Into the Shadow by Christina Dodd Page B

destroyed her last three months’ work. She’d lost a man on the site. She’d finally glimpsed her lover and realized she wasn’t mad—but perhaps he was. She didn’t think she had an ounce of humor left. But now she found her mouth crooking. ‘‘Well. That’s true.’’ She looked around. They were on the edge of a lawless borderland, with the most meager glimmer of civilization at least a day’s drive away. There was no one to see them and, more important, no easy way to get cleaned up.
    She looked down at herself. Her T-shirt was grubby. Her legs were bare. Now that he mentioned it, she felt sort of grainy.
    One more hour would make no difference to the outside world.
    A crisp breeze eased through the pristine mountain valley.
    With a yell that echoed up the walls of the valley, she grasped the hem of her T-shirt, stripped it off over her head, and ran toward the waterfall.
    Behind her she heard a similar shout. He ran past her, his bare feet lifted high, and he hit the stream seconds ahead of her. Icy droplets sprayed in the air. He skidded to a stop, and she plowed into him. He wrapped her in his arms and thrust her under the icy cascade.
    She screamed in subzero agony, and laughed and splashed as he used his hands to scrub her entire body. She rubbed him back, feeling silly, horny, free for one more foolish second.
    They didn’t linger; it was too cold.
    But they got clean, and she knew why he always smelled so fresh and wild when he came to her bed.
    First he came here to the waterfall.
    He pulled her from the water and spanned her waist with his hands.
    She looked up at him and laughed.
    His face changed subtly, from shared amusement to a starkness, a bleakness that broke her heart.
    Then he said them, the words that moved her from sorrow to rage. ‘‘I will never let you go.’’

Chapter Seven
    K aren stepped back from this man she didn’t know . . . this man she knew so intimately. ‘‘What do you mean, you won’t ever let me go?’’
    Relaxed, confident in his decision, he scrutinized her, his black eyes impenetrable.
    ‘‘Look. You saved me. I’m grateful. But that doesn’t mean I want to stay here. I’ve got a job to do, and I intend to do it.’’ Deliberately she turned her back on him and walked to first one piece of her clothing, then another, picking them up and flicking the dust off them. She was wet and cold and she shivered, but she didn’t lie to herself. She shivered because she was afraid.
    What had she gotten herself into?
    She jumped when he strolled past her, silent as a cat, then watched to see what he would do next. And, because she couldn’t help herself, she observed the way the long, lean muscles of his back and butt and thighs coiled and stretched beneath the golden skin.
    He opened the saddlebags of his motorcycle. He pulled out jeans and donned them, Comanche-style, and pulled a T-shirt over his head. Reaching back inside, he dug around and pulled out another T-shirt and tossed it in her direction. ‘‘It’s clean. Put it on.’’ He threw out another pair of jeans. ‘‘You can roll up the legs.’’
    She stood still, trying to decide, for while his blunt commands offended her, her own clothes were dusty and sweaty.
    Picking up his boots, he pulled them on, then reached back into his saddlebags. He turned to face her, a semiautomatic Glock steady in his hand. ‘‘Put my clothes on.’’
    Her heart stopped—then raced. He didn’t mean it. ‘‘You won’t shoot me.’’
    ‘‘Because we had sex? I wouldn’t count on that.’’ Those strange black eyes watched her, and she hadn’t a clue what was behind them. ‘‘I’ve had a lot of women, and I don’t give a crap about any of them.’’
    That she believed. Oh, God. She really believed him.
    Should she fight? She held a black belt in jujitsu; in her line of work, in the places in the world that she visited, self-defense made sense. But her master was Vietnamese, a veteran of the war with the