CHAPTER 12

Matt glanced over his shoulder. He could just make out the spiky branches of a tree reaching for the ebony night. Beneath the moon they shone silver instead of red, but—

“That’s it,” he said.

Gina got to her feet, emitting a surprised grunt, even as she tightened her lips against sudden pain.

“You okay?” Matt stood as well, reaching for her.

She pulled back. “Fine.”

Matt let his hand drop to his side. Would she ever let him touch her again?

Doubtful.

“I think they stopped.”

Matt followed her gaze, catching just a hint of equine shadows several hundred yards in the opposite direction. “I’ll get them.”

“They aren’t going to come,” she said. “Horses have never liked it here.”

Matt, who’d already started toward them, turned back. “Why?”

She shrugged. “Any horse that’s ever come within a hundred yards of this place bolts.”

Though he felt like a two-year-old who’d just discovered his favorite question, nevertheless, Matt was forced to ask again: “Why?”

“None of them have ever said.”

“Har-har.” Matt considered the distant silhouettes of Spike and Lady Belle. “What are we going to do?”

“Sleep over there.” Gina brushed her palms against her pants and began to walk.

*   *   *

Gina couldn’t believe they’d been this close to the site and she hadn’t been aware. Sure, it was dark, but shouldn’t she have been able to feel a change? The horses had.

Yes, she’d heard the wind calling her name, but she heard that all over the damn place.

Gina increased her pace. She didn’t like the horses being so far away. Not that a wolf was going to get them. But there was the odd bear or pack of raging coyotes. Not to mention that Spike might just take it into his head to run home.

Teo’s scurrying footsteps scattered rocks and dirt every which way as he hurried to catch up. “Animals sense what we don’t,” he said. “If there’s a tomb below, that’s gotta feel … I don’t know … hollow to them.”

Gina didn’t bother to point out that when the horses had actually lost it the area had still been a good hundred yards away.

Because they had sensed something. She just didn’t think it was that hole beneath the earth.

Gina approached Spike and Lady Belle, murmuring reassurances. The mare lifted her head and nickered a welcome, as if nothing had happened at all.

Spike snorted and stomped and shook his mane, but he didn’t bolt, and if he was still bothered by … whatever, he would have. Unfortunately, the bolting he’d done thus far had been enough.

“My tent’s missing,” Gina said, then cursed. “My camera bag, too.”

Why she’d brought the thing along she wasn’t sure. She certainly didn’t want to take any more pictures of this place. The first one had caused trouble enough.

Teo stared back the way they’d come. The moon had disappeared behind the clouds again. They could barely see three feet in any direction; they certainly weren’t going to be able to find anything now.

“You can have mine.” Gina felt rather than saw him glance at her. “I’ll sleep outside.”

“I promise I won’t jump you if you don’t jump me.” Gina’d meant the words to be flippant; instead they came out kind of bitchy. And really, she was okay with that.

“I … uh … well, certainly,” Teo managed. “I would never force my attentions on a lady.”

Gina’s lips curved as she turned away. Since he’d started to talk like an eighty-year-old man with a stick up his butt, she’d made him uncomfortable.

Join the club.

The idea of sharing a small, enclosed space with Teo made her as twitchy as a horse in a barn full of flies.

“It’s going to rain.” She heaved the tent in his direction. He caught it with a muffled oof. “You can’t sleep outside.”

An hour later the horses were taken care of. Gina had made a fire; Teo had pitched the tent. They’d eaten, and now they lay inside the shelter, staring at the canvas ceiling as distant thunder loomed.

Or at least Gina stared; she wasn’t sure what Teo was doing except tossing and turning, every shift of his body reminding her of that body shifting against hers on his bed in the hotel. The constant movement also squirted the maddening scent of oranges and sunshine across the far too short distance that separated them.

He was driving her batty!

“Okay.” She sat up. “Let’s play cards.”

“I’m sorry?”

“You aren’t, but you should be.”

“What?”

“You should be sorry for coming here, for lying, for trying to seduce me, for stealing my ranch. But you aren’t. Because you got what you wanted. Or you soon will.”

He moved again, making more noise than Spike on a rampage. An instant later, the portable tent light—a combination of lantern and flashlight—flared to life, illuminating Teo sitting cross-legged on his bedroll, hair mussed as if she’d just run her fingers through it over and over and over.

Gina clenched her hands until the knuckles crackled in the sudden stillness. She could still feel that hair against her palms and that mouth against hers.

Hell.

“I am sorry.” He lifted his gaze, which, unfettered by his glasses, had softened to the shade of the sage in Fanny’s spice garden. “But not for everything.”

Gina wasn’t sorry about everything, either. She might be mad about some of it, but she wasn’t sorry.

“Cards,” she blurted. “What can you play?”

“Nothing.”

“You don’t know how to play cards?”

“Oh, I know how. What do you think we did on digs when the torrential rains came?”

As if in answer to his question, raindrops began to patter against the canvas and the wind shook the tent just a little. But worse was coming. Gina could smell it.

“I don’t know,” she answered. “Read a book?”

“That was my mother. I played cards with the workers.” He cracked his knuckles. “I’m really good at poker.”

Gina’s lips curved. “Not as good as me.”

“I’d love to prove you wrong, but I don’t have any cards.”

Crap. Neither did she. And she had no one to blame but herself, since she’d done the packing. Which just proved how out of it she’d been. Cards were usually one of the first things she tucked into the pack.

“Great.” Gina fell back onto her bedroll. Another sleepless night with nothing to do but think. Just what she needed.

A rustle drew her attention to Teo. He’d put on his glasses and now peered at a notebook he held in his hands.

“What’s that?”

“My mother’s translations.” He shrugged, appearing sheepish and very young. “Do you want to see?”

At her nod, Teo scooted over on the bedroll, making room for Gina to sit at his side. Which was probably a really bad idea.

“I promised not to jump you,” he said, surprising a laugh from her.

What was it about this man that made her want to like him, to trust him even though he’d proved he was both unlikable and untrustworthy?

Though it was probably a bad idea, nevertheless, Gina leaned forward, placing her palms on the ground; then she crossed, on her hands and knees, the few feet that separated them.

She hadn’t realized how suggestive the pose was until his breath caught, then his eyes flared, gaze lowering and fixing on something just below her neck. She glanced down and discovered that her shirt gaped, revealing the easy sway of her breasts beneath.

When she lifted her head, the expression on his face, the stark wanting, made her chest ache. No man had ever looked at her like that before.

Gina sat back on her heels and considered returning to her side of the tent.

“Sorry,” Teo murmured. “You’re just so lovely I can’t help myself.”

Her cheeks heated. Lovely. Such an old-man word, though the look in Teo’s eyes had been anything but old. Or maybe it had been ancient—the same look men had been giving women since the beginning of time. And since she now knew exactly what it felt like when he touched her, all he had to do was glance at her and she remembered his hands, his mouth, that taste.

She remembered, and she yearned.

“Stare all you want, but keep your hands off,” Gina muttered, even though that wasn’t what she wanted. Not really.

How pathetic. Lie, cheat, steal, attempt seduction under both a false name and false pretenses, yet still she wanted him.

“No touching,” Teo agreed. “Swear to God.”

“Which god?” Gina asked.

“Any god. All the gods. Whatever you want.”

She lifted a brow, but she scooted the few feet left to his bedroll in an odd, crab-like movement that kept her from flashing him again.

Gina crossed her legs, stilling when her knee brushed his. Teo shifted, as if he just needed to change positions, but she knew better. The electricity that had jumped between them at that simple touch was disturbing. Would her body ever stop calling out for his?

He pointed to the notebook. “These are the glyphs that led me here.”

Gina leaned closer, careful to avoid brushing any more body parts. “Reminds me of kindergarten stick figures.”

“Not everyone was van Gogh.”

“More like Picasso.”

“Yes!” he agreed, both surprised and pleased. “The colors, the glyphs that appear to be half person, half something else. Excellent comparison.”

Gina felt again the warm rush in her chest and stomach that his praise brought to her. Why she craved it, craved him, she had no idea. But she couldn’t seem to stop.

“This is the section about the superwarrior.” Teo pointed to another picture. “The Aztecs marched to—” He slid his index finger, dark against the creamy sheet, to another glyph. “A land north,” he tapped what appeared to be a yellow and black knife, “of the big river.”

Gina leaned closer, barely registering the graze of her shoulder against his in her eagerness to see what he meant. The drawing of the river next to his nail was definitely bigger than the other drawings of rivers elsewhere on the page.

“There isn’t another big river in Mexico?” she asked.

“Not like the Rio Grande. Hence the moniker Grande.”

“Good point,” Gina said, and he turned his head to smile. Because she was leaning against his shoulder their faces were far too close. His nose nearly brushed hers as his breath breezed across her cheek.

She straightened, cleared her throat, and made herself glance away. “How do you get north out of this?” She indicated the bumblebee-shaded knife.

“The Aztecs believed each direction was the realm of a particular god. Tezcatlipoca governed the north; he was the god of night and destiny, of war. His glyph was a tecpatl—the weapon used for sacrificing victims.”

“Weren’t all Aztecs—from the farmer in the fields to the warrior on parade—ruled by sacrifice?”

“Yes.”

“So why did this guy have the sacrificial knife as his symbol? Was he more vicious and violent than the rest?”

Teo’s eyes seemed to lose focus. He’d gone away for a minute in his mind. Gina was starting to understand that sometimes he had to.

“No,” he said at last. “North was also associated with the xerophyte tree, which grew at the northern reaches of the empire in a place called the land of death.”

“Cheery group of people, those Aztecs.”

His lips quirked. “It would make sense to them to use the weapon of death to symbolize the god of the land of death.”

“I suppose so,” Gina agreed. “What else?”

“Uh…” He stared at the pages for several seconds as if he’d forgotten what the pictures meant or perhaps just didn’t know where to begin.

Gina slid her finger beneath a string of colorful drawings all in a row. “What about these?”

Teo pushed his glasses up his nose, even though, from what she could tell, they hadn’t moved at all. “Those describe the superwarrior. A glyph can have several levels of meaning—the actual thing it represents, as well as a trait, and sometimes even a letter of the alphabet.”

“I don’t get it.”

“You’ve seen those games where you have to figure out a sentence from a string of pictures?” Gina shook her head. “Like this.”

Frowning, he patted the pocket of his shirt, then his pants, then, muttering, patted the bedroll surrounding them, triumphantly pulling a pencil from beneath his ass, before flipping to the back of the journal and scribbling.

He offered the page so she could see what he’d drawn. An eye. A heart. An alligator. “What does that say?”

“Your heart sees alligators?”

He laughed. She really enjoyed his easy laughter, both the sound of it and how it made her feel. As if she was funny, witty, and smart.

“Or…” He rapped the pencil’s eraser against the eye. “I.” Then the heart. “Love.” Then the alligator. “Alligators.” He lifted his shoulder, rubbing against her again despite their continued efforts to remain apart. “I don’t, but I’m really good at drawing alligators.”

“You are,” she said, hearing the laughter in her own voice.

He turned the page in his direction again, scratched a few lines, and turned it back. “This is the symbol for teeth, called tiantli in the Aztec language. But it was also used to represent the letter t. And this,” he tapped what also looked like teeth, except these had a roof on top, “is the symbol for la, which is used to indicate an ‘l’ sound at the end of a word.”

“What is that thing?”

“I don’t know. Something that sounded to the Aztecs like ‘la.’”

“How could anyone know what was being written with all those possible meanings?”

“The Aztecs knew, or at least those who could read and write did. And while the Aztec may have been the only civilization at that time with universal schooling for both sexes, the majority of the population was still illiterate. They didn’t need to read or write unless they worked for the government or the church.”

“So how do we know now what they were saying then?”

“Some of the codices reconstructed after the conquest have Spanish translations below them.” He frowned. “Of course many of those translations were merely what the Spanish wanted the texts to say.”

“Let me guess: Any bearded guy was labeled Jesus, even in a story about an ancient god of the sea.”

“Stop me if you’ve heard this before,” Teo murmured.

“I did a report on the Crusades,” Gina said. “Imposing their own interpretations on every ancient legend appeared to be SOP for all Christian conquerors. So my question remains—how do we know what the Aztecs were really saying?”

“We don’t. To make it even harder, Aztecs didn’t write in a linear fashion like we do.” He used his finger to draw a line across the page, left to right. “They drew a picture. Things that were farther away at the top, things that were closer at the bottom. All of them interacting in strange and mysterious ways. To translate, one has to pick through and interpret.”

“Kind of a ‘Where’s Waldo?’ for the sacrificial crowd?”

“Yes. Although I’ve never found Waldo in any of them.”

“Thank God,” Gina muttered. The idea of that bespectacled candy-cane shirt–wearing doofus peeking out from behind an Aztec pyramid was both amusing and a little creepy. “I don’t understand how, with all those options, you manage to figure out anything at all.”

“That’s why my mom had six possible places where the superwarrior could have been buried.”

“Did she also have six possible translations for what else a superwarrior might be?”

His eyes, darker in the dim light and shaded behind the lenses of his glasses, narrowed. “I don’t follow.”

“If the place of his burial could be one of many, maybe he could be one of many, too?”

“One of many what?”

“How should I know?”

“Here.” Teo scooted closer again, flipping pages until he found what he wanted. “These are the glyphs my mom interpreted for the superwarrior legend.” He pointed to an obvious soldier. “You see how this drawing is much bigger than the others?”

“Yeah.” It was, in fact, twice as big as the others. “Like I said, maybe they labeled him as super just because he was taller than everyone else. I read somewhere that the reason David was able to fell Goliath was because the giant wasn’t exactly gigantic, just larger than the average Philistine.”

“David was still a pretty good shot. The smaller the head of the giant, the better that shot becomes.”

“Good point,” Gina agreed. She studied him a moment. “You believe the stories in the Bible?”

“Yes,” he said, shocking her. As he was a scholar, some might even say a scientist, she’d expected him to say no. He was just one surprise after another.

“If I don’t believe those stories, how could I ever believe these?” Again he tapped the notebook.

“You said you didn’t believe the superwarrior was a sorcerer.”

“That doesn’t mean I don’t believe he existed at all.”

Gina’s gaze returned to the extremely large stick soldier. “So you think the super part of the superwarrior was his size?”

“Maybe. Or it could just relate to his personality, his essence, his spirit. In many of the codices, glyphs relating to royalty were also drawn larger than everything else. The Aztecs used size not only to mean size but also to indicate a largeness of intangible things. A largesse of being.”

Gina wasn’t exactly sure what largesse was, but she got the concept from the drawing.

“What about these?” She indicated a string of symbols beneath the great big warrior.

“We think it describes his attributes.” Teo moved his finger from icon to icon as he explained. “The wind, which also means strength. A lizard, which indicates endurance, the rabbit for speed, a dog for loyalty; the monkey symbolizes agility. No other warrior in any codex was ever described with this many superior traits.”

Gina studied the glyphs. In her opinion that dog looked far too vicious to symbolize loyalty. Perhaps he’d been viciously loyal.

“Maybe the super part of his warriorhood,” she pointed to the final image: a skull, which loomed larger than all the others, “was not just that he was a very big boy, but also that he was fabulous at killing people.”

“The skull does mean death,” Teo agreed. “But it can also indicate life force and vitality.”

“So he was either king of the killing,” Gina said, “or just larger than life.”

“Or both.”

“You said the pictures could actually mean what they represent.” He nodded. “What if the army just ran into a dog, then a rabbit, a lizard, and a lot of skulls on their trip?”

“How do you explain a monkey this far north of the border?”

“Maybe it was a pet. Were there monkeys somewhere in the Aztec empire?”

Teo nodded as he considered the row of glyphs. “If that’s the case, this could be nothing more than a travelogue.”

His eyes had lost some of their light.

“Would that be bad?” Gina murmured.

He didn’t answer for a long time, just continued to stare at the page until Gina touched his elbow. “Teo?

He came back to the here and now with a start. “Uh … well…” He pushed his glasses up again. “It’s an interesting concept. Perhaps the large soldier merely represented a large army. Nothing earthshaking there.”

“But you said this,” she pointed to the bumblebee knife, “indicates north. And this.” She tapped the big water. “The Rio Grande.”

He sighed, and his chin lowered toward his chest. “It could mean anything.” He slapped the book shut. “It could mean nothing.”

Gina felt like she’d kicked a kitten.

“Even if the so-called superwarrior didn’t exist,” she argued, “the translation still points to the Aztecs traveling north of the Rio Grande. Isn’t that important?”

“Not if there’s no way to prove it. Without that tomb, I’ll never be able to vindicate any part of my mother’s work or my own.”

“Well, what do I know?” Gina asked. “You and your mother have been translating this stuff for decades. I never saw it before today.”

Although, strangely, she felt like she understood it. That with a little practice she could read those writings and, even more strangely, that she wanted to. Perhaps Teo’s enthusiasm was catching.

“My mother did spend her life on those translations,” he agreed.

Gina suddenly saw what she’d done. He’d been doubting himself, doubting his mission, and she wanted him to doubt. She wanted him to give up and go away. Instead, she’d managed to turn him back to the idea that what he believed about this place was true.

What was wrong with her?

Teo’s head lifted. “There is the part about the tree of life springing from a land awash with the blood of the sun. And we both know that’s here.”

“There’s nothing underneath that tree,” she lied.

“Gina,” he murmured, voice both soft and rough. “If there was nothing there, you wouldn’t be trying so hard to keep me from it. Why don’t you just tell me what happened?”

Her eyes, though she tried to make them stop, flicked to his. He was closer than he should be, or maybe she was. Their knees knocked. Their faces hovered a foot apart. She didn’t want to tell him. She didn’t want to tell anyone, ever. Instead, she touched her lips to his.

He stilled, and for an instant she thought he might pull back, might stick to his promise of not touching. So she flicked out her tongue. Just a quick swipe along his slightly parted lips and he was as lost as she was.

He came to his knees; she came to hers, and they were touching thigh to thigh, hip to hip, chest to breast, mouth to seeking mouth.

His palms rested at the curve of her waist; his thumbs stroked the fluttering muscles of her stomach, chasing them across the taut skin, first above her shirt and then blessedly, thrillingly, below. His calluses scraped, and she caught her breath.

“Sorry,” he murmured, but as he began to withdraw, both hands and mouth, she nipped his lip, snatched his wrist, and he swept his hands upward, cupping her breasts along with her bra. Despite the chill of the night, they both wore far too many clothes.

Gina’s fingers went to his shirt even as his went to hers. But there were too many buttons, too many fingers, too many arms criscrossed every which way.

They broke apart, breathing heavily, mouths damp, eyes dark. Then, as one, they unbuttoned their own shirts.

“You first,” he said, his hanging open, revealing a far too small slice of chest and torso.

Gina shrugged free of the flannel. His gaze hung on her every move. Slowly, she undid her bra, letting the straps slide down her arms the same way the shirt had.

Though the tent was cool, his eyes had gone hot, seeming to warm her flesh wherever they touched.

“I can’t breathe,” he murmured. “You’re so beautiful.”

Right now she felt beautiful.

“Your turn.” She indicated his shirt with a lift of her chin.

The flannel fell away with one quick shrug, revealing gorgeous, gleaming skin. She wanted to touch him so badly; she licked her lips and reached out.

He grabbed her wrist, pulled her close, but being on her knees, she wasn’t very graceful, and she fell forward, crashing into him. They both tumbled to the bedroll, then lay there all tangled together, breathing hard. Gina began to giggle.

“Why is it every time I see your bare chest I fall?”

“I don’t know.” He touched her cheek. “But don’t ever stop.”

The light shone off his glasses like a beacon; she couldn’t see his eyes. Lifting her hands, she touched the frames. “Can you take these off?”

“Sure.” He set them atop his mother’s notebook. “You mind if I turn off the light? Everything’s fuzzy now.”

Gina reached over herself, the movement rubbing her breasts against his chest in new and enticing ways, then flicked the switch. Navy-blue night settled over them with an audible hush.

His hair brushed her cheek; she buried her face in his neck and took a taste. Something that had been slightly hard against her hip became definitely hard and she smiled into the velvet darkness. Reaching down, she slid her thumbnail up his length, and he choked.

“Sorry.” She pulled her hand away, but he caught her wrist and tugged it back.

“Don’t be.”

He let go of her wrist and slid his palm up her body, cupping first one breast, then the other, rolling each nipple until they hardened like him. When his mouth closed over one and his teeth worried it, she muttered a word she’d learned from the Hurlaheys and slid her hand inside his jeans.

He rose, palms at her back, lifting and holding her to his lips as he teased and taunted and took. Her jeans fell away, as did his. Though the tent surrounding them was dark, the night beyond it ever darker despite the distant rumble of thunder, nevertheless, Gina saw in her mind’s eye the contortions of their bodies, the slide of legs, of hands and fingers, of lips, and it excited her.

He urged her onto her stomach so he could run his mouth from her ankles to the soft curves at the backs of her knees, then up her thighs, across the swell of her buttocks, where she felt again his teeth, then to her spine. His fingernail ran gently upward, over each ridge, before his hands spread across her shoulders, down her ribs to her hips. Her skin on fire, she began to turn, but his voice stayed her.

“Ever since you crawled across this tent, I’ve had this image I can’t get out of my head.”

“Me, too.”

“I wonder if they match,” he said, and lifted her onto her hands and knees again.

Then he waited, touching her nowhere but his palms at her hips. She felt his heat, the pulsing weight of his erection so close but still so far. She wanted him inside of her.

“Yes,” she said, then, as he pushed fully within, “yes.”

Though this had begun as just sex, rooted in a need to forget, to avoid, perhaps even to break free, it changed. One instant she reveled in the sharp slap of flesh, the pulse and the push that ground so deep. The next he had curved himself over her, chest to back, fingers to breast, lips to neck, and her chest, her belly, her very being, stilled.

“Gina,” he whispered in a voice full of wonder, as if he’d seen a shooting star, a meteor, or maybe just her.

His other hand settled atop hers where it rested on the ground, and without thought she linked their fingers together.

The catch in his breath rushed along her skin, giving her goose bumps despite the seeming heat, then he throbbed, once, twice, again, and she was falling, rising, coming as she reached for a place where she no longer remembered anything but him.

*   *   *

He shouldn’t have touched her with so much strife between them. But one look into her endless eyes and Matt had been lost.

Or maybe he’d merely been found. Because making love to Gina had felt like coming home.

Ridiculous. He’d never had a home. How could he possibly know what coming back to it would feel like?

Gina stirred at his side, and he tightened his arms around her. He didn’t want her to move. Not now. Not ever.

He kissed her and again experienced that tug in his chest that made him want to hold on, to never let go. She’d told him that she’d rarely had a second date with a man; he’d rarely had a second date with a woman.

Because no first date had ever felt like this.

She licked the seam of his lips as she lifted her mouth. He could see nothing beyond the slightly darker outline of her head, but her breath brushed his cheek, her hair stroked his chest, and his body yearned all over again.

“I need to check the horses,” she said.

“I’ll do it.”

Her laughter flowed across his skin, and his penis leaped. He reached for her, but she was already rolling away, grabbing her jeans, her shirt. “I won’t be long.”

Matt lay back, hands beneath his head, and listened to her move about the tent. His mind wandered, as it often did, and he remembered what he’d asked right before she’d suddenly kissed him.

“What happened?” he repeated. “Beneath that tree. You can tell me.”

The rustling stopped. The tent flap opened. She stepped out; the scent of rain rushed in.

It took Matt several minutes to realize she wasn’t coming back.