Quake

by Tracey Alvarez

“Fine.” Note to self: she was beginning to hate it when he was right—which was pretty much all the time. “Turn around.”

  He obediently shuffled to face the entrance, and while he was looking away, she couldn’t help admire the broad shoulders and defined slabs of muscle beneath the wet fabric of his shirt.

  The cotton slurped as she peeled it away from her skin and over her head. Bra on or off? She bit her lip. The light synthetic fabric would dry rapidly and the idea of having something dry to put on in the morning was the deciding factor. Bra off. Wriggling into the sweater, she exhaled at the relief of dry wool settling against her clammy skin. She had a momentary flash of heat flare across her cheekbones as she draped her shirt and bra over one of the poles to dry. Pretty sure the sight of her sensible beige full-coverage bra wasn’t going to send Daniel into a paroxysm of lust-driven madness, she ignored the urge to shove them closer together on the pole so her lingerie wouldn’t be so obvious.

  “I’m done,” she said.

  Daniel didn’t turn around. “No, you’re not. Take the bottom half of your clothes off, too. You’re still soaking.”

  “Like hell.” And this time the flare of heat in her face flamed red hot, spreading to her pelvic muscles, which tightened with the same fire. Take everything off? Spend the night bare-assed naked in a tent with a man she was fiercely attracted to?

  That was begging for her rusty libido to take over and cause her to do something really dumb.

  “The sweater will cover you to your knees. Isn’t that long enough to preserve your modesty?” he asked.

  “That’s hardly the point.”

  He half turned to face her, one brow raised and those maddening dimples winking. “What is the point, then? Surely you’re not so uptight you’d prefer to spend the night in wet, uncomfortable clothes?”

  Uptight, huh? She pushed up the sweater’s too-long sleeves and pinned him with a stare that used to make witnesses on the stand squirm.

  “The point is, Farm Boy, why am I the only one being asked to strip?”

  He chuckled while he unbuttoned his shirt. “Better?”

  She managed a nonchalant shrug, though under the sweater her nipples brushed sensitively against the thick knitted fabric.

  Lord, he was beautiful.

  Undeniably male, but still beautiful. He had the chest of an athlete, muscled and defined, with a smattering of sandy-colored hairs covering his pectorals. No hair covered the sleek cut of his abs but it reappeared in a fine trail below his belly button and temptingly disappeared into the waistband of his jeans.

  Daniel’s hands drifted down to rest on his belt buckle.

  She hypnotically followed their movement as he pulled the belt through the buckle. The hiss of his zipper sliding open triggered her sanity.

  “I’ll give you some privacy,” she squeaked, twisting to face the tent’s back wall.

  She wouldn’t sit there watching him take his jeans off like a woman drooling over a bachelorette’s night stripper. A grunt of amusement drifted over the sounds of denim rasping against bare skin.

  Nipples aching, skin flushed hot—so much for being cold—Ana worried her teeth against her bottom lip and reminded herself of the reasons why nothing was going to happen between them in this damn tent. Unbelievable that less than an hour ago they’d been in the midst of a tension-filled conversation. Now a different kind of tension suffused the atmosphere.

  She inhaled quietly. No need to alert him to the difficulty she was having in regaining her composure. Their earlier conversation should’ve been enough to rid her of this unhealthy interest in him. Daniel had been sympathetic about her past failed relationships, yet he seemed not to grasp the fact that was patently obvious to her. A long-term relationship between them couldn’t succeed and she didn’t do quick, mindless flings.

  More rustling sounds came from behind her.

  Perhaps she’d read too much into his words. She leaped to the conclusion that he was talking about relationships, when he could be one of those guys who’d throw a ‘Love ya, babe’ at you with no more thought than a friendly high-five.

  “You can turn around now,” he said.

  She hesitated, wondering what state of undress she would find him in.

  “I’m perfectly modest.”

  He’d changed into a pair of cargo shorts and a T-shirt. His hand extended toward her with a pair of plain black boxer shorts dangling off his fingertips.

  “You can put these on under the sweater, if you like. They’re clean.”

  “Thank you.” She thought she sounded quite gracious, considering the circumstances.

  “You’re welcome.”

  His dimpled and disarming grin left her flustered. She plucked the shorts from him and without asking he turned his back again. The cotton was smooth and cool against her fingers and she looked at them in disbelieving amusement. Could things get any more bizarre than wearing Daniel’s underwear?

  Wet pants and errant panties came off in an awkward frenzy. Funny how she had gone from thinking of him as a stranger to just Daniel. Distancing herself from him by labelling him a stranger was no longer possible. She dropped her wet clothes to the floor and wriggled into the boxer shorts. They were too large around the waist and slipped to rest on her hipbones, but at least they were blissfully dry and gave her a sense of security, however false.

  “This time I’m done.” She gathered up her pants and panties and hung them up beside her other wet clothes. Beige bra, white panties. Sheesh, she hadn’t even checked she’d grabbed a matching pair when she’d rolled out of bed Friday morning. Wasn’t exactly expecting anyone with XY chromosomes to be eyeballing her lingerie.

  “Feel better?” he asked.

  “Yes.” She decided not to elaborate on how it actually felt wearing two items of clothing that, although clean, still carried a trace of his scent.

  “Cold baked beans for dinner.” He sat cross-legged beside his backpack and pulled out a can, the same one she’d thrown earlier. “Or maybe we should save this in case someone else needs taking down a notch or two?”

  “Like who—you?”

  “I don’t need a whack in the head with a can to cut my ego down to size. One Ice Lawyer look of yours is enough to do that.” He drew a can opener out of the bag.

  “Yet you keep coming back for more.”

  “I’m a persistent kind of guy.”

  She shook her head and laughed. “Persistent or plain bull-headed?”

  “A little of both.” He tossed her a plastic spoon.

  “Just open the can. I’m starving.”

  While he set up a battery-powered lantern and used the can opener, Ana dug the sleeping bag out of her backpack and unrolled it in the center of the confined space. Mrs. Wilcox had insisted she take it, apologizing with a wink after telling her that it was only big enough for one person.

  They sat side by side on top of the sleeping bag, the open can between them. She could’ve been swallowing mouthfuls of tomato-sauce-covered clumps of dirt for all the taste the beans had. Part of that was her dislike of baked beans, since for a few years after Theo was born—and being too proud to ask her parents for a handout—cheap canned food like baked beans had been a staple part of her diet. More disturbing than the memories of the first hard years of solo parenting was the overwhelming physical presence of the man opposite her.

  Every move he made demonstrated the theory of cause and effect. For every action, she countered with an equal and opposite reaction. When he dipped his spoon into the tin, her hand jerked away so their fingers wouldn’t touch. If his knee moved forward, hers edged backward.

  Outside the rain continued to batter the sides of the tent in intermittent spurts. The nylon hissed and the ropes hummed as occasional wind gusts buffeted them. In the distance thunder rumbled hollowly. She thought of Daniel’s voice booming as he shouted at her after the fight, fury in every fiber of his tone. She had to ask.

  “Daniel?” She kept her voice gentle. “Who’s Jodie?
”

  Chapter 23

  Sunday, July 25. 7:26 p.m. Khandallah, a northern suburb in Wellington, New Zealand.

  * * *

  From the haunted expression on Daniel’s face, Ana knew she risked hurting him. But the habit of digging for the truth wouldn’t let her rest. A part of her she could barely admit to needed to know what this woman meant to him.

  His eyes were weary, dully resigned when he glanced up. “She’s a soldier I trained.”

  “Oh.” She shifted on the hard ground. Daniel didn’t seem inclined to elaborate. “You’re still in contact?”

  He shook his head. “I haven’t spoken to her for years. She moved to Australia.”

  “Why did you say her name when you were yelling at me?”

  “I shouldn’t have yelled. I apolog—”

  “You’re changing the subject.”

  “Am I?”

  “Yes. I seem to recall you wouldn’t let me get away with doing that earlier.”

  Daniel stared at her through the flickering shadows for a beat. “What I said to you about not following orders brought up some bad memories.” He pressed his lips together and remained silent.

  Would she have to coerce the rest of the information from him? “Of?”

  He chuckled but there was little humor in the sound. “You call me persistent and bull-headed?”

  She refused to let him off the hook. “Were you two…involved?”

  “No.”

  “Then?”

  Daniel dropped his head backward with a groan and she added, “Yeah, I know I’m pushy and won’t let it go. That’s why my colleagues used to call me a pit bull.”

  “Fitting,” he muttered, tipping his head forward again to meet her eyes. “Jodie was a new recruit in my last year of service. She was twenty-two years old, with a little bit of a spoiled princess about her. She wanted a bit more adventure than shoe shopping, and enlisted. She had a tendency to try and get away with slacking off, but I pushed her to give a hundred percent. On the morning of the accident I’d had another fight with Charlotte and I didn’t notice—” He swallowed audibly and swiped a hand across his mouth. “I didn’t notice how pale she was…”

  When three more seconds ticked past, she whispered, “There was an accident?”

  Daniel nodded. “I ordered her on the course and she hauled herself up on the ten-foot wall, got stuck at the top. I could see her shaking, sweating.” He picked up the can of beans and stirred the spoon around for moment before releasing it. “I ran, yelling at her to halt until I got there. She didn’t listen, tried to position herself to climb down, and got dizzy. She fell. Hard.”

  “God. Daniel.”

  “I found out later she’d been feeling nauseous all morning. She had an ear infection which shot her balance to hell.”

  “What happened to her?”

  “Spinal injury. She regained some function in her legs with a shitload of therapy, but she can’t walk without a cane and she still suffers from chronic nerve pain.”

  “You felt responsible.”

  Daniel shot her a look that clearly said well, duh.

  “Jodie didn’t tell you she was sick,” said Ana. “It’s not your fault. You can’t carry that burden of responsibility.”

  “I was her superior. She was an inexperienced cadet.”

  Ana reached over and plucked the can from his hands, putting it to one side. She squeezed his fingers, her chest tightening as she felt them tremble. “Did she blame you?”

  “No.”

  Ana cocked her head. “Tell me what you did to help her afterward.”

  Daniel looked uncomfortable. “I only did what anyone else would’ve done. I visited her from time to time, kept in touch.”

  She shook her head. “I know you did more than that. You went out of your way to help her.”

  He shrugged. “I contributed a little financially to pay for some of her house alterations.”

  “Ahh, I see.” Ana allowed a pause to grow before she spoke again. “So even though this girl didn’t blame you for the accident, it wasn’t enough for you to stop dragging that misplaced guilt around?”

  “No, you don’t see. Jodie didn’t listen to me—didn’t wait for me to help her—and she’s the one permanently scarred by it.”

  Connections snapped together like Lego blocks in her mind. “Oh. So you think, like Jodie, I’ll end up getting hurt because I don’t…trust you?”

  “Trust is important.”

  He studied her with such intensity that suddenly the space in the tent seemed to collapse around her. Were they still talking about her physical safety?

  It was her turn to swallow deeply. “Yes.”

  “I seem to recall you didn’t answer my question about trust earlier.” Sarcasm laced his words.

  She forced herself to meet his gaze with a boldness she didn’t feel. “I trust you to get me home to my kids. Without question, I know you’ll do everything you can to make sure we get there safely.”

  “That’s not the only kind of trust we’re talking about.”

  Ana picked up the nearly empty can that Daniel had been playing with. She stared at a rivulet of tomato sauce dribbling down the side that looked eerily like blood. “That’s the only kind of trust I’m prepared to talk about.”

  “You assume the worst of all men, or is it only me?”

  She slid the can across the sleeping bag toward him. “I don’t assume anything about you; I barely know you. We’re one of those ‘six degrees of separation’ kind of deals. We’re just about strangers.”

  “You don’t believe that now, any more than I do. We’re waaaay past strangers.”

  They stared at each other in the flickering light. Outside a brief flash lit up the tent and seconds later thunder trundled noisily across the sky.

  “Alyssa loves thunder and lightning.” It was something to say. Something to try and ease the raw, sizzling tension arcing between them.

  Daniel offered her the last spoonful of beans. A peace offering, she guessed, since he sighed when she shook her head. He spooned the cold beans into his mouth.

  “I would think most little kids would be scared of it,” he said once he’d swallowed.

  “Most little kids are. Alyssa was, too, until Theo told her thunder was the sound of angels moving furniture around in heaven and the lightning was their flashlights searching for where to put it.” Ana wanted to smack herself on the head then clamp a hand over her mouth that wouldn’t stop flapping, fueled by an unstoppable deluge of nerves.

  “No hiding under the bed with a teddy bear like Nadia used to do?”

  She wrinkled her nose. “No, Alyssa’s pretty fearless.”

  He moved the can off to the side. “Tell me more about her.”

  Stretching the sweater over her knees and tucking them close to her chin, her eyelids drifted shut. This, at least, was safe territory. Picturing Alyssa’s toothy smile and pink cheeks turned up to her like tiny crab apples lodged a lump of bittersweet joy deep inside her. God, she loved her little girl.

  “She’s got a beautiful, caring spirit. She loves people and completely skipped the stranger-danger phase that most kids go through. She adores being the center of attention and gets the biggest kick out of making people laugh.”

  “She sounds like a little dynamo.” He rolled onto his side and stretched out his long legs, patting the sleeping bag. “If you’re cold, crawl in here.”

  She opened her mouth to object that she wasn’t cold, but snapped it shut again.

  Perhaps she’d feel less exposed and vulnerable if she were covered from neck to toe. Not to mention the warmth of the sleeping bag would neutralize the need to steal any of Daniel’s body heat. She still cringed at the memory of clinging to him like a limpet on the first night after the earthquake.

  So she unzipped the sleeping bag and slithered in, managing to keep the sweater yanked down past her knees. She tugged the zipper up, enclosing herself in a mothball-scented cocoon. Hopefully, the smell
of camphor would be enough to mask the masculine scent wafting off Daniel. Boy, you couldn’t swing a cat in this tiny tent without it colliding with some part of the man’s body. His seriously hot body.

  “Uh. I’ll turn this lamp out, shall I? Better save the batteries.”

  And save my sanity from having to look at his aforementioned hot body. She wriggled to her knees inside the sleeping bag and shuffled the few yards to the end of the tent to extinguish the comforting white light of the lamp.

  Outside, a sudden squall sent a long branch of gorse scraping the side of the tent with an undulating whisper across the nylon. She crouched in the stillness, listening to the sounds of wind and rain, waiting for her eyes to adjust to the total absence of light.

  “You all right?”

  She turned at his voice, but the darkness was so absolute she couldn’t see any part of him.

  “Yes.”

  Shuffling backward, holding onto the sides of the sleeping bag so she didn’t slip out of it, she estimated her position on the floor and lay down. Her head, instead of touching the cold, hard surface of the tent’s groundsheet, came to rest on the warm, hard surface of Daniel’s arm.

  “Oops—sorry!” She rolled away fast, tucking into herself, her nose inches away from the vibrating nylon. Little wonder the redness flooding her cheeks didn’t light up her nose, too, like Rudolph’s on Christmas Eve.

  He chuckled. “No worries. Sweet dreams, Counselor.”

  The night stretched before her, an endless loop of time spiraling off into infinity. She felt like she’d overloaded on caffeine—hyperaware and jittery—and after a few endless minutes every deep, sleepy breath that came from Daniel ratcheted up a tension in her equally created from annoyance and arousal. How would she ever make it to morning?

  Chapter 24

  Monday, July 26. 1:23 a.m. Khandallah, a northern suburb in Wellington, New Zealand.

  * * *

  A woman’s soft whimpers catapulted Daniel up from the dark pit of exhausted sleep.

  Something thwacked him solidly across the chest, and something else, covered in a slippery synthetic fabric, jabbed him repeatedly in the shin.