men. He’d been well trained to take care of thugs like Don Pedro’s. With Melanie, on the other hand, for the first time in his life, he felt out of his depth.
He didn’t like the feeling.
She’d somehow managed to turn him on while, at the same time, massively confusing him.
The only thing weirder than her hitting on him was his instant attraction to her. That’d come out of nowhere. He didn’t have a pregnant woman fetish or anything. Never had a pregnant girlfriend. Wasn’t even sure if pregnant women were into men or were awash with some mommy hormones that preoccupied them, making things like sex irrelevant. Those labor and delivery scenes he’d seen in movies flashed into his mind, scenes where the woman screamed at the father and did her best to break the man’s fingers.
He flexed his hands.
He hadn’t planned on doing that. Ever.
Yet he found Melanie sexy as hell. And enigmatic. With a touch of vulnerability. But with enough guts to go after what she wanted.
Okay. Boyish obsession ends now.
He shuffled down the stairs, his neck tucked in, doing his best not to draw attention to himself, noting the two men who’d come in since he’d gone upstairs. If nobody paid attention to him, maybe he could hang around a few more minutes.
He glanced around, looking for one of the Don’s satellite phones, but he didn’t see any of them out in plain sight. Bugging that would be just as effective as bugging the man’s office, and possibly easier to accomplish.
A faint taste of Melanie still lingered on his lips, reminding him that months had passed since he’d last touched a woman. Melanie had reawakened his body and then some, but only danger awaited him in that direction, so he refocused his thoughts on the men by the table. They were eating, holding bowls of steaming food the women must have brought up while Jase had been upstairs.
His stomach growled. He ignored it.
Roberto, who wasn’t eating, spotted him and called out as he wrestled with a sizable roll of paper. “Come give me a hand. Here. Hold this.”
Okay. Good. Excellent, in fact.
A command to stay instead of a lecture on all the reasons he shouldn’t be in here.
The man struggled to spread out a large jungle map on a table, a taped-together puzzle of what looked like Google Maps printouts.
Jase moved to hold down two corners, spotted the satellite phone under the edge of the paper. Roberto grabbed a hand grenade to weigh down another corner, then pulled his knife and speared the last corner to the wood with the blade. He gave a swarthy grin, apparently satisfied with his own ingenuity.
“Let’s see if we can figure this out, amigos.” He bent to carefully examine the expanse of trees, interrupted here and there by the river or a clearing. He pointed to the middle of the map and followed the line of the river to the point where it looped back on itself a little. “We’re here.”
None of the camp showed. The satellite pictures had probably been taken years ago, when the camp had been nothing but a couple of wood huts hidden under the trees. Only after Don Pedro’s headquarters had been destroyed by Cristobal last year had the boss begun serious building here.
The men examined the map as they ate.
“Here is one of the burned villages.” One of them pointed at the edge of the map with his fork.
“And here is another.” Roberto tapped a spot not far from the first. “So we know Cristobal is going to hit us from the southeast.”
Jase scanned the map in every direction. He hadn’t seen a rendering this detailed of the area before. He’d studied aerial photos of the jungle before leaving on this mission, but back then he hadn’t yet known where exactly the Don’s new headquarters were, so he’d had no reason to inspect this exact spot out of the endless jungle specifically.
Some sort of a building showed on the satellite map about thirty miles to the north of them.
“What’s that?” he asked, not sure whether he would get an answer.
But Roberto seemed to be in a talkative mood. “A scientific research station. They monitor one square mile of jungle and record every animal that passes through it. Some kind of biodiversity research. A chopper brings them supplies and switches staff out every month. They don’t move outside their boundaries.”
“They got any good stuff?” Jase played the part of the opportunistic jungle thug, wondering if the scientists knew just how close they were to some serious trouble.
Roberto shrugged. “Not the kind of equipment we could use here. And their perimeter security is too good. That’s how they keep track of the animals. They’re not worth the bother.”
Jase filed that information away in his brain and kept his mouth shut while the others marked the approximate location of the enemy troops on the map and tried to guess the numbers. He paid close attention until a shout from above interrupted the murmur of voices.
“What the hell are you doing? In your room!” Don Pedro growled at Melanie at the top of the stairs, his eyes narrowed with fury, his mouth drawn into a sharp, cruel line of displeasure.
Looked like the Don had stepped out of his office and caught her watching the men from above. No doubt she’d been plotting her escape, picking the next chump to try her tricks on.
If the Don had come out earlier when Jase’d been in her room…
He thanked his lucky stars and watched as she headed toward her door, her neck pulled in. Apparently she didn’t move quickly enough. The Don grabbed her by the arm. Hard enough to leave marks.
Jase’s muscles tightened.
Her hands slid in a protective gesture to her abdomen as she tried to pull away. She winced as the man shoved her toward her room. The door closed behind them with a slam.
Then the Don proceeded to shout at her some more in Spanish, his tirade muted now and unintelligible to the men downstairs. A small pause came, then something crashed.
Jase’s muscles twitched.
She’d tried to use him and he didn’t like that, but he liked this even less. Instinct, and everything he was, pushed him to leap up the stairs and bust into that
