‘Surely you are not thinking of drinking alcohol while you’re driving?’ Clare said in an outraged voice.
‘I’d prefer not to be thinking about it, Sister,’ Diego murmured as he lifted the bottle closer to his mouth and felt her fingers dig into his bicep. Her hand looked pale against his darkly tanned skin. He visualised her naked white body beneath him, her soft thighs spread in readiness for him to possess her. Tension coiled low in his gut and he shrugged her hand from his arm and put the bottle to his lips, his taste buds anticipating his first sip of beer. It was warm rather than ice-cold the way he liked it, but it was better than nothing.
Diego stiffened when Clare leaned across him and he inhaled a fresh lemony fragrance, which he recognised was soap. He supposed nuns did not wear perfume or make-up. Sister Clare’s smooth complexion was entirely natural. Her long eyelashes were dark auburn and he wondered if her hair, hidden beneath her veil, was the same colour.
The jangling sound of metal jerked Diego from his fantasies and he frowned when he saw that she had taken the keys out of the ignition.
‘Drunk driving is a despicable crime and potentially life-threatening to other road users,’ she stated.
He tried to control his impatience. ‘In normal circumstances I agree that driving after drinking alcohol is unacceptable, certainly in a town. But, in case you hadn’t noticed, we are the only people on the road. We haven’t seen another vehicle since we left Manaus, and we won’t see another one because no one else is crazy enough to want to go to Torrente.’
He held out his hand. ‘Give me the keys, Sister Clare, and let’s be on our way. We can’t afford any more delays if you want to reach Torrente by Sunday.’
She had to be there on Sunday to pay Becky’s ransom. Clare remembered the instructions from the kidnappers to wait in a cave close to a waterfall just outside the town. She felt torn, knowing the gold prospector was right and they could not afford to be delayed. But she fervently believed that driving while under the influence of alcohol was wrong.
‘My aunt was killed by a drunk driver,’ she burst out. ‘Aunt Edith was knocked off her bicycle one Christmas Eve. The driver of the car who was responsible for her death was found to be three times over the legal alcohol limit.’
Diego squinted through the mud-smeared windscreen at the torrential rain. ‘I’m sorry about your aunt, but we’re unlikely to come across a cyclist in the middle of the rainforest.’ He looked at Clare, noting the stubborn set of her chin but also the faint quiver of her lower lip. She had the most beautiful eyes, twin sapphires that at this moment shimmered with a sheen of tears. ‘Damn it.’ He exhaled heavily. ‘All right,’ he muttered as he wound down the window and poured the beer on to the ground.
‘Satisfied?’ He glared at Clare as she silently handed him the keys.
The word hovered in the hot, humid atmosphere inside the Jeep as sexual tension exploded between them. Clare’s gaze locked with the prospector’s grey eyes. Satisfied made her think wanton thoughts and imagine how it would feel to be satisfied by him. With his rugged good looks and to-die-for body, he was every woman’s fantasy and, without consciously being aware of moving, she swayed towards him, her eyes unknowingly issuing an invitation as she moistened her dry lips with the tip of her tongue.
Seemingly in slow motion, he lowered his head until his face was so near to hers that she felt the whisper of his breath on her cheek. Another few centimetres and his mouth would brush across her lips. She held her breath, willing him, wanting him to kiss her.
Suddenly Becky’s face flashed into her mind. Dear heaven, what was she doing? Clare silently questioned. Self-disgust swept through her as she realised she had not given her sister a thought while she had been panting over the gold prospector.
She jerked away from him and inched across her seat until she could go no further and was pressed up against the door. ‘Please, can we continue our journey, Mr Cazorra?’ she said in a low voice.
For a moment she thought he was going to refuse. When she peeped at him she was shocked by the feral hunger that tautened his features and gave him a wolf-like appearance that was further enhanced by the hungry gleam in his eyes. She was relieved when he inserted the key into the ignition and started the engine.
Diego forced himself to concentrate on steering the Jeep around the rain-filled potholes. It was impossible to tell how deep the holes were and he wanted to avoid becoming stuck in the mud again at all costs. The quicker they got to Torrente and he could deliver his beautiful, infuriating passenger, the better it would suit him.
He glanced at her sitting primly beside him, her body hidden by her nun’s habit and her hair covered by her veil so that only her lovely face was visible. Her serene expression irked him. She was apparently unaffected by the fact that they had been a heartbeat away from kissing, while he was aware of a dull ache in his groin that felt as if he’d been kicked by a mule.
‘You seem to have trouble remembering my name, Sister Clare,’ he drawled. ‘I’ll remind you again. It’s Diego. If you call me Mr Cazorra once more, I might be tempted to assist your memory.’
‘Assist, how?’ Clare was curious, despite her determination to keep her distance from him, something that was difficult to do physically while they were cooped up in the Jeep. She was intensely aware of him every time he moved his arm to change gear, and when he took off his hat and ran his hand through his hair, her fingers itched to brush back the dark blond strands that had fallen across his brow.
He took his eyes briefly from the road and sent her a smouldering glance that melted her insides. ‘I’ll have to kiss you until you have learned my name.’
HEAT SWEPT THROUGH Clare and she felt herself blush from the tips of her ears down to her toes as she visualised Diego carrying out his threat. This had to stop, she told herself firmly. She had come to Brazil for one reason only—to rescue Becky. She had no idea what kind of conditions her sister was being held in, but the severed piece of earlobe sent to her by the kidnappers made the situation very real and very dangerous. She could not allow herself to be distracted by the outrageously sexy man sitting beside her.
Unable to think of a suitable retort to what she assumed was his teasing remark, she turned her head to stare out of the window at the unending jungle. He would not really dare kiss her, she assured herself. But she remembered the Mother Superior’s warning about him being a womaniser and decided not to give him any opportunity to take liberties with her.
They had been driving for some while—Clare had been absorbed in her thoughts and had lost all track of time—when the rain stopped as suddenly as it had started. The heat of the sun close to the equator caused the wet leaves to evaporate steam into the air so that the forest looked like a giant smoking cauldron. Even the huge puddles were steaming on the road that stretched ahead as far as the eye could see, like a giant brown snake wending through the green forest.
‘When was your aunt killed?’ Diego asked suddenly, his voice breaking the tense silence that had filled the Jeep for miles.
‘Almost two years ago.’ Clare remembered the cold grey day before Christmas when her mother had phoned to break the news that Aunt Edith had died after being knocked off her bike by a car. The fact that the driver was drunk at the time of the accident had only been revealed later at the inquest, and Clare had felt anger as well as grief that her aunt’s life had been ended by a thoughtless, selfish act.
It was hard to imagine that when she had left England three days ago the weather had, typically for November, been freezing cold with the promise of sleet, while in Brazil the temperature on the dashboard was showing thirty-seven degrees centigrade and the humidity was so high that Clare’s clothes were sticking to her.
‘The car driver said that he skidded on a patch of ice, but the police breathalysed him and found he was over the alcohol limit and shouldn’t have