Untamed

Rourke turned around. “Why?” he asked in a hunted tone. “Why did you do it?”

K.C. was momentarily taken aback. “Why did I do what, exactly?”

“Why did you sleep with Tat’s mother?” he raged.

K.C.’s eyes flashed like brown lightning. K.C. knocked him clean over the sofa and was coming around it to add another punch to the one he’d already given him when Rourke got to his feet and backed away. The man was downright damned scary in a temper. Rourke had rarely seen him mad. There was no trace of the financial giant in the man stalking him now. This was the face of the mercenary he’d been, the cold-eyed man who’d wrested a fortune from small wars and risk.

“Okay!” Rourke said, holding up a hand. “Talk. Don’t hit!”

“What the hell is wrong with you?” K.C. demanded icily. “Tat’s mother was a little saint! Maria Carrington never put a foot wrong in her whole life. She loved her husband. Even drunk as a sailor, she’d never have let me touch her!”

Rourke’s eyes were so wide with shock and pain that K.C. stopped in his tracks.

“Let’s have it,” he said. “What’s going on?”

Rourke could barely manage words. “She told me.”

“She who? Told you what?”

Rourke had to sit down. He picked up the glass of whiskey and downed half of it. This was a nightmare. He was never going to wake up.

“Rourke?”

Rourke took another sip. “Tat was seventeen. I’d gone to Manaus on a job.” Rourke’s deep voice was husky with feeling. “It was Christmas. I stopped by to see them, against my better judgment. Tat was wearing a green silk dress, a slinky thing that showed off that perfect body. She was so beautiful that I couldn’t take my eyes off her. Her parents left the room.” His eyes closed. “I picked her up and carried her to the sofa. She didn’t protest. She just looked at me with those eyes, full of... I don’t even know what. I touched her and she moaned and lifted up to me.” He drew in a shaky breath. “We were so involved that I only just heard her mother coming in time to spare us some real embarrassment. But her mother knew what was going on.”

“That would have upset her,” K.C. said. “She was deeply religious. Having you play around with her teenage daughter wasn’t going to endear you to her, especially with the reputation you had in those days for discarding women right and left.”

“I know.” Rourke looked down at the floor. “That one taste of Tat was like finding myself in paradise. I wanted her. Not for just a night. I couldn’t think straight, but my mind was running toward a future, not relief.”

He hesitated. “But her mother didn’t realize that. I can’t really blame her. She knew I was a rake. She probably thought I’d seduce Tat and leave her in tears.”

“That could have happened,” K.C. said.

“Not a chance.” Rourke’s one eye pinned him. “A girl like that, beautiful and kind...” He turned away. He drew in a long breath. “Her mother took me to one side, later. She was crying. She said that she’d seen you one night at your house, upset and sick at heart because a woman you loved was becoming a nun. She said she had a drink with you, and another drink, and then, something happened. She said Tat was the result.”

“She actually told you that Tat was your half sister? Damn the woman!”

Rourke felt the same way, but he was too drained to say it. He stared at his drink. “She told me that. So I turned against Tat, taunted her, pushed her away. I made her into something little better than a prostitute by being cruel to her. And now I learn, eight years too late, that it was all for a lie. That I was protecting her from something that wasn’t even real.”

He fought tears. They played hell with the wounded eye, because it still had some tear ducts. He turned away from the older man, embarrassed.

K.C. bit his lip. He put a rough hand on Rourke’s shoulder and patted it. “I’m sorry.”

Rourke swallowed. He tipped the last of the whiskey into his mouth. “Ya,” he said in a choked tone. “I’m sorry, too. Because there’s no way in hell I can tell her I believed that about her mother. Or that I can undo eight years of torment that I gave her.”

“You’ve had a shock,” K.C. said. “And you really are jet-lagged. It would be a good idea if you just let things lie for a few days.”

“You think?”

“Rourke,” he said hesitantly. “The story she told you was true,” he began.

“What! You just said it wasn’t...!”

K.C. pushed him back down on the sofa. “It was true, but it wasn’t Tat’s mother.” He turned away. “It was your mother.”

There was a terrible stillness in the room.

K.C. moved to the window and stared out at the African darkness with his hands in his pockets.

“I got drunk because Mary Luke Bernadette chose a veil instead of me. I loved her, deathlessly. It’s why I never married. She’s still alive and, God help me, I still love her. She lives near my godchild, her late sister’s only living child. I told you about Kasie, she married into the Callister family in Montana. Mary Luke lives in Billings.”

“I remember,” Rourke said quietly.

He closed his eyes. “Your mother saw what I was doing to myself. She tried to comfort me. She had a few drinks with me and things...happened. She was ashamed, I was ashamed...her husband was the best friend I ever had. How could we tell him what we’d done? So we kept our secret, tormented ourselves with what happened in a minute of insanity. Nine months later, to the day, you were born.”

“You said...you weren’t sure,” Rourke bit off.

“I wasn’t. I’m not. I don’t have the guts to have the test done.” He turned, a tiger, bristling. “Go ahead. Laugh!”

Rourke got up, a little shakily. It had been a shocking night. “Why don’t you have the guts?” he asked.

“Because I want it to be true,” he said through his teeth. He looked at Rourke with pain in his light eyes, terrible pain. “I betrayed my best friend, seduced your mother. I deserve every damned terrible thing that ever happens to me. But more than anything in the world, I want to be your father.”

Rourke felt the wetness in his eyes, but this time he didn’t hide it.

K.C. jerked him into his arms and hugged him, and hugged him. His eyes were wet, too. Rourke clung to him. All the long years, all the companionship, the shared moments. He’d wanted it, too. There wasn’t a man alive who compared to the one holding him. He respected him. But, more, he loved him.

K.C. pulled back abruptly and turned away, shaking his head to get rid of the moisture in his eyes. He shoved his hands back into his slacks.

“Don’t we have a doctor on staff?” Rourke asked after a minute.

“Ya.”

“Then let’s find out for sure,” Rourke said.

K.C. turned after a minute, looking at the face that was his face, the elegant carriage that he knew from his own mirror.

“Are you sure?”

“Yes,” Rourke said. “And so are you.”

K.C. cocked his head and grimaced as he looked at Rourke’s face.

“What?”

“You’re going to have a hell of a bruise,” K.C. said with obvious regret.

Rourke just smiled sheepishly. “No problem. It’s not a bad thing to discover that your old man can still handle himself,” he chuckled.

K.C. glowed.

2

Rourke spent the night getting drunk. He was out of his mind from his father’s revelations. Tat had loved him. He’d pushed her away, for her own good, but in doing so, he’d damaged her so badly that he’d turned her into little better than a call girl.

He remembered her in Barrera, her blouse soaked in blood that even a washing hadn’t removed, the stitches just above one of her perfect small breasts where that animal, Miguel, had cut her trying to extract information about General Emilio Machado’s invasion of the country.

Rourke had killed Miguel. He’d done it coldly, efficiently. Then he and Carson, a fellow merc in the group that helped Machado liberate Barrera, had carried the body to a river filled with crocodiles and tossed it in. He hadn’t felt a twinge of remorse. The man had tortured Tat. He would probably have raped her if another of Arturo Sapara’s men hadn’t intervened. Tat, with scars like the ones he carried, with memories of torture. He closed his eyes and shuddered. He’d protected her most of her life. But he’d let that happen to her. It was almost beyond bearing.

He got up, nude, and poured himself another whiskey. He almost never drank hard liquor, but it wasn’t every day that a man faced the ruin of his own life. He’d been protecting Tat from a relationship that was impossible, because he’d been told that there was blood between them, that Tat was really his half sister. And it was a lie.

He’d never even questioned her mother’s revelation. He’d never dreamed that the religious, upright Mrs. Maria Carrington would lie to him. She loved Tat, though. Loved her dearly, deeply, possibly even more than she loved Matilda, her second child. The woman had been a pillar of the local church, never missing Mass, always there when anyone needed help, quick with a check when charity was required. She was almost a saint.

So when she told him that K.C. had seduced her in a drunken stupor, he’d believed her. Because he believed her, he pushed Tat away, taunted her, humiliated her, made her hate him. Or tried to.

But she wouldn’t hate him. Perhaps she couldn’t. He put the whiskey glass against his forehead, the cold ice comforting somehow. When he’d gone with the others to invade the capital in Barrera, Tat had pulled him to one side and linked the cross she always wore around his neck, asking him to wear it for luck. The gesture had hurt him. He wanted to pull her against him, bury his hard mouth in hers, let her feel the anguish of his arousal, show her how much he wanted her, needed her, cared for her. But that was impossible. They were too closely related. So he’d worn the necklace, but when he’d given it back, he was deliberately cold, impersonal.

When he’d left Barrera, what he’d said to her had shuttered her face, made her turn away, hurting. He’d hurt her more with his venomous comments at the airport in Johannesburg after he’d taken her out of Ngawa.

And that, all that, was for nothing. Because there was no blood between them. Because her mother had lied. Damn her mother!

He barely resisted the urge to slam the glass of whiskey through his bedroom window. That would arouse all the animals in the park, terrify the workers. It would bring back memories of another night when he got drunk, the night after Maria Carrington’s revelation. He’d gone on a week-long bender. He’d trashed bars, been in fights, outraged the small community near Nairobi where he lived. Even K.C. hadn’t been able to calm him, or get near him. Rourke in a temper was even worse than K.C. They’d stood back and let him get it out of his system.

Except that it wasn’t out. It would never be out. He finished off the whiskey and put the glass down on the bureau. The tinkle of ice against glass was loud in the quiet room. Outside a lion roared softly. He smiled sadly. He’d raised the lion from a cub. It would let him do anything with it. When he was home, it followed him around like a small puppy. But let anyone else approach him, and it became dangerous. K.C. had said he needed to give it to a zoo, but Rourke refused. He had so few amusements. The lion was his friend. There had been two of them, but a fellow game park owner had wanted it so desperately that Rourke had given it to him. Now he had just the one. He called it Lou—a play on words from the Afrikaans word for lion, leeu.

He closed his eyes and drew in a long breath. Tat would never forgive him. He didn’t even know how to approach her. He imagined Tat’s mouth under his, her soft body pressed to his hardness, her hands in his thick hair as he loved her on crisp, white sheets. He groaned aloud at the arousal the images produced.

And just as quickly as they flashed through his mind, he knew how impossible they were. He’d spent eight years pushing her away, making her hate him. He wasn’t going to be able to walk into her home and pick her up in his arms. She’d never let him close enough. She backed away now if he even approached her.

He thought of her with other men, with the scores of them he’d accused her of sleeping with. His fault. It was his fault. Tat would never have let another man touch her if she’d ever really belonged to Rourke; he knew that instinctively. But he’d pushed her into affairs. Her name had been linked with several millionaires, even a congressman. He’d seen photos of her in the media, seen her laughing up into other men’s faces, her body exquisite in couture gowns. He’d pretended that she was only playacting. But she wasn’t. She was twenty-five years old. No woman remained a virgin at that age. Certainly not Tat, whom he’d baited and tormented and rejected and humiliated.

But he had to get near her. He had to know if there was any slight chance that she might not hate him, that he could coax her back into his life. She’d never let him in the door in Maryland, where her home in the US was located. She had security cameras—he’d insisted on them—placed all around the house she owned there, the house that had belonged to her father.

Tat’s father had worked for the US Embassy. His people had been wealthy beyond the dreams of avarice. He’d married Maria Cortes of Manaus, a woman who had Dutch and highborn Spanish heritage who was also an heiress. It had been a marriage of true love. They had houses in Africa and Manaus and Maryland. Tat had inherited the lot, and their combined fortunes. Tat had loved her mother. It had devastated her when Maria died of a fever she caught nursing a friend.

He knew how Tat revered her mother. How could he tell her what the woman had done? It would shatter her illusions. But he would have to tell her something, to try and explain his behavior.

How to get near her, near enough to make her listen, that was the problem. His eye fell on an invitation on top of the stack of mail one of the workers had left on the bureau for him to go through. He frowned.

He picked it up and opened it. Inside was a formal invitation to a gala awards ceremony in Barrera. It was a personal invitation from General Machado himself. Now that his country was secure once more, all the loose ends tied up, it was time to reward the people who had helped him wrest control away from the usurper, Sapara. Machado hoped that Rourke could come, because he was one of several people who would be so honored. He went down the list of names on the engraved invitation listing the honorees. Just above his name was that of Clarisse Carrington.

His heart jumped. Machado had promised that she would be recognized for her bravery in leading two captured college professors to safety and giving the insurgents intel that helped them recapture Barrera’s capital city and apprehend Sapara.

Tat was going to be in Barrera, in Medina, the capital city. She would certainly go to the awards ceremony. It was a neutral place, where he might have the opportunity to mend fences. Certainly he was going to go. The date was a week away.

He took the invitation back to bed with him, scanning it once more. Tat would be in Medina. He put the invitation on the bedside table and stretched out, his hands behind his head, his body arching softly as it relived the exquisite memory of Tat half-naked in his arms, so many years ago, moaning as he touched her soft breasts and made the pretty pink nipples go hard as little rocks.

The memories aroused him and he moaned. Tat in his arms again. He could hold her, kiss her, touch her, have her. He shuddered. It would take time and patience, much patience, but he had a reason to live now. It was the first time in years that he felt happy.

Not that she was going to welcome him with open arms. And there was the matter of her lovers, and there had to have been many.

But that didn’t matter, he told himself firmly, as long as he was her last lover. He’d bring her here, to the game park. They could live together...

No. His expression was grim. Despite her diversions, Tat was still religious. She would never consent to live with him unless he made a commitment. A real one.

He got up from the bed and went to the wall safe. He opened it and took out a small gray box. He opened it. His hand touched the ring with tenderness. It had belonged to his mother. It was a square-cut emerald, surrounded by small diamonds, in a yellow gold setting. Tat loved yellow gold. It was all she wore.

He closed the case, relocked the safe and tucked the ring into the pocket of a suit in the closet. He would take it with him. Tat wasn’t getting away this time, he promised himself. He was going to do whatever it took to get her back into his life.

He lay back down and turned out the lights. For the first time in years, he slept through the night.

* * *

Three days later, K.C. came into the living room, where Rourke was making airline reservations on a laptop computer.

“You’re going to Barrera, then?” K.C. asked.

Rourke grinned. “You’d better believe it,” he chuckled. “I’ve got my mother’s engagement ring packed. This time, Tat’s not getting away.”

K.C. sighed and smiled tenderly. “I can’t think of any woman in the world I’d rather have for a daughter-in-law, Stanton.”

Something in the way he said it caught Rourke’s attention. He finished the ticket purchase, printed out the ticket and turned toward the other man.

“Something up?” he asked.

K.C. moved closer. He was looking at the younger man with pride. He smiled. “I knew all along. But the doctor just phoned.”

Rourke’s heart skipped. “And...?”

K.C. looked proud, embarrassed, happy. “You really are my son.”

“Damn!” Rourke started laughing. The joy in his eyes matched the happiness in his father’s.

K.C. just stared at him for a minute. Then he jerked the other man into his arms and hugged him. Rourke hugged him back.

“I’m sorry...about the way it happened,” K.C. said heavily, drawing back. “But not about the result.” He searched Rourke’s face. “My son.” He bit down on a surge of emotion. “I’ve got a son.”

Rourke was fighting the same emotion. He managed a smile. “Ya.”

K.C. put a hand on Rourke’s shoulder. “Listen, it’s your decision. I’ll do whatever you want. I was your legal guardian when you were underage. But I would like to formally adopt you. I would like you to have my name.”

Rourke thought about the man who’d been his father, who’d raised him. Bill Rourke had loved him, although he must have certainly thought that Rourke didn’t favor him. Bill had been dark-haired and dark-eyed. The man he’d called his real father had been good to him, even if there hadn’t been the sort of easy affection he’d always felt for K.C.

“It was just a thought,” K.C. said, hesitating now.

“I would...like that very much,” Rourke said. “I’ll keep my foster father’s name. I’ll just add yours to it.”

K.C. smiled sadly. “Your father was my best friend. It tormented me to think what I did to him, to your mother. To you.”

“I think it tormented her, too,” Rourke said.

“It did. She loved me.” His face hardened. “That was the worst of it. I had nothing to give her. Nothing at all. She knew it.”

Rourke’s one good eye searched his father’s. “Nobody’s perfect,” he said quietly. “I have to confess, I wished even when I was a boy that you were my real father.” He averted his eye just in time to miss the wetness in K.C.’s. “You were always in the thick of battles. You could tell some stories about the adventures you had. I wanted so badly to be like you.”

“You’re very like me,” K.C. said huskily. “I worried about letting you work for the organization. I wanted to protect you.” He laughed. “It wasn’t possible. You took to it like a duck to water. But I sweated blood when you left me and went with the CIA.” He shook his head. “I agonized that I’d let you get US citizenship, even though you kept your first citizenship.”

“It was something I wanted to do.” Rourke shrugged. “I can’t live without the adrenaline rushes.” His good eye twinkled. “I must get that from my old man.”

K.C. chuckled. “Probably. I still go on missions. I just don’t go on as many, and I’m mostly administrative now. You’ll learn as you age that your reaction time starts to drop. That can put your unit in danger, compromise missions.”

Rourke nodded. “I’ve had so many close calls that I’ve been tempted to think about administrative tasks myself. But not yet,” he added with a grin. “And right now, I have another priority. I want to get married.”

K.C. smiled warmly. “She’s really beautiful. And she has a kind heart. That’s more important than surface details.”

Rourke nodded. His face hardened. “It’s just, the idea of those other men...”

“You’ve had women,” K.C. replied quietly. “How is that different?”

Rourke looked vaguely disturbed. He turned away with a sigh. “Not so very, I suppose.”

“Tell Emilio hello for me,” K.C. said. “I knew him, a long time ago. Always liked the man. He’s not what you expect of a revolutionary.”

Rourke chuckled. “Not at all. He could make a fortune as a recording artist if he ever got tired of being President of Barrera. He can sing.”

“Indeed he can.”

Rourke turned at the door and looked back at the man who was the living image of what he’d be, in a few years.

He smiled. “When I get back, maybe you could take me to a ball game or something.”

K.C. picked up a chair cushion and threw it at him. “Get stuffed.”

Rourke just laughed. He picked up the cushion and tossed it back.

“You be careful over there,” K.C. added. “Sapara has friends, and he’s slippery. If he ever gets out of prison, you could be in trouble. He’s vindictive.”

“He won’t get out,” was the reply. “Just the same, it’s nice that my old man worries about me,” he added.

K.C. beamed. “Yes, he does. So don’t get yourself killed.”

“I won’t. Make sure you do the same.”

K.C. shrugged. “I’m invincible. I spent years as a merc and I’ve still got most of my original body parts.” He made a face as he moved his shoulder. “Some of them aren’t up to factory standards anymore, but I get by.”

Rourke grinned. “Same here.” He searched K.C.’s hard face. “When?”

“When, what?”

“When do you want to do the paperwork?”

“Oh. The name change. Why not get it started tomorrow? Unless you’re leaving for Barrera early?”

“Not until Thursday,” Rourke replied. His face softened. “I’d like that.”

K.C. nodded.

Rourke went back to his room to start packing.

* * *

The paperwork was uncomplicated. The attorney was laughing like a pirate.

“I knew,” he said, glancing from one to the other. “It was so damned obvious. But I knew better than to mention it. Your old man,” he added, to Rourke, “packs a hell of a punch.”

Rourke fingered his jaw, where there was only a faint yellow bruise to remind him of his father’s anger when he’d accused him of being Tat’s real parent. “Tell me about it,” he laughed.

K.C. managed a bare smile. “I need to have a few classes in anger management, I guess,” he sighed.

“No, Dad,” Rourke said without realizing what he’d said, “you’ll do fine the way you are. A temper’s not a bad thing.”

K.C. was beaming. Rourke realized then what he’d said and his brown eye twinkled.

“Nice, the way that sounds, son,” K.C. said, and his chest swelled with pride.

“Very nice.”

“Well, I’ll have this wrapped up in no time,” the attorney told the two men. “You can check back with me in a few days.”

“I’ll do that,” K.C. said.

* * *

Rourke walked out the door of his house with a suitcase and a suit bag, in which he had a dinner jacket, slacks, shirt and tie. He was going to look the best he could. He was so excited about the day to come that he hadn’t slept. Tat would be there. He’d see her again, but not in the same way he’d seen her for eight long years. Tomorrow night was going to be the best of his life. He could hardly wait.