Not His Wedding! (Silhouette Reissued) by Suzanne Simms

Author:Suzanne Simms [Simms, Suzanne]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Contemporary Romance, Women's Fiction, Forever Love, Bachelor, Single Woman, Sensual, Hearts Desire, Life-Changes, Second Chances, Honesty & Trust, Silhouette Reissued, Marriage Merger, Business Merger, Marriage Immune, Ambitious & Dependable, Unpredictable Adventurer, Mr. Wrong
ISBN: 0373057180
Publisher: Curtis Brown Unlimited
Published: 2012-12-02T05:00:00+00:00

Nine

They’d been on the run all night, and Diana hadn’t complained once. Not a word. Not a sigh. Not a gripe or a grumble. Not a moan or groan of self-pity.

Ross was amazed.

She had to be hot, or tired, or hungry. Probably all three. He knew he was.

The strap of her carryon bag was digging into her shoulder; he could tell by the way she shifted the weight from one arm to the other every now and then.

Her feet must hurt. Her legs must ache. Every muscle in her body must be screaming for relief. He was pushing her harder than she had ever been pushed before in her entire life. Yet she was keeping up with him, and without a word of complaint.

He turned his head and said just loud enough to be heard, “How are you doing?”

“Fine.”

“How do the boots feel?”

“Fine.”

Lola, the singer and sometime barmaid at the Hotel Paraiso, hadn’t owned any suitable walking shoes, so he’d had to barter for a pair of men’s work boots from Simon Ha. One of the few pair on the island, according to the hotelier, since most residents of Port Manya went barefoot.

“They are genuine leather,” Simon had claimed as he drove up the already exorbitant asking price. “Excellent workmanship. Brought all the way from Mindanao by my eldest son.”

Ross had taken the boots. He’d had no choice.

They weren’t an exact fit—there was an inch or two of old newspaper stuffed into the toe of each one—but they sure beat the alternative: Diana’s skimpy three-inch-high imported Italian heels.

Lola had been more than willing to trade a blouse, a jacket and a pair of faded jeans for the designer dresses. Of course, the singer was barely five feet tall. Consequently the jeans hit Diana about midcalf. The difference had to be made up with a pair of Ross’s socks that reached well above her knees. You didn’t go into the jungle at night with bare legs, with bare skin, with bare anything. Not if you were smart.

Ross hadn’t explained why.

Diana had wisely not asked. There were times when ignorance was bliss.

He wasn’t particularly eager to go into details about the necklace-length centipedes; the ants as long as a man’s finger; the poisonous spiders; the snakes, especially the giant pythons and the cobras; the pagil, a species of jungle boar with a nasty temper; or the purported fifty-six varieties of bats that inhabited the caves on some of these islands. Not to mention the countless nameless creatures that slithered along the jungle floor, and the mosquitoes that could eat you alive.

While they were having dinner together at the Manila Hotel, Ross remembered warning Diana that if she stayed in this part of the world, the veneer of civilization would be stripped away and she would be exposed for who and what she was. It happened to everyone sooner or later.

Perhaps what he was seeing now was the real Diana Winsted. She wore no makeup. Her hair was pulled back into a single utilitarian ponytail, and there was an old Detroit Tigers baseball cap pulled down over her eyes.

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