He couldn't stop the silly grin that spread across his face. "Isn't it though? I shocked myself." The smile faded and he caught her chin again. "I'm not giving you up or betraying you, Rachael. I know Kim. He won't endanger vour life, not for any reason."

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"Money talks, Rio. Almost everyone has a price."

"Kim lives simply, but more than that, he has a code of honor."

Rachael nodded. There wasn't much else she could do. Rio was right in that she couldn't very well run away with her leg torn up. "Answer him then."

Rio didn't look away from her, but let out a singsong note that sounded to her exactly like the birds calling to one another just outside the walls of his home. She tucked his wild, s.h.a.ggy hair behind his ear, allowing her fingertips to trail over his jaw, rub over his mouth. "I'm afraid."

"I know. I can hear your heart beating." He circled her wrist, his thumb sliding over her pulse. "There's no need to be."

"It's a great deal of money he'll pay to get me back."

"Your husband?"

She shook her head. "My brother."

His hand went to his heart, as if she'd stabbed him. Almost at once his face closed down. He drew air into his lungs, let it out; There was a watchfulness in his eyes, a suspicion that hadn't been there before. "Your brother."

"You don't have to believe me." Rachael pulled away from him, leaned back in the chair and pulled the cover closer around her. The humidity was high, even with the wind blowing. Where Rio had pulled the covering away from the window, she could see thick mist curling around the foliage and creepers surrounding the house. "I shouldn't have told you."

"Why would your brother want to have you killed, Rachael?"

"You make me tired. It does happen, Rio. Maybe not in your world, but certainly in mine."

Rio studied her averted face, trying to see past the mask she wore to what was going on her mind, his brain racing with the possibilities. Had she found his home by accident, or had she been sent to a.s.sa.s.sinate him? She'd had a couple of opportunities. He'd given her a gun. It was still 108.

there, beneath her pillow. Maybe she hadn't taken care of it because she needed him while her leg was healing.

He straightened slowly and walked over to the stash of weapons hanging on the wall. He strapped a sheath to his leg and pulled the leg of his pants over it. A second knife was positioned between his shoulder blades. He pulled his shirt on and tucked a gun into his waistband.

"Are you expecting trouble? I thought you said Kim Pang was your friend."

"It's always better to be prepared. I don't like surprises."

"I noticed," she answered dryly, prepared to be angry with him over his boorish reaction to her admission. He may as well have slapped her. She had revealed something to him she had never admitted to another soul and he didn't believe her. She could tell by his immediate withdrawal.

Rio crouched beside the injured cat, his hands incredibly gentle as he examined the leopard. Her heart nearly turned over in her chest. His head was bent toward Fritz, his expression almost tender as he murmured softly to the cat. She had a sudden vision of him cradling his child, looking down lovingly, his thumb in the baby's tiny hand. He suddenly lifted his head and looked at her and smiled.

If it were possible to melt, Rachael was certain she did. His eyebrow arched.

"What? Why are you looking at me like that?"

"I'm trying to figure out what it is about you," Rachael answered honestly. His face was no boy's face. His features were tough and hard-edged. His eyes could be ice-cold, frightening even, yet sometimes when she looked at him, Rachael couldn't breathe with wanting him.

Rio's hand stilled on the small leopard. She could shake him with just a simple sentence. It was terrifying to think of the hold she already had on him, especially since he had long ago accepted he would live alone. His life was here, in the rain forest. It was where he belonged, where

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he understood the rules and lived by them. He studied her face. A mystery woman with a silly made-up name.

The beast roared and Rio embraced the rising temper. He didn't want to see the expression on her face, her gaze drifting over his face with a mixture of emotions, feminine and confused, a tenderness he couldn't afford. "The rules are different here in the rain forest, Rachael. Be very careful."

As always she surprised him, her laughter invading his senses and squeezing his heart. "If you're trying to scare me, Rio, there's nothing you can do I haven't already seen. I'm not easily shocked or easily frightened. I knew the day my mother died, back when I was nine years old, that the world wasn't a safe place and there were bad people in it." She waved a dismissing hand, princess to the peasant. "Save your scare tactics for Kim Pang, or whoever else you want to impress."

Rio gave the small leopard one last pat, reached out casually to scratch Franz's ears before straightening to his full height, towering over her, filling the room with his extraordinary presence. He looked very uncivilized, completely untamed and at home in the wilds of the forest. When he moved, there was a fluid grace she'd only seen in predatory animals. When he ceased all movement, he was utterly, completely still. It was intimidating, but Rachael would never admit it.

"You'd be surprised at what I can do." He said it quietly, and there was a soft, underlying menace to his tone.

Rachael's heart skipped a beat, but she kept her expression serene and merely lifted her eyebrow in response, a gesture she'd worked hard to perfect. "You know what I think, Rio? I think you're the one who's afraid, of me. I think you don't quite know what to do with me."

"I know what I'd like to do." This time he sounded gruff.

"What did I say that upset you?"

Rio stood in front of her feeling like he'd been felled by no a huge tree. He had closed that door so long ago, his emotions raw and bruised and bleeding, and he wasn't about to open the door for her or anyone else. He couldn't believe it still shook him, those occasional glimpses into a past he didn't want to remember. A different life. A different person.

Rachael watched his hands curl into fists, the only sign of his agitation. She had inadvertently touched a nerve and had no idea what it was that had done it.

She shrugged. "I have a past, you have a past, we're both looking for a different life. Does it matter? You don't have to tell me, Rio. I like who you are now."

"Is that your way of subtly asking me to stay out of your business?"

She tugged at the hair at the back of her neck, obviously used to it being much longer. "I was saying it doesn't matter. No, I don't want you prying into my past. I shouldn't have told you as much as I did." She smiled at him because she couldn't help herself. She was acting out of character, telling things best left unsaid. She shouldn't have hurt feelings because he didn't want to spill his life's story to her. She doubted he would have been hiding out in the rain forest unless something traumatic had happened in his life. He made her want to tell him everything. "I'm sorry I made you uncomfortable, Rio. I won't do it again,"

"d.a.m.n it, Rachael. How do you manage to do that?" One minute he could work up anger and the next she disarmed him completely. "And, by the way, how is it that you escape the mosquitoes? I only use the netting because they annoy me buzzing around, but I thought you would be covered in bites."

"Mosquitoes don't find me quite as charming as you do. I noticed all the others in my group were having to use repellent all the time. I don't think mosquitoes like the way I taste. Does it bother you that they leave me alone?"

He nodded. "It's a rare phenomenon. The mosquitoes don't bother the tribespeople. Your mother knows the stories

ill

of me leopard people. Were you born here? Is your mother from here?"

Rachael laughed again. "I thought we just agreed not to pry into one another's business and you can't let three seconds go by without asking questions. I'm beginning to think you have a double standard, Rio."

A slow, answering smile curved his mouth. "You could be right. I never thought of it that way."

"And all this time I thought you were a modern sensitive New Age man," she teased.

Franz growled, coming to his feet. At the same time, Rio leapt to one side of the door in the nearly impossible way he had of covering long distances. He signaled the cat to silence, drew his gun and simply waited.7.THE whistle came again, a soft one-two note. The gun never moved at all, remaining steady and aimed at the entrance. Rio answered, using a different combination of sounds, but he stayed motionless, simply waiting.

"Put the gun away," Kim Pang said and pushed open the door. He stepped into the house, his clothes torn, damp and b.l.o.o.d.y, his tough features a mask of weariness. He had obviously been traveling fast and light. There was no pack and no weapon that Rachael could see.

Still, Rio remained in the shadows, to one side of the door. "I don't think so, Kim," Rio said softly, "you didn't come alone. Who's with you?"

"My brother, Tama, and Drake Donovan have come as well. You were slow in answering and Drake is scouting while Tama covers me." Kim remained very still.

His gaze shifted to take in Rachael, but he gave no acknowledgment that he recognized her.

'Tama isn't doing a very good job, Kim," Rio said, but Rachael could see him visibly relax, although he did not put away the gun. "Signal him to come in." He lifted his

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head and coughed, a peculiar grunting cough that sounded much like that of animals Rachael had heard in the distance when she was trekking through the forest.

Kim called out loudly in another dialect, his voice raised and harsh, but when he turned back, he was smiling at Rachael. "Miss Wilson, it is good to see that you made it out of the river alive. Your apparent demise caused quite an uproar."

Rachael glanced guiltily at Rio. She'd forgotten she had come to the rain forest as Rachael Wilson. Rio grinned at her, taunting male amus.e.m.e.nt that gave her the urge to do violence.

"How nice to meet you, Miss Rachael Los Smith-Wilson," Rio said with a slight bow. "How fortunate that Kim remembered your name for you.''

"Oh shut up," Rachael replied rudely. "Kim, you're hurt. If you bring Rio's medical kit over here, I'll see if I can clean those lacerations."

"You just sit there and don't move, Miss Wilson," Rio said. "Kim can stay where he is, and when Tama and Drake come in, I'll fix him up. He doesn't need a woman fussing over him" He was ashamed of the tightness in his gut, the knots lying heavy in his belly. The black jealousy the males of his kind could experience.

He fought down the natural inclination but couldn't help the small, involuntary move that flushed him out of the advantage of the shadows and into the open as he placed himself slightly in front of Rachael.

Kim spread his fingers wide as if to show he held no weapons. His brother came into the room grinning sheepishly. "Sorry, Kim, I slipped on the wet branch and nearly fell. I was so busy saving my own life, I couldn't very well save yours."