had a name.
Dismal. Oh, great. She slapped at a mosquito and swore a mild oath. This probably wasn’t the dumbest thing she’d ever done, but it was right up there near the top of the list.
“What happened?” he called again.
“Nothing happened! I landed on my knees in the mud,” she yelled back.
She was filthy. No more scratching, at least not until she’d scrubbed her fingernails with soap and water. Unless she used a stick. A twig. Natural things were naturally sanitary, weren’t they? Hadn’t she read that somewhere?
Sure they were. Like natural poison ivy.
Lyon had plenty of time for second thoughts while he lay there waiting for deliverance, his face set in a grimace of pain. He’d tried ignoring the agonizing spasms in his back. He’d tried forcing himself to relax, muscle by muscle. He’d tried mind over matter, but pain was pain, and his mind wasn’t up to the task.
Here she came. It would have to be a female. With his luck, she’d be one of those environmentalists, ready to land on him with both feet for disturbing the pristine wilderness with his beer bottle and his Vienna sausage can and his crass human intrusion.
He could have told her the possums would eat the grease. The can would eventually rust away. They did still make ’em out of tin, didn’t they? As for the bottle, he’d take the damned thing with him if she could just help him get on his feet and back in his boat. Eventually, he’d drıft back to the campsite.
Eventually Like maybe, in a couple of weeks.
Either she was wearing snowshoes or she was leading a troop of cub scouts. He heard her thrashing through the underbrush long before she came into sight.
Long. That was his first thought. That she was long all over, especially her legs, which were pink and white and muddy. That she was wearing a fright wig the color of raw venison that stood out around her face like a halo, only he’d never seen a halo in that shade of red, nor one decorated with leaves, cypress needles and twigs.
She smiled. It was a surprisingly sweet smile in what would have been a pretty face except that there was something wrong with it. He wanted to tell her she shouldn’t go around smiling at strange men that way. For all she knew, he could be dangerous, only she could probably tell by the way he was lying here flat on his back sweating bullets that he was no threat to anyone.
“Did you fall?” She had a nice voice when she wasn’t yelling; low, husky—no discernible accent. Even half dead, his brain automatically noted and filed away such details.
“Not recently.” At her look of puzzlement, he added, “Bad back. Took off brace, rowed too far in one stretch.” He sort of grunted the words, trying to keep from breathing too deeply because every breath he took was sheer agony.
She sat on her haunches beside him, her knees projecting over his chest. God, didn’t the woman have a grain of sense under that fright wig?
A man would have to be dead not to react to all that satiny white skin, even when it was daubed with mud and laced with red scratches.
He drew a cautious breath, inhaling the scent of perfume, calamine and feminine sweat.
“Never wear perfume in a swamp,” he grunted.
“I know. I only wore it to, um—boost my morale, but it draws mosquitoes. Is it sort of like a Charly horse?”
“Your perfume?”
“Your back.”
He kept staring at her. Jasmine was used to being stared at; she was a minor celebrity, after all. A very, very minor one.
Somehow, she didn’t think that was the reason he was staring at her. What did he expect her to do? She was no medical missionary. She’d never even been a Girl Scout. They’d moved around too much.
“Yeah, sort of,” he said through clenched teeth. He had nice teeth. White, even, but not quite perfect. They showed to an advantage in a face that was covered in several days’ growth of beard.
He closed his eyes. Without the distraction of a pair of intense periwinkle blue eyes, he looked tired and miserable. Logic told her she had no business being there. Instinct told her that he was harmless and that he desperately needed her help.
Jasmine always trusted her instincts. Every time she went against them—as in the case of Eric—she lived to regret it.
“So...what can I do to help you? Go for help?”
“No!”
He winced, as if speaking sharply hurt him. If she didn’t know better, she might even have thought he was afraid of something.
Of course, she didn’t know better. For all she knew, he was a criminal on the run. Might even have been injured in a shoot-out, only she didn’t see any sign of blood.
“Are you a criminal?” she asked. Might as well get everything out in the open. He didn’t appear to be armed, and she was pretty sure she could outrun him, if push came to shove.
“No way,” he gasped. “Retired...cop.”
“You’re too young to be retired, and how do I know you’re a cop?”
“Disability,” Lyon said, not without a glimmer of humor. Damn, she was persistent. If he’d had to be rescued by a female, why couldn’t she have been a physical therapist?
“Then you really are a policeman?”
He nodded, which was a mistake, the neckbone being connected to the backbone, et cetera, et cetera. He wasn’t a cop and he wasn’t retired, but it was close enough to the truth.
Close enough for government work, as the old saying went.
“Well. I don’t suppose you can walk, but if we can get you in the boat maybe I can take you back to the motel and have someone send for a doctor. It’s right on the water. The motel, I mean. It might even be on the main river, I’m not sure, but if it is, this stream should get us there sooner or later. All we have to do is follow—”
“No way.”
“No way, what? Everything east of the Mississippi flows into the ocean by way of streams and rivers. If we—”
“No, I mean—ah, hell, it hurts!” Lyon closed his eyes and willed himself to let go—not to tense up. “Get me back to my campsite and we’ll call it even.”
“I don’t see anything even about that. I do all the work and you—”
“And I do all the bitching and groaning. Sorry about that. I’ll pay you for your time.”
“I don’t want your money.” She had dark eyes—brown with a hint of maroon, like her hair. They were shooting off sparks.
“Take off, then. Sooner or later someone else will come by.” They both knew that was a crock. They were so deep into uncharted territory it was a wonder the buzzards could even find them. “How’d you get here? The road doesn’t come anywhere near here.”
