He started rewinding.
The boat rocked as Mags climbed in. “We’re loose,” she said, “and you might want to get a move on. Those guys aren’t real speedy and a few have dropped out. The ones that are left, though, just hit the dock.”
“Grab an oar and push us away,” he said. “And let’s hope to hell they don’t have a boat of their own.” He gave the bulb another pump, waited a second as Magdalene pulled one of the oars out of the oar lock, then gave the handle another yank.
He got a more promising reaction this go-round when it almost, damn near, caught. Still, no cigar. The good news, however, he decided as footsteps thundered down the dock, was that he was getting faster and more efficient at rewinding it around the pulley.
Meanwhile, Mags braced the blade end of the oar against the dock and shoved. It whipped the rear of the boat out into deeper water, but the front end, where she was kneeling, was still less than a foot from the quay, and even as he pulled the starter cord once more, he saw one of the bar boys rock to a halt in front of her and bend over the bow.
This time the motor roared and he rapidly adjusted the choke and put the boat in Reverse. They started moving away from the dock and he shot a triumphant grin over his shoulder.
Just in time to see the man lean farther and close his hand on a fistful of Mags’s hair.
He roared a denial, but she didn’t make a peep. Instead, she thrust her right arm out at the man who had her in his grip and shoved the tip of her index finger down on the little gray canister in her hand.
The guy screamed like a girl and let her go to claw at his eyes.
Finn took immediate advantage and turned the motor handle hard to the left, whipping the boat’s front end away from the dock in a fast, tight U. He heard a splash behind him. Looking back, he saw the man’s head pop up out of the water.
Straightening the boat out, he pointed them downriver. “You okay?” he asked, looking over at her as she cautiously climbed over two narrow seats and sat facing him on the one nearest his. “You mace him?”
“Pepper-sprayed.” She shrugged. “Same difference.”
He noticed she didn’t address his first question. “And you’re okay?”
“I’m fine.” The look she cast around her, however, seemed less certain and when she looked back at him her delicate eyebrows furrowed. “When you said we were taking a boat, I guess I kind of expected something larger.”
“Yeah, me, too.” He shook his head. “Well, I didn’t really give any thought to how big it would be. But I assumed it would have a small shelter on it.” He studied her fair skin. “You have a nice hide. Delicate—I’d hate to see it get burned to a crisp.” She was already pink from being out in the festival sun. Luckily, the sun was nearing the horizon and as he’d already learned, when it went down it did so suddenly and completely.
Which brought up another problem.
“You’re such a silver-tongued devil,” Mags said. “I’d feel flattered, except I bet you tell all the girls they have a good hide. But don’t worry, I’m not going to burn.” She leaned back to hook her bag and dragged it over the bench to the floor in front of her. Opening its top wide, she dropped her pepper spray back into it, then bent to paw through it for something else.
A second later she straightened with the thin, long-sleeved, half-zip T-shirt she’d donned in the gondola. “This is my rash guard,” she explained, pulling it on. “It has built-in SPF.”
“That’s one less thing to worry about, then.”
She gave him a funny little crooked smile. “Aw. You were worried about me?”
“Maybe a little.” He held up a hand, his thumb and index finger an inch apart to demonstrate. “Right now I’m more worried about finding a spot for us to pull over for the night before the sun goes down.”
“Yeah. That’d probably be a good idea. The only problem, as I see it,” she added, looking around at the river and its surroundings now that they were away from town, “is that the water appears to end where all that dense foliage begins.”
“Yeah,” he agreed glumly. “And that doesn’t leave us with anywhere to set up a tent.”
“Or find a place to pee.”
Given that she seemed to do that with much more regularity than he, he shot her a rueful smile. “Right,” he said drily. “Or do that.”
CHAPTER TEN
THE SUN WAS an enormous flaming orb sinking behind the river’s western bank. Long rays of light spiked through the clouds that billowed with increasing denseness atop the bank’s horizon, turning the mass into a spectacular wash of orange, scarlet, gold and violet. The result was stop-the-breath-in-your-throat stunning. But Mags also knew it heralded nightfall. Soon.
And that wasn’t good.
“It’s going to be dark in about five minutes,” she said. And so far they hadn’t found so much as a chink in the impenetrable foliage lining the banks.
“I know.” Finn had removed his backpack shortly after they’d cleared town and he nudged it with his toe in her direction. “I have a headlamp in there. I want you to go get us the life jackets from under the bow. Put yours and the headlamp on. When it turns full dark I’ll row for a while. It’ll be safer than using the motor. Your job is to keep an eye peeled for anything that might get in our way and a potential place to pull over.”
“And if we don’t find one?”
“We hope to hell there’s an anchor under the bow as well, because it’s not safe to travel blind for long. The map indicated this is a tributary to a bigger river that we won’t run into until we’re just above the northernmost Amazon. A lot of tributaries are controlled for agriculture but I don’t know if that’s the case here. I’m kind of hoping so because my research before coming to South America pointed to a lot of waterways in this region having falls. And while some of them are insignificant, others definitely aren’t. I’m thinking we don’t want to find ourselves going over one in the dark.”
“Or in daylight, either, if it comes to that.”
“Oh, I don’t know.” He grinned at her. “That could be kind of fun.” Evidently taking her unsmiling face for the lack of amusement she felt, he gave her a suspiciously unsober sober look as he added virtuously, and probably falsely, “But mostly I’m right there with ya.”
She reached for the pack and pulled it onto her lap. Finn directed her to the outside pocket, where she found the headlamp and, never having seen one up close and personal, she removed it from the pack and studied it for a few silent moments. The band had a subtle black-and-charcoal geometric design, the company logo stamped in orange in regular intervals and was clearly intended to go around the wearer’s head like a miner’s light. The actual LED holder was a lighter gray metal that sat dead center in the band. The beam was adjustable and she tested its limits for a few seconds before slipping the band onto her head.
Unfortunately, she let go too soon, for it slipped down her forehead and over her eyebrows until the bridge of her nose stopped the lamp’s protrusion. Forcefully. “Ow.”
“Are you okay?” The corner of his mouth tipped up. “Want me to kiss it better?”
She made a rude noise that he correctly interpreted as a no. But she had to admit the idea of him kissing her anywhere was... Lord have mercy. Crazy appealing.
His dark eyes made a slow inspection of the too-loose gadget still sitting cockeyed atop her nose. “Looks like my head’s bigger than yours. Which is to be expected, since I need room for my amazingly large brain.”
“Or for your astoundingly fat ego.” She hauled the head strap back to her forehead and slapped a hand against it to hold the thing in place as she tugged on the strap in back to tighten it up. When she got it to where it felt secure, she turned back to him and posed. “How do I look?” She turned her head first to the right, then to the left, sucking in her cheeks and pursing her lips in her best runway moue. “I hear all the fashionistas are wearing this color combo this season. Flattering, right? I think it brings out the orange in my eyes.�
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He laughed—then laughed even harder, as if he couldn’t help himself.
As if she’d said the wittiest thing he’d ever heard.
She assured herself that didn’t warm her right up from the inside out. It wasn’t like she gave a great big rip what he thought of her.
She sneaked a glance at him, all big and competent with his wide-palmed, long-fingered hand firmly on the steering thingy. Really. She didn’t care.
Feeling unaccustomedly flustered, she turned away to fetch the life vests and verify they did have an anchor if they needed one. Then she settled back on her seat, pulled off her scarf and sighed as snatches of a fitful breeze fluttered through damp strands of her hair.
The next time she looked at Finn she saw that he’d kicked off his hiking sneakers, which, he’d informed her when she’d said she thought all hikers wore boots, had a steel shank running through the insole to give it the stability of one. She studied his feet. They were actually kind of nice...long and narrow with long toes and a high arch. The big toe on his left foot looked beat-up, as if something heavy had dropped on it. She thought about asking him about it, but didn’t.
Little by little she found herself relaxing. It was rather calming, being on the water. The air was a hot, damp weight against her skin, yet she felt as if she could breathe, could draw a truly deep, satisfying breath for the first time since this madness had blown up in her face. It was peaceful out here.
But not quiet. The motor’s hum and the water softly slapping the hull of the dory were soothing sounds. The evening itself, however, was a sometimes melodious, often raucous cacophony of birds trilling, crying and calling out as they wheeled against the sky or journeyed back and forth across the water. Many were brilliant explosions of color against the dense greenery lining the river, others you had to concentrate to pick out among the preponderance of camouflaging cover. She watched a pair of toucans settle briefly on a tree limb hanging over the water before hopping from branch to branch to branch in what appeared to be a restless quest for the ideal perch.
Then more abruptly than the final curtain falling on a bankrupt play, the sun dropped below the horizon and the sky went from alive with fire and light to stygian.
Finn muttered a curse and cut the engine, tipping it up until the propellers cleared the river. He locked it in the upright position and Mags felt more than saw when he turned his attention to her.
“Turn your lamp on and move up to the bow,” he instructed. “You’re mostly looking for a place where we can pull over for the night, but keep an eye out for deadheads or anything else that might snag the boat.”
She did as directed and heard the creaking boards and slight ring of metal against metal when he shifted into her seat and unshipped the oars. Glancing over her shoulder, the beam of her headlamp caught the blade of the oar on her right as it sliced into the water. When it rose again, a thin stream rimmed its bottom edge like a slick of mercury before rolling off in silver droplets that left expanding rings in the mirror-smooth river. She turned her attention back to her assigned job as he began to pull with strong, even strokes, and the boat glided through the water with nearly the same efficiency it had under motor power.
It took her a minute to get the hang of looking within the headlamp’s beam without losing focus as she slowly swiveled her head to catch everything from one side of the waterway to the other, but it quickly became second nature. Unfortunately, there wasn’t much to see except the unrelentingly closely packed right-up-to-the-water’s-edge plant life and less ubiquitous trees. Her eyes were burning in their sockets from too infrequent blinking and she was about to throw in the towel and suggest they drop anchor after all, when a sudden slice of unexpected white made her squeeze her eyes shut and rub the hell out of the burning itch they’d become. When she reopened them, the white was still there. Focusing on it she saw that it was, omigawd—
“Beach!” she blurted. “On the left. No, wait, my left, your right,” she amended when she remembered they faced different directions. “And about...crap, I have no idea how far away—my distance-judging skills suck eggs. But it’s within reach of my lamp beam.” A slightly wild laugh exploded out of her throat. “There’s an honest-to-god patch of beach, Finn!”
A big laugh rolled out of him as well and he craned to look over his right shoulder. “You still have it in your beam? Oh, hell, yeah, there it is! Good work, Mags!”
“I know. I totally rock, right?”
“Damn straight.” Untwisting to face the stern once more, he put his back into rowing, and the boat shot down the river. “Tell me when to turn.”
A minute or so later she gave him the word and he pulled hard on his oar to turn the bow right, then resumed rowing with both oars. Seconds after that the gritty susurrus of hull meeting sand sounded as the boat’s bow touched, then slid almost a foot up the beach. Mags laughed, swept the sand with her light to make sure nothing creepy awaited them, then scrambled over the bow and onto the shore.
Finn joined her and the two of them tugged the boat farther up the sand until a good half of it was out of the water. When it was safely settled, she broke into a spontaneous little dance until he directed her to train the headlamp on his hands. He’d retrieved the anchor and she watched the strong bunch and flex of small muscles and tendons as he deftly tied it onto the bowline and sank what he called its fluke—and she called the pointy end—deep into the sand.
“Who the heck knows that kind of terminology?” she demanded.
“Someone whose brother spent over a decade crewing in races or sailing rich people’s yachts from point A to point B all over Europe.”
“Which brother is that?”
“Dev. He’s the—”
“—one closest to you in age and interests.”
“Yeah.” He gave her a hey-you-remembered! grin, then directed her to train the light on his backpack until he pulled out his battery-powered lantern and set it up. In its farther-reaching light he gathered enough wood from the beach and along the border of the foliage to build a small beach fire and set up the tent while she assembled something for them to eat.
They sat in the sand in front of the fire to eat their late dinner. Even though the evening was still hot and muggy, there was something comforting about watching the flames flicker and dance. When Mags finished her meal she looked over at Finn. “Between running from ass-grabbing pigs and worrying about being on the river after dark, I didn’t realize how hungry I was. But this hit the spot. If you’re done, I’ll clean up.”
He handed her his plate and fork, and she carried them along with her own to the river, where she scrubbed them with sand and rinsed them in the water. “I’ll check these in the morning to see if I need to redo them in boiled water,” she said as she finished up and set them inside the tent vestibule before rejoining him in front of the fire. But her bladder was anxious to relieve itself and she shifted uncomfortably on the sand. Finally she said, “I really gotta—”
“Pee,” he finished for her. “I swear, girl, I’ve never met anyone who does that as much as you.” But he pulled his backpack over and dug out the toilet paper for her. Then he dug around some more and offered her a little spade.
“What’s this for?”
“Take it to the far end of the beach and dig a little hole to do your biz. Cover it back up when you’re done and, boom! You’ve avoided having to go into the brush.”
“Oh, God, thank you, thank you!” Throwing herself at him, she wrapped her arms around his neck and planted a loud, smacking kiss on his lips.
Just like the last time she’d impulsively kissed him, however, this, too, promptly jumped the tracks into something much less grateful and a lot more...lusty. Finn’s hand speared into her hair to hold her in place when she started to pull back. He raised his head for a moment, looked into her eyes, then lowered it again. And his mouth was all blistering heat and I’m-in-charge aggression.
Damned if she wasn’t all over that, too. She’d probably be a
ll over him as well...if she didn’t have to dig that hole so darn bad. Slowly, reluctantly, she pulled back. “I, uh, really do have to go.” She held up the trowel. “Thanks for this. I wasn’t wild about the idea of going into that—” She waved a hand at the dense foliage. “Even supposing I could penetrate the dang thing.”
She climbed to her feet and trotted down to the far end of the beach, where she dug her hole and flipped her headlamp to point as far skyward as its adjustability allowed. Not because she didn’t trust Finn not to look. She might’ve only known him for a short while in the grander scheme, but it was long enough to know he wasn’t the kind of guy to get his jollies watching her do her biz. She simply felt less exposed knowing she was shrouded in darkness.
She thought about that kiss. She really needed to do something about her lousy impulse control. Because, now what? It hadn’t even lasted that long, yet it had packed a killer punch—and she didn’t believe only for her. So, would he expect to pick up where they’d left off? Had she made him believe she was ready and willing to share his sleeping bag as well?
Was she?
Quite possibly.
No.
C’mon, admit it...possibly.
No, dammit. Just—no.
Dang. When would she learn to take a second or two to think before she threw herself headfirst into behavior that was potentially destructive?
She could feel her cheeks flame in mortification as she adjusted her clothing and headed back to the fire, in no hurry to abandon the all-encompassing shadows. Because there was no denying that once again she was the one who had started it. And women who started things up, then called an abrupt halt to them, tended to be called cock teases by the men on the receiving end. Approaching the fire, she braced herself.
Finn, however, merely looked up at her and said, “You want a cup of coffee?”
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