Olive Ridleys and endangered leatherbacks.”
“And you moonlight as a machete-wielding maniac, apparently, capturing innocent women off the beach.”
Despite the grimness of their situation, the sweat pouring off him and the strain in his muscles as he paddled like hell down the coast, his lips curved at her tart reply.
“You know what they say,” he drawled. “It’s tough work, but somebody’s got to do it.”
Chapter 2
“Where are you taking me?”
His hostage’s sexy voice cut through the darkness as he power-stroked as hard as he could.
He inhaled raggedly, the muscles in his arms aching from the exertion. He considered himself in pretty darn good shape, but this insane pace and the strain of paddling both of them were definitely taking a toll on him.
Since he didn’t have breath to spare, he chose not to answer her question with a long explanation. “We’re almost there. See those lights ahead and to the left?”
She looked in the direction he pointed. “Yes,” she answered after a moment, wrapping her arms around herself.
She couldn’t possibly be cold, could she? he wondered. It was a mild night, probably only low 80s, and slightly cooler out here on the water, but it was far from chilly. Of course, she was only wearing a bikini and she wasn’t paddling her guts out.
“That’s my research station. Playa Hermosa. I’ve got a Jeep there.”
She shuddered and tightened her arms around herself.
He grimaced, wishing he had time to offer her words of comfort. He wasn’t crazy about the idea of traumatizing a bride on her honeymoon, but it couldn’t be helped.
He allowed a quick moment to wonder where her groom might be lurking in this miserable drama and why he had left his luscious little wife even for a minute. Maybe out fishing on the missing yacht? The Pacific coast of the Osa Peninsula was rich with marine life, from marlins to sailfish to tuna.
Any groom who would abandon his bride to go fishing deserved to have her kidnapped. Ren certainly wouldn’t have let her out of his sight.
Something about Rafferty’s next intended victim appealed to him on some deep, visceral level. In the pale moonlight shimmering off the water, she looked lush and soft and delectable, with creamy skin and voluptuous features.
A blond cream puff, Rafferty had called her. Ren had a feeling she wouldn’t appreciate the nickname—or his sudden fierce desire to swallow her up in one delicious bite.
The discovery did not improve his mood. In two years, he hadn’t been able to drum up even a tiny smidgeon of enthusiasm for the whores in the rough and ready town of Puerto Jiménez, no matter how determined their attempts at seduction during his infrequent visits to the cantinas.
In the space of the last hour, he had witnessed a vicious murder, had kidnapped a woman for the first—hopefully only—time in his life and terrified her out of her skull, then paddled like hell across the ocean.
Yet here he sat with the biggest hard-on of his life.
Disgusted with himself, Ren growled a fairly vile curse in Spanish and felt like an even bigger pervert when the woman in front of him flinched as if he were planning to ravish her any second now, something he was fairly sure was impossible—not to mention rather ill-advised—in a sea kayak adrift on the open ocean.
He could ignore the heat and hunger. He’d had plenty of practice, after all. Excepting those first wild months after the fire when he hadn’t climbed out of a bottle, for two years he had focused his entire energies on his work, leaving no room for anything else.
Though he had the occasional research assistant and used volunteers to help him patrol the beaches for nesting sites, he lived a solitary life for the most part, and that was just the way he liked it. He had a few friends on the Peninsula, but most of the villagers considered him the Crazy Turtle Man of Playa Hermosa.
Early in his time in Costa Rica five years ago, a few heated altercations with poachers after the culinary prize of turtle eggs taken beyond the legal season had started the rumors. His wildness of the last two years had cemented the reputation.
He imagined this little escapade would probably add more fuel to the fire if word got out, which he had no doubt it would.
No help for it, he thought. Snatching Rafferty’s little blond cream puff had been an impulse, but he couldn’t regret it.
At least not yet.
When he neared Playa Hermosa, he paddled as far as he could and let the waves push them the rest of the way. Close to shore, he climbed out and pulled the kayak up the beach.
In the moonlight, his hostage looked numb, her features expressionless and dull, and he hoped to hell she wasn’t going into some kind of delayed shock and taking a mental vacation on him. That would be just what he needed right about now—a catatonic sexpot in a bikini.
Though he would have liked to consign Rafferty’s expensive kayak to the sharks, he couldn’t find it in him to waste such a sleek, beautiful craft. With Olivia Lambert still inside, he muscled it up past the high-tide mark, then reached a hand to help her out.
“Here we are. We’ll just grab my keys inside and a change of clothes for you and be on our way.”
She gazed at him blankly, and he wondered again if she’d lost her marbles somewhere out there on the ocean.
“It’s okay,” he tried to reassure her.
After a long pause, she slipped her hand in his and climbed out of the kayak as regally as a princess. Her small hand was cool and soft as the petals of the hibiscus and orchids and frangipani flowering around them, and she trembled only a little.
It was dark and would probably begin raining any minute, but for now the moon was full and clearly illuminated the short pathway from the beach to his station. He gestured for her to proceed him.
“Head through those trees right there,” he said. “We’re on the only developed road in this area, if you can call the mud track in the green season a road.”
He should have been tipped off to her intent, but her abstracted, out-of-it air fooled him. He was completely unprepared when she took just a shuffling step forward in the direction of the trail, then whipped around the other way and took off down the beach.
For about half a second, he was severely tempted to just let her slip away into the jungle. His life and the surreal trip it had become in the last hour would sure be a hell of a lot easier without having to deal with a soft dumpling of a bride who seemed on the verge of dissolving into a quivering mass of fear any second now.
He even took a step toward his research station, then he growled an oath and turned around. He couldn’t let her just wander off out here. The jungle was a dangerous place, especially for a soft thing like her.
She had several seconds head start and she was faster than he would have expected. She was almost to the thick shelter of trees, where he would have a much tougher time catching her.
Out
