thinking! Again, she was taken by the color of his skin. Bronze. It made it look warm and silky, skin that invited touching.
She bent quickly and looked at where the blood blossomed like an obscene crimson flower slightly above and to the side of his hip. When she cleaned away the blood, it really did look like a scratch, a mean scratch though, deep, wide and ragged.
“How did you do this?”
“I was trying to chop my way through a mess of brush. The ax swung back and clipped me.”
She studied the wound, thinking it was at least possible, though the wound seemed to be in an odd place and the edges of it not clean enough to have been caused by an ax. She continued to suspect the wound was the result of a gunshot, though if it was a gunshot it was superficial, a graze. Her brothers would say she read too many suspense novels.
“Which way did you come in from?” she asked, striving to sound casual.
He hesitated. “From the east.”
“That’s a tough way to come in.” She didn’t say a weird way. He had come cross-country, from a little-known logging road. It explained why she had seen no sign of him on her trail.
Doing her best not to hurt him more, she finished cleaning around the wound. His skin felt exactly the way she had known it would feel—like warm silk wrapped over steel.
She continued to probe, trying to keep her questions conversational and casual. “What would make you come here? With a baby?”
“We’re on vacation.”
“A vacation?” Too late, she tried to snatch back the skepticism out of her tone.
He shrugged, and she glanced up from her swabbing of that cut, to see his eyes on her, hooded, measuring.
She turned hastily from him to her humble kitchen counter and mixed up Jake’s favorite old family formula to put on the injury.
“This place doesn’t seem like it would be first choice for someone with a baby to take a holiday,” she ventured, glancing back at him.
“Really?” he said evenly. “Fresh air. Great fishing. What is that?”
“Turpentine and brown sugar. It kills infection.”
“No kidding?” he growled.
“Kerosene oil works, too, but you have to be careful with it. It’ll blister the skin.”
“Really?”
“And a bit of chimney soot and lard will work, but it’s messy.” She offered these folksy little gems to him partly to take his mind off the pain, partly to make him think she was just a naive mountain girl, not sophisticated enough to be even contemplating the possibility he might have kidnapped that baby.
“My brother Jake would have put a spiderweb on to stop the bleeding, but I’ll just use one of these regular bandages.”
“Shortage of spiderwebs?”
“I think the baby is eating them.”
He chuckled at that, a reluctant and dry sound deep in his throat.
She unrolled medical gauze around his entire lower body, back to belly, to hold the bandage in place and keep pressure on it. It was amazingly hard not to touch a man while doing that, so she simply surrendered to the circumstances.
A mistake. Every time her hands grazed his skin, his muscles, physical sensation rocked through her. She had never been struck by lightning, thank God, but she was pretty sure it would feel just about like this. She felt a need so naked and demanding it set her teeth on edge. Where had it come from? This sudden need that felt greater than a need for food or water. To be kissed hard and held soft.
Not by this man!
A stranger, with a suspicious wound, and a baby she did not think was his.
The air around him practically tingled with danger, mystery and an aura of exotic worlds she knew nothing about.
She had a lot of questions to ask and she ordered them in her mind as she bent to the task at hand, knowing, even before she asked, that his answers would not satisfy her curiosity, nor lessen the sense of danger vibrating off him in waves that were unmistakably sensuous.
“You’re trussing me up like a mummy,” he complained.
“Since you mention it, where is junior’s mommy?”
“She died. She died when he was born.”
“And you’re his daddy, right?”
A flick of emotion in those complicated eyes. “Right.”
She felt a shiver go up and down her spine as she registered the lie, but she said with absolute calm, “Well, you’re welcome to the cabin. It’s primitive but if it’s fresh air and fishing you’re looking for, you’ll find plenty of both here. I have to move on, but if you need me to leave you anything—”
“You can’t go anywhere tonight. It’s nearly dark.”
It was said pleasantly enough, but she had the uneasy feeling she had just become a prisoner. Still, she had her shotgun outside the door, and her wits.
“That’s probably a good idea,” she said pleasantly. “It wouldn’t be smart to go thrashing around the mountains in the dark. We’ll muddle through tonight, and I’ll go in the morning.”
She cast him a look from under her lashes. She knew these mountain trails, night or day. And besides, there would be a moon.
Ben McKinnon watched his prisoner carefully. Because that was what she was now. He could not risk letting her go and telling anyone she had seen him with the baby. He wondered if she knew it, and suspected she did. Her eyes, gorgeous blue, almost turquoise, sparkled with spirit and intelligence, despite the folksy cobwebs and chimney soot routine.
She was a complication he didn’t need. One he resented. He had not planned on anyone being at the cabin. He needed five days, maybe six, in a place where he could not be found and would not be looked for. Meanwhile, Jack Day, a friend from the Federal Intelligence Agency, would find out who had betrayed him and if the vengeance of Noel East’s political enemies extended to the baby. Back there in the woods, Ben had ditched a high-tech two-way radio that he could check in on later.
Noel East. A humble and courageous man, a single father, who had put his name forward as a candidate in the tiny country of Crescada’s first free elections.
Ben had been assigned to protect him. The immensity of his failure would haunt him into old age.
The baby began to howl, thankfully, bringing him back to the here and now before he saw again in his mind’s eye that strangely peaceful look on Noel’s face, heard again his dying words.
“How can something so small make so much noise?” the woman asked, astounded.
“I’ve been asking myself the same thing for three days,” he said, and saw his mistake register in her face. He’d
