She must have spent more miserable hours, but she was hard-put to remember. The rain didn’t let up, the road, if anything, grew steeper and more narrow, and the mud turned into a soupy consistency as Frazer drove doggedly onward. Maggie clutched the seat in desperate hands, but the rainwater made the old leather slippery, and she kept losing her grip. She didn’t bother complaining or screaming at Frazer, much as she wanted to. All she could do was close her eyes, try to hold on and pray.
They stopped so abruptly that Maggie was thrown forward, banging her forehead against the windshield. She opened her eyes, putting her hand to her face, only to bring it away covered with rain and blood.
She turned to look at Frazer, a dazed expression on her face, but if she expected concern she was optimistic. He’d already climbed out of the Jeep and grabbed his duffel bag and tossed it on the rain-soaked ground. She started to get out of the Jeep as well when he stopped her.
“You might want to stay put for the moment, Maggie,” he drawled, kneeling on the front seat and looming over her. “It’s a sheer drop on the other side.”
She jerked her head around to look, and let out a quiet moan of sheer terror. They weren’t hanging over the edge, but close enough that she might have slipped.
He was cupping her face, moving her hair away from her forehead. “Just a bump and a small cut,” he said briskly. “These head injuries bleed like crazy. Hold on.” He reached into his pocket and pulled out a handkerchief. She didn’t move while he proceeded to tie it around her forehead like a bandage. “Climb out this way.”
She didn’t need to be told a second time. She scrambled out of the Jeep after him, landing on her knees in the mud, almost ready to kiss the ground in her relief. He hauled her upright with impartial concern, staring down at her bloody, rain-drenched face, and a small smile curved his mouth. His damnably sexy mouth.
“Now you’re the one who looks like a swashbuckler,” he said.
She yanked her shirt free and tried to wipe some of the blood away with the tail of it. He watched the process with annoying fascination, and she realized she was exposing most of her stomach in the process. She yanked the shirt back down, glaring at him.
“What are we going to do now?” she demanded.
“Looks like we’re going to walk.”
“Walk?” she echoed in horror. “In this rain?”
“The Jeep wasn’t doing much good. Anyway, it’s good and stuck.”
“I’m not walking,” she said. The sultry heat of the San Pablo lowlands had turned sharply colder in the mountains, and the rain seemed to have sunk to her very bones.
“Suit yourself,” he said, tossing his duffel back onto the muddy ground. “I’m not carrying you.”
He started up the muddy track that had once been a road, abandoning both her and the Jeep without a backward glance.
“You can’t leave me here!” she cried.
He stopped and turned. “Then get your butt in gear and come with me. Or you can wait until someone shows up, though I hate to think who might be out in this kind of weather.”
“What about your Jeep?”
“I’ll get it later. It’s just about out of gas anyway—we were going to have to start walking sooner or later.”
Blanche Magnolia Brown, Philadelphia banker, used a word she’d never used out loud before in her entire life. And then, for good measure, she kicked the Jeep.
She heard the groaning sound from a distance. And then she saw that the Jeep was moving, slowly, sliding backward toward the edge of the cliff.
She didn’t even stop to think. She started after it, grabbing for the side in a ridiculous attempt to stop its momentum. In a daze she heard Frazer’s shout of fury, and a moment later she was slammed full face into the mud, with Frazer’s body covering hers.
A moment later he rolled off her, and she lifted her head to watch as the Jeep disappeared over the side of the cliff.
The noise it made as it tumbled down the hillside was endless, and she winced, hoping it would stop. But it didn’t—on and on, as the noise grew fainter, the clang of metal against rock, of trees breaking.
She turned to look at Ben. He was lying on his back in the rain, breathing deeply, not even blinking as water splashed over his face.
Finally the noise stopped. “It didn’t explode,” she said in a small voice.
“Not enough gas left in the tank.” His voice was calm, remote. He still didn’t move.
She sat up. “I’m…I’m sorry,” she said.
He nodded. And then he surged to his feet, effortlessly. He looked down at her. “You coming?” he inquired.
She nodded. She stood up, glancing over the hillside to the path of devastation. The Jeep was nowhere to be seen, but its trail had carved a swathe across the valley. “My suitcase,” she said in a mournful voice. “My Ferragamos.”
“Gone,” he said grimly, unmoved. He looked at her. “Did you have any more of that underwear?”
“Yes.”
“Damn.” He picked up his duffel bag. “Come on, Maggie. You need to rescue your sister, remember?”
“I remember,” she said. So the shoes were gone. And her ridiculously fanciful underwear. And her travelers checks and passport and ATM card and all her clothes. She had a kerchief around her head, she was soaked to the bone, and she’d just pushed a car over a cliff in a fit of pique.
She started to laugh. She threw back her head and laughed, in the face of the rain and the San Pablo mountains, she laughed, the sound ringing out over the valley.
“Have you lost your mind, Maggie?” Ben demanded warily.
“No,” she said, controlling her amusement. “I’ve lost everything else under the sun, and you’re doing your best to take away my very reason for being here, but no, I haven’t lost my mind. I just found my sense of the absurd.”
She didn’t expect him to get it. But a slow smile curved across his face, and he shoved his wet hair back, nodding with approval. “Maybe there’s some hope for you after all, Miss Magnolia.”
And for some reason she smiled back at him, no longer furious. “Maybe there is.”
* * *
THEY’D GIVEN HIM A BAD moment there. When El Gallito had seen the Jeep tumbling end over end down the mountainside he’d thought his entire trip had been for nothing. If they’d crashed in the Jeep there would be no one to lead him to The Professor, and these mountains guarded their secrets too well. There was no way he could find his target in the next twenty-four hours without divine intervention, and El Gallito had learned that the Almighty didn’t have a whole lot of sympathy for a hired killer.
But there’d been no screams, no death cry, no bodies flying from the open cockpit of the Jeep. And he knew Frazer far too well to expect him to make that kind of mistake. No, he and the woman were out of the Jeep before it made its abrupt descent, and Frazer had probably pushed it himself. He knew El Gallito was out for The Professor’s blood—he was smart enough to assume he was being followed.
Not too smart if he thought he’d fool El Gallito with such a crude bluff. They were heading onward on foot, and they’d be just as easy to track. They’d be moving slower, and it wouldn’t be long before he’d catch up to them.
He had to be very careful, though, and pick the right moment. When Frazer’s defenses were down. He was a formidable opponent, and El Gallito couldn’t count on the presence of the woman to effectively distract him.
He had a few hours to play with. It was growing late, they’d be wet and miserable while he was still safe and dry inside his sturdy SUV. When he was ready, they’d be defenseless.
He could hardly wait.
CHAPTER NINE
MAGGIE WAS SHIVERING. Her head hurt, though less than she would have expected, given her brush with the windshield on the erstwhile Jeep. She was soaked to the bone, and while the last downpour had the dubious benefit of sluicing most of the mud and blood off her, it left her chilled and achy and ready to weep with exhaustion.
She
didn’t say a word. She kept pace behind Frazer, moving steadily, and if she slipped on the wet pathway she simply got up again without a word.
It was getting dark. The road had turned into a narrow track, climbing higher and higher into the mountainous terrain, and she had no idea whether the altitude was getting to her or simply the lack of food and warmth. He was right—Stella could take care of herself in the future. And Maggie would tell her just that, if she ever managed to catch her breath long enough to speak.
She’d long ago lost any reluctant admiration for Frazer’s tall, strong body. He just kept moving, inexorably, and if there was a sort of catlike grace to him she didn’t give a damn. All she wanted was a fire and a place to lie down and the world to leave her alone. Her amusement had fled long ago, and right now misery was her only companion. Frazer seemed to have forgotten about her entirely.
It was growing dark. The rain was still falling, a steady drizzle that kept Maggie’s clothes drenched and her shoes squelching in the mud. She wondered what would happen if she simply sat down and refused to take another step.
Except that she knew what would happen. Ben would give her one last mocking look and abandon her, and it wouldn’t matter at all that she’d asked him to bring her up here, paid him to do it.
And so she kept on, counting the steps as she went, so blindly wretched that she could barely speak. It didn’t matter—there wasn’t much to say. Sooner or later she’d simply drop in her tracks and that would be the end of it. No one would ever find her body, and she’d become a family mystery. Stella’s grandchildren would always wonder what happened to their great-aunt Maggie, who disappeared in the mountains of San Pablo looking for…
What the hell was she looking for? Did she even care anymore? Could she walk one more step?
A tree branch slapped her in the face, and she had her answer. She went down, and this time she stayed down, sitting in the middle of the rocky path, trying to catch her breath.
She’d underestimated him. As soon as he realized she’d fallen behind he came back, looming over her in the gathering dusk. “We’re almost there, Maggie,” he said gruffly.
“Almost where?” Or at least that was what she’d tried to say. Her breath was wheezing, her words barely discernible.
“The place where we’re stopping for the night.”
She shook her head. “I’m…stopping here…” she gasped.
She wasn’t expecting sympathy, or patience, which was a good thing because those two commodities were clearly in very short supply. She also wasn’t expecting him to haul her straight up, into his arms.
“Put me down!” she said, struggling.
“If you don’t hold still I’ll send you after my long-lost Jeep,” he said grimly. An empty threat—they were nowhere near the cliffs anymore. “There’s a ruined farmhouse somewhere up ahead where we can find shelter. It’s too far to Segundo tonight, and the accommodations wouldn’t be much better. I’m tired and I’m hungry and I’m in one hell of a bad mood, so don’t push me. Lie still and be quiet.”
He’d started back up the steep pathway, seemingly unaffected by her solid one hundred and twenty three pounds in his arms. He was still carrying the duffel bag, and she knew that was a fairly hefty proposition as well. He didn’t seem the slightest bit fazed by it. He was much stronger than she realized, much stronger than his lean, sinewy body suggested. She opened her mouth to voice one more protest, then shut it instead. What was that saying? Wisdom was the better part of valor?
Being carried was a lot less comfortable than it looked in the movies, she thought dismally. When Richard Gere swooped someone up in his arms it looked divinely romantic. When Ben Frazer swooped her up in his arms to carry her up a steep, rocky pathway it was jarring and uncomfortable, his grip on her was as impersonal as a baggage handler’s, and each step made her teeth rattle.
She didn’t say a word.
It was full dark by the time he set her down, and she was past noticing anything more than the basics. They were in some kind of shelter, and the rain had stopped. She curled up where he placed her, huddled and miserable, beyond words. She watched him as he built a fire in a pit in the center of the room, content to simply doze, when he finally spoke to her.
“Do you want to change first or eat?”
She roused herself. “Change into what? All my clothes went over the cliff with the Jeep.”
“Mine didn’t. You’re caked with mud, sugar. There’s a stream out back where you can wash off—it’s not that cold. You’ll feel better if you do.”
“I doubt it.”
“I can wash you myself.”
She glared at him. It was probably an empty threat—he had to be almost as exhausted as she was, though he still appeared to be brimming with energy. It took all her effort to rise to her feet, but he wisely made no attempt to help her. “All right. Where’s the stream?”
“Out back. I’ll take care of dinner while you’re gone.”
“How domestic,” she said with a trace of her usual fire, taking the pile of clothes he handed her.
The stream was easy enough to find—she just followed the sound of gurgling water. There was even a shallow pool, and it wasn’t as icy as she’d feared.
They’d stopped at the ruins of an old farmhouse. Ben had chosen the one room that was reasonably intact, although most of the roof was gone. He’d built the fire in the middle of the floor, the smoke going straight out into the starry night. The rain clouds had finally cleared, and the night was still and beautiful. On any other occasion Maggie would have been awestruck by the sheer physical beauty of it. Right now all she could worry about was getting clean and dry.
The pool was marginally warmer than the running stream, and as quickly as she could she stripped off her muddy, rain-soaked clothes and jumped in. The water came to her thighs, and she sank down, shivering, rubbing the dirt away from her skin briskly. She even dunked her head under the water to wash away the stray blood from her forehead. The cut above her eye stung, but she was past caring.
No towel, of course. No underwear, either, though she could have hardly expected that Ben would come equipped with panties and a bra. Her own were too wet and muddy to even consider wearing, so she simply yanked on the baggy jeans, then grabbed the soft khaki shirt.
One button. One damned button and no bra underneath. He must have another T-shirt somewhere, but he hadn’t bothered to give it to her, the pig. She had no choice but to tie the long tails of the shirt together and hope the one button would preserve what tiny amount of modesty she had left.
He was busy by the fire when she came back, and he didn’t even bother looking up at her as she took a seat as far away from him as she could, on the other side of the blissfully blazing pit. Heat was wafting out of it, reaching into her icy bones, and her icy mood was beginning to melt as well.
She made one last effort to hold onto it. “Don’t you have any shirts with buttons on them?”
He looked up, across the flames, and his innocent smile looked saturnine. “Not for you, sugar.”
“Pig,” she said without any real antipathy.
“You make a real nice swashbuckler yourself, Maggie,” he drawled. “Or a pirate wench. How’s your head feel?”
“Could be worse.”
He came around the fire to her, so quickly she didn’t have time to scamper out of the way. He caught her chin in his hand, pushing her wet hair away from her forehead with an impersonal touch. “It doesn’t look too bad. Might leave a scar though. If you want I could try to stitch it.”
She shuddered, and it had nothing to do with his hard, warm hand holding her chin, his cool, dark eyes staring down at her. “I thought you told me you couldn’t sew.”
“I save my tailoring talents for field dressings.”
“I’ll pass, thank you. Every good swashbuckler needs a scar or two.”
An odd expression flitted across his face. In another man she might have called it tenderness, but Ben Frazer didn’t hav
e a tender bone in his body. He was still cupping her chin, and a strange silence had fallen between them, broken only by the sound of the crackling fire. He bent closer, and she had the craziest notion that he was going to kiss her, that he was going to put his firm sexy mouth against hers for no other reason than that he wanted to. And she wanted him to. Badly.
She panicked. She slid away from him, backward until she came up against the old stone wall of the room. “What’s for dinner?” she asked breathlessly.
His eyes were opaque, giving nothing away, and she wondered if she’d imagined that strange, erotically charged moment. She must have.
“Freeze-dried beef Stroganoff,” he said mildly. “Since you rejected the notion of chili. Washed down by whiskey.”
“I don’t think so.”
“The whiskey’s optional, though you’ve still got a chill,” he observed with clinical detachment. “The Stroganoff is an order. If you want to keep going you’ll need to get a decent night’s sleep and some food in your belly. Otherwise you’ll probably collapse on the path again and this time I won’t haul your ass anywhere.”
“Charming,” she said sweetly. She must have imagined that moment. “I’ll eat.”
“You’ll sleep better with a couple of shots of whiskey as well.”
“I’d sleep better in a nice warm hotel room on a real mattress.”
“Wouldn’t we both? Just be grateful I grabbed my duffel. We have two blankets between us. You can wrap yourself in one and hope for the best. Or we can team up and share them.”
She didn’t even dignify that with a response. The whiskey was sounding better and better. The idea of curling up on the hard ground with nothing but a thin blanket was about as appetizing as the tin plate of hot mush he handed her, but she didn’t have much choice in the matter. Besides, it tasted surprisingly good. Maybe she’d sleep better than she expected. She was certainly tired enough.
The room was so small he could lean against the far wall and still be near enough to enjoy the heat of the fire. A little too close to her, but she was getting used to that. He’d eaten his dinner with methodical concentration, like someone taking medicine, and then he’d washed it down with some of the contents of a small, battered flask.