Heart of Fire by Linda Howard Read Free Book Online Page A

these other two were working their own deal, and he wanted to know what it was. He smelled money, a lot of it. He had a few scruples, but they seldom got in the way of making money, certainly not when it came to perhaps conning a couple of con men.
    "All right," he said abruptly. "I'll do it. Let's get this figured out." He slugged back a hefty swallow of whiskey and gave his full attention to the business at hand. Laying in supplies for a long trek into the interior was serious stuff and had to be carefully calculated. How many people were involved? How far were they going? How long did they expect to stay once they got there? He always took extra supplies in case something went wrong, which always happened—he had to plan for all possibilities.
    He pulled out a map and spread it on the table, a larger and much more detailed map than the one the men had produced earlier. "Okay, show me where we're going."
    Jillian leaned over and drew a large circle with her forefinger. "This general area."
    He looked at her as if she were crazy. The area she had indicated covered thousands of square miles. "Shit, if you don't have a better idea than that where we're going, we're likely to wander around for months without finding what you're looking for, and that's not an area where we can stroll at our leisure. It's uncharted territory, sweetcakes. Nobody knows what the hell is in there. If any white men have gone in, they haven't come out."
    She remained unruffled. "We'll have to work out the exact course en route, Mr. Lewis."
    "Well, I can't lay in supplies en route ," he drawled with almost visible sarcasm. "I have to know beforehand where I'm going."
    She leaned forward and tapped a spot on the map beyond the area she had indicated before. "Then get sufficient supplies to last us to this point, and that will be more than enough."
    He showed his teeth, but not in a smile. "We have to carry the goddamn supplies. The more we have to carry, the longer the trip will take. The longer it takes, the more stuff we'll need. Is any of this making sense, sweetcakes?"
    "I'm sure you'll find a satisfactory median."
    "A median isn't what would give me satisfaction right now." Throttling her struck him as a damn satisfactory idea. Or climbing on top of her. He was definitely getting hard. Arguing with a woman had never caused that response before; it must be true that a man couldn't resist a challenge from a woman, and Ms. Jillian Sherwood was a challenge from head to foot.
    "Then you'll have to do as you think best," she said blandly. "I've given you all the information I can."
    Or would. He suspected she knew a hell of a lot more than she was telling, but none of it was given away by those cool green eyes. He wondered why their destination was so all-fired secret that she hadn't even told her brother. On second thought, he decided that he wouldn't share any valuable information with Rick Sherwood either, especially when he had friends like Steven Kates. Maybe Ms. Sherwood was even smarter than he'd thought. But just what the hell did she think she was going to do when they got to wherever she wanted to go? Stand guard twenty-four hours a day?
    He dropped the subject, knowing she wasn't going to say anything else in front of the other two. She didn't trust him either, come to that. Definitely a smart woman. If he had to be honest with himself, which he usually was, he had to admit that she was right in that, too. If she let her guard down just a fraction, he'd have her drawers off before she knew the game was going on, much less that she'd lost it. Since she insisted on going with them, he'd have a couple of months to work on her, and he had no doubt about the success of his seduction plans.
    Who knows, if he sweet-talked her just right, she might even tell him what she was looking for. If whatever was in the jungle was so valuable to her, well, hell, it would be valuable to him, too. A man never had too much money. Ben had a few limits as to what