The Complete Mackenzie Collection Read online

  “I’ll be careful,” she promised. A yawn took her by surprise. “How can I be sleepy? I got plenty of sleep last night.”

  “It’s the heat. Why don’t you take a nap? I’ll watch the fire.”

  “Why aren’t you sleepy?”

  He shrugged. “I’m used to it.”

  She really was sleepy, and there was nothing else to do. She didn’t feel like setting up the tent, so she dragged her bag into position behind her and leaned back on it. Silently Chance tossed her sweater into her lap. Following his example, she rolled up the sweater and stuffed it under her head. She dozed within minutes. It wasn’t a restful sleep, being one of those light naps in which she was aware of the heat, of Chance moving around, of her worry about Margreta. Her muscles felt heavy and limp, though, and completely waking up was just too much trouble.

  The problem with afternoon naps was that one woke feeling both groggy and grungy. Her clothes were sticking to her, which wasn’t surprising considering the heat. When she finally yawned and sat up, she saw that the sun was beginning to take on a red glow as it sank, and though the temperature was still high, the heat had lost its searing edge.

  Chance was sitting cross-legged, his long, tanned fingers deftly weaving sticks and string into a cage. There was something about the way he looked there in the shadow of the overhang, his attention totally focused on the trap he was building while the light reflected off the sand outside danced along his high cheekbones, that made recognition click in her brain. “You’re part Native American, aren’t you?”

  “American Indian,” he corrected absently. “Everyone born here is a native American, or so Dad always told me.” He looked up and gave her a quick grin. “Of course, ‘Indian’ isn’t very accurate, either. Most labels aren’t. But, yeah, I’m a mixed breed.”

  “And ex-military.” She didn’t know why she said that. Maybe it was his deftness in building the trap. She wasn’t foolish enough to attribute that to any so-called Native American skills, not in this day and age, but there was something in the way he worked that bespoke survival training.

  He gave her a surprised glance. “How did you know?”

  She shook her head. “Just a guess. The way you handled the pistol, as if you were very comfortable with it. What you’re doing now. And you used the word ‘reconnoiter.”’

  “A lot of people are familiar with weapons, especially outdoorsmen, who would also know how to build traps.”

  “Done in by your vocabulary,” she said, and smirked. “You said ‘weapons’ instead of just ‘guns,’ the way most people—even outdoorsmen—would have.”

  Again she was rewarded with that flashing grin. “Okay, so I’ve spent some time in a uniform.”

  “What branch?”

  “Army. Rangers.”

  Well, that certainly explained the survival skills. She didn’t know a lot about the Rangers, or any military group, but she did know they were an elite corps.

  He set the finished trap aside and began work on another one. Sunny watched him for a moment, feeling useless. She would be more hindrance than help in building traps. She sighed as she brushed the dirt from her skirt. Darn, stranded only one day and here she was, smack in the middle of the old sexual stereotypes.

  She surrendered with good grace. “Is there enough water for me to wash out our clothes? I’ve lived in these for two days, and that’s long enough.”

  “There’s enough water, just nothing to collect it in.” He unfolded his legs and stood with easy grace. “I’ll show you.”

  He led the way out of the overhang. She clambered over rocks in his wake, feeling the heat burn through the sides of her shoes and trying not to touch the rocks with her hands. When they reached more shade, the relief was almost tangible.

  “Here.” He indicated a thin trickle of water running down the face of the wall. The bushes were heavier here, because of the water, and the temperature felt a good twenty degrees cooler. Part of it was illusion, because of the contrast, but the extra greenery did have a cooling effect.

  Sunny sighed as she looked at the trickle. Filling their water bottles would be a snap. Washing off would be easy. But washing clothes—well, that was a different proposition. There wasn’t a pool in which she could soak them, not even a puddle. The water was soaked immediately into the dry, thirsty earth. The ground was damp, but not saturated.

  The only thing she could do was fill a water bottle over and over, and rinse the dust out. “This will take forever,” she groused.

  An irritating masculine smirk was on his face as he peeled his T-shirt off over his head and handed it to her. “We aren’t exactly pressed for time, are we?”

  She almost thrust the shirt back at him and demanded he put it on, but not because of his comment. She wasn’t a silly prude, she had seen naked chests more times than she could count, but she had never before seen his naked chest. He was smoothly, powerfully muscled, with pectorals that looked like flesh-covered steel and a hard, six-pack abdomen. Alight patch of black hair stretched from one small brown nipple to the other. She wanted to touch him. Her hand actually ached for the feel of his skin, and she clenched her fingers hard on his shirt.

  The smirk faded, his eyes darkening. He touched her face, curving his fingers under her chin and lifting it. His expression was hard with pure male desire. “You know what’s going to happen between us, don’t you?” His voice was low and rough.

  “Yes.” She could barely manage a whisper. Her throat had tightened, her body responding to his touch, his intent.

  “Do you want it?”

  So much she ached with it, she thought. She looked up into those golden-brown eyes and trembled from the enormity of the step she was taking.

  “Yes,” she said.

  Chapter 7

  She had lived her entire life without ever having lived at all, Sunny thought as she mechanically rinsed out his clothes and draped them over the hot rocks to dry. She and Chance might never get out of this canyon alive, and even if they did, it could take a long time. Weeks, perhaps months, or longer. Whatever Margreta did, she would long since have done it, and there wasn’t a damn thing Sunny could do about the situation. For the first time in her life, she had to think only about herself and what she wanted. That was simple; what she wanted was Chance.

  She had to face facts. She was good at it; she had been doing it her entire life. The fact that had been glaring her in the face was that they could very well die here in this little canyon. If they didn’t survive, she didn’t want to die still clinging to the reasons for not getting involved that, while good and valid in civilization, didn’t mean spit here. She already was involved with him, in a battle for their very lives. She certainly didn’t want to die without having known what it was like to be loved by him, to feel him inside her and hold him close, and to tell him that she loved him. She had a whole world of love dammed up inside her, drying up because she hadn’t had anyone to whom she could give it, but now she had this opportunity, and she wasn’t going to waste it.

  A psych analyst would say this was just propinquity: the “any port in a storm” type of attraction, or the Adam and Eve syndrome. That might be part of it, for him. If she had to guess, Sunny would say that Chance was used to having sex whenever he wanted it. He had that look about him, a bone-deep sexual confidence that would draw women like flies. She was currently the only fly available.

  But it wasn’t just that. He had been attracted to her before, just as she had been to him. If they had made it to Seattle without trouble, she would have been strong enough to refuse his invitation and walk away from him. She would never have allowed herself to get to know him. Maybe they had met only twenty-four hours before, but those hours had been more intense than anything else she had ever known. She imagined it was as if they had gone into battle together; the danger they had faced, and were still facing, had forged a bond between them like soldiers in a war. She had learned things about him that it would have taken her weeks to learn in a normal sit