As for Jared, he was an exceptional interpreter, a renowned expert in Mayan artifacts and at this precise moment, a damned nuisance.
“If you don’t stop saying I see in that smug tone, I’m going to throttle you first,” he warned.
Jared simply grinned smugly. Eventually he must have figured it was safe to open his mouth again, because he cast a sly look in Riley’s direction and asked, “How long have you known her?”
“Practically all my life.”
“You never talked about her.”
Riley had no answer for that. Abby had been in his heart. That had been enough. Besides, what would he have said? No one, not even Jared, would have understood his reasoning for giving up a woman who meant so much to him.
“When did you fall in love with her?” Jared persisted determinedly.
Riley frowned. He’d always prided himself on keeping his feelings hidden. It protected him from messy entanglements. “Who said I was in love with her? I just feel responsible.”
“Right.”
That single word was laden with skepticism. “Look,” Riley said, “she’s like a sister to me, okay? She’s my best friend. I know her whole family. I have an obligation to all of them to look out for her. They trusted me. Her fianc;aae trusted me.”
Not that he felt all that much sense of duty to return Abby to old Martin. If Martin truly cared for her the way he claimed, he would have been the one sharing an adventure with her. Abby would have been totally content with her life, and Riley would have been out of it. That was the role that suited him...outsider, with no one depending on him.
“There’s absolutely nothing more between us,” he added, just to emphasize the point to his thickheaded friend.
“Uh-huh.”
“You’re doing it again,” Riley warned.
“Doing what?”
“Being smug.”
Jared shrugged. “I see what I see.”
“I wish you’d stop seeing things that aren’t there and concentrate on finding their trail. Do you suppose Manuel has any idea where he’s going?”
“He grew up in Comitan,” Jared reminded him. “He knows this area like the back of his hand, and he’s trustworthy. That’s why I hired him, rather than some of the professional guides who turned up for the interviews. It sure as hell wasn’t for his cooking skills. His coffee tastes like sludge, and I shudder to think what’s in that god-awful stew he makes. Anyway, Abby will be perfectly safe with him. They may not find the Mayan ruins, but he won’t let her come to any harm.”
Jared’s reassurances were scant consolation. “He can’t stop an entire guerrilla army if they see a way to use Abby as a hostage,” Riley countered.
“We’ll find them before anything like that happens,” Jared countered. “Come on, stop worrying. We can’t be that far behind them.”
Two days later, despite Riley’s insistence that they stay on the move each day until a thick, impenetrable darkness closed around them, they seemed no closer to catching up to their quarry. Tracking two people who didn’t want to be found in an overgrown wilderness not exactly teeming with witnesses wasn’t quite the snap he had hoped it might be. The gnawing sensation in the pit of his stomach was getting worse by the hour, and an aching emptiness seemed to have settled in the region of his heart.
What if he never saw her again? The very possibility filled him with dread. How the devil had he let this happen? He’d sworn a thousand times that he’d never again care about anyone. It was the only way he could see to avoid the anguish that came with their inevitable loss.
Somehow Abby had slipped through that wall of defenses. More likely it was just that she’d always been inside that wall, a constant in his life that he’d taken for granted, like the sun and the moon. He’d never examined his feelings for her too carefully, because then he might have had to drive her away as he had everyone else who’d dared to get too close the past few years.
He thought of all the times he’d instinctively wanted to reach for her and held back. He remembered each and every time he’d taken her hand in his, the casual gesture innocent enough in and of itself, but more memorable than far more provocative caresses with other women. To his amazement he could vividly recall the softness of her skin, its whispered scent of jasmine, its vibrant warmth. There were lovers whose touches he did not remember so clearly.
With the memories came a yearning so sharp, so painful, it robbed him of breath. How could he not have seen before now how badly he wanted her, how desperately he needed her?
How the hell could he have let her slip away?
Slip away, he thought ruefully. What a joke! He’d driven her away, threatened to send her packing back to a man she wasn’t one bit suited for. The mere thought of her in the arms of old Martin made him grind his teeth. A woman as vital and alive as Abby would wither and die in a dull marriage. If he hadn’t seen that before, her precipitous departure from their camp two days earlier had proven it. Sensible, reliable Abigail Dennison, to his astonishment, had a wild streak that some man was going to have one hell of a time taming. He envied the man who met that challenge.
Too bad it couldn’t be him, he thought with a heavy sigh of regret.
The truth was, no matter how badly he wanted her, no matter how deeply he cared for her, he refused to make the kind of commitment that a woman like Abby deserved. Life had taught him that commitments meant
