She zipped the flashlight into the backpack, and dropped the pack inside.
It fell with a clattering thud. A long way down.
She swallowed a lump of fear thicker than tar, then moved. Shimmying on her back, trying to ignore the mud seeping into her sweatshirt, she poked her feet in first, then her legs, then wriggled her fanny in. Then came trouble. Her hips wedged in the opening, and suddenly she couldn’t move. At all. In or out.
Cripes, there were times she’d groaned about not having enough hips to fill out a pair of jeans. Now she wished she’d had three less cherry doughnuts this week. Her fanny seemed stuck. No kidding, no joke, seriously stuck.
She briefly considered crying. Actually, she didn’t really want to cry. She just wanted to be home. In a hot, soaking, sybaritic rose-scented bath, maybe with a glass of chablis, maybe reading some of the thick files of research information she’d picked up lately on sperm banks and fantasizing about babies.
Fantasizing about babies was tempting. Just not real helpful right then. Moving in either direction hurt, but lying still was just as untenable—her spine was screaming objections at being trapped in this contortionist position. It’d be nice if a hero would wander by to help, but that didn’t seem real likely. Being crawled on by earthworms seemed far more likely…and that did it. The mental picture of the worms in that flower bed being close enough to crawl on her was mighty powerful incentive to move.
She sucked in a breath, swung her legs up, and pushed in hard.
The push worked. Sort of. She was still alive when she crash-landed on the concrete floor, but that measure of success was hardly worth applause. On the route down, she’d cracked her forehead on the window frame, and both her breasts had been squished and scraped. She landed on a hip and a wrist. The basement was darker than tar, with a dank, damp, mildewy smell. Wouldn’t matter if she were in the Taj Mahal; she hurt too much to care. Stars danced in front of her eyes in a real dizzy tango. She wasn’t positive it was possible to break a fanny—she’d certainly never seen one in a cast or in traction—but she was damned scared she’d done it.
To add insult to injury, a light suddenly flashed in her eyes.
The obnoxious glaring light came from a bald light bulb in the middle of the basement room.
And to top off the worst debacle she’d ever gotten herself into, the man standing by the light switch, shaking his head, was familiar. Painfully familiar. So was his unmistakably gravelly tenor.
“I thought at least ten kids were breaking into the place. You made enough noise to wake the dead. I should have known it was you. Dammit, Rebecca, what the hell are you doing here?”
Rebecca squeezed her eyes closed. “At the moment, I’m sitting here with forty-seven broken bones, feeling sorry for myself. Please, God, make this a nightmare, and when I wake up, try and fix it so he’s someone else. Make him a Russian spy. Make him a serial killer. Make him anyone but Gabe Devereax.”
Not that she was willing to open her eyes to check, but that dry, gravelley tenor seemed to be coming closer. “You’re damn lucky it’s me—and at least I have a logical reason for being here. Did you leave your brain at home? You could have killed yourself—or gotten yourself killed—and you look worse than an alley cat who’s been in a street fight.”
“Thank you for sharing that with me. I’m dying of pain and injuries, and all you can do is yell?”
“I’d yell a lot louder if I thought it’d do any good. For God’s sakes, you’re soaked and covered with mud and it looks like you’re growing branches in your hair. If that isn’t witless, I don’t know what is. Quit fighting me, dammit. I’m just trying to see if you’re hurt.”
“I already know I’m hurt.” But her pride was now smarting a dozen times more than any of her other scrapes and bruises. Gabe had stalked over and hunched down. Keeping her eyes closed and practicing denial had worked pretty well—until she felt his big strong hands feeling her up. Her eyes shot wide open then.
There were times and places when Rebecca wouldn’t mind a guy feeling her up—at a fantasy level, she might even have entertained Gabe in that role—but not when she was being handled like a sexless sack of sugar. Merciless fingers probed and poked her ankles, trailed up her calf, bent her knee, lifted her arms, rotated her wrists…. She said “ouch” several times. Either he wasn’t paying attention or he didn’t believe her.
Possibly she’d have felt less resentful if he didn’t look so good. Heaven knew how Gabe had gotten in the house, but she already knew he was resourceful. Spit. He was the best. That was why she’d convinced her family to have him look into her mother’s disappearance. And although he hadn’t come up with much in that case, he’d been more successful with some other family cases over the past few years. But now she had to look like something a dog would bury, and there wasn’t a rip or a tear or a smudge of dirt on him. His clipped dark hair looked fresh-brushed, his square jaw fresh-shaved. His galloping shoulders stretched the seams of a long-sleeved navy T, but the shirt was tucked nearly into jeans. His boots didn’t even look muddy.
Rebecca didn’t know him well. She wasn’t sure it was possible for a woman to know a man’s man like Gabriel Devereax well—but they’d crossed paths before. Several family members had already noted that they got along about as well as a snake and mongoose. Not only didn’t Rebecca object to Gabe, she was the one who’d originally researched PI firms and urged her family to hire him. She knew, better than anyone, that Gabe had an unbeatable reputation and credentials. She respected him completely. But when her family had trouble, Rebecca was hardly going to take the back seat and let someone else drive.
Gabe appreciated advice about as much as poison ivy. What she called help, he called interference. Anyone with the most basic concept of family would understand that love and loyalty required her involvement. Trying to explain that to Gabe was like drilling a hole in granite. He had a handsome head, but there was a lot of stone between those ears.
Even if there was no love lost between them, Rebecca could hardly fail to notice certain details about that handsome head. He was thirty-eight, and he looked it. The square-boned jaw, the scar on his right temple, the brush strokes of character lines bracketing his eyes and mouth, all spoke of a man who’d lived hard. He was no boy. There was energy in that rugged face, vital, virile energy, and a never-back-down determination stamped in all those lonely lines on his brow.
Personally, Rebecca thought a woman would have to be an eensy bit bonkers to risk taking on any man as tough and closed up as Gabe Devereax…but the man did have the deepest, darkest, sexiest eyes she’d ever seen. At the moment, it was impossible to ignore those eyes, because they were aggravatingly, relentlessly focused on her face. He cupped her chin with a knuckle, and examined her face for injuries, with as much personal interest as he’d have shown a bug under a microscope.
“I think you’re going to live,” he announced. “Although it’s pretty hard to tell for sure under all that dirt.” Because he was looking straight in her eyes, she didn’t instantly realize where his right hand was. Smoother than a card cheat’s, his palm had sneaked under her sweatshirt. His hand was warm, volatilely, evocatively warm, and skimming an electric path over her ribs.
“Hey.” She moved faster than a 747 to push him away, but the ox wouldn’t be pushed.
“Oh, don’t get your liver in an uproar. If I were going to make a pass, you’d know it. Trust me, sex is only on my mind ninety percent of the time. You got a hell of a scrape here—and no, I’m not looking to see how far it goes up—but I want you to cough.”
“Cough? I don’t need to cough—”
“Well, we can just drive you to the emergency room and get those ribs x-rayed, but somehow, I didn’t think you’d cotton to that idea. If it didn’t hurt when you coughed, I might—might—be more reassured that rib isn’t cracked, but hey, if you want to go get an X ray—”
She