Page 18 of Her Reluctant Hero
Chapter Three
“We have got to go.” Alex grasped her arm, but her resistance surprised him. He knew she hurt, but he thought her will to survive was stronger.
He turned. Her gaze was riveted by a kid sprawled on his stomach, arms stretched out toward a woman—his mother?
The goddess stared. Damn, was she going to break down on him? Last thing he needed was a hysterical female.
“We can’t just leave them like this,” she said through lips that didn’t move. “We need to bury them.”
He felt sick about it, but said, “Right, and Santiago’s men will just hang back and wait for us to finish our good deed. We’re moving on.”
She dug her heels into the soft earth beside one of the smallest victims. Neither of them looked down. Instead, her eyes burned into his.
“I hate you.”
“I’m hurt.” He headed off into the jungle, hating himself pretty much as well.
Isabella followed, barely able to see him through the tears of sorrow and anger that blurred her vision. Each step took them from the people who needed their help, and she couldn’t forgive him for it.
Finally, she couldn’t go any farther. They’d left the village an hour ago, maybe longer. Her muscles were watery and her feet screamed in a symphony of pain. She was dizzy and she was thirsty and she was hot. But she hadn’t spoken to Shepard since they’d left the villagers lying in the open, waiting for the jungle to reclaim them.
He hadn’t spoken to her, either, had gotten as far as twenty feet away before slowing to wait for her. She’d thought he meant to leave her, like he had the villagers, and part of her was relieved. She couldn’t go on much longer.
He was ahead of her again, standing, waiting, every line of his body telegraphing his impatience. She didn’t hurry to catch up—couldn’t—but when she reached him, he swung his pack to the ground and said, “Break,” without looking at her.
Why was he mad? Oh, yes—he thought it was her fault those people were dead.
He might be right. She couldn’t care just now.
As he crouched and opened his pack, she swayed on her feet. He pawed through, then reached up toward her with a power bar in his fist. She took it, unwrapped the plastic and scarfed the crumbly bar, barely tasting it, before he stood, unwrapping his own.
His gaze flicked from the empty wrapper, then her, for the first time since the village. “Why didn’t you tell me you were hungry?”
Surely he was smart enough to figure it out, so she didn’t answer. When he rolled his eyes, she knew he’d made the connection.
“Still mad?”
She didn’t have the energy to argue with him about leaving those people, didn’t want to tell him about her fears that he’d leave her as well, so she said nothing.
“There was a reason you snuck out of the compound, right?” he asked.
His ability to form complete sentences stunned her. He had to be as exhausted as she was. She merely nodded.
“I figure you probably don’t want to go back or end up like those people.”
The memories of those people swamped her, choking her, and she shook her head. Her eyes burned. She was going to cry and he was going to hate her even more.
“If we die out here, no one’s going to bury us,” she whispered.
“No.”
Her breathing became faster as she swallowed her tears, then she whirled away from him, too tired to fight them anymore. Dizzy, she dropped to her knees, dug her fingers into the decaying vegetation and stopped resisting.
Terror, rage, sorrow gushed out in a torrent, monsters her body struggled to purge. Behind her, Shepard loomed, making no effort to quiet her, to comfort her, to chide her. He only stood, waited until she got control of herself.
Sitting on her heels, she wiped at her face. She couldn’t look at him, at his judgmental eyes. But once her vision cleared she saw the canteen he offered her. She took it silently and drank big gulps, passed it back considerably lighter.
He sighed and capped it. “You need to get some sleep.”
