Proposition: Marriage. Eileen Wilks
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Bit by bit, as they pressed farther into a world that cared not at all for their exalted status as humans, he relaxed back into his usual detachment
It was just as well this was his last job. He’d known it was time to get out. Ever since Jack’s death he had known, but his reactions today were so far out of line he had to wonder if he should have agreed to take this job, even as a favor. He owed Patrick a great deal, but messing up this job wouldn’t repay him.
He heard a muffled squeak and turned. She was brushing frantically at something on her arm, a spider or some other small, multi-legged creature. “Did it bite you?” Concern hit him with a quick, unexpected punch. Few of the creepie-crawlies on the island were dangerous, but—
“No,” she said. “Its wiggly little legs got on me.” She looked as if she thought she’d been poisoned.
“You saved the other one,” he pointed out. “In the lake. The beetle.”
“It was going to drown.” She rubbed her arm as if she hoped to wipe the insect germs off. “I couldn’t just let it drown after... Well, the bug thought my arm was safe, and by holding still, I was sort of deceiving it. When it fell into the water, I felt responsible.”
He looked at her, disbelieving. She’d felt responsible for a beetle? “Come on. I see a stump up ahead where you can sit. We need to get dry socks on.”
“Why?” She limped after him. “Our shoes will still be wet.”
“Jungle rot.” He stopped by the stump to unzip his backpack. “One of the first rules in climate and terrain like this is to keep your feet dry.” He handed her a pair of socks.
She shuddered and sat down.
He changed his own socks without sitting, balancing first on one leg, then the other, checking each foot for any small cuts or blisters. Open wounds in the tropics could be dangerous. When he had both shoes back on he looked at her and frowned. She was taking too long. She’d only done one foot. Her other foot was propped on her knee, her dress gathered up to her knees to droop in concealing folds between her parted legs. She was pulling the wet sock off slowly.
The sock had a wide, lacy border. It also had a red stain. “You’re bleeding.”
She eased the sock the rest of the way off. “Brilliant observation. Wet shoes and socks can rub blisters, you know.”
He tightened his lips. “Leaving an open, untreated wound on the foot in a tropical zone is just begging for infection, fungus—” He shook his head, disgusted, as he unzipped the backpack. “What about your other foot?”
“It’s fine.”
He thought about the fact that she’d just kept going, without complaint, when her blister must have hurt like hell. “Take your shoe off.” He got out the ointment and gauze. “I want to check both feet.”
She had an odd expression on her face. “It’s like my mother’s purse.”
“What?”
“Your backpack. It’s like my mother’s purse. She carries a tote the size of Manhattan, and it’s got everything in it. Having you got a sewing kit in there?” she asked, interested.
As a matter of fact, he did. Among other things. He knelt in front of her and grabbed her foot.
“Hey!”
“Hold still.” She had small feet, with pearly pink toenails. He couldn’t keep from smiling when he saw those toenails. What was the point of painting them when she wasn’t wearing sandals? He looked at the blister on her heel that had burst and bled into her sock. “Why didn’t you tell me you were hurting?”
“Why? We couldn’t have stopped any earlier, anyway, could we?”
“I need to know your limitations to plan properly.” There was a topical anaesthetic in the ointment, and he would pad the area with gauze. That, and the dry socks, should make her more comfortable, but he wouldn’t be able to keep her from hurting entirely. He frowned. Absently, he stroked his thumb along the bottom of her foot. It flexed in a quick, involuntary movement. “Are you ticklish?”
“N-no.” Her eyes were dark when they met his. “I mean, yes.”
He saw the heat in her eyes, heard the uncertain longing in her voice. His hand tightened on her foot as his body tightened elsewhere. Apparently he wasn’t the only one coming down with jungle fever.
His gaze drifted away from her foot. Her dress was still damp. It molded nicely to the firm swells of her breasts, but he couldn’t see her nipples anymore. Not quite. If he were to lean forward, though, and take one in his mouth...
No, he told himself. Not now. The time and the place were wrong. But it was harder than it should have been to look away, take the cap off the ointment, and tend to the part of her body that needed it most. And when he’d finished treating her blister, he stroked the sole of her foot again—one long, seemingly casual stroke of his thumb—and watched her foot quiver. No, he thought again, angry with her for responding so quickly and easily. He wouldn’t take her. It wasn’t safe; not here and now.
But maybe it would be. Later.
Jane caught glimpses of the sun whenever the forest canopy thinned. It was on its way down now, though they still had some daylight left. The man who’d rescued her kept moving tirelessly while she watched, and followed.
Observing him was altogether too pleasant. He was lithe and muscular and graceful, and Jane’s body couldn’t seem to understand that he wasn’t at all what she wanted, no matter how firmly she spoke to it. She didn’t understand it. Her dress was filthy and wrinkled; her feet hurt with every step; she was tired and lost, and mystified by her body’s reactions. After twenty-nine years of reasonable behavior, it seemed determined to embarrass her with outrageous demands.
She felt as if she’d started the day in Kansas and ended up in Oz. Only instead of ruby slippers, all she had to get her home were her filthy tennis shoes, and instead of a friendly Scarecrow or Tin Man, her companion was a cold-eyed liar who made her body burn.
So his name was John, was it?
After noticing the way he’d stared at her breasts, she’d kept her distance from him, not asking questions, though she was nearly bursting with them. Except her foolish body wasn’t listening to her sensible brain.
Maybe, she thought as they started up yet another a hill, this sudden attack of lust was part of the price she had to pay for her foolishness. A solitary, impromptu vacation had seemed like such a small adventure, though. Most of the time, Jane felt mildly foolish about her other name—the one her father had given her—but she’d wanted just once to see if she could live up to it. A woman whose middle name was Desirée ought to be able to handle all sorts of risks.
Which proved how little she deserved such an exotic name, she thought glumly. She would much rather have been helping Frances Ann get her garden ready the way she’d planned to do before Ed had waved that cruise ticket under her nose. Instead, she was on the run with a man who might be a spy. Or a criminal.
At least her inconvenient lust took her mind off the way her feet hurt. “How much farther do you suppose this village is?”
“Hard to say, when we haven’t been traveling in a straight line.”
No, they hadn’t, had they? He’d gone out of his way to avoid that, and she wondered why. Jane added that to the mental list she was keeping of questions to ask at a better time, when she wasn’t out of breath and her reluctant rescuer seemed a little friendlier. But what if things didn’t get better? she asked herself suddenly, pausing to catch her breath. What if things stayed messed up and scary, and the man in front of her stayed silent and scary?
Damn. Jane bit her lip. He was heading downhill, annoyingly tireless. She skidded after him—and spoke up. “So why aren’t we traveling in a straight line? Why didn’t we take that little dirt road