Running Wild

by Susan Andersen

  He actually had considerable appreciation for his family. Now, however, ridiculous as he knew it to be, he felt honor-bound to stick with the stance he’d originally taken. He gave her a lazy smile. “What can I say? You should have been born into my family and I should have been the only child.”

  She blew out a breath that contained neither vowels nor consonants, yet managed to convey Idiot! all the same.

  He grinned, because that was quite the talent. “Let’s pack up and get a move on while it’s still reasonably cool.”

  “Yes, sir, Boss.” The tone was coolly sarcastic, but she crawled back into the tent, gathered the few things she’d collected from her tote or his pack last night and stowed them back in their proper places. When that was done, she rolled up her sleeping bag. Coming out a moment later, she stacked her belongings outside the tent, then sank to sit cross-legged on the ground a few feet away and pulled a tube of SPF from her bag and began slathering it on. While he broke down the tent, she brushed her hair and gathered it into one hand in a ponytail, which she tied in a knot at the nape of her neck, then applied mascara and a slick of rosy lip balm.

  A few moments later, when he turned from tightening up the straps that secured the tent container to the bottom of the backpack, he discovered she’d carried her things down to the boat. He watched as she tucked everything except her tote, which she never seemed to allow to be more than a foot away from her at any given time, neatly beneath the bow.

  He carried his own load over to the boat. “I swear you must’ve been born a sailor,” he said and gave her a friendly hip check as he arranged his stuff under the bow alongside hers.

  She blew a rude raspberry, but pinked up, and not for the first time Finn thought it didn’t take a hell of a lot to please her. They shoved the boat into the river and Mags held the line while he climbed in. Then she gave the craft a final shove and hopped atop the bow. He unlocked the nine-horse, lowered the propellers into the water and primed the motor. It started on the first pull.

  Minutes later, they were chugging down the river.

  * * *

  “THIS BEATS THE EVER-LOVIN’ crap out of driving,” Mags said with a big grin. It was all she could do to not laugh like a loon.

  The morning was still young enough to be fairly cool, the sky was blue, the birds were colorful, the water smooth as silk and, man, she liked this river travel.

  Finn grinned back at her. “You get out on the water much back in the States?”

  “No. Except for a freebie birthday ferry ride to and from Catalina once, I’ve never even been on a boat.”

  “You’re kidding me.” Then he immediately twitched a muscular shoulder as if to repudiate his words, or maybe the incredulous tone of voice in which he’d delivered them. “Not that I’ve been out on tons of ’em myself. I have, however, been on more than a ferry.”

  “Yeah, I guessed as much.” She nodded to the motor and his tanned, competent hand manning the tiller or whatever the pokey-outie steering stick that maneuvered the motor was called. “You obviously know what to do with that thing.”

  He laughed and, looking at him in the morning sun, all strong-bodied and flashing white teeth, she felt something warm and effervescent slide through her veins. Loosen all her muscles.

  She looked away.

  A moment later, however, she looked back again. “So, you said you work with your brothers in the family construction business. What kind of stuff do you construct?”

  “We mostly do high-end remodels. We redid an old mansion a couple of years back and restored it to its former glory. That was a fun one—to take something that had been gorgeous at one time but had been updated over the years in a really piss-poor fashion and make it shine once again. Dev met his wife on that job.”

  She would have enjoyed following that thread, but made herself stay on track. “So you work for the rich folks?”

  “We’ve done plenty of smaller jobs, but the Wolcott mansion kicked us up into the high-income-bracket crowd.”

  “I wouldn’t mind being rich,” she said dreamily.

  “Yeah?”

  “Absolutely. I’ve had to stretch every dollar I’ve ever earned.” She made an erasing gesture. “Don’t get me wrong, it’s doable. God provides and all that.”

  He gave her a half smile. “Hard to throw away those teachings learned from the cradle, isn’t it?”

  “No foolin’. Still, I truly believe it. It would sure be fun, though, to have a bit of discretionary income every now and then.” She realized it was suddenly much noisier than it had been a moment before, so she twisted around.

  And saw that the placid river just ahead of them where it went into a bend was about to turn into white-water rapids that boiled and churned like the wrath of hell.

  She whipped back to look at Finn. “Oh, shit. This can’t be good.”

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  FINN LOOKED AHEAD as well. “Fuck.” He should have been paying more attention, but he’d gotten caught up in their conversation and failed to notice that, little by little, the ever-present impenetrable foliage had been joined by large boulders on either side of the river. Their growing density meant a thinning of the solid undergrowth behind them and the inclusion of a lot more trees than they’d seen along this stretch.

  And not a single safe place to pull over to assess their options.

  He raised the propeller shaft out of the water and locked the motor in place, then pulled the oars from the oar locks to use as paddles. When he had a free second, he looked over at Mags, who sat clutching her tote with white-knuckle hands.

  Even as he debated putting her to work, she looked up, visibly collected herself and said, “What can I do?”

  “Do you think you have the upper body strength to man one of the oars? They’re made for rowing, so they’re long and unwieldy.”

  “Pass one over, let me see.”

  He did as requested and she gave it her best shot. But they were long and unwieldy and heavy. She struggled. Finally, she pulled it into the boat and looked at him. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I can’t seem to find the right hold to make it so I can paddle without doing more harm than help. And I’m afraid I’ll lose the dang thing.”

  “Don’t worry about it, we’ll be okay,” he assured her—and hoped like hell he wasn’t blowing smoke. This wasn’t the type of boat he’d have chosen for riding the rapids, although the flat bottom was a plus. The rigidity of its wood, on the other hand—

  Well, that was going to be a little more problematic.

  Still, they had what they had. He’d just have to take each hurdle as it came.

  That made him take note of something they didn’t have. Or Mags didn’t, anyhow. “Where’s your life vest?”

  She looked down at herself. “I forgot to put it on.”

  “Well, grab it now before we hit the rough stuff.”

  No sooner had the words left his mouth than they did just that. The bow sliced through the beginning of the white water and that was all it took to suck them into a pattern of eddies and whirlpools strong enough to command his full attention. He focused on getting them through it, because along with the white water, or maybe the very factor that caused it, boulders now cropped up in the river itself. No sooner did he squeak their boat past one without scraping its side along the solid rough-rock surface, then another was there to take its place.

  It was like a big game of dodge ’em and, adrenaline running high, he laughed as he shot the boat past one obstacle only to have to paddle fast and furiously on the other side in order to maneuver them around the next. Then he got tangled up in a whirlpool and was pretty damn sure he wouldn’t miss the one they were fast approaching.

  But Mags kept them away from it with the end of her oar and he whooped in approval.

  After a period of time that could have been anywhere between seconds or a quarter of an hour, the boat flew out of the turbulence into a calm patch of water. He’d barely spared more than a quick glance at Mags, howev
er, before he saw the small falls coming up.

  After a lightning-quick assessment, he decided it wasn’t much, maybe a three-or four-foot drop. Trouble was, the boat wasn’t bendy the way a river raft would be and at the base of the drop the white water recommenced with a vengeance.

  And Magdalene still wasn’t suited up in her safety gear.

  “Dammit, Mags, grab your life vest. We don’t have hard hats—at the very least you gotta wear your flotation device. Then trade places with me. We have a little drop coming up and I’ll have more control from the front of the boat.”

  She twisted to look over her shoulder at the approaching falls before leaning back on her seat to snag her vest from beneath the bow. Clutching it and her big bottomless purse to her chest, she climbed over the seat and headed toward the stern as he duplicated her movements toward the bow.

  The current was fast, and as they neared the drop he only had seconds to decide whether to face it head-on or at an angle. He risked swamping the front of the boat with the first option and flipping it over with the second.

  Good times. Choosing the compromise his gut insisted on, he paddled toward the drop and hoped for the best.

  He maneuvered the boat to approach it at a slight angle that would put them in the smoothest part of the falls, yet still give him time to circumvent the rocks below toward which his bow was now primarily aimed.

  It worked as if he actually knew what he was doing, instead of flying by the seat of his pants, but he didn’t have time to pat himself on the back. The current and eddies were even stronger down here than they’d been above the short falls and he had to work like a son of a bitch to avoid each new challenge that cropped up one atop the other like in one of those police training grounds where silhouettes popped up and rookie cops had a nanosecond to decide if they were a threat or a granny with groceries.

  Then the water suddenly smoothed out and there was even a beach a few yards away. He whooped and shot a grin over his shoulder at Mags.

  It froze on his face when she wasn’t where he expected her to be.

  He looked around wildly, half expecting to see she had squeezed herself into a space on the floor between the seats.

  The only thing on the decking was her life vest.

  “No. No, no, no, no, fuck no!” He was pretty sure, in hindsight, that he knew where this might have happened and kicked himself for not having her sit in the middle, rather than the back end of the boat.

  But he shook it off and dropped the motor’s propellers back in the water. He yanked the cord, then turned the dory in a tight circle the minute the outboard fired up. Opening it full throttle, he headed back upriver.

  He hadn’t traveled that far from the demarcation line where calm met turbulent water, but the nine-horse simply wasn’t fast enough to suit him. He cursed fluently as he scanned the river for a glimpse of Magdalene. Please, God, I’ll go to church again like Mom keeps telling me I oughta, if You’ll just let me find her.

  An awful image appeared full-blown in his brain and he amended, “Alive. Please. Let me find her alive.”

  He honest to God couldn’t imagine all of Mags’s energy shut down for good and damned if he would believe otherwise before he was presented with indisputable proof that gave him no other choice.

  But he saw nothing. Not a damn thing—she was simply nowhere in sight. He’d reached the edge of the white water and had a sinking feeling the nine-horse wouldn’t be powerful enough to power through it upstream.

  “Finnnnnn!”

  Oh, hell yes! The sound of Mags’s voice sent relief singing through his veins. He looked around wildly, but for several heartbeats he still couldn’t spot her.

  Then suddenly he did. Only her head, shoulders and arms showed above the churning water where she clung to the side of a boulder. He maneuvered the boat along the border, where the water changed from calm to wild until he was as close as he could get, then climbed over the seats to throw out the anchor on his side of the division. As soon as he was certain he’d played out enough line to hold, he hopped up onto the bow of the boat to assess the situation.

  Maybe ten to twelve feet of white water separated them and there were two possible obstacles between her and the safety of the boat—only one of which he deemed a real risk. “You have any idea how deep it is?” he called.

  “No. Every time I try to put my feet down, the current sweeps them out from under me.” A wave hit her boulder and sent a plume of water into the air. Its rebound caught her in the face and as she coughed he could see her arms slide several inches down the rock.

  “Hang on!” Shit, shit, shit. “You want me to try to swim to you?”

  “Yes,” she said fervently. But she immediately shook her head. “No. Unless you’re a world-class swimmer there’s no way to swim against this current. And probably not even then.” She was quiet for a moment, then she said so softly he barely heard, “I’m not sure I can let go of the rock.”

  “I’m scared” was what she was really saying and he wanted to give her a soothing “I know, baby” in return. But he knew better than to offer sympathy to someone on the ragged edge, the way she must be, so instead he said briskly, “I know you’re shook, but if you went out of the boat where I think you did, you’ve done the hardest part already.”

  His gut churned at the thought of the punishment she’d taken getting from that point to the rock she clung to now, but he made damn sure it didn’t show on his face. “You can do this, too,” he said matter-of-factly. “But before you do, I want you to take a look at the streams going away from your boulder and the objects in your path between there and here.”

  She did what he said and a moment later she said, “That one’s going to be the biggest problem.” She nodded at the boulder that gave him the most worry as well, and he was glad to hear her voice had lost its frightened wobble.

  “I agree. See the relatively calm area between the two streams?”

  She nodded.

  “See if you can maneuver yourself around the rock so you can let go in that spot. You’ll have a lot more control if you can stay in that one.”

  “Unless it has serious undercurrents that we just can’t see,” she muttered.

  He smiled wryly, because that was the Mags he knew. “I won’t lie to you, darlin’, it very well could. But we know the other two definitely do, so I think it’s your best bet. And if you can keep yourself in it, it should squeak you past the problem boulder. The white-water streams don’t merge until my side of it.”

  As he watched, she jutted out her chin, squared her shoulders and inched one hand toward a handhold in a part of the rock that would bring her closer to her objective. It was higher than where she’d previously held on and as she got a good grip on it, she lifted her shoulders out of the water.

  And...what the hell? For the first time he saw that she had hooked the strap of her big bag around her neck and the body of the tote hung down in the water. “Lose the purse!” he roared.

  She ignored him and found another handhold.

  Dammit! He remembered all the money she’d raked in yesterday. A lot of it had been in paper El-TIPS, but she’d had a shitload of change-type pesos as well. She might as well have an anchor tied around her neck and he was amazed it hadn’t dragged her down to the bottom of the river already. “Lose. The. Fucking. Purse!”

  She got her feet on the boulder and pushed off.

  “Son of a bitch!” He held his breath as she landed mostly in the smoother stream. But her left shoulder and thigh caught the edge of one of the turbulent watercourses, and it tried to pull her deeper into its tumultuous depths. She submerged twice and he was pretty sure he aged ten years waiting for her to pop back up to the surface each time. Eventually, however, she fought her way free until she made it entirely into the calmer stream.

  Calmer was a relative word, however, and his heart banged against the wall of his chest as he watched her being whipped toward him at an incredible pace. It wasn’t a straightforward plung
e to the finish line—she was spun around, dragged beneath the surface and shot out of it again and again.

  He held his breath as she approached the boulder, because she was too damn close for comfort. She did exactly what he’d told her she had a shot of doing, however—she cleared it by maybe an inch and a half.

  Before he could cheer her victory, the calm water disappeared on her. And what hadn’t been pretty to begin with turned downright ugly as she was promptly dragged under the water—and didn’t come up again.

  “No!” He dived overboard and swam with strong strokes to the edge of the white water before he surfaced to assess.

  She should be coming out—or have come out—right about here...provided she didn’t hit her head or have that damn purse snag on something on the bottom.

  If he got his hands on the thing he was going to sink it.

  A sudden midbody blow knocked him under the water and—thank You, Jesus, see Ya in church!—it was Magdalene. He got his arms around her and pulled her up until both their heads cleared the water and he could see her face.

  She was eerily still and her head sagged slightly to one side. “No, c’mon!” he whispered and started maneuvering them toward the boat. “Come on, baby. Don’t you give up on me now.”

  She remained too damn still.

  Then her eyes popped open and she gasped in a huge breath of air that made her promptly cough and wheeze. Her arms circled his neck in a limp hold.

  Her lack of strength scared the shit out of him. “Are you okay?” he demanded, treading water to check her out. “Where do you hurt?”

  “I’m fine.” She rested her head on his shoulder. “God, you feel good.” Her fingers softly patted the muscle they rested against. “So solid.”

  “You sound weak—are you injured?”

  “Bumps and scrapes,” she said in a low, hoarse voice. “Kinda stings, but nothing serious.” Then her voice grew stronger. “But yes, I’m weak. Get a clue, Kavanagh. I’m not the big strong construction guy in this scenario. My arms just got more exercise than they’ve had in weeks and they feel like linguine. My legs aren’t quite as bad, but they’re not loads better, either.”