Page 20 of Hot Soldier's Rescue

He must’ve made a sound because she glanced at him in concern. “Are you okay?”

“Yes. No. Uh, yes.”

“Which is it?” She stopped and turned to face him, her smile glowing in the dark like a beacon calling him home.

“I’m fine.”

A frown creased her forehead, as if she was suddenly questioning exactly what he’d seen. He blurted quickly, “Let me take that bucket of water from you. I’ve got purification tablets for it back in camp. It’ll taste like iodine, but it’ll be safe to drink in an hour.”

She replied dryly, “Yes, I’m familiar with how water purification tablets work.”

“Of course you are. We can heat some of the water up and reconstitute the freeze-dried food I’ve got. But you know how that works, too—” He broke off as her grin widened. He was babbling. Actually babbling.

“You sure you’re okay?” she asked.

“Yes, I’m sure,” he snapped. “I’m fine.” He was so not fine. He was a mess. He was in total, no-holds-barred lust with this woman.

She eyed him suspiciously. Apparently, another typically nunlike trait she had in abundance was knowing when people weren’t being truthful with her. Swearing up a blue storm under his breath, he led her back to camp and went about heating water and making them both dinner—if reconstituted chili mac and freeze-dried strawberry ice cream could rightly be called dinner.

He let the fire burn down to a glowing pile of embers and Elise seemed content to sit thoughtfully beside it and watch it die.

Finally, he muttered, “We’d better call it a night. We’ve got a long day ahead of us tomorrow.”

She looked up quickly. “I thought you said we’d reach Acuna my midmorning.”

“We will. But once we collect your precious cargo, we’ve got to put as much distance between Acuna and ourselves as we can before we stop. Just to be safe.”

He was not doing this. He was not helping her collect her blessed orphans! He had other fish to fry, more important fish. But as sure as he was sitting here, he was delaying his own mission to help her with hers. If his boss got wind of this, he was going to be toast. Burned to a crisp, in fact.

“Right. Safe.” She sounded skeptical about achieving that state anywhere in this country. Smart girl. Her safety around him was a much more precarious thing than he cared to admit, but he was walking a razor’s edge between lust and honor right now.

He unzipped the tent flap and held it up for her. “Crawl in.”

He tried not to watch her pert little derriere as she crawled through the low opening. He really tried. But the image of it naked and wet and squeezable just wouldn’t go away. Swearing under his breath, he reached for the zipper.

“Hey. Aren’t you going to join me?”

Oh, Lord. “No. I’m going to sleep out here.”

“That’s crazy.”

Her pronouncement shocked him out of the haze fogging his brain function. “I beg your pardon?” he asked blankly.

“This is Colombia. Home of every poisonous insect and snake in creation. And they all love warmth at night. If you sleep out there, you’ll have a veritable zoo crawling all over you by morning. It’s unsafe to sleep directly on the ground.”

He snorted and refrained from telling her about the first time he’d tied himself into a tree to sleep during a mission in this region and woken up with a deadly eyelash viper curled peacefully asleep in his lap the next morning. He’d sweated for three hours before the damned thing finally woke up and meandered off into the tree branches.

She had a point. This wasn’t an ideal place to spend a night without some sort of protection from the wildlife. But no way was he spending the night a foot away from her without laying his hands on her. He might be disciplined, but she was too much temptation for him.

“I’ll be okay out here,” he replied stiffly.

“Don’t be an idiot. Get in here.”

“No.”

“Do I have to come out there and get you?”

His lips twitched. That drill-sergeant tone of voice was just cute coming from all five-foot-two-fluffy-kitten of her.

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