Ann leaned against him as he placed his arm around her shoulders and led her along. Grateful for his understanding, she managed to murmur, “I’ve never felt like this, Mike. Ever.”
Chuckling indulgently, he pressed a kiss to her hair. “I told you Peru would cast her spell on you. Down here, magic happens all the time.”
“Magic? Humph. More like a sledgehammer to my head, if you ask me.” Ann heard him laugh deeply over her remark. She felt his steadying care and she acquiesced to his superior strength.
“Well,” he drawled, giving her a teasing look, “maybe our kiss had a little something to do with that?”
Refusing to be baited, Ann tried to give him a dour look. “You don’t have to look like a satisfied cat about it, Houston.”
Preening a little, Mike broadened his grin into one of boyish delight. “That kiss has been a long time in coming. And there’s no way I’m apologizing for it. Ah, here we are.” He halted. “This is just what you need—espresso to settle your nerves.”
Ann laughed a little as they stood in front of the restaurant. “Oh, sure, coffee to soothe my jangled nerves. Right.” They stood looking at the small café with its red-and-green-striped awning.
“I always stop here, at Federico’s Place, to get my espresso when I’m coming in off a long flight.” Mike gestured to the brass-and-glass doors. “Come on. He’s got the best espresso in Lima. I swear it.”
Once they were seated at a small round table covered in expensive white linen and decorated with colorful flowers in a cut-glass vase, Ann smiled gratefully at the waiter. When he delivered their coffee a moment later, she cautiously sipped the tiny, fragile cup of espresso, and studied the man before her. Mike Houston was simply too large for the white wrought-iron chair, the table or even this small café. But it was there that he frequented because the owner, Federico, had recognized him instantly. There had been a lot of backslapping, smiles and greetings. And it seemed the two young waiters knew him, too. She was beginning to wonder who Houston didn’t know, but then, he’d been down here more than ten years, and in his line of business, it was good to know a lot of people.
“Well?” Mike demanded. “What do you think?” He’d already drunk half of his espresso, while Ann had only hesitantly tasted hers. He supposed she was like that with everything in her life: cautious and slow. Why? She had that shadowed look back in her eyes as she lifted the English china cup to her lips and looked at him over the rim.
“It’s sweet…and tastes surprisingly mild.” Ann set the cup down. “I thought it would taste bitter because it’s so concentrated.”
Chuckling, Mike finished off his first cup. A second magically showed up seconds later, Federico himself brought it over with a flourish. Mike nodded and thanked the restaurant owner. “What you poor folks up in Norteamérica get for coffee beans, is a sin,” he said to Ann with a laugh. “Sudamericanos aren’t stupid.” He raised the cup in toast to her. “We keep the best beans down here, and that’s what you’re drinking—Andean coffee raised on slopes so high that the condors fly over them daily. Coffee growing in some of the finest, richest lava soil in the world. It has to taste good.”
Ann couldn’t help but smile. “You are so passionate about everything. I’ve never met anyone like you before.” It was Mike’s passion that was somehow encouraging her to tap into her own desires on such a primal, wonderful level of herself as a woman.
His reckless grin broadened. “My mother often told me when I was a young kid growing up that if I didn’t love whatever I was doing, I’d eventually curl up and die. She told me to do things that made my heart sing, that made my heart soar like the condors that hang above the Andes.” He sobered a little and sighed. “She was a woman of immense intelligence, I realized as I got old enough and experienced enough to really understand what she was telling me.”
“To live life with passion,” Ann murmured. “That’s not one I’ve heard of late.”
“So,” Mike said, “do you live your life with passion? Do you love what you do as a medical doctor?”
“I like what I do. It feels good to be able to stop a person’s pain, to stop death from cheating a life…but passion? I don’t know about that.” She frowned and picked up her cup once again. “I certainly don’t live with the gusto you do.”
“A little while ago,” Mike murmured in a low intimate tone, as he turned the tiny cup around and around between his massive, scarred hands, “I saw a different Ann Parsons out there. Not the one I knew for eight weeks in Arizona. This woman, the one I kissed today, was—different. Provocative…passionate…committed…”
“Translated, that means what?”
“Just that I felt a much different woman,” Mike said in a whisper, so that no one could eavesdrop.
Avoiding his heated look, Ann tinkered nervously with the cup in her hands. “Mike…give me time. I—I’m just not prepared to say much right now.”
Holding up his palm in a gesture of peace, he added huskily, “You’re a woman of immense feelings. I understand. You’re like a deep, deep well of water. Not many are privy to the real feelings you hide so well.”
Ann couldn’t deny any of it. Stealing a glance at him, she whispered, “I don’t know what happened to me today, Mike. Maybe something changed in me when I saw Antonio almost die. I usually protect myself from personal feelings in these situations….” Her words trailed away as she became pensive. Mike deserved her honesty here. Setting the cup down, she forced herself to add, “I guess your passion for living life with emotion has rubbed off onto me a lot more than I realized. Watching your friend almost die probably shook that loose in me. It was time, I guess….”
Mike nodded, feeling the gravity of her statement. She was being honest on a level he’d never experienced with her before—due to that magical connection forged between them earlier, in that beautiful moment when he’d kissed her. He decided to return some of her honesty. “When I was trying to save Tony, I was afraid,” he admitted. “I was afraid he was dead. I wanted him to live so damn bad I could taste it. I could feel myself willing my heartbeat, my energy or whatever it was, into his body. And when I looked up at you in that moment, I felt hope. It spurred me on.” With a shrug, he added a little shamefacedly, “I can’t tell you what went on between us in that split second, I only know that something did. And somehow, it gave me hope when I didn’t really have any left.”
“All that in one look,” Ann murmured as she sipped the espresso. “I’m amazed, frankly.” Still, she felt good at Mike’s sincere praise, at the admiration in his eyes. She liked the feeling.
“You have a very healing effect on people, whether you know it or not,” Houston said sincerely.
“Something else happened back there, Mike,” Ann began hesitantly. “I think what I saw may have been a result of sleep deprivation.” She saw him frown. With a wave of her thin hand, she said, “Not that it was bad. It was just…shocking.”
“What happened?”
“Promise you won’t tell me I had a brief, acute psychotic episode?”
“No problem. You’re sane and well grounded.” Interested in hearing her experience, Houston asked, “This happened while we were bagging Tony?”
“Yes. At one point,” Ann continued, setting the espresso aside and folding her hands on the table, “something changed. You got far more intense than before. You’d hit him twice in the chest and he hadn’t started breathing again. I know you were desperate. You wanted your friend to live. That was normal behavior, but…” she folded her hands “…then something happened, and I can’t explain it or even begin to get a handle on it.”
“What?”