then, suddenly, the two outside began looking over their shoulders. Shifting her gaze to that direction, she watched a military transport pull into the village square. The sound of its engine finally reached her ears, a few seconds after the men outside had become aware of it.
The truck seemed as dated as the rebels’ weapons, but given its olive drab color, there was no doubt what it was. Or, after a moment, why it was here. There were distant shouts, and the troops who had been searching the rubble began to trot toward the truck and clamber up onto the open bed. One of the soldiers standing outside the building where she and Josh were hiding turned back and called to their companion.
There was an exchange of shouts. Holding her breath again, Paige listened as the searcher’s footsteps began to retrace his route over the broken boards above their heads. The dust dislodged by his passage this time was less than before.
Then the soldier jumped off the subfloor right in front of the crack. Paige flinched involuntarily with the thud his combat boots made when they hit the ground.
As the three began to walk toward the truck, one of the others threw an affectionate arm around the shoulders of the man who had been in the process of descending into the basement. Consoling him? And then, laughing at something he said in response, the three began to jog toward the truck.
Neither she nor Josh said anything until the rebel forces were all aboard. As soon as they were, the transport began to move, lumbering out onto the main street with a belch of smoke from the exhaust and an ominous grinding of gears. As the sound of its laboring engine faded into the twilight, silence descended over the remains of what had once been a thriving community.
“Close call,” she said. Her heart was beginning to slow, beating in her chest rather than crowding her throat.
“The very best kind,” Josh said softly, his eyes still scanning the deserted village.
Looking for what? she wondered. Someone left behind to secure this place? To see if anything suspicious popped up after the rest of the unit departed?
The two of them wouldn’t show themselves, of course. Not until he was sure there was no one there. The Joshua Stone she had come to know in these four months took nothing for granted.
“What does that mean?” she asked, willing her voice to steadiness. “The ‘best’ kind. As far as I’m concerned there isn’t a ‘good’ close call.”
He turned, his eyes examining her features, which she imagined showed the strain of the last few minutes. “A good close call is one you survive, Daniels. A little danger gets the juices flowing. Keeps you young,” he said.
Paige felt as if she had aged ten years while she’d been waiting for the soldier to discover them. “You, maybe,” she said. “I don’t think danger has that same effect on me.”
“So what effect does it have on you?”
She hesitated a moment, and then she said truthfully, “It makes me glad to be alive.”
“And makes you appreciate life in a way you don’t think about too often,” he suggested.
He was right, of course. She was very glad to be alive. She wasn’t sure, however, if that equated to feeling more alive. Or to feeling younger. As for those flowing juices, there didn’t seem to be enough moisture in her body to work up a good spit. Her mouth was dry, hands trembling. Only with that observation did she realize that she was still holding her weapon.
“Think it’s safe to put this away?” she asked, lifting the pistol as she glanced up to find Josh’s eyes were on her face. They were again illuminated by the light which filtered in through the crack. For the first time since she’d known him, their blue seemed dark. Mysterious and unfathomable.
And his face was set, harder than she had ever seen it before, a tic visible in the tightness of his jaw. As she watched, his lips flattened. Then he turned his head, looking out through the narrow opening once more. She felt the breath he took, deep and uneven.
“Is something wrong?” she asked.
He turned to face her, his eyes assessing. Then he stepped back, bending and laying his weapon on the concrete floor. He shrugged out of the camouflage backpack he was wearing, propping it carefully against the wall. Her eyes followed those movements. When Josh straightened, she expected some kind of explanation. Instead he simply looked at her again.
Unspoken permission to put her own gun away, as she had asked? If so, she wasn’t averse. Especially since she understood that would mean Josh felt they were no longer at risk.
They would probably wait out the night here. It was as good a place as any, especially since the village had already been searched. In the morning, according to plan, they would head for the border, deliver what they had been sent here to retrieve, and then get the hell out of Dodge. And despite Josh’s teasing, that hot bath was going to feel very good.
She lowered her pistol, unwrapping the nearly bloodless fingers of her left hand from around those of the right. She usually kept the weapon in the side pocket of the fatigue-type pants she wore, and she wanted it back there, out of the way. She doubted Josh would approve. The location was not particularly handy, not if she needed the gun in a hurry.
Given her ambiguous feelings about engaging in any kind of shoot-out with the rebel forces, however, that was okay by her. She’d leave the quick-draw responses to people like Joshua Stone.
She looked down to guide the insertion of the barrel back through the opening of her parka. Josh’s hands were suddenly there, preventing her. Surprised, she looked up, expecting to find that she had somehow misinterpreted what she had thought was permission to put her weapon away.
As she hesitated, trying to understand, his left hand took the pistol and shoved it into the pocket of his own jacket. And then his right hand slipped into the opened placket of her coat.
Holding her eyes, he began to unbutton her shirt, fingers moving quickly over the task, as if this were something he had done a thousand times. He probably had. But not with her.
As soon as he had undone two or three of the buttons, his hand flattened and pushed inside the opening he’d created. And his palm encountered not bare skin, of course, but her long johns. She could tell by the sudden widening of those blue eyes that he hadn’t expected the thermal underwear, despite the climate.
“Think you could possibly have on any more clothes, Daniels?” he asked, the teasing note back in his voice.
She was almost too shocked by what had happened to formulate an answer. And more shocked when his palm moved upward to cup the softness of her breast. As it did, his eyes dilated slightly, the pupils expanding outward into that rim of sapphire.
She wasn’t wearing a bra. She wasn’t all that well-endowed to begin with. Besides, Josh was right. She had on so many layers of clothing as protection against the cold that she had known no one would ever be able to tell. Now, of course…
Josh’s thumb and forefinger found her nipple, pebbled with cold and the aftereffects of fear. It seemed to have hardened even more now with anticipation. Watching her face, he rolled it between his fingers, the pressure almost enough to be pain. And almost ecstasy. As the sweet, hot heat began to roil through her lower body, she closed her eyes, exhaling through her mouth the breath she hadn’t realized she was holding.
“You like that?” he asked softly,
