Lord of the Forest Read online

  LORD OF THE FOREST

  Rachel Ford

  Cal needed a cure for a broken hear

  So she volunteered for an arduous stint of fieldwork in the Central American rain forests, hoping it would do the trick.

  But she hadn't reckoned with Luis Revill the aloof, austere landowner whose territory surrounded the reserve she w, to work on. On a scale of ten, he'd score eleven for arrogant disregard of every other living being.

  Cal couldn't help wondering why he was so opposed to everything she and her fellow conservationists stood for. And why he had taken such a particular dislike to her ....

  PROLOGUE

  'SENOR! Un momento, senor.'

  The man was loading wooden packing-cases into the back of a Land Rover. He ignored the insistent call until— 'Por favor, senor." The speaker, a stout, khaki-clad airport official—well, virtually the only official at the small inland airstrip—was at his shoulder now like a buzzing gadfly, and with a barely concealed grimace of irritation the man set down the box he was holding and slowly turned.

  'What is it?' His Spanish, unlike the other's softer, more feminine Latin-American pronunciation, had the hard classical Catalan accent. 'You are returning to Chicambo, senor?' He picked up the final case and dumped it in the vehicle. 'Yes.' His tone was not encouraging, but the other persevered.

  There is a young man—a boy,' he amended. 'English.' He gestured towards the small duplex hut, sweltering almost visibly under a rusting red corrugated-iron roof, which served as departure and arrival lounge. 'He wishes to go to the village.'

  'So?' The man was turning away, already reaching into his jeans pocket for his keys.

  'But, senor, he was expecting to be met and no one has come for him. Perhaps you would—?'

  'No.' The man did not raise his voice, but the tone was a cold rebuff. 'I do not give rides to hippies, back-packers.'

  'This one is—different senor. He is too young to be alone here—still a puppy, wet behind the ears.' He shrugged, as if in apology for his tender-heartedness, and the other looked down at him thoughtfully.

  'You know, I do believe, Basilio, that you are becoming sentimental in your old age.'

  'Perhaps. But if you would only see him—' Then, as the man inserted the key into the lock, Basilio added, a shade desperately, 'It is fortunate that Lieutenant Ramirez is not here this afternoon. You know how he is with boys, and this one...'

  He spread his hands in a graphic gesture, and, at the thought of Ramirez's pudgy face, a mask of gross, thick-lipped sensuality, the man's own lips twisted in distaste. He straightened up and gestured impatiently to Basilio to lead the way.

  The air in the small room was dank and fetid, a swarm of flies droning dispiritedly in endless spirals around the ceiling. The sole occupant was sitting on the only bench. He was clad in baggy, camouflage-type drill trousers and combat jacket, a khaki drill hat jammed down over his fair hair, and his hands were thrust deep in his pockets, his long legs sprawled in front of him as he disconsolately surveyed the scuffed toes of his trainers.

  For a moment, the man gazed down at him unseen. Basilio was right, damn him. Whether it was the fragile-looking wrists, the soft line of the chin—which was all that was visible of the face—the boy had a certain quality, a vulnerability, and just for a fleeting second a wholly unexpected feeling of compassion stirred within the man's frozen heart –

  Then his companion was bending over the boy. 'Senor.' And, startled, the lad was looking up, first at the speaker, but then past Basilio's broad shoulder, huge, dark-lashed gold-topaz eyes widening as they locked with his own ...

  CHAPTER ONE

  A TRICKLE of sweat ran down between Cal's shoulder-blades and she shifted her position slightly on the hard bench, staring down at an enormous red ant that, having navigated her rucksack, was now advancing purposefully on her white trainers.

  What am I doing here? she asked herself despairingly. What am I doing here? Help, somebody, please help. I feel awful. The flight down from Santa Clara in that horrible matchwood plane ... that electric storm ... I swear I saw lightning bounce off the wing beside me ... and that landing-strip—like a switchback, ugh! And my arm. I wondered why the doctor asked me if I was right- or left-handed just before she shot the first jab in. Now, I shall never be able to use it again ...

  And where's Pete Sanderson got to? He's supposed to be meeting me, isn't he, to drive me out to Chicambo? I thought Americans were supposed to be well organised, certainly well enough organised to be able to meet their latest recruit, who's come all this way to do her bit for the rain forests of San Cristobal. Oh, damn all tropical rain forests—and damn Phil! If it wasn't for him...

  'Senor.'

  I'm going to be sick. I know I am.

  'Senor!'

  Cal looked up reluctantly. Silhouetted against the brilliant sunlight in the doorway, a plump man in khaki trousers and sweat-stained shirt was bending towards her. Senor! He must think she was a man. She opened her mouth, but then closed it again. No need to put him right—in fact, maybe it was all to the good.

  Just for once in her life, she was actually grateful for her tall, slender build, and the kind of looks that her friends called gamine and her non-friends tomboy; for the thick, short-cropped tawny-blonde hair and shaggy fringe; for the heart-shaped face, with the liberal sprinkle of freckles and the open, engaging grin, which showed a mouthful of strong white teeth.

  Behind him, she saw now, was another, much taller man. He was staring down at her over the plump man's shoulder, frowning with the effort to focus on her after the dazzle outside. His own face was in deep shadow, so that she could make out nothing apart from the lean outline and the one lock of jet-black hair across his brow.

  She sensed rather than saw the penetrating pair of eyes which were subjecting her to a cold, dispassionate scrutiny. The man had not spoken, had made no move towards her, his hands were thrust into his jeans pockets in an almost negligent gesture, and yet there was something about him, a potency—wholly unconscious, she was sure—which emanated from him even while he did not move a muscle.

  She tore her eyes away and looked back at his companion.

  'Si?' She deepened her already husky voice a few notches, trying to inject a masculine timbre which she hoped would mask the slight tremor.

  'Senor, you wish to get to Chicambo.' Through her misery, she felt a slight lift. She could follow his guttural tones—so her one year of subsidiary Spanish had not been wasted, after all. 'This gentleman is going there, so—'

  A telephone shrilled from the other side of the flimsy partition wall. He stopped short, and, waving a hand in apology, disappeared. A few seconds later the strident ringing stopped and they heard his voice raised in animated conversation.

  Cal realised that she was fiddling with one of the buttons on her camouflage jacket. She moistened her dry lips and gave the other man a wary smile as she racked her tired brain for something—anything—to say. But the stranger abruptly broke the silence for her. 'If you're quite ready—' In spite of the overt hostility in his tone, a gush of relief flowed through her. Not Spanish, not even English with a Spanish accent, but pure American. Of course! What a fool she was. He must be Pete Sanderson—late, not the slightest word of apology, but at least he'd got here now.

  She scrambled to her feet, almost tumbling over her rucksack and travel bag. Thank goodness you're here.' She grinned at him and gave a gusty sigh of relief. 'I was beginning to think I was going to have to walk all the way.' Then, when he still made no move towards her, only stared down at her in that narrow-eyed scrutiny, 'I'm Cal Ward,' she said and put out her hand, but he ignored it.

  Well, she thought welcome to San Cristobal, Cal. So glad you could make it. I hope the trip was
OK. Oh, thank you, Pete, yes, it wasn't too bad, and I've been really looking forward to working with you. What was wrong with him, for heaven's sake? Americans were an open-hearted, matey bunch, weren't they? But she must be charitable. According to his doctorate thesis, which she'd skim-read on the dog-leg London-Miami-Santa Clara flight he'd been out here for over three years, so perhaps after all that time surrounded by steaming rain forests the sweetest disposition was liable to turn sour. All the same, though, she was doing him a favour, wasn't she, coming out here, so he might at least make some—

  'If you're quite ready,' he repeated impatiently, so that her hackles rose even more.

  Still, she managed to keep her tone cool as she replied, 'Yes, certainly.'

  He nodded brusquely and turned towards the door. She realised that, half unconsciously, she had been waiting for him to pick up—or at least offer to carry—her rucksack and bag. But clearly chivalry was way down on this man's list of priorities. Perhaps that was it She knew that all his previous fieldworker assistants had been men; maybe he resented being saddled, as he saw it with a woman, and was determined to show her right from the start that she could expect no favours. Well, she'd just have to show him, right from the start, that she was at least as good as any two men.

  She jutted her jaw pugnaciously, bent down to take a firm grip on her luggage, and hurried after him.

  But then the nausea which had been lurking in the undergrowth for hours suddenly took control, so that she dropped her bags and clapped her hand wildly to her mouth. He turned in the doorway.

  'What's the matter now?'

  Through her fingers she mumbled, 'I f-feel sick.'

  'Oh, for—'

  He placed a hard hand on her arm and rapidly propelled her towards a rickety door in the corner of the room. She stumbled in, dragging the door to behind her, and proceeded to throw up everything, right down to the bacon sandwiches and coffee she had unwisely had for an early breakfast at Heathrow.

  When eventually she emerged, pale and slightly unsteady at the knees, there was no sign of him. She could have been dying in there, for all that unfeeling swine cared. Her luggage had disappeared though, and when she went in search of it she found that her reluctant host had dumped it in the back of an old Land Rover. Now he was leaning up against the vehicle, his arms folded, and from under the brim of an old straw hat he was scowling across the sizzling tarmac in her direction. Cal could feel that scowl at twenty paces, as though it were a hail of barely invisible bullets.

  Oh, God, what was she going to do? How was she ever going to be able to work with him? She couldn't, she just couldn't She was tired, dispirited, empty, sticky all over, and now, at the sight of him, she had to resist the almost overpowering urge to plump, down on to the dusty ground, right where she was standing, and burst into a torrent of self-pitying tears. But if she did that he would almost certainly lose all patience with her, hurl her luggage back on to the tarmac and drive off without her.

  She braced her jelly-like knees and, tilting her head at a defiant angle, walked across to him. As she approached he straightened up and, without a word, threw open the passenger door. Not looking at him, she climbed in.

  'I beg your pardon?' His tone was polite uninterest.

  'I said, yes, thank you, I feel much better.'

  She congratulated herself on—almost—keeping the snap out of her voice. The next three months were clearly going to be a trying enough time for both of them without their coming to blows before they'd even left the airport She settled back into the seat and he got in beside her, reaching across to pull her door to. His arm brushed against her thigh so that under the crumpled cotton of her trousers she felt the tiny hairs stir and stand erect. Surreptitiously, she edged away, her leg still uncomfortably prickling from the casual touch of his fingers, and pressed herself against the door.

  The man at the gate gave what was . surely an exaggeratedly obsequious salute for a dirty old Land Rover, then threw open the barrier with an expansive gesture and they swung out on to a wide, unmetalled road which led through the outskirts of the town.

  It was, presumably, one of the poorer areas, and as they threaded their way through the bicycles and mule carts, the beat-up Cadillacs and garishly painted trucks and buses, all of them driven kamikaze-style by drivers as apparently intent on their own destruction as on that of anyone who happened to stray into their path, Cal caught glimpses of narrow alleys leading between single-storeyed, one-roomed shacks. But despite the squalor, and her companion's continuing morose silence, she all at once became tinglingly aware of the excitement mounting within her. She was here, she really was here! In less than a day, she was half a world away from the drabness of London, away from the grey misery that had engulfed her ever since the dreadful humiliation of just eight days ago.

  Unable to keep away any longer, she'd returned a day early from the anti-nuclear-power-station demo and gone to her fiancé Phil's flat, only to discover him in bed with a woman they'd met casually at a party a few nights before. She'd crept away unnoticed, like a stricken animal...

  And yet, was she really in San Cristobal? On either side of the street huge hoardings clamoured the delights of Coke, Pepsi, Seven-Up and Kentucky Frieds.

  'I suppose if you're ever feeling homesick you just take a drive along here,' she said brightly.

  'What?' He glanced briefly at her.

  'You know—all these.'

  She gestured towards the billboards and smiled invitingly, but he merely raised one quizzical eyebrow and relapsed into his taciturn silence.

  OK, you be like that, she thought angrily. I know it was a pretty feeble effort, but can't you even share a joke?

  They were soon clear of the town and the road led as straight as any Roman highway through the flat landscape, fields of what she presumed was sugar-cane flowing away from them on either side. There was far less traffic now, although every so often they had to swing out to avoid wandering groups of scrawny-looking cattle and goats. One animal had clearly not been so lucky, for ahead of them Cal saw a gaggle of scavenging turkey vultures. As they sped past the birds rose reluctantly in a black, flapping cloud to reveal the bloody, half-dismembered corpse.

  Her stomach began to heave again and she looked hastily away, only to glimpse what she was certain was a flicker of sardonic amusement cross her companion's lips. Her mouth tightened, but even as she went to turn away she found her unwilling gaze held as though by some magnetic force. For the first time she really looked at him, and she felt her jaw sag with disbelief. How astonishingly handsome he was—never, in all her life, had she seen such a face.

  She studied him surreptitiously at first from under the brim of her drill hat, then, as all his attention remained seemingly on the road ahead, with increasing boldness.

  His face was square cut, the firm lines of his deeply tanned features emphasised by the black hair, which was slightly curling into the neck . .. the nose well-shaped, aquiline, though in profile almost hawklike . . . thin but sensual mouth . . . thick, sooty eyelashes beneath fine, dark brows ... A thoroughly handsome—no, handsome was a wholly inadequate word for such a—beautiful face.

  And yet ... Despite the burning heat, she shivered slightly. Somehow, she sensed that this beauty was of a wholly aloof, forbidding kind. There was a hard, intimidating quality to that face—as though, she thought suddenly, he'd brought down an invisible shutter between himself and the rest of the world, or, at any rate, between himself and her.

  And, on second thoughts, maybe that was just as well. In her desperate need to get away from London, from her office—and most of all from Phil's vicious phone calls when, after a sleepless night, she'd sent back his ring—she'd impetuously applied for the job advertised in the supporters' newsletter which she herself edited in her role as Information Officer for the conservation pressure group Planet Earth Tomorrow. 'Wanted! ! ! Fieldworker to join Dr Pete Sanderson and his small team in Chicambo, San Cristobal, undertaking ecological survey of Central Ame
rican rain forest Three months' contract Low pay, long, exhausting hours, but a chance in a million to do something really worthwhile for this endangered environment'

  But in the few frantic days following her abrupt decision she had by no means sorted out her emotional turmoil, and an invisible shutter between herself and any man was welcome.

  They must have been driving for well over an hour, and Cal was just beginning to ask herself how much longer their silent ride would last when her companion lifted one casual finger from the steering-wheel.

  'Chicambo's up there.'

  She leaned forward eagerly in her seat and strained her eyes into the. heat haze. Far ahead of them she could just make out a line of low hills, tinged with a greenish smudge. That must be the beginnings of the rain forest—somewhere in there was to be her home for the next three months.

  They had left the lowland plain now and were climbing steadily. Instead of the cane plantations, the road was bordered by scrub which at intervals had been cleared around small clusters of wooden, thatch-roofed huts. As they raced past, Cal glimpsed groups of women bending low over rows of long-leaved shrubby plants ... a man slicing a huge hank of green bananas from a palm-fronded tree ... two young black-haired children—a boy and a girl, neither of them more than four years old—holding out to them something grey and lizard-like and wriggling, hanging helplessly upside down from string tied round its tail.

  'What's that?

  'Iguana. They were hoping you'd buy it.'

  'Buy it? What to keep?'

  He laughed scornfully. 'No, to eat of course. They're quite delicious, roasted.'

  Aghast she stared at him, her eyes open wide.

  'You mean to say you've actually eaten them?'

  'On occasion, yes.'

  'But that's terrible.' Her voice was shaking.

  'Really?' he replied coldly. 'Any worse than you indulging in such European delicacies as frogs' legs?'