The Seduction of Goody Two-Shoes

Funny thing was, it had never bothered her to share a room with Ken. Anyway, not like this. Of course, she and Ken had always had separate beds…

“Excuse me,” she said as she calmly and without a visible tremor signed Rose Ellen Burnside on the registration slip, “is that one bed or two?”

“One bed,” said the desk clerk with obvious satisfaction. “Queen size.”

Ellie nodded and became very involved, suddenly, with the task of putting the credit card back in her wallet, and the wallet back in her purse.

“Will that be all right, senora?”

“Yes, that’s fine.” But her mind was doing the frightened rabbit thing again. Impossible. A king… maybe. But a queen? No way. She could feel McCall close beside her, casually turned a little toward her so that his Panama hat, squashed under one arm, brushed against her shoulder. She could feel the heat from his body. Smell his scent-like hers, mostly insect repellent. She could feel her own pulse thumping in the hollow at the base of her throat. One of us will just have to sleep on the floor. I will…

The desk clerk had turned away to look for their room key. In desperation, Ellie gazed upward, as if somehow the answer to her dilemma might be found written on the wall above the registration desk.

And-lo and behold, there it was. A sign, neatly hand-lettered in both Spanish and English. The English part read: Hammocks Available on Request.

“Oh, look, dear,” she said in a sweet girlish voice that was nothing like her own, and with a breathlessness that was more relief than excitement, “they have hammocks! I used to love hammocks when I was a little girl.” Turning toward McCall, she twined herself around his arm and purred, “Let’s get one, shall we, darling? Just for fun?”

Was it her imagination, or did his breathing catch-just a little? At any rate, his voice, when he spoke, was thick with gravel-though admittedly, that wasn’t unusual for McCall.

“Sure, why not? Anything you want, dear.” His teeth were showing again. She couldn’t see his eyes.

The clerk disappeared through a door behind the desk and came back with a tightly rolled webby bundle, which he placed on the counter. “There you are, senor…senora. You will find hooks on your veranda. And there is a message for you, Senor Burnside.” He handed McCall a sealed white envelope. Ellie could hardly keep herself from snatching it out of his hands. “Perhaps it is from your friends…”

“Perhaps,” said McCall as he tucked the envelope in his shirt pocket.

The desk clerk gave them the key and directions to their room, which turned out to be not in the main hotel but one of a string of tiny cottages arranged along a path overlooking the lakeshore. McCall passed the key to Ellie and tucked the bundled hammock under one arm. They thanked the hovering desk clerk, who beamed at them as they turned to go and said something in Spanish that Ellie didn’t quite understand.

“What did he say?” she muttered as soon as they were out of earshot, glancing up at McCall. His face was curiously deadpan. “It definitely wasn’t ‘Enjoy your stay.’ I understood feliz and luna, but what’s miel?”

His lips twitched slightly, and it was a moment before he answered, in a voice as determinedly devoid of expression as his face. “It means honey. He was wishing us happiness on our honeymoon.”

“Oh,” said Ellie, and her heart did an odd little stumble-step. She gnawed her lip and frowned at the ground, trying hard to think of something to say. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d felt this self-conscious…walking close beside McCall, not touching him but aware of every breath and muscle twitch, his heat and scent melting into her very pores. Both of them carefully not looking at each other and her feeling as though the eyes of the entire world were watching them, even though not a soul was in sight. “I’m sorry,” she finally said on a shaken exhalation. “I should have thought of this.”

You should have thought of a lot of things, McCall thought grimly but didn’t say. Before you elected a complete stranger to stand in for your absent husband. Before you dragged me into your life…your mess. Before you kissed me…

He cleared his throat and said aloud, “Couldn’t be helped. Look-this is a remote part of the world. Everybody around here’s probably related-hell, for all you know, that desk clerk could be the head smuggler’s brother-in-law. We’re supposed to be husband and wife-how’s it gonna look if we’d asked for separate rooms?”

“Well,” said Ellie, getting a staunch, determined look he was beginning to recognize, “I’ll sleep in the hammock. It’s the least I can do.”

She wouldn’t get any argument from him there. So why was he arguing? He wondered about that as he heard himself say, “Come on, you’ll get eaten alive by mosquitos.”

“Maybe we can rig up some netting. Besides, I’ll douse myself with plenty of repellent. Don’t worry about me.” And she gave her head an intrepid little toss as she jerked open the door to the VW and plunked herself inside.

“Sister, you’re the last person I’m worried about,” he muttered, going around to the driver’s side and easing in under the wheel.

But why did that always get to him-that arrogant, overconfident little way she had that made him want to either kick her in the butt or gather her into his arms and shield and protect her? Maybe because he knew it for what it was? Because he’d worn it often enough himself in a past life…the mask of bravado people wear to hide the fact that they’re really scared to death…and bound and determined to go ahead anyway.

Some people might have said that was the definition of courage. As far as McCall was concerned, it was just plain stupidity.

Neither of them said anything more as he drove the VW to a parking space as close as he could get to their cottage. The silence held while he was hauling their overnighters out of the back seat, along with Ellie’s purse and a big cloth beach bag that held her sun visor, flashlights, insect repellent, bottles of water, and of course, a dozen or so bars of chocolate. It persisted while Ellie stood in the VW’s open doorway with her elbows resting on the roof, one hand holding down her wind-ruffled hair as she gazed out across the lake…and while McCall tried every way he knew how not to look at her, or notice how rich and warm the colors of her skin and hair were against the cool greens of the jungle, the vivid blues of water and sky.

Then he heard a soft sound, a deeply inhaled breath. “Mmm…you can smell the sea,” she murmured.

“Huh,” he said, scowling at the overnighter he’d just wrestled out of the car. “Wind must be just right. Probably that tropical storm moving in.”

She turned her back on the car and the lake and lifted her face to the sun, which retaliated by making a coppery halo of her hair. Wind stirred through orange and mango, oak and banana leaves, and a flock of small green birds- parrots of some kind-flitted, chattering, from tree to tree. McCall caught the scent of orange blossoms.

“It’s so beautiful here,” she said softly, as if to herself. “It would be a lovely place for a honeymoon.”

It wasn’t so much the words, as the way she looked when she said them. A kind of wistful innocence, McCall thought, like a young girl gazing at bridal gowns. He didn’t know what it was about it that made his throat tighten up, what made anger flare hot behind his eyes…or what made him pounce almost without thought, like a cat smacking a paw down on a hapless mouse.

“One to a customer,” he said in a rough, rude tone, and then, firing her a challenging stare, “Where’d you go for yours, Mrs. Burnside?”

He didn’t know what he’d expected to accomplish by asking that, except perhaps to punish himself by stirring up the little worm of jealousy that kept popping up so unexpectedly from dark cupboards in his subconscious mind. What he did not expect was the look that flitted across her face. Blank, pale panic, as if she had no idea whatsoever how to answer him.

And then… “Lake Tahoe!” she blurted it out angrily, almost defiantly. And he absolutely knew it was a lie.

“Really? Lake Tahoe…” he said in a calm, musing tone, aware suddenly that his pulse had quickened and that it was taking all his concentration to keep his breathing from doing the same. “I know it very well. Where, exactly?”

“None of your business,” she snapped, then shot it right back at him. “Where’d you go on yours?”

She was standing very close to him, drawn up to her full height, such as it was, head thrown back so she could look him straight in the eyes. He gazed down at her, refusing to let himself dwell on how lush and lovely her mouth was. Suddenly feeling old and indefinably sad.

“What business is it of yours?” he said with sneering cruelty. “By my calculations you were probably in