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  “You did it again!” She actually slapped his head and shoulders as he came climbing out onto the deck.

  “Move!” he ordered, so annoyed now that when he finally got his feet under him, he not only grabbed her arm to push her out ahead of him, but lay a single, hard swat across the womanly curves of her backside. All he wanted to do was knock a little urgency into her, but heaven help him, the woman had only two speeds: slow and she-was-going-to-get-them-both-killed even slower.

  “B-but my things!” she protested, digging in her heels when he tried shoving her around the side of the pilot house and back to where his boat was haphazardly tied in the shadows toward the aft. “My money!”

  He could hear some kind of staggering movement on the fore where he’d left Montague lying on the deck. He was rapidly running out of time and still, before he could grab her and simply toss her over the rail onto his skiff, she wrenched out of his grip and dashed off toward the front of the ship.

  “What the hell are you doing?” Takura chased after her but stopped when he saw Montague, slowly crawling up onto his knees and rubbing at the back of his neck with one hand. Running straight up to him, Levina kicked him in the ribs and Montague went over onto his side. He hugged his midriff and making no move to stop her as she quickly rifled through his pockets. She found her money, her book and a few articles of jewelry—for heaven’s sake, the woman had brought jewelry on her trip to the Amazon!

  “You—you—!” She shook her finger, glaring at Montague, her lips working impotently to find a curse black enough to suit the man. Her vocabulary lacking, she worked herself up to giving him another hard kick instead. “You are no gentleman!”

  Takura grabbed her arm and this time he didn’t let go until he had her over the rail. When he let go, she dropped the last three feet into his skiff.

  “My clothes!” she wailed.

  “You can get new ones in Manaus,” Takura said bluntly, and hopped the rail to land in the skiff next to her.

  “But—”

  No buts. He was all out of buts, and patience, and everything else connected with this troublesome woman. He grabbed the oars and shoved hard against the side of the tug to get some distance between them. Paddling like mad, he didn’t slow or stop until they were all the way back to his boat.

  CHAPTER THREE

  “I’m not going back to Manaus,” Levina said flatly. She folded her arms across her chest and cast a stormy green stare out across the calm waters into the surrounding jungle. “I’ve come all this way—”

  “You’ve come two miles,” Takura snapped back. “You couldn’t even get that far without getting into trouble! Woman, you are a menace! You have no business being out here! You—”

  are catastrophe incarnate.

  Levina reacted as if she’d been slapped. “That could have happened to anyone! If you knew what that awful man was planning for me, why didn’t you warn me?”

  “I did w—”

  “You most certainly did not! I guarantee if you had told me that man was going to steal all my money and put me in a cage, I’d have listened! I’m not stupid!”

  “What did you think I was saying when I told him he was going to sell you?”

  “I thought you were doing what that—that—”

  “Montague,” he supplied.

  “Yes, thank you—said you were doing: trying to scare me so I’d continue bartering with you when he was clearly cheaper! So maybe you did warn me, but you didn’t argue with him after that, either. How was I supposed to know?”

  Throwing up his hands, Takura walked away at that point, leaving Levina to stare out across the water and feel like an absolute failure. Yes, it could have happened to anyone. But that it had happened to her would only serve to reinforce Parnell’s current opinion of her as clumsy and incompetent. That he wasn’t even here to bask in her failure made no difference to Levina. If she went back to Manaus now, she might just as well go home, too. She’d never get to that flower ahead of her fiancé then, and without that flower, his opinion of her as something pretty but useless would never change.

  Her eyes stung; she blinked rapidly to keep back the tears and then turned her head to look at Takura, standing in the pilot house, his back stiff and angry. He was steering by lamp light through the back waterways toward the fork of the main river, taking them both back to Manaus.

  She was failing. Levina faced the water again, desperation making her want to cry. Digging into her skirt pocket, she pulled out the wad of her money that Montague had tried to steal and counted out how much she had left. Back on the docks, Takura had said he would take her to the Amazon Basin for six hundred dollars. She had that—a little more than that, even—but he looked so angry right now…

  Counting out half of what she had left, Levina meekly made her way to the pilot house. “Mr. Takol.”

  “I’m taking you back,” he said bluntly. “You have no idea the trouble you’re asking for, a woman by herself. In this place?” He shook his head once, glaring out at the water ahead of him. “The kind of trip you’re attempting is dangerous enough for a full party of men, never mind just you and me.”

  He shook his head again, and this time didn’t stop shaking it until she crept into the pilot house far enough to slip her handful of money up in front of him. Her hand shook a little, but she took two deep breaths and although the trembling didn’t stop entirely, it did ease a little. Takura, on the other hand, froze entirely. He didn’t take the money, but after a moment he did turn around and look at her, his black eyes narrowing.

  “One thousand dollars,” she said softly. “That’s almost twice what you asked for. Please. I need you to take me upriver into the Basin so I can find my flower.”

  He looked at her for a long time, then he looked at the money.

  “All this for a flower,” he muttered, but he took it. And when they reached the fork in the Rio Negro, instead of steering right and heading back to Manaus, he shook his head again and took her the other way.

  * * * * *

  He had to be out of his mind. Stark raving out of his mind.

  Takura put five miles between himself and where he hoped Montague was still recovering. He passed a number of backwater inlets and streams where they could have spent the night in safety, but every time he was tempted to turn into one, he kept going instead. He went as far as he could in the darkness. He knew this part of the river well enough not to strand the boat on submersed trees or let mangrove roots tangle in the propeller. However, eventually even he had to stop. It would be dawn in a few hours, and he couldn’t afford to fall asleep at the wheel and waste the daylight.

  Finding what he hoped was a nicely secluded alcove in the trees, he steered into the shelter jungle and shut of the engine. He stepped outside and listened, but after several long minutes, all he could hear was Levina groaning from her spot next to the rail, which is where she’d parked herself shortly after giving him that wad of cash. As far as he could tell, she hadn’t moved from that spot beyond what few inches she needed to lean her head out over the water.

  She really looked miserable.

  “Are we stopping for the night?” she groaned.

  “Yeah, we’ll be safe enough here. For a while, anyway.” Hands on his lean hips, he looked down at her, lying on her back near the railing. “Want to come inside? You can sleep in my berth. I’ll rig a hammock down here.”

  “Ugh,” she covered her stomach with both hands. “I think I’d best not.”

  “The mosquitoes are going to eat you alive,” he predicted, not unkindly. She looked just miserable enough that he actually felt sorry for her. When she only groaned again, he went up the ladder to his cabin and brought her a pillow and blanket.

  “Thank you.” She curling herself around the pillow.

  He spread the blanket over her. “Don’t fall into the water. The piranha probably wouldn’t bother you, but I can’t say the same for the caimans.”

  “That’s okay.” Her elbow bumped up into t
he blanket as she rubbed at her stomach again. “I’d drown first. I can’t swim.”

  “You can’t swim?” he echoed with no small surprise. “You can’t swim, you get seasick in calm waters, princess, why in the world would you want to charter a boat?”

  Moaning, she rolled over and got ready to offer another round of prayers into the river. “I thought it would be quicker than hiking through the jungle.”

  She had a point there. Shaking his head, Takura put a lamp on the deck at her feet, doused the rest and left her to it. This was her charter, she’d made her bed; he went to lie down in his own while there was still time enough before dawn for him to catch a few hours’ sleep.

  No sooner, it seemed, did he lie down and close his eyes than did a barrage of loud pops startle him straight up out of bed again. The next thing he knew, he was lying with his face pressed to the deck with bullets punching through the side of his cabin as if it were paper. He grabbing the gun out of his waistband with one hand, struggling to shield his head with his other while shards of glass and wood flew over him.

  The morning sunlight spilling in through the holes was blindingly bright. Somewhere outside, Levina was screaming and, as the bullets continued to punch through the captain’s cabin, sending a rain of feathers from his mattress billowing into the air, Takura scrambled as flat as he could manage it toward the door.

  There were bullets smashing through that too, but Takura cracked it open anyway. He spotted Levina right away. She had kicked free of her blanket and now lay scrunched up against the rope rails, her arms thrown up over her head, the only protective cover she had to shield her from the rapid gunfire that was peppering the boat.

  “Don’t move!” Takura shouted just as Levina screamed again. She might not have heard him, which would explain why she started crawling, elbows and knees scrambling, for his door. At least she knew enough to keep her head down, but she hadn’t managed more than a few inches before the deck in between them all but exploded from the showering force of more bullets than he cared to count. Giant splinters of wood rained down between them, and Levina dropped with another piercing scream. She also scrambled backward, pressing back up against the narrow rail post to cover her head again.

  The rain of bullets seemed to lessen, although it never completely ceased. Swearing and trying to keep as low to the floor as he could, Takura angled his head around the threshold until he saw them, Montague and Thiago, standing shoulder to shoulder at the bow of their boat. There was little expression on the Frenchman’s face. Thiago was struggling to reload his gun.

  He should have shot them when he’d had the chance.

  It wasn’t funny, but Takura laughed anyway. Then he stuck his arm out through the crack in the door and just started firing back. He emptied his gun, sending both Montague and Thiago diving for cover as he scrambled out the door onto the open deck.

  “Shit!” he swore under his breath. “Shit shit shit!” This was such a bad idea.

  He ran toward Levina anyway, but she wasn’t waiting for him. In that split second of ceasefire, he saw the abject panic on her face when she scrambled to get under the bottommost rope rail. He couldn’t believe she’d do it, even as she threw out her arms and rolled right off the side of his boat. She couldn’t swim, and yet she only offered one high-pitched squeal of fear before leaping into the water, arms outstretched to latch onto the four-foot caiman who, attracted to the disturbance, was doing its best log impersonation as it drifted in between the tugs. With one violent thrash of its tail, the caiman dove out of her way a half second before she hit the water belly first.

  “Merde!” Montague scrambled for the rail of his own ship, sheer annoyance flashing across his face as he waited to see if his stolen cargo was about to be torn apart.

  Lying on his back between two crates, Thiago finished reloading his gun and then rolled out into the open. He came up onto his knees, hefting his gun to his shoulder and taking deadly aim at Takura.

  Takura didn’t bother with the ladder; he knew he’d have been shot off it anyway. Grabbing onto the metal post, he leapt over the rail into the river after Levina.

  The black waters closed in around him. The river here wasn’t very deep, but the sediment was so thick, he was damn near blinded by it. Bullets snicked through the water around him and Takura dove, waving his searching arms in wide arches. It was only by sheer luck that his hand bumped into hers. She latched onto him at the same time that his feet found the stick-strewn river bottom and his head whacked against the underside of his already sinking boat. He ducked under it, pulling her through to the other side to get the boat between them and the rain of bullets searching to find them.

  Fingernails cut into his shoulders and neck as she tried to climb him, scrambling against the slick hull as she fought for some way back up to the river’s surface and the air. He felt his way up her, reaching until he’d caught her face and yanking her back down again. Her whole body stiffened when he crushed his lips to hers, but then he blew, feeding her a portion of what little air he had left and her struggles stilled.

  Lungs aching, Takura got behind her. He slung his arm around her and kicked hard to get them both up off the river bottom, but the sheer weight of her waterlogged dress was staggering. Grabbing at his boot knife, the growing urgency of his body’s need to breath prickling at his insides, he quickly felt his way over her breasts—she jerked around in his embrace and soundly boxed his ears—then slipped the edge of his knife in between her cleavage and the seam of buttons that ran all the way down to her waist. He cut right through the lot of them, and halfway down she must have realized what he was doing because she abruptly stopped fighting. She even helped, struggling out of her sleeves as he ripped the dress right off her and left it, billowing gently in the water’s current while he kicked and pulled, lugging her clinging body into the shelter of the mangrove roots and reeds that choked the muddy bank. One strong kick brought them both, finally, back up to where there was air.

  Levina spewed river water. Eyes closed and arms clasping all around him, she gasped and coughed like…well, a woman who’d swallowed half the Rio Negro.

  He turned her face into his chest, trying to smother the sound, but from here he couldn’t see either Montague or Thiago and he doubted they could see him either. They were fixed on sinking his boat, single-mindedly turning the hull below the water line into Swiss cheese. They had minutes, at most, Takura knew. Just as soon as his boat was nothing more than a grounding obstacle in the bottom of the river, the Frenchman was going to come after them.

  “The log…moved!” Levina gasped out between coughs, not moving other than to cling to his arm.

  “That wasn’t a log. Be quiet.” Sticking close to the bank, Takura dragged her through the reeds and tangling mangrove roots. Her soft breasts kept brushing against his chest as the slow current of the river moved against them. At the moment, he was more concerned with the possibility of stirring up hungry eels to pay much attention to them. That he was noticing them—the softness, the roundness, the protrusion of taut little nipples that he wouldn’t mind getting to know better, but just plain did not have the time for right now—became a serious irritation.

  Eventually, they came across a caiman slide, little more than a muddy path leading up the steep bank from the water to the jungle.

  Clinging to his shoulder with both arms, Levina twisted back her head to look back. “M-Mr. Takol…I think the, um…not logs are sneaking in behind us.”

  Takura snapped around. Sure enough, there were four curious caimans drifting up behind them. Caimans weren’t known to be overly ambitious when it came to taking down prey that was much larger than they were, and that included human prey. Three of the four coming at them now weren’t anywhere near big enough to be a threat. Leading the way, however, the fourth predator was ten feet if he was an inch, and there was a glitter in the depths of those reptilian eyes that suggested his motivating curiosity might be attached to an empty belly.

  “Get out o
f the water! Now!” Takura shoved her up onto the slide, slapping her cloth-covered ass when she stumbled, her legs hampered by yards of wet, almost sheer chemise.

  She yelped and with one foot still in the water, rolled onto her hip to clutch at her rump. “Mr. Takol!”

  Takura scrambled up the slippery bank. Trying to get his own legs out of bite and roll range, he grabbed a wad of cloth at her chest and one arm and hauled her roughly after him, yanking her practically nose to nose when he bellowed, “Those aren’t logs! Move!”

  Her eyes as round and wide as saucers (whether because he’d yelled at her or because one of the caimans growled), Levina scrambled up the bank. She rolled in the mud, clambering onto hands and knees, sliding and slipping as she struggled to get up into the dry and shielding vegetation. Just to keep her moving and moving fast, every few crawling steps, he laid another sharp swat to her backside, turning the wet white cloth mud-brown in only a few watery, splattering smacks.

  The second she reached the top of the embankment, she swiveled around, jerking up onto her knees high enough to slap him back. “Stop doing that!”

  A bullet snicked through the foliage, breaking the tip off a leafy twig right above her head.

  “Get down!” Grabbing the scruff of her underclothes, he knocked her flat on her back, dragging her back through the dirt and leaves as he crawled out of the target area. With several trees between them and the focus of Montague’s vengeful assault, they scrambled into the sheltering arms of high-growing tree roots. She hit the ground first and he promptly landed on top of her.

  It quickly became clear that they weren’t being shot at. Standing on the bow of his tug, Montague turned in a slow circle, firing aimlessly into the curtain of mangrove roots along both banks and now and then firing volleys into the jungle, just in case.

  “My boat,” Takura softly moaned, watching as it bubbled and sank, gradually disappearing into the black water. It didn’t have far to go to find the bottom. Only the first deck and a half fully submerged. Then the boat bumped into the sticks and silt before gradually rolling onto its side and finally disappeared beneath a cloud of stirred up sediment and rotting vegetation.