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“Can I help?” Jamie asked as he snatched a small backpack off the floor.
“Look for his cell phone,” Nathan ordered as he stuffed the items into the bag.
The debris around her seemed to multiply as Jamie tossed aside clothes and papers, searching frantically. She cursed Robert for being such a slob. “I don’t see it!”
“Never mind.” He stepped into the kitchen area, yanked two dish towels off a rod and wet them under the faucet. “Tie this over your face.” He handed her one and put the other on himself. She placed the towel, which smelled of rancid cooking grease, over her nose and mouth. He reached around behind her head and tied it roughly. Then he grabbed her hand again and tugged her out the door.
The smoke outside was thick enough now to make Jamie’s eyes smart. Nathan dragged her toward the stallion, tethered to a low tree limb near the cabin. The horse, sensing danger, was prancing backward, whinnying and straining against the lead. Nathan kept repeating, “Whoa, boy,” as he approached, then he soothed the animal with expert hands. When the stallion stood quietly, he hooked the backpack over the saddle horn and mounted, fluidly, still murmuring calm intonations.
“Okay.” He looked down at Jamie. “Up you go.” He extended a strong broad hand.
She stared at the hand, then into the dark eyes squinting at her above the towel.
“Up I go?” she echoed, and swallowed.
He gave her a questioning frown, then leaned an elbow forward on his muscled thigh, bringing his eyes directly into line with hers. “Your pilot is never going to make it back here in time, Ms. Evans. I know that this animal is scary, but he happens to be our escape vehicle.” His uncannily accurate guess rattled her even more. The place where she stood at this moment was as close as Jamie had ever been to a horse. Her lifelong fear of the huge beasts stemmed from a frightening childhood incident at a rodeo. He eased his boot out of the stirrup.
“Now put your foot in there, grab here—” he twisted to demonstrate with a palm braced on the saddle pommel “—and give me your other hand.” He spread his palm downward again. Whoa, boy,” he murmured as the animal danced away from Jamie.
Jamie’s throat, already dry, stuck closed with fright, while unconsciously she stepped away from the horse, not toward it. As she fought to breathe, she sucked the towel tight against her open mouth. Though Nathan seemed to understand her fear, his reaction was less than sympathetic. “Look,” he said in a low, almost threatening, voice. “I’ve got control of him now, but don’t make me get down and lift you up here. I can’t guarantee what this stallion will do then. He’s not a saddle horse. He’s a stud. So do as I say. Now.”
Jamie blinked against the smoke and stepped forward. As soon as she did, the horse made a terrifying jerk and let out a frenzied whinny. Nathan used the reins and his voice to subdue the animal again. “Just step forward slowly,” he urged Jamie.
She did so on wobbly legs.
“Now put your foot in the stirrup. Slowly.”
The huge horse kept edging away. And it didn’t help that Jamie’s skirt was bunched practically to her waist. She struggled with all her might and tried not to think about the view Nathan Biddle might be getting—black bikinis beneath nude panty hose. As soon as she managed to get her foot in the stirrup, Nathan leaned down. With a hand hooked under her armpit, he hauled her up behind him. Somehow Jamie found herself straddling the saddle skirt. She wrapped her arms around him, clutching his waist.
“Keep your legs around his belly,” Nathan told her. “Don’t squeeze him back in the flanks. Kick him there, and he’ll buck us off for sure.”
That’s reassuring, Jamie thought as she nervously scooted her feet forward on the horse’s side.
“Just plant your feet on my calves,” he said dryly.
“Okay,” she squeaked.
“Here we go,” he said.
With her eyes squeezed shut and her cheek mashed into the smooth cool leather jacket, she felt the horse lurch forward.
Jamie registered little about that jolting ride off the plateau. Except for the sound of Nathan’s thudding heart and the feel of powerful muscle—both the animal’s and the man’s—she was aware of nothing.
She finally opened her eyes when she heard splashing water. She raised her head, coughing at the smoke, then felt cold water grazing her feet and found her voice. “Where are we?”
Nathan turned his head. “Hoshkahomi Creek. Unfortunately, not wide enough or deep enough to protect us. We’ll have to make it to Middle Bird Creek.”
Jamie looked around to get her bearings. Above the bare treetops, the morning sun was nothing but a weak spotlight now, shrouded in smoke.
They climbed the bank, hitting open ground, and the horse broke into a hard gallop. Jamie fumbled for a better hold, gripped Nathan’s belt buckle and clung to his middle for dear life.
It seemed forever before they stopped. She looked around at the cedars and naked sycamores that dotted the landscape. Then she leaned around Nathan’s wide back to look ahead of them. The horse stood on a rocky incline that veered toward the deep creek below. The trees on the opposite bank looked frighteningly far away. The rippling water looked too fast and deep for the horse, but as Nathan guided them down the embankment, she knew they were going to ride the stallion across.
“Where are we going?” Her voice was too loud, too anxious, and she realized she was clutching his shirtfront.
“There’s a narrow spot around the bend.” His voice reverberated through his back, making a comforting vibration against her breasts.
But the contact was also disquieting, and she attempted to ease back, creating some space between their bodies. “What will we do when we get there?”
“Cross.”
“Why don’t we hear any fire sirens?”
Silence. He was leaning around the horse’s neck to check the rocky ground ahead of them.
“Do you think the helicopter will look for us down here by the river?”
More silence.
“What will we do after we cross? Will we be safe then?”
“You sure ask a lot of questions.”
“I’m a reporter.”
The air was less smoky near the water, and she pulled the odious towel down and got a whiff of his hair, his neck, the leather jacket. He smelled like cut cedar and freshly laundered shirt—and something else purely virile and male. It was a smell that felt, at this precise moment, extremely safe. Jamie, who’d been so absorbed in her work, hadn’t been this physically close to a man in quite a while. She closed her eyes, resisting the heady intoxicating dangerous urge to collapse against him. The circumstances made her feel this way, she reasoned, not the man. This man wasn’t necessarily safe, she reminded herself. He might even be dangerous.
They came around a narrow meander in the river, and Nathan brought the horse to a stop on an alluvial wash. “This is the place,” he said as he turned the resisting animal to the river’s edge. He gave a gentle kick as he guided the stallion into the water. “Hold on tight,” he ordered.
Like I’m not already, Jamie thought. She clutched him so tightly that the hind bow of the saddle cut into her midriff.
Bird Creek in October was unpleasantly cold. Jamie couldn’t help but think of the damage to her expensive suede pumps and two-hundred-dollar silk suit. But when the horse skidded unevenly on the rocky bottom, she forgot about her ruined clothes. Nathan leaned with all his power to keep them steady. The cold water crept up and soon the horse was swimming.
When the water reached her thighs Jamie sucked in a shocked “Ahh!” and Nathan turned his head. His teeth flashed white in the first smile she’d seen from this man. “Better chilled than burned to a crisp.” But even as he said it, he pressed the warm undersides of his muscular arms over her hands. “Hang on,” he encouraged. “We’re almost there.”
Nathan and the horse handled the current masterfully, but when they bounded onto the opposite shore, the stallion turned mutinous. He tossed his head and reared, churning his forelegs high in the air as Jamie held on and again squeezed her eyes shut, plastered herself to Nathan’s back and pressed her cheek against his powerful shoulder.
“Are you okay?” Nathan asked, when he had the animal under control again.
Jamie nodded against his back. She imagined he could feel her trembling clear through the jacket.
They climbed the bank and she felt him twist the horse around. She opened her eyes to see fire snapping over the ridge in the distance.
“There goes Grandfather’s cabin,” Nathan commented sadly.
“I’m so sorry,” Jamie whispered. She didn’t even want to ask about the ranch buildings—or that grand old house. “Are your other horses here on this side of the river?” she hoped to distract him from his losses.
“Somewhere.” His answer was flat. “We can stop here for a minute.” She felt him kicking his boot free of the stirrup. “Down you go.”
Their legs bumped while she fumbled for the stirrup. Once in, she swung her other leg over the horse quickly, determined to demonstrate that she was as intrepid as he was. But her muscles were taxed and already stiffening with chills, and when she hit the ground, her legs felt weaker than water. She would have landed squarely on her behind if he hadn’t tightened his firm grip on her forearm.
“Easy,” he said as he dismounted.
Jamie nodded and found her way to an outcropping of rock and lowered herself shakily. Nathan tied the horse to a low branch.
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