Free Sandra's Classics - The Bad Boys of Romance - Boxed Set by Sandra Marton Page B

ran her fingers through her hair again, trying to smooth and shape it, painfully aware of her unwashed, unmade-up early morning face and the fuzzy taste in her mouth. Chad, she noticed, looked bright-eyed and ready for the day, except for the shadowy beginning of a beard.
    ‘You didn’t wake me,’ she said quickly. ‘I was up...’ He glanced at her and she hesitated . ‘OK,’ she said sheepishly, ‘I wasn’t. I guess I managed to sleep a bit after all.’
    He squatted beside the remains of the fire and began to rearrange the kindling and branches.
    ‘Yeah, I thought you might have dozed off once or twice,’ he said casually, digging in his pocket for the matches. ‘I figured that’s what it meant when you started snoring.’
    ‘I do not snore,’ Jessica said indignantly. ‘I never …” She sighed as he grinned at her. ‘I didn’t, did I? Tell me I didn’t.’
    Chad brushed his hands off on his jeans. ‘OK, you didn’t,’ he said agreeably. ‘You just make strange noises when you sleep.’
    She laughed.
    ‘ Never mind. Truth is,’ she admitted, watching as he coaxed a tiny flame to life, ‘I slept like a log. You were right, I guess. I was a lot more tired than I realized.’
    ‘Yeah, you hardly stirred all night.’ He leaned forward and blew on the struggling flame. ‘Well, you did wake up briefly at about three in the morning. The cold got to you.’
    She stiffened and watched him carefully, but he was concentrating all his energies on the fire.
    ‘Did I?’ she said finally. ‘I don’t remember that at all.’
    He shrugged his shoulders and added a couple of twigs to the stack.
    ‘Once you were warm again, you just drifted right back to sleep.' Suddenly, he lifted his head and his eyes pierced hers. ‘You don’t remember that, huh?’
    Jessica shook her head.
    ‘No, not at all,’ she said quickly, hoping the dancing flames would hide the color she felt blazing in her cheeks. ‘I guess I snuggled right into that tarpaulin you gave me and dozed right off again.’
    Chad grinned lazily. ‘Sure,’ he said easily, ‘that must have been it.’
    She wanted to look away from him but his eyes held hers, the golden lights in their hazel depths dancing with faint amusement and something more, something she couldn’t quite fathom...
    She swallowed drily as he bent his head and broke the electric contact between them.
    ‘Well,’ she said in a light voice, ‘the sleeping accommodations in this hotel weren’t bad, but the plumbing leaves a lot to be desired. I’d give anything for a toothbrush and some soap and a sink.’
    ‘Anything?’
    She nodded her head. ‘Anything.’
    He smiled as he got slowly to his feet. ‘We should have a drum roll here,’ he said, holding his hands out to her, fingers spread, ‘and a spotlight.’ Slowly, he rotated his hands before him. ‘Abracadabra,’ he said dramatically. ‘The Great O’Bryan promises that at no time will his hands ever leave his wrists.’
    It was impossible not to smile in return.
    ‘The Great O’Bryan?’
    ‘ Do not scoff at a demonstration of woodland magic, ma’am. Will a volunteer from the audience kindly note the absence of charcoal smudges on my fingers? And the teeth are shiny, ma’am. Care to check more closely and verify that?’
    ‘What I’ll verify is that you’re crazy,’ Jessica laughed. ‘You’re not going to tell me you have tubes of toothpaste and bars of soap in that bottomless pit you call a backpack, are you?’
    ‘No, sorry about that. Even the old pit has its limits. But fine sand is a great substitute for soap. And I’ll personally cut you a terrific aspen twig toothbrush that you can use down by the lake.’ He waggled his eyebrows in an exaggerated leer. ‘Now, aren’t you sorry you said you’d give me anything I wanted for that information?’
    ‘Well, I ...’
    ‘Nope, it’s too late to back out. You’re not a welsher, are you, Jess?’
    ‘Well, no,’ she said. Color swept into her