Wild Orchids (33 page)

"Relax, Lora." Max's voice was low and soothing. "He's not going to do anything if you stay still. He'll just crawl off your arm and go somewhere else. Just stay still and it will soon be over."

Lora shut her eyes, letting his words wash over her. She concentrated on that husky, brown velvet voice. She loved the sound of Max's voice, she realized, with its drawling Texas accent. That was one of the first things that had attracted her to him. That and his linebacker's shoulders… Lora thought of those shoulders, pictured them naked and gleaming bronze, concentrated on the width and breadth and strength of them as the snake slithered across her palm and over her fingers. She concentrated so hard that she wasn't even conscious of the sweat that was drenching her body…

"Blammm!" The explosion of a pistol almost in her ear sent her screaming upright, her hands flying out from under the snake as she jumped to her feet. Max was there behind her, and she fell against him as she turned with blind panic. His arms enfolded her, holding her against him, one hand soothing as it slowly stroked her back. His other hand held the pistol… Lora shuddered and gasped into the soft cotton of the t-shirt covering his broad chest, the terror that she had managed to hold at bay until now making her quake with tremors from head to toe.

"What the hell?" The yelped question was Tmafish's as he jacknifed into a sitting position on his pallet, but Lora scarcely heard it.

"Coral snake," Max said briefly. "I took care of it, go back to sleep."

"She all right?"

"Yes. Go back to sleep. All of you." The tone made it an order that was also addressed to Minelli and DiAngelo, who had started up at the sound of the gunshot and now sat staring at Lora in Max's arms with identical smirking expressions.

"Anything you say, boss." Tunafish lay back down and ostentatiously shut his eyes. So did the other two, with snorts of disgust. Lora was scarcely aware that they were even present. She could not get the image of that brilliantly striped snake on her white skin out of her mind. She clung to Max as if she would never let him go.

"It's over now," he murmured into her hair, his head bent so that his mouth was pressed somewhere near her ear. "The snake's dead, and you're safe. It's over."          

"It felt so—warm," she gasped, shivering. "I always imagined a snake would feel—cold."

"It must have been lying in the sun when something disturbed it. Put it out of your mind. It's over."

"Oh, my God, I'll have nightmares for the rest of my life. I hate snakes."

Against her hair she felt a movement of his face that made her think he was smiling.

"So do I. They give me the creeps."

That so surprised her that she pulled a little away from him to look up at him. He was smiling, she saw, a crooked, boyish smile that charmed her utterly. When he was like this, she found herself thinking, it was easy to imagine that he was someone she could love… Her eyes widened with horror that she could even in her wildest imaginings couple that word with this man. Of course she couldn't love him—she didn't even like him. Or at least, not often. It was just a case of her perfectly normal female hormones responding as they were meant to to an inordinately sexy hunk of masculinity…

She pulled away from him, her hands on the hard muscles of his bare arms setting him at a little distance. He looked down at her inquiringly, and she found that she had to look away from that too-aggressively masculine face. He disturbed her on every level.

The body of the snake, its head shot off, caught her eye, and effectively banished Max from her mind. She shuddered again, feeling her stomach heave. All at once she knew she was going to be sick… She ran for the entrance to the cave and fell to her knees on the crumbly rock in front of it. There, with small shaggy bushes tickling her cheeks and green leafy treetops almost at eye-level, she vomited until there was nothing but clear liquid left inside her. When it was over, she sat weakly back, to find Max beside her. She didn't even care that he had seen her at her repulsive worst.

"Here," he said, passing her a bit of gauze bandage that he had hastily doused with water. "Wipe your face, you'll feel better."

"Thanks." She took it from him, shakily, and passed it over her face and neck. The cool wet cloth did make her feel better.

"Rinse your mouth out, then take a couple of sips," he ordered next, passing her the empty whiskey bottle which he had pressed into service as a canteen. Lora obediently took a swallow from the bottle, swished it around her mouth and spat. Then she took a couple of sips as he directed, and handed him back the bottle.    

He let her sit there for a moment, soaking the warmth of the sun into her shock-chilled system, then he pulled her to her feet. She clung to his forearms, her eyes lifted to study his face. She didn't know it, but the newly risen sun caught the tangle of curls that framed her face, turning it a bright and shiny gold that glinted and glittered with life. All her unaccustomed outdoor activity of the day before had left her normally pale face flushed with rosy color from the sun. Her mouth was a deep rose, too, and her eyes were a dark, denim blue. The shocking pink t-shirt hugged her from shoulders to waist, and even though she was wearing a bra the contours of her soft, round breasts with their upthrusting nipples was unmistakable. And the tight jeans revealed no less of her curvaceous hips and long, long legs…

Max's face tightened as he looked down at her. All the warm caring, all the tenderness and concern vanished, to be replaced by a craggy mask harder than the rocks they stood on. Those black eyes glittered down at her unreadably, and that hard mouth tightened into a straight line. Even the silky black mustache seemed to change: it was no longer charmingly masculine, but intimidatingly ferocious. Lora stared up into the ruthless face of the man who had first kidnapped her, and felt her eyes widen.

"Max?" His name was a soft, puzzled question. She didn't. understand what had caused him to change so quickly. He'd been kind and gentle, and now…

She felt his forearms tighten under her hands. "Go back inside. I have some things to do. I'll be back later."

"Max…"

"Tunafish!" he roared over her head. "You're on!"

"Got ya, boss!" came the answering shout from inside the cave, and then Max turned his attention back to Lora.

"Go on," he said, stepping away from her so that her hands fell to her sides. Without even looking at her to see if she obeyed, he turned and started down the crumbly rock face of the cliff. Lora stared at the back of that black head, at the broad back and those long, jean-clad legs until they disappeared into the dense jungle below.

Chapter XX

"I want to talk to you."

It was late afternoon of the same day, and the daily downpour was raging outside. The rush of the water, which Lora sometimes found almost soothing, was threatening to drive her out of her mind. She was so sick of everything always being damp, and smelling of mildew! To say nothing of snakes and ticks and mosquitoes and—and men! Particularly one man. She glared at him challengingly as she cornered him at last, sitting at the mouth of the cave, pistol resting on his bent knees as he stared out into the pouring rain. He had taken good care to be out of the cave all morning, and she had a feeling he would have been gone now if conscience hadn't demanded that he take over the guard duties so that Tunafish could rest. Ever since he had come back into the cave—bearing fish, this time, which they had baked on a rock and eaten for lunch—he had been behaving as though she were a mere acquaintance whose name he had trouble remembering. She had taken it silently, because there didn't seem to be anything else she could do without making a fool of herself. But as he chatted with Tunafish, and even exchanged a few remarks with Minelli and DiAngelo while shepherding them outside to attend to nature's call, she felt her grievance grow until she thought she would choke on it. Damn it, she was not disposable! She could not be used once and then discarded like a—a paper plate! As Tunafish dozed and Minelli and DiAngelo stared sullenly off into space, Lora glared at Max's averted head and seethed. Suddenly, she made up her mind: as the advertisements said, she was mad as hell and she was not going to take it anymore! And so she walked determinedly to where Max Stared out at the roaring rain and confronted him.

It seemed to take her words a moment to sink in. Then he turned his head slowly to look up at her. She stood, hands on hips, face belligerent as she glared down at him.

He sighed and lifted a finger to stroke his mustache. "Not now, Lora, okay?"

"Why not now?" Her tone was as belligerent as her expression.

He sighed again. "Would you believe I have a headache?"

"No."

"Well, I do."

"Want an aspirin?" Sarcasm stung through the seemingly solicitous request.

"That would be nice, yes."

"Too bad. Tunafish has taken them all."

Max sighed again, eyeing her.

"Just who the hell do you think you are?" The question burst forth from her throat of its own volition, fueled by the seething anger that had driven her to tell him off in the first place—and by the resigned way he was meeting her increasingly maddened eyes.

"This is about what happened yesterday, I take it?"

"You're darned right it is! I don't like being treated like a—like a—" she hesitated, searching for just the right word. To tell the truth, she didn't know exactly what he was treating her like. All she knew was that she didn't like it!

"Like a one-night stand?" he supplied helpfully.

Lora glared at him. "Yes!"

"I knew you wouldn't."

His calm response stopped her incipient tirade in its tracks.

"What?"

He eyed her. The resigned look was back, but this time Lora was too confused to respond with the fury it deserved.

"Look, Lora, if we have to have this out, why don't you sit down? I'm sure Minelli and DiAngelo are having a ball trying to figure out why you're shouting at me."

Lora cast a furtive look over her shoulder. Like Tunafish, Minelli seemed to be dozing, but DiAngelo was watching them interestedly. She looked back at Max, who patted the floor beside him. She sat down with poor grace.

"If you want an apology for yesterday, you've got it. I apologize. Sincerely."

"I don't want an apology! I want to know what happened! Yesterday, when we were—were making love, you seemed—I thought…" Her voice trailed off as she found herself quite unable to put what she had thought into words, even in her own mind. "And then you changed," she added obscurely. "This morning, too."

Max looked at her for a moment, his expression unreadable, then turned to look back out at the slashing torrents of rain.

"Just what did you think while we were making love,Lora?" The question was quiet, but the eyes that turned back to focus on hers were keen.

"I thought—I thought…" She floundered in a morass of half-formed sentences, and stopped.

"You thought that this might be the start of some kind of deathless love affair," he answered for her. That was exactly what she had thought, she realized with chagrin, but now that he had put it into words, it sounded hopelessly sophomoric. And from the way he said it, he thought so, too.