His warm hand closed on her shoulder from behind. “Are you all right?”
“I’m exhausted.”
“You’re incredible. I’ve never seen anything like the way you—most women I know would have been cowering in the bottom.”
“Then they’d have been in the river.”
“I know, but—”
There was a sound. A loud roar. And they were moving faster again. “Oh, hell,” she said, lifting her head and seeing what was coming. “Paddle, Alex. Paddle!”
He paddled, but the boat went over the waterfall, anyway. The nose of the canoe seemed suspended in the air for a split second; then it tipped downward, and Mel had to release her hold on the paddle to grip the sides or she would have flown straight out.
For a moment there was too much water in her eyes to see anything, and the canoe felt as if giants were beating it with hammers. Then there was some kind of impact, and her hands were jerked free of the wood she’d been gripping for dear life. And then she was in the water. Tumbling. She had no idea which way was up and which way was down. She couldn’t breathe, and her body was pummeled by rocks and boulders. Every blow made her want to suck in a gasp of pain, but she clamped her jaw to prevent it. The last blow she felt was to her head. After that she didn’t feel much of anything anymore.
Mel felt warm. That was the first thing that registered. Warmth. She’d been very, very cold, she seemed to recall. So the warmth was different. Surprising.
She smelled smoke. Not in a scary way, but in a nice way. Wood smoke.
She was being held. There were arms around her, a chest beneath her, for her pillow. Mmm, that was nice….
Oh, but her head hurt. The throbbing pain seemed to knock on her skull harder and harder until she noticed it above anything else. But only for a moment, because then she felt the rest of her body and realized everything ached. Pain was not nice….
But she was warm, and she was being held.
She didn’t want to move. It was going to hurt to move. But she opened her eyes, mostly out of curiosity. She could see only blurry darkness at first. Then it was broken by the dancing yellow light of a fire and the gray clouds of smoke that billowed from it. The chest beneath her head was covered by a black suit jacket and was bare beneath that. The vee down the center where her cheek rested was just warm skin.
Alex, her brain told her.
She didn’t want to lift her head, but she needed to see his face, so she tipped her head back as far as she could, in spite of the pain, lifting it only slightly. And she saw that chin of his and the whiskers he’d grown over the past three days and the line of his jaw. He was sitting on the ground, his back braced against a tree.
“Awake again?” he asked. He didn’t move, except to lift his free hand and stroke her hair away from her face.
“Again?”
“You’ve been awake a few times since I pulled you out of the river. Just not very talkative or particularly coherent.” He was looking intently into her eyes, even tugging her eyelids open a bit with his thumb.
“River?” Oh, God, yes. The canoe. The falls.
“How’s your head?”
“It hurts. Everything else does, too. And I have a feeling that if I try to move too much it’ll hurt more.”
“Don’t move, then.” He gently pressed her head back to his chest. “We’re not going anywhere for a while, anyway.”
From where she lay, she could look around them, but only a little. What she saw wasn’t encouraging. There were scraggly woods and wasteland. She saw a dilapidated building that might have been a barn once, its boards broken, warped and weathered to a pale shade of gray. Beyond that, there was only the night sky.
“Where are we?”
“Middle of nowhere, near as I can guess. I’d have taken you to a hospital if it were humanly possible, Mel. I carried you as far as I could, but there’s just nothing out here.”
“I don’t need a hospital.”
“You were shivering. I figured the best I could do was get you warm and dry.”
“And I am warm and dry,” she told him, snuggling against him, hugging her rough covers around her. Then she frowned and looked at the covers, touched them. “Is this…burlap?”
“I found some old feed bags in what’s left of that barn over there. Sliced the seams, gave them a good shaking.”
She blinked, slowly taking stock. Then she lifted the burlap to look underneath. “Am I wearing your shirt, Alex?”
“Your clothes were soaked.” He sighed. “I didn’t have a choice, Mel. I had to take them off you. I wrapped you up in the feed bags and hung our clothes by the fire to dry, but that dress was barely worth the effort. So when my shirt got dry, I put that on you instead.”
“Oh.”
“Are you okay with that?”
She relaxed against him. “Stop being such a gentleman, Alex. You didn’t have a choice. How can I not be okay with that? You saved my freaking life.”
He didn’t say anything. She wished she could see his face and read his thoughts there. She wished she knew what he’d been thinking when he’d undressed her. She would give her eyeteeth to believe he’d entertained impure thoughts about her—her, not that trussed-up phony she’d been pretending to be. But she doubted it. The real Mel was not his type.
The silence stretched, tense and nerve-racking. “So how did you manage to build a fire?” she asked him at length.
“Took me an hour and a half. I was beginning to think the Ranger Scouts were full of hot air, but that old rubbing two sticks together trick really works. After a while.”
“You were a Ranger Scout.”
“Until I was nine.”
“Why only till you were nine?”
“That’s when I was packed off to military school. There was no Scout troop there. In a way the whole place was a Scout troop, though, so I didn’t really miss it.”
“That’s awful,” she said softly.
“What is?”
“Being sent away to military school at nine. God, didn’t you hate it? Weren’t you homesick?”
He shrugged. “It was a great experience. Best thing my parents ever did for me.”
She lifted her head, sitting upright this time. Her prediction had been right on the money: it hurt like hell. “Ow, dammit!” She pressed a hand to her head.
He did, too. “Easy. Lie still.”
But she was too surprised not to look him in the face. “Are you saying you liked being sent away from home to military school at the age of nine?”
“Well, no. Not at the time. But now, with hindsight, I realize what a valuable experience it was.”
“You’re such a liar.” She said it while rubbing her fingertips against her temples in small circles.
“I’m being perfectly honest.”
“You’re being perfectly correct. I’m not sure you know what honest is, Alex.”
He frowned at her as if confused.
“Okay, let’s say you get married. Let’s say you have a son. When he’s nine, would you pack him off to this same school?”
“No.” He answered without hesitation.
“Why not?”
“Well, because…because…”
“It was a valuable experience, wasn’t it? Best thing your parents ever did for you?”
“I didn’t understand those things until later. Much later,” he told her. “At the time it was…”
“What was it at the time?”
He lowered his eyes. “Awful. I hated it. Any kid that age would hate it. And I wouldn’t put a child of mine through that. Are you happy now?”
“No, I’m not happy. My head hurts, and every part of my body aches, including a few parts I didn’t know could. But I’m glad to see that you know the difference between good manners and honesty after all.”
“And I’m glad to see you haven’t suffered any brain damage. You’re the same straight-up, in-your-face Mel you were before the blow to your head.”
“You were
hoping I’d wake up believing myself to be the real Katerina Barde, I’ll bet.”
He frowned so hard his brows touched. “Why would you think that?”
She rolled her eyes and looked away from him, getting to her feet, holding the feed bags around her shoulders. The ones on her lap fell away when she stood, though. She walked closer to the fire, saw the broken barn boards and deadfall he’d piled up nearby. There was a small stream off to the left. She heard it bubbling.
“Did you have some survival training at that military school?” she asked.
“Some,” he said. “I think we should wait here until daylight. By then we might be able to get a better idea of where we are, so we can tell which direction is best to travel.”
“We have to go west, don’t we? Toward Quinn?”
“Quinn is hours away, even by car. What we need is a town, preferably one with a telephone.”
“Food and some clothes wouldn’t be bad, either. And maybe some aspirin.” As she said it, she rubbed her arm.
“You’re covered in bruises,” he said. “I’m surprised you can even walk.”
She lifted her eyebrows but didn’t comment. He’d looked her over pretty thoroughly, then, she thought. In the dark. By firelight, maybe. Should she be offended or flattered?
“I wish Selene was here,” she said softly. “She’d go forage in the woods over there and come back with enough herbs and roots and berries to make us a four-course meal with dessert, and probably brew me up some extra strength pain reliever in a tea while she was at it.”
He laughed a little. “I take it you’re hungry.”
“Starving.”
He sighed. “We still have the guns. I could maybe…shoot something.”
She looked at him, smiling for the first time. “Didn’t they get wet?”
“I cleaned them, dried them. Used a bit of your burlap ball gown and a twig from a tree. Most of the bullets will be all right. Some might not fire, if any water seeped into the powder, but they’re pretty well made these days.”
“If the bad guys are out looking for us, firing a gun might not be the best idea, though. Right?”
“Maybe not. Then again, they might be too far away. I think we traveled a good clip on the river.”
She tossed another piece of wood onto the fire, then walked back to where he sat and returned to her spot close beside him. “I can wait for morning if you can.” Then she leaned against him just as she had been before, placing her head on his chest.
Alex reached for the burlap sacks she had dropped and pulled them over her legs and his own. He slid them both to the side, away from the tree, so he could lie down, and she remained curled up tight beside him, embracing him.
He hoped to God there was a town nearby. A phone. Anything. Thank God she’d turned him down when he’d offered to shoot something for her dinner. Good grief, he didn’t think he could remember how to field dress a game animal, especially without a knife. She would be shocked to learn he didn’t carry a knife, wouldn’t she? Didn’t all rustic, manly men carry pocket knives capable of numerous tasks at all times? He would bet any one of her cowboy cousins would have had a side of venison roasting on the fire for her by the time she woke. And probably would have erected a shelter and made her a dress from the feed bags, to boot.
He had found it kind of cute to watch Melusine struggling to fit into his world. Kind of endearing. He’d liked that she needed his help, to tell the truth. With the manners and the dancing and the political correctness and the clothes and the makeup and the correct fork for the correct course. And maybe it had made him feel a little more important to be able to help her deal with all those things. Like the big hero, saving the helpless damsel.
But the wheel had taken a spin, and now it was his turn to feel inept and unequal to the task. It had been all he could do to get the damn fire going, and he’d cursed in frustration and thrown the sticks a dozen times before a tiny bit of hot-wood smell and a wisp of smoke had fed him enough encouragement to keep trying.
She wasn’t used to men like him. He had thought he’d been impressing her with his social skills and ability to protect her back there in the world of the wealthy and powerful. But now, he realized, she was going to see him for the first time as the useless fop he was. Because out here, she was twice the man he was.
Wearing his white shirt, swathed in burlap, she snuggled so close to him that it would have been easy to believe…but, no. It was cold out here. She’d nearly drowned, been pounded mercilessly by the stones and the current. She was afraid, and he was the only person within reach. She was embracing him because of the situation and nothing more.
He lay there and he held her until the fire burned low and the sun began to rise.
Mel felt a coldness and a distinct sense that something important was missing. She opened her eyes to the sight of a blaze-orange sun peering over the distant horizon and what looked like miles of nothing stretching between her and it. Rolling acres of scrub brush and grass dotted by patches of gray-brown hardpack and hunching, odd-shaped boulders. Cactus. Tumbleweed. It wasn’t desert in the sense most people thought of desert. It wasn’t sand dunes and burning heat. But it was just as inhospitable.
And Alex was nowhere in sight.
That explained her sense of something missing. Alex. She got to her feet, letting the feed bags fall to the ground at first, then quickly snatching one up to drape around her shoulders in deference to the early-morning chill. The fire had died. Alex hadn’t bothered to try to rekindle it. Where the hell was he?
“Alex?” she called.
There was no answer. He wouldn’t have abandoned her here, she thought. Not deliberately. God, what if something had happened to him?
She quickly grabbed her little revolver from the flat rock near where she had slept. Alex had laid both the weapons there, within easy reach, last night. She scooped up the six precious bullets that still remained from where he’d laid them out to dry, then quickly poked them into the cylinder, gave it a spin, clapped it shut. The pancake holster lay near the charred remains of the fire, dry now, she hoped. She picked it up, felt it. Yes, perfectly dry. A little stiff. She worked the leather in her hands to loosen it up, then she strapped the holster around her thigh and slid the revolver home.
Yanking off her feed-bag shawl, the seams of which Alex had already ripped open, she wrapped it around her hips, knotting it at the right one. A nice sarong skirt, in burlap, with the open side providing easy access to her gun. Using her teeth she ripped strips off the remaining burlap sacks and wrapped those around her bare feet, which gave her at least some protection.
She was ready. She took a last glance at the fire to be sure it was out, and then she started walking, wondering where Alex would have gone, in what direction he would have started off before—before something had happened to him?
She looked around, wondering if he had fallen or been bitten by a snake, or if maybe those men with the automatic weapons had caught up with him. Was he wounded, hurt, bleeding? God, was he dead?
“Alex?”
There were hills and dips and trees and shrubs blocking her view, so she decided to get up higher for a better vantage point, scan the area for signs of Alex before taking off without a clue. The best spot, the highest spot with easy access, was a brush-and rock-strewn hill not far away, so she hiked in that direction and started up it. Not an easy task. Even with the burlap wrapping her feet, she kept slipping, so she had to grab hold of shrubs to help her pull herself along, and it was frustrating as all hell.
As she got near the top she heard movement and slowed down, creeping along, using cover, drawing her weapon.
Then she saw the man. His back was toward her, and he was standing underneath a large, gnarly apple tree that had seen better days. He was shirtless and lean, sinewy and tightly muscled. Smears of dirt and several scratches and bruises marred his back and shoulders. His hair was uncombed. He looked rugged. He looked dangerous.
“Turn around slo
w,” Mel said, holding her gun at her side. She didn’t point it at him. She didn’t believe in pointing guns at anyone without cause, and she still wasn’t certain she had one here.
He turned around slowly, frowning at her. “Morning, Mel. You sleep okay?”
She blinked twice before jamming her gun back into the holster, missing the first time and trying again. “I…didn’t recognize you…without your shirt,” she stammered. She had never really looked at him the way she was looking at him right now. Even though she’d been with him nonstop for days, she had never seen him undressed. She had never seen him like this, with his pants looking battered and his chest uncovered, his arms scratched and bruised and dirty, and his hair sticking up all over, his whiskers on the wild side.
This was not the immaculate gentleman in the designer suit. And it wasn’t the imitation Thomas Barde. She didn’t know who the hell this was.
O-hh, but she liked him.
“Are you all right?” he asked, searching her face, obviously confused by her reaction to him.
“Sure. Yeah, fine. I, um, I woke up and you were gone.”
“I meant to be back before you woke. Sorry. I thought I could get a better look around from up here.” He tossed something, and she jerked her hands up to catch it instinctively. “I found some apples.”
“Thanks.” She bit into one, puckered a little. Scrub apples, tart as hell. Mamma would say they’d make a great pie, she thought, but for eating off the tree they were sorely lacking. Still, her stomach was glad for the sustenance. “So what did you see from the top?” she asked between bites.
“There’s a road off that way, and a few miles up, there’s some kind of a building. It’s too far to tell for sure, but it looks as if it might be a gas station.”
“A gas station? Hey, maybe it would have soda and junk food. You know, I’ll bet it would. And a bathroom with running water.”
“And a phone,” Alex said. “One highly unlikely to be tapped.” He picked up his jacket from where it was hanging over a limb, pulled it on and started down the hill again.
Secrets and Lies Page 11