High-Stakes Honeymoon. RaeAnne Thayne
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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 of patience and breath, he finally lunged at her from the side in a classic football tackle his college linebacker of a brother would have been happy with, just before she would have slipped into the brush.
With an oomph, she hit the sand and his momentum carried him on top of her.
For a second, he froze there, some savage male beast inside him taking primitive delight in her soft curves.
He was aroused all over again, he realized with no small measure of disgust.
All his life, he had considered himself a pretty decent guy. His parents taught all three of their sons to treat women with respect and honor, and Ren thought he had completely absorbed those lessons.
So why did this woman—this situation—seem to bring out the worst in him and make him feel like some kind of rampaging beast?
She squirmed beneath him, fighting frantically to be free. “Please,” she whimpered. “Please don’t.”
Her words and the panicked fear behind them were like taking a dip in spring runoff back home in Utah. He stood up, this time keeping a close hold on her wrist.
“I’m not going to attack you,” he growled, tugging her back up the beach toward the station.
“M-more than you already have?”
“You’re alive, aren’t you?” he snapped. “At least for now.”
Wrong choice of words, he realized, when she hissed in a breath. He was grimly aware she was trembling now as she stumbled along behind him.
He hated her terror and wanted to explain everything but he didn’t dare take the time. Rafferty and his men hadn’t reached Playa Hermosa yet, but he knew they couldn’t be far behind. Her little attempt at escape and the subsequent delay it caused could turn out to be a deadly mistake for both of them.
He could tell her everything as they drove to the little police outpost in Matapalo, but for now they needed to get the hell out of Dodge.
“Look, I’m trying to help you here. You can believe me or not, but there are some mighty nasty creatures stalking the Osa after dark, not a few of them human. Trust me, sweetheart, right now I’m your best chance of getting out of this whole thing in one piece. If you run away from me again, I’m going to have to tie you up for your own safety and neither of us wants that.”
She muttered something under her breath he didn’t catch but he didn’t have time to waste wondering about it. He just headed up the hillside to the research station, keeping his hand firmly clamped around her wrist the whole way.
He had locked the station to protect his equipment inside when he headed down to Suerte del Mar earlier and his keys were zippered into the same waterproof bag on his kayak, but he quickly found the emergency spare snugged under Yertle, the huge leatherback carved by one of his research assistants the summer before.
With one eye trained on the hill for approaching headlights, he unlocked the door and yanked her inside behind him.
He didn’t dare let her go so he kept her wrist firmly in his grasp as he grabbed his Jeep keys, then headed to his bedroom and flipped on the generator-driven light. When she caught sight of his bed, she dug her heels into the concrete floor as if he were going to yank aside the mosquito netting and ravish her on the spot.
He sighed and forced away the annoyance. There was no time for it. If she wanted to think he was some kind of mad rapist, so be it.
Of course, it didn’t help that seeing her in the light made him all too aware of her lush, curvy femininity, so blond and soft and different from anything to be found in this wild corner of Costa Rica.
He opened a drawer and grabbed a couple clean T-shirts and some shorts. They would be way too big for her, but they’d have to do.
“Here, put these on,” he ordered.
That blank stare was back—he saw it take over the stunning blue of her eyes—and he sighed. She seemed to retreat into some hidden corner of her mind, somewhere he couldn’t reach. Right now, he didn’t have the time or the patience to try.
“Look, we’re in for a wild ride to