Maddy Lawrence's Big Adventure

by Linda Turner

  His mouth pressed flat into an uncompromising line of determination, he never knew where he found the strength of will to put her from him. Especially when her eyes flashed with hurt. Dammit, hadn’t anyone ever told her she wasn’t supposed to wear her heart on her sleeve? he thought resentfully. Did she think this was easy for him? He knew what he was missing; she didn’t. But he was trying to do the right thing for once in his life, and by God, he was going to do it even if it killed him!

  “Dominic can’t get all the packs up the cliff by himself,” he said tersely. “Why don’t you take a break? You look like you could use one.”

  He left her standing there and headed back to the cliff like a man who had just escaped a close brush with disaster. Feeling as if her heart had just taken a dive over the waterfall, Maddy stared after him long after he disappeared from view. The breath she hadn’t realized she was holding escaped in a slow rush. She told herself she was glad he hadn’t kissed her again. She couldn’t handle it, couldn’t handle what he did to her. He made her forget that this wasn’t reality, that he wasn’t and never could be the man she’d been waiting for all her life. Because he was a dream, as out of her reach as the fictional Ace MacKenzie.

  The emotion that helped get her up the side of the cliff faded as Maddy settled in the middle of the canoe and they started upriver again. With her paddle in hand, she should have slipped right back into the rhythm with ease, but one by one, her muscles began to tighten up. Bumps and bruises that had until now been masked by the rush of adrenaline that had accompanied her near fall began to make themselves known.

  She ached…literally everywhere. Even her teeth hurt. A dull throbbing in her head seemed to keep cadence with the beat of her heart, and she wasn’t sure, but she thought she must have wrenched her shoulder. White-hot pain seared her every time she moved her left arm.

  Casting a quick look at Ace’s stiff back, she sent up a silent prayer of thanks that he was sitting in front of her instead of behind her. He never saw the grimaces of pain she couldn’t quite hide or the careful way she shifted in her seat in an effort to get comfortable. But regardless of how she changed positions, nothing seemed to help.

  And then there was her side. She didn’t think it was bleeding, but from the way it burned, she must have scraped it raw against a jagged edge of rock when she’d thrown herself onto the ledge. She could feel her shirt sticking to it and didn’t dare lean against the side of the canoe the way she longed to. She knew Dominic had to notice, but he was thankfully silent, and for that, she was profoundly grateful. Because if Ace suspected half of what she was feeling, he’d stop immediately, deal with her injuries and then send her back to Caracas to wait for his return. And in the process, he would lose precious time and probably any chance of catching Lazear.

  No, she told herself silently, stifling a moan when she inadvertently moved the wrong way. She wouldn’t let him lose Mr. Lazear because of her. After all, it wasn’t as if she were dying. So she had a few scrapes and bruises, so what? She’d clean them up later when they stopped for the night and Ace would be none the wiser. By tomorrow, she’d be good as new.

  It was a good plan, but by the time they stopped for the night, she was so stiff she could hardly move. If it hadn’t been for Dominic quickly coming to her aid, she wouldn’t have even been able to get out of the canoe.

  Taking her hand as he helped her out, he said quietly, “Maybe you should sit down and rest, señorita. You don’t look so good.”

  If she looked half as bad as she felt, that had to be a whopper if she’d ever heard one, but she couldn’t help grinning at his blunt statement. “Gee, thanks, Dominic. Now I really feel better.”

  “Oh, but I didn’t mean-”

  “The señorita knows what you meant,” Ace said dryly as he lifted the backpacks from the canoe and began unpacking the tents. “She was just teasing. And you’re rightshe’s beginning to look a little purple around the edges.” Turning his attention to Maddy, he frowned. There was no point in asking if she was all right—he knew her well enough by now to know that she’d have to be half-dead before she’d complain. “Pull up a log and sit down,” he said gruffly. “Dominic and I can handle the tents.”

  “But I’ve been sitting all day. And look at those clouds,” she added, lifting her eyes to the dark clouds gathering ominously overhead. “You’ll never get the tents up before it rains if you don’t let me help.”

  She had a point, one that he had no choice but to concede to if he was going to have her safely inside before the evening showers hit. But he didn’t like it. She looked… fragile. Finding the hammer among the bag of tools he carried in his pack, he handed it to her handle first. “I’ll take care of the heavy stuff. All you’ve got to do is hammer when I say hammer. Got it?”

  It was an order, pure and simple, one she didn’t miss. “Yes, sir. Anything you say, sir.”

  She didn’t salute, but she might as well have. His lips twitching, he tried his damnedest to keep his expression stern, but he was fighting a losing battle. Little witch. “That’s what I like to hear—a woman who knows her place,” he drawled. Casting another quick look at the clouds gathering overhead, he estimated that they were only five minutes or so away from busting wide open. “We’d better get moving or we’re all going to get soaked.”

  They didn’t need a second warning. Jumping into action, they hurriedly started throwing the tents up. Four minutes later, with only a slight sprinkle for a warning, the skies opened up, and they still had one stake left to secure. Muttering a curse, Ace grabbed the hammer from Maddy and yelled at her to get inside, but her strained muscles refused to let her do anything fast. Already soaked, she turned toward the tent entrance, wincing in pain, as Ace gave the stake two powerful blows that sent it shuddering into the wet ground. In the next instant, he snatched her up into his arms and ran for the cover of their tent as Dominic darted into his own.

  “Damn, I thought we were going to make it!” Shaking his wet hair out of his eyes, he laughed and bent to set her on her feet.

  Every muscle in her body seemed to cry out in protest at the simple movement, but Maddy refused to give in to the discomfort. Pasting on a smile, she lifted a hand to her dripping hair and instantly regretted it. A hot pain shot out of her sore shoulder, stealing her breath. With a quiet hiss, she froze and squeezed her eyes shut.

  The second she opened them a few moments later and found him watching her, she knew it was too much to hope that Ace hadn’t noticed her pain. His gaze sharp in the . shadows that slowly filled the interior of the tent, he frowned at her accusingly. “Why didn’t you tell me you were in pain?”

  “I’m not-”

  “The hell you’re not! You’re as white as a sheet, and you can hardly move. I knew you’d be stiff and banged up, but this is more than that, isn’t it? You’re really hurt.”

  His tone was filled with a self-reproach that stabbed her right in the heart. “No! I’m not…not seriously, at least,” she quickly amended. “It’s just my shoulder—I think I wrenched it when I fell.”

  “And…?”

  He waited for the rest, and she knew he wouldn’t let up until she told him. “I scraped my side.”

  Ace swore long and hard then, wanting to shake her. “You little fool! This is the jungle, for God’s sake! You don’t walk around with open wounds all afternoon getting infected with God knows what. How bad is it?”

  “It’s n-nothing. Just a scrape.”

  She tried to shrug off his concern, but he knew he’d scared her—he could see it in the shadow of her eyes. And she needed to be scared, dammit. If she got some kind of jungle fever because of this…

  “I’m going to have to take a look at it,” he said huskily. “Which side is it?”

  She started to give him an argument, but he gave her a fierce glare that warned her this was one fight she wasn’t going to win. Pale, she turned her left side to face him and lifted her arm. Reaching out, he carefully lifted her shirt.

&nbs
p; Her head turned aside, Maddy felt the touch of the damp air on her raw skin and braced herself for Ace’s touch. But he only sucked in a sharp breath and gently lowered her shirt. And that’s when she knew she must have hurt herself much worse than even she had suspected. He didn’t yell at her or grumble about her foolishness; he just spoke in a quiet, controlled voice that was somehow much more unsettling than a shout of anger. “The first-aid kit’s in Dominic’s backpack. I’ll be right back.”

  He strode out into the rain, leaving her to think what she would as the shadows gathered around her and her imagination ran wild. He would send her back for sure now, she thought, stricken. She’d left him no other choice. And she didn’t want to go. He’d showed her a whole new world and a side of herself that she had never suspected existed, and for the first time in years, she felt alive, really alive. Her days had a vibrancy they hadn’t had before, her nights an anticipation that left her breathless. All because of Ace. He’d dragged her kicking and screaming out of a dull, colorless existence, and just the thought of going back to that…and leaving him…made her sick at heart.

  With the rain a dull pounding against the roof of the tent, she didn’t hear him return, but suddenly he was there in front of her, his face creased with lines of concern and his arms laden with supplies that included everything from the first-aid kit and a flashlight to the Bunsen burner Dominic had used to cook their supper last night. Frowning, she said, “What’s that for?”

  “To heat water.” All business, he switched on the flashlight and hung it on the center pole of the tent, then quickly proceeded to set up the burner and start heating a small pot of water. His eyes on the task, he tore open the first-aid kit and started removing the items he would need. “Can you take your shirt off by yourself or do you need some help?”

  Somewhere in the back of her mind, she’d known he couldn’t very well treat her injuries with her shirt on, but the thought that she would have to undress in front of him never quite registered. Staring at him blankly, she said, “You’re going to help me undress?”

  He looked up then, his blue eyes dark with purpose and deadly serious. “This is no time for modesty, sweetheart. Your side’s got to be cleaned and treated with antiseptic. That means taking off your shirt. If you can’t do it by yourself because of your sore shoulder, then I’ll help you.”

  There wasn’t anything the least bit suggestive or out of line in his tone. He looked as professional as a paramedic, but her heart still had this crazy tendency to turn over at the thought of him undressing her. Hugging herself, she unconsciously took a step back. “N-no. I can do it. Just give me a minute.”

  He nodded. “Take your time. The water’s not warm yet, anyway.”

  He turned his attention back to the first-aid kit, not sparing her so much as a glance as she lifted trembling fingers to the top button of the grass green blouse he’d bought her in Mexico City. Her throat dry, Maddy hesitated, feeling like a child and hating herself for it. He was right—this was no time for modesty. And it wasn’t as if he’d never seen a woman without her clothes before. He’d probably been personally responsible for stripping hundreds himself. He’d gotten a good look at her last night at the river, so he wasn’t likely to so much as blink at the sight of her in a bra.

  Still, she presented him her back as she fumbled with the buttons, releasing them one by one. And in the tense silence that seemed to grow like spectators at the scene of an accident, her heart thundered like a runaway train.

  Reaching the last button, her blouse hanging open like a wanton’s, she dragged in a calming breath and assured herself that she could do this. All she had to do was act as if she wasn’t the least concerned about standing before him in her underwear and he’d never notice her embarrassment.

  But when she peeled the front sections of the garment back so that it could just slide off with only a slight shrug, her sore shoulder locked up tight, making only the barest minimum of movement possible. More on than off, her blouse just hung there. A silent groan lodging in her throat, she tried again…with the same results.

  “Problems?” Ace asked quietly.

  She hadn’t heard him approach, but suddenly he was right behind her, so close she could feel his breath stirring her hair. She stiffened, feeling horribly exposed. In the revealing light of the flashlight, a blind man couldn’t have missed the curve of her breast covered only by her bra.

  Sudden tears thickening in her throat, she nodded. “I g-guess I need some help, after all.”

  Without a word, he carefully placed his hands on her shoulders and gently began to ease the garment off. His jaw as rigid as a block of granite, he sternly ordered himself to concentrate on her injuries, but from the moment he’d stepped up behind her and caught sight of her bra, it was all he could do not to groan. Red again. God, what had possessed him to buy her sexy underwear? He’d wanted to shock her, to shake up that prim and proper demeanor of hers and get under her skin a little, but he was the one who was constantly being thrown for a loop. Dammit, next time he bought a woman—any woman—underwear, he was getting plain-Jane cotton!

  “Well?”

  Jerking back to attention, he looked up to find that she’d turned and lifted her arm so that he could see her side clearly in the light. From the expectant way she was looking at him, her cheeks on fire with color, she’d obviously said something, but he hadn’t a clue what it was. “What?”

  “I said it must be pretty bad. You haven’t said a word.”

  Only because he’d been too busy drooling like a young pup who’d never seen a woman in her underwear before, he thought irritably. “No, I was just…thinking,” he lied huskily, and dropped his gaze to her nearly naked torso.

  In the full glare of the flashlight, he was able to see that she was hurt much worse than he’d originally thought. Large patches of skin had been scraped away along her ribs, creating open wounds that had to sting like the devil.

  A muscle bunching along his tightly clenched jaw, he lifted his fingers to an ugly yellow-and-black bruise that was just above the waistband of her shorts and as big as his hand. He knew battle-toughened men who would have gone to their knees with that type of wound, yet she hadn’t so much as whimpered all afternoon. She’d let him lead her up the side of that cliff, then climbed into the canoe and paddle upriver for hours without a single break. How had she stood it?

  Wanting to shake her, to take her in his arms and assure her that he would never let anything or anyone hurt her again, he said in a rough whisper, “I ought to turn you over my knee, lady, for not telling me about this. How do you think I feel knowing you must have been in agony all afternoon and you didn’t trust me enough to tell me? What’s the matter? Did you think I’d go on without you or what?”

  “I didn’t want to slow you down,” she said with a quiet dignity that struck him right in the heart. “We’ve already lost too much time as it is. Mr. Lazear—”

  “Screw Lazear,” he growled. “He’s not your problemhe’s mine. And I’ll deal with the bastard when I catch him.”

  Jesus, what kind of monster did she think he was? He’d get the damn ring somehow, but not at the expense of her health. Nothing was worth that. Turning away, he grabbed her sleeping bag and rolled it open with a snap of his wrist. “Come over here and sit down by the light,” he told her gruffly. “The water’s warm now.”

  Grabbing up her discarded shirt, she held it protectively in front of her and crossed to her sleeping bag, drawing a smile from him that faded the second she settled cross-legged in front of him. He was going to have to hurt her— there was no help for it. And it sickened him.

  Tersely explaining what he was going to do, he dipped gauze in the warm water and warned, “This is going to sting. Yell if you want to.”

  At his first touch, Maddy stiffened like a poker, liquid fire spreading out in waves across her ribs. She groaned—she couldn’t help it—and immediately felt Ace jerk his hand back as if he was the one who burned. Curses—all directed
at himself—turned the air blue, drowning out the rain that continued to pound the roof of the tent.

  “Hell, honey, I’m sorry—”

  “No!” she choked thickly. “Don’t apologize.”

  “But I hurt you, dammit!”

  “It’ll hurt a lot worse if those scrapes get infected. Go ahead. Do your worst. I can stand it if you can.”

  This time when he touched her, she told herself she was ready for the pain. Her jaw locked and her mouth pressed flat, she stared unseeingly at the dull green walls of the tent and thought of ice. Mountains and mountains of ice surrounded by choppy seas and weeping skies that soothed her fevered skin and chilled her all the way to the bone. There was no heat there, no fire, nothing to burn her.

  For all of two seconds, she was totally immersed in the image, her concentration so fierce she actually shivered. Then he swabbed another contusion with the gauze, and the wintry scene vanished in a blast of red-hot heat. Sweat popped out on her brow and her upper lip. Rigid, she felt a groan swell in her chest like an expanding balloon, but this time she didn’t cry out. Not even when tears traced a silent path down her ashen cheeks.

  She never knew how long the torture lasted. Dazed, her vision blurring, her body braced and all her attention focused on the next burning stroke, she lost touch with all concepts of space and time. Nothing mattered but enduring the never-ending agony with as much composure as she could manage and hanging on until the moment when she would finally cease to hurt.

  Surprisingly, that moment arrived long before she expected it. One second, her nerve endings were crying out for relief and the next, Ace was throwing the unused bandages across the tent with a snarled oath. “There, dammit! I’m through. If you want to haul off and hit me, I wouldn’t blame you.”

  Light-headed, she dragged in a deep, cleansing breath and slowly let it out, but it was a long moment before she could manage to say anything. “No,” she said faintly, her smile weak. “I’ll have to take a rain check on that. If I tried that right now, I’d fall flat on my face.”