Читать книгу Jeopardy: A Game of Chance / Loving Evangeline - Линда Ховард, Linda Howard, Линда Ховард - Страница 14

Chapter Six

MINDFUL OF CHANCE’S WARNING, Sunny didn’t wander far. In truth, there wasn’t much to look at, just grit and rocks and scraggly bushes, and those vertical rock walls. The desert had a wild, lonely beauty, but she was more appreciative when she wasn’t stranded in it. When rain filled the stream this sheltered place probably bloomed with color, but how often did it rain here? Once a year?

As the day warmed, the reptiles began to stir. She saw a brown lizard dart into a crevice as she approached. A bird she didn’t recognize swooped down for a tasty insect, then flew back off to freedom. The steep canyon walls didn’t mean anything to a bird, while the hundred feet or so were unscalable to her.

She began to get hungry, and a glance at her watch told her she had been meandering through the canyon for over an hour. What was taking Chance so long? If there was a clog in the lines he should have found it by now.

She began retracing her steps to the plane. She could see Chance still poking around the engine, which meant he probably hadn’t found anything. A chilly finger of fear prodded her, and she pushed it away. She refused to anticipate trouble. She would deal with things as they happened, and if Chance couldn’t repair the plane, then they would have to find some other way out of the canyon. She hadn’t explored far; perhaps the other end was open, and they could simply walk out. She didn’t know how far they were from a town, but she was willing to make the effort. Anything was better than sitting and doing nothing.

As she approached, Chance lifted his hand to show he saw her, then turned back to the engine. Sunny let her gaze linger, admiring the way his T-shirt clung to the muscles of his back and shoulders. The fit of his jeans wasn’t bad, either, she thought, eyeing his butt and long legs.

Something moved in the sand near his feet.

She thought she would faint. Her vision dimmed and narrowed until all she saw was the snake, perilously close to his left boot. Her heart leaped, pounding against her rib cage so hard she felt the thuds.

She had no sensation or knowledge of moving; time took on the viscosity of syrup. All she knew was that the snake was getting bigger and bigger, closer and closer. Chance looked around at her and stepped back from the plane, almost on the coiling length. The snake’s head drew back and her hand closed on a coil, surprisingly warm and smooth, and she threw the awful thing as far as she could. It was briefly outlined against the stark rock, then sailed beyond a bush and dropped from sight.

“Are you all right? Did it bite you? Are you hurt?” She couldn’t stop babbling as she went down on her knees and began patting his legs, looking for droplets of blood, a small tear in his jeans, anything that would show if he had been bitten.

“I’m all right. I’m all right. Sunny! It didn’t bite me.” His voice overrode hers, and he hauled her to her feet, shaking her a little to get her attention. “Look at me!” The force of his tone snagged her gaze with his and he said more quietly, “I’m okay.”

“Are you sure?” She couldn’t seem to stop touching him, patting his chest, stroking his face, though logically she knew there was no way the snake could have bitten him up there. Neither could she stop trembling. “I hate snakes,” she said in a shaking voice. “They terrify me. I saw it—it was right under your feet. You almost stepped on it.”

“Shh,” he murmured, pulling her against him and rocking her slowly back and forth. “It’s all right. Nothing happened.”

She clutched his shirt and buried her head against his chest. His smell, already so familiar and now with the faint odor of grease added, was comforting. His heartbeat was steady, as if he hadn’t almost been snakebitten. He was steady, rock solid, his body supporting hers.

“Oh, my God,” she whispered. “That was awful.” She raised her head and stared at him, an appalled expression on her face. “Yuk! I touched it!” She snatched her hand away from him and held it at arm’s length. “Let me go, I have to wash my hand. Now!”

He released her, and she bolted up the slope to the tent, where the towelettes were. Grabbing one, she scrubbed furiously at her palm and fingers.

Chance was laughing softly as he came up behind her. “What’s the matter? Snakes don’t have cooties. Besides, yesterday you said you weren’t afraid of them.”

“I lied. And I don’t care what they have, I don’t want one anywhere near me.” Satisfied that no snake germs lingered on her hand, she blew out a long, calming breath.

“Instead of swooping down like a hawk,” he said mildly, “why didn’t you just yell out a warning?”

She gave him a blank look. “I couldn’t.” Yelling had never entered her mind. She had been taught her entire life not to yell in moments of tension or danger, because to do so would give away her position. Normal people could scream and yell, but she had never been allowed to be normal.

He put one finger under her chin, lifting her face to the sun. He studied her for a long moment, something dark moving in his eyes; then he tugged her to him and bent his head.

His mouth was fierce and hungry, his tongue probing. She sank weakly against him, clinging to his shoulders and kissing him in return just as fiercely, with just as much hunger. More. She felt as if she had always hungered, and never been fed. She drank life itself from his mouth, and sought more.

His hands were all over her, on her breasts, her bottom, lifting her into the hard bulge of his loins. The knowledge that he wanted her filled her with a deep need to know more, to feel everything she had always denied herself. She didn’t know if she could have brought herself to pull away, but he was the one who broke the kiss, lifting his head and standing there with his eyes closed and a grim expression on his face.

“Chance?” she asked hesitantly.

He growled a lurid word under his breath. Then he opened his eyes and glared down at her. “I can’t believe I’m stopping this a second time,” he said with a raw, furious frustration. “Just for the record, I’m not that noble. Damn it all to hell and back—” He broke off, breathing hard. “It isn’t a clogged fuel line. It must be the pump. We have other things we need to do. We can’t afford to waste any daylight.”

Margreta. Sunny bit her lip to hold back a moan of dismay. She stared up at him, the knowledge of the danger of their situation lying like a stark shadow between them.

She wasn’t licked yet. She had four days. “Can we walk out?”

“In the desert? In August?” He looked up at the rim of the canyon. “Assuming we can even get out of here, we’d have to walk at night and try to find shelter during the day. By afternoon, the temperature will be over a hundred.”

The temperature was probably already well into the seventies, she thought; she was dying of heat inside her heavy sweater, or maybe that was just frustrated lust, since she hadn’t noticed how hot it was until now. She peeled off the sweater and dropped it on top of her bag. “What do we need to do?”

His eyes gleamed golden with admiration, and he squeezed her waist. “I’ll reconnoiter. We can’t get out on this end of the canyon, but maybe there’s a way farther down.”

“What do you want me to do?”

“Look for sticks, leaves, anything that will burn. Gather as much as you can in a pile.”

He set off in the direction she had gone earlier, and she went in the opposite direction. The scrub brush grew heavier at that end of the canyon, and she would find more wood there. She didn’t like to think about how limited the supply would be, or that they might be here for a long, long time. If they couldn’t get out of the canyon, they would eventually use up their meager resources and die.

* * *

HE HATED LYING to her. Chance’s expression was grim as he stalked along the canyon floor. He had lied to terrorists, hoodlums and heads of state alike without a twinge of conscience, but it was getting harder and harder to lie to Sunny. He fiercely protected a hard core of honesty deep inside, the part of him that he shared only with his family, but Sunny was getting to him. She wasn’t what he had expected. More and more he was beginning to suspect she wasn’t working with her father. She was too...gallant was the word that sprang to mind. Terrorists weren’t gallant. In his opinion, they were either mad or amoral. Sunny was neither.

He was more shaken by the episode with the snake than he had let her realize. Not by the snake itself—he had on boots, and since he hadn’t heard rattles he suspected the snake hadn’t been poisonous—but by her reaction. He would never forget the way she had looked, rushing in like an avenging angel, her face paper-white and utterly focused. By her own admission she was terrified of snakes, yet she hadn’t hesitated. What kind of courage had it taken for her to pick up the snake with her bare hand?

Then there was the way she had patted him, looking for a bite. Except with certain people, or during sex, he had to struggle to tolerate being touched. He had learned how to accept affection in his family, because Mom and Maris would not leave him alone. He unabashedly loved playing with all his nephews—and niece—but his family had been the only exception. Until now. Until Sunny. He not only hadn’t minded, he had, for a moment, allowed himself the pure luxury of enjoying the feel of her hands on his legs, his chest. And that didn’t even begin to compare to how much he had enjoyed sleeping with her, feeling those sweet curves all along his side. His hand clenched as he remembered the feel of her breast in his palm, the wonderful resilience that was both soft and firm. He ached to feel her bare skin, to taste her. He wanted to strip her naked and pull her beneath him for a long hard ride, and he wanted to do it in broad daylight so he could watch her brilliant eyes glaze with pleasure.

If she wasn’t who she was he would take her to the south of France, maybe, or a Caribbean island, any place where they could lie naked on the beach and make love in the sunshine, or in a shaded room with fingers of sunlight slipping through closed blinds. Instead, he had to keep lying to her, because whether or not she was working with her father didn’t change the fact that she was the key to locating him.

He couldn’t change the plan now. He couldn’t suddenly “repair” the plane. He thanked God she didn’t know anything about planes, because otherwise she would never have fallen for the fuel pump excuse; a Skylane had a backup fuel pump, for just such an emergency. No, he had to play out the game as he had planned it, because the goal was too damned important to abandon, and he couldn’t take the risk that she was involved up to her pretty ears, after all.

He and Zane had walked a fine line in planning this out. The situation had to be survivable but grim, so nothing would arouse her suspicion. There was food to be had, but not easily. There was water, but not a lot. He hadn’t brought any provisions that might make her wonder why he had them, meaning he had limited himself to the blanket, the water and the pistol, plus the expected items in the plane, such as flares. Hell, she was a lot more prepared than he was, and that made him wary. She wasn’t exactly forthcoming about her reason for toting a damn tent around, either. The lady had secrets of her own.

He reached the far end of the canyon and checked to make certain nothing had changed since he and Zane had been here. No unexpected landslide had caved in a wall, allowing a way out. The thin trickle of water still ran down the rock. He saw rabbit tracks, birds, things they could eat. Shooting them would be the easy way, though; he would have to build some traps, to save his ammunition for emergencies.

Everything was just as he had left it. The plan was working. The physical attraction between them was strong; she wouldn’t resist him much longer, maybe not at all. She certainly hadn’t done anything to call a halt earlier. And after he was her lover—well, women were easily beguiled by sexual pleasure, the bonds of the flesh. He knew the power of sex, knew how to use it to make her trust him. He wished he could trust her—this would be a lot easier if he could—but he knew too much about the human soul’s capability of evil, and that a pretty face didn’t necessarily mean a pretty person was behind it.

When he judged enough time had passed for him to completely reconnoiter the canyon, he walked back. She was still gathering sticks, he saw, going back and forth between the bushes and the growing pile next to the tent. She looked up when he got closer, hope blazing in her expression.

He shook his head. “It’s a box canyon. There’s no way out,” he said flatly. “The good news is, there’s water at the far end.”

She swallowed. Her eyes were huge with distress, almost eclipsing her face. “We can’t climb out, either?”

“It’s sheer rock.” He put his hands on his hips, looking around. “We need to move closer to the water, for convenience. There’s an overhang that will give us shade from the sun, and the ground underneath is sandier, so it’ll be more comfortable.”

Or as comfortable as they could get, sleeping in that small tent.

Wordlessly she nodded and began folding the tent. She did it briskly, without wasted movement, but he saw she was fighting for control. He stroked her upper arm, feeling her smooth, pliant skin, warm and slightly moist from her exertion. “We’ll be okay,” he reassured her. “We just have to hold out until someone sees our smoke and comes to investigate.”

“We’re in the middle of nowhere,” she said shakily. “You said so yourself. And I only have four days until—”

“Until what?” he asked, when she stopped.

“Nothing. It doesn’t matter.” She stared blindly at the sky, at the clear blue expanse that was turning whiter as the hot sun climbed upward.

Four days until what? he wondered. What was going to happen? Was she supposed to do something? Was a terrorist attack planned? Would it go forward without her?

* * *

THE DOGLEG OF the canyon was about half a mile long, and the angle gave it more shade than where they had landed. They worked steadily, moving their camp, with Chance hauling the heaviest stuff. Sunny tried to keep her mind blank, to not think about Margreta, to focus totally on the task at hand.

It was noon, the white sun directly overhead. The heat was searing, the shade beneath the overhang so welcome she sighed with relief when they gained its shelter. The overhang was larger than she had expected, about twelve feet wide and deep enough, maybe eight feet, that the sunshine would never penetrate its depths. The rock sloped to a height of about four feet at the back, but the opening was high enough that Chance could stand up without bumping his head.

“I’ll wait until it’s cooler to get the rest,” he said. “I don’t know about you, but I’m starving. Let’s have half of one of your nutrition bars now, and I’ll try to get a rabbit for dinner.”

She rallied enough to give him a look of mock dismay. “You’d eat Peter Cottontail?”

“I’d eat the Easter Bunny right now, if I could catch him.”

He was trying to make her laugh. She appreciated his effort, but she couldn’t quite shake off the depression that had seized her when her last hope of getting out of here quickly had evaporated.

She had lost her appetite, but she dug out one of the nutrition bars and halved it, though she hid the fact that Chance’s “half” was bigger than hers. He was bigger; he needed more. They ate their spartan little meal standing up, staring out at the bleached tones of the canyon. “Drink all the water you want,” he urged. “The heat dehydrates you even in the shade.”

Obediently she drank a bottle of water; she needed it to get the nutrition bar down. Each bite felt as if it was getting bigger and bigger in her mouth, making it difficult to swallow. She resorted to taking only nibbles, and got it down that way.

After they ate, Chance made a small circle of rocks, piled in some sticks and leaves, both fresh and dead, and built a fire. Soon a thin column of smoke was floating out of the canyon. It took him no more than five minutes to accomplish, but when he came back under the overhang his shirt was damp with sweat.

She handed him a bottle of water, and he drank deeply, at the same time reaching out a strong arm and hooking it around her waist. He drew her close and pressed a light kiss to her forehead, nothing more, just held her comfortingly. She put her arms around him and clung, desperately needing his strength right now. She hadn’t had anyone to lean on in a long time; she had always had to be the strong one. She had tried so hard to stay on top of things, to plan for every conceivable glitch, but she hadn’t thought to plan for this, and now she had no idea what to do.

“I have to think of something,” she said aloud.

“Shh. All we have to do is stay alive. That’s the most important thing.”

He was right, of course. She couldn’t do anything about Margreta now. This damn canyon had saved their lives yesterday, but it had become a prison from which she couldn’t escape. She had to play the hand with the cards that had been dealt to her and not let depression sap her strength. She had to hope Margreta wouldn’t do anything foolish, just go to ground somewhere. How she would ever find her again she didn’t know, but she could deal with that if she just knew her sister was alive and safe somewhere.

“Do you have family who will worry?” he asked.

God, that went to the bone! She shook her head. She had family, but Margreta wouldn’t worry; she would simply assume the worst.

“What about you?” she asked, realizing she had fallen halfway in love with the man and didn’t know a thing about him.

He shook his head. “C’mon, let’s sit down.” With nothing to use for a seat, they simply sat on the ground. “I’ll take two of the seats out of the plane this afternoon, so we’ll be more comfortable,” he said. “In answer to your question, no, I don’t have anyone. My folks are dead, and I don’t have any brothers or sisters. There’s an uncle somewhere, on my dad’s side, and my mom had some cousins, but we never kept in touch.”

“That’s sad. Family should stay together.” If they could, she added silently. “Where did you grow up?”

“All over. Dad wasn’t exactly known for his ability to keep a job. What about your folks?”

She was silent for a moment, then sighed. “I was adopted. They were good people. I still miss them.” She drew a design in the dirt with her finger. “When we didn’t show up in Seattle last night, would someone have notified the FAA?”

“They’re probably already searching. The problem is, first they’ll search the area I should have been over when I filed my flight plan.”

“We were off course?” she asked faintly. It just kept getting worse and worse.

“We went off course looking for a place to land. But if anyone is searching this area, eventually he’ll see our smoke. We just have to keep the fire going during the day.”

“How long will they look? Before they call off the search?”

He was silent, his golden eyes narrowed as he searched the sky. “They’ll look as long as they think we might be alive.”

“But if they think we’ve crashed—”

“Eventually they’ll stop looking,” he said softly. “It might be a week, a little longer, but they’ll stop.”

“So if no one finds us within, say, ten days—” She couldn’t go on.

“We don’t give up. There’s always the possibility a private plane will fly over.”

He didn’t say that the possibility was slight, but he didn’t have to. She had seen for herself the kind of terrain they’d flown over, and she knew how narrow and easily missed this canyon was.

She drew up her knees and wrapped her arms around her legs, staring wistfully at the languid curls of gray smoke. “I used to wish I could go someplace where no one could find me. I didn’t realize there wouldn’t be room service.”

He chuckled as he leaned back on one elbow and stretched out his long legs. “Nothing gets you down for long, does it?”

“I try not to let it. Our situation isn’t great, but we’re alive. We have food, water and shelter. Things could be worse.”

“We also have entertainment. I have a deck of cards in the plane. We can play poker.”

“Do you cheat?”

“Don’t need to,” he drawled.

“Well, I do, so I’m giving you fair warning.”

“Warning taken. You know what happens to cheaters, don’t you?”

“They win?”

“Not if they get caught.”

“If they’re any good, they don’t get caught.”

He twirled a finger in her hair and lightly tugged. “Yeah, but if they get caught they’re in big trouble. You can take that as my warning.”

“I’ll be careful,” she promised. A yawn took her by surprise. “How can I be sleepy? I got plenty of sleep last night.”

“It’s the heat. Why don’t you take a nap? I’ll watch the fire.”

“Why aren’t you sleepy?”

He shrugged. “I’m used to it.”

She really was sleepy, and there was nothing else to do. She didn’t feel like setting up the tent, so she dragged her bag into position behind her and leaned back on it. Silently Chance tossed her sweater into her lap. Following his example, she rolled up the sweater and stuffed it under her head. She dozed within minutes. It wasn’t a restful sleep, being one of those light naps in which she was aware of the heat, of Chance moving around, of her worry about Margreta. Her muscles felt heavy and limp, though, and completely waking up was just too much trouble.

The problem with afternoon naps was that one woke feeling both groggy and grungy. Her clothes were sticking to her, which wasn’t surprising considering the heat. When she finally yawned and sat up, she saw that the sun was beginning to take on a red glow as it sank, and though the temperature was still high, the heat had lost its searing edge.

Chance was sitting cross-legged, his long, tanned fingers deftly weaving sticks and string into a cage. There was something about the way he looked there in the shadow of the overhang, his attention totally focused on the trap he was building while the light reflected off the sand outside danced along his high cheekbones, that made recognition click in her brain. “You’re part Native American, aren’t you?”

“American Indian,” he corrected absently. “Everyone born here is a native American, or so Dad always told me.” He looked up and gave her a quick grin. “Of course, ‘Indian’ isn’t very accurate, either. Most labels aren’t. But, yeah, I’m a mixed breed.”

“And ex-military.” She didn’t know why she said that. Maybe it was his deftness in building the trap. She wasn’t foolish enough to attribute that to any so-called Native American skills, not in this day and age, but there was something in the way he worked that bespoke survival training.

He gave her a surprised glance. “How did you know?”

She shook her head. “Just a guess. The way you handled the pistol, as if you were very comfortable with it. What you’re doing now. And you used the word ‘reconnoiter.’”

“A lot of people are familiar with weapons, especially outdoorsmen, who would also know how to build traps.”

“Done in by your vocabulary,” she said, and smirked. “You said ‘weapons’ instead of just ‘guns,’ the way most people—even outdoorsmen—would have.”

Again she was rewarded with that flashing grin. “Okay, so I’ve spent some time in a uniform.”

“What branch?”

“Army. Rangers.”

Well, that certainly explained the survival skills. She didn’t know a lot about the Rangers, or any military group, but she did know they were an elite corps.

He set the finished trap aside and began work on another one. Sunny watched him for a moment, feeling useless. She would be more hindrance than help in building traps. She sighed as she brushed the dirt from her skirt. Darn, stranded only one day and here she was, smack in the middle of the old sexual stereotypes.

She surrendered with good grace. “Is there enough water for me to wash out our clothes? I’ve lived in these for two days, and that’s long enough.”

“There’s enough water, just nothing to collect it in.” He unfolded his legs and stood with easy grace. “I’ll show you.”

He led the way out of the overhang. She clambered over rocks in his wake, feeling the heat burn through the sides of her shoes and trying not to touch the rocks with her hands. When they reached more shade, the relief was almost tangible.

“Here.” He indicated a thin trickle of water running down the face of the wall. The bushes were heavier here, because of the water, and the temperature felt a good twenty degrees cooler. Part of it was illusion, because of the contrast, but the extra greenery did have a cooling effect.

Sunny sighed as she looked at the trickle. Filling their water bottles would be a snap. Washing off would be easy. But washing clothes—well, that was a different proposition. There wasn’t a pool in which she could soak them, not even a puddle. The water was soaked immediately into the dry, thirsty earth. The ground was damp, but not saturated.

The only thing she could do was fill a water bottle over and over, and rinse the dust out. “This will take forever,” she groused.

An irritating masculine smirk was on his face as he peeled his T-shirt off over his head and handed it to her. “We aren’t exactly pressed for time, are we?”

She almost thrust the shirt back at him and demanded he put it on, but not because of his comment. She wasn’t a silly prude, she had seen naked chests more times than she could count, but she had never before seen his naked chest. He was smoothly, powerfully muscled, with pectorals that looked like flesh-covered steel and a hard, six-pack abdomen. A light patch of black hair stretched from one small brown nipple to the other. She wanted to touch him. Her hand actually ached for the feel of his skin, and she clenched her fingers hard on his shirt.

The smirk faded, his eyes darkening. He touched her face, curving his fingers under her chin and lifting it. His expression was hard with pure male desire. “You know what’s going to happen between us, don’t you?” His voice was low and rough.

“Yes.” She could barely manage a whisper. Her throat had tightened, her body responding to his touch, his intent.

“Do you want it?”

So much she ached with it, she thought. She looked up into those golden-brown eyes and trembled from the enormity of the step she was taking.

“Yes,” she said.