Maddy Lawrence's Big Adventure

by Linda Turner

  They landed twenty feet from the crash site face-first in the undergrowth, and for a good two minutes, neither of them moved so much as a muscle. Behind them, the flames danced and crackled and reached high into the night air.

  Ace was the first to lift his head. “You all right?”

  His voice sounded hoarse and strange to her ears…and oh, so dear. Half-afraid the earth would tilt under them if she moved too quickly, she cautiously looked up and found him lying less than a foot way, the concern furrowing his brow clearly revealed in the bright glare of the fire. A tree branch or a piece of glass must have gouged his cheek—a thin streak of blood trickled from a ragged cut—but other than that, he looked whole and healthy and wonderful.

  Her heart kicking into gear again, she briefly considered all her aches and pain and dismissed them with a nod. “Yeah, I am,” she said, amazed. “But you’re hurt!”

  She started to reach for his cheek, but he stopped her simply by catching her hand and tugging her into his arms. “It’s just a scratch.” The tension draining out of him at the feel of her against him, soft and whole and in one piece, he laughed suddenly and squeezed her tight. “God, honey, I thought we were goners for sure! The next time I want to go up in a helicopter, do us both a favor and give me a good hard kick where it’ll do the most good, okay?”

  “You can count on it. I’ve never been so scared in all my life.”

  The admission was murmured calmly enough against his’ throat, but Ace wasn’t fooled. She was shaking in his arms and holding on to him for all she was worth, and he couldn’t say he blamed her. That’d been a damn close call—he could still feel the heat from the blast singeing the back of his neck—and all he wanted to do was just hold her. But they weren’t out of the woods yet—either literally or figuratively—and that was a luxury he couldn’t afford. Not now, when Barrera was racing toward them, guided by the flames of the wreckage that glowed like a beacon in the night.

  “Hey, what’s this?” he teased, pulling back far enough so he could see the sparkle of tears in her eyes. “You’re not going to fall apart on me now, are you, lady? The adventure’s just begun.”

  “That’s what I was afraid you’d say.” She groaned. “Can’t somebody call time-out or something, just till we catch our breath and regroup?”

  “You’ll get to rest,” he promised, chuckling. “Later. After we put as much distance as possible between us and Barrera.”

  The drug lord’s name sobered them both as nothing else could. Pushing herself out of his arms, she sat up. “Now what do we do?”

  “We run,” he said flatly. “As long and as far as we can and hope like hell that Barrera loses our scent somewhere along the way. If we’re lucky, we’ll come across a village where someone has a car and we can talk them into driving us to Caracas.”

  And if luck wasn’t with them…they’d have to come up with another plan.

  With no water to put out the burning wreckage, they had no choice but to turn their backs on it and leave it to burn itself out. For a hundred yards or so, the flames were bright enough to light their way, but then the wild foliage surrounded them, blocking out the light and encasing them in the thick, all-consuming darkness that was the jungle at night. Taking Maddy’s hand to make sure he wouldn’t lose her in the dark, Ace started jogging at a slow but steady clip that he could, if he had to, maintain all night.

  With no flashlight and only the starlight high above the treetops to light their way, they tripped and stumbled over fallen logs and dodged branches that slapped them in the face, but kept on going, pushing themselves harder and harder, until their breathing was ragged and their steps heavy. And still they ran.

  Maddy’s hand tightly clasped in his, Ace knew she had to be tiring, but she hadn’t issued a word of complaint. His own lungs were burning, and there was a stitch in his side that tightened with every step. Self-preservation urged him to keep going, but running them both into the ground would only allow Barrera the opportunity to catch them.

  Stumbling into a small creek, he stopped in the ankle-deep water, gasping for air as he dragged her to a stop beside him. “We’ll take…a break…here,” he panted.

  Unable to manage a word, Maddy nodded weakly and bent over at the waist, her breathing labored. God, she was dying! Another few steps and he would have had to drag her—that was all there was to it. Her blood felt like sludge in her veins, her brain mush. If she could just sit down—

  But even as she started to sink right down into the water itself, a distant murmur carried on the night breeze had her turning to stone where she stood. Dogs. They were a long way off, but in the stillness of the jungle, sounds carried easily and the baying of hounds, even at a distance, was unmistakable.

  Stricken, she looked up at Ace in growing horror. “My God, he’s set dogs on us!”

  Grimfaced, Ace cocked his head to the side and listened. “The fire led them right to us, but they’re at least a mile back. That’ll give us some time.”

  “Time for what? We can’t outrun dogs!”

  “No, but we can lose them in the creek.” Squatting, he hurriedly cupped his hands in the water and took a long drink. As soon as Maddy had done the same, he took her hand again and turned upstream.

  “Wait! I thought Caracas was the other way.”

  “It is. And that’s just the way Barrera will expect us to go. So we’ll go to Brazil instead.”

  Stunned, Maddy hurried after him, splashing water with every step, not sure if she wanted to laugh or cry. Brazil! Of course. Why hadn’t she thought of that herself? she thought, swallowing a giggle that popped into her throat like an unexpected soap bubble. They had no clothes, no passports, no food—any other man would have seen that as a serious problem. But not Ace. Oh, no. They’d just hike on over to Brazil and get what they needed. Lord, what was she going to do with him?

  They sloughed through the creek for hours, long after their feet had shriveled up in their wet shoes and they’d lost the energy to run, pushing themselves until they reached the stream’s headwaters. And even then, they didn’t stop. Boneweary, they backtracked numerous times to throw the dogs off just in case they tracked them that far. By then, Ace figured that they were well into Brazil, but he still didn’t trust Barrera not to come after them. So they kept going.

  So tired she could barely keep her eyes open, let alone walk a straight line, Maddy numbly followed wherever Ace led and never noticed the stars grow dimmer overhead. Suddenly, it was dawn and she had no memory of where the rest of the night had gone.

  She thought he would stop then. They were dead on their feet. But he wouldn’t even let her slow down. “Not yet, honey,” he said as he wrapped an arm around her waist and half carried her through the trees. “I promise I’ll let you sleep, but not out in the open. It’s too risky. We’ve got to find some type of shelter first.”

  “But we’re miles from any kind of civilization!” she protested, fighting tears. “And I’m so tired!”

  The last came out as a wail that Ace could see she would have given anything to take back, but she was just too exhausted. Tenderness flooded his heart, a tenderness that no other woman had ever been able to pull from him. She was dirty and pale as a ghost, her cheeks streaked with the tracks of her tears, and all he could think of was that she’d never looked more beautiful, more precious.

  His arms instinctively tightening around, he pulled her closer. “I know, princess. I’m dead on my feet, too. But there’s got to be a village around here somewhere. Just hang on.”

  He was lying through his teeth—he didn’t know if there was anything remotely resembling civilization anywhere within two hundred miles of them—but she only nodded and gratefully hung on, letting him lead her wherever he wanted. An hour later, when they stumbled across a small village that had been hacked out of the middle of the rain forest, no one was more surprised than him.

  “Wake up, Dorothy,” he murmured out of the side of his mouth as their unexpected arrival started to
draw wary glances. “I think we just arrived in Oz.”

  Barely able to keep her eyes open, she only murmured, “Good. Find me the ruby slippers and I’ll get us home. Can we sleep now?”

  That was the sixty-four-thousand-dollar question. He wasn’t letting his guard down long enough to fall asleep unless he felt sure that Barrera wouldn’t be able to find them while they were out of commission. And despite the fact that they’d been walking all night and were now in another country, Barrera’s stronghold was just on the other side of the border. He was a smart man with a long reach. For his own protection, he would have made connections in every little village and town within a hundred-mile radius.

  “We’ll have to see,” he told her. “The locals don’t look too friendly.”

  In fact, they looked downright hostile. Women stood in doorways of what were little more than huts, their children clinging to their skirts, and stared at them with eyes that were dark with suspicion. No one made a move toward them, but all work seemed to stop as Ace half carried Maddy down the muddy main street that cut through the center of the collection of primitive houses. And although the men weren’t quite as overt in their scrutiny of them as the wives, Ace felt the touch of what seemed like a thousand pairs of eyes.

  Frowning, he was just wondering how to proceed next when an older gentleman who had been lounging in the morning sun on the porch of what looked like a general store rose to his feet and slowly approached them. “We don’t have many visitors from the north,” he said in what Ace recognized as a dialect of Portuguese. “You and your lady have had trouble?”

  Trouble didn’t begin to describe what they’d been through, but Ace only nodded curtly. There was, he decided, no use beating around the bush. If Barrera had contacts in the village, he had probably already notified them of their escape, so they might as well find out now if these people were friends or enemies. “We escaped from Barrera,” he said curtly in the little bit of Portuguese he knew. “You have heard of him?”

  The weathered old man’s eyes narrowed sharply. “No one ever leaves that devil’s place without his permission. Are you sure you aren’t a friend of his?”

  Ace’s mouth quirked. “We didn’t exactly leave, with his blessing,” he said dryly. “Which is why he’s been tracking us with dogs all night. That should tell you just how friendly we are with him. Can you offer us shelter?”

  For a moment, he thought the man was actually going to say no. He studied them shrewdly, noting their ravaged clothes, the scratches and bruises they’d acquired when the helicopter went down, the exhaustion they couldn’t hide. Abruptly coming to a decision, he turned to the other villagers who had crept closer and spit out a rapid series of orders.

  When he turned back to Ace, he said, “Forgive our rudeness. But we are a small village and have no wish to do business with the likes of Barrera or any of his friends. Come, sir. You and your lady must be exhausted. I will show you to a hut where you can bathe and rest.”

  Maddy, already half-asleep, stirred as Ace suddenly swept her up in his arms and followed the old man to a small dwelling right in the heart of the village. Blinking owlishly, she looked around. “Are we still in Oz?”

  “Yeah.” Ace laughed. “But the flying monkeys’ll never find us here.” Thanking the old man for his help, he nudged the door shut with his shoulder and strode across to the rope bed that took up one corner of the hut’s only room. “You can sleep now, sweetheart. We’re safe.”

  That was all she needed to hear. With a low moan, she turned over on her stomach the second he laid her down. Before Ace could crawl in beside her, she was asleep.

  Ace had only planned to sleep for four or five hours, but the bed was surprisingly comfortable and his tired body demanded more. With Maddy safely at his side and the villagers on the lookout for Barrera, he was finally able to relax his guard and just shut down. The morning gave way to afternoon, then the early-evening rains and nightfall. Lost in a deep, dreamless sleep, he never knew when the old man cautiously looked in on them to make sure they were okay, then left just as quietly as he’d come, leaving them alone.

  He might have slept around the clock, in fact, if an unexpected thunderstorm hadn’t rolled in around four in the morning. Lightning ripped across the night sky, but it was the sudden crack of thunder that sounded like the helicopter when it exploded that brought him awake with a jerk. His heart suddenly hammering, he lay perfectly still and stared up at the shadowy, unfamiliar roof of the hut, trying to remember where the hell he was when it finally hit him. Brazil. They’d made it to Brazil. They were safe.

  Lightning flashed again, but this time, the thunder that followed seemed to shake the very ground itself. Curled up against him on her side, her back snug against his chest and her bottom nestled against his hips and thighs, Maddy jumped, coming abruptly awake with a frightened gasp. “Oh, God! What was that?”

  “Just a thunderstorm,” he said huskily, then almost groaned aloud when she innocently moved against him again. His jaw as rigid as granite, he clamped his arm across her waist and held her flush against him, stilling her unconscious movements. “Go back to sleep, honey,” he rasped. “Now!”

  He knew the second she realized what she was doing to him—she stiffened like a poker and sucked in a quick breath she forgot to release. Under his hand, he could feel the awareness that had every nerve ending suddenly humming, and it was all he could do not to let his fingers wander. She was a virgin, he reminded himself sternly and ordered his hand to stay right where it was. It did, but the effort cost him.-Sweat broke out on his brow, and along his locked jaw, a muscle began to tick.

  The rain started then, a soft but steady rain that pelted the roof in a regular cadence that was as soothing as a lullaby. His breathing slow and controlled, his blood growing hotter with every passing second, Ace closed his eyes and told himself she would sleep soon. He just had to wait her out. And then, by God, he was never crawling into bed with her again. He wasn’t made of steel, dammit. There was only so much he could take.

  But just when she relaxed under his hand and he thought she was out for the rest of the night, she broke the intimate silence that wrapped around them in the dark. “I don’t want to go back to sleep.”

  She hardly spoke above a whisper, but in the quiet, her words sounded like a shout. Not moving so much as an eyelash, Ace tried to tell himself that she didn’t mean anything suggestive by the remark—she’d just had her fill of sleep. But still, his voice was hoarse when he asked, “Then what do you want to do?”

  Her heart thudding a dozen beats a second, Maddy couldn’t even imagine what she wanted him to do to her. How could she tell him? She didn’t have the words, the experience. But their time together was running out. She could feel it as surely as if the sands of an hourglass slipped between her fingers. He’d gotten what he’d come for—the ring—and he wouldn’t waste any time spiriting it and her back to New York. When he left her on her doorstep, she wouldn’t spend the rest of her life wondering what could have been between them. She would know.

  Sliding her arm over his where it was drapped across her middle, she said faintly, “Touch me. I want you to touch me.”

  For what seemed like an eternity, he didn’t move, didn’t speak, didn’t do anything but just lie there, his arm rock hard beneath hers while seconds gathered into minutes with painstaking slowness. Then, just when she thought he must be searching for the words to let her down easy, his hand moved abruptly under hers. Clutching her convulsively to him, he groaned like a man at the end of his rope.

  “I can’t just touch you and stop,” he warned thickly, burying his face in her hair. “You know that, don’t you? I want you too much to be satisfied with just that.”

  Her throat tight with emotion, she nodded as a slow smile spilled across her face. How could he have known how badly she needed to hear that when she hadn’t even known it herself? Taking his hand in hers, she carried it to her mouth and pressed a kiss to his knuckles and suddenly the wor
ds she hadn’t been able to say before were there. “I want you, too,” she murmured. “Make love to me, Ace. It seems like I’ve waited my whole life for you to make love to me.”

  Her honesty struck him right in the heart, destroying him. He shouldn’t do this—deep down inside, his conscience was ordering him to get the hell away from her while he still could. She was an innocent, for God’s sake! He had nothing to protect her with, and even if he had, she deserved romance and candlelight for her first time, not a rope bed in a musty old cottage at the end of the earth. And she deserved the prince she’d unconsciously been waiting for all these years, that perfect, good-looking guy on the white horse who would sweep her off to paradise and the home in the suburbs with two point two kids that every woman seemed to want. He couldn’t be that, couldn’t give her that, and only a louse would let her think that he could.

  But even as he struggled for the strength of will to put her from him, she turned in his arms to face him, and he knew he’d waited too long. A flash of lightning revealed her shy smile, the trust in her eyes, and he was a goner. In an agonized voice he hardly recognized as his own, he murmured her name and leaned down to take her mouth with his own.

  He thought he had it worked out in his head how he would take her from innocence to pleasure. He was the experienced one and it was his job to see that she wasn’t rushed or scared or in any way apprehensive. So he started with a kiss, a brush of mouth against mouth, a flash of heat, a tantalizing sample of the passion he would build with infinite patience even if it killed him. But the second he feathered his mouth whisper-soft across hers, she let out a shaky breath that was sweet and uncertain and so heart-twistingly vulnerable that the taste of her went right to his head. So instead of teasing her and slowly seducing her into forgetting her inhibitions, he lingered longer than he should have, drinking from the well of her mouth like a man who had been so long in the desert that he’d forgotten the fresh, heady taste of water.