High-Stakes Honeymoon. RaeAnne Thayne

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СКАЧАТЬ the same kind of smell, only on killer steroids.

      She couldn’t say she found it unappealing, just overwhelming.

      She couldn’t help comparing it to gentle summer rain in Texas, with the sweet, clean scent of wet pavement and wet grass.

      She couldn’t imagine any two more different experiences from the same act of nature.

      She wanted to go home.

      The sudden fierce craving for the familiar was so overwhelming she couldn’t seem to breathe around it. She wanted to be sitting on her tiny covered patio, with barely room for one lawn chair, listening to the wind sigh in the oak tree and her neighbor’s TV playing too loudly.

      She wanted the safety and familiarity of her normal routine, the comfort of things she had always taken for granted—electric lights and TiVo and warm running water.

      Would she ever see her condo again? Her father? Her girlfriends? She shivered, unable to bear the idea of dying, trapped in the middle of such foreignness.

      “You’re not cold, are you?”

      He had been right. It was much cooler up here than down in the murky soup of the understory, but she was still warm. She shook her head, trying hard to forget they were dozens of feet in the air.

      “I’m okay.”

      “I’ve got some MREs in my pack. You need to eat something.”

      She nodded, though for all her hunger of before, she wasn’t completely sure she could swallow anything with this ball of dread in her stomach.

      “You have everything in there, apparently.”

      “Pays to be prepared. I’ve got enough supplies for three or four days on my own in here, so we should be fine until tomorrow afternoon. I’ve been stranded by washed-out bridges or bad roads a few times and having an emergency pack has come in very handy. I keep one in my Jeep and one in the kayak, just in case.”

      His way of life was as foreign to her as this monsoon rain. She couldn’t fathom needing to live off her wits for days at a time.

      “While we’re up here, you might want to take your boots and socks off to give your feet a chance to dry out little. Foot rot is a big problem when you’re hiking in the tropics.”

      Lovely. Just what she needed. While he pulled a couple of brown-packaged meals out of his pack and started to open them, she unlaced the borrowed boots and slid them off, wincing as fire scorched along her nerve endings.

      “What’s the matter?” he asked.

      “Blisters.”

      He dropped the MREs. “Let me take a look.”

      She didn’t want him coming any closer. She was shaky and off balance enough up here in their aerie.

      “That’s not necessary,” she mumbled. “I just need a bandage.”

      He frowned, ignoring her protest as he approached with the lantern. She felt supremely self-conscious as he knelt in front of her and reached for her still stocking-clad foot.

      He held her foot up to the light and hissed out a curse when he saw her socks were pink with blood at the heel and the widest part of her foot.

      “Why didn’t you say something?” he asked sharply.

      “I believe I told you several times I wanted to stay put.”

      “You didn’t tell me I was turning your feet into bloody stumps!”

      If she didn’t know he was a soulless monster, she would almost have thought he sounded guilty.

      “I’ve got a well-stocked first aid kit in my bag. Let’s put some salve on. Hang on.”

      She decided to take his words literally and continued to cling tightly to the massive trunk of the tree, listening to the rain pound the roof while he found what he needed.

      She expected him to simply hand her the ointment and bandages for her blisters. Instead, he sat on the floor in front of her and picked up her foot again. His hands were warm, his skin callused, but sensations rippled through her at his touch.

      What on earth was wrong with her? The man had kidnapped her, for heaven’s sake. This would be a good time for her to kick him right over the side.

      Even as she thought the impulse, she knew she wouldn’t. For one thing, she wasn’t sure she could climb back down by herself.

      Instead, she sat motionless, doing her best to keep from trembling as he touched her. It was fear, she told herself, but the assertion rang hollow.

      In the lantern light, he looked mysterious and dark, all sharp angles and lean curves. He was extraordinarily handsome, she thought again. He didn’t at all fit her image of someone who would devote his life to science and the study of turtles.

      She might have suspected him of lying if she hadn’t seen his research station firsthand, with all the gadgets and gizmos.

      She supposed he could be a CIA agent or something, using turtle research as his cover. It was far easier to believe.

      His fingers moved with surprising tenderness as he rubbed salve on her skin. Her feet had always been sensitive and his touch felt incredibly soothing after the exertion of the last few hours. She couldn’t seem to control another shiver.

      He mistook her reaction for pain. “I’m sorry to have to hurt you more,” he said. “By tomorrow you’ll be safe and sound in Puerto Jiménez.”

      She flexed her toes as he stuck on a bandage. “So you say.”

      “I swear it, Olivia. It should only take us four or five hours to hike to El Tigre, and it should be easy to catch a ride from there to Port J on the colectivo, which is kind of like a bus.”

      Five more hours of hiking. She wasn’t sure she could bear even ten more minutes. She said nothing, though, and he finished bandaging her feet in silence. When he was done, he moved back to the MREs. She watched him put a tray that looked like a TV dinner in a small green bag. He then poured water from a water bottle in with it.

      He repeated the actions with a second MRE, then set them both propped up against the railing at an angle.

      Finally, she had to ask, though she wanted to pretend none of this was happening and she was just waiting for a table at The Mansion on Turtle Creek back in Dallas. “What are you doing?”

      “Heating our dinner. MREs come with a heating element. You activate it with water. Believe it or not, it makes a pretty decent meal. There are some crackers and raisins in the bag. You can eat those while we wait.”

      She had to admit, the food tasted delicious, for something that had been shoved in the bottom of a backpack for heaven knows how long. When the entrées were done, he handed her one. The roast beef and mashed potatoes weren’t gourmet cuisine, by any stretch of the imagination, but she could see how the meals could sustain fighting men in the field.

      If she СКАЧАТЬ