When she topped off Mrs. Beaumont's cup, she reached out and patted the older woman's shoulder. She squeezed Jessica's hand as she spoke quietly to both women. Yet the men, he noted as he watched her go over to refill Christopher's and Richard's cups, she didn't touch at all. She talked to them easily, but kept her hands strictly to herself.

As early as this morning he would have expected it to be just the opposite. Then again, earlier this morning he also probably would have expected her to sit around like Cassidy, exhibiting an air of entitlement as she waited for someone else to attend to her needs. Instead, Lily was the one waiting on everyone, and it obviously didn't make her feel the least bit diminished to do so.

Discovering yet more evidence of just how far off base he'd been with her was about as welcome as a case of the clap. He ground the heels of his hands into his eyes, then dropped his hands to his sides and watched as she brushed a spill of sugar off a table into her cupped palm and walked over to toss it into the fireplace. He wasn't a man who ordinarily jumped to hasty, ill-thought-out conclusions. Nor was he accustomed to being in the wrong.

He hated that lately he'd been both.

"Okay, that seems to be it," Christopher said, and Zach turned to him in relief. He'd think of a way to apologize later. Hell, maybe he should just kiss her again; that had worked pretty slick the last time he'd felt the need to admit he was wrong.

Are you out of your mind? He managed not to pound his head against the nearest wall, but just barely. Jesus, Taylor. You keep your damn distance from that dame before she completely screws up your head . Besides, wouldn't this apology simply be more of the same old, same old anyway? He was getting confused. Was he in the wrong again or in the wrong still.

His headache was starting to come back—he couldn't think about this any more. Right here, right now— thank you, Jesus —he had a situation that needed his attention, and it was something with which he actually had some experience. Walking over to where the two men were tossing their pencils onto the table and pushing their chairs back, he demanded, "You've projected a timetable for getting the money together?"

"Yes." Christopher plowed his hands through his expensively barbered hair and stretched his elbows toward the ceiling as he dug all ten fingers into the muscles at the base of his skull. "If I get started right away, we ought to be able to liquidate everything we need in four days. Five at the outside."

Zach froze. Well, well. What an amazing coincidence. That was the exact amount of time the kidnapper had generously allowed them to raise the ransom money.

Funny thing, though. Zach had never been the type of man who believed in coincidences.

And suddenly this reeked to him of an inside job.

Miguel dashed back to his car through the rain. He let himself in and turned on the engine, immediately cranking the heater to high. Then, shivering, he shook out his hands like a wet cat, flicking drops of water all over the dash. Dios , it was cold! More than anything—more than the mellifluous language of his country, more than its foods so full of flavor and spice—he missed the bone-melting heat of Colombia. He was ready to go home.

He didn't intend to go back, though, with his tail tucked between his legs. When he returned to his village, he'd do so walking tall—the people of Bisinlejo would not see a man who allowed great wrongs to go unpunished. No indeed, what they would see was a man who avenged his honor.

But first the blonde puta had to come out of the big house.

Leaning over the steering wheel, he wiped a circle in the windshield with his sleeve to clear the fogged glass, and peered out. But the haze wasn't all on the inside of the car. The weather was socked in.

He'd never seen anything like it. In Bisinlejo when it rained, it came down in violent torrents that pelted the ground and pummeled the surrounding foliage, but just as quickly stopped. One could always count on the sun to come out again and evaporate the moisture until nothing remained but vagrant wisps of steam rising from the ground. This rain, though—it was a thick, almost mistlike drizzle that quickly soaked everything in its path. It seemed to find its way into every crack and crevice, no matter how well you thought you defended against it, and it sank to the bone, chilling and stiffening the joints.

A short while ago he'd pulled out a package of crackers left over from one of the petrol stops he'd made on the way here and had eaten them for breakfast. Although they'd been well wrapped, they were completely limp and soggy.

Still, he could live with that. But he was dressed all wrong, he was running out of food, and what provisions he did have were in pitiful condition. Worse, no one in the big house had ventured out of doors all morning long, and even if the master sergeant's woman should come outside, Miguel's teeth were chattering so loudly, she'd probably hear him a kilometer away and run for the hills!

With sudden decision, he reached for the shift lever, put the car in gear, and released the emergency brake. Leaning forward to peer cautiously in all directions, he inched the car out of its hiding place and started down the narrow country road. Since he didn't have any idea what Taylor's plans might be or how long this might take, he could very well be stuck here for a good long while yet.

But regardless whether that turned out to be the case or he accomplished his mission tomorrow, it was definitely time to find the nearest town and properly outfit himself.

Chapter 13

ALONE IN THE KITCHEN, LILY CHOPPED, DICED, AND minced everything that wasn't nailed down. Restlessness burned through her veins and along her skin like a fast-spreading rash. Try as she might, she couldn't seem to get the session with Zach in the upstairs hallway out of her mind.

Whoever would have guessed that a guy so hard-edged aggressive could kiss with such devastating subtleness and restraint? At least at first he had. But then he'd really got cooking, and…

Heat suffused her. She stared blindly across the kitchen as she relived those too few moments, her knife suspended over the potatoes she was currently reducing to uniform cubes. Again she experienced the hunger with which he'd kissed her, recalled the hard length of him wedged solidly between her thighs, remembered the friction and heat she'd felt as he'd rocked and ground against her, generally driving her insane.

The knife slipped from her fingers with a clatter. Startled, she jerked back to reality, and reached for a napkin to blot the perspiration that dotted her forehead, her cleavage, her upper lip. What was it about that man?

A different president had been in office the last time she'd had sex, and she'd never been the sort of woman to tumble into bed with a guy simply because she liked the cut of his jeans. Even if he was a great kisser.

So she was safe. It was a case of momentary lust, that was all. Refuse to give into it, and it would pass.

Only…

What if that wasn't all? A small moan escaped her. It hardly seemed credible, but she had an awful feeling she was starting to harbor feelings for Zach. Genuine, caring feelings.

She tried to push the thought aside, for the very idea scared her silly. She couldn't care for him. Not only had she not known him long enough, but to care— stop thinking the word, darn it !—would threaten her lifelong dream to settle down in one place and open her own restaurant. The last thing she wanted was to fall for some soldier whose very profession was synonymous with moving. She'd had a bellyful of that lifestyle already.

Besides, you had to really know a person in order to care for him, and she didn't have a clue who the real Zachariah Taylor was. Was he the guy who could be totally rude and crude and talk to her as if she were some no-account bimbo? The devil who'd kissed her like his soul was on the brink of damnation and she was his salvation—or more realistically, like he was determined to pull her into the Dark Side with him? Or was he the man who'd stopped for a second at the bottom of the stairs to make sure she was all right?

Maybe he was all three. Right this moment, though, it was the man who'd kissed her senseless who, quite frankly, kept drawing her thoughts off track. Oh, Lord, that mouth. That hot and talented mouth—

Holy smokes, enough already! Yanking off her apron, she found some containers, scraped the various mounds of vegetables into them, and put everything into the fridge. She had to get out of here. Get her mind on something else. Now .

Moments later, after a quick detour to her room for her purse, she knocked on Jessica's door. It was obvious the other woman was surprised to see her standing there, but Jessica had gracious behavior down to a fine art, and she quickly masked her reaction.

"Well, hi," she said and stepped back from the door. "Please. Come in."

Lily waved away the invitation. "I don't mean to intrude on your private time. I just wanted to bring you this"—she extended the lipstick she'd promised earlier—"and ask directions to a decent grocery store. I was doing some meal planning and realized I'm going to need a few supplies. Especially the fresh stuff like veggies and fruit, and milk and eggs."

Jessica grasped her arm and tugged her over the threshold. "Come in," she repeated. "Let me just put on some shoes, and I'll drive you into Eastsound."

"Oh, you don't have to—" But Lily cut off her protest as she followed Jessica into a cozily furnished suite. No sense in working overtime to sabotage herself; Jessica's help would be much appreciated. "That is—if you're sure it's not too big a bother?"