But personally, she’d bet on the human race every time. As far as she knew, cockroaches had never painted aMona Lisaor invented a new lifesaving operation to save anyone from brain disease.
But where there were cockroaches, could snakes be far behind? She had no fondness for reptiles. Enough was enough.
She stopped on the trail and shouted, “Are we going to play hide and seek all day, Dominic? I’m tired of this.”
“It’s no game, Celine.” Dominic was suddenly standing before her, a dark shadow outlined in the soft luminosity of his flashlight. “It was more of a demonstration to show you that you should have waited until I was ready to come back for you as I asked.”
“You didn’t ask, you just told me and then disappeared,” she said curtly. “Demonstrations can be good if they teach something. The only thing I learned by having to follow you is thatI dislike cockroaches almost as much as I do snakes. Also that I hated having to worry about you in here by yourself when I could have been watching your back.”
“You wanted to protect me?” He paused. “How unusual. Most people decide that I’m capable of taking care of myself. After all, it’s what I do for a living. I believe I’m touched.”
“Stop making fun of me. Did you find what you wanted in this cave or not?”
“I found it. I’ll show you in a few minutes, but right now I want to explore the fact that you were disappointed that you couldn’t watch my back.” He took a step closer to her. “Why?”
She could feel the heat from his body, and she was suddenly tense. There was something different about him. She could almost feel the electric excitement he was radiating. Excitement and… something else. “Because we’ve become… partners, and I’d never leave a partner to face people like Caldwell and Zakira alone. I don’t care how well he thinks of himself.”
She inhaled sharply as he bent forward and she could feel his breath on her ear.
Then his lips were on the hollow of her throat.
She shuddered and found herself pressing closer to him. Where was the anger? Just the feel of him was making her dizzy. Oh, to hell with it. This was more important… “Though I don’t think… this is the right time to…” He was unbuttoning her shirt, freeing her breasts, and rubbing her nipples slowly, sensuously, against his chest. She gasped as she arched up against him.
“No, you’re damn right, it’s not the right time.” His hands were cupping her hips and bringing her to cradle tightly against him. “But we both knew it was going to happen sometime,didn’t we…?” He bent his head and pulled at her nipple with his teeth. “Wrong time. Wrong place. But if I don’t get you out of here soon, it’s going to happen anyway. Because I have to be inside you.”
And she wanted him inside her. He had her pinned to the stone wall, and the muscular tension of his body combined with the surrounding darkness and the rhythmic sound of the waterfall outside was absolutely erotic. “I don’t care if it’s the wrong time.” She was breathing hard, and every breath was another caress against him as she tried to move closer. “I need you to—”
He was pushing her away!
“No!” She tried to hold on to him, but he was picking her up and putting her back on the path. She could see he was also trying to get his breath as he brushed his cheek once more back and forth against her breasts and then pushed her toward the cave opening. “Get out of here. You may not care right now, but you might if you look back on it later. I refuse to be the man you’ll remember with the cockroaches and the snakes. Though I didn’t see any snakes.”
“Neither did I. Maybe there aren’t any.” She pushed her hair from her face as she looked back at him. Her body still felt on fire, and she didn’t want to leave him. She vaguely remembered something he’d said. “But didn’t you tell me you wanted to show me something?”
“Later. I promise. Everything later. Just get out of here. I can’t touch you right now. I’m trying to be the kind of guy whose back you’d like to watch tomorrow as well as today. I’m having dire trouble with the whole concept at the moment.”
“No, you aren’t,” she said quietly. “Even when I barelyknew you, I realized that you were different from anyone else. From the moment you took me down to see Barnaby that night at the precinct and held my hand and didn’t let me face it alone. How could I not know it?” She was heading back toward the cave opening. “I was thinking that my father would have done something like that.”
“Dear God, don’t compare me to your father even mentally. I couldn’t stand the comparison.”
“No, you couldn’t.” She’d reached the waterfall. “But you wouldn’t have to. You manage to set your own standard that works just fine for you and the people around you.” She turned and said over her shoulder, “Kontara said she’s going to fix a special meal tonight. You won’t want to miss it.” She smiled impishly. “And you particularly won’t want to miss the dessert.” She disappeared under the mist of the waterfall.
CAMPFIRE, ROXANNE FALLS
9:40 P.M.
The fireside dinner was everything that Kontara had promised it would be. A delicious beef bourguignon. For dessert, she’d prepared a special African dish that was delicate and yet totally and wonderfully cinnamon-spiced.
Dominic had a call from Joe Quinn that kept him busy after the first few courses, and he stopped by to tell Celine that Joe’s team had reached the estate and would be joining them soon. But he also made a point of stopping beside where Celine was sitting by the fire after dessert was served. He bent down and whispered, “This wasn’t the dessert you were talking about?”
She chuckled and shook her head.
“Thank God.” He went on with his call as he strolled away from the fire.
Rashid took his place and knelt down beside Celine. “That wasn’t a good thing that you did, you know. I caught hell from Dominic about you slipping off to that cave. Did you get hell, too?”
“Something like that.” She was remembering that heated moment in the cave when it had seemed the entire world was turning upside down. Best not to elaborate on that particular reaction. “But he was happy with what he found in the cave, so I think that it ended up all right.”
“Just don’t do it again,” Rashid said, shaking his head. “I know he was worried that Caldwell might have left one of his men in the cave to pick off anyone they ran across who was obviously on the hunt. He’d be damn upset if anything happened to you.”
