gaze drifted away from her foot. Her dress was still damp. It molded nicely to the firm swells of her breasts, but he couldn’t see her nipples anymore. Not quite. If he were to lean forward, though, and take one in his mouth...
No, he told himself. Not now. The time and the place were wrong. But it was harder than it should have been to look away, take the cap off the ointment, and tend to the part of her body that needed it most. And when he’d finished treating her blister, he stroked the sole of her foot again—one long, seemingly casual stroke of his thumb—and watched her foot quiver. No, he thought again, angry with her for responding so quickly and easily. He wouldn’t take her. It wasn’t safe; not here and now.
But maybe it would be. Later.
Jane caught glimpses of the sun whenever the forest canopy thinned. It was on its way down now, though they still had some daylight left. The man who’d rescued her kept moving tirelessly while she watched, and followed.
Observing him was altogether too pleasant. He was lithe and muscular and graceful, and Jane’s body couldn’t seem to understand that he wasn’t at all what she wanted, no matter how firmly she spoke to it. She didn’t understand it. Her dress was filthy and wrinkled; her feet hurt with every step; she was tired and lost, and mystified by her body’s reactions. After twenty-nine years of reasonable behavior, it seemed determined to embarrass her with outrageous demands.
She felt as if she’d started the day in Kansas and ended up in Oz. Only instead of ruby slippers, all she had to get her home were her filthy tennis shoes, and instead of a friendly Scarecrow or Tin Man, her companion was a cold-eyed liar who made her body burn.
So his name was John, was it?
After noticing the way he’d stared at her breasts, she’d kept her distance from him, not asking questions, though she was nearly bursting with them. Except her foolish body wasn’t listening to her sensible brain.
Maybe, she thought as they started up yet another a hill, this sudden attack of lust was part of the price she had to pay for her foolishness. A solitary, impromptu vacation had seemed like such a small adventure, though. Most of the time, Jane felt mildly foolish about her other name—the one her father had given her—but she’d wanted just once to see if she could live up to it. A woman whose middle name was Desirée ought to be able to handle all sorts of risks.
Which proved how little she deserved such an exotic name, she thought glumly. She would much rather have been helping Frances Ann get her garden ready the way she’d planned to do before Ed had waved that cruise ticket under her nose. Instead, she was on the run with a man who might be a spy. Or a criminal.
At least her inconvenient lust took her mind off the way her feet hurt. “How much farther do you suppose this village is?”
“Hard to say, when we haven’t been traveling in a straight line.”
No, they hadn’t, had they? He’d gone out of his way to avoid that, and she wondered why. Jane added that to the mental list she was keeping of questions to ask at a better time, when she wasn’t out of breath and her reluctant rescuer seemed a little friendlier. But what if things didn’t get better? she asked herself suddenly, pausing to catch her breath. What if things stayed messed up and scary, and the man in front of her stayed silent and scary?
Damn. Jane bit her lip. He was heading downhill, annoyingly tireless. She skidded after him—and spoke up. “So why aren’t we traveling in a straight line? Why didn’t we take that little dirt road we passed a while back?”
“It was going in the wrong direction.”
That sounded good, and yet... Jane consulted her mental list as she made her way unsteadily downhill after him.
His pants were dry now. They should have been too baggy to be sexy, but watching him move did funny things to her breathing. He was as lithe as a dancer, but it was a deadly sort of grace—one that spoke of both survival and danger.
Moves like an athlete or a martial-arts expert, she added to her mental list.
That list kept growing. He had known about General Ruiz. He’d done something violent and serious to the two soldiers when he rescued her. He didn’t like roads, or even well-traveled footpaths. He knew about this village that was, apparently, the only place he considered safe; and that, in itself, didn’t make sense.
“Why is this village the only safe spot for us to go?” she asked. “Why didn’t we go west?”
He didn’t bother to look back. “Generalissimo Ruiz has his camp set up a few miles west of the village where our bus stopped. I doubt that it needed repairs, by the way. The driver had probably been bribed to deliver the norteamericanos to the village. Ruiz has done this before, grabbing any foreigners who wander near what he considers his territory. He’s after ransom.”
“But I don’t have any money!”
He shrugged. “If he couldn’t get money from your family, he’d try to get it from his government, which can’t afford to be embarrassed by his little tricks. The cruise ships will stop docking here if they start losing tourists to Ruiz’s plans for redistributing the wealth.”
They’d reached the bottom of the gully, where a trickle of water pretended to be a stream. He headed south along the would-be streambed.
Jane scrambled after him. He had to be either a spy or a criminal, didn’t he? Who else would know the kinds of things he did? She shuddered at the possibility that she might be at the mercy of someone who sold drugs or guns—a man with no morals and no conscience.
But would a man like that have saved her? She couldn’t believe it.
Of course, this whole situation veered between the incredible and the unbelievable. Here we are, she thought, John and Jane, tramping through the jungle, pursued by rebel guerrillas.... She frowned. “What did you say your name was?”
“John.”
“Now that’s original. John Doe, maybe?”
He turned around. The gleam in his eyes might have been amusement. Or a warning. “I should remember that naïveté isn’t the same as stupidity. Let’s make it Smith.”
Her heart beat faster. “What a coincidence. My name’s Smith, too.”
His mouth thinned. “Sure, it is. Look, you don’t need to know who I am. Just do what I tell you, and don’t ask questions.”
Shutting up sounded like a good idea, except now that she’d gotten started, she couldn’t seem to stop. “I don’t see what difference it makes. You’re just going to lie about the answers anyway.”
“The less you think you know, the better. There are people who wouldn’t let you leave the country if they suspected you knew me.” He paused. “Pay attention, Jane. This is what really happened. You were frightened by the gunfire and ran. You got lost, but kept going because you didn’t know what else to do. You don’t know how you wound up near a village where a nice man found you, and offered to escort you to the capital. You never saw me after the bus stopped for repairs.”
She bit her lip. “Are you a spy?”
For a second his face went blank. When he smiled, it looked
