Heart of Fire Read online

  “I’m sure you’ll find a satisfactory median.”

  “A median isn’t what would give me satisfaction right now.” Throttling her struck him as a damn satisfactory idea. Or climbing on top of her. He was definitely getting hard. Arguing with a woman had never caused that response before; it must be true that a man couldn’t resist a challenge from a woman, and Ms. Jillian Sherwood was a challenge from head to foot.

  “Then you’ll have to do as you think best,” she said blandly. “I’ve given you all the information I can.”

  Or would. He suspected she knew a hell of a lot more than she was telling, but none of it was given away by those cool green eyes. He wondered why their destination was so all-fired secret that she hadn’t even told her brother. On second thought, he decided that he wouldn’t share any valuable information with Rick Sherwood either, especially when he had friends like Steven Kates. Maybe Ms. Sherwood was even smarter than he’d thought. But just what the hell did she think she was going to do when they got to wherever she wanted to go? Stand guard twenty-four hours a day?

  He dropped the subject, knowing she wasn’t going to say anything else in front of the other two. She didn’t trust him either, come to that. Definitely a smart woman. If he had to be honest with himself, which he usually was, he had to admit that she was right in that, too. If she let her guard down just a fraction, he’d have her drawers off before she knew the game was going on, much less that she’d lost it. Since she insisted on going with them, he’d have a couple of months to work on her, and he had no doubt about the success of his seduction plans.

  Who knows, if he sweet-talked her just right, she might even tell him what she was looking for. If whatever was in the jungle was so valuable to her, well, hell, it would be valuable to him, too. A man never had too much money. Ben had a few limits as to what he’d do to get it, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t willing to seize every opportunity that presented itself.

  He made arrangements to meet them the following day for his advance payment as well as the money he would need to start laying in supplies and hiring porters. Now that the decision was made, he was ready to get on with it.

  * * *

  “Did you have to come on like such a bitch?” Rick asked resentfully when they were back at the hotel.

  Jillian sighed. She was tired, and dealing with Ben Lewis had just about used up her store of patience. “I was more polite than he was.”

  “You were throwing your weight around, making a point of showing him that the big-shot archaeologist is the one calling the shots.”

  Big-shot? She almost laughed aloud. Her professional prestige was almost nil; if the foundation had had any respect for her or confidence in her opinion, she wouldn’t have been forced to deal with roughnecks like their guide. But Rick had always been jealous of the fact that she had followed in their father’s footsteps, and he was quick to flare up at any perceived slight.

  “I wasn’t throwing my weight around. I was just letting him know that he can’t intimidate me. And anyway, I don’t think he’s such a good choice. He was drinking this afternoon when you saw him, he was drinking tonight, and he’s probably been drinking every minute in between. A sot isn’t our best bet.”

  “So now you want to run this part of it, too?” Rick sneered.

  It was difficult, but she held on to her temper. Maybe she did so out of guilt, because she knew the professor had preferred her over her brother. She couldn’t help feeling sorry for Rick, though at the same time she had to fight her impatience with him. Whatever was wrong with his life was always someone else’s fault, and usually she was the someone else.

  “What I want,” she snapped, “is to find the Anzar city and clear Dad’s name. And I think we’d have a better chance of doing that if our guide is at least sober.”

  He scowled at her. “I suppose you think I don’t care about Dad’s name? He was my father too, you know.”

  She did know it. No matter how angry Rick made her, she never forgot that he really had loved the professor. That more than anything was what kept her from writing him out of her life.

  “Let’s forget about it, okay?” Kates cut in. “We’re all tired. I know Lewis looks and talks rough, but his reputation is the best. I’ll see him tomorrow and tell him to lay off the sauce. Why don’t we call it a night?”

  His tone was soothing, the peacemaker at work, but his cold eyes signaled a warning to Rick. Jillian saw it, though she pretended not to. Kates worked hard at presenting an innocuous front, but she couldn’t quite buy it, maybe because the eyes never fit the image. Because it suited her to cut the conversation short before it degenerated into a real fight, she murmured good night and went into her room.

  Kates jerked his head at Rick, and the two men went down the hall to their own rooms. “Don’t get her back up,” Kates warned. “If she decides to cut a separate deal, we’re left out in the cold with nothing for our trouble.”

  Rick turned sulky, as he always did in the face of criticism. “She’s not going to cut any deals with Lewis,” he muttered. “She can’t stand him.”

  “Lewis isn’t the only guide. If she convinces someone else that those jewels are really there, they might get the financing and go after the treasure on their own. Try to keep your temper under control, at least until we’re on our way and there’s nothing she can do about it.”

  “All right, all right. That attitude of hers just pisses me off.”

  Kates managed a tight smile. “Just think of the money.” Kates himself couldn’t think about anything else; it was the only reason he was there. He was out of familiar territory and didn’t like it at all, but was willing to do whatever it took to get those jewels. When Rick had first come to him with a wild story about his old man finding a lost city with a fortune in gems just waiting for whoever got there first, he’d wondered what kind of ha-ha powder Sherwood was taking. But Rick had had details, enough that Kates had begun to realize he was dead serious.

  He was desperate enough to jump at the chance to involve himself; he needed money, lots of it. He was literally at the end of his rope, jumping at every unexpected noise. His last big shipment of coke had been seized by the police. They hadn’t been able to nail him, but the cops were the least of his worries. He owed millions to the people who had fronted him the money for that coke shipment, money that would have been earned back several times over if he’d been able to get the coke on the street, and his creditors were tired of waiting for him to make good on the debt. Those people made the cops look like Mister Rogers.

  Rick’s mad scheme was a godsend, in more ways than one. Kates had just enough money to finance this crazy project. If it panned out, then he could save his ass. At the very least, being in Brazil would give him a breather from looking over his shoulder every few minutes, waiting for his head to be blown off.

  If Rick was right. . . damn, a deal like this came along once in a lifetime. The gems—especially that big red diamond—would bring in a pile of loot that would make his coke debt look paltry. He dreamed about that damn rock, dreamed about holding it in his hands. It was his ticket to easy street, if he could just get Sherwood to keep his stupid mouth shut. The sister wasn’t a fool; from what Kates could tell, she’d gotten all the brains in the family. But she was keeping all the information to herself, and the instructions were written in some kind of code that only she could read. He wasn’t worried about her, though. All he wanted was for her to get him there. Then he wouldn’t have any use for her or any of the others. He had plans that didn’t include them, big plans. He was tired of always being pissed on by the big boys; this was one time when he was going to get the lucky break.

  The next day Steven Kates showed up at the bar alone. Ben hid his instinctive distrust of the man behind a facade of good-old-boy affability. A lot of people were fooled by his slow southern drawl and seedy, hard-drinking act; it was a useful disguise. Oh, the drawl was real, but people who knew him long enough gradually realized that behind it lay a