“So eat,” he said. Clara, giving him a look of disgust, nevertheless picked up another can of corn and proceeded to consume its contents in the same uncivilized fashion. It was surprising how delicious vegetables could be when one was hungry.
After the meal, McClain wiped his hands on his jeans and disposed of the cans by the simple act of tossing them out the cabin door. Then he went outside. When he came back some ten minutes later he was carrying the raft upside down on top of his head. Clara’s half frozen clothes were perched up on top. Clara watched with interest as McClain struggled to maneuver the unwieldy raft in through the narrow door. When he finally forced it through, to send it shooting and slithering to land almost at her feet, Puff leapt up from the nap he had succumbed to after his meal, hissing and spitting at the unexpected arrival. Clara stayed where she was, eyeing first McClain and then the raft. Bringing the raft inside for the night seemed a little strange, but doubtless he had his reasons, and she was too tired to worry about them.
“Here.” He tossed her clammy clothes at her. Clara had been half asleep, leaning back against the wall with her entire body drawn up under the poncho. His action caught her by surprise; before she could react she was slapped in the face by icy cloth. More rained around her.
“Why did you do that?” Clawing her way out from beneath her stiffened jeans, which had landed on her head, she glared at McClain.
“If you want those things to be dry in the morning you’d better rig them up in front of the stove tonight.”
Acknowledging the truth of that, Clara groaned as she got
to her feet and gathered up her garments. She was so tired it was all she could do to breathe.
“Here,” McClain untied the rope that surrounded the raft’s perimeter and attached one end of it to a nail protruding from a wall. The other he affixed to a rusty cup hook at one end of the middle shelf, creating a crude clothes line.
“Thank you.” She was surprised, and not a little touched, at his effort, which was solely on her behalf. Now that she came to think of it, it was the first thing he had done that had not benefited him as well. Of course, it could just be that he didn’t fancy traveling with a damp companion in the morning.
As she draped her clothes carefully over the line so that they would get the maximum heat, he went out again. When he came back, he set two of the empty cans he had apparently retrieved from outside on the stove.
“Present for you,” he said briefly in response to her inquiring look. When she frowned, he gestured at the cans.
“Water. To wash with. I don’t know about you, but I feel grubby as hell.”
Clara did too. She looked at him for a moment with real gratitude. Of course, she wouldn’t be able to get very clean with the small amount of muddy river water he’d been able to fetch, but still it was better than nothing. And a very nice thought.
“Thank you,” she said again. And meant it.
She was draping her teddy over the line when she heard the unmistakable sound of a zipper being lowered behind her. Turning around, she was aghast to see McClain calmly sliding out of his jeans.
“What are you doing?” Her voice held just the tiniest edge of hysteria. Seeing McClain standing before her in nothing but a sweatshirt and a pair of maroon cotton jockey
briefs was unnerving, to say the least. His legs were long and hard muscled and covered with dark hair. The sweatshirt ended just below his waist, providing no coverage for what lay below it. His underwear provided little more. They clung to his narrow hips like a second skin. The little placket in the front of the briefs bulged with silent proof of his maleness. Then he crossed the room to hang his jeans on the line beside her clothes. His soaked sneakers he placed carefully beside her shoes in front of the stove. She had an excellent view of a tight, well-muscled rear in motion. Dazzled, she stared.
“I was hanging up my clothes to dry. Now I’m going to wash and then I’m going to go to sleep.”
She had been so lost in contemplating the view that his words made her start. Guiltily, she looked at him, to discover him watching her, his eyes narrowed. His green eyes were as bright as emeralds. Clara hastily busied herself with straightening her clothes on the line. A totally unnecessary action, since she had done it once already. But she didn’t want him to think that she was watching him.
With all her good intentions, she couldn’t help herself. As he poured water from one of the cans into his palm and splashed it over his face, she stared. She stared even harder when he casually grasped the edge of the sweatshirt and pulled it up over his head in a fluid movement, leaving him bare except for the clinging maroon briefs. His back was magnificent, she saw as he splashed more water under his arms and on his chest. Deeply tanned and broad-shouldered with a deep cleft running down the center to disappear beneath the white elastic waistband of his briefs. His muscles rippled as he moved. Clara watched, feeling a quickening of her senses. He had the most beautiful back she had ever
seen; she had to fight an urge to go over and run her hands along that satin over steel flesh. …
He pulled the sweatshirt back on and turned so fast that Clara barely had time to switch her eyes back to her jeans. She would die of mortification if he guessed she had been watching him like a starving man at a feast. Nervously she moved over to the stove and stared down at her can of water. She needed some kind of cloth to wash her face. The poncho that she had been wearing when she fell in the river was hanging on the line with her other clothes. She took that from the line, dipped its end in the can, and proceeded to wash her face and neck.
With another of those narrow-eyed looks in her direction, McClain crossed to where the raft sat in the middle of the floor. She took advantage of his inattention to scrub hastily at her body beneath the covering poncho. As a bath it wasn’t much, but it was the best she could do. Warily she looked over her shoulder to see if he was watching her. To her astonishment he was stretched out at full length in the middle of the raft. He just fit, using the rolled side as a pillow to support his head. Clara blinked at him. He returned her look, unsmiling.
“You’re going to sleep in the boat?”
“You have any better suggestions?”
Looking around at the empty cabin, Clara had to admit she didn’t.
“But what about me?”
“If you have the sense God gave a flea, you’ll join me.”
Clara stared down at him. He looked perfectly serious—if one didn’t count those outrageously sexy legs that were stretched at full length and crossed at the ankles.
“I can’t sleep in that ridiculous boat with you. There’s not enough room, for one thing,”
He shrugged, stretched, and crossed his arms under his head. His green eyes narrowed as they looked up at her.
“The less room, the better. It’s cold out there tonight and getting colder. That stove doesn’t put out much heat. And you are probably well on the way to pneumonia already from the asinine stunt you pulled earlier.”
What he said made perfect sense, she had to admit. It was ridiculous under the circumstances for them not to curl up together and share their body heat. Only that was the problem, she discovered as she turned the possibility over in her mind: Just thinking about sleeping next to McClain in his underpants made her body heat.
“You’re going to have to shed the blanket, by the way. It’s the only cover we have.”
He said it so negligently that it was a moment before Clara caught the full meaning of the words. Then, as she pictured herself lying without the blanket—naked—in his arms, she felt her blood heat to scalding. Whatever else he was—and she generally felt he was three separate kinds of sons of female dogs—he was every inch a man. And sexy. So sexy that she had to bite her tongue just to keep from staring at those sinewy legs. To say nothing of the tantalizing cling of claret cotton. …
“There is no way we are sharing this blanket. I am rearing it.”
McClain’s eyes narrowed even more. “So?”
“I am not wearing anything else,” she clarified, her eyes still having to struggle to look only at his face.
“So what? Believe me, I’m too tired to do anything about it. If it makes you feel better, I’ll shut my eyes,”
This did not make her feel any better. “No!”
“Don’t be any stupider than you can help, Clara.”
This weary statement sent her eyes flying to his. He was
looking at her with the kind of exasperated patience a man might show to a slightly thickheaded dog.
“I am not sleeping naked with you!” Clara blushed even as she said the words. She felt the hot color wash up over her neck and chin and cheeks to the roots of her hair. Blushing was the bain of her existence when she was a teenager; she had thought she’d gotten over it by now. In more ways than one, it seemed, McClain brought out the worst in her.
“All right, so you’re not sleeping naked with me.” These unexpectedly reasonable words made Clara look at him suspiciously. He was sitting up, pulling the sweatshirt over his head and tossing it at her. She fumbled for it, dropped it, and bent to pick it up, all the while trying to look everywhere but at his magnificently muscled torso. Bare except for his briefs, his body was gorgeous. His front looked even better to her than his back. His shoulders were bronzed and thickly muscled and broad; his arms too were well-muscled. His chest was wide and tapered and covered with a thick wedge of coal black, curling hair. His abdomen was ridged with muscle, looking impossibly hard and enticing above the clingy cotton of his briefs. And the part covered by the briefs was dazzlingly tantalizing … Clara felt her mouth go dry and hastily averted her eyes. The quickening she felt from just looking at him was embarrassing.
“So put on my sweatshirt and get in here. Now.”
“No.”
“Do it!”
Clara was so befuddled by the totally unprecedented feelings his mere physical presence was evoking in her that she couldn’t even summon up the strength to argue. If truth were told, she wanted to cuddle up to that strong, hairy chest. … If she pretended he wasn’t McClain, he could
almost be her fantasy man, she thought, gazing at him distractedly. The hero she wrote about—
“Goddamn it!” he roared, jackknifing into a sitting position. The shouted profanity effectively quelled her too vivid imagination. This was nobody but McClain, nasty, unprincipled, overly aggressive McClain, no matter how attractive the package. Muscles and chest hair were no proof against a rotten personality.
“All right,” she capitulated suddenly, relieved to have gotten over that sudden attack of the hots for him. “Just shut your eyes.”
“Oh, for God’s sake,” he muttered, but shut his eyes he did. Keeping a wary eye on him, Clara pulled the sweatshirt over her head without removing the poncho, managing to get it on without revealing anything that shouldn’t have been revealed. The sweatshirt, thankfully, hung halfway down her thighs.
“I could have kept my eyes open,” he said with disgust, opening them.
“You were peeking,” Clara accused, still clinging to the blanket that she had just pulled over her head.
“Would you please get over here with that blanket? Now that you’re wearing my shirt, I’m the one who’s freezing to death.”
Clara tossed him the blanket, relieved when he covered himself with it and lay down. Intellectually she knew he was a real stinker, but when faced with all that sinewy bronzed flesh her body reacted with a mind of its own. It went all tingly and soft, female to his male. A reaction she didn’t like at all.
“Well, come on,” he said impatiently, throwing back a corner of the blanket, which, when stretched out, was just sufficient to cover the raft. The hole in the middle McClain
had cut for his head would undoubtedly let in a draft, but that couldn’t be helped. Swallowing, avoiding his eyes, Clara took the three steps that brought her to the raft’s side and climbed gingerly in. Once she was sitting he pulled her down beside him. Before they were settled comfortably, her head was on his shoulder and his arms were around her. For warmth, she told herself fiercely as her blood started to heat again at the feel of the satiny smooth shoulder beneath her cheek. The smell of man enveloped her, making her spine tingle. Her breasts were pressed into his side, her smooth bare legs brushed his hair-roughened thighs. She had never, in her life, been so aware of a man as a man.
Her hands she kept tucked firmly between them; she had already had an accidental encounter with the soft hair on his chest when she had first lain down, and it had unsettled her to such an extent that she dared not risk another. But her fingers, with a mind of their own, ached to touch him. …
The inside of the cabin was dark and alive with shifting shadows. The glow from the stove provided a red tinged illumination for a few feet in either direction. The air was not warm by any means, but compared to the chill of the outdoors it was warm enough. Outside the four tumbledown walls that were all that stood between them and the freezing night, Clara could hear an occasional muffled hoot of an owl, or the cry of a small creature captured by a hunter. She tried not to think of what—or who—might be in the forest hunting at night. Bears or wildcats or even horrible, deadly men.
“McClain.”
“Mmm.” He sounded sleepy. Indeed, when she finally dared to look over at him his eyes were closed. His eyelashes were short and spikey and incredibly black as they
rested against his cheeks. She relaxed a little. She would feel far, far safer if he would just go to sleep.
“Do you suppose they’re still looking for us?”
His eyes opened a slit to meet hers.
“Without a doubt.”
“Then—”
“I just don’t think they’ll look for us here. I think we lost them pretty thoroughly today. If I didn’t I wouldn’t have stopped. Now go to sleep.”
“All right.”
He had already closed his eyes again. Clara felt the tension slowly draining from her body as she studied his face. Seen in profile, with the flickering light from the stove casting strange shadows over everything and softening the healing bruises, she thought again that he was not a handsome man. His face was too square, too aggressive for that. His forehead was broad and high beneath the ruthlessly short black hair, his cheekbones were high, too, and flat. His nose had been broken in more than one place. It had probably been a good looking nose at one time, but now it gave him the look of a battered prize fighter. His jaw was square and uncompromisingly pugnacious, covered now with two days growth of bristly black beard, but the lips above it were well shaped. Funny, she could still remember the feel of them against hers; they had been scaldingly hot, and soft at first before they hardened with desire.