glanced at her face in the small circle of light from the lantern. “If there was another way, I’d take it.”
She drew in a slow breath and closed her eyes, letting go of the fabric. She bit her lip and didn’t look as he peeled the fabric away from her small, firm breasts.
The sight of the small cut made him furious. She had pretty little breasts, tip-tilted, with dusky nipples. He could feel himself responding to the sight of her, and he had to bite down hard on a wave of desire.
He forced himself to focus on the cut, and nothing else. The bra, he stuffed in his backpack. He didn’t dare leave signs behind them. There wasn’t much chance that they were closely followed, but he had to be careful.
He had to touch her breast to clean the small cut, and she jerked involuntarily.
“I won’t hurt you any more than I have to,” he promised quietly, mistaking her reaction for pain. “Grit your teeth.”
She did, but it didn’t help. She bit almost through her lip as he cleaned the wound. The sight of his big, lean hands on her body was breathtaking, arousing even under the circumstances. The pain was secondary to the hunger she felt for him, a hunger that had lasted for years. He didn’t know, and she couldn’t let him know. He hated her.
She closed her eyes while he put a soft bandage over the cleaned wound, taping it in place.
“God in heaven, I thought I’d seen every kind of lowlife on earth, but the guy who did this to you was a class all by himself,” he growled.
She remembered the man and shuddered. Micah was pulling the shirt down over her bandaged breast. “It probably doesn’t seem like it, but I got off lucky,” she replied.
He looked into her eyes. “It’s just a superficial wound so you won’t need stitches. It probably won’t even leave a scar there.”
“It wouldn’t matter,” she said quietly.
“It would.” He got up, drawing her up with him. “You’re still nervous of me, after all this time.”
She didn’t meet his eyes. “You don’t like me.”
“Oh, for God’s sake,” he burst out, letting go of her shoulders. He turned away to deal with the medical kit. “Haven’t you got eyes?”
She wondered what that meant. She was too tired to work it out. She sat down again and picked up her half-eaten meal, finishing it with relish. It was hard to look at him, after he’d seen her like that.
She fingered the rolled-up pair of camouflage pants she was wearing. “These aren’t big enough to be yours,” she remarked.
“They’re Maddie’s. She gave me those for you, and the shoes and socks, on the way out of Texas,” he commented when he noticed her curious exploration of the pants.
He worked with some sort of electronic device.
“What’s that thing?” she asked.
“GPS,” he explained. “Global positioning. I can give my men a fix on our position, so they can get a chopper in here to pick us up and pinpoint our exact location. There’s a clearing just through there where we’ll rendezvous,” he added, nodding toward the jungle.
Suddenly she frowned. “Who’s Maddie?” she asked.
“Maddie’s my scrounger. Anything we need on site that we didn’t bring, Maddie can get. She’s quite a girl. In fact,” he added, “she looks a lot like you. She was mistaken for you at a wedding I went to recently in Washington, D. C.”
That was disturbing. It sounded as though he and this Maddie were in partnership or something. She hated the jealousy she felt, when she had no right to be jealous. Old habits died hard.
“Is she here?” she asked, still puzzled by events and Micah’s strange skills.
“No. We left her back in the States. She’s working on some information I need, about the mole working for the feds, and getting some of your things together to send on to Miami.”
She blinked. “You keep saying ‘we,’” she pointed out.
His chin lifted. He studied her, unsmiling. “Exactly what do you think I do for a living, Callie?” In the dim light, his blond hair shone like muted moonlight. His handsome face was all angles and shadows. Her vision was still a little blurred from whatever the kidnapper had given her. So was her mind.
“Your mother left you a trust,” she pointed out.
“My mother left me ten thousand dollars,” he replied. “That wouldn’t pay to replace the engine on the Ferrari I drive in Nassau.”
Her hands stilled on the fork and tray. Some odd ideas were popping into her head. “You finished your residency?” she fished.
He shook his head. “Medicine wasn’t for me.”
“Then, what…?”
“Use your mind, Callie,” he said finally, irritated. “How many men do you know who could rappel into a drug lord’s lair and spirit out a hostage?”
Her breath caught. “You work for some federal agency?”
“Good God!” He got up, moved to his backpack and started repacking it. “You really don’t have a clue, do you?”
“I don’t know much about you, Micah,” she confided quietly as she finished her meal and handed him the empty tray and fork. “That was the way you always wanted it.”
“In some cases, it doesn’t pay to advertise,” he said carelessly. “I used to work with Eb Scott and Cy Parks, but now I have my own group. We hire out to various world governments for covert ops.” He glanced at her stunned face. “I worked for the justice department for a couple of years, but now I’m a mercenary, Callie.”
She was struck dumb for several long seconds. She swallowed. It explained a lot. “Does your father know?” she asked.
“He does not,” he told her. “And I don’t want him to know. If he still gives a damn about me, it would only upset him.”
“He loves you very much,” she said quietly, avoiding his angry black eyes. “He’d like to mend fences, but he doesn’t know how. He feels guilty, for making you leave and blaming you for what…what my mother did.”
He pulled out a foil sealed meal for himself and opened it before he spoke. “You blamed me, as well.”
She wrapped her arms around herself. It was cold in the jungle at night, just like they said in the movies. “Not really. My mother is very beautiful,” she said, recalling the older woman’s wavy jet-black hair and vivid blue eyes and pale skin. “She was a model just briefly, before she married my…her first husband.”
He frowned. “You were going to say, your father.”
She shivered. “He said I wasn’t his child. He caught her in bed with some rich man when I was six. I didn’t understand at the time, but he pushed me away pretty brutally and said not
