Chapter 3
Chapter
“Wait.” Sarika held up one hand defensively.
“I don’t understand.” Her cousin was going to carry her?
Like a sack of potatoes through the jungle?
She’d been told many things about her looks, including that she looked ethereal at times, but she’d never been called fragile.
She wasn’t a delicate hothouse flower. “I find that offer rather insulting. I’ve traveled all over the world on my own and managed to get through every jungle I was in by walking on my own two feet. ”
Luiz raised an eyebrow, but his expression remained exactly the same.
“We can travel much faster if I carry you. I have only this night to give you. During the day, I will be sleeping. I thought you wanted to talk. To discuss the history of our family and learn as much as possible about the shifters in this area. Was I mistaken?”
His tone was mild. Pitched low. She had no idea why he raised her alarms—and irritated her at the same time.
He hadn’t really said or done anything wrong.
She was so out of sorts. Her breath caught in her lungs.
Out of sorts. That wasn’t her personality.
Arguing and getting irritated with males wasn’t in her personality.
She found the men she traveled with on her trips down the and throughout the world’s rainforests a little amusing.
She respected them and what they did, but they often tended to act superior—until they realized she could pull her weight on the treks.
That realization usually changed their attitude toward her.
The moment she recognized that she was not in her usual state of mind, alarms shrieked at her. Her jaguar female could not go into heat in the rainforest. Not when she knew it was occupied by male shifters. That would be a disaster. A total, absolute disaster.
When jaguar females came into heat, they were extremely vocal in looking for a mate.
She’d experienced the heat of her jaguar female on more than one occasion, and it had been very uncomfortable.
She hoped she wasn’t coming into heat now.
That scent would call every male shifter for miles.
Jaguars could mate up to a hundred times a day in the wild.
When she’d been in heat, she’d felt as if she could have accommodated a man at least that many times.
Instead, she went into the woods alone and ran until she was so exhausted she couldn’t stand.
The last thing she wanted was to go into heat here in the jungle with male shifters around.
She gave a fleeting thought to leaving the rainforest until she knew for certain, one way or the other.
She sighed, trying to decide what to do. She’d counted on finding out about her history. It was important to her to learn where she came from and what had happened for her to be sent away. Having a living cousin had been exciting to her. A relative. Someone she hoped to have a relationship with.
“Are you concerned that I mean you harm?”
Startled, she raised her gaze to her cousin’s face.
For the first time, there had been a change of tone.
Still low and mild, but there was a hint of gentleness in his voice that hadn’t been there before.
Perhaps that was what had been wrong all along.
He seemed so indifferent to her, as if it meant nothing to him that she was his family.
He didn’t seem to care one way or the other that she was related.
“Sarika?” he prompted.
She’d taken too long to answer him. “I didn’t come to be a burden on you, Luiz.
I wanted to meet my only relative. My parents made it very clear to me before they died that they wanted to know I had someone in the world.
” She tilted her chin at him. “I’m a grown woman.
I’ve been well educated, and I’m certainly capable of making a living for myself.
I wanted to meet you, but if you have no interest in an acquaintance, it is best to say so, and we can be done with this. ”
Never once had his piercing gaze left hers. It was difficult to meet his strangely colored eyes when he had the direct focus of a predator.
“I have given you the impression I am unhappy to meet you?” Again, a note of gentleness crept in.
She didn’t see a change of expression on his face or in his eyes.
He looked as dangerous as ever, yet there was something appealing about his tone.
Maybe she was just so anxious to believe someone other than her parents wanted her.
Until that moment, she hadn’t realized that knowing her father had kept her brother but sent her away had made her feel as though she was unwanted.
She’d been isolated to a great extent growing up, mostly through necessity, but aside from her adoptive parents, she’d never been close to anyone.
Sarika tried to make light of her insecurities when she didn’t feel that way at all. “I don’t wish to be a burden on you, cousin. I’m very aware you had little notice before my arrival.”
Those artic-cold green eyes didn’t blink but remained fixed on her so she couldn’t possibly look away. “Have I indicated in some way that you are a burden or that I am unhappy to meet my only family?”
“I must be misreading you,” she admitted. “Or perhaps I have a chip on my shoulder because my father sent me away while his son and you were wanted. You did explain his reasoning, but that explanation doesn’t negate a lifetime of feeling unwanted by family.”
It was his lack of expression. He had said he was sorry for her loss when he spoke of her adoptive parents, but that loss had been his as well.
Alois and Gemma were his only relatives other than Sarika, and now they were gone.
Granted, he hadn’t grown up around them and hadn’t had a chance to develop real feelings for them, but Alois was his father’s brother.
Surely, his father had spoken of Alois to Luiz.
Alois had certainly regaled her with tales of growing up with his two brothers in the rainforest and how mischievous they had been.
She had grown fond of those memories of her uncles and their antics with Alois.
“Family means a great deal to me,” she confessed. “Maybe too much, since we don’t know each other. I didn’t like the idea of being alone, but that doesn’t mean I’m incapable of being alone.”
She knew she’d tilted her chin in that telltale gesture her parents had called her on more than once. In fact, often.
“How did I give you the idea that you are unwanted by me? I made every effort, despite some difficulty, to reach you when the sun set so we would have as many hours as possible to get to know each other. I am told I do not show enough emotion. Is that the problem?”
He’d called her out, just as she had done to him. “Family trait?” she murmured, flashing him a little half smile.
“I would imagine the two of us have quite a few traits in common. Stubbornness might be one of the foremost traits we share.”
Sarika gave a little shrug. “I know I’m stubborn. That particular characteristic might be considered a negative one, but it got me through some difficult times.”
“Such as?” he prompted.
It was the first question he’d asked her about herself that showed real interest. She could tell he really wanted to know.
He was so low-key, his mask impossible to read.
No real inflections when he spoke, but the flare of interest was there in his eyes.
So brief, she might not have caught it had she blinked.
“I’ve spent a good deal of my time working on conservation in the world’s rainforests. Several of the expeditions I went on went awry due to numerous causes: weather, war, poachers, any number of reasons.”
“Determination,” he corrected. “Not stubbornness.”
She burst out laughing. “You say that now, but once you have to deal with me, I believe that you’ll decide the determination was stubbornness after all.”
Sarika expected a smile, even if it was only a brief one, but his tough features didn’t change expression. Apparently, she wasn’t nearly as funny to her cousin as she was to herself. She repressed a sigh and hung determinedly on to her smile.
“You say you worked on conservation in the various rainforests—did you do so alone?”
The tone was mild, not at all condemning, but Sarika felt the reprimand and instantly reacted.
Like a porcupine, with every hair on her body rising like quills, she actually felt prickly.
She couldn’t imagine being friends with Luiz, no matter how long she knew him.
He didn’t look judgy, but it seemed as if he was judging her.
He looked indifferent. No, not even that.
She sighed, wishing she weren’t so prickly with him.
She made every effort to keep her tone even, with no trace of annoyance.
“There were others I met going on the expeditions. While I was in school, I went on a few, and that allowed me to meet others interested in conservation. Once I was out of school, I joined several organizations for the preservation of jaguar habitats and was accepted on various treks. We set up cameras and tagged a few of the jaguars. The idea is to open a corridor for the jaguars so they aren’t interbreeding.
By enlisting the aid of locals, we have a much better chance of success.
So far, the program has been working.” Animation crept into her voice.
She believed in the work. She knew that without intervention, the jaguar species would become extinct.
“You joined total strangers trekking into the rainforest?” Luiz repeated it as if he couldn’t quite comprehend.
“Are you having a problem with my choice of career?” she challenged. She tried as hard as she could to tamp down the belligerence, but there was just something about him that set her off.
“Do you think it was safe for you to do such a thing?”