Chapter 4
4
The next hour was a nightmare. The mountain was no less steep at the top than at the bottom, and the baby fussed occasionally, sending her into a cold panic as she tried frantically to shush the newborn. It didn’t help matters that the battle raging below grew more intense as the night wore on. And who knew what lay over the mountain peak?
Alex was grim and silent, focusing intently on finding a route up the mountain. He was quick to lend her a helping hand, though, or to haul her up over a particularly rough patch.
As she’d correctly guessed, he was deceptively strong. And, when her strength lagged and her will to go on faltered, he was indomitable.
When she thought she couldn’t go on, she thought about that intense hug in the cave. It had been more than simple comfort. He had let her inside his guard. Made a human connection with her. Maybe he’d even needed her for a minute, there.
Alex murmured from ahead, “Get down on your hands and knees. We’re cresting the mountain. Don’t want our silhouettes visible.”
She crawled across open peak and huddled in the lee of a boulder just over the crest beside Alex.
“How’s the baby?” he asked low.
“Alive. It moves around now and then.”
“Let me see it,” Alex muttered.
She unzipped her coat and lifted the infant out. In a flash of mortar fire from below, she saw it was a baby girl, a healthy size and weight—she guessed around eight pounds. And she took immediate and loud umbrage at being exposed to the sharp chill, however, and started to squall.
“Good lungs,” she commented under her breath.
Alex pulled a scarf out of his pack and swaddled the infant in it after a fast examination. Thoughtfully, he passed the baby back to her, and Katie slipped the child back in her coat. It took a minute or so, but the baby quieted in the warm and dark next to Katie’s heart.
“We have to get food for her,” Katie said worriedly.
“She can go a day or two without eating, actually,” Alex replied. “Most babies don’t take in much nourishment in their first twenty-four hours. As long as we can get some water down her, she’ll be okay for a day.”
“What about us?”
He shrugged. “We’ll also need water before long.”
“Any bright ideas about what to do next?” she murmured.
“Go downhill for a while.”
She liked that idea a whole lot better than continuing to go up. In the dark. With no climbing gear. And a baby stuffed in her coat.
Trying to stay oriented as to where they were, she pictured the map of this region they’d been shown in the D.U. offices. Another village lay at the head of this valley. Its name was something like Ghan or Ghun. She couldn’t remember exactly. No telling if it was another Karshani clan village or belonged to some other clan entirely. Likely as not the neighbors hated each other’s guts.
This side of the mountain was more a slope than a cliff, covered with treacherous, rolling gravel. Much of their descent involved sliding on their behinds, before it had the advantage of being fast. And she was all good with putting as much distance between them and the fighters behind them as possible.
They stopped sliding at the bottom of a narrow valley in deep darkness.
Alex brushed off the seat of her jeans, and finishing off by giving her tush the briefest of squeezes. So brief she wasn’t sure if she’d imagined it or not. But not so brief that her breathing didn’t accelerate alarmingly.
“Altitude getting to you?” he murmured dryly.
Yeah, right. Altitude . “Gee, I don’t know,” she whispered back. “Maybe I should feel up your ass and see if a sudden case of altitude sickness overcomes you.”
“I dare you.”
Oh, it was so on. She stepped right up behind him and slipped her hands down the waistband of his jeans. He lurched in shock as she slid her bare palms between his briefs and the denim and cupped strong, well-defined male cheeks that abruptly went rock hard.
“Not bad, Peters. Not bad at all.”
He whipped around, effectively yanking her hands out of his pants and stared down at her. Clothed in darkness and heat that rolled off of him like sin, it crossed her mind that, perchance, she was playing with fire by messing with this man.
“If you go there with me,” he rasped, “you’d better be prepared to follow through. I’m not some tame college boy.”
The warning in his voice was clear. Was she prepared to go there with him? And where was there , anyway?
How far beyond her experience would he take her? Just how intense would sex with him be? Turned on and scared in equal measures, she let out a careful breath as he turned and stalked off into the night.
She’d wanted to be taken seriously. For everyone to quit seeing a sweet, innocent co-ed fresh out of nursing school when they looked at her. But how much innocence was she willing to lose? If she didn’t miss her guess, being with Alex Peters might cost her all of hers.
They’d been hiking for maybe an hour when the baby commenced crying and nothing she could do would quiet the poor little thing.
Alex muttered, “She’s hungry.”
“Any suggestions as to what to feed her?”
“Actually, yes.” He slid his pack off his shoulders and rummaged in it, emerging with an IV bag. He poked a pinhole in one corner of it while she opened her coat and maneuvered the infant close to the opening while keeping the baby mostly inside the garment’s warmth.
They tried unsuccessfully to squeeze some of the IV fluid into the child’s mouth, but the baby wouldn’t swallow it and only squalled louder.
“We’ve got to quiet her down,” Alex bit out. “Once the artillery fire stops, people for miles around will hear her screaming.”
“I’m open to ideas,” Katie muttered, frantically rocking the furious baby.
“She needs to suck to trigger her swallowing reflex.”
“I already tried getting her to suck my finger as a makeshift pacifier and she wouldn’t do it.”
“She needs to suckle. As in a female breast.” He threw her an expectant look.
Katie stared. “Newsflash, doctor. My equipment is not currently in service for milk production.”
“She doesn’t need to get any milk. She just needs a breast to suck. Once she’s sucking strongly, then we can squirt some IV fluid into her mouth and she’ll swallow it.”
An embarrassed impulse to refuse speared through her gut at the same time intellectual certainty that she was going do it speared through her brain.
They would die if they didn’t’ find a way to quiet the infant.
Her breast it was.
She tried unsuccessfully to juggle the baby and her coat and her shirt, until Alex’s big, warm hands slipped inside her coat and took the baby. Awkwardly, she raised her shirt, baring her bra, which happened to be lacy and white and practically glowed in the dark.
“Not very practical lingerie for Zaghastan,” he murmured in amusement.
“My sports bras were dirty. I wore this one today so I could wash the practical ones,” she snapped. “Besides, I wasn’t expecting to show my lingerie to anyone while I was here.”
“So you wear sexy lingerie entirely to please yourself? That’s encouraging.”
“How so?” she blurted. She wished the words back as soon as they left her mouth.
“You struck me as too…virginal…for sexy bras. Glad to see I underestimated you.”
Her gaze narrowed at the faint challenge simmering in his voice. She reached for the edge of her bra cup and slowly, deliberately, pulled it down. Alex’s gaze riveted on her flesh as the swell of her breast and its rosy nipple were revealed. His gaze flared like an arc welder, and her pulse spiked hard in response.
Without comment, he eased the infant to her breast. The baby was too mad or too inexperienced or both to know what to do, however.
“I apologize,” he muttered.
“For what?”
“For this.” He reached in front of the infant’s mouth with his fingers and pinched her nipple. Hard. She jumped and would have squawked were they not in the middle of a war zone. Involuntarily, her back arched into his hand, trying unsuccessfully to ease the sharp pressure.
“ Oww! ” she breathed.
He let go and made a small sound of satisfaction. “Better.”
She ventured a look down and realized her nipple now jutted out, slightly swollen and fuller.
“Rub it on the baby’s face. Across her mouth,” he instructed.
She did so, stunned at how erotic it was to be doing this in front of him. Without warning, the baby latched on and gave a tug that shot sensations all the way to her groin. “Oh!” she gasped.
One corner of Alex’s mouth curved up knowingly. He reached between her breast and the baby with the IV bag and slipped the pinholed corner into the infant’s mouth. She felt the baby swallow against her flesh.
“It’s working,” she breathed. “Do it again.”
Working together, the two of them got a few ounces of IV fluid down the baby, who fell asleep quickly after that. Alex hooked his finger under the lace edge of her bra and lifted it into place, running the back of his knuckle lightly across her nipple in the process. Damned if it didn’t perk up again, pushing impudently at the lace. And damned if he didn’t stare down at it, his eyes ablaze, until her breath came short and fast.
“Zip up,” he ordered sharply. “I don’t need either of you catching a chill.”
She scowled at his back until it occurred to her that it might have been sexual frustration putting that edge in his voice. Abruptly, she felt much better as she tucked the sleeping baby into her coat and zipped it up. She’d tied the waist string of the coat tightly enough that the baby’s weight rested on it, leaving both her hands free for climbing and balance.
“We need to name her,” she announced. “We can’t just keep calling her, ‘the baby’.”
Alex threw her a startled look over his shoulder. “You do it. But, for God’s sake, don’t name her something native. Pick something American sounding.”
“Why?”
“We’ll need to take her back to the States with us. Which means we’ll need to pass her off as our baby. What would you name our daughter?”
Their baby? The notion was both thrilling and scary to contemplate. “How about Charlene?” It had been her grandmother’s name.
“A slut I went to school with was named that. Try again.”
“Alexandra?”
That earned her rolled eyes and a firm, “No.”
“Catherine?”
“You want to name a baby after a violent, dead queen?”
“Fine. You come up with a name you like!”
“Katrina.”
“Sounds a little gown up for a tiny baby.”
“She won’t be a tiny baby for long. And you can call her a nickname like Kat or Trina in the meantime.”
“Teeny Treeny?”
He groaned under his breath. “Call her Dawn. The sun will be coming up soon.”
She actually liked the symbolism of a new day after the darkness of night. Goodness knew, this child had been born under the blackest of circumstances. And she couldn’t think of any horrible nicknames other kids might come up with for it. “Dawn it is.”
“Speaking of dawn, we’ll need to take cover soon,” he commented.
“Why?”
“Given the size of last night’s battle, I expect more drones will be patrolling the area today.”
“Isn’t the U.S. the only country in this part of the world with attack drones? Why would the good guys come after us?”
He responded sharply, “Since when is the United States presumed to be the good guy?”
Her jaw dropped. She’d been raised among soldiers dedicated to country and service…to the death. It was anathema in the McCloud house to suggest anything other than the United States was right and good and decent.
Alex huffed. “Don’t get me wrong. Democracy is a hell of a lot better than most of the alternatives. But spare me the religious fervor for mom, apple pie, and the Stars and Stripes.”
“What the hell did Uncle Sam do to pee in your Wheaties?” she demanded.
Pain. Grief. Rage. Desolation. The emotions flitted through his eyes so fast she could barely register them, let alone catalogue them. What the ?—
“Not on the list of approved topics for conversation between us,” he bit out. He turned around and stomped off without waiting to see if she followed.
“If there’s a list of approved topics, how come I didn’t get a copy?” she called after him.
A mumbled retort floated back over his shoulder, “Above your pay grade.”
Her eyes narrowed. She wasn’t about to let him get away with blowing her off. But first she had to catch him, and he was practically running toward the head of the narrow valley, now. She’d always hated it when her brothers used their superior size and strength to ditch her. In retrospect, she’d probably been an annoying pest more often than not, but she’d just wanted to be included. To this day, she hated being left behind.
Her brother’s cryptic request to watch for signs of something weird going on with Alex resonated in her head. What was up with this guy?
“Slow down!” she finally had to call to Alex.
Nada.
“Please!”
That did it. He stopped without turning around and waited until she panted up behind him. The altitude was a killer when added to a strenuous hike. As soon as she drew within arm’s length of him, he took off again, but thankfully at a more reasonable pace.
In a few minutes, he murmured, “Keep an eye out for movement on that slope ahead. We’re getting close to Ghun.”
Mostly, she was occupied staring at the ground so she didn’t twist an ankle or break her neck. She glanced where he indicated and saw a steep rock face looming. She groaned under her breath.
“I see caves up there,” Alex commented. “It’s too early in the year for shepherds to have brought their flocks up here, though, so they ought to be empty. No grass, yet.”
She snorted. Nothing grew up here. She was surprised to spot what looked like an organized network of caves all over the steep slope ahead, though. How could so many people support themselves off the dirt and dust of this valley? No stream of any kind flowed through the area. In the past two weeks, she’d learned just how critical water supplies were to native peoples.
As the first gray of pre-dawn peeked over the mountains, Alex scrambled up the steep hill while she rested a bit. He came back soon and led her to a cave blessedly not far up the slope. Overlapping slabs of stone mostly obscured the entrance. They slipped past the rocks into the dark, and Alex audibly sighed in relief. Had he been that worried?
In the green light of a cyalume stick, she looked around the cave. The floor was dry and reasonably clean. A few animal droppings and scattered bones proclaimed the presence of some small predator. Off to one side was a stone ledge about hip high covered with a framework of woven boughs and dried grass that looked like a crude bed. Near the entrance, the stone walls were blackened as if fires had been lit there.
A stack of firewood was piled in a corner, and Alex moved to it quickly. In a matter of minutes, he’d built a fire that she moved close to. Out of the steady wind, the silence in here was palpable. And it got on her nerves fast.
“Where’d a city slicker like you learn to lay a fire like that?” she asked to break the quiet.
Alex didn’t deign to answer and merely shrugged as he pushed a series of smooth, melon-sized rocks close into the edge of the fire. The dry wood crackled loudly and burned fast, but it heated up the small chamber surprisingly well.
A thin layer of smoke accumulated near the ceiling, seeping sluggishly toward the rear of the cave. Must be a tunnel or vent back there. The back walls, which retreated into shadows, were pocked with round holes at even intervals, big enough for her thumb to stick in. Maybe those were the vents.
Surprisingly little light seeped in as day came outside, but that also meant very little cold seeped in, either. Before long, the cave was actually reasonably cozy, enough that she shed her coat and made a nest out of it for Dawn.
Alex unwrapped the infant and, at long last, trimmed the umbilical cord and wiped the last birth blood off of her. He frowned down at her, and Katie moved to his side rapidly. “What’s wrong?” she asked.
“Take a look at her. Notice anything odd?”
She stared down at the pink, chubby baby, who had adorable blonde peach fuzz hair. Ten fingers. Ten toes. Two eyes. Two ears. Limbs of equal lengths. No visible deformities… Whoa. Wait. What?
“Blonde hair?” she said questioningly. Every baby they’d birthed so far had had black hair. All the locals she’d met were dark-haired.
“Exactly.” He stared at her significantly.
“How did that happen?”
“The mom was an unmarried girl. Good looking, right?” Alex asked tersely.
“Yes, she was stunning.”
“What was her coloring?”
“She was olive-skinned and dark-haired like all the locals.”
Alex murmured, “Too much pigment in Dawn’s skin for her to be albino. Only way for her to have blonde hair, then, is for her father to be Caucasian.”
She blurted, “Where did a local girl meet a Caucasian?” To her knowledge, she and Alex were the only Caucasians for dozens or hundreds of miles around.
Alex snorted. “Soldiers. Spies. Civilian contractors. Drug dealers.”
“And aid workers like us,” she added, appalled.
“We’re the only aid organization that dares venture into this area,” he retorted.
She grimaced. “That’s what the local women have been saying to me. Okay, so strike aid workers from the list of possible fathers.”
They stared down at the baby, who was settling down to sleep in her warm nest.
Alex announced without warning, “Strip off your clothes. All of them.”
“I beg your pardon?”
He was already shrugging out of his coat and pulling the black turtleneck over his head. Lord, that man had acres of gorgeous muscle.
He reached for his belt buckle and she squawked. “What are you doing?”
He looked up and his gaze went from concentration on something worrisome to smoking hot in the blink of an eye. “Worried about delivering on the bet you lost?” he purred.
“No, I’m not worried,” she lied belligerently. “I just don’t think now is the time or place to collect.”
He moved to stand a little too close to her for comfort, and she was abruptly aware of how much bigger than her he actually was. And stronger. And they were so very alone out here in the middle of nowhere. Literally. He could force himself on her and there wouldn’t be a soul around for miles to hear her scream.
“Angel, when I collect on our bet, it will not be in a squalid cave, and you will beg me for it.”
Her eyes flashed, rising instinctively to the challenge. “I don’t beg.”
The corner of his mouth turned up in that sardonic half-smile of his. “Wanna bet?”
“No, thank you,” she replied tartly. “I’m already in debt to you. I don’t need to add to it.”
“I still need you to strip. All the way down to your skin.”
“Why?”
“I need to check for tracking devices in our clothes.”
She blinked, shocked. “Excuse me?”
“Tracking devices. I need to make sure none were planted on the gear or clothing we bugged out with.”
“Who on earth would want to track us?”
“I can think of any number of candidates, and some of them I’d rather not have knowing where we are.”
“Like who?” It was starting to feel like all she did with him was ask questions.
“Not on the list of approved topics between us.”
She scowled. “I’m not stripping unless you answer me.”
His gaze snapped up to hers, and this time amusement flashed before he banked all emotion. “Fine. The CIA. Their Russian counterparts, the FSB. The U.S. Army. The Mafia. That’ll do for starters.”
“Why would the mafia track you? What did you do to them?”
“I relieved them of substantial funds some years ago and have yet to give them an opportunity to win any of them back.”
“How?”
“In my rebellious youth, I went on a short-lived, but highly productive, gambling spree. And I chose the casinos I knew to be run at that time by the mob.”
“Didn’t you say something about being good at math? Or maybe someone mentioned it to me about you?”
“My undergrad degree was in math. Did a quick master’s in probability and a bit of post-grad work in cryptography before I decided to go to medical school.”
“How much did you take the casinos for?” she blurted.
“Enough to pay for my medical school plus…” he hesitated. “…a lot.”
Huh. So the good doctor was rich, too? It hardly seemed fair given how smart, sexy, and good-looking he was.
“That explains the mafia. So, why would the CIA and Russians want to track you?”
He threw her a stubborn look and merely shimmied out of his black jeans. Dang, that man was built.
“Let me guess,” she said wryly. “Not on the list.”
“Bingo.”
Oh, Lord. There went his Lycra underwear. Yowza. The good doctor was blessed in every single department of his life. She spun away quickly lest he catch her looking at his package. The temperature in the cave felt as if it shot up at least ten degrees as sexual heat abruptly filled the air.
“I’m not kidding about your clothes,” he said grimly from behind her.
Which would be worse? Getting naked at the same time he was or waiting until he was fully dressed again and forcibly undressed her? Wow. That was about a toss-up.
A tiny part of her loved the idea of him tearing her clothes off of her…maybe it was the whole caveman vibe coming out of her deepest, darkest DNA. But she didn’t have any spare clothing and needed what she had on to stay intact. Practical necessity won out and she pulled her pink turtleneck over her head reluctantly.
Ohmigod. He was watching her. And he was stark naked. Gloriously, unconcernedly so.
He’d already seen her in her bra—less than her bra. This was no big deal, right? They were both medical professionals and completely accustomed to seeing the human body. Except her heart was jumping in her throat and her hands shook like leaves in a storm.
She reached for her jeans and unzipped them. Pushed them off her hips reluctantly. Heat blossomed in her face as her lace thong was revealed. She could literally feel his blazing hot stare taking in her pert rear end. Men had been commenting on her derriere since she’d been old enough for it not to be creepy. She knew it was firm and high and lush enough to turn men on without Alex having to tell her so.
“Nice.”
“Could you at least be a gentleman and turn your back?” she blurted.
“I’m a lot of things, but a gentleman is not one of them. You owe me sex, anyway. I’m eventually going to see you naked, so why not now?”
Because she barely knew him. Because he was naked, too. Because part of her wanted him to take advantage of the situation, and she was a big, fat chicken about that part of herself.
Fantasizing about a dark, dangerous man like Alex Peters was one thing. Being naked and alone with him for real was another thing altogether. She didn’t want it to be that way, but it was. She talked a big game, but she couldn’t handle a man like him.
Still.
The promise of sex hanging thick and heavy in the air pulsed between them, pulling her toward him. An urge to run her hands over that magnificent body, to pull him to her, to make love with him, surged within her, startling her. Sure, she felt attracted to guys at work and joked around with her girlfriends about jumping various guys’ bones.
But that was all in fun. This compulsion originated low in her belly, deep and primordial. Lust in its purest form. Mindless. Insistent.
“What’s wrong?” he murmured low.
She resorted to mumbling, “You’re making me strip in front of you and you have to ask that?”
Something warm and soft dropped around her shoulders, making her lurch. It smelled of sandalwood and spice. His coat. “Sometimes I forget what an innocent you are. Wear this until I check out your clothes.
The driving need she’d experienced at the site of his naked body subsided, and she all but cried in her relief At having his coat draped over her as she tossed her thong and bra over her shoulder to him.
Was she still innocent in spite of her best efforts to get people to let her grow up?—
--What if other people weren’t preventing her from growing up? What if she was the one choosing not to? Chagrin roared through her. A real man was within arm’s length, naked or close to it, and she owed him sex. All she had to do was reach out and take it. And yet…
And yet. Fear held her back.
Alex worked in silence, turning each piece of clothing inside out, running his fingers carefully over each seam, examining tags, and pockets, and anywhere else a burr might be attached.
“How big would a tracking device be?” she asked curiously without turning around to see if he was still starkers.
“Depends on how big a battery it has and how long the person who plants it wants it to work. A short-term device, say for a single day, could be the size of a pin-head. Something a little longer term, like I’d expect to get used on us, might be the size of a grain of rice.”
“Long grain or short grain?”
He chuckled briefly. “Okay. Your lingerie is clean.”
A big, tanned hand emerged over her right shoulder, her lacey bits dangling from his fingertips. She snatched them from his hand and maneuvered into them awkwardly underneath his coat. Who would have guessed two tiny scraps of cloth could make her feel so much better?
Her shirt took longer, and her jeans longer still, to check. But eventually, he passed them over her shoulder, and she was safely clothed once more. But no sooner had she pulled the shirt back over her head than Dawn started to fuss.
“She’s hungry,” Alex announced.
Katie had been a labor and delivery nurse. They handled infants for a few minutes after they were born, but then they handed the babies off to pediatric nurses. While she had some experience with babies, their day-to-day care was not her area of expertise.
She had no idea if newborns only cried because they were hungry. She scooped up the baby and the IV bag he held out to her and moved over by the fire with her back to him to coax the baby to drink a little more.
It took giving Dawn her breast again to get the infant to swallow, and Katie had to pinch her own nipple before Dawn could find it and latch on. The sensation of the tiny mouth sucking vigorously at her breast was overwhelming and confusing. It felt good, but not in a sexual way.
It also felt very wrong. Like she was co-opting a moment that belonged to someone else. That poor, dead girl should be doing this. Although, given how much she’d hated Dawn, Katie doubted the mother would have fed this child. More likely, she’d have drowned the baby or suffocated it. Katie held Dawn a little more closely and fell in love a little.
“I need my coat back,” Alex said apologetically. “I have to check it.”
She passed him the garment and he stepped close to drape her coat over her shoulders. As he did so, he paused to watch the baby suckling at her breast and swallowing the IV fluid Katie was sneaking into the baby’s mouth.
“That’s a beautiful sight,” he said in a hushed voice.
She looked up at him in surprise. That was the last thing she’d expected to hear from the dark, sexy bachelor.
He reached down to cup the baby’s tiny head in his hand for a moment. “Such a rotten start in life, baby Dawn. I’m so sorry I couldn’t save your mother,” he breathed.
“You did your best. And if that girl had lived, I expect she would have killed Dawn as soon as they left us. Maybe this is how it was supposed to work out—that the baby lived and the mother didn’t.”
“I don’t believe in fate,” Alex said low, his voice harsh.
Katie sighed. “Even if she successfully got rid of Dawn, she would’ve had some tall explaining to do if and when she married. Not only would she not have been a virgin, but her body would have shown the signs of having borne a child. She would have been beaten to death if she was lucky. Perhaps a quick end on that mountain was the merciful way for her to go.”
“But the barbarism of it,” Alex muttered. “Nobody deserves that.”
“You had no choice. We had no choice. She also would’ve died horribly if you hadn’t done the C-section.”
Alex sank down onto the cave floor beside her and held his hands out to the fire. Katie didn’t interrupt his silent thoughts.
At length, she murmured, “If we take Dawn back to the States, she’ll grow up in a very different world from this one. I have no right to think one is better than the other, but I do know she’ll be safer in America.”
Alex answered, sounding resigned, “We have no choice. Not with that blonde hair of hers. She’d be a pariah at best in this society and horribly abused at worst—assuming she would be allowed to live at all.”
Katie shuddered and cuddled the infant a little closer. She was starting to feel downright maternal toward the small bundle of squirming warmth.
Alex laid out all of the gear in his emergency pack and inspected each piece of it. She was surprised to recognize an array of survival gear along with the medical supplies—energy bars, matches, cyalume sticks, matches, batteries, water purification tablets.
“How is it that you had a whole backpack of survival stuff ready and waiting to go last night?” she asked.
He shrugged. “Call it a hunch. Those rebel forces kept showing up almost exactly at our location and attacking, and it made me suspicious.”
“Suspicious of what?”
“Do you always ask so many questions? he demanded.
“When people are being cryptic with me, absolutely,” she declared.
He sighed. “Of somebody not being happy we’re out here.”
“Are we in direct danger? And don’t dodge the question or lie to me. I grew up with soldiers. I know exactly what kind of danger we’re in if someone wants us dead.”
“I won’t ever lie to you, Katie. That I promise. I may refuse to answer a question, but I won’t lie. Deal?”
“Deal.”
He said grimly, “I think Doctors Unlimited may not be as innocent an organization as it claims to be. That’s why I volunteered to work for it.”
“To expose it?” she exclaimed.
“I figured I’d see what I find about it and decide what to do from there.”
“Found anything so far?”
“Only that someone’s unerringly following me to the places they send me.”
“Maybe it doesn’t have anything to do with D.U. Maybe it’s coincidence that the fighting has flared up in the places you’ve been. After all, the organization does send its people to the most remote and war-torn places on the planet.”
He snorted. “I can calculate odds out to nine figures in my head in under a minute. And you don’t want to know how many zeros line up after the probability of it being random chance that I get shot at everywhere I go.”
She put her coat down on the rough bed and tucked Dawn back into her nest. Alex used two pieces of wood to scoop up the now hot rocks from the edge of the fire and place them around the baby to keep her warm.
That taken care of, they returned to the fire and each ate an energy bar. She gazed at Alex in the dancing firelight. “What are we going to do, now?”
“We’re going to get some rest and wait for dark before we do anything. There’s a place not too far from here…can you hike twenty miles or so over rough terrain if we break it up into a couple of days?”
“Depends on the terrain, but I guess so. It’s not like I have much choice, anyway.”
He leaned back against the cave wall and held his arm out. “Share some body heat with me?”
She stared, shocked. He was inviting her to cuddle with him? He so wasn’t a cuddly kind of guy! He was a torrid sex, love ‘em and leave ‘em, kind of guy.
Stunned, she scooted around the fire to his side and tentatively rested her head on his shoulder. His arm went lightly around her waist and she hesitantly draped her arm across his middle.
“What do you do to work out?” she murmured.
“Vigorous sex. You?”
She giggled in spite of herself. “Zumba. Which is a lot like pole dancing without the pole.”
“Show me sometime?”
“Not on your life.”
She felt his smile without having to look up to see it. Silence fell between them and she savored the slow, steady beat of his heart against her ear.
The warmth of the fire and the flames’ mesmerizing dance had lulled her mostly to sleep when he murmured under his breath, “I’m a devil you can’t handle, Angel. If you know what’s good for you, you’ll stay far, far away from me.”