“I can’t go that far, I have to get back to the motel.”
“Fine. Pull over to the bank and get out.”
“What about you?”
“What about me? I won’t starve, if that’s what you’re worried about. I had half a can of Vienna sausage for lunch.”
“How will you get home?”
“Not your problem.”
“It is so my problem! I can’t see my way back to the motel in the dark. I’ll take you to your camp and you can lend me a flashlight and point me in the direction of the road, and...”
She gaped at him, her mahogany-colored eyes growing round. Even the one that was swollen half shut. “Did you say six and three-quarter miles?” she whispered.
The boat scraped against a cypress knee, and without even looking, she reached out, grabbed the thing and shoved off. Her survival skills were on a par with her rowing ability.
“Like I said, pull over to the bank and get out. Follow the creek to where you found me and then retrace your steps back to wherever you came from.” If he’d known there was a motel within walking distance, he might have gone even deeper into the swamp.
Company, he didn’t need.
Jasmine was having trouble making out his features. He was facing away from the rapidly fading light. His shoulders looked enormous in the baggy gray sweatshirt. She had a feeling they would look even more impressive without it. A surly man with shoulders the size of a refrigerator she didn’t need.
With a heavy sigh, she retrieved the oars now that the creek had widened out. One of them scraped his hip. He caught his breath, she apologized, and told herself it would make a wonderful travel piece. Lost in the wilderness, surrounded by silence, Spanish moss, cypress knees and a perfectly splendid sunset that was reflected, now that she’d come around a bend, on the water.
So far she’d seen no signs of any predators, but she had seen a huge, graceful bird she recognized as a heron type. It lifted from the bank just as they’d rounded the bend and flapped right overhead. If she’d been standing, she could have reached out and touched it.
If she’d been standing, she would have probably fallen overboard. Heaven help her if that happened, because she couldn’t swim a stroke and whatsisname wouldn’t be able to pull her out.
“What is your name, anyway?” She slapped at a mosquito and winced when it set off her itching again.
He hesitated just long enough for her to wonder why he hesitated at all. “Lyon,” he said.
“Oh, right. As long as it’s not alligator.”
“What’s yours?”
She didn’t hesitate. She, at least, had nothing to hide. “Jasmine. Jasmine Clancy,” she said, just in case he was wondering where he might have seen her before.
“Great. That takes care of the flora and fauna.”
“Ha-ha, very funny. How far is it now?”
“At a guess, I’d say about five and a half miles.”
She groaned. She’d been rowing steadily ever since the creek widened. Thanks to his constant carping, she was beginning to get the hang of it, but her hands would never be the same. “I don’t suppose you have a pair of gloves, do you?”
“I’m sorry.” Actually, Lyon thought, she wasn’t all that bad. Her form was lousy, but what she lacked in physical strength, she made up for in determination. He should have thought about her hands, though. If he could have got to his knife, she could have hacked off his sleeves and pulled them over her hands like a mitt.
Jasmine felt tears sting her eyes. She hated pain, she really did. She hated itching, hated mosquitoes, hated noxious vines that hated her right back, but most of all, she hated being here in the middle of the wilderness, not knowing where she was or how she was ever going to get back.
She was a coward. She’d always been a coward. After her father left, she and her mother never stayed in the same place more than a year or two. She used to wake up in the middle of the night terrified that she would come home from school and find her mother gone, too, and strangers living in her house.
She leaned forward—from the hips, the way he’d told her—and bumped the oars against the wallowed-out wooden oarlocks. Dammit, she would get him there if it killed her! She refused to be put out in the middle of this damned swamp in the dead of night, without so much as a flashlight.
“Take a break.”
“It won’t help.”
“Do it. I’ve got a handkerchief. Dig it out of my hip pocket, rip it in two pieces and wrap it around your palms.”
She really didn’t want to break her rhythm. And she had one, she really did. He had a lousy disposition. He’d fussed at her constantly, but he’d taught her the rudiments of rowing a boat.
Taught her enough to know that if she never set foot in one of the damned things again, it would be too soon.
“Do it, Jasmine. I don’t want you bleeding all over me.”
“Why, because you’re afraid the scent of fresh blood might attract alligators?” She lost her rhythm. A blade caught the water and jerked at her arm, and she uttered a five-letter word. Tears trickled down her cheeks, making her rash itch all the more.
“At least when I hit the headlines—Actress Lost in Damned Dismal Swamp, Feared Dead—my grandmother won’t recognize my name.”
Three
The sky was beginning to grow pale when Lyon opened his eyes. Being careful not to move, he drew a shallow, experimental breath. He still hurt. Hurt like hell, in fact, and where he didn’t hurt, he ached. The difference was subtle, but it was there.
He toyed with it as his senses came quickly alive. Mental exercises served a purpose when physical exercise was out of the question.
Like now. A fourteen-foot skiff was no place to spend a night. Especially not with a broken back and a knee that was still none too reliable.
Especially not an open skiff. In February. The warm spell was over. The temperature must’ve dropped into the forties last night.
They’d stopped for a rest. Her hands had been hurting. He’d been hurting all over. He’d known there was no hope of reaching camp before dark, and rather than risk taking a wrong turn, he’d let her sleep. And then he’d fallen asleep himself. Not a smart thing to do, but then, his options weren’t exactly limitless.
“Ah, hell,” he muttered, gazing bleary-eyed at the woman still huddled in the stern of the boat. She’d turned up the collar of her shirt, rolled down her sleeves and done her best to cover those long, naked legs with a few rumpled tissues and the flap of her shoulder bag.
“Wake up,” he rasped.
She groaned and tried to draw her knees up to her chin. Her no-longer-whıte shorts weren’t particularly skimpy. They’d been designed to come halfway down her thighs, but when a woman had legs as long as hers, there was still a lot of flesh left exposed to the elements.
Not to mention exposed to the eyes.
“Jasmine, look alive. We’ve got to get some heat going.”
“Turnip therm’stat.”
“Right. You do ıt—you’re the closest.”
She opened one eye.