Anna looked up from his sculpted abs, dying to know what the secret was and more than surprised that he would reveal what it was to her and nobody else.
“Meara asked me to watch over Hunter and Finn.”
Anna chuckled under her breath. “Sounds like Meara. The guys are glad to have you here. And little Elsie, too.”
“What about you?”
She didn’t know how he managed to fluster her so, but she felt her whole body flush with renewed heat. “Yeah, thanks for the help back there.”
“You’re welcome.” Bjornolf stretched his arms behind his back. She watched as his muscles moved. “Elsie and her little brother shouldn’t have been put through this hell.”
Anna glanced at the room, wondering if the parents were asleep.
“There’s only been one time that I remember being that small and frightened,” he said, his voice more hushed this time.
She took a gander at all of him again. She couldn’t imagine him ever having been…small. Or frightened.
“My friend and I were in the woods when we were twelve. I don’t know how we ever survived all the near-death experiences we had before then. Right before Christmas, we were hiking up a mountain, and we startled a momma black bear that only thought to protect her two young cubs.” He looked away and took a deep breath. “Gregory was mauled to death, and I couldn’t do a thing for him.”
Anna swallowed hard. She could see the grief he still felt for his friend, the feeling of helplessness, of being at fault.
“I ran away before she took notice of me. I didn’t leave the area, though. I went back as soon as the mother and her cubs moved off. I was the same size as Gregory, and I was sure that mother bear would come back at any moment. I had to carry Gregory’s body home to his parents. They were grief-stricken; it was awful. And I got hell from my own parents who were furious with me for hiking without adult members of the pack to keep us safe.”
Anna closed her gaping mouth. Even when he was young and terrified of facing his own mortality, he’d been honorable.
“Even today, the sound of a bear roaring in the wilderness gives me flashbacks about that horrific incident. After that, I resolved to be as tough as I could. Take no prisoners. Kill before being killed. Law of the jungle. I never wanted to have to rely on anyone else to get me anywhere safely.” He took a deep breath and exhaled it. “I had convinced my friend to join me on the hike. I was responsible.”
“You were just a kid, Bjornolf,” she said. “We all make mistakes. But the bear killed your friend. It could have been you.”
“Yeah.” He sounded like he still felt he was at fault. “These kids are with their parents. In this case, the mother and father are responsible for putting the children in harm’s way. Who the hell does that to their kids?”
Anna nodded, unsure what to say. Sometimes lending a sympathetic ear was enough.
Yet, she wanted to hug the young boy in Bjornolf who had suffered such a traumatic experience. And immediately thought how dangerous that would be.
She slipped out of her shirt and spread it next to her boots. He stood and unbuckled his belt while she watched. She couldn’t have taken her eyes off him at that moment for anything.
He unbuttoned his pants. She rose to her feet and unbuckled her belt, unfastened her pants, and slid them down her legs. The pants were caked with mud, stiff from the knees down, and it felt good to get out of them. If she had the time, she’d wash them in the morning.
Wearing only a pair of black boxers, Bjornolf lay down on her spread-out sleeping bag, his arms behind his head, his eyes on hers. He looked sexy, his tan muscled legs spread out, his chest lightly dusted in dark hair, his pecs remarkably toned as if he got a regular workout.
Which made her think of women and Bjornolf getting a really good workout that way.
Anna definitely didn’t want to ponder that further.
She climbed onto the hammock, wearing a clingy olive-green tank top over her bra that showed a little skin between the top and her low-cut matching bikini panties. As Bjornolf’s gaze lingered on the skimpiness of her undergarments, a heated blush crept up her chest and neck and stretched down her torso.
Sure, the other guys looked when she stripped partway to climb into her sleeping bag—they were hot-blooded men of the wolf variety, after all—but she didn’t think they appeared quite as predatory as Bjornolf did when he swallowed her up with his gaze. She’d noticed that the other men looked her way but then looked away again.
The hammock swung back and forth for a moment before it settled down. She sniffed at the canvas and smelled a feline scent. Jaguar?
“They kind of grow on you, don’t they? The team, I mean,” she asked softly so as not to wake the sleeping family.
“Kinda,” Bjornolf admitted.
For a man who was as tough as a tortoise shell and as reclusive as a jaguar, he had to have had a hard time admitting that, but he seemed to trust her at least that much.
“They’re growing on me, too,” she said.
They were silent for a long time, then he said, “That bruiser who buried you weighed a ton.”
She smiled. “Yeah, but when you took the other one out and he landed on top of me, I felt like I was buried beneath tons of rubble.”
“Sorry. He was supposed to drop the other way.”
She chuckled, then stretched out on the hammock again and closed her eyes. She was getting sleepy.
She heard a howl from the jungle and an answering howl back. Paul and Allan. They must have shifted into wolves to provide security while on guard duty.
An hour later, she heard whispered words between William and his brother, Jeff, inside the hut. Her ears perked up and she listened hard.
“It wasn’t supposed to go down this way,” Jeff whispered.
“Someone got their noses into the business instead of leaving well enough alone,” Wentworth said.
“Now what happens?” Jeff asked, his voice hushed but angry.
“I don’t know. Hell, it’s not my fault that these people killed our kidnappers.”
Chapter 3
Anna’s back stiffened. Why would the SEAL team be at fault for killing the kidnappers in an effort to free the family?
Her thoughts shifted in another direction, more sinister in nature. What if saving them hadn’t been part of the agenda? What if Wentworth and his brother had arranged the whole thing?
She leaned over the hammock to peer at Bjornolf. In the sweltering night, he looked hot and sexy resting on his back as he spread out on her sleeping bag. His eyes were closed, but the way he was breathing, she could tell that he was wide awake.
Good. She liked having verification when she believed some skullduggery was in progress.
“We’ll have to come up with another plan,” Wentworth whispered to his brother.
“You’ll still have to pay the guys,” Jeff said.
“Cost of doing business.”
“What about that other situation?” Jeff asked.
“I left a trail straight to his door. He’ll take care of it if he wants to survive.”
“Except we won’t be there to help him this time,” Jeff said, his voice still hushed.
“Perfect for us.”
When they didn’t say anything further, Anna assumed they must have fallen asleep. She soon followed them, drifting off to nothingness.
Bjornolf knew he had to speak privately to Hunter about what the brothers had revealed. Once they were all on the trail again, it would be harder to get the word to Hunter without the family overhearing. Bjornolf threw on a fresh set of clothes and left the hut.
Finding Hunter stretched out on a hammock nearby, Bjornolf explained what he overheard. “All I know is that you had to rescue this family, and from the research I did, I learned that William Wentworth is a multimillionaire with more than a dozen businesses. Some have to do with pharmaceuticals and trying to discover new medicines from plants in the Amazon. He also has other more diversified businesses, including computer technology. What I don’t understand is why they were here in the first place. Dragging two little kids and a wife on a trip to the jungle this close to Christmas?”
“According to family friends, they came here on a special tour—to get a look at the jungle that has made so much money for them. What we were told was that the adventure went bad when their tour guides were murdered and the family was taken hostage. Their lawyer received a ransom message and he was concerned that if he paid the money to the kidnappers, they’d take the payment and kill Wentworth and his family. The lawyer relayed the information to my source, who got in touch with us, knowing we could handle the mission.
“We all believed he brought the family here to prove he wasn’t just a desk jockey. That he could handle the Amazon jungle as well as he did a corporate jungle, but then he found himself way out of his element here. What you overheard blows that theory all to hell. What I’m not clear on is how you came to be here.” Hunter waited for Bjornolf to respond.
“Truth is, it needs to remain a highly kept secret,” Bjornolf said seriously, though he was having the damnedest time keeping a straight face.
Hunter shook his head. “Meara sent you.”
Bjornolf smiled a little. “Yeah, she emphasized that both you and Finn were needed home for Christmas. Good thing I don’t have a sister. Or a mate.”
“Speaking of that…”
Bjornolf wondered where this little talk was going.
“Listen, Bjornolf, I know you don’t do team projects any longer. I know about your team being killed on a mission and you being the lone survivor. I know what that kind of thing can do to a guy, so don’t think I’m unsympathetic. But I could really use your help for a job. Right after we arrived in Bogota, I got a call from Tessa. She said Nathan—you remember the teen you brought home after he’d run away?” Hunter asked.
“Yeah, sure. Good kid. Troubled.”
“Yeah, well he’s working at a Christmas tree farm and smelled a couple of dead wolf bodies. Tessa has our police officers looking into it, but they haven’t found any bodies, and we have more of a problem than that.”
