Betrayal on the Border by Jill Elizabeth Nelson

Author:Jill Elizabeth Nelson
Language: eng
Format: epub, azw3, mobi
Publisher: Harlequin
Published: 2012-08-15T04:00:00+00:00

TEN

“Are you praying or talking to yourself?” Maddie settled onto the sun-baked ground next to Chris.

His head jerked up, and he devoured her with his gaze. “You!”

She blinked at him. “Yes. Last time I checked I was me.”

“You’re alive.” A medieval knight waking up in the twenty-first century couldn’t have spoken with greater amazement.

“I am.” She grinned fit to split her face.

Chris scowled blacker than last night’s storm. His arm snaked out quick as thought and snatched her to him. Her face was mashed up against a pleasantly broad and sturdy shoulder and his masculine scents of soap and sweat filled her nostrils. She wriggled against him, but he crushed her all the tighter.

“Don’t ever scare me like that again.” His stern words blew hot in her ear.

Maddie managed to nod against his chest, and his grip loosened. She lifted her head and gazed into his eyes. Had the subtle crow’s-feet at their corners deepened since last she saw him? She was lucky his hair hadn’t gone white from trauma like his sister’s had done.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “There wasn’t time to explain my plan or argue with you about the risks.”

He grunted darkly. “Maybe you could take a moment now and enlighten me? I thought you’d gone over the cliff into the river.”

Maddie’s heart twisted, and she lowered her gaze. “I bailed at the last second. Now the cops are busy recovering the wreck of the car they think we both occupied, and we have a small window of time to slip away.”

“You ditched Ginger? Your brother’s car? You really ditched her.”

Maddie nodded, her throat too full of loss for further speech. A strong finger lifted her chin, and the blue of Chris’s eyes pulled her deep into their welcoming embrace. He bent his head, and his mouth touched one corner of hers then the other.

“Madeleine Jerrard,” he murmured. “You are the bravest woman I know... Check that. You’re the bravest person I’ve ever met.”

Something huddled and lonely in Maddie’s depths unfurled before the simple power of his affirmation. It would be so easy to surrender to the feelings for him that grew like Virginia creepers and clung to her heart in spite of her best efforts to exterminate them. She had to remember there was no future in love unless trust could also be declared. Her brother always told her she was stubborn beyond belief. Maybe he was right. So far, Chris had seemed to play square with her, but someone from within camp the night of the attack had to have transmitted their location to the cartel. It still made sense that the only other survivor of the carnage was that person.

Please, Dear Lord, could there turn out to be some other explanation?

“Let’s get out of here,” she said, “before the authorities figure out that we weren’t inside Ginger when she lost her reckless bid to defy gravity.”

She helped Chris struggle to his feet.

“Your arms are all scraped and scratched,” he said.

She shrugged. “One of the consequences of performing a rolling dive from a fast-moving vehicle.

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