The Fall of Maggie Brown by Anne Stuart Page B

there was any reason he should feel responsible. She had chosen to come to San Pablo. She’d walked right into the lion’s den with a singular disregard of the current political situation, and it would serve her right if she met with disaster.
    He had too damned much conscience, that was his problem. He couldn’t abandon a woman in those circumstances, not any woman. It didn’t matter whether she was an American or not, or Stella’s sister. It didn’t matter that she brought out a crazy, protective, irritated streak in him that most people never came close to. He’d do the same for anyone.
    So now that they were up here, less than a mile from the hidden valley where The Professor and his followers had set up headquarters, how the hell was he going to ditch her long enough to get a warning to them?
    He could get her drunk, though she didn’t seem terribly interested. He could try to sneak out while she was asleep, and if he didn’t get back before she woke up he’d give her some embarrassing biological excuse that she couldn’t very well question.
    Or he could simplify matters, tie and gag her and simply go. It would keep her safe and out of the way, and while she’d be mad as hell when he came back, this whole wild-goose chase would be close to being finished. The elections would be over. Morales would be the newly elected democratic president, the
Generalissimo
would have no choice but to get the hell out of the country, and there’d no longer be any need to keep Maggie from finding out just what happened to her sister, Stella.
    The one thing he wasn’t going to do was sleep with her.
    It was tempting, of course. He’d lain on the mattress last night, listening to the soft sound of her breathing, and it had taken all his considerable willpower to keep still. He could still taste her mouth, feel the heat of her skin. She was sitting there, looking half-dead, his clothes enveloping her, and if he had any excuse in the world he’d take her, here and now, and make her forget about her responsibilities and her sister and her bank and her life in Philadelphia.
    How in the hell could he want someone who chose to live in Philadelphia? He was a wanderer, a free spirit, a man who’d made a new home and a new life in San Pablo, and she was a dutiful Quaker, by nature if not by religion. He belonged with someone like Stella, someone wild and free, not with an uptight little mouse of a woman who looked at him as if he were a pirate. A swashbuckler, she called him. And she was a far cry from a pirate’s wench.
    But he did want her. It was that simple, that basic, and it was taking all his self-control to keep from doing anything about it.
    She’d finished eating, setting the metal bowl down on the dirt floor beneath her. As she moved, the unbuttoned shirt exposed a creamy expanse of breast, and he wanted to groan. He was only making things harder on himself.
    She yawned, a huge, extravagant yawn that was annoyingly appealing. “I’m tired,” she said.
    “Yup. Hard work, kicking a Jeep over a cliff and being carried up a mountainside,” he drawled, looking for trouble.
    But she was too weary to deliver. “I’ll replace the Jeep, of course. When we get back to Las Palmas I’ll get you the money…”
    “Don’t worry about it. It wasn’t my Jeep.”
    That was enough to startle her. “Whose was it?”
    “No one you’ve met,” he said, thinking of The Professor’s reaction when he found out the Jeep was gone.
No one I want you to meet if I can help it.
    “How are we going to get back to Las Palmas?”
    “Aren’t you worried about finding your sister?”
    “Can we find her?” Maggie asked. “I’m beginning to think it’s a lost cause.”
    “I could have told you that days ago,” he drawled. “She’s a grown-up, you’re a grown-up. Time to go your separate ways.”
    “But she’s feckless, wild and crazy…”
    “And you’re responsible, sane and boring,” he said.
    She looked affronted. Her