Just a Kiss Away (20 page)

He removed his pack and held out a hand. “Come on, I’ll need to help you over this section.” He pulled her up beside him onto the narrow shelf of rock. Squatting over the pack, he drew out a hank of rope and tied one end of it around his waist. He turned to Lollie.

“I need to loop the other end of this rope around you. It’s about an eighty-foot drop to the ground below.” He nodded toward the ledge and knotted the rope while she peered over his shoulder, her face suddenly pale and unsure. “There you go.”

He stood; she still surveyed the cliff.

“Don’t look down.”

She shifted her makeshift pack of coconuts and gave him a pale and apprehensive look.

“Just leave the coconuts, Lollipop.”

She shook her head, but didn’t stop gaping at the drop. “If you look down, you’ll get dizzy, and that’ll get us both in trouble. Understand?”

“Okay.” She raised her eyes to his and grabbed a tight hold of his hand.

It took almost five eternal minutes to get three-quarters of the way across the ledge. The whole time, Sam kept talking to her as if he were easing a spooked horse, his voice firm, quiet, and as reassuring as he could make it.

“Stay against the side, Lollie,” he said, moving farther ahead of her on the narrowest section of the ledge. “It’s narrower here—”

She gasped.

He could have kicked himself for telling her it was narrow and probably scaring her senseless—he mentally amended that.

“It’s okay.” He turned to ease her mind . . . and froze. “Don’t move,” he ordered, hoping to God that she wouldn’t.

A huge black tarantula crept along the coconuts onto her left shoulder.

Sam could see her wary eyes slowly move to the left. “Whatever you do, don’t move!”

Her mouth fell open.

She’d seen it.

Her eyes grew wide with horror.

He could see the scream coming. “Don’t—”

“Aaaaaaaak!”

He moved toward her.

She jumped up and down, as if running in place, flinging and flailing her arms over her head and hair, screaming. Lord, but was she screaming.

The spider flew through the air in a black furry ball, as did the coconuts.

He reached out to grab her waving arms.

The edge of the ledge cracked, and over she went, still rotating her arms faster than a weather vane in a Chicago gale wind.

Sam arched back, bending his knees to absorb the jolt he knew was coming. He grasped the rope in a tight grip. At any second he’d feel the force of her weight dangling off the ledge.

The rope jerked hard, cutting into his waist, but he held tight. His shoulders absorbed the shock. An instant later the rope skidded through his hands so fast it seared his palms. He squeezed tighter, ignoring the burn, gripping the rope until finally it stopped.

Her screaming didn’t.

Sam took a deep breath and began to wrap the rope around his fists.

Suddenly it slipped again in small, sharp movements. “Stop screaming! And hold the hell still!” he yelled, then added under his breath, You twit.”

He pulled up the rope, hand over burning hand. He could feel it when she stilled, and he continued to draw her upward. Her sobs whimpered up as he pulled over and over until he finally dragged her up and over the side of the ledge.

“Oh, Gawd, oh, Gawd,” she moaned, grabbing his hands. “G-get-m-me off h-here.”

He shoved her back against the rock.

“D-d-did you s-s-see th-that awful th-thing?” She could barely wheeze out the words she shook so, hiccupping to get her breath.

He sank to his knees, the rope still held loosely in his hands. He didn’t know whether to hit her or hold her. She took the decision out of his hands by rolling toward him, then crawling right into his arms and wrapping her own around his neck in a clinging grip. He could feel her shake. Their hearts beat a rapid tattoo, his from exertion and danger, hers from terror and tears.

“It was awful, and black, and hairy,” she muttered into his chest, her breath warm, her arms still clasped around his neck. She still shook. Very slowly he started to place his hands on her small heaving back. She burrowed into him as if trying to find solace, clinging, her chest plastered against his.

He stopped in mid-motion. He shouldn’t touch her. He didn’t want to touch her. He couldn’t touch her. There was no way he would touch her. His hands clenched, then opened and started to close the two-inch gap to her back, lower and lower . . .

She pushed away, wiping her eyes and swallowing hard.

His mouth was a little dry. He looked down at her, shook some sense into his rattled head, and asked, “Are you all right?”

She sniffed and nodded.

“Good. Now I can wring your fool neck.”

She stared at him for a long, sorrowful moment, then burst into tears, crying—caterwauling—for all she was worth.

Sam winced, completely convinced that if he died and went to hell, it would be full of crying, screaming, whining women.

“I lost the coconuts!” she said in a wail.

Because of the sorrowful way she cried, he couldn’t bring himself to give her any more trouble. There was shame and defeat in her Southern voice, as if she carried Pandora’s guilt, spilling plague and pestilence on the earth instead of dropping a few spider-infested coconuts.

Of course now that he thought about the way the tarantula had flown through the air, Sam guessed she did spill pestilence, and her whining had definitely plagued him. He almost smiled at his thoughts, but watched her for a moment instead, deciding that just letting her cry it out would be best for her, though not for his ears.

She was an odd little pain in the ass. His first impression had been of a pampered little rich girl. Now he wondered about that. Besides the helplessness and trouble that seemed to be Lollie LaRue—he shook his head, still unable to get over that name—there was something he’d picked up about her, loneliness and insecurity, things he’d have thought money and prestige made up for.

Loneliness wasn’t foreign to Sam, only now he liked being alone. He was in control of his life and he liked it that way. He chose his friends carefully and could count them on one hand. Trust was a hard thing for him to give. He forced most people to earn it, and he was so hard on them that they usually gave up.

On Quincy Street your friends were only that as long as you could keep a little fear in them. Otherwise they’d stab you in the back. They had to survive. He’d heard this jungle referred to as the kind of place where only the fittest survived. The jungles he’d been in, the fights, the small wars, were nothing compared to the war he had fought to live to adulthood.

Yes, he knew about survival. He could remember feeling as if every time someone looked at him they saw “poor white bastard trash” tattooed across his forehead. It had taken years to knock that particular chip off his shoulder, and he wondered now as he looked at the Lollipop if maybe some of that chip wasn’t still there.

Her blubbering tapered off, and he gave her another minute. “Are you through?”

She took that moment to look at him. Even he couldn’t laugh at her when she looked as if she didn’t have a soul in the world. Sam didn’t understand her. She wasn’t logical. In fact, her mind worked with a quirky illogic that he’d never encountered before. He wondered briefly if that was what it was about this harebrained woman that threw his timing off.

Well, whatever it was he didn’t have time to analyze it. He needed to get rid of her once and for all; then everything would be nice and normal.

“We don’t need those coconuts,” he reassured her, hoping that would get her over this little show.

“I
needed them. They were my responsibility.”

Shaking his head in disgust, he stood, grabbed her small shuddering shoulders, and lifted her up. She sniveled some more, looked around her, then up at him. “I hate spiders.”

“Lollipop, come here.”

She stepped closer, and he put his hands on her shoulders and turned her so she could see down the other side of the ledge. He pointed down below. “Look.”

She craned her neck so she could peer down the hill. “It’s just another river.” She wiped her eyes.

“No,” he said. “It’s a freshwater pool. See the waterfalls?” He could feel her nod. The woman was senseless. “Want a bath?”

She spun around, her hands clutching his filthy shirtfront like a shameless beggar. “A bath?” She sounded ready to swoon.

He smiled and peeled her grappling hands from his shirt so he could get the pack and rifle. “Come on.” He grabbed her hand and took her down the rocky path that led to the pool. “Let’s go get you that bath.”

Lollie stood under
the falling water, rubbing the large oily leaves Sam told her worked like soap over her filthy skin. She scrubbed her shoulder especially well, washing away the creepy feeling left behind by the huge spider. With each swipe of the large leaf more of the dirt and grime and mud washed away in the cascading water. This was heaven.

She glanced around at the slate gray rock of the small ledge on which she stood. It was solid and almost completely surrounded her except for one small open area where the water fell. She’d been leery at first, worried that Sam could see her. She had asked him how she could be sure of her privacy.

He’d told her he had better things to do than look at her. When she balked, he’d taken her over to another grotto just like this one. Both had been carved by nature into the rock hillside on opposite ends of the clear silvery pool.

A ridged wall of rock separated the two areas so that in order for him to see her, he’d have to climb onto the rocks where he’d be in plain sight of her. She was safe from prying male eyes. And she wanted to be clean so badly she was willing to trust him. She’d probably have trusted the devil himself if it meant getting clean.

The water felt so good. She let it rush through her long hair, basking in the way it poured over her scalp like gentle, cleansing fingers. She wadded the soap leaf in her hand and rubbed it over her hair, getting a bit of a lather that smelled like expensive exotic perfume. Leaning back, she rinsed her hair, twisting and turning this way and that.

A noise pierced the rushing sound of falling water. She spun, covering her privates, both upper and lower, as best she could with her arms and hands. Then she stepped back and peered out, expecting to see Sam Forester standing on the rocks watching her.

No one was there.

How odd, she thought. The noise sounded like a male groan—a loud male groan. Worried now, she stooped down and picked up her undergarments, which she’d washed and wrung out before placing them on a small ledge near the waterfall. She eyed the corset. That was one garment she intended to leave behind. She stepped into the lace-edged drawers, pulled them up, and tied the waist cord. Soaking wet, they clung to her like a second skin, a sheer second skin. Ramming her arms into the corset cover, she fumbled with the small pearl buttons, every so often peering out at the rock barrier.

Still no one, she thought, stepping into her ragged and torn petticoat. She glanced down. At least most of her was covered, although now she wasn’t cinched in. While it felt odd, that corset was one garment she wouldn’t miss. A little freedom was nice, but it was even nicer to be clean all over. Well, almost all over. There was still jerky between her teeth.

Maybe she could borrow Sam’s small knife to whittle it out. Moving with purpose she crossed the small shallow pool. He had given her the shallow end to, as he put it, keep her from drowning in four feet of water. She reached the rock barrier and realized that she’d forgotten her shoes. She eyed the distance back, then the few rocks she could use as steps. They were slick and smooth, made so by years of flowing water.