Just a Kiss Away
Authors: Jill Barnett
| Just a Kiss Away |
| Jill Barnett |
| Pocket (2011) |
After arriving on a lush Pacific island, Eulalie Grace LaRue is to be finally reunited with the absent father she hasn't seen since childhood. Yet before her long dreamed-of meeting can take place, the lovely but pampered Southern belle is caught in the crossfire of a violent revolution and thrown into the rugged arms of American mercenary soldier Sam Forester.
On the run in the jungle, this battle-scarred soldier of fortune hasn't a clue what to do with the naive blonde in his care. Survival is his top priority, but he can not resist Lollie's endearing, helpless, and laughable charm...or deny the growing attraction between them. Though Sam thrives on chance and risk, falling in love is the one chance he isn't willing to take. Powerless against the desire that consumes them both, Lollie surrenders to his passionate embrace. But when he dismisses her affections, she is determined to fight for him, to prove that in the steamy heat of paradise, two hearts can find the love of a lifetime.
Sam and Lollie sat at opposite ends of the boat, each trying to out-glare the other. Lollie felt she was winning.
Sam lolled against the bow, his arms hooked over the rim. He rubbed his dark, stubbly jaw. “Why the hell are you so mad?”
Lollie stuck her nose up and looked away. “Because I saved you!”
“So?”
She slowly turned back around. “So? So? Your backside isn’t throbbing from riding one of those horned cows. You didn’t have your hand crushed by some love-struck native girl. You didn’t have mud flung at you and natives yelling at you.”
“Are you through?” He hadn’t moved, hadn’t flinched, just sat there, grinning.
“No! I hate you, Sam. I really do.”
“Then why did you save me?” He looked as if he were really enjoying this, which made her even madder.
“Because I thought
you
needed saving for a change!”
“I suppose I did. Come closer, Lollipop.” He put his hand behind her head and pulled her up until she was just a kiss away . . .
“Jill Barnett is a storyteller extraordinaire.”
—Dorothy Garlock
Now Available Or Coming Soon In Ebook
From Bell Bridge Books:
JUST A KISS AWAY
BEWITCHING
DREAMING
IMAGINE
CARRIED AWAY
WONDERFUL
WILD
WICKED
THE HEART’S HAVEN
SENTIMENTAL JOURNEY
THE DAYS OF SUMMER
BRIDGE TO HAPPINESS
Visit Jill at www.jillbarnett.com
and www.bellbridgebooks.com
Jill Barnett sold her first book to Simon and Schuster in 1988 and has gone on to write 19 novels and short stories. There are over 7 million of her books in print, and her work has been published worldwide in 21 languages, audio and large print editions, and has earned her a place on such national bestseller lists as the New York Times, USA Today, Washington Post, Publishers Weekly, Barnes and Noble and Waldenbooks —who presented Jill with the National Waldenbook Award. She lives with her family in the Pacific Northwest.
by
Jill Barnett
Bell Bridge Books
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons (living or dead,) events or locations is entirely coincidental.
Bell Bridge Books
PO BOX 300921
Memphis, TN 38130
Ebook ISBN: 978-1-935661-69-6
Bell Bridge Books is an Imprint of BelleBooks, Inc.
Copyright © 1991 by Jill Barnett
Printed and bound in the United States of America.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer, who may quote brief passages in a review.
A mass market edition of this book was published by Pocket Books in 1991
We at BelleBooks enjoy hearing from readers.
Visit our websites – www.BelleBooks.com and www.BellBridgeBooks.com.
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2
Cover design: Debra Dixon
Interior design: Hank Smith
Photo credits:
Woman © Madartists | Dreamstime.com
Palm fronds © Damla Ayzeren | Dreamstime.com
:Mkj:01:
To Jan Barnett and Kelly Barnett Walker, Sam’s for you.
Luzon Island, Cavite Province,
July 1896
The machete just missed his head.
And Sam Forester needed his mercenary head, preferably still attached to his body. He spun around. A guerrilla soldier stood a foot away with the long curved knife held high, ready to strike again. Sam punched him. A familiar crunch rang from his callused knuckles to his wrist. He shook the soreness from his hand and stared down at the soldier. The man wouldn’t get up soon.
Sam picked up the machete and a moment later whacked a path of escape through the dense jungle bamboo. Where the growth allowed, he ran. Damp, pointed leaves of oleander scratched his face. Cut bamboo crunched under his feet. Wet, furry vines slapped at his shoulders and head. He raised the machete and sliced through a low, smothering ceiling of jade vine. All the while he could hear the others chasing him.
He burst into a clearing—no jungle to tangle him up, to hold him back. He pushed harder for the chance to gain a little ground. Running, running, pulse throbbing in his ears, he looked up. It was still dark. A vivid canopy of giant banyans blocked out the afternoon sun. Ahead all he saw was a wall of green—the never-ending sea of tree-palm fronds and another dark wooden forest of island bamboo.
Mist steamed up from the humid ground as if the earth had cracked open over the seas of hell. A sweet, almost sickening smell hung like fog in the heavy air. The smell grew stronger, the leaves around him thicker. He ripped at them, driving on, harder and harder, tearing through a dense, twisted prison of sweet jungle jasmine. The rough, woody vines caught on his shoulder, scratched his arms and hands. They seemed to suddenly wrap around him like long grasping fingers, determined to slow him down, hold him, or trip him. But he couldn’t trip. His escape depended on it. One fall and they’d have him. The guerrilla soldiers were that close. Though now he couldn’t hear them over the pounding of his heart, he could still sense them, could feel them. They were hot on his heels.
Then he heard them right behind him, crashing through the underbrush. They panted. They swore. They stuck to him as if they were his own shadow, ever present. He heard the crack of their machetes—long, deadly, curved steel blades that splintered a path in the tall bamboo. With each chop, each hack of metal against splitting wood, the frenzied sound of pursuit ran an icy path of fear through Sam’s bones.
Sweat streamed down his tanned face, under the black leather eye patch he’d worn for eight years, over the hewn angles of his life-weathered face, and trickled down through the dark shadow of a three-day beard. His perspiration mixed with the sweltering beads of humid, thick, steamy air that cloaked everything on this heaven-and-hell island.
His vision blurred from the wet air . . . or from the sweat; he wasn’t sure which. He sped on, stumbling once when he couldn’t see anything but a dark wet blur. He swabbed his good eye with a torn sleeve. His heart drummed in his ears. It was a beat to run by.
A new fragrance filled the air. The smell of risk.
A sudden blood rush sent him running faster, pounding through the jungle. The bitter metallic taste of danger was so palpable, so real, that it swelled in his dry mouth with the same urgency of sexual impulse. His brink-driven breaths increased, faster, faster, until they burned in his chest like hot acid. His legs churned. His ridged thighs contracted. Mud suddenly swallowed his feet. He couldn’t move.
Damn!
He pulled forward, determined not to let dirt and water stop him. He fought on, dragging and slogging his legs forward. His boots felt like lead. The mud got deeper. It sucked at his thighs. His calves ached. The muscles in his forearms tightened. He trudged on and on. Now the mud was only ankle-deep. He broke free, still ahead of the men who chased him, and soon he had gained ground once again.
He ran. They pursued. It was a game in which he wavered on the edge, maybe even the edge of death. He was in his element. He tested the fates. He challenged the odds. And he gambled with his life, because the thrill was keener and so much more intense when the price of failure was so dear.
A white, wicked smile cut like lightning across his hard jaw.
Sam Forester lived for this.
