Houston prowled restlessly around the perimeter of the living room. He watched Ann give him livid, stabbing looks of raw accusation every now and again, despite the fact that Morgan had an incredibly soothing effect on her—any woman, in fact. Mike wished he had the skill, but didn’t. “Look,” he protested in frustration, “if Ann doesn’t want to go, there’s nothing I can do about that. But maybe I can take the edge off things a little bit for her.” He leaned down and picked up the thirty-thousand-dollar check.
“Here, put this with the rest, since you’re going to have to put up with me six weeks longer than you thought.” He handed Ann the donation and the personal check Morgan had written out to him. He could see the fear deep in her eyes. Anger warred with sadness and heartbreak within him. Trying his best to gather his strewn emotions, he rasped, “You want to run a clinic, it takes money. So here it is. And if you’re pissed off and distrusting of me and my intentions, well, that’s okay. I know the truth—I had nothing to do with this assignment of yours. I won’t be around the clinic that much to be a pain in the ass to you, anyway. Fair enough?” He put both checks in her hands. Her gaze wavered as she met his hard, angry eyes.
Houston turned, shook Morgan’s hand, thanked him and left. He needed to get out of the house and calm down. As he went out the front door, the coolness of the Arizona morning hit him. Throwing back his shoulders, he descended the wooden steps quickly and headed toward the corral. Damn! Everything’s screwed up. Everything! As he took long, steady strides, Mike rubbed his aching chest.
But although this wasn’t how he’d planned things to go with Ann, a tiny part of him was euphoric that she would be coming to Lima with him. He would have more time with her, even if the opportunities to see her would be severely limited down there. As he halted at the corral, where twenty Arabians were feeding, he placed his elbows on the uppermost rung of the pipe fence. The metal felt cooling to him, to his smarting anger and frustration.
Closing his eyes, Houston tried to wrestle with all his emotions. Ann thought he’d set this whole thing up. It was obvious she hadn’t believed Morgan when he’d explained that Mike had nothing to do with it. Her anger was real. And so was that terror banked in her eyes. Closing his fists, Mike took a deep, unsettled breath of air into his chest. No matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t erase the sweet power of Ann’s mouth upon his, her incredible, hungry response to him. But although her mouth, her body signaled one thing, her mind held sway over her actions. What a helluva fix he was in now! More than anything, Mike wanted to somehow convince Ann that he was innocent of dragging her on this assignment. Judging from her anger, she probably wasn’t going to give him an opening very soon to explain. Maybe, on the flight down to Lima, she’d cool off and he could reason with her. He hoped so. Or maybe Morgan could soothe her because Mike certainly couldn’t!
“Morgan, I don’t want to go down there,” Ann declared.
He shrugged and sipped his coffee. “Calm down, Ann. This is an excellent assignment.” He smiled up at her drawn features. She looked cornered but Morgan didn’t really want to let her out of this one. Worried that Escovar, one of the most powerful of all the drug dealers in South America, was going to go after Mike Houston in earnest once Mike was back in Peru, Morgan wanted a backup. He didn’t want to tell Houston of his concerns for his life, but if Mike got into trouble, Morgan wanted someone with the best medical skills on the planet nearby. And even though Ann was only in her early thirties, she was a top professional in the field.
Ann didn’t know why he was sending her to Peru to be near Houston. Morgan didn’t want to put that kind of pressure on her. Besides, from everything he and his wife could see, there was a mutual attraction between the by-the-book doctor and the hotheaded, passionate major whose Indian blood kept him running headlong into dangerous scrapes with Escovar. Yes, Ann’s cool, calm and collected personality would be a good match for Houston, whose zealous attempts to destroy every drug dealer he could find in Peru could be his undoing.
Morgan admired Houston tremendously, and he’d just gotten information from the highest government sources that Escovar had recently renewed his efforts to take revenge on Houston. In fact, Escovar had just doubled the price on his head. Morgan had no doubt Mike had his own network of spies to warn him of Escovar’s movements, but Morgan wanted a safety net for him. And Ann, who was all science and facts, was a good chess piece to put into play down there. She could keep tabs on the footloose major and save his neck, if necessary. No, it was best that Ann go there thinking she would be slaving away in a small clinic. Morgan didn’t want her flying in those drug-raid copters and getting shot at. He knew that Houston’s network of helicopters could ensure that he was within an hour’s ride of Lima should anything terrible happen to him. And Ann would be there waiting, ready with her surgical skills to save his sorry life.
Smiling to himself, Morgan sipped more of his coffee. There was no one better than Houston to go up against Eduardo Escovar. But Morgan wanted insurance for him of a different sort. He felt intuitively that Houston liked Ann—a whole lot. And maybe, just maybe, the hotshot jungle fighter would ease off on the throttles just a little bit, take a few less risks if he knew he had someone to return to in Lima after one of his bloody raids deep in the mountains. Maybe… Morgan admitted his plan was risky in itself. It was obvious Ann thought Houston had maneuvered things to get her on this assignment. And in Houston, she had more than met her match. Chuckling to himself, Morgan marveled over the attraction he saw between the cool, level-headed scientist and the passionate jaguar god of Peru. It was the molten steel being thrust into a bucket of icy water. What a combination! Morgan knew the sparks would fly. Secretly, his money was on Houston to endure her scalpel-like reactions and slowly but surely wear her down. Beneath Ann’s genius mind, beneath that cold, scientific rationale that fed her intellect, was a hot-blooded woman who was afraid to step out of her ivory tower and experience being wild and free in a man’s arms. And these weren’t just any man’s arms Morgan was pushing her toward…. He was betting that Houston could handle her. Time would tell, though.
“The flight to Peru will be a good shakedown cruise for both of you,” he told Ann in his rumbling voice. “A nice chance to talk over how you want to run the clinic for Houston.”
Ann glared at Morgan. “I’m not happy about this assignment. At all.”
He lifted his hand. “Just be patient,” he urged gently. “Mike isn’t the monster you make him out to be. He’s all-heart if you give him a chance.”
That was exactly what Ann was afraid of—Mike Houston’s passionate, wild heart. He frightened her. More so than any other man. And in less than three hours, she’d be forced to sit beside him on that airplane. How was she going to deal with her fearful emotions?
Ann tried to contain her feelings as she sat in the first-class section of the Veracruz flight. Mike Houston, dressed in a pair of dark brown slacks, a short-sleeved, white silk shirt and camel hair sport coat, sat across the aisle. She studied his rugged profile. It reminded her of the harsh granite of the Andes beneath them. They’d been in the air for hours since picking up fuel in Mexico City for the long flight to Lima.
Her conscience prickled. She knew she was being grumpy about this assignment and she didn’t like herself for it. Generally, she was unflappable in every situation. Nothing ever caused her to swerve from her focus on saving lives, not even bullets flying around her. This man, this army major, had really unsettled her in ways she’d never thought possible. How could she be so drawn to Mike? How? It scared her to even think of him in that way. Ann thought herself incapable of ever falling in love again since— She slammed the lid shut on her memories before she felt the pain of them. Somehow being around Mike made her feel vulnerable once more. He was mysterious; there was something about him she couldn’t put her finger on and it bothered her immensely. He was unlike any man she’d ever met—or had been attracted to. Her gut told her that dealing with him would be like handling
