Hard to Handle

by Diana Palmer

  “Was Missouri a southern state?”

  “I’m not from Missouri originally. My parents moved there when I was seven. I was born in Alabama,” she continued. “And that is a southern state.”

  “You don’t have an accent.”

  “Neither do you.”

  He felt his lips tug into a smile. “Should I?”

  “I wouldn’t touch that with a pole, Mr. Hunter,” she replied. “I’ve had enough of that big chip on your shoulder. I’m not aiming any more punches at it.”

  “Poles and chips and punches, at this hour of the night,” he murmured gently.

  “You don’t have to talk to me, you know,” she said wearily. “We can manage this assignment in sign language.”

  “Do you know any?” he asked in a dry tone as he crossed his arms over his head, stretching.

  “A few phrases,” she admitted, reluctant to confess it. “Eugene sent me up to Montana once and I had to parley with two Dakota Sioux. They spoke no English and I spoke no Sioux, so I learned to talk with my hands. It was very educational.”

  She was full of surprises. His head turned and he stared at her through the half darkness. “I could teach you to speak Apache.”

  She closed her eyes. “I don’t want you to teach me anything, Mr. Hunter,” she said huskily.

  “Too bad,” he replied, trying not to take offense. After all, he’d given her a hard time. “You could use a little tutoring. For an experienced women, you don’t know much about kissing.”

  She couldn’t believe what she was hearing. She sat up on the sleeping bag. “This from a man who already admitted that Apaches don’t do it…!”

  “That was back in the nineteenth century,” he mused. He propped himself on one elbow and stared at her, his blood beginning to burn at the sight of her, so beautiful with her long hair around her shoulders. “How can you be twenty-seven and not know something so elementary as how to kiss a man properly?”

  “You only did it to humiliate me…!”

  “You didn’t know that,” he replied. He remembered her shy response, and it made him feel worse. Apparently the men in her life had been more interested in their own pleasure than hers, because no one had ever taught her about loveplay. He wanted to. His body went rigid as he realized how much he wanted to.

  “I told you,” she said, trying to salvage some of her pride. “I’ve been alone for a long time…”

  “Have you? Why?” he asked.

  She didn’t want to go into why. He’d managed to cut her to the bone already with his cold manner, without the insult about the way she kissed. It hurt even more that he’d noticed, despite his lack of interest in her.

  “Never mind,” she said wearily. She lay back down and closed her eyes. “I just want to go to sleep. It’s been a long day.”

  “So it has. We’ll move camp tomorrow.”

  “Could we move it to Mars?” she asked. “It wouldn’t make much difference, considering the lack of vegetation.”

  “You aren’t seeing. The desert is alive and beautiful, if you know what to look for.”

  “You do, I suppose.”

  “I’m an Indian, remember?” he asked with rough insolence.

  “How could I forget?” she muttered. “You never let anyone forget…”

  “Go to sleep,” he said shortly. He closed his own eyes, out of patience and totally out of humor. She was really getting to him. He turned his head on the sleeping bag and his eyes wandered slowly over the curve of her body under the quilted fabric. Damn Eugene, he thought furiously, closing his eyes against the sight of her. He’d never forgive him for this assignment.

  Jennifer, meanwhile, was thinking much the same thing. He blew hot and cold, friendly one minute and hostile the next. She didn’t know how to get along with him. He seemed to resent everything about her. Even the way she kissed, she thought bitterly. Well, hell would freeze over before she was going to kiss him again! She rolled over. Maybe in the morning, things would look better.

  5

  But things didn’t look better in the morning. Hunter was unapproachable. When he did glance her way, it was like an Arctic blast. Nothing she did was ever right, she thought ruefully.

  She busied herself with getting her equipment together, trying not to let him know how hurt she was by his coldness. Worse, trying to forget the feel of him in intimacy, the hard expertness of his mouth on hers. Dreams had sustained her for so long. Now she had at least one bittersweet memory to tuck away. But like all memories and dreams, it wasn’t enough.

  They loaded the four-wheel drive and set off for the next site—the real one this time. It was back in a canyon, beside a stream under a nest of cottonwoods and oaks. Behind it was a mountain range, smooth boulders rising to jagged peaks high above and only a small rutted road through the dust to get to it.

  “It’s very deserted here,” Jennifer murmured, thinking she wouldn’t want to be here on her own. It was probably haunted….

  “One of the old Apache camps,” he said, looking around. “I feel at home.” He glanced at her with faint menace. “But I can imagine that you don’t. White captives were probably brought here.”

  She turned away. “If you don’t mind sparing me your noble red man impersonation, I’d like to get my equipment.”

  He lifted an eyebrow. That was more like it. He’d grown weary of her attempts not to mention his ancestry or her embarrassment when she did.

  “Apaches weren’t the only tribe around here,” he remarked as he lowered the tailgate and began removing equipment and sleeping gear. “Comanches roamed this far south, and Yaquis came up on raids from Mexico. There were bandidos, cavalry, cowboys and miners, gunfighters and lawmen who probably camped in this area.” He glanced at her with a faint smile. “I hope that makes you less nervous.”

  Her eyebrows arched. “I’m not nervous…Oh!” She jumped when a yelp sounded somewhere nearby, and got behind Hunter, sheltering behind his broad shoulders.

  He chuckled with pure delight, savoring that one surge of femininity from Miss Independence. “A coyote,” he whispered. He glanced down at her as the yelps increased. “Fighting. Or mating,” he added, his eyes burning into hers from scant inches.

  She went scarlet, swallowed, and abruptly tore away from him with her heart beating her to death. It wasn’t what he’d said, it was the way he’d said it, his black eyes full of knowledge, his voice like that of a lover.

  “Could you set up the tent, so that I can get the portable generator hooked up to my laptop?” she said with shivering dignity.

  He put down the sleeping bags and glanced at her. “What’s wrong?”

  “You’re very blunt,” she said stubbornly. “I wish you wouldn’t go out of your way to make me uncomfortable.”

  His expression gave nothing away. He studied her curiously. “Did I embarrass you? Why? Mating is as natural as the rocks and trees around us. In fact,” he added, his voice deepening, “some native tribes weren’t that fanatical about purity in their young women. Adultery was the sin, not lovemaking.”

  She glanced at him angrily. “The Cheyenne were fanatical about maidenly purity, for your information,” she told him curtly. “And the Apache were just as concerned with virtue…”

  “Well, well,” he murmured. “So you do read about Indian history?” A faint smile appeared on his dark face. “Do you find the subject interesting?”

  Not for anything was she going to admit that she did because of him. She’d read extensively about the Apache, in fact, but she wasn’t going to admit that, either.

  Nevertheless, he suspected it. He pursed his lips. “Did you know that Apaches disliked children?”

  “They did not,” she said without thinking. “They even kept captive children when they raided, raising them as their own flesh and blood…Oops.”

  He laughed. His face changed, became even more handsome with the softness in his black eyes, the less austere lines of his face. “So they did,” he murmured.

&nbs
p; She turned away. “That wasn’t kind.”

  “Why does it bother you to be curious?” he asked pleasantly. “I don’t mind. Ask. I’ll tell you anything you want to know about my people.”

  She put down her computer and her blue eyes searched his black ones. “I didn’t want to offend you,” she said. “You’ve always been reticent about your ancestry, especially with me. I know I got off on the wrong foot with you, right at the beginning,” she added before he could speak. “You frightened me, and what I did, I did out of nervousness. I never meant to offend you.”

  “That was a wholesale apology,” he murmured, watching her. “I’ll add one of my own. You frightened me, too.”

  “Me?” She was astonished. “Why?”

  His eyes darkened and he started to speak, but the sudden beat of helicopter blades diverted him. He looked up, glad that he’d parked the vehicle under the thick cover of the cottonwood trees.

  He caught Jennifer’s arm and propelled her close to the Jeep, at the same time reaching behind him, into his belt, for the .45 automatic he always carried.

  The sight of the cold metal in his hand made her nauseous. Sometimes it was easy to forget exactly what he did for a living. But this brought it home with stark clarity. He knew how to use the gun, and probably had, many times. She knew he’d been shot a time or two, and she’d seen one of the scars against his tanned shoulder, when he’d taken a shower two nights earlier. She shivered, remembering how he earned his living, what risks he took doing it.

  He felt her tremble and glared toward the departing sound of the helicopter. He’d never known her to be afraid. This had to be a first.

  “It’s all right,” he said, feeling unusually protective toward her. “I won’t let anyone hurt you.”

  She looked up at him, glad he’d misjudged the reason for her unsteadiness. “Thanks,” she said huskily. She looked toward the canopy of leaves. “Was that them, do you think?”

  “Very likely.” He put the safety back on the automatic and reholstered it with practiced ease. “We’ll make a smokeless fire, just in case.”

  She smiled at him. “I suppose woodcraft, or the desert equivalent, was part of your upbringing?”

  He nodded. “One of my ancestors fought with Cochise,” he said. “When I was a boy, I knew how to find water, which plants I could live on, how to find my way in the darkness. Did you know that an Apache can go without water for two days by sucking on pebbles?”

  “Yes,” she said simply. Her eyes lingered on his dark face. “I…read a lot,” she explained.

  He let his gaze fall to her soft mouth. He had to stop remembering how silky and warm it felt, like a rose petal kissed by the sun. She wasn’t a woman he could have, ever. Not as long as they both worked for the corporation. It would be the kiss of death to become involved on the job. One of them would have to go, and that wouldn’t be fair. Jennifer was good at her job, and she loved it. He loved his, as well. Better to avoid complications.

  She frowned slightly. “What are you thinking?” she asked.

  He smiled faintly. “That a hundred years or so ago, I could have carried you off on my pony and kept you in my wickiup,” he murmured. “My other wives might have beaten or stoned you when I was out making war, of course.”

  “Other wives, the devil,” she said firmly. “Polygamy or no polygamy, if I’d lived with you, there would have been one wife, and it would have been me.”

  He smiled at her ferocity. Amazing that she could look so cool and professional, but under the surface there was fire and independence and passion in her. He could imagine her with a rifle, holding off attackers and defending her home. Children playing around her skirts on lazy summer days. He frowned. His eyes fell to her flat stomach and for one insane moment, he let himself imagine…

  “Why are you looking at me like that?” she asked softly.

  His gaze came back up to hers, the expression in his eyes unreadable. “We’d better get things set up. I’ll pitch the tent.”

  He became unapproachable again, withdrawing deep into himself. Jennifer was sorry, because just for a few minutes it had seemed that they were on the verge of becoming friendlier. But Hunter was Hunter again when he had the tent up and the portable battery backup working. He left her to her computer and charts, busying himself with securing the parameters of their small camp and setting up his distance surveillance equipment.

  She put on a pair of hiking shorts and long socks with her thick-soled walking boots and a button-up khaki blouse. She had a hat, an Indiana Jones one, in fact, that she used to keep the sun from baking her head. One thing she’d learned long ago was that a hat in the desert was no luxury. One case of sunstroke had taught her that, and Hunter had given her hell when he’d found her lying on the ground far away in the Middle East, where they were working on assignment one time, searching for oil.

  He glanced up when she came out in her working gear, nodding at the hat. “You remembered, I see,” he remarked.

  “You gave me hell,” she recalled, smiling.

  “You deserved it.”

  “Yes, I did. All the same, you got me to a medic in short order. You probably saved my life.”

  “I don’t want hero-worship from you,” he said flatly, staring back at her. “We’d better get going. Keep to the trees if you can. We know we’re not alone. It’s best not to take chances.”

  “The stream bed is where I want to be,” she said coldly. “And it isn’t hero-worship.”

  “No?” He gave her a mocking appraisal. “Then what is it?”

  “Fascination,” she said with a mocking smile of her own. “You’re different.”

  He didn’t betray so much as a flicker of an eyelash, but the words hit home. She’d accidentally betrayed what he’d suspected all along, that she coveted him because he was a new experience for her. Like another white woman, years before, who’d been entranced not by who he was so much as what he was.

  “Different,” she emphasized. “Hardheaded, cold-eyed, bad tempered, unpredictable and totally exasperating!”

  None of which had anything to do with being Apache, he mused, relaxing a little. He smiled with reluctant amusement.

  “I could go on,” she added. “But I do have a job to do.”

  “I’m not the only one here with a bad temper,” he replied as they started out. “And you have a hard head of your own.”

  “I wouldn’t have a bad temper if you’d stop stripping around me,” she blurted out.

  His eyebrows arched. “When did I do that?”

  “At the motel.”

  “Oh.” He chuckled as he strode along beside her. “I wanted to see if it would affect you.” He glanced down. “It did.”

  “Most men your age are as white as dead fish and flabby,” she remarked, refusing to let him get to her. “I can’t be the only woman who’s ever found you fascinating without your shirt.”

  No, but she was the only one it mattered with, he admitted to himself. He found her equally disturbing, but it wasn’t a good time to say so. His eyes were alert, watching for signs.

  “Look!” she exclaimed, bending down at the creek where tracks were visible in the wet sand. “A cougar!”

  He knelt down beside her. “So it is. How did you know?”

  “Big print, no claw marks,” she explained. “Dogs and wolves can’t draw their claws back in like a cat can, and they leave claw marks. Look at this. It’s a buck deer—cloven hoofprint. A doe’s is rounded.”

  He met her eyes with grudging admiration. “Tracking interests you, I gather?”

  “It always has. My father hunts deer every fall. He taught me.”

  “Kill Bambi?” he exclaimed with mock horror.

  It was the first real flash of amusement she’d seen in him. She laughed delightedly and impulsively pushed him. He fell heavily onto his side, laughing, too.

  “You hellcat,” he murmured, reaching out with a lightning movement to drag her down heavily against him. He rolled her in t
he damp sand, pinning her, his face hard, his eyes glittering with excitement as he loomed over her. His gaze went down to her breasts, where the buttons of her blouse had parted during the struggle, leaving her cleavage bare. His breath quickened as he looked at her, his expression changing from humor to intent male appreciation.

  The feel of all that hard muscle so close made her tremble with pure need. She could smell the scent of his clothing, the cologne that clung to his skin. She looked up into his black eyes and knew in that moment that he was everything she’d ever want. She wanted him to bend down, to pin her body to the damp sand. She wanted his hard, warm mouth to crush into hers and kiss her senseless. She wanted him.

  And the ferocity of her desire made her ache. “Kiss me,” she whispered, unbearably hungry for him. She reached up and touched his lean, hard face with hands that trembled, loving the warm strength of him. “Hunter…!” She managed to lift herself enough to reach his hard mouth, and hers touched it with helpless need.

  He froze at the contact, his breath catching as he felt her lips so soft and warm against his own. For one insane second he almost gave in to his own hunger. But she was off-limits. She had to be, because there was no future in it for either of them. He forced himself to go rigid, despite the fact that his damned heart was beating him to death as he struggled with desire.

  His lean hands caught her wrists and he pushed her down, tearing her mouth from his as he loomed over her, looking cold and dangerous. “Stop it,” he said curtly, forcing the words out.

  She felt the rejection right through to her heart. He didn’t want her, so why couldn’t she stop offering herself? She hated having him know just how vulnerable she was. How could she have done something so stupid? She flushed beet red. Yes, she was vulnerable, but not Hunter. Mr. Native American was steel right through.

  “Let me get up, please,” she said, her voice trembling.

  Pure bravado, and he knew it. He could have her, right here, and she’d give herself with total abandon. But he knew, too, that once would never be enough. He’d have her and then he’d die to have her again. The fever would never be satisfied.