Hard to Handle

by Diana Palmer

She searched his eyes with helpless attraction. “It’s never been like that,” she whispered worriedly. “Not ever…”

  “We all have an Achilles’ heel,” he said. “Apparently I’m yours.” He smiled gently. “It’s all right. We’ll muddle through.”

  “Do you have one?” she asked shyly.

  “One what?”

  “An Achilles’ heel.”

  He chuckled softly. “Of course. Haven’t you guessed yet what it is?”

  “Your ancestry,” she said with sudden insight.

  “Smart lady.” He noticed Eugene gesturing toward them and slid a careless arm around her shoulders. He couldn’t help but feel the shiver that ran through her slender body, and he felt a little guilty at encouraging her physical infatuation for him. But it flattered his pride and touched his heart. If he didn’t put some distance between them pretty soon, she could become a worse Achilles’ heel even than his ancestry.

  The day wore on, with Jennifer trying desperately not to look at Hunter with equal amounts of possession and wonder, and failing miserably. Eugene stayed in meetings until dinner, so Hunter escorted the women to all the places they hadn’t seen before. Nothing had changed on the surface in Hunter’s relationship with Jennifer. He didn’t touch her except when it was necessary, and he didn’t pay her any more attention than he paid Cynthia. Jennifer noticed that, and it made her feel even worse than she already did. The night before had been a revelation to her. But Hunter, even though he seemed a little less rigid with her, betrayed no sudden passion for her. By the time Eugene rejoined them and they had dinner at the restaurant that evening, Jennifer was more depressed than ever.

  Hunter noticed her lack of spirit, and he was sorry. It had been equally difficult for him to pretend that nothing had happened. But for his sake as well as Jennifer’s he had to keep things on a business basis from now on. He didn’t dare risk a repeat of the night before. Having found Jennifer virginal had kept him awake all night. He wanted her more now than he ever had. It was agony to look at her and know that she’d give in to him with hardly any coaxing; to know that she’d give him what she’d never given another man.

  He watched her all through dinner, hungry to get her alone, to kiss her until she was too weak to stand up. He didn’t dare, of course. He was going to have to think of something to keep him occupied tonight and out of trouble.

  Fate did it for him. He went with the women upstairs while Eugene had a drink with another contact. He’d suggested that they go by their suite first, to drop off Jennifer, trying not to notice the wounded look on her young face. But just as they rounded the corner off the elevator, they spotted a man coming out of Jennifer’s room.

  “Stay here,” he said tersely, jerking out his .45 automatic. He was off in one single graceful movement.

  Jennifer wanted to scream after him to be careful, her heart in her eyes, her pulses jerking wildly as he pursued the other man down the corridor and around another corner.

  “Oh, Lord,” Cynthia said huskily, putting a protective arm around Jenny.

  “He was in my room,” Jennifer said. “I hope he doesn’t hurt Hunter! It’s got to be some of that same group who broke into my apartment before. They’re after my maps!”

  “But you didn’t bring them, did you?” Cynthia asked worriedly.

  “Hunter has them,” Jennifer said huskily. “But he hides things well. I suppose my room was the natural one to search.”

  “Risky for them to come here,” Cynthia commented.

  Jenny’s thoughts were occupied with the man chasing the prowlers. She didn’t hear the other woman’s words. “I wish Hunter would come back!” She stared down the corridor worriedly.

  He did, a minute later, pushing his automatic back into its holster on the way. He looked and felt furiously angry. Just the thought that the agent could have broken into Jenny’s room while she was in it, asleep, made him crazy.

  “He got out on a fire escape. There was a car waiting, damn the luck,” Hunter said angrily. “We’ll have to arrange something for tonight.”

  “Jennifer can stay with me, and you can stay with Eugene,” Cynthia volunteered.

  “No.” Hunter didn’t look at Jennifer. “You’re safer with Eugene. I’ll be in the suite with Jennifer. Nobody will get in.”

  “You could sleep on the sofa,” Jennifer volunteered with downcast eyes, thrilled that he was being so protective.

  “We’ll discuss it after we leave Cynthia at her door. I’ll post an operative outside it tonight. You’ll be safe until Eugene comes up,” he promised Cynthia.

  “You’re very efficient,” Cynthia said with a smile, and a teasing glance at Jennifer.

  Jennifer didn’t say a word. She went along to drop Cynthia off and then minutes later she was alone with Hunter in her room. He had some odd instrument and he went over the entire apartment with it, careful to check everywhere. He discovered two tiny metal devices, which he dealt with before he said a word.

  “I’ve sent a man down to my room to play possum,” he told her, shucking his jacket. The shoulder holster was firm around his broad chest, the dark butt of the handle stark against his white shirt.

  She shivered at the sinister outline of the gun, at the memory of how Hunter earned his living. Sometimes she could forget it altogether, but not at times like this, and she feared for him.

  He saw that nervous scrutiny and lifted an eyebrow. “I won’t shoot you by mistake,” he murmured dryly.

  “It’s not that.” She wrapped her arms around his chest. “They never give up, do they?”

  “From what you’ve told me about strategic metals, I’m not surprised.” He moved closer, his lean hands smoothing over her shoulders. “Lie down and get some sleep, if you can. In the morning we’ll go home. A couple of weeks in the desert while things are finalized, and we’ll be home free. No more danger.”

  “Yes.” And no more interludes like this. She thought it, but she didn’t say it.

  His dark eyes held hers. “Go on,” he said gently. “I told you last night, there won’t be any more close calls.”

  “I know. I’m a little nervous about the intruder, that’s all,” she lied.

  “Of course.” He knew she was lying. He watched her put away the clothes that had been disarranged, seeing the way she grimaced at the thought of strange hands on her things. But she packed them before she got out a nightgown. He was standing in the doorway, and his expression was grim.

  “Are you…going to stay there while I change?” she asked huskily.

  His jaw tautened. “If I did, you wouldn’t spend the night alone.”

  He turned away and closed the door, trying not to picture Jennifer’s soft, nude body in that room.

  It was a long night, but there were no incidents. The next morning when Jennifer got up and dressed, Hunter was on his way out of the suite.

  “Marlowe’s outside the door,” he said tersely. “We leave for the airport in thirty minutes.”

  “I’ll be ready,” she said quietly.

  He nodded curtly and closed the door behind him.

  They flew back to Tulsa that morning, but Jennifer barely had time to get settled back in her apartment before she and Hunter were on a plane heading to southern Arizona all over again.

  “Same song, second verse,” she murmured as they took the camping equipment back out to the desert, having gone through the process of renting a four-wheel-drive vehicle and buying camping equipment all over again.

  He glanced at her, a smoking cigarette in his hand. “Well, it’s not quite so bad. This time you don’t have to do any real prospecting. We’re only camping out.”

  “No television, no movies. Just the two of us and a handful of enemy agents, right?” she mused, trying not to give away how miserable she was.

  “It won’t be that bad,” he said with a faint smile. “I’ll teach you how to track and all about Apache customs. We’ll get by.”

  She nodded. “With bullets whizzing around us and peo
ple trying to kill us for a mineral strike, right?”

  “Stop that. Nobody’s going to try to kill you. They want the land, not bodies.”

  She wished that was reassuring, but it wasn’t.

  They pitched the tent at the site they’d occupied the first night when they were here before. It was a good six miles from the actual site, but still close enough that seismic tests could be detected with the right monitors. But Eugene was an old fox, and her rock samples had been assayed by now. He used seismic tests extensively when he was searching for oil deposits, but moly was a different element and there were all sorts of detecting devices he could use to search out deposits.

  “Nervous?” Hunter asked as they pitched camp.

  She nodded. “A little.”

  He built a fire and proceeded to prepare food, a process Jennifer watched with fascination.

  “Hunter, did you grow up around here?” he asked suddenly.

  He nodded. “I used to wander all over this country as a boy. Within limits, of course. I kept to the reservation.”

  She studied him across the campfire. “And now?”

  He looked up, studying her face in the flames. Even in jeans and a floppy T-shirt she was gorgeous, he thought. “Now I live in Tulsa.”

  “You said you kept horses.”

  “Yes. On the reservation. I own a small homestead. The house is my refuge. Actually I should say that the tribe owns the land, and ownership is overseen by the tribal council. We aren’t allowed to sell any land without approval from the Bureau of Indian Affairs. The reasoning for that is a long story, and one I’d rather not go into right now,” he added when she started to speak.

  “All right,” she said easily. He handed her a plate of stew and a cup of black coffee, adding a couple of slices of loaf bread to her plate. She ate hungrily. “Something about the night air gives me an appetite,” she sighed when she finished. “Look at the stars. They’re bigger here. And it’s so quiet…Well, except for the coyotes and an occasional four-wheel-drive vehicle and the sound of rifle fire as people shoot road signs for amusement.”

  He glanced at her ruefully. “You’re poetic.”

  “Oh, very.” She wrapped her hands around her knees and stared at them.

  He watched her for a minute, remembering another night alone, at another campsite, and her bare breasts in the moonlight. He got up suddenly.

  “I’ll have a look around. You might go ahead and turn in. It’s been a long day.”

  “Yes, I think I will,” she agreed easily. She went into the tent and got into her sleeping bag. Amazingly she was asleep when he finally came to bed.

  The days went by all too slowly, and by the end of the week, Jennifer’s nerves were raw and she was snapping at Hunter. He wasn’t in any too good a humor himself. Jennifer lying beside him in the tent night after night was driving him out of his mind. The scent of her, the sound of her, the sight of her were so firmly imbedded in his brain that he felt part of her already.

  The memories didn’t help. He’d come so close to possessing her, and now his body knew the reality of hers and wanted it. The hunger kept gnawing at him, making him impatient and irritable.

  “Must you keep turning those scanners on?” Jennifer asked when the police scanner began to get on her nerves the Friday night after they’d arrived.

  “Yes, I must,” he said tersely. “They’re reporting an incident near here—presumably at the test site where Eugene’s geologic technicians are working. I’m going to have a look. Stay close to the tent. Have you still got that .22 rifle I gave you?”

  “Yes, and I can use it,” she replied. “Was anybody hurt?” she asked.

  “If I knew that, why would I be going to check it out?” he asked curtly. “What a damned stupid question!”

  “Well, I’m not a trained agent, so you’ll have to forgive my ignorance!” she shot back. “Go ahead and get shot! I won’t cry over you!”

  “I never expected that you would,” he returned. He got into the four-wheel drive and took off without looking back.

  Jennifer’s nerve deserted her the minute the Jeep disappeared. She sat down beside the scanner and listened to it uneasily, glancing around with the rifle across her legs. She didn’t know what had happened, and the fact that the agents were the most likely people to be bothering the technicians was unsettling news. What if they came here and tried to shake the information they wanted out of her while Hunter was gone?

  That was ridiculous, of course. She laughed out loud. Of course they wouldn’t come here…

  The sound of a Jeep alerted her and she jumped up. Hunter, she thought with relief. She ran toward the rutted road with the rifle in time to be caught in the headlights of the vehicle that was approaching. There was an exclamation and a shot as the vehicle suddenly reversed and rushed off in the other direction.

  Jennifer felt something hot against her arm, like a sudden sting. She touched it and her fingers came away wet.

  She looked down at her arm. She could see a dark stain in the faint light from the campfire. She lifted her fingers closer and the unmistakable smell of blood was on her hand!

  I’ve been shot, she thought in astonishment. My God, I’ve been shot!

  She sat down heavily next to the campfire, with the rifle still in her shaking hands. If only Hunter would come back! She was alone and afraid and she didn’t know what to do. Obviously the agents had come roaring into camp with the intention of seeking information. They hadn’t expected her to come running toward them with a rifle. They’d shot at her in apparent self-defense and had raced away before she could get a shot off at them. It might be funny later. Right now, it was terrifying.

  Her arm hurt. She grimaced. The sound of a vehicle approaching came again, but this time, she didn’t run toward it. She raised the rifle, wincing as her arm protested, and leveled it at the dark shape spurting into camp.

  “That’s far enough!” she called out.

  The engine and lights were cut off. The door opened. “Shoot and be damned,” Hunter’s deep voice replied.

  9

  Jenny thought that as long as she lived, she’d never forget the expression on Hunter’s face when she collapsed in his arms and he discovered that she’d been shot.

  She managed to explain what had happened while he laid her gently on her sleeping bag inside the tent and moved the Coleman lantern closer to check the wound.

  “I must have passed them coming back. Damn it!” he burst out, adding something in a very gutteral language that seemed to raise and lower in pitch and stop suddenly between syllables.

  “Is that…cursing?” she asked.

  “Yes, and thank your stars you can’t translate it,” he added icily. He glanced down at her. “They raided the other camp, but they were a little too late. The technicians flew back to Tulsa this afternoon with the data. They left the tents and other gear, just as Eugene had instructed, to give them time to get away. They were supposed to contact us, but apparently they were being watched too closely.”

  “Eugene will kill them,” she murmured, groaning when his fingers touched around the gash in her soft skin.

  “If he doesn’t, I will,” he returned. “Which is nothing to what I intend doing to the man who shot you.”

  She stared up at him through waves of pain. His eyes were frightening, and at that moment he looked pagan, untamed.

  “It isn’t bad,” she said, trying to ease the tension she could almost taste as his hard, deft fingers searched around the cut. They seemed just slightly unsteady. Imagine anything shaking the stoic Mr. Hunter, she thought with hysterical amusement.

  “I can’t see properly in this light. Come on.” He helped her to the vehicle and helped her into the passenger side. He turned on the overhead light after he’d climbed quickly in beside her, and once more his eyes were on the cut. “You can manage without stitches, but it needs an antiseptic.”

  “There might be a drugstore…” she offered.

  He turned off t
he light and started the engine. He never seemed to feel the need to answer questions, she sighed to herself. Amazing how he expected her to read his mind.

  “But what about our things?” she asked.

  He cursed again, turning around. “Wait here.” He left the engine running, put out the campfire, got her case and his out of the tent along with the technical gear, and left the rest of it.

  “But the tent, the sleeping bags…” she began. He glanced at her and she stopped when she saw his expression. She cleared her throat. “Never mind.”

  He set off into the desert and drove for what seemed forever until he came to a small house, set against the jagged peak of one of southern Arizona’s endless mountain chains. He pulled into the dirt driveway, and Jenny wondered whose home it was. The house was livable, just, but it needed painting and patching and a new roof.

  “Come on.” He opened the door and helped her out.

  “It’s a beautiful setting,” she murmured as she drank in the sweet, clear air and looked around the yard at the ocotillo and cholla and agave that surrounded the yard. “Like being alone in the world.”

  “I’ve always thought so,” he said stiffly. He escorted her onto the porch and produced a key to unlock the door. He didn’t look at her as he opened it and pulled the screen door back to let her enter the living room.

  It was nothing like the exterior of the house, she noticed as he pulled a long chain and the bare light bulb in the ceiling came on. The living room was comfortable and neat, with padded armchairs and cane-bottomed chairs, Indian rugs on the floors and spread over the backs of the chairs. There was some kind of furry round shield with tiny fur tails hanging from it, and basketry everywhere.

  Hunter was watching her, waiting for disgust or contempt to show on her soft face. But she seemed fascinated; almost charmed by what she saw.

  She turned back to him, her eyes shining despite the faint throb of the wound on her arm. “It’s your house, isn’t it?” she asked.

  His dark eyebrows arched. “Yes.”

  “You’re wondering how I knew,” she murmured dryly. “It’s simple. You’re the only person I know who would enjoy living totally alone in the world with no nosy neighbors. And this,” she gestured toward the living room, “is how I’d picture your living room.”