Carpathian 23 - Dark Storm

and an attitude of superiority that irked Riley. Even if she wasn’t
     already so much on edge, the presence of that awful man would have made her so. Worse,
     her mother was very fragile right now, making Riley extremely protective of her, and
     his constant sexual innuendos and filthy jokes around her mother made her want to
     just shove him overboard.
    Annabel Parker, a renowned horticulturalist famous for her efforts to reestablish
     thousands of acres of Brazilian rain forest lost to deforestation, looked at her daughter,
     dark brown eyes twinkling and mouth twitching, obviously itching to smile. “Unfortunately,
     honey, we’re in piranha territory.”
    “That’s the point, Mom.” Riley cast another pointed glare in Weston’s direction.
    The only benefit of the horrible man’s presence was that plotting his demise gave
     her something to focus on other than chills slowly spreading through her body and
     making the hair on the back of her neck stand up.
    She and her mother made this same trip up the Amazon once every five years, but this
     year from the moment they had arrived in the village to find their usual guide ill,
     Riley felt as if a dark cloud hung over the trip. Even now, a strange heaviness, an
     aura of danger, seemed to be following them up the river. She’d tried hard to shrug
     it off, but the ominous feeling remained, a weight pressing down on her, chills creeping
     down her spine and ugly suspicions keeping her awake at night.
    “Perhaps if I could accidentally cut his hand as he goes overboard . . .” she continued
     with a dark smile. Her students could have warned the man to beware when she smiled
     like that. It never boded well. The smile faded a little, though, as she glanced down
     at the murky water and saw the silver fish churning around the boat. Were her eyes
     playing tricks on her? It almost looked as if piranha were following the boat. But,
     piranha didn’t follow boats. They went about their business.
    She stole a glance at the guide who muttered to the two porters, Raul and Capa, ignoring
     their charges—a far cry from the familiar villager who usually took them upriver.
     The three looked very uneasy as they continually studied the water. They, too, seemed
     a little more alarmed than usual about being surrounded by a swarm of flesh-eating
     fish. She was being silly. She’d been on this same trip many times before without
     freaking out over the local wildlife. Her imagination was working overtime. Still . . .
     piranha seemed to be all around their boat, but she couldn’t see a single flash of
     silver in the waters surrounding the boat chugging ahead of them.
    “Ruthless child,” Annabel scolded with a small laugh, drawing Riley’s attention back
     to the aggravating presence of Don Weston.
    “It’s the way he looks at us,” Riley griped. The humidity was so high that every shirt
     Riley wore clung to her like a second skin. She had full curves, and there was no
     hiding them. She didn’t dare raise her hands to lift her thick, braided hair off the
     back of her neck or he would think she was deliberately enticing him. “I really, really ,want to smack that oaf. He stares at my breasts like he’s never seen a pair, which
     is bad enough, but when he stares at yours . . .”
    “Maybe he hasn’t ever seen breasts, dear,” Annabel said softly.
    Riley tried to smother a laugh. Her mother could ruin a perfectly good mad with her
     sense of humor. “Well if he hasn’t, it’s for good reason. He’s disgusting.”
    Behind them, Don Weston slapped his neck and hissed out a slow, angry breath. “Damn
     insects. Mack, where the hell is the bug spray?”
    Riley suppressed an eye roll. As far as she was concerned, Don Weston and the other
     two engineers with him were liars—well at least two of the three were. They claimed
     to know what they were doing in the forest, but it was clear neither Weston nor Mack
     Shelton, his constant companion, had a clue. She and her mother had both tried to
     tell Weston and his friends that their precious bug spray would do no good. The men
     were sweating profusely, which washed off the insect repellent as fast as they could
     apply it and left them feeling sticky and itchy. Scratching only aggravated the itching
     and invited infection. The smallest wound could quickly become infected in the rain
     forest.
    Shelton, a compact man with burnt mahogany skin and rippling muscles, swatted at his
     own neck and