True Lies (21 page)

The weather was clear and warm, the bugs practically nonexistent this late in the summer, and the view from the last ridge they had climbed had been spectacular. Thanks to the emergency supplies in the first aid kit, they had enough dried food packs and water purification pills to last them at least two days. Under other circumstances, this hike might even have been an enjoyable challenge.

She slipped on a piece of moss as she followed Bruce around an alder grove and another hot needle jabbed her ankle. Other circumstances? Enjoyable? The tension must be getting to her. This was no stroll through the park, this was a trek for survival. Not only hers and Bruce’s, but Simon’s. The popped blister was nothing but a minor annoyance. She wouldn’t even let herself think about it. They had to do the ten miles they’d planned so that by tomorrow they would reach the trail that had been marked by the broken black line on her map, which would lead to the logging road, which would lead to a telephone and Bruce’s colleague Xavier and the chance to help her brother.

Since the twin engine Beechcraft had disappeared over the southern horizon, neither of them had mentioned Simon again.

Neither of them wanted to talk about “later.”

A burst of slanting sunshine made her squint as they reached a flat outcrop of glacier-scarred rock. At the crest of a hill a row of leaning white pines stood like windblown sentinels silhouetted against the hazy blue folds of distant ridges. Bruce stopped and shielded his eyes to look over the next valley. “How are you hanging in?” he asked.

“Fine. No problem.” She eased the string of the sleeping bag from her shoulder. “How about you?”

“Can’t complain.” After a careful survey of the area, he took the compass from his pocket and held it in front of his chest. Moving only his feet, he turned until he lined up the direction he wanted. “We'll have to swing around to the north a bit more.”

Since she had been the one to lead the way in the morning, Bruce was taking his turn for the afternoon, and he was demonstrating a quiet competence with the task. Although she didn’t want to, she couldn’t help feeling a grudging admiration for him. “Did you learn about orienteering on that bear gall bladder job?”

“Nope. This is pure Boy Scout.”

She let the bag drop by her feet. “You've been leading us for the past four hours from something you learned in the
Boy Scouts?
“

Pushing the compass back into his pocket, he looked at her over his shoulder. The crinkles at the corners of his eyes deepened. “Don’t worry. I got a merit badge.”

The glimpse of Prendergast’s gentle wit startled her. Who was he today? she wondered.

He turned back toward the valley, the plaid flannel of his shirt clinging damply to his broad shoulders. Since noon she’d watched those shoulders shift and flex as he moved. He’d rolled up his sleeves, and the hair on his arms glinted golden in the sunshine. His loose shirttails fluttered around his hips, revealing the outline of Primeau’s tight buttocks under his worn jeans. Who was he now?

Bruce. Simply Bruce. The cop who had tricked her, used her and intended to put her brother in prison. The man who had watched the ducks and untangled her hair. The lover who...

The sky blurred as her eyes filled with tears. They’d had a tendency to do that today. She didn’t want to admit that this lump in her throat was more than worry about her brother, and about the whole complicated mess with McQuaig. Had she thought that she could simply dismiss what had happened with Bruce? Had she really believed that she could decide it was honest and natural and then get on with her life? She might have moved in the sophisticated, jaded levels of society where sex was as shallow and as meaningless as the phony smiles, but she had never been like that. And she had left it behind. At least, she had believed that she had left it behind. Or was she only trying to soothe her belated sense of morality by considering there might have been more than blind, physical desire involved in what happened with Bruce?

But there couldn’t be more. No, not with him. They had both agreed that there couldn’t be more. Tipping her head forward, she felt a tear slip down her cheek. Impatiently, she wiped her eyes with her sleeve.

“Are you thirsty?” he asked as he unfastened the rope that held the tarp together and drew out a canteen. He walked to a boulder, sat down, and patted the rock beside him in invitation.

Forcing herself not to limp, she moved over to join him. “Thanks.” She unscrewed the top and took a quick swallow, then handed the canteen back to him.

“I think we might as well stop for the day. This looks like a good spot to make camp.”

“Now?” She ignored her throbbing ankle and checked her watch. “We still have a few hours of daylight left. We haven’t come as far as we’d planned.”

“I estimate that we'll be out of the bush by tomorrow night at the latest, so we're doing all right.” He put the canteen to his lips, took a long drink and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “Actually, we're doing better than anyone could expect. The weather’s cooperating, and you managed to land us reasonably close to help.”

“The landing was pure luck.”

“Hardly. You're one awesome pilot, Emma.” He propped his ankle on his knee and looked around the clearing. The outcrop was smaller and not as flat as the one by the lake where they’d spent the previous night. “Seeing as we've got some time before sunset, I think I'll gather some spruce boughs to sleep on.”

“Good idea.”

“There’s no reason why we shouldn’t have a fire tonight, since nobody’s going to be looking for you.”

“I'll scrounge up some firewood.”

“I can top off the canteen at the stream we passed near the alder grove. If it’s all the same to you, I’d rather reconstitute the dried food we've got with us than go out and snare a rabbit.”

“Sure. Whatever.” She pushed herself to her feet. “I'll get the water while I'm picking up firewood.”

“Sure. Whatever.”

Without another word, she took the canteen from his hand and headed back the way they had come. The stream wasn’t much more than a trickle, the smooth, rounded rocks in the center lumping high above the surface in the late summer dryness. Emma knelt at the edge of the water and scooped out a hollow in the gritty streambed, then wedged in the canteen so that the flow was directed into the opening. When it was full, she ducked into the underbrush to look for firewood. Within a few minutes she loaded her arms with dry sticks and returned to the clearing.

Judging by the thrashing noises coming from the trees, Bruce hadn’t finished cutting their mattress yet. Emma dumped her firewood and sat down on a cushion of moss to unlace her boot. Carefully, she wiggled it off, then looked at the patch of blood on her sock with dismay. Gritting her teeth, she peeled back the sock and assessed the damage. The blister had broken, all right. More than two layers of skin had been worn away and hung in limp tatters around an oozing red center that was the size of a quarter.

The tart aroma of fresh-cut evergreen wafted around her as Bruce walked past and stacked a load of spruce boughs beside the sleeping bag. Whistling a snatch of an old Duke Ellington tune, he knelt down to open the white enamel first aid kit and rummaged through it briefly. “Well, what’s your choice, sort of beef stew or noodle surprise?”

“What’s the surprise?”

“I don’t know.” He tilted his head to look at her, a twinkle in his eyes. “The label came off.”

Another Prendergast comment. She tossed her boot to the ground and frowned. “Are you going to do the cooking?”

“Sure, if I can find something to use for a stew pot. Have you got any ideas?”

She pointed at the first aid kit. “Unhinge the lid and empty it out. It’s enamel, and it’s waterproof.”

He emptied out the box and went over to where she had dropped the firewood. Using a flat rock, he scraped the moss and dry grass away from a circle and ringed it with stones. Emma leaned sideways to reach the pile of first aid supplies and picked up the bottle of disinfectant. She sorted through the bandages until she found the size she wanted, then pulled her foot onto her lap.

“What’s wrong?” Bruce asked. “Are you hurt?”

“No, it’s just a blister.”

He was at her side before she could blink. His blond curls fell over his forehead as he leaned down for a closer look. “That must have been hell to walk with. Why didn’t you say something?”

“We still have a long way to go. It’s not that bad.”

“There you go again, not worrying about yourself.” He sat down in front of her and took her foot between his hands. “Let me do this.”

“You're making a fuss over nothing. I'm perfectly capable of taking care of myself.”

“I know. That doesn’t stop me from wanting to help.” He propped her heel on his thigh and took the disinfectant from her hands. “This is going to sting.”

It did sting, but Emma didn’t flinch. She handed Bruce the bandage and watched as he peeled off the wrapper and positioned it. “Thanks.”

He smoothed his thumbs along the adhesive strip. When he was finished, he didn’t release her foot. “Give me the other one.”

“Why?”

“I'm going to check it for blisters and then give you a massage,” he said matter-of-factly. He lifted her foot and took off her boot and sock, then moved back so that she could stretch out her legs. Cradling her heels on his lap, he did a quick inspection, nodded, and began squeezing her toes. “How’s that?”

It was bliss. It was exactly what she needed. She braced her arms behind her and sighed. “Why are you doing this, Bruce?”

“Because I'm a nice guy.”

She shook her head. “No, your alter ego with the beard and the weight problem was a nice guy. You're a cop.”

“Okay. I'm doing this to be sure you'll be in shape to hike out of here tomorrow so that I can contact Xavier and get back on the case as soon as possible. Is that what you wanted to hear?” He flexed her foot up and down a few times and rubbed her instep.

“Won’t Xavier be starting a search for you? I mean, don’t you need to check in regularly or something?”

“Not when I'm playing out a deep cover like Primeau. He'll know something went wrong with the plan when he doesn’t hear from me today, but he won’t risk the operation by launching an all-out search. Not yet, anyway. I've been in tougher spots before, and he knows I always manage to land on my feet.”

“At the moment, you don’t look very much like Primeau to me.”

The hint of a smile flitted across his face. For a minute he hesitated, then he leaned forward, tightened his jaw, lowered his eyelids and let his voice deepen. “Don’t I, sweet thing?”

Her fingers dug into a patch of crunchy moss behind her as her mouth dropped open. The transformation had been instantaneous. “Bruce?”

“Mmm?” Slowly, seductively, he slid his hand to her good ankle, pushed up the hem of her jeans, and wrapped his fingers firmly around the bottom of her calf. His touch was no longer soothing, it was sensual.

Awareness tingled through every inch of her weary body. She looked at his arm, at the hard, cording muscle below his sleeve, the tension in his broad shoulders and the arrogant tilt of his head. Everything about him radiated raw, animal energy. Beneath the lazily lowered lids his eyes gleamed. Her pulse accelerated as she responded helplessly to his blatant masculinity. “Good God,” she whispered. “How do you do that?”

He moved his thumb. That was all, just a subtle, almost imperceptible motion against her skin, but it sent heat racing up her leg. “Do what? This?”

She tried to inch backward, but his grip was deceptively firm. “Let go of me.”

“I only did your feet. What about the rest of you?” Wind sighed through the pines around them, denim whispered against his palms as he slowly stroked his way to her knee. “You could take off these jeans.”

Instantly, the heat flared higher. Too vividly she remembered how it had felt the last time, how her bare thighs had rubbed over the folds of his jeans, how his strong hands had held her against him. Raw need throbbed insistently, stealing her breath, her caution, her sense...

No. Not again. This wasn’t last night. She was in control of herself, there was no excuse. This game they were playing was too dangerous. It couldn’t continue. She had to... “Stop. We can’t.”

His hand curved around the back of her knee. “I watched you walking in front of me all morning, saw the way your hips swayed, memorized the shift and flex of your—”

“Bruce, stop it!”

His expression lost Primeau’s cocky smirk, his face eased back into the one she was familiar with. Yet the sexual awareness was still there. He moved his hands to her thighs and rose to his knees, straddling her legs. “Are your feet better now?”

“What?”

His gaze focused on her mouth. “I was touching you only so that you’d be able to walk tomorrow.”

“Of course. I know that.”

The breeze pulled at the front of his shirt, exposing a palm-size patch of bronzed skin. She had done that, had ripped those buttons off, had been too far gone to care. She had felt the texture of the short, crisp curls on his chest and had learned the rippling strength that lay beneath. He was breathing hard. Tension, shared memory, shared restraint vibrated between them as neither one of them moved. No excuse, she told herself, her fingers clutching painfully at the rock and the moss. It was broad daylight, they were both completely rational; this time there would be no excuse.

Bruce clenched his jaw and lifted his hands from her thighs. With a low curse he pushed himself to his feet and turned away. His movements stiff, he walked to the pile of firewood and bent down to select the thinnest sticks. The dry wood snapped harshly as he broke it into short lengths. “Did you ever go hunting with Turner?”

Emma exhaled shakily. “What?”

“Turner. The man you were engaged to once.”

“I know who he is. I'm surprised at your question, that’s all.”

“You said you enjoyed those vacations with your father. Did your fiancé like the outdoors as well?”

“Not really. Unless you counted the two acres of manicured lawns and formal flower beds around his parents' house.”

“He took you to a lot of those society events, didn’t he?”