Free Midnight Rainbow by Linda Howard Page B

her. If there was a choice between two paths, he invariably chose the more difficult one. The route he took was through the roughest terrain, the thickest vegetation, up the highest, most rugged slope. Jane tore her pants sliding down a bluff, that looked like pure suicide from the top, and not much better than that from the bottom, but she followed without complaining. It wasn’t that she didn’t think of plenty of complaints, but that she was too tired to voice them. The benefits of her short nap had long since been dissipated. Her legs ached, her back ached, her bruised arms were so painful she could barely move them, and her eyes felt as if they were burning out of their sockets. But she didn’t ask him to stop. Even if the pace killed her, she wasn’t going to slow him down any more than she already had, because she had no doubt that he could travel much faster without her. The easy movements of his long legs told her that his stamina was far greater than hers; he could probablywalk all night long again without a noticeable slowing of his stride. She felt a quiet awe of that sort of strength and conditioning, something that had been completely outside her experience before she’d met him. He wasn’t like other men; it was evident in his superb body, in the awesome competence with which he handled everything, in the piercing gold of his eyes.
    As if alerted by her thoughts, he stopped and looked back at her, assessing her condition with that sharp gaze that missed nothing. “Can you make it for another mile or so?”
    On her own, she couldn’t have, but when she met his eyes she knew there was no way she’d admit to that. Her chin lifted, and she ignored the increasingly heavy ache in her legs as she said, “Yes.”
    A flicker of expression crossed his face so swiftly that she couldn’t read it. “Let me have that pack,” he growled, coming back to her and jerking the straps free of the buckles, then slipping the pack from her shoulders.
    â€œI’m handling it okay,” she protested fiercely, grabbing for the pack and wrapping both arms around it. “I haven’t complained, have I?”
    His level dark brows drawing together in a frown, he forcefully removed the pack from her grasp. “Use your head,” he snapped. “If you collapse from exhaustion, then I’ll have to carry you, too.”
    The logic of that silenced her. Without another word he turned and started walking again. She was better able to keep up with him without the weight of the pack, but she felt frustrated with herself for not being in better shape, for being a burden to him. Jane had fought fiercely for her independence, knowing that her very life depended on it. She’d never been one to sit and wait for someone else to do things for her. She’d charged at life head-on, relishingthe challenges that came her way because they reaffirmed her acute sense of the wonder of life. She’d shared the joys, but handled the problems on her own, and it unsettled her now to have to rely on someone else.
    They came to another stream, no wider than the first one they had crossed, but deeper. It might rise to her knees in places. The water rushing over the rocks sounded cool, and she thought of how heavenly it would be to refresh her sweaty body in the stream. Looking longingly at it, she stumbled over a root and reached out to catch her balance. Her palm came down hard against a tree trunk, and something squished beneath her fingers.
    â€œOh, yuk!” she moaned, trying to wipe the dead insect off with a leaf.
    Grant stopped. “What is it?”
    â€œI smashed a bug with my hand.” The leaf didn’t clean too well; a smear still stained her hand, and she looked at Grant with disgust showing plainly on her face. “Is it all right if I wash my hand in the stream?”
    He looked around, his amber eyes examining both sides of the stream. “Okay. Come