husband is a handsome young man.” Mariela straightened her flowered housedress. “You have been married for long?”
Benny choked and wiped coffee off her skirt. “He’s not my husband.”
Mariela frowned. “But you travel together without a chaperone?”
How wonderful to meet a lady with scruples as antiquated as her own. “We’re traveling together sort of by accident. We’d planned to reach our destination before dark. I’m happy you and Gustavo can be our chaperones.”
Mariela pursed her lips. “For one night. What will you do after that?”
Benny shrugged. “Owen’s a gentleman. I never have to worry about him.” She lifted the coffee cup to shield her face but couldn’t help glancing at Owen. There was something powerful and magnetic about the way he’d looked at her while he was in Agrexco this week. His usual teasing expression had been thoughtful. As if he saw into her thoughts and feelings.
Thoughts and feelings she hid pretty carefully. After all, she wanted to present an impression of a godly young Christian woman. Which was, of course, exactly what she was.
Lord, with Your help, I’ve escaped so much tragedy, she thought as she watched Owen jump three of Gustavo’s black checkers. Why? Why let that man stir it up again? So many men in her life had sent her down destructive paths. She couldn’t help lining Owen up with the lot of them, measuring to see how he fit.
He suddenly grinned at something Gustavo said and Benny hastily dropped her gaze to watch him jingling a handful of checkers. He had beautiful hands—long, deft fingers with neatly trimmed nails—and he wore a big college class ring with a blue stone on his right hand. She noticed a gash across his thumb, probably from his impromptu carpentry work that afternoon. He could do pretty much anything that came his way.
She stood up. “Owen, is there a first aid kit in the plane?”
“Sure, it’s in the cockpit, in the compartment between the—hey, where are you going?”
“Your thumb’s bleeding.” She handed her coffee cup to Mariela, who blinked in surprise. “I’ll be right back.”
Owen caught up to her as she pushed open the screen door. “I don’t want you going out there by yourself.”
She paused, wishing he’d stayed put but not entirely surprised that he hadn’t. “Why not?”
“Because it’s dark. And…there’s a killer goat out there.”
“Ooh. You’re gonna protect me from the big bad baby goat?” She patted her chest as if overcome. Owen grinned and she smiled. “Look, Mariela already thinks we’re into scandalous behavior. We need to be careful.”
His eyes narrowed. “Good grief. What a busybody.”
Benny shrugged. “She asked if we were married. When I told her no, she assumed…Well, I said I was glad for her to chaperone.” She looked up at Owen, relieved to have this discussion out in the open. She didn’t want any misunderstandings. “Listen, Owen, my credibility as a single female missionary hinges on my reputation. I’ve got to make sure we’re not alone at night. Ever.”
He stared back at her, his jaw shifting. “Okay. I guess I can see that. But for the record, you know I’d never…you know you can trust me, right?”
She weighed her words carefully. “I don’t think you’d do anything on purpose, but…” She sighed. “Well, I know when a man is looking at me a certain way.”
His mouth opened and she fully expected him to blast her for her conceit, but then his gaze unexpectedly wavered. “There’s nothing wrong with looking at a beautiful woman,” he muttered.
Benny couldn’t help the little thrill of pleasure his words—and his confused expression—sent through her midsection. Oh, Lord, forgive me. I thought I was past that hunger for approval….
She crossed her arms over her stomach. “That’s very sweet of you to say that, but I really need you to help me be…circumspect. Do you know what I mean?”
She had to endure the intense blue-green gaze scanning her face, touching her lips. Finally, he smiled a little. “No looking, huh?”
She shook her head. “And we’ve been in here by ourselves long enough. Go play checkers with Gustavo and I’ll get the first aid kit. I can’t have my pilot coming down with gangrene.”
“Yeah, that would be inconvenient.” Owen pushed away from the doorjamb. Placing his hands over his eyes, he backed away. “Just call me See No Evil.”
Benny laughed and headed out into the moonlit yard. A flashlight would have been nice, but they’d left that in the plane, too, along with Owen’s luggage and some stuff the Garretts had sent back to the States. Benny herself had no personal items whatsoever. She’d left in such a panic she hadn’t even had time to grab her purse.
She shuddered, remembering the zip of the bullet whizzing over her head to plant itself in the concrete wall behind her. Had it really happened less than twenty-four hours ago?
Now she had no cash, no credit cards, no ID, no phone—nothing but the clothes on her back. Getting safely across Mexico was going to stretch her faith and intellect to the limit.
Owen Carmichael would never have been her first choice of escorts. Lord, why not somebody safe? Somebody a little less…charismatic?
Pushing open the barn door that Owen had created from the boards he’d cut out of the wall, Benny poked her head inside. She could hear the animals rustling in their stalls. She wasn’t afraid of the little goat, but the idea of getting butted in the dark didn’t appeal, either. Hopefully he was locked in a stall for the night.
If the barn had been shadowy in the daytime, it was positively Cimmerian tonight, and it smelled like…well, like a barn. A draft through the open door stirred the hay and she sneezed. Leaving the door open so the moonlight could filter in, she waited a moment until her eyes adjusted to the darkness. As hangars went, this one was on the cramped side. The nose of the plane loomed over her head to the left and she could barely discern the outline of the door panel in front of the wings.
A moment later, she had the door open and managed to lower the steps. By the glow of the interior light, she climbed into the cabin. Sliding into the pilot’s seat, she laid her head back against the soft leather back of the chair. Astonishing, this sudden feeling of being enveloped by Owen. Even more surprising was the realization that she didn’t feel threatened. Just safe.
She studied the instrument panel. Earlier in the day, she’d been too frightened to pay much attention to all those dials, knobs and switches. Clearly it would take a pretty good brain to operate a million-dollar aircraft like this. Owen liked to perpetrate a class-clown persona, but he had hidden depths. Well hidden.
She grinned to herself. Okay, the first aid kit. He said it would be in the compartment between the seats. She lifted the lid of the box, which reached to about the level of the armrests. Its interior light revealed a couple of maps, a pair of sunglasses and a spiral-bound notebook. She dumped them all in her lap to continue digging for the first aid kit.
There it was, a white metal box with the traditional red cross on top. She opened it and removed the antibiotic
