by Linda Turner
Taking a quick glance at the sky through the trees overhead, Ace frowned. “If we’re going to get the tents set up before it rains, we’d better get a move on it. I don’t like the looks of those clouds.”
Bone tired but exhilarated, Maddy jumped to help. “I’ve never put up a tent before, but I’m game if you are. Tell me what to do.”
“There’s a hammer in my pack,” he replied. “Why don’t you get it while Dominic and I unpack the tents?”
With a speed that amazed Maddy, they had the first tent up in a matter of minutes. But before she could step back to admire their handiwork, the clouds overhead suddenly split wide open, sending a deluge raining down on their heads.
“Oh!”
“Quick! Inside!” Ace yelled. Pushing her into the tent, he and Dominic were right behind her, but it was too late. They were all three already soaked to the skin.
“My God,” Maddy gasped. Flanked by the two men, she stood in the open doorway and watched the rain pour down in sheets. “If this keeps up, we’ll be washed away. Shouldn’t we do something? The canoe—”
“Will be fine,” Dominic assured her, raising his voice to be heard over the thunderous roar. “Showers never last long in the jungle. It’ll stop soon.”
“You’ve got to be kidding. It’s pouring!”
“Sí,” he agreed, smiling. “We are in a rain forest. But any second now…”
The words were hardly out of his mouth when the down-pour ended as quickly as it had begun. Amazed, Maddy wouldn’t have believed it if she hadn’t seen it with her own eyes.
Flanking her on the other side, Ace chuckled. “I’d say the man knows what he’s talking about, Maddy, darlin’. How long do we have before it’s totally dark, Dominic?”
With the passing of the shower, the clouds had cleared, lightening the sky. Ace would have said they had at least forty minutes until they needed to break out the lanterns, but Dominic wasn’t nearly as optimistic. “Twenty minutes,” he said promptly. “No more.”
“Then we’d better hustle,” Ace retorted, ignoring the still-dripping trees as he stepped outside. “We’ve got a lot to do.”
The second tent went up as easy as the first, but when Maddy looked around for the third, it was nowhere in sight. Tired, her wet clothes clinging to her and growing more uncomfortable with every passing moment, she watched Dominic throw his personal items into the smaller of the two structures and suddenly didn’t like the look of things.
Turning, she confronted Ace. “All right, where’s the third tent?”
As surprised as she, he shrugged. “I don’t know. Maybe this was all he could get his hands on with such short notice.”
Maddy might have accepted that if it had come from anyone but Ace. He was a man who liked women—he’d already made that more than clear. And then there was the little matter of a kiss that she knew was going to haunt her until she was old and gray.
“And maybe you put him up to this,” she retorted in a low whisper that wouldn’t carry to the other man. “I heard you speaking Spanish to him right before he left to get everything, and my name was mentioned. You told him we’d share a tent, didn’t you?”
“Of course not!”
“Then what did you tell him?”
Caught between a rock and a hard place, Ace hesitated. Damn the woman, she wasn’t going to like the truth and he’d be damned if he’d lie to her. “None of your business.”
“Aha! I knew it!”
Goaded, heat stealing into his cheeks—dammit, he was blushing!—he snapped, “You want the truth, little girl? All right—here it is. I told him you were mine so he’d better keep his paws to himself or the deal was off. That must be why he only brought two tents. So there, Miss Nosy Britches! You wanted the truth, you got it. Now deal with it!”
Taken aback, Maddy just stared at him.
I told him you were mine….
The words echoed in her head like a lover’s whispered confession of love, teasing her, seducing her, once spoken impossible to ignore. Somewhere in the nether regions of her common sense, a voice was yelling at her not to be a fool—he probably used lines like that all the time on gullible women.
Why? she wanted to ask him. Why would you say such a thing to Dominic? But fear of his answer kept the words unspoken on her tongue. If this was his way of passing the time, of amusing himself until they got back to civilization, of giving the old-maid librarian a thrill for the first time in her life, she didn’t want to hear it.
Lifting her chin, she said quietly, “Then the two of you can share this tent and I’ll take the smaller one.”
He nodded curtly. “Fine. You do that. And if Lazear gets wind that we’re on his tail and sends someone back to take care of us, you’re going to be a sitting duck. When I get back to the States, though, I’ll notify your mother that she had a daughter she can be proud of. You died protecting your virtue.”
Sneaky. Lord, the man was sneaky. The battle was lost before it had hardly begun. She would have given anything to call his bluff and insist on sleeping alone, but they both knew she was too much of a chicken to do that. Their eyes locked in a battle of wills, she had no choice but to retreat with as much of her pride intact as she could manage. “All right. We’ll do it your way…for now. But I’m getting me a tent and gun of my own at the first decent village we come to tomorrow.”
This far into the jungle, she wasn’t likely to find such a well-stocked trading post, and even if she did, she didn’t have any money, but Ace wisely refrained from pointing that out. “Have it your way,” he said with a shrug. “Now that we’ve got that straightened out, I suggest we all eat, then grab some shut-eye. Tomorrow’s going to be another long day and we’re going to get started early.”
“Oh, but I can’t eat until I take a bath and get out of these wet clothes.”
Amused, he laughed. “Good luck, honey. The nearest bathtub is sixty miles away.”
“But I can’t go to bed like this!” she cried,’ appalled. “Look at me!”
Taking her at her word, he did just that, then wished he hadn’t. Thanks to the rain, her wet clothes were plastered to every feminine curve and tempting hollow. Just looking at her made him ache. For what seemed like the thousandth time since he’d kissed her, he reminded himself that she was an innocent and only a cad would take advantage of her in her present situation. But dammit, he wanted to touch her, to kiss her again and see if she was half as sweet as he remembered. God, what had he set himself up for by insisting that she share a tent with him?
“We’re roughing it, remember?” he reminded her tightly. “If you’re that desperate for a bath, you’ll have to use the river. But I suggest you hurry. You heard what Dominic said about the snakes.”
She paled, but he had to give her credit—she didn’t back down. “Fine. But I’m not going off by myself. One of you will have to go with me with a gun.”
Only a masochist would have agreed to such a thing, and self-torture had never been Ace’s thing. He should have told her to do what she wanted, he was going to eat, but just the thought of another man watching her bathe was like a fist in his gut.
Dammit, he was jealous! he realized with a jolt of surprise. He’d never been jealous of a woman in his life, and it wasn’t a feeling he cared for. What the hell was she doing to him?
He opened his mouth to tell her Dominic would probably be more than happy to watch out for her, but all that came out was a rough growl. “Then you’d better grab your soap and haul that little butt of yours. We’re losing daylight fast.”
Not giving her time to comment, he collected his gun from where he’d stored it in his pack and a flashlight from Dominic, and twenty seconds later he was escorting her downriver to a more secluded spot. After a quick reconnoiter of the place, he declared it snake-free and dropped down onto the bank with his back half-turned to the water. “You’ve got five minutes.”
He should have been happy that he didn’t have to tell her twice. Stepping out of s
ight behind him, she hesitated, and he could almost feel her eyes on him, her sudden doubts about stripping in plain view of anyone who cared to look. Her need for a bath, however, quickly overcame her need for modesty, and in a matter of seconds, he heard the whispered sound of buttons sliding free and the soft growl of a zipper. It was, he discovered too late, the most seductive sound he’d ever heard in his life.
And his conscience wouldn’t let him sneak a peek.
A muscle jumping along his clenched jaw, he stared straight ahead at the darkening jungle and tried to concentrate on anything but the woman enjoying her bath just out of his sight behind him. But his mind refused to cooperate, and instead, he found himself listening for the next splash as she rinsed herself, her next sigh as she soaked sore muscles that were unused to lifting anything heavier than a book. She would be smiling, her eyes closed with pleasure, her skin ivory and softly flushed in the twilight, her breasts full and wet and pouting for a man’s hands—
Suddenly hot and hard, he swore, cursing himself for a fool. “You’ve got two minutes,” he said through his teeth. “Start wrapping it up.”
“I’m almost finished,” she promised breathlessly. Her hair full of suds, she quickly ducked underwater to rinse it, then burst to the surface with a smile on her lips. How could she have known skinny-dipping could be so invigorating? She’d never felt so free in her life! She wanted to laugh, to do the backstroke all the way across the river and back, to play like a child. But she was out of time.
Unable to stop grinning, she waded up onto the bank. “All finished,” she called to Ace’s back. “Just give me a second to dress and…”
She didn’t see the snake that slithered out of the undergrowth and curled up on her clothes until she started to reach for her discarded shirt to dry herself. Freezing in her tracks, she screamed.
Chapter 6
“What the hell!” Scrambling to his feet, his pistol already in one hand and the flashlight in the other, Ace whirled and immediately spied the anaconda coiled on Maddy’s clothes barely a yard away from her bare feet. The huge boa, nearly twenty feet in length, was facing away from her and couldn’t easily strike from that position, but Ace was taking no chances. Lightning quick, he fired, shooting the snake right between the eyes. It wasn’t until then, when he lifted his gaze and the flashlight to Maddy, that he realized she was as naked as the day she was born. “Are you all right?” he demanded hoarsely.
She nodded jerkily, her eyes huge in her ashen face as she stared unblinkingly at the now-still figure of the snake. “I—I didn’t s-see it,” she stuttered through chattering teeth. “I was reaching f-for m-my shirt a-and suddenly it w-was j-just…there.”
From the camp, they heard a crashing through the underbrush and a muttered oath in Spanish as Dominic made his way toward them in the near dark, the beam of his flashlight bobbing as he ran. “Secñor Ace? Señorita? Where are you? What’s wrong?”
Cursing, Ace stepped over the shirt the dead snake lay coiled on, snatched up the clean one Maddy had brought along and whipped it over her shoulders. Snatching her close, he had her in his arms by the time the other man was close enough to pick them out of the deep shadows with his flashlight. “It was just a boa,” he told Dominic gruffly. “A dead one now. Everything’s under control.”
The guide’s eyes barely touched on Maddy’s obviously naked figure draped in the shirt before they hurriedly moved back to Ace. “The señorita is okay?”
He nodded, his arms instinctively tightening around her as he felt her tremble. “She’s just a little shaken up. I’ll bring her back to camp as soon as she’s had a chance to calm down.”
Without a word, the older man quietly faded back into the night, leaving them alone. For the span of a heartbeat, the silence that settled around them was refreshingly complete. But the jungle was never quiet or still for long. An instant later, tree frogs croaked like musicians warming up for a performance, while katydids and other insects broke into song. High above the forest floor, the wind rushed through the tree crowns.
After the rain, the humidity was worse than ever. Ace never noticed. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d just held a woman and comforted her. Damn, it felt good. She felt good. Soft and delicate and womanly. And she was crying.
She didn’t make a sound, but he could feel her hot tears soaking his shirt as she buried her face against his chest and clung to him as if she would never let him go. Deep inside, something cracked in the region that had once been his heart. When she’d screamed, he’d thought…Hell, he didn’t know what he’d thought, just that he’d kill anyone or anything that hurt her. Later, he knew that was going to keep him awake long into the night, but for now, he just wanted to hold her, touch her, reassure himself that she was really all right.
Stroking his hands down her back over and over again, he murmured, “It’s okay, honey. You’re fine. The snake’s dead, and if you see another one, I’ll kill it, too. Nothing’s going to hurt you. Okay? Don’t cry.”
Maddy sniffed and managed a nod, but still she couldn’t stop the tears that silently flowed down her cheeks and soaked his shirt. It was just nerves, she told herself, shuddering. A reaction to everything that had happened to her over the course of the past twenty-four hours. She’d been knocked out, kidnapped, shot at, dragged halfway across the world. And now nearly strangled by a snake as big as a house. And that was only the beginning. She was worried about her mother, and she couldn’t remember when she’d had anything to eat that came close to resembling real food. That plastic stuff they’d served on the airplane and the trail mix Dominic seemed to have an unending supply of just didn’t cut it. And then there were the aches that were beginning to make themselves known all over her body. Tomorrow, she’d be lucky if she could move. Tonight, she just wanted to stand there and absorb his strength.
The emotional roller coaster of fear faded quickly, however, and with its passing, her trembling gradually eased, and the last of her strength just seemed to fade away. Spent, hardly able to keep her eyes open, she sighed and slumped against him.
His hand lifted to her hair, his fingers soothing as he stroked her. “Better?”
Half-asleep, she hummed, “Mmm-hmm.”
“Think you can get dressed by yourself? It’s getting late and we need to get back to camp.”
Her thoughts fuzzy, she frowned. What did he mean “get dressed”? Then it hit her. She was naked but for a shirt that barely covered her backside!
“Oh, God!”
“Now don’t get all embarrassed on me,” he warned quickly when every muscle in her body stiffened in alarm. “I don’t know anybody who would stop to worry about their clothes if they found themselves that close to a boa. You did the right thing and screamed your guts out. Nothing else matters.”
“That’s easy for you to say.” She groaned, pressing against him so he couldn’t see anything. “You’re not the one standing here in your birthday suit.”
“No,” he agreed in a voice laced with laughter. “But that could be arranged.”
“Don’t you dare!”
He chuckled. “Somehow I had a feeling you’d say that. I guess it’s just not my day. Do you want me to get your clothes for you?”
And leave her naked before him? “No!”
“Okay, then you get them.”
For a minute, he thought she was going to reject that suggestion, too, and then they really would have been in a fix. Because a frightened and unaware Maddy pressed against him was one thing. An appealingly shy and embarrassed one who was just as aware of him as he was of her was something altogether different.
“Don’t look,” she whispered softly. Lifting her hand, she blindly patted his face until she found his eyes and covered them with her fingers to make sure they were closed.
Going perfectly still at her first touch, Ace almost groaned at the innocence of her caress. He wasn’t a kid. He’d experienced the knowing, arousing hands of women from Singapore to Sydney, but nothing had ever s
tirred him like the artless brush of Maddy’s fingers. He’d seen her naked and she knew it, yet she trembled at the thought of dressing in front of him on a dark, moonless night when he could hardly see her hand in front of his face.
Just yesterday, he would have called her a prude, too coy and repressed for his taste. If she’d pulled such a stunt last night, he would have accused her of playing some kind of game that he had no intention of falling for. But not now. Not after he’d kissed her this morning. Not after this. He didn’t know how she’d managed it in today’s jaded world, but she had somehow made it to the age of thirty-four without once being touched by a man.
Her modesty humbled him, touched him, made want to wrap her close and lose himself in her sweetness and an innocence that was as rare as snow in the jungle. But to do that, he would have to destroy that very purity that drew him like a bee to honey, he regretfully acknowledged. And that was something he couldn’t do. When he finally took her home, come hell or high water, she would be as untouched as she was when Cement Johnny knocked her out and kidnapped her from the newsstand.
Fighting down the hot need rising like a tide in his body, he willed his eyes to remain shut and said gruffly, “Okay, they’re shut. Scout’s honor.” Reaching for one of her hands, which was still lightly covering his eyes, he dragged it down and pressed the flashlight into it. “But the deal’s off if you scream again. Take the light and find the rest of your clothes. And for God’s sake, be careful!”
Her heart thumping madly, Maddy hesitated, a protest she didn’t have the guts to voice hovering on her tongue. She didn’t want to get dressed because she didn’t want to leave the protection of his arms. Something had happened to her while he’d held her. Daring to study him in the weak light that bounced up from where she pointed the flashlight at the jungle floor at their feet, she tried to put her finger on what it was, and suddenly it hit her. Ace MacKenzie, or whatever his name was, was a fraud. He might pretend to be an irreverent, devil-may-care tough guy who didn’t care about anything or anyone, but whatever else he was, he wasn’t a man who would ever take advantage of a woman. And that made him a man she could trust.
