She loved his sexy voice, too. Growly at times, deep and dark and fathomless, but it also had a masculine purring sound to it. She loved listening to him talk, even when she’d been so out of it that she couldn’t make out his words. Just the lulling sound of his voice, lilting at the end of sentences as if he had been asking her questions.
He had been so tender and caring. She even remembered his kissing her—when she’d wanted him to kiss her—fearing she would die before she could thank him for saving her life the first time. He’d been so gentle and unassuming. Oh, he could deny it, but she sensed his deeper interest in her.
But now that she was better, he seemed impatient and gruff. She wasn’t sure what was going on with him. Did he like her or not?
She shrugged as if it made no difference, although it did and she was having a hard time hiding her feelings. “Roger stuck it out with me for a while, figuring I’d return to my former self. But I had flashbacks of the killings and night terrors so vivid that I beat on him in my sleep, trying to make the bad go away.”
Connor cast her an elusive smile. Standing next to the washbasin with a soapy scrub brush and a frying pan caked with burned fish remnants, he had an appealing quality about him. Any man who would clean a frying pan that was that much of a mess had to have some good in him.
“Hey,” Kat admonished him for giving her such a smug smile. “If I slept with you and began beating on you in the middle of the night, I bet you wouldn’t stick around, either.”
“Try me.”
Connor looked dead serious. Maya appeared genuinely astonished, but then she quickly looked away, attempting to hide a smile.
Even Kat’s mouth gaped before she could recover. “You wouldn’t say that if you were in a deep sleep and I slugged you.”
“I bet we could come to some kind of arrangement that would mutually satisfy our need to sleep.”
The wicked gleam in his eyes said he wasn’t thinking about sleep.
“Yeah, right.” Kat quickly changed the subject. “When are you returning home?” She hoped they weren’t delaying their own trip home for her sake. If they were, no matter what her condition, she would be out of here so she could let them get on with their plans. All they needed to do was point her in the right direction.
“We’ll be leaving you off at the resort, then we’ll go home from there,” Connor said, his voice taking on a businesslike tone. It was clear he wanted her out of their lives. Pronto.
Feeling like a party crasher, Kat figured his attitude was because she had messed up their vacation to such an extent. How could they have had any fun out here when they were spending so much time caring for a sick person they didn’t even know?
But Maya looked crestfallen. And Kat felt terrible about it. Maya seemed genuinely to like her, and Kat could really use a friend like that. She had left the Army and now was totally free—no permanent job, no home, just a few Army friends who didn’t know about her final mission. But they lived so far away that she might not ever see them again. She sighed. After this trip to the jungle, she had planned to set down roots, unlike with the military that had moved her around so much. Or foster care.
Kat smiled at Maya, ignoring Connor’s gruffness. Maya was as tanned as Connor, in as great shape, really pretty, and Kat’s petite height. Despite Connor’s male posturing, Kat would not be intimidated. He could go prune his plants, for all she cared. Kat and Maya could have an all-girls’ night out. Or whatever else Maya liked to do.
“Let me know when would be a good time to visit you at your home in Texas, Maya. I’m… in between jobs right now. So I want to take the time to travel a bit before I start the job hunt all over again and try to figure out where I want to settle down.”
“Then you’re coming home with us,” Maya said, chin up, arms folded, defying Connor to say no.
Connor glowered at his sister but didn’t say anything.
“I’d love to,” Kat said, assuming then that Maya owned half of the nursery and the home and also had to have half raised the cats. “I won’t stay long, just a couple of days. But… I’d really enjoy that.” Of course she meant to visit after she went to the resort and did everything else she had planned to do before she got lost in the jungle and came down with a fever. She really had hoped subsequent pleasant trips to the Amazon would help to get rid of her flashbacks.
Maya beamed, but she didn’t dare look at Connor.
Connor growled something about leaving it alone, which Kat didn’t understand. Then he left the hut, and Kat figured he was going to get away from the females who were wreaking havoc with his ability to exert his male dominance over all.
She really liked Connor, despite his need to show a gruff aloofness now that she was getting better. She couldn’t help it. All along, he had been kind, tender, and caring. So she didn’t believe he was truly a beast in disguise.
Maybe he had issues, like a girlfriend who had dumped him recently, or maybe he felt Kat had messed up his well-ordered life. But she didn’t intend to be a bother in Texas. She’d just visit with Maya a little and then be on her way.
“Are you hungry still?” Maya asked, offering another banana. “We need you to get your strength back so we can leave. But not before we go to the falls. And I was wondering if you’d like to swim with the pink dolphins.”
Loving the idea, Kat smiled. “I’d love to see the dolphins. But I’m stuffed, thanks.”
She wanted to take pictures and videos of the jaguars while they explored the jungle, hopefully while it was still light out, so she could remember them always as they had protected her in the Amazon and so she could write the article about them as she had planned.
But then she thought about her guide, Manuel, who had left her, saying he would lead men he’d been concerned about away from her when they had heard them in the jungle, and then she’d never seen him again. What if he had been one of the men in the jungle earlier, searching for her?
“Maya, I’ve been thinking.”
Maya turned to face Kat, her expression concerned.
“I wonder if the guide I had was the one who was wandering through the jungle, maybe trying to find me and take me back to civilization.”
“We’ll take you wherever you wish to go,” Maya said abruptly.
“All right.” Kat got the distinct impression that Maya hadn’t trusted the man. Maybe because he’d abandoned her.
And Wade Patterson? What had happened to him? Kat vowed to learn what she could about both men as soon as Connor and Maya took her to the resort.
The next day, Kat felt well enough to go to the falls, although she was still weak and would need Connor’s assistance in getting there. She hated being indisposed and having to rely on Connor. She hoped the waterfall would not be too far away, but she wanted to clean up in the worst way.
Connor and Maya had left her alone for the first time that she could remember, some business to do with the cats, they had said. But while she was brushing her teeth at the washbasin, she heard Connor arguing with Maya in the jungle near the hut, probably not wanting to go too far away and leave Kat alone for very long. They most likely thought they were speaking softly enough with all the other jungle noises surrounding them and the way the vegetation muffled sounds, but she heard.
“Maya, you know it’s too dangerous for her to visit with us at our home in Texas.” Connor’s voice was low and concerned… and annoyed.
The cats, Kathleen thought. Was he worried she wouldn’t be cautious enough around the cats? She wasn’t the one who’d forced the male jaguar to place his head on her lap in the tree and keep her there, or the female to do so afterward. Sure, she would be careful around them. She hadn’t had much of a choice the first time she had encountered them. But she would have kept out of their path if she had been able. She sighed. She hadn’t seen any sign of them for days—well, partly because she had been so out of it that she hadn’t known who or what had been watching over her.