“Are you going ashore when we dock?” Gard asked, coming up behind her.
She really wasn’t surprised to see him. In fact, she’d been expecting him. “Yes, I am.” She cast a glance at him, the vividness of last night’s interlude still claiming her senses.
In denims and a pale blue shirt, he looked bronzed and rugged. Those hard, smooth features were irresistibly handsome. Rachel wondered if she didn’t need her head examined for taking it so slow.
“Did you sign up for one of the tours?”
“No.” She shook her head briefly and tucked her hair behind an ear, almost a defensive gesture to ward off the intensity of his gaze. “I thought I’d explore on my own.”
“Would you like a private guide?” Gard asked. “I know where you can hire one—cheap.”
“Does he speak English?” She guessed he was offering his services, but she went along with his gambit, albeit tongue-in-cheek.
“S?, señorita,” he replied in an exaggerated Mexican dialect. “And español, too.”
“How expensive?” Rachel challenged.
“Let’s just say—no more than you’re willing to pay,” Gard suggested.
“That sounds fair.” She nodded and felt the run of breathless excitement through her system.
“We’ll go ashore after breakfast,” he said. “Be sure and wear your swimsuit under your clothes. We’ll do our touring in the morning and spend the afternoon on the beach.”
“Sounds wonderful.”
When they went ashore, Gard rented a three-wheeled cart, open on all sides, to take them to town. As he explained to Rachel, it was called a pulmonia, which meant “pneumonia” because of its openness to the air.
Their tour through town took them past the town square with its statue of a deer. Mazatlan was an Indian name meaning “place of the deer.” Gard directed their driver to take them past the Temple of San Jose, the church constructed by the Spanish during their reign in Mexico. Afterward he had the driver let them off at El Mercado.
They spent the balance of the morning wandering through the maze of stalls and buildings. The range of items for sale was endless. There were butcher shops with sides of beef and scrawny plucked chickens dangling from hooks, and fruit stands and vegetable stands. And there was an endless array of crafts shops, souvenir stores, and clothing items.
For lunch Gard took her to one of the restaurants along the beach. When Rachel discovered their seafood had been caught fresh that morning, she feasted on shrimp, the most succulent and flavorful she’d ever tasted.
Later, sitting on a beach towel with an arm hooked around a raised knee, Rachel watched the gentle surf breaking on shore. After the morning tour and the delicious lunch, she didn’t have the energy to do more than laze on the beach. Gard was stretched out on another beach towel beside her, a hand over his eyes to block out the sun. It had been a long time since he’d said anything. Rachel wondered if he was sleeping.
Off to her left an old, bowlegged Mexican vendor shuffled into view. Dressed in the typical loose shirt and baggy trousers with leather huaraches, he ambled toward Rachel and held up a glass jar half-filled with water. Fire opals gleamed on the bottom.
“Señora?” He offered them to her for inspection.
“No, thank you.” She shook her head to reinforce her denial.
“Very cheap,” he insisted, but she shook her head again. He leaned closer and reached into his back pocket. “I have a paper—you buy.”
Gard said something in Spanish. The old man shrugged and put the folded paper back in his pocket, then shuffled on down the beach. Rachel cast a curious glance at Gard.
“What was he selling?” she asked.
“A treasure map.” He propped himself up on an elbow. “This harbor was a favorite haunt of pirates. Supposedly there’re caches of buried treasure all over this area. You’d be surprised how many ‘carefully aged’ maps have been supposedly found just last week in some old chest in the attic.” There was a dryly cynical gleam of amusement in his eyes.
“And they’re for sale—cheap—to anyone foolish enough to buy
them.” Rachel understood the rest of the game.
Turning the upper half of her body, she reached into the beach bag sitting on the grainy sand behind her and took out the bottle of sun oil lying atop their folded clothes. She uncapped the bottle and began to smooth the oil on her legs and arms.
There was a shift of movement beside her as Gard again stretched out flat and crooked an arm under his head for a pillow. His eyes were closed against the glare of the high afternoon sun. With absent movements Rachel continued to spread the oil over her exposed flesh while her gaze wandered over the bronze sheen of his longly muscled body, clad in white-trimmed navy swimming trunks.
The urge, ever since he’d stripped down, had been to touch him and have that sensation of hard, vital flesh beneath her hands. It was unnerving and stimulating to look at him.