Free The Mercenary by Cherry Adair Page B

something hurt?” When she didn’t respond, he lifted her chin to look into her face.
    “Are you sick?
    Does your arm hurt? Are you embarrassed that I saw you naked? What?” Her eyes filled with tears.
    Great. “Talk to me.” His voice came out a little harsher than it should have.
    “Leave me alone.” She glared at him, the tears making her green eyes glitter. “I broke the comb. Okay?
    I broke the blasted comb!”
    Marc stared at her as if she’d lost her mind. “You’re crying because you broke a damn comb? Christ,
    lady, it’s a fine day when that’s the worst thing that happens to you.” He got to his feet impatiently, paced to the back of the cave and pulled out the sat phone. If she was
    going to freak out over something as ridiculous as a broken comb, they were in big trouble.
    He’d been delusional to think he could get her to grow some kind of backbone. He couldn’t make her
    something that she wasn’t. Not her fault, damn it.
    Pushing her hair aside she looked over her shoulder. “What are…are you doing?”
    “Calling Angelo. He can come and get you.”

CHAPTER FIVE
    MARC WAITEDfor Angelo to pick up the phone. Damn fool woman. He’d schlepped her halfway
    around the world because he needed her to find Alex. Fast. Faster than he could do it himself. But she
    was proving to be more of a liability than an asset.
    “No!” Tory jumped up, tears forgotten. “No, d-don’t do that.” She grabbed the phone and
    disconnected. “I’m the only one who can find my brother. You said so.”
    “Lady, I must have been out of my ever-loving mind to think you’d be any help.” He took the phone
    from her, deliberated for a second, then stuck it in his back pocket. “Look at you. You’re already falling
    apart and we haven’t even gotten to the hard part yet.”
    “You don’t understand.” She bit her lip. “It’s not…I can’t get the knots out of my hair.
    The comb
    broke, and I…The comb’s broken.”
    He’d known her for little more than a day and in that short time he had her figured. She was a lousy liar,
    which he liked. She was too damned sexy without being aware of it, which he didn’t like. Marc
    remembered the prissy, navy suit and sensible heels she’d worn when he’d first met her.
    He had a
    sudden mental image of her straightening her collar and striving to neaten her hair when she’d awakened
    in his den the other night.
    He might not know her well, but one thing he did know was that she was obsessive about being neat and
    right now her bare feet were sandy, the T-shirt she wore was crumpled from being in the pack, and her
    hair was wildly tangled. She was a mess.
    He liked her this way. Rumpled and untidy. But clearly it wasn’t a look she was comfortable with.
    “Come here,” he said gently. With a hand on her shoulder, he pushed her down on the blanket and
    settled behind her. “Give me the comb.”
    Her slender shoulders were rigid under his hands. “I don’t want you to touch me, thank you very much.”
    “I don’t want to be kept up all damn night because you’re sniveling about your frigging hair. Give me the
    comb.”
    She handed the largest piece of the broken comb to him over her shoulder.
    “Relax.” He picked up the towel and rubbed at her hair.
    Her voice sounded muffled and sheepish. “My mother used to do this.” He rubbed out as much of the moisture as he could, then picked up the comb. Her hair pooled on the
    silver blanket between them, and he picked up the ends and started drawing the teeth through the wet
    tangles.
    “Tell me about her,” he said softly. Her hair felt like silk in his fingers.
    “I don’t have that many memories. I do remember that she and my father were inseparable.” Her voice
    caught and she cleared her throat before continuing. “My father was a stuntman, and my mother always
    went with him on shoots. Apparently he was in high demand, because they were gone a lot.”
    “And where were you when they were