Page 34 of Once an Angel
"Good Lord, sir, what manner of hellish creature could have—"
Before Penfeld could finish, Justin was gone, his path marked by a wild crashing through the dense
brush.
Justin could not have explained how he knew the unearthly cry had come from Emily, only that the timbre of her voice had somehow become as familiar to him as his own. An icy sweat broke out on his body as he careened down a hill, scraping his back on the serrated trunk of a totara tree. Ferny boughs whipped his face, blinding him, but still he pressed on, driven by the stark terror that by his absence he had allowed something terrible to happen to her. Time spilled back to the night when he had rushed to another beach, clutching Nicky's bloody coat like a talisman against the darkness, only to arrive a
moment too late.
He tripped over a trailing creeper and went sprawling. His cheek struck the warm, rich earth with a
thud. He shook damp tendrils of hair from his eyes and flung himself to his feet, catching a tantalizing glimpse of wicker through the trees. He hurtled into the clearing and stumbled to a halt, his heart slamming against his ribs, his breath dragged from his lungs in raw rasps.
Emily favored him with her sweetest smile. "What took you so long? I thought you'd never come."
Nothing could have prepared Justin for the sight of Emily holding court over a throng of prostrate
Maori warriors like some triumphant Amazon queen. She cradled the rifle in her arms. Her little foot rested daintily on the spine of one of the largest and most irate warriors Justin had ever seen. Even his ears were pink with fury.
Justin doubled over, flattening his palms on his knees, before she could begin to guess at the depth or bitter sweetness of his relief. Its intensity terrified him. He took a deep breath as a hard-edged fury
born of thwarted fear flooded his veins.
He jerked his head up. "What in the bloody hell do you think you're doing?"
Emily recoiled. Why didn't Justin look more pleased with her? She shrugged. "It's obvious, isn't it? Capturing cannibals."
Contempt iced his voice. "You, my dear, have just captured our neighboring tribe of Maori. A tribe,
I might mention, that has been quite friendly to me, at least before they madeyouracquaintance."
"I don't understand," she said faintly. The rifle slipped a notch in her hands. "That horrid creature waved his club at me. They were all armed. They even brought their own pot. I only assumed—"
"That 'horrid creature' was performing the te uero a ceremonial dance to welcome you to his country." Justin picked his way over several inert Maori and grabbed a long-handled tool topped by an innocuous blade. "What were they going to do? Hoe you to death?" He pulled an orangy-brown object out of the overturned pot and waved it at her. "Akumara. Sweet potatoes. Their gift to you."
"Oh, dear." Emily mopped her brow, feeling suddenly sicker than she had before.
Justin glided toward her with such lethal grace that she started to point the rifle at him. He plucked the weapon out of her arms, handling it with two fingers as if it were a deadly serpent, and tossed it in the sand.
"I'd like to introduce you to Witi Ahamera, theirariki, their chief."
She squared her chin, mustering her fading pluck. "I'd like to meet him, too. I've got a few things to
say about his tribe running about, terrorizing unsuspecting young Englishwomen."
"You're standing on him."
A brilliant heat flooded her cheeks. She followed Justin's mocking gaze down her calf to the foot braced against the bronze muscles of the Maori warrior. Her toes twitched nervously.
She looked to Justin for help, hoping he'd provide a graceful dismount, but he only smirked at her.
"Well, so I am," she said. "Who would have thought it?" She hopped off the man and tugged at his arm. He rose slowly, towering over her. She reached above her head to brush sand from his chest, avoiding
his stony glare. "If Mr. Witi would have bothered to tell me he was the chief, I'd never have trod upon him in such a thoughtless manner."
Biting off what sounded like a distinctly Anglo-Saxon oath, the chief shoved her hand away. She shrank against Justin without realizing it. His arm slipped around her waist, molding her to his lean frame. She
felt as if she'd flopped literally from stew pot to fire.
