by Valerie Parv
“Everything about you is my affair. From the moment you walked into my crocodile park. You were so sure of yourself, or so you pretended. At heart you were scared stiff of what you’d bitten off.”
“I was not.”
“When I gave you that baby crocodile to hold, you almost freaked out. Oh, you kept your cool on the outside. I admired that. But when I took the croc from you, I felt you trembling.”
She stalked to the rock face and pressed her palms against it. She was trembling now. Could he guess?
“If you must know, I was imagining confronting its big brother in the wild,” she said, keeping her voice low so he wouldn’t hear the tremor in it.
“Yet you went ahead with the assignment anyway. I’ve never met a woman like you, Jo. Outwardly all tough ambition. Inwardly—
She held up a hand to cut him off. “Stop it, before my halo strangles me.”
“I’m not saying you’re perfect.”
Cold fear swept though her. How she hated that word. “I’m not,” she agreed.
“Just perfect for me,” he went on as if she hadn’t spoken.
There, he’d said it. The words he’d never expected to say to any woman. But he recognized the truth of them the moment they left his mouth.
Jo was perfect. Not in any saintly sense, but in her combination of healthy self-preservation and willingness to meet life head-on.
In his opinion, courage was doing what you were afraid to do—exactly what she did. He couldn’t ask for more.
She was beautiful. Even battered and dirty, she was the most gorgeous thing he’d seen in a long time. He doubted whether the best hairdressers and fashion designers could make her any more lovely to his eyes than she was right now.
Her beauty was real.
“Shouldn’t we focus on getting out of here?” she asked when the silence lengthened.
He cursed himself for being self-indulgent. Yet he couldn’t give her what she most craved at that moment. “I’m afraid it won’t be tonight.”
“What?”
He schooled himself not to take her into his arms again or he wouldn’t answer for the consequences. “The vine I used to climb down broke before I reached the bottom of the fissure. I had to jump the rest.” He might manage to climb up the sheer rock face but he doubted she’d have the strength.
He saw her accept the inevitable. “Then we walk out.”
“My guess is this valley runs parallel to the main gorge, ending somewhere near the Uru cave. If there was another way in, I’m sure one of my foster brothers or Judy would have stumbled on it years ago. Trying to find our way in the dark would be foolhardy. We’re better off staying put until dawn, then making the attempt when we’re fresh.”
“You’re the expert.”
He admired her confidence in him but thought it was misplaced. “In this, I’m no expert. This is way out of my league. I have some basic rescue skills, the ability to read the land, find food and navigate around, but not much more.”
“It’s more than I have going for me,” she said, sounding shakier.
“You have a lot going for you. You discovered this valley. Who knows, Des might name it after you.”
He was gratified to see her spirits lift visibly even as she waved away the suggestion. “I’m hardly the first to discover it.” Her gesture indicated the rock paintings high above them.
He followed her gaze. “I’d say they haven’t been retouched in over a century.”
She studied the paintings curiously, the fading light making them seem more vivid when logic suggested they should be harder to see. “Why are they so high up?”
He frowned, wishing she hadn’t asked. “They’re painted above the level the water rises to during the wet season.”
She glanced at the creek. “You can’t mean this trickle of water gets as high as those tide marks?”
His smile was rueful. “It’s true. Once the monsoon rains start, creeks like this fill up and spill across the land in sheets as far as the eye can see.”
Her brow furrowed. “The wet season is due to start soon, isn’t it?”
“Not for another few weeks. Your project will be finished before it happens.”
“But sometimes the rains come early.”
He couldn’t lie to her. “Sometimes.”
“And if we’re trapped in here when they start?”
This time he did take her into his arms. “It’s a long shot. We have more immediate worries, like getting through the night.”
“It’s going to get cold, isn’t it?” She could feel the air chilling as the last rays of the sun left the valley.
“Luckily, Gilgai overlooked one of the packs. Yours has a space blanket and emergency rations in it,” he said. “We’ll have to share the blanket and pool our body heat.”
She rested her forehead against his shoulder and then lifted her head, striving for humor. “This must be a dream come true for you.”
He stroked her hair, his heart turning over as he realized she was trying to make light of the situation. “You’re on to me. I arranged for you to fall down that fissure for the sole purpose of getting you under my space blanket.”
She touched his cheek with her hand. “Wouldn’t it have been easier just to ask?”
The light banter had given her time to regroup, to master her fears and deal with the reality of spending the night with Blake in a hidden valley, cut off from the outside world.
There was no difference between what they were about to do and sharing the rough shelter at Dingo Creek. If anything, the valley gave them more space than the narrow shelter.
Until nightfall.
For the moment, it was business as usual.
From her pack, Blake produced a nutritious if unexciting meal of half a high-energy fruit bar each and the remains of the cheese and crackers from lunch, washed down with water from the creek.
The atmosphere was too damp to start a fire, even if the smoke wasn’t likely to choke them. The temperature was still mild, so the cold food and drink didn’t bother her. More worrying was the thought of huddling under a space blanket with him during the long hours of darkness.
He made the process as painless as he could. In an attempt to lessen her nervousness, he joked about letting her use the bathroom first, while he made a bed of ferns for them in the shelter of a rock wall. She noticed he chose a ledge a few feet up from the valley floor. A precaution against an unseasonal flash flood?
She recoiled at the thought of being caught in the valley when a mountain of water came crashing down on top of them and then told herself she was worrying needlessly. Blake had assured her the possibility was remote and even if it wasn’t, obsessing over it wouldn’t make any difference in the long run, except to guarantee her a sleepless night.
Not that she expected to get much sleep anyway under the circumstances.
Blake shook out a thin, crackly sheet of what looked like cooking foil. “How will that keep us warm?” she asked, a delaying tactic if ever she’d heard one.
“The thermal material is designed to reflect our body heat back to us, instead of dissipating in the air,” he explained. “Some cave explorers carry one folded up inside their helmets, both to keep them warm while caving, and in case of emergency.”
“And it’s called a space blanket because you huddle together in a small space,” she hazarded, her pulse racing at the prospect.
He shook his head. “You might think so, but in reality the material was designed for the space program.”
Houston, we have a problem, she thought, looking at the bed of ferns and the silvery sheet he held open for her. His large body took up a daunting amount of the available room. She joined him on the fern cushion, trying not to tense when he tucked the blanket around the two of them, pulling it over their heads like a tent. Within seconds, she could feel the heat radiating from him.
He put an arm around her shoulder. “Try to relax and get some sleep.”
He might as well have suggested she fly arou
nd the valley under her own power. The problem wasn’t the strangeness of the night closing in around them, or the knowledge that there were no other people for miles, but the tiny amount of distance she was maintaining between herself and Blake. If she did fall asleep she might slump against him, and what would happen then?
So what? she asked herself angrily. Strangers slept on each other’s shoulders in planes. It didn’t have to mean anything.
And if the contact aroused them to the point where they made love, again so what? She was an adult with a contraceptive implant in her arm that still had a few weeks of life left in it. Everything she knew about him suggested that Blake was as healthy as she was. Neither of them was committed to anyone else. And they’d already agreed they cared for each other.
There was the problem.
It would be easier if he didn’t care for her. His insistence on placing her on some kind of pedestal of female perfection scared the devil out of her. She didn’t want anyone thinking her as perfect. The burden felt too heavy.
Several times in her life, she’d tried to pinpoint why being the object of other people’s high expectations made her feel so ill at ease. As usual, she got nowhere. It wasn’t as if her family had created the problem. On the contrary, her parents had made her feel as if every achievement was wonderful, provided she’d done her best. Yet somehow the fear persisted.
“You’re thinking,” he said into the gathering darkness.
“Everybody thinks.”
“Not as loudly as you’re doing.”
She laughed without humor. “I’ll try to think more quietly.”
He shifted slightly and began to massage her nape. “Better if you stop thinking and go to sleep.”
He couldn’t know it but his touch had just about guaranteed wakefulness. At the contact, hot, eager arousal flooded her and it was all she could do not to turn her face and seek his mouth with her own. That way lay madness.
She took deep breaths, willing her body to relax. Gradually, the kneading at the back of her neck did its job and she felt herself sinking. She was barely aware of his hand sliding away from her nape, to drape around her shoulders. Snuggling into the crook of his arm, she let herself drift at last.
And woke up countless hours later, screaming.
Chapter 11
Someone was holding her down. She couldn’t get away. She fought and struggled wildly but iron hands held her firm. “Jo, you’re dreaming. You’re all right.”
Still, she thrashed around, trying to escape. “Let me go.”
“Not until I know you’re fully awake.”
Awake? She’d been asleep. Dreaming. Was she still dreaming? Blearily, she looked around, seeing the shadowy outline of rocks silvered by moonlight. Feeling the hardness of a ledge beneath her, and hearing the labored breathing of the man holding her as if he’d never let her go.
“I’m awake,” she said, aware of her pounding heart and clammy hands. Aware of being cradled against the solid wall of Blake’s chest, his arms tight around her.
“You must have had some dream.”
“An old one.” She tried to sound dismissive but could hardly muster her thoughts. They kept wanting to slide back into the nightmare. “It hasn’t bothered me for years.”
He rubbed her back with a circular motion. “Probably the result of the fall and the strange surroundings.”
Shivering, she pressed her palms against her eyes. “Oh, God, I’ve never known it as bad as that.” Although she was awake now and remembered falling into the cave and settling down for the night with Blake, the dream seemed more real. The fear that went with it so vivid that she shook with it.
He smoothed her hair back. “It’s all right, I’m here. Lean on me.”
She was too distraught to do anything else and burrowed into his embrace with childlike eagerness. He felt so strong, so good. So solid. Not soft and cushiony like…no, she wouldn’t think of the person in the dream. She wouldn’t.
Without letting go of her he rummaged in the pack one-handed and came up with a bottle of water. Popping the top, he offered it to her. “I wish we had some light,” she said when the dryness in her throat was gone.
“We have moonlight. It’s a lot more romantic.”
But less reassuring than the bright glare of lights she craved. “Do we have a torch?”
“Sure.” He delved into the pack again and came up with a small flashlight. When he clicked it on, the cave receded and a circle of yellow light enveloped them.
Her ragged breathing started to ease. “Thanks.”
“We can leave it on as long as you want.”
She nodded, too unsettled to speak.
“Want to talk about it?”
She shook her head. Even if she could drag the remnants of the dream together enough to make sense, she couldn’t share it. The very thought speared her with dread.
“I’m sorry I disturbed your sleep,” she said, striving for normalcy.
He offered her the water bottle again and she cupped her hand around it, guiding it to her mouth, ashamed when she spilled as much as she swallowed.
He wiped away the water with the back of his hand. “You screamed something about an old woman. You were telling her not to touch you.”
“Was I?”
“Who is she, Jo?”
She lifted her shoulders. “A figure in a dream. Who knows?”
“I have the feeling you do.”
“Then you know my mind better than me, because I haven’t a clue. She’s probably a witch in a story I read as a child, the sort of person who looks kindly and sweet but hides an evil core.”
“A pretty specific description of someone you claim not to recognize.”
His persistence began to ruffle her. “Whose dream was this?”
“Judging by the effect on you, it was more than a bad dream.”
She needed to move, to pace, to dissipate the energy charging through her, but didn’t want to leave the shelter of his arms. Logic told her there was nothing to harm her beyond the circle of torchlight, but she still recoiled from the darkness. She drew her knees up and hooked her arms around them, wincing when stray bruises from the fall made themselves felt. “This particular dream started when I was a little girl. I thought I’d outgrown it.”
“Do you think something down here triggered it?”
“Probably. I’m okay now. We can go back to sleep.”
“Do you think you will?”
“No.”
Blake heard the tremulous note in her voice and his heart turned over. Jolted awake by her screams, he’d felt helpless, wanting to do something to ease her fear, but unable to reach her through the nightmare. He could feel tremors sweeping through her like the aftershocks of an earthquake, and tucked the thermal blanket closer around her. “It’s almost dawn. If neither of us is going to get any more sleep, we may as well talk until it’s light enough to move.”
“As long as it isn’t about the dream,” she insisted.
“Have you ever spoken of it to anyone?”
“Not for a long time.”
He stroked her hair, felt her tension. “Don’t you think it might be time?”
“I’ll find a therapist as soon as I get back to Perth,” she lied.
“What’s wrong with right now? We don’t have anything else to do.” She tried to squirm away, but he held her tightly. “Does this have something to do with you being abducted when you were a child?”
He felt her stiffen in his arms. “What makes you ask?”
“You said you were taken by a demented old woman who thought you were her child, although her daughter was middle-aged by then.” It was a long shot but he had to ask. “Could that woman be the one you were screaming at to leave you alone?”
“It happened a long time ago. I barely remember anything about her.”
“Consciously. Unconsciously, you probably remember every detail,” he said.
“So what?”
“So the buried memories
could be causing the nightmares.”
She frowned. “And you want me to dig them out now, for your entertainment?”
“No,” he said, refusing to be goaded. “For your peace of mind.”
She buried her face against his shoulder. “Oh, God, it’s so hard to talk about. I haven’t for years.”
“But you did at the time?”
Keeping her face against his shoulder, she shook her head. “Not really. Twenty years ago, nobody thought counseling or debriefing mattered, especially to a six-year-old. A doctor checked me over to make sure I hadn’t been harmed sexually—interfered with was the term he used then. I hadn’t. And the police asked me to identify the woman. That was about it.”
He smoothed her hair with his fingers. Her forehead was damp. “What about your parents?”
“They took me away for a vacation. They thought spending time at amusement parks and the beach would be the best way to help me forget.”
“Or help them get over it,” he observed.
She stirred in negation. “My parents did the best they could at the time. I won’t have them demonized for not knowing any better.”
“I’m not fixing blame, only trying to understand why you might be haunted by the experience and still wake up screaming more than twenty years later.”
“Assuming I am,” she said overbrightly.
“Do you doubt it?”
Her sigh whispered between them. “No, damn you.”
“Then talk. Tell me what you remember.”
Accepting that he wasn’t going to be diverted, she took a deep, shuddering breath. “What can I say? According to my mother, we were at a children’s concert in a park. I remember being in a crowd with lots of other families. Some of the kids, including my brothers, went up to the front where other children were dancing. I went with them. An old lady approached me and said my mother wanted me. I went with her but she took me away from the park.”
“Nobody saw you go with her?”
“Everybody was watching the concert.”
“Something your abductor counted on. Maybe she wasn’t as demented as she let the police think.”
“The same thought occurred to me many years later, although nobody thought about it at the time.”
