Lindsay McKenna - Hunter's Woman

“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 a little and pressed a kiss to the tip of her nose. He ran his fingers through her hair, then trailed them across her cheek, marveling at the smoothness of her skin. More than anything, he liked the dusting of freckles across her straight, thin nose and cheeks. Her lashes were thick and long, like dainty fans against her flushed cheeks. Ty savored every moment spent with Catt. They didn’t get to meet often because of their demanding schedules. He could never get enough of her, of her husky voice, her touch, her loving, fiery body and that wild, free spirit of hers.

As he lay there and felt her snuggle deeply into his arms Ty had sighed with contentment. He’d never known love was like this. Oh, he’d had girlfriends off and on, but never had he been smitten like this, his emotions bright, his joy higher than the tallest mountain in the world, his senses more alive than he could ever recall. All because of this beautiful redheaded woman in his arms who had crashed into his life two months earlier. He could feel his heart opening powerfully to her as he held her. He’d felt such a sense of fierce protectiveness toward her and he knew he wanted her as his mate for the rest of his life. He was helpless against his longing for her; all he could do was hold her. Simply hold her.

As he sat on the tug now, a ragged sigh of frustration issued from between Ty’s lips. He scowled heavily and worked to erase that scene from his memory. Glancing toward the bow again, he saw that Catt was off the phone and talking to Steve, her chief lab man, who would be setting up the work station once they reached the village. Ty knew the responsibilities on Catt’s shoulders. He’d worked with outbreak teams before. They had to move fast to chase down the bacteria or virus that was mercilessly killing people.

As he studied the group out of the corner of his eye, Ty considered them modern-day knights, heroes and heroines riding into battle against an unknown opponent—one that could easily kill them, sometimes in as short a time as forty-eight hours after contracting the infection. Most of the world didn’t know much about these outbreak teams, the chances they took with the unknown, even when the unknown was a killer of powerful proportions. It took real guts to walk into an area where people were dropping like flies, and hunt down the invisible killer with thorough, detailed, step-by-step analysis and plain hard work. To flush out the culprit meant constantly exposing themselves to it. One wrong move—a prick with an infected needle, or the entrance of the infection into the body through an open cut—would allow the disease to gain a foothold. Just the cough of a sick person could be dangerous if the germ was an aerosol-borne substance and could be breathed in.

There were so many ways to die if one was an outbreak chaser like Catt and the members of her team. Men and women composing such teams were truly courageous in the face of danger, and Ty’s respect for them was as high as it was for a military person going into war. The risks an outbreak team took were as lethal as any he’d ever encountered during warfare. Instead of a bullet potentially killing one of them, it would be an invisible bacteria or germ. And the death could be gruesome and painful.

Worried, Ty wondered if Black Dawn had spread a nervine-type gas, such as VX, that would affect the central nervous system and stop a person from breathing, over the village. If they had, the team would see a lot of central-nervous-system symptoms such as paralysis, shaking or trembling limbs or altered states of consciousness in the victims. And a bug like that could easily be inhaled by Catt and her team.

Running his fingers through his short hair, Ty waited until Catt was standing alone at the bow once more. Then he made his move.

Catt’s heart thundered as she saw Ty slowly ease to a standing position and head in her direction. She sat down on one of the trunks at the bow. Busying herself with a clipboard, she pretended not to notice his approach. Maybe he’d get the message and leave her alone.

“You got a minute?” he asked, coming to a halt in front of her. Ty saw the rest of her team at the other end of the tug, watching warily. Looking back at Catt, who had her head bowed over the clipboard on her lap in an obvious attempt to ignore him, he waited her out.

“I’m busy,” she snapped.

“This will be the most unbusy time you’ll have,” he began. “When we land at that village, you and your team will work yourselves into exhaustion the first forty-eight hours. You won’t even have time to sleep, while you try to find the culprit that’s killing off those people. And you won’t want to talk to me then, either, so now is as good a time as any.”

Putting down the pen, Catt glared up at him. “What do you want?” She tried to hate him again, but it didn’t work. He stood there, open and accessible, every emotion he felt revealed in his eyes. Catt knew he wasn’t trying to hide anything from her—and she knew how good he was at hiding the truth when he chose to do so. For whatever reason, he was allowing her to see all of him without any walls.

“Mind if I sit down?” he asked, pointing to a green metal trunk behind him. He knew that would put only about three feet between them, and he saw the wariness in Catt’s expressive features. It hurt to see how much she distrusted him. Well? Hadn’t he earned it? Yes. So now that he’d made his bed, he had to lie in it.

“You’ll sit whether I want you to or not.”

Grinning mirthlessly, Ty eased back onto the trunk. Opening his thighs, he clasped his hands between them and studied her in the late afternoon light. He could see the stress around her mouth and eyes. Her brow was no longer smooth, but looked permanently wrinkled with the intensity of her concentration on the mission ahead of them.

“Spit out whatever you were going to say and then leave. I’ve got work to do,” Catt warned him. She didn’t want to look at Ty. Every time she even glanced into his warm, inviting brown eyes, she felt her heart crying out with need for him. It was a ridiculous reaction on her part. Completely ridiculous!

“I just want to go over some logistics with you,” he began in a deep, soothing tone. “Casey wanted me to be a gopher and a guard dog at the same time, for you and your team.”

Head snapping up, Catt looked at him. “What do you mean, guard dog? Are the Juma in a territorial dispute with another tribe?”

“No…not that I know of. We’ll be meeting Rafe Antonio, a backwoodsman in this area. He works for the state and is the Brazilian equivalent of what we Americans would call a forest ranger.”

“He’s the one who contacted OID in the first place,” Catt agreed, though she felt like fleeing. Just being this close to Ty Hunter was like hell itself. Only it was a hell filled with sweet longing—the kind of longing Catt never would have thought she’d feel if they’d ever met again. Ten years had hardened her heart against him. Or so she’d thought.

“Yes,” Ty said tentatively. “He’s got a houseboat, which is how he gets around to the various tribes that live in the backwater channels off the Amazon. Casey wanted me to fill you in on the Juma and get you up to speed on the politics of what’s going down presently in Brazil regarding them.”

“Since when did you become a South American Indian expert?”

Her sarcasm assaulted him. Frowning, Ty refused to let her anger toward him distract him from what he needed to share with her. “I’ve batted around the world a lot since you knew me,” he said slowly and carefully. Noting her surprise, he added, “I left the Marine Corps five years ago. Now I work for the federal government as an expert on outbreak epidemics, with a specialty in South America and Africa.” He didn’t mention that his real knowledge was in bioterrorism. That would tip Catt off, and he didn’t need her knowing the truth—at least, not yet, and maybe never. If Morgan was wrong about this being a Black Dawn experiment, and this was an outbreak situation only, there was no reason to needlessly put more stress on Catt and her team. They’d have enough danger to handle with the epidemic alone, without the possible threat of bioterrorists in the vicinity.

Catt frowned. “I see.”

“I was also chosen for this team because I speak Portuguese. I’ve spent a lot of time in the Brazilian jungle the last three years.” He looked around, his voice softening. “It’s a beautiful place. Like a Garden of Eden. There’re so many plants and animals within the jungle itself. It’s like a living, evolving laboratory right before your eyes….”

She tried to remain immune to Ty’s unexpected vulnerability, to his obvious love of this humid jungle environment—an environment that only made her feel miserable and hot. “Pretty to you. Dangerous to us,” she accused sharply.

Shrugging, Ty studied her. Despite her personal dislike of him, Catt was gradually being less defensive and prickly as they spoke to one another. For that he was grateful. Opening his hands, he said, “No disagreement from me. Rafe will meet us at the head of the channel. He’s got a green houseboat with white trim.” Looking at his watch, Ty said, “We’ll be about an hour late, but that’s no big deal. He’ll be waiting, and he’ll guide us back to the village.”

“I just tried to raise him on the cell phone,” Catt said. “No answer.”

“I’m not surprised,” he told her in a low voice. “Cell phones don’t work real well out in the jungle. Around Manaus,” he continued, looking back upriver, where the skyline of the modern city had disappeared from view, “they work fine. Out here, I’m afraid you’re going to find that old-fashioned pony express will be the communication of the day.”

Nodding, Catt said, “No different from any other outbreak situation we’ve been in before—cut off from the outside world except by Jeep, Land Rover, horseback or a good pair of hiking boots.”

Ty nodded and grinned a little. Thrilled that Catt was settling down now and speaking to him without such rancor, he breathed an inner sigh of relief. How badly he wanted to reach out and touch her long, elegant fingers. How badly he wanted to tell Catt that the coals of his love for her were still there after all this time. It was a surprise to him, one that made him feel unstable and unsure of himself. He’d thought the love he’d had for Catt had died long ago.

“You should set your lab up near Rafe’s houseboat,” he suggested. “You don’t know what kind of epidemic we’re facing yet, and his boat is about as safe as it will get.”

“I’d already thought about that. Do you know how far back from the channel the Juma village sits?” Catt found herself falling into companionable conversation with him—once again. Oh, Ty Hunter had always been easy to talk with. How many times had she replayed those wonderful, stolen moments from the past? Far too many. Catt recalled the endless tears she’d cried when he’d abandoned her. In her greatest hour of need, when she’d craved Ty’s comfort, his arms, his support, he hadn’t been there for her. Tears pricked the backs of her eyes now, and she blinked several times to push them away. Looking at him, she dropped her gaze to his strong, capable mouth. Hotly, she recalled how wonderful his kisses had been. How his mouth had moved with such silken power across her lips, taming her, guiding her, cajoling her and meeting her hunger with his own.