Jeopardy. Linda Howard

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СКАЧАТЬ during the day. By afternoon, the temperature will be over a hundred.”

      The temperature was probably already well into the seventies, she thought; she was dying of heat inside her heavy sweater, or maybe that was just frustrated lust, since she hadn’t noticed how hot it was until now. She peeled off the sweater and dropped it on top of her bag. “What do we need to do?”

      His eyes gleamed golden with admiration, and he squeezed her waist. “I’ll reconnoiter. We can’t get out on this end of the canyon, but maybe there’s a way farther down.”

      “What do you want me to do?”

      “Look for sticks, leaves, anything that will burn. Gather as much as you can in a pile.”

      He set off in the direction she had gone earlier, and she went in the opposite direction. The scrub brush grew heavier at that end of the canyon, and she would find more wood there. She didn’t like to think about how limited the supply would be, or that they might be here for a long, long time. If they couldn’t get out of the canyon, they would eventually use up their meager resources and die.

      * * *

      HE HATED LYING to her. Chance’s expression was grim as he stalked along the canyon floor. He had lied to terrorists, hoodlums and heads of state alike without a twinge of conscience, but it was getting harder and harder to lie to Sunny. He fiercely protected a hard core of honesty deep inside, the part of him that he shared only with his family, but Sunny was getting to him. She wasn’t what he had expected. More and more he was beginning to suspect she wasn’t working with her father. She was too...gallant was the word that sprang to mind. Terrorists weren’t gallant. In his opinion, they were either mad or amoral. Sunny was neither.

      He was more shaken by the episode with the snake than he had let her realize. Not by the snake itself—he had on boots, and since he hadn’t heard rattles he suspected the snake hadn’t been poisonous—but by her reaction. He would never forget the way she had looked, rushing in like an avenging angel, her face paper-white and utterly focused. By her own admission she was terrified of snakes, yet she hadn’t hesitated. What kind of courage had it taken for her to pick up the snake with her bare hand?

      Then there was the way she had patted him, looking for a bite. Except with certain people, or during sex, he had to struggle to tolerate being touched. He had learned how to accept affection in his family, because Mom and Maris would not leave him alone. He unabashedly loved playing with all his nephews—and niece—but his family had been the only exception. Until now. Until Sunny. He not only hadn’t minded, he had, for a moment, allowed himself the pure luxury of enjoying the feel of her hands on his legs, his chest. And that didn’t even begin to compare to how much he had enjoyed sleeping with her, feeling those sweet curves all along his side. His hand clenched as he remembered the feel of her breast in his palm, the wonderful resilience that was both soft and firm. He ached to feel her bare skin, to taste her. He wanted to strip her naked and pull her beneath him for a long hard ride, and he wanted to do it in broad daylight so he could watch her brilliant eyes glaze with pleasure.

      If she wasn’t who she was he would take her to the south of France, maybe, or a Caribbean island, any place where they could lie naked on the beach and make love in the sunshine, or in a shaded room with fingers of sunlight slipping through closed blinds. Instead, he had to keep lying to her, because whether or not she was working with her father didn’t change the fact that she was the key to locating him.

      He couldn’t change the plan now. He couldn’t suddenly “repair” the plane. He thanked God she didn’t know anything about planes, because otherwise she would never have fallen for the fuel pump excuse; a Skylane had a backup fuel pump, for just such an emergency. No, he had to play out the game as he had planned it, because the goal was too damned important to abandon, and he couldn’t take the risk that she was involved up to her pretty ears, after all.

      He and Zane had walked a fine line in planning this out. The situation had to be survivable but grim, so nothing would arouse her suspicion. There was food to be had, but not easily. There was water, but not a lot. He hadn’t brought any provisions that might make her wonder why he had them, meaning he had limited himself to the blanket, the water and the pistol, plus the expected items in the plane, such as flares. Hell, she was a lot more prepared than he was, and that made him wary. She wasn’t exactly forthcoming about her reason for toting a damn tent around, either. The lady had secrets of her own.

      He reached the far end of the canyon and checked to make certain nothing had changed since he and Zane had been here. No unexpected landslide had caved in a wall, allowing a way out. The thin trickle of water still ran down the rock. He saw rabbit tracks, birds, things they could eat. Shooting them would be the easy way, though; he would have to build some traps, to save his ammunition for emergencies.

      Everything was just as he had left it. The plan was working. The physical attraction between them was strong; she wouldn’t resist him much longer, maybe not at all. She certainly hadn’t done anything to call a halt earlier. And after he was her lover—well, women were easily beguiled by sexual pleasure, the bonds of the flesh. He knew the power of sex, knew how to use it to make her trust him. He wished he could trust her—this would be a lot easier if he could—but he knew too much about the human soul’s capability of evil, and that a pretty face didn’t necessarily mean a pretty person was behind it.

      When he judged enough time had passed for him to completely reconnoiter the canyon, he walked back. She was still gathering sticks, he saw, going back and forth between the bushes and the growing pile next to the tent. She looked up when he got closer, hope blazing in her expression.

      He shook his head. “It’s a box canyon. There’s no way out,” he said flatly. “The good news is, there’s water at the far end.”

      She swallowed. Her eyes were huge with distress, almost eclipsing her face. “We can’t climb out, either?”

      “It’s sheer rock.” He put his hands on his hips, looking around. “We need to move closer to the water, for convenience. There’s an overhang that will give us shade from the sun, and the ground underneath is sandier, so it’ll be more comfortable.”

      Or as comfortable as they could get, sleeping in that small tent.

      Wordlessly she nodded and began folding the tent. She did it briskly, without wasted movement, but he saw she was fighting for control. He stroked her upper arm, feeling her smooth, pliant skin, warm and slightly moist from her exertion. “We’ll be okay,” he reassured her. “We just have to hold out until someone sees our smoke and comes to investigate.”

      “We’re in the middle of nowhere,” she said shakily. “You said so yourself. And I only have four days until—”

      “Until what?” he asked, when she stopped.

      “Nothing. It doesn’t matter.” She stared blindly at the sky, at the clear blue expanse that was turning whiter as the hot sun climbed upward.

      Four days until what? he wondered. What was going to happen? Was she supposed to do something? Was a terrorist attack planned? Would it go forward without her?

      * * *

      THE DOGLEG OF the canyon was about half a mile long, and the angle gave it more shade than where they had landed. They worked steadily, moving their camp, with Chance hauling the heaviest stuff. Sunny tried to keep her mind blank, to not think about Margreta, to focus totally on the task at hand.

      It was noon, the white sun directly overhead. The heat was searing, the shade beneath the overhang so welcome she sighed with relief СКАЧАТЬ