“These contain our drugs and antibiotics in dry ice. Let Andy or Steve help you with them.”
Ty nodded and picked up a number of smaller boxes. He’d try and make himself useful—and stay out from under Catt’s feet, if possible. However, that tug was only sixty feet long and was going to be crowded at best. There’d be very little room to give Catt relief from his unexpected presence.
His chest ached. Hell, his heart was hurting, too. Every time he walked back for another load of equipment, he saw Catt standing there so alone, so apart from everything going on around them. Her shoulders were slumped. The look on her face was one of utter devastation. It agonized him to know that he was the cause of her turmoil. And more than anything, Ty realized, as he took another box to the awaiting tug, all the old feelings he had for Catt ten years ago were not only alive, but clamoring inside him. He needed to talk to her, to understand all that had happened on that day so many years ago.
Sighing raggedly, Ty handed the tug captain, who’d introduced himself as Hernandez, the box to be placed in the center region of the boat. He knew nothing of Catt’s life since their breakup so long ago. And there was so much he needed to know. She’d wanted to be a medical doctor and go on to become a pediatrician. She had always loved children…. Wincing internally, Hunter felt pain shoot through him. He turned on his booted heel and walked back for another box.
To his surprise, Catt was standing near the last box. She was waiting for him. He could see it in the challenging blue fire of her gaze, the hard set of her jaw and the way her body tensed as he approached.
Her voice was low and snarling.
“I don’t know what strings you pulled or why, Hunter. I don’t like it. I don’t like the fact that you’re here. And there’s nothing I can do about it. This smacks too much of our past together.” She jabbed her finger into his chest. “I don’t trust you at all. From here on out, I’m the boss. You carry out my orders or else. The first time you don’t, or you give me lip, I’m making a call on my cell phone to my boss and your butt is out of here. You got that?”
He felt her fear. He saw it in her eyes, even though he knew Catt was very good at making an opponent think she was fearless. Ty couldn’t be angry with her. He understood exactly where she was coming from—her last experience with him had hurt her badly. There was no way to explain. Not now…maybe never. That hurt. He didn’t like being seen as the villain in another person’s eyes. Especially Catt’s.
“We need to talk—”
“Like hell we do!” Her nostrils quivered, and her voice shook. “Hunter, you screw up just once and you’re out of here. Got it?”
He held her gaze, which was riddled with anguish and fear. “Yeah,” he growled under his breath, “I got it.”
Chapter Three
Ty wanted to scream like a wounded jaguar. Struggling against this unexpected surge of emotion, he stuffed his feelings deep down inside, as usual. From his position at the rear of the tug as it left the dock, he could see Catt standing at the bow as the engine chut-chutted along. Her profile was silhouetted against the magnificent expanse of the headwaters of the Amazon, and the suffering evident in her face was tremendous. Not only did she have the responsibility of the epidemic and people’s lives in her hands, but she had him. Maybe that’s all he was feeling—remorse for Catt’s suffering. Lord knew, he’d made her suffer terribly. His unresolved feelings were like a knife twisting savagely in his gut. But tears and emotions had no playing ground within a mercenary or military person—none at all.
The tug bobbed gently as it putt-putted across the slightly choppy expanse as the waters of two different rivers met to form the Amazon. Ty tried to focus instead on the beauty of the mighty waterway, where the dark tea-colored water of the Rio Negro, so clear he could see fish swimming in the depths of it, met with the Rio Suhimoes, a milky, muddy river. It looked like someone had poured chocolate milk and iced tea together. The branching of the two rivers was known as encongtro das aguas, the “wedding of the waters.” And from this marriage, the muddy Amazon was born. There would be a patch of transparent water here, a spot of milky water there as the two currents met and mixed.
It was almost 3:00 p.m. The afternoon haze that always hung over the equatorial country made the sun look like it was shining through opaque white gauze, rather than clouds. The temperature was in the nineties and so was the humidity. Ty was sweating profusely. But then, so was everyone else. So far the rest of Catt’s team treated him with respect, not with the withering glares Catt sent him, as if he were some kind of pariah. He sure felt like one. Obliquely, Ty wondered if Morgan or Casey knew of his tragic history with Catt. Probably not. He figured since her name was no longer Simpson, Catt had gotten married, and put their affair solidly behind her. And she could easily have shortened her name from Catherine to Catt. That was a simple enough explanation. But the thought of her with another man made him ache inside. As he sat on the edge of the thick rubber coating that covered the first foot of the tug, Ty had to work to contain all his emotions.
It was absolutely impossible. Morbidly, he swung his gaze back to Catt. She stood on the bow with the cell phone in hand, talking to someone. Probably arranging to get him off the tug and out of her life. Grimly, he realized that wouldn’t happen. Casey knew the score. She knew why he was on this mission, though Catt, hopefully, would never find out. She and her team had enough to handle without thinking about the threat of terrorists lurking in the area. That was his job—to be the eyes and ears for the group and protect them, as well as alert the U.S. government of Black Dawn’s whereabouts.
Just looking at the way the soft, humid breeze lifted strands of Catt’s burnished hair made him ache again. He recalled that fiery red hair streaming freely, like a wild river, across her shoulders as she’d played that soccer game where he’d met her so long ago. Even then she had stood out like the champion she was. Catt was good at whatever she tried. Though she often won, she was a good sport about losing, too, satisfied to simply give her all to the game.
Other feelings, other memories, gently wafted to the surface of his roiling emotions as he sat there on the tugboat, charging down the wide, wide expanse of the Amazon. Closing his eyes, his clasped hands resting between his opened thighs, Ty remembered their wildly torrid lovemaking. Catt had been as hot, assertive, wild and free with him as she was in real life. She was truly an unfettered spirit inside a delicious woman’s body. Ty remembered how he’d teased her once after loving her to exhaustion in a motel not far from the gates of the naval air station.
“You know what you are?” he had whispered, placing one small kiss after another on her damp brow as she lay beside him, absolutely spent, a wonderful smile of fulfillment on her soft, glistening lips.
Languidly, Catt moved her fingers across his well-shaped arm and up across his broad shoulder as she gazed into his eyes. “No, what am I?”
“An Amazon warrior.” He picked up a strand of her long, damp red hair and held it up, critically examining it in the late afternoon light that peeked around the shade at the front window. “Part child, part woman, part Amazon warrior, part goddess, part sunlight, part warm, rich earth…”
“Mmm, I like that,” she sighed, nuzzling his jaw as he cupped her shoulder and pressed her more surely against him. “No one has ever said things like that to me before….”
“Because?” Ty looked down at her with a grin.
Barely opening her eyes, she smiled up at him. “Because I’ve never fallen in love before, I guess.”
“Hard to imagine. You’re so beautiful. A free spirit. You’re like the wind in the thunderstorms I used to see every summer over the Rockies, where I grew up,” he murmured against her hair. “When I saw you on that soccer field, I thought you must have a hundred men waiting in line for you.”
Giggling, she said, “Not many men will take on a female Texas rancher, believe me. Most men feel as if they’ve met their match. More than met it! And that scares them.”
“Texas women are special, not to be feared or run from.” Ty smiled