Free The Other Guy's Bride by Connie Brockway Page B

lifted his hands, squirming. “Of course not, effendi . I was not thinking clear.”
    “No!” Mildred Whimpelhall howled from atop her crate. “That’s not fair. You can’t just tell people to ignore me!”
    Jim glanced over at her. “It’s for your own good.”
    “Oh, how I loathe that phrase,” she spat out. Her hat had fallen off during her scramble, and the terrible red hair was starting to come unbound, falling in Medusa-like ropes around her face.
    “You may stop this man from taking me across the river, Mr. Owens,” she declared, “but you can’t accost every captain along this shore, and that’s what you’ll have to do to keep me from crossing this river. I’ll go up and down the banks and ask every man with a dahabiya or felucca or a raft to ferry me across. Sooner or later, one of them is bound to agree, and there is nothing you can do to stop me, unless, that is, you plan spend your days shadowing me. And since you seem to be in a great hurry to be rid of me, I can’t imagine you will do so. So you may as well go now, Mr. Owens, and leave me to my search.”
    He stared at her. She stared at him.
    Shit .
    “Allah be praised!” the boy beside her suddenly cried, leaping up and pumping the air with both fists as the mainsail caught the breeze and billowed out.
    His triumph was short-lived. He hadn’t tied down the mainsheet on the boom, and as soon as the wind filled the sail, the big wooden spar swept across the deck, knocking aside everything in its path.
    Including Miss Whimpelhall. One minute she was standing there, glaring at him; the next, she was gone.
    He leapt to the side of the boat just in time to see her sink beneath the water, her enormous dark skirts ballooning around her like a giant jellyfish, a jellyfish that was going to drown her.
    “Leave Egypt now, James,” Haji said calmly. “I will see that she is safe.”
    But it was too late. Jim had already dived in.

     
    Ginesse plummeted toward the bottom of the Nile, weighed down by the heavy gabardine skirt. She opened her eyes in a thick stew of brown murk and felt a thread of panic take hold: she couldn’t tell top from bottom. Disoriented and frightened, she forced herself not to struggle. She knew how to swim, but in these skirts it would be impossible. She had to shed them.
    She began to work feverishly at the ties and buttons. Her chest ached, and her lungs felt close to bursting, but she knew to exhale meant she had only seconds to replace the air. Carefully, she let a thin stream of bubbles escape her lips as she yanked at the skirt. She was growing light-headed, her fingers fumbling…
    And then suddenly two strong hands seized her and she was being propelled up through the muddy waters, the water breaking over her head as she was pushed up through the surface and into the air, choking and gasping for breath. Strong arms raised her up the side of the felucca where other hands accepted her, hauling her aboard like a net full of fish and dropping her on the deck.
    She coughed, spitting water all over the deck, and then she was being lifted against a hard, broad chest and her head fell in the lee between a warm neck and muscled shoulder.
    “Are you all right?” His voice was harsh, unsympathetic. He gave her a little shake. “ Are you? ”
    “Yes.”
    She opened her eyes, blinking through the muddy water still streaming down her face, and found Jim Owens looking down at her. Of course. She’d known it was him the moment he’d touched her. His face was a mask, inscrutable and stony, his gray eyes roving over her face, touching on her hair, her mouth, and finally meeting her eyes.
    “You dove in after me,” she said, her voice faint and wondering.
    He seemed to find this amusing, for his mouth curled at the corner again and she took that for a smile. “Did you think I wouldn’t?”
    She answered before she had time to consider. “I didn’t expect you.”
    “I didn’t expect you, either.” His voice seemed odd,