The Marriage Trap Read online

  THE MARRIAGE TRAP

  Anne McAllister

  "I'm a guide, not a nanny, sweetheart."

  Aidan Sawyer was the quintessential jungle guide, and being in his company was akin to cornering a panther. Courtney realized quickly that jaguars and river bandits were not the only dangers on the Amazon.

  Since day one of their river trek, to find her missionary parents, Aidan had tested and teased Courtney with every manipulative macho trick in the book.

  Her only hope for temporary relief from Aidan's relentless mischief was to find the mission—and fast. Surely there her parents' presence would protect her from this too-talented rogue!

  CHAPTER ONE

  Everybody said that once Courtney found Aidan Sawyer, her problems would be solved.

  There wasn’t a finer guide in the whole upper reaches of the Amazon jungle, they said. If anyone could help her find her missionary parents, he could, they said. If there was anyone she could depend on, it was Aidan Sawyer, they said.

  Unfortunately ‘they’ seemed not to have told Aidan.

  So when she finally tracked him down to the dank, overgrown backwater town of Boca Negra and actually found the finest guide to the upper reaches of the Amazon jungle sitting, bare-chested and grimy, amidst a dock full of mechanical clutter that had no doubt once been a boat engine, she had complete confidence that he would help her find her parents.

  He said, ‘No.’

  Courtney stared, unable to believe she had heard him right. The din of market day, the cackle of chickens and the hawking of wares, must have befuddled her hearing. She stepped carefully into a coil of thick rope, edging part of it aside with her foot so that she could get closer.

  ‘I beg your pardon.’

  ‘No,’ he enunciated very carefully. She heard traces of upper-class Boston in the word. The incongruity of it might have made her laugh if the word itself hadn’t astonished and infuriated her. He couldn’t say that!

  ‘What do you mean, no?’ She fished in her canvas bag and pulled out a crumpled, sweat-streaked business card. ‘Aidan Sawyer, giu’a e traductor. Aidan Sawyer, guide and translator,’ she read. ‘That’s you, isn’t it?’ She glowered through her owlish glasses at him. He was a great panther of a man, the quintessential jungle guide despite the Harvard-educated voice. With his thick unruly hair and hard-muscled body he was every inch what she had expected him to be. Except willing.

  She glanced around hopefully for another possible Aidan Sawyer. The only person nearby was a tiny, dark, wizened man in a shirt and trousers three sizes too large. She didn’t know whether to hope he was Aidan Sawyer or not.

  ‘It’s me,’ the panther agreed laconically. He squinted up at her, his jade-green eyes unnerving. She didn’t like the way he was looking at her. It wasn’t all that different from the way a dozen other men had looked at her since she had left Los Angeles five days ago, but it felt different.

  They had been assessing her, too—weighing the fact that she was travelling alone and obviously wondering whether they dared make a pass. But most had decided that her cool, distant look and the way she used her large-lensed glasses as a flirtation-proof barrier was reason enough not to. She didn’t think Aidan Sawyer was likely to reach the same conclusion. He would probably diagnose it as the myopia it was. The thought disconcerted her.

  ‘Well, then…?’ she snapped irritably. ‘You guide. It says so right here.’ She waved the card in front of his nose.

  He shrugged, the sheen of sweat on his mahogany shoulders making the muscles glimmer. ‘Nothing on the card says I have to, though.’

  Stymied, Courtney glared at him. Perspiration trickled down her spine. She brushed a damp tendril of blonde hair away from her face and wished she had thought to get a haircut before she had left Los Angeles. The closest thing to a hairdresser in Boca Negra was the old woman in the market-place hacking up gourds with her machete.

  The machete tempted her. She would have liked to whack Aidan Sawyer with it. How dared he sit there and simply decline to help her?

  ‘Listen, Mr. Sawyer,’ she said, ignoring the small, dark man who was now winding up the large coil of rope that lay like an oily snake on the sun-bleached boards. ‘I need to find my parents. I haven’t heard from them in a year. And my uncle is threatening to—well, never mind what he’s threatening to do.’ There was no point in airing family disputes before a man who seemed totally uninterested anyway. ‘Suffice it to say,’ she went on, ‘this is not some sort of lark I am undertaking, not some frivolous escapade to share with my high-society urban room-mates when I return.’

  One sweat-darkened brow lifted. ‘Got a lot of high-society room-mates, have you?’ he drawled.

  ‘I live alone,’ she retorted sharply.

  ‘Ah.’ He seemed to consider that. ‘That could be worth knowing.’

  Courtney felt her cheeks burn. The old man coiling the rope snickered. If she had wondered how much of their conversation he understood, she now knew. Bristling, she snapped, ‘You will never have cause to be concerned about that.’

  Aidan Sawyer’s dark head bent over some bit of mechanical complexity. ‘You’re probably right.’ He began to hum softly to himself, dismissing her.

  Courtney glowered at him. He didn’t notice.

  ‘Mr. Sawyer!’

  The dark head lifted. He gave her a quizzical look.

  ‘Why won’t you take me?’ She hated asking. But she couldn’t argue with reasons she was unaware of, and she was definitely going to argue. She hadn’t spent the last five days and the better part of her bank account in an effort to discover her parents’ whereabouts, only to be turned back when she was within a hundred miles of them.

  He didn’t answer at once, not verbally anyway. His eyes raked her from the top of her straight, fair, shoulder-length hair to the tips of the painted pink toenails that peeped out of her Dr. Scholl’s sandals. They took in the off-white safari shirt that now, after several days’ wear on plane, taxi, bus, and jeep, was closer to tan. They lingered far too long on her small breasts. They took in the wide leather belt and the baggy soft cotton slacks that had also once been white. They spoke volumes. But in case she didn’t get the message, he spelled it out. ‘Where’d you get the outfit? A yuppie safari store?’

  Her cheeks flamed again, and not from the midday sun. ‘As a matter of fact, yes, I did.’

  He snorted. ‘Figures.’

  ‘I tried Army surplus first,’ she told him sweetly. ‘There’s not a lot of gear made for people who are barely five foot four.’

  Aidan grunted, as if he would rather not acknowledge that.

  ‘So you’re rejecting me on account of my clothes?’ The moment she phrased it that way, she knew she had made a mistake. The old man’s guffaw just confirmed it.

  Grinning devilishly, Aidan shook his head. ‘Sweetheart, I’m not rejecting you at all. I’m just not taking you into the jungle.’

  Courtney took a deep breath, reminding herself that it was a hot day, that business was better conducted inside a semi-cool bar or cafe than in the midst of a sun-scorched dock. But she was reaching the limits of her patience. ‘I’d like a reason, Mr. Sawyer. A non-personal reason. If you can.’

  For a moment she thought he would simply admit that he couldn’t. Then he waved his hand over the disassembled engine parts. ‘How about this?’

  ‘Your engine, you mean?’

  He nodded.

  ‘How long will it take to fix it?’

  He gave her a baleful look. ‘As long as I want it to.’

  She gritted her teeth. ‘There’s nothing wrong with it, then?’

  He shrugged. ‘A few new parts wouldn’t hurt.’

  ‘But you could get it going?’

  Another shrug.<
br />
  ‘I can wait.’ Not for ever, but he didn’t have to know that.

  He sighed. ‘It figures.’

  ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’

  ‘It means, I guess, that I’ll have to be blunt.’

  Blunter than he already had been? Courtney couldn’t quite imagine anything much blunter than the ‘no’ she had first received. ‘By all means, Mr. Sawyer, do speak your mind.’

  He gave her a hard look. ‘All right, I will.’ Again she heard the hard New England clip in his voice. ‘I won’t take you because I’d have to be responsible for you. You’d shriek if a snake slithered across a limb in front of you. You’d howl when the rain ran down the back of your neck. You’d faint at the sight of a jaguar. And if you needed to use the gun, you’d probably shoot yourself in the foot. I guide experienced people—scientists, anthropologists, geologists. Not,’ he added scathingly, ‘schoolgirls whose hand I’d have to hold the whole damn way. I’m a guide, not a nanny, sweetheart. I don’t guide people who need keepers. Like you.’

  Well, he was blunt, she had to admit that. But it was all drivel. What did he know about her? ‘Nonsense,’ she told him flatly. ‘I’m perfectly capable of taking care of myself. I am, after all, a grown woman.’

  ‘In one way, anyhow,’ he allowed, the way obvious from the once-over his eyes were giving her.

  ‘Besides,’ she went on doggedly, ignoring the heated suggestion in his eyes, ‘I’ve been here before.’

  ‘Oh yes? A Caribbean cruise with a fifty-mile day-trip up the Amazon, perhaps?’ His voice dripped scorn.

  ‘I was born and raised here.’

  ‘In Boca Negra?’ He was incredulous.

  ‘In the jungle. I was born in Tuchanapi.’ She named an Indian village about eighty miles away.

  ‘Tuchanapi?’ He frowned. Then a faraway gaze came into his eyes, as if he were remembering something. A moment later his gaze narrowed and he said, almost accusingly, ‘You’re the “white dolly”?’

  It had been years since Courtney had heard that phrase. It brought back memories long forgotten. Stories about her mother’s pregnancy, her father’s insistence that if Indian children could be born there, so could his child; stories about how tiny she had been when she was born, and how the Indians in the village hadn’t at first thought she was real, how they had persisted for several years in calling her ‘White dolly’ instead of her name.

  For a moment she was shaken, and she suspected that he saw it in her face. Then she gave a wry smile of acknowledgement. ‘I was.’

  ‘Well, I’ll be damned.’ He cocked his head to one side and looked her over again, then grinned. ‘You’re still a dolly, too, by God.’

  The old man cackled and nodded affirmatively, giving Courtney a toothless grin. ‘She some dolly,’ he chortled. ‘You crazy not to take her, Sawyer.’

  Courtney, despite her annoyance, felt a momentary flicker of hope at having found an unexpected ally. But Aidan shook his head.

  ‘Nope. Dollies are the last thing I need, Joao, and you damned well know it.’

  ‘You like dollies,’ Joao protested, still chuckling gleefully.

  ‘Not like this one,’ Aidan denied flatly.

  ‘You don’t need to talk about me as if I’m not even here!’ Courtney snapped. ‘I’m not in the least interested in being your “dolly”. I only want to find my parents. And I will. With or without your help, Mr. Sawyer!’

  ‘Yeah?’ He gave her an amused glance, as if she were a toddler throwing a tantrum. ‘You and who else?’

  ‘Me and whoever I can get, since you’ve declined.’

  He frowned. ‘You’re out of your mind, lady. You pick some bandit to take you into the jungle and you’ll never get out alive.’

  ‘Well, it won’t be any concern of yours, will it?’ she asked him. ‘Inasmuch as you’ve washed your hands of me.’

  He let out a furious explosion of air. ‘Lady, go home.’

  ‘No.’

  They glared at each other, hard green eyes battling equally stubborn blue ones. Courtney was glad she was the one standing. It was hard to be intimidating at her height. It would be impossible, she suspected, if he uncoiled his length. He must have been a shade over six feet, and he would tower over her.

  He sighed and raked a hand through his thick dark hair. It was curling in the humid air, and it wanted cutting even more than hers did. ‘Look, Miss… Miss…’ He stopped suddenly, obviously realising for the first time that he didn’t even know her name.

  ‘Miss Perkins,’ she informed him crisply. ‘Mary Courtney Perkins.’

  ‘Mary Courtney? Sounds like a nun.’ He looked at her suspiciously. ‘You’re not, are you?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘A schoolteacher,’ he guessed.

  She sighed. ‘I write children’s books.’

  ‘Children’s books? Like Goldilocks and Winnie the Pooh? You write about bunnies and stuff?’ He tilted back his head and laughed, a strong rough masculine laugh.

  ‘That amuses you, Mr. Sawyer?’

  ‘It puts my mind at ease,’ he told her. ‘Now I know I was right in refusing you. Listen, Miss Mary Courtney Perkins, you may have been born out here— ’ he waved a hand towards the dark green forest surrounding them ‘—and you may have fond memories of a Garden of Eden childhood where Mommy and Daddy protected their little girl from danger, but this is not Kipling’s “altogether uninhabited interior”. This is the real live jungle we’re talking about. And people who protect big girls aren’t thick on the ground.’

  Courtney rested a hand on her hip. ‘Any minute now I expect you’ll remind me that it’s a “bunny eat bunny” world out there.’

  He stared at her, a tiny smile playing at the corners of his mouth. ‘You wouldn’t listen if I did.’

  ‘Absolutely correct.’

  He shook his head. ‘You’ll just go out and hire yourself some bandit or rapist or murderer, and set off into the jungle with him.’ He tossed the engine part he had been cleaning on to the dock and got to his feet.

  ‘If you insist,’ Courtney said, more blithely than she felt. She had been right. Vertical he was more than imposing. Downright menacing summed it up.

  ‘It’s not me who’s insisting, sweetheart,’ he told her. He took the end of the rope from Joao and ambled away down the dock towards the long narrow boat tied up at the end.

  ‘Go on home. You’re out of your element here,’ he tossed back at her.

  ‘That remains to be seen.’

  He glanced over his shoulder, beginning to wrap the rope in a wide loop around his elbow and forearm. ‘You need a demonstration?’

  She stuck her chin out. ‘You’re damned right I do.’

  A slow grin lit his face. ‘You asked for it, sweetheart.’ And he gave a quick twist of the rope. Immediately she felt the other end tighten around her ankle. One swift yank and he had swept her off her feet. The next thing she knew muddy river water was closing over her head.

  Spluttering, gasping, she struggled to the surface.

  ‘Why, you—!’ Water streamed down her face as she floundered towards the dock, blinking and shaking her head. A hand reached down to pull her out. Shaking the hair out of her eyes, she looked up at Aidan’s grinning face.

  ‘Never stand in a rope coil, Miss Perkins,’ he drawled in his Boston-twang voice. ‘Lesson number one.’ He leaned over further, his lean brown hand outstretched. For a split second she considered not taking it. Then she thought, why not? and took a firm grip.

  A second later Aidan Sawyer was thrashing in the water beside her.

  ‘God Almighty!’ he roared breaking the surface.

  ‘Never mess with a lady who writes about bunnies and stuff, Mr. Sawyer,’ she said and hoisted herself soggily up on to the dock. ‘Lesson number two.’

  As she dripped her way up the steps to the road, she heard Joao chuckling, ‘I guess she show you.’

  What she had shown him, Courtney thought gloomily once she was in her hotel ro
om stripping off her sopping clothes, was that he had been right to refuse her.

  No man in his right mind would trek off into the jungle with a woman who dunked him for spite. But he had dunked her first! she remembered with renewed fury. To teach her a lesson! He’d got one, too, though. So now they were even. Perhaps, she tried encouraging herself as she dragged a brush through her still wet hair, he would respect her daring and change his mind. Unfortunately even she wasn’t that big an optimist. And she was less so half an hour later when she went back out into the lobby-cum-cafe of the town’s only hotel, a dreary damp one-storey wooden building that had definitely seen better days, and asked Consuelo, the smiling, round-faced woman who checked people in, waited on tables, cleaned rooms and did everything else that needed doing, if she knew the way to Aidan Sawyer’s heart.

  ‘Heart? You want his heart?’ The older woman laughed. ‘I thought you want a guide.’

  ‘It’s just an expression,’ Courtney assured her. ‘I do want a guide. But he wasn’t too eager—’ which was putting it mildly ‘—so I need to do a bit of persuading.’

  Consuelo clicked her tongue. ‘Persuade that one? Money maybe. He needs a new motor for his boat. Or, you don’t got money, there are other things he might like.’ She gave a creditable imitation of Aidan cataloguing Courtney’s feminine charms.

  ‘Not that,’ Courtney said quickly.

  Consuelo shrugged. ‘Then money, I guess.’

  Courtney had some, but probably not enough to sway Aidan Sawyer when he seemed already to have made up his mind against her. She sighed and leaned against the counter, watching as Consuelo folded the almost threadbare towels. Surely there must be some way under the man’s guard. But she couldn’t think what. Maybe if she had a bit of time, she could figure it out.

  But time was something she had very little of, she realised moments later when she heard, ‘Mama! Mama! Guess what! We got guests coming!’

  Consuelo’s son, Aurelio, the ten-year-old charmer who had carried Courtney’s duffel bag from the bus while giving her a Chamber of Commerce spiel about the highlights of Boca Negra, shot in the door, a large canvas bag in each hand.