Stretching out beside Lexie, he pulled her body against his. There would be no repeat tonight of the passion they had shared the previous evening, but he could give her the comfort of his arms. As he snuggled her against him, his hand brushed over the baby. He froze, then slowly pulled her next to Lexie. When he finally fell asleep, his hand was curled around Ana as he held her close to her mother.
Lexie awakened abruptly from a deep sleep to the familiar sound of Ana snuffling in the darkness. Without opening her eyes she reached out for the baby, expecting Ana to be right next to her. When she couldn’t find her, she opened her eyes and struggled to sit up.
Every muscle in her back screamed in pain, and Lexie had to bite her lip to keep from crying out. She must have made some slight sound, because Caine rolled over beside her and said, “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing.” Taking a deep breath, she slowly eased herself upright. “I’m just a little sore, that’s all. I’d forgotten about yesterday.”
Swinging himself into a sitting position, he reached out for her and gently pulled her back against him. “Remember how we did this last time she woke up? Hold on and I’ll get her for you.”
As she relaxed against Caine’s solid strength, she vaguely recalled waking up sometime during the night to feed Ana. He’d held her against him then, too. And if her mind wasn’t playing tricks on her, she also remembered that he’d practically held Ana to her breast. She swallowed and looked around for the baby. Obviously she’d been too tired to pay attention to what had been going on.
Ana wasn’t anywhere in sight, and as the panic started to rise, Caine’s voice murmured behind her. The low, rumbling tenderness was something she’d never heard in his voice before. As she sat frozen, listening to him, he laid Ana in her arms.
“Can you hold her all right?”
“I... I think so,” she managed to say. She wished desperately that there was some light in the tent. She needed to see Caine’s face.
As Ana settled against her and began nursing, Lexie half twisted toward Caine. “What happened during the night?” she whispered.
In the darkness she felt his shrug. “You were sleeping like the dead. When An—the kid started to whimper, you didn’t wake up, so finally I held her for you while she nursed. I think you fell asleep again before she was even finished.”
Shifting Ana to her other arm, she waited for a moment, then said, “When I woke up this time, she wasn’t next to me.”
She could feel him squirm behind her. “Yeah,” he finally said. “I had her next to me. I figured you needed your sleep.”
Her throat swelled as she stared blindly down at Ana in her arms. What had happened while she slept yesterday afternoon and evening? He had almost called Ana by her name. What magic had occurred to put that note of tenderness and wonder in Caine’s voice when he talked about her child? Their child, she reminded herself, as one tear rolled down her face and fell onto her hand.
His hands slid up her arms as she leaned against him, and slowly and gently he began to massage her shoulders. “I bet you hurt like hell, don’t you?” he murmured into her ear.
She wanted to tell him that she’d never felt better in her life, but she knew he wasn’t ready to talk about whatever was happening between him and Ana. So she said softly, “I have had better mornings, I guess.”
His hands moved to her back, and she closed her eyes and let her aching muscles savor his touch. “I hate to sound singleminded, but do you think you’ll be able to walk this morning?” he asked.
“Yes, I will.” She didn’t even hesitate before she answered. Her muscles might ache, but if they stayed where they were, it would be too easy for the rebel leader to track them down. Their only hope of safety was in getting to Limores.
His hands tightened on her shoulders for an instant and he bent and kissed the back of her neck. Then he released her. “You’re a hell of a woman, Lexie.”
The emotion in his voice made her shiver, but before she could answer he had unzipped the tent and crawled out into the predawn darkness. As she laid Ana down on the ground and rebuttoned her blouse, now stiff with dried mud, she heard him rustling around outside. It would take him only a few minutes to pack everything and they would be ready to leave.
Every muscle in her body seemed to shriek with pain as she tried to lift Ana into her arms. Closing her eyes, she gathered her strength and tried again. Her body protesting, she slid toward the door of the tent and wondered how she was going to stand without stumbling.
Before she had to try, Caine was there. “Give her to me,” he said, bending to take Ana from her arms. In the dim light of dawn she saw him lay the baby on her shawl, then he came back to her. “Hold on to me and pull yourself up.”
She couldn’t have stood any other way, and she suspected he knew it. When she was finally standing, she slowly straightened and tried to ignore the pain that shot across her back and down her legs.
“You hurt, don’t you?”
Caine stood next to her, watching her with worried eyes.
“Yes, I do,” she said frankly. “But I’m sure it’ll get better when we start to move.” She tried a weak smile. “Don’t coaches always tell their players to walk it off?”
Caine looked around the clearing, then back at her. She could see the indecision in his eyes. “Maybe we could stay here for another day. By tomorrow you’ll probably feel a little better.”
“By tomorrow, I want to be sitting in the biggest bathtub in Limores,” she answered, looking around for her pack. “We can’t afford to stay here for another day, and you know it.”
“We haven’t seen another helicopter,” he said, and she wondered which of them he was trying to convince.
Staring at him, she said softly, “Is that good or bad?”
“Dammit, Lexie, I don’t want to force you to walk. I know how you must feel.” He turned around abruptly and gave the string on his backpack a vicious jerk.
“You’re not forcing me to do anything. I know as well as you that we have to get to Limores as fast as we can. Tell me the truth. Why do you think we haven’t seen another helicopter?”
His hands stilled on the pack and he was silent for a moment. Then he stood and turned around. “I’m going to tell you straight, because you deserve to know. You’re a lot tougher than I ever would have guessed. I wish to hell we had seen another helicopter. In fact, the more choppers, the better. It would have meant he wasn’t sure what he saw, or that he was trying to pinpoint our location. The fact that we haven’t seen or heard another one is not a good sign.”
“What do you think it means?” she whispered.
“I think it means that they know exactly where we are, and they’re waiting for us to come out of the jungle. I think it means that they’re between us and Limores, and they know they have us trapped.”
Feeling oddly detached from the fear she knew should be consuming her, she asked, “So, what do we do?”
“The only thing we can do. Get to Limores as fast as we can, and hope like hell we can think of some way to get around them, if they’re waiting for us.”
Bending slowly to pick up Ana, she said, “Then what are we waiting for? Let’s go.”
His hand on her arm stopped her. “Don’t, Lexie. You’re going to have a hard enough time walking today without trying to carry anything. I’ll get the packs and the kid. You worry about yourself.”
“You can’t take everything,” she protested. “You don’t even have room for everything.”
“Yeah, I do. Most of our food is gone, so I could put your small pack and my small pack inside the larger one. That makes one pack for my back and one kid for my chest.” As he spoke he hefted the pack onto his back and then bent down for Ana.
“Are you sure?” she asked as she watched him.
“It’s the only thing that makes sense.” His voice was gentle. “There’s no way you can carry her today. You’re just too sore. This’ll work fine.”
He raised his hands to
massage her shoulders again, and she had to stop herself from flinching. He was right. Her back was too sore to bear even the small weight of Ana, let alone her pack. “All right, let’s go.” She twisted to look at him. “But how are we going to get across the river?”
His mouth tightened momentarily, then he looked away from her. “While you were sleeping yesterday I found a place where the river narrows quite a bit. That’s why there was such a powerful undertow. I think we can swing across on vines. Let’s go give it a try.”
She looked at him, horrified, but he had already started to walk, so she fell in behind him, steadfastly ignoring the pain in her back and her ankle.
It seemed like only a few minutes before they stopped at the river’s edge.
She stared at the spot where he wanted to cross and swallowed hard. “You think we can swing across this?”
“I’m sure of it. It isn’t as far as it looks.”
He laid Ana on the ground with gentle hands, then swung his pack off. “I’m going to try it first. If I make it all right, I’ll come back and get you and the kid.”
“What if you don’t make it?”
“Then I’ll be taking a bath this morning.” He flashed her a grin, then grabbed a thick vine that hung over the placid water. He might joke about taking a bath, but she knew how the currents swirled beneath that calm surface.
She held her breath as he took a running jump and sailed over to the other side of the river. He made it look easy, but her heart began to pound as she watched him return.
“I’m going to take the pack over first, then I’ll take the kid. All right?”
She nodded numbly and watched as he swung easily across the river with the pack on his back. He made it look like a Huckleberry Finn type of adventure, rather than the desperate scramble for their lives that it really was.
She couldn’t bear to watch as he swung across the water with Ana in his arms, and she couldn’t bear to look away. He made it across in one smooth jump, and the next moment he was back, standing expectantly in front of her. “Ready?”
“Are you sure that vine will hold both of us?” she asked, staring at it as it swung gently in the air.
“Nope.” He grabbed it and gave it a tug. “Would you rather go alone?”
Measuring the distance between the two shores, she finally shook her head. “I don’t think I could jump that far.”
“Okay, then, it looks like we’re a pair. Hold on to me.”
She had barely tightened her arms around his neck when he leaped into the air. The vine dipped sickeningly under their combined weight, and her toes brushed the surface of the water, but in a few seconds they were standing on the opposite bank of the river, watching the vine snap back to its original position.
He grinned at her again. “That was an invigorating way to start the morning. We’ll have to do it again sometime.”
“I’ll put it on my list of things to do,” she muttered.
Scooping up his pack, he adjusted it on his back, then picked Ana up and tied the shawl around his neck. “Ready?” he asked.
When she nodded, he said, “Let’s go.”
Chapter 13
Her head spinning, Lexie stumbled and barely stopped herself from falling by grabbing on to a thick vine. Sharp splinters stabbed into her palm and the muscles in her back burned with the strain of holding herself upright. It was late afternoon, and they had been walking forever. The only time they had stopped was when Ana needed to eat, and Caine had given Lexie trail mix and nuts while she nursed the baby.
Her stomach growled, but Lexie was too tired to even think about eating. All she could do was concentrate on putting one foot in front of the other. It took all her energy to block out the pain from her sore and aching body.
Spears of white-hot fire stabbed down her back with every step she took. When she tried to raise her hand to wipe away the sweat that trickled into her eyes, her shoulders tightened and the muscles knotted and throbbed. Even holding Ana to nurse was an agony.
But she knew she had no choice. The closer they got to Limores, the more acute the danger. They didn’t dare stop so she could rest. And she was afraid that if they did stop, she wouldn’t be able to move again.
She knew Caine was in front of her only because she could hear the dead leaves on the jungle floor crunching under his boots and the cracking of the branches he pushed out of the way. She hadn’t looked up at him for a long time, let alone talked to him. She didn’t dare raise her eyes from the ground. Even watching constantly, she couldn’t stop herself from tripping over the smallest root or branch in her way.
Without warning she bumped into something hard and solid. As her breath whooshed out of her, she looked up and realized it was Caine. He’d stopped dead in his tracks and stood frozen, listening.
She was too numb to do anything more than stand behind him and wait until he was ready to move on. Vaguely she wondered if he’d heard another helicopter, and what it would mean. If they had to stop and hide, she wasn’t sure if she would be able to stand afterward and keep moving. Only the realization that all their lives could depend on it had kept her going this long.
Caine turned abruptly and looked around. Seeing one of the huge kapok trees over to their left, he led her toward it. “I want you to stay here for a while with the kid and our pack,” he said in a low voice. “I heard something ahead of us, and I need to check it out before we go any farther.”
“You mean it wasn’t a helicopter you heard?” she asked as she stumbled along behind him.
He shook his head. “No. I’m not sure what it was, but I don’t want to take any chances.” They’d reached the base of the enormous tree, and he led her into the shelter of the wide buttresses at the base of its trunk. “You need to sit down for a while, anyway, and the kid probably needs to eat. Stay here until I come back.”
Then he disappeared into the jungle like a wraith. Slowly she sank to the ground, her back rubbing against the smooth bark of the tree. Caine was right. Ana would be hungry very soon, and she probably needed to be changed right now. Gathering her strength, Lexie reached for the backpack and pulled out a diaper.
Someone was shaking her shoulder and calling her name. The voice was too insistent, and she closed her eyes more tightly and willed him to disappear.
“Lexie, wake up,” someone said sharply, and she dragged her eyes open and looked up into Caine’s worried face.
“I am awake,” she croaked. Struggling to sit up, she almost cried out loud when her muscles screamed a protest. He must have seen the pain in her face, because strong hands lifted her smoothly and a warm arm surrounded her to hold her steady.
“Where’s Ana?” she cried, looking around frantically.
“Right beside you,” Caine soothed. “She’s sleeping, too.”
Once she saw the baby, asleep on her shawl next to her leg, Lexie relaxed and looked around. The sun hung low in the trees, but there was an odd glow to the sky that made her grasp Caine’s hand and sit up straighter.
“What’s that?” she whispered.
“What?” He twisted around to look in the direction she was facing.
“That...that light in the sky. Is there a fire in front of us?”
His arm tightened around her, then he smiled down at her. “That’s Limores. It’s the light from the city being reflected into the sky,” he explained.
Hope surged in her heart. “We’re that close?” she whispered.
“Yeah, we are. That’s the good news.”
She looked over at him sharply, hope crashing and burning inside her. “What’s the bad news?”
His mouth tightened, and his arm dropped away from her shoulder. “The bad news is that rebel troops have set up roadblocks on every route into the city that I can see. They’re searching every car and truck that’s headed there. There’s no way we’re going to be able to catch a ride.”
The last cobwebs of sleep disappeared as she looked up at the sky. “You were gone a long time. Did
you figure out another way to get there?”
He turned to stare at her, an odd expression on his face. “You sound like you’re sure I have.”
She looked at him, meeting his gaze and not turning away. Something moved inside her—a tenderness that slowly grew and blossomed in her heart. “I think you can do anything you want to do. If there’s a way into Limores, I think you know what it is.”
Something flickered in his eyes and he started to reach for her, but then he looked away. “I have an idea,” he said gruffly. “I don’t know if it’ll work or not, but at this point I don’t think we have much choice.”
“What do we have to do?” she asked as she started to gather their belongings and stuff them into the pack.
“You’re ready to go? Just like that, without hearing any of the details?” He sounded incredulous.
She stopped packing and looked at him. “I trust you,” she said simply. “If you say this is our only chance, I believe you.” She tried to smile and failed miserably. “And based on past experience, I’m quite sure that you’ll tell me exactly what to do.”
He reached for her and gently pulled her close. “No one has ever trusted me like that, Lexie. Ever. It’s enough to make me scared spitless.”
“Why?”
“Because I’m afraid I’ll fail you. I’m afraid my plan won’t work.”
“If it doesn’t work, it won’t be your fault,” she murmured against his shoulder. “It’ll be El Cuchillo’s fault. Besides—” she lifted her head and gave him a weary grin “—I thought Caine O’Roarke was invincible.”
“I wish,” he muttered. Slowly he lowered his head and kissed her. It was a kiss of promise, a pledge of faith. Whatever happened, she knew, he would do his best to protect her and Ana.
He stood and looked around. “We’re not going anywhere until it gets dark. We might as well finish the trail mix and the nuts while we wait.”
To Save His Child Page 20
