The Mercenary. Allison Leigh
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And then nearly jumped out of her skin at the short, sharp crack that blasted through the air when he pointed the small device and pressed a button.
She looked back. The front of the plane was engulfed in flames.
The front of the plane where the radio and all that wonderful, high-tech equipment was. She whirled on him. “How could you do that? What if they can’t find us?”
“Who?”
Her teeth chattered with chills. “Whoever is g-going to rescue us!”
He’d opened the throttle of the outboard, and now they were moving fast down the river. “We are the ones doing the rescue. This is just a temporary hitch in the plans.”
Marisa looked up at the afternoon sky. It seemed like hours had passed since the moment the plane had begun its tumble from the sky. But her logic told her it couldn’t have been long at all. “I still don’t see why you had to completely destroy the plane.”
“Would you prefer the shooter to know that we got out alive? Or would you prefer him to find completely burned wreckage?”
She felt dread slice through her. How silly of her not to realize the person who’d shot at the plane might not be finished with them. “Why does El Jefe hate this Westin so badly?”
“Don’t you know?”
She raked back the pieces of hair that had come loose from her chignon. “What do I have to do to convince you that I am not in league with El Jefe!” She realized she was yelling, and closed her mouth with a snap.
“I’ll let you know.”
She shook her head, wincing at the pain in her face. At least her swimming head had cleared. And being wrapped like a hot dog in tin foil had done the trick of settling her chills. “You’d have been right in style with the witch trials,” she told him.
For some reason, he found that amusing. His lip curled in an entirely unexpected and terribly brief grin.
Marisa looked away.
The river had narrowed from where they’d crashed to only about fifteen, perhaps twenty feet. The banks were steep, congested with heavy root growth from the trees that towered over them, nearly blocking out the sky above. As the small, tough boat skimmed steadily along the surface, Marisa couldn’t help the feeling that she’d been left all alone in this world with a man whose smile could transform his face.
But a man who hated her, nonetheless.
She’d fallen asleep.
If she had a concussion, that wasn’t a good thing. But Tyler was equally concerned about putting as much distance between them and the crash site as possible.
Still, he let off on the throttle. When she didn’t stir, he reached for the black duffel bag and unzipped it. Inside were several other smaller containers, some locked closed, and he methodically checked each one, keeping an eye out for Marisa to stir. She didn’t. And when he was satisfied that all of the contents had come through undamaged, he pulled out the first-aid kit and closed the bag once again.
Then he knelt beside her, freezing for a moment at the pain that seized his ribs. He waited, mentally counting off the seconds until he could breathe again. And when he could, he carefully pulled the loosened hair away from her forehead where she’d taken that gash.
The hair that had come free from her bun had dried into unruly waves and the slick black strands curled around his callused fingers with a gentle caress. He pulled away as if he’d been burned, and had to count off another few seconds until the pain eased. Then he just sat there, staring at her upturned face, while he called himself ten kinds of a fool.
Her lashes were long, thick. If she’d had any of that black stuff that women wore on them, it would have long worn off. Which meant they were naturally that soft and dark.
Her forehead was already turning a vivid shade of purple, but the cut wasn’t as large as he’d first thought. More like the skin had simply split when she’d smacked her head against something during the impact.
He slowly unwrapped an antiseptic wipe as he studied her. Could she really be as innocent as her sleeping face suggested?
Without difficulty, he conjured a memory of Sonya. Even after he’d had his hands on evidence damning her for all eternity, she’d stared up at him, blue eyes wide as a child’s.
He crumpled the foil wrapping from the moist wipe and tossed it onto the pile of stuff he’d salvaged from the plane. Dammit. He hated working with women.
Marisa jerked and gave a fretful moan as he dabbed her wound. When he smeared some ointment over it and pressed the adhesive bandage into place, she opened her eyes.
He was glad that they looked clear, steady. Her pupils were the same size, contracting equally against the lengthening sunlight.
He held up his hand. “How many fingers?”
“That’s pretty rude.” She pushed away his hand and the age-old one-fingered salute. “And remarkably unimaginative.” She ran her fingertips over the square bandage on her forehead. “I’m surprised you didn’t leave it open to fester. Maybe I’d be taken with infection and then you could leave me to rot in the jungle.”
He sat back, sitting on the only plank of a seat the boat possessed. “Who needs imagination? You’ve got more than enough for both of us.”
Marisa eyed him warily. He looked surprisingly at ease as he sat there, leaning over slightly, his arms resting on his wide-spread thighs, fingers loosely linked together. But then, he was part of some secret military group, so for all she knew, this was just a typical day on the job for him.
He possessed his share of scrapes, as well, mostly on his arms. One sleeve of his T-shirt was torn, baring the hard thrust of his shoulder, and he had smudges of what looked like grease down his chest.
She decided his arms were a safer focus than his chest. There were four or five thin scrapes down his right arm. A particularly nasty one circled down around his wrist. “You should clean up your own cuts,” she murmured.
Of course, being the big, macho military giant that he was, he made no move to do so. Rolling her eyes, she picked up the first-aid kit that was sitting by her feet and plucked through the contents until she found an antiseptic wipe. She tore it open and reached for his hand.
She didn’t think too much about it, just swabbed the cloth firmly, rapidly, over the slash along his wrist. She turned his hand over and continued cleansing the cut. She knew the wipe had to sting furiously, yet he didn’t so much as twitch.
His hands were remarkably graceful for such a large man. She’d have thought he’d have big, meaty palms and square fingers. But no. Sinew defined his tanned forearms, his wrists were well-shaped and his fingers long.
A vision of a well-manicured hand raised in anger accosted her and she stared, hard, at the hand she was tending, forcing the memory from her thoughts. Tyler’s nails were clipped short, and calluses roughened his palms, as if he were more used to wielding a sword than a pen. If this man had ever subjected himself to a manicure, she’d eat her hat.
If she had a hat.
She suddenly pushed the wipe into his palm and sat back on her heels. Touching him hadn’t been a good idea. He could finish cleaning his own scrapes.
Her clothes were no longer dripping water, but were distinctly damp and definitely uncomfortable. The items they’d taken from the plane were jumbled together beside her at the front of the boat. “Where’s my suitcase?”
His eyebrows lifted. “Suitcase heaven?”
Her jaw dropped and she forgot all about the feel of his hands. “You managed to get all this.” She shoved at the pile and something encased in a slick nylon bag slid off the top and landed by his boot. “But not my suitcase?”
“You’ll live.”
She