by Hoff, Stacy
“My God! There they are!” James cried back.
The men yelled out cries of relief and ran to meet each other.
“Are you all right?” Devon demanded.
“We were worried to death!” Tom interjected. “All of us. Even Mark. He was going to catch a flight this afternoon to join our search party if you weren’t found.”
She blinked at that. “Really?” she exclaimed. Unconsciously, she placed her hand over her heart, deeply touched by Mark’s concern.
Tom smiled in obvious amusement. “Yeah. Mark said, and I’m quoting here, ‘Can you imagine our liability if she dies out there?’ That’s our boy, Mark. Gotta love him.”
She didn’t answer, pressing her lips together tightly. Yep, that sounded more like Mark, all right. Sentimental guy that he was.
“We brought some fresh water,” James broke in, holding out two large bottles. She grabbed one, twisting off the cap and drinking most of it down. James reached into his vest and handed them granola bars, which were quickly devoured. Simple food and water never tasted so good, she thought, licking the crumbs off her lips. “We brought a change of clothes for you, too. We had to bribe the hotel maid to let us into your room, but it was worth the twenty dollars,” he grinned. “Unless you like the look and feel of mud.”
“Not so much,” Stephanie retorted. “Thanks for the clothes.”
“They’re on the boat in a plastic bag,” James said, gesturing over to the water. “We brought a few of your things down—we weren’t sure what you’d want. Uh, we took a change of underwear for you, too. Sorry to get so personal, we thought you’d want it.”
“Yeah, the experience was a little too personal for us, if you ask me,” Devon said snarkily. “What’s up with all the lace bras and thongs?” He laughed so loudly she was sure Devon could be heard all the way back to the hotel.
“Let’s get her back on the boat,” Colin said, changing the topic.
“We brought a change of clothes for you, too,” James said. “They’re in the smaller bag.”
“Thanks,” Colin replied, stuffing the granola wrapper in his shorts pocket. “We’ll change into them now and we’ll be off.”
“No problem. I’m putting on my Teleworld account the additional ten-dollar bribe I gave the maid,” he said, giving Colin a wink.
“No need. After I claim the million-dollar prize, I can pay you back myself.”
He and Stephanie took the clothes and walked off to the tree line in separate directions. When they were ready, all of them walked back to the boats. The group trailed behind Colin. She had the weirdest notion of them looking like a flock of wild geese, Colin leading the head of the formation, while the rest fanned out behind him.
“We’ll all head out to our next stop,” Colin called to them over his shoulder. “We’re traveling south to the wet prairies, and then into the mangroves. We’ll take two of the boats while Stephanie takes the third boat back to the hotel.”
“Two more destinations? I thought we only had one more,” Devon inquired. He frowned and tugged the collar of his tee shirt away from his neck.
His question was drowned out by Stephanie’s louder one. “You’re all going on without me?” she squealed.
Colin stopped walking so suddenly she almost bumped into him. Turning around, he leveled her with a stern look. “Yeah, Steph, we’re going on without you,” he answered. “You need to get the cuts on your feet cleaned up and some sleep.”
“What the heck happened to her feet?” asked James. “Stephanie, are you okay? Do you need a doctor or something?”
“Damn, I knew we should have brought a first aid kit,” Tom muttered.
“Why is she in need of sleep? What were you two doing all night?” Devon asked with a grin so large it threatened to overtake his whole face. “Did any of your nocturnal activities involve her lacey lingerie?” He eyed them both mischievously.
Colin’s slit-eyed stare down immediately silenced him.
Stephanie muttered her response. “Real mature, Devon.”
Devon shrugged his broad shoulders and grinned Cheshire cat wide.
Colin cleared his throat deliberately loud, getting everyone’s attention. “Let me answer all of your questions about what happened to us last night . . .”
As Colin recapped the night, thankfully leaving out the personal details, her thoughts wandered. The only answer she cared about was whether she’d let them continue on without her. She’d need to get used to the idea of leaving Colin behind. But that time didn’t need to be now. “I’m going to the mangroves with you,” she said, interrupting Colin’s recap to the crew.
“What?” he said, voice raised. “No, you’re not.”
Devon bit back a smile. “Dude, never tell a woman ‘no.’ They get real upset, and they don’t listen anyway.”
“She’s not going,” Colin said definitively.
Stephanie tugged back a stray hair from her braid and headed to an airboat.
The driver, a balding man with overalls, took her hand and helped her on. “Nice to see you back, little miss,” he said kindly. “Where to?”
“South to the wet prairies, please,” she said, sitting down and titling up her face toward the sun. After all that rain, the sun’s rays had the healing power of dry warmth. She tugged off her boots and socks, stretching her bare feet across the boat’s deck. Closing her eyes, she basked in the heat.
“You look like one of ’em gators,” the driver chuckled. “Cold-blooded critters. They climb up on rocks every once in a while to warm up.”
Stephanie shifted more into the sun. “I’ll be as ferocious as an alligator if we don’t get going. Trust me, you don’t want to see that. Not my best look.”
The driver chuckled and gave her a nod. “Yes, ma’am.” Then he boomed out to the men on land, “Little missy here wants to go see the wet prairies, and I’m gonna take her. If any of you all want to go, too, you’d best be moving.”
Tom, James, and Devon hustled over.
Colin, grumbling, stayed a few steps behind.
The airboats traveled south until the sun was high in the sky. They disembarked on what was barely an island, more like drier elevation in the vast sawgrass marshland. The drivers left them to refuel and the crew plunked down their stuff on a small rocky outcrop. Tom and Devon fiddled with the camera cases.
“Devon, can you get us some wood?” Colin asked, though Stephanie thought it came out more like an order.
“Sure thing, boss,” Devon quipped, but he set off to do Colin’s task.
Colin walked up to Stephanie. “I want to talk to you,” he said through clenched teeth. “I have no idea why you’re here. I wanted you to rest and take care of your cuts.”
“Don’t worry about me,” she answered breezily.
“But I am worried about you. That’s the problem. Don’t you get it? If anything happens to you—”
“Hey! Are you two getting along down there?” Tom called out to them.
They nodded in unison.
“Sure,” Colin said. “She’s going to help me catch some crayfish for lunch. Be back in a few minutes.”
As they walked the shoreline, Stephanie faintly heard Tom say, “What the heck were they arguing about?” She looked back to see James shrug, before she turned back to follow Colin.
Walking among the knee high, rough grass was hard work. If she wasn’t careful, she’d be even more cut up than she already was. About a half-mile into their trek, she swatted away a large flying insect that persisted on humming in her ear. Whatever the insect was, it wasn’t one she wanted to sting her. With one large swat she lost her balance and fell down, landing with a loud crack.
Chapter 16
“Steph! Are you okay? Did you break anything?” Colin asked, panic in his voic
e.
“No,” she answered, voice as shaky as her body.
He let out a sharp breath of release. Protecting her was going to be as hard a task as protecting hostages. No, worse. This one actually asked for trouble. Begged for it, even.
“It wasn’t a bone that cracked, it was something underneath me,” she explained. He saw her reach around her torso and grab a glob. The glob looked slimy and sticky. Like puked up chunks of yellow Jell-O with sharp pieces protruding everywhere. Holding some of the glop up, they could see what it was—cracked egg.
“Eww!” she spat out. “Thank goodness I have more clean clothes on the boat.”
Why didn’t she ever listen to him?
“This is disgust—” Her words were cut off by the sound of a splash. Turning, he saw a six-foot alligator jump up out of the marsh waters. Mere feet away. Lumbering forward at surprising speed. And headed right for her. She let out a shrill scream.
Without stopping to determine a plan of action, Colin pulled an eight-inch blade out of his back pocket. Throwing the sheath down, he put the blade in his mouth and clenched the dull side with his teeth. In a single fluid motion, he leapt onto the animal’s back, grabbed its head, and clamped the great jaws shut. The animal’s sharp, powerful tail jerked back and forth, trying desperately to throw him off. Colin rolled onto his back, taking the alligator with him, twisting it around until it was flat on its back, on top of him. Only one of them was going to win this round, and he’d be damned if it wasn’t him.
The gator stopped its struggle. In his panic to protect her, he wondered if his heart would stop its struggle, too. The gator felt as heavy as an SUV.
“Is, is that, is it dead?” Stephanie asked, words tangled.
“No, but my sleeper hold won’t last forever,” he choked out. “Go into my bag. There’s a giant rubber band looking thing in there. Take it out.”
It looked like she was forcing herself to move, but she did as he asked. A moment later she tried to hand him the device.
“My hands are a little busy, don’t you think?” he said through clenched teeth. Patience. She’s a city-slicker. One that’s scared shitless. Just like me. Breathe, damn it! “Take the band,” he grunted, “and glide it over its nose. It can’t bite you now, I promise. Do it quick.”
Her hands visibly trembling, she held the device open and quickly shoved it over the protruding nostrils.
“Push it on as high as it can go,” Colin ordered and she tugged the band further up its jaw. “Good. Thanks. Now step back and yell to me when you’re a few yards away.”
Stephanie moved away, yelled his name, and Colin twisted the animal off of him and back onto its legs. He let go, simultaneously jumping up and out of the way. The stunned animal stepped menacingly toward him, trying to open its jaw. When that failed, it slunk back into the water, and Colin let out a hard breath. Enemy down.
Stephanie plunked herself down on the dirt with a loud thump.
“Good, sit yourself down for a minute,” he unnecessarily instructed her. No doubt she had to wait for her heart rate to slow. So did he, for that matter.
“What is that thing you had me put on it?” she asked after a minute.
“It’s my own invention. They don’t have strong jaw muscles for opening their mouth, just for snapping them shut. Put this rubber band on ’em and they can’t open up to bite. Think of it as the kind of rubber band fishermen use to bind lobster claws.”
“Oh,” she said, her voice heavy.
“What’s wrong now? You’re still afraid of it? Think it’s going to come back?”
“Yes. But it’s not that. I know it sounds stupid to feel protective of an animal that just attacked me, but I don’t want it to die.”
“It’s not going to die.”
“Sure it will. How’s it going to eat with the band on?” She stopped for a moment. “I’m sorry. I don’t mean to sound ungrateful. You saved my life.” She looked up at him and smiled. “It looks like you keep saving me. Thank you.”
“Maybe you do have a little of that damsel-in-distress thing going on.” He laughed.
“I’m starting to think so. You’re fitting the hero role very well.”
Damn, really? And he wasn’t even working in his military capacity anymore. He was glad he hadn’t lost his “tough stuff” though and even more glad she admired him. His heart bloomed from her words, lifting and growing as it never had before. “Thanks, back at ’ya. And don’t worry, in a few hours the band will break down from being over stretched. Then it’ll fall off. As I’ve said before, I hate killing things if I don’t have to.”
“You’re amazing,” she said, her voice full of sincerity. She even looked teary. He felt his heart stretch out more than the gator’s noseband. “I’m here to keep you safe,” he said simply, trying to fight off yet another powerful enemy—raw emotion. It was because she touched his heart that he worried deeply. Why she couldn’t just let him keep her safe, he didn’t know.
“Look, Steph, I told you that you shouldn’t be here at all. I’m flattered you think I’m a hero and all that. But to be honest, I’m still annoyed you didn’t listen to me. Following orders is Survival 101.”
Stephanie said nothing as she tugged back more stray hairs.
“Let’s go,” he said more gently, “and get you cleaned up.”
“I’m sorry,” she said. She lifted the ruined bottom of her shirt up to her face. Breathing in, she scrunched up her nose and eyebrows. “Yuck. I stink like alligator eggs.”
“Bird eggs,” he corrected. “You interrupted its lunch. If those had been the alligator’s eggs, you’d be dead.”
Chapter 17
The second and last airboat stop that day was further south toward Florida Bay. She had changed her clothes again and was clean and dry once more. Thank God for hand wipes and Purell. The day, and their journey, were wearing on her. Traces of pink and orange streaked the otherwise bright blue sky. The water had changed color, too. Its greenish cast becoming the brightness of a blue turquoise stone. Sunlight glistened off the water as the boats pressed on. A white crane, high above them, periodically dove down into the water and eventually out of sight. A bigger, odd-looking bird glided overhead. A pelican, maybe. Even with her sunglasses on, she squinted to see clearly—the bright day stubbornly refusing to give way to night.
Finally a beach appeared not too far up ahead. Its narrow, sandy bank wrapped around a large island, the shoreline twisting in and out of alcoves. Tree roots jutted out of the waterline, thick and branch like, shooting out of the sand like massive tangled vines. This endlessly deep thicket of mangroves was visually very different from the cedar hammock, but to her it was still a dangerous jungle.
Disembarking minutes later, she sank her boots into the soft sand. Micro tidal pools formed in a trail behind her, sandy footprints filled with water.
“We’re only going to have an hour and a half here,” Colin called out to them from up ahead. “Then we’re back on the boats to catch a helicopter. We’ll be flying back to the hotel.” The crew nodded and quickly took out the most portable of their equipment, since they’d need to work fast. “Of course,” Colin joked, “any of you who would like your own turn sleeping out in the Everglades, let me know. More manatees than alligators in this area, if you want to give it a go.”
Devon snorted a laugh, the rest were too busy scurrying around to pay attention to him.
Stephanie, notepad out, scribbled away while she sat on the sand. Lost in thought, Colin’s soft voice in her ear a few minutes later surprised her.
“How about you? One more night out here?”
“Don’t tempt me, because I just might say yes.” Her voice instantly went throaty with desire. She managed to keep it low, but the crew was already walking away from them, down the beach to establish possible shots.
<
br /> “Go straight down, about thirty minutes from here,” Colin called out to them. “If you’re lucky, you’ll see sea turtles.”
“Right on!” Devon yelled back before disappearing from sight.
Stephanie looked back to Colin to see him gazing down at her, an indeterminable smile on his face.
“I wish we could spend the night,” she said, voice barely louder than a whisper. “I’ve been thinking, I really don’t want this to end. It doesn’t have to, does it?”
He took her hand, gently rubbing the back of it like he had at the Carlyle’s restaurant. “It doesn’t have to end if you don’t want it to. I’ll be going to New York in a few days to sign the contracts,” he said. “We’ll spend some time together. In a more desirable place than here. The description of your apartment building sounds much better than a lean-to.”
She brushed aside his lighthearted words. “Tell me what happens after those few days,” she asked with fervor. “I don’t even know where you live. Will we be able to see each other?” Blood rushed to her face. She knew she had no right to demand anything from him, including answers. But she’d be leaving for New York tomorrow. If her paradise with him was going to end, she wanted to know now. After all, if she had never dated Freddie, she could have saved herself a lot of heartbreak. It was time she learned her lesson and got out while the going was good. “Be honest with me, Colin. Please.”
“I am being honest with you. Look, I’ve been moving around so much, driven to do so much, I haven’t been involved with a woman for a long time. If I had been, I would have known women don’t follow orders too well.” He grinned, and despite her tension, she let out a snort of laughter. “If this is what it’s like to be in a relationship with a woman,” he continued, “I like how it feels. I like the way you feel,” he said, lifting her hand to his mouth and kissing it. “I want that woman to be you.”
