Free Elizabeth Lowell by Reckless Love Page B

her in a way I never would have teased a girl.
A woman, maybe, but not a girl.
Why, she can
’
t be much more
than
...
Abruptly he sat up straight on the stone ledge, sending water cascading off his body.
Just how old is she?
    And how innocent?
    Ty remembered the look of desire he had once seen in Janna’s eyes. Instantly he squelched the thought. He was nearly thirty. He had no damned business even looking at a thirteen-year-old, no matter how soft her cheeks were or how her gray eyes warmed while she looked at him when she thought he wouldn’t notice. Besides, boy or girl, at thirteen a case of hero worship was still a case of hero worship.
    If she was, indeed, thirteen.
    She can
’
t be much older than that. I may be blind but I
’
m not dead. If she had breasts, I
’
d have noticed.
Or hips, for that matter.
Even under those flapping, flopping, ridiculous clothes, I
’
d have not
iced
...
wouldn
’
t I?
    Hell, yes, of course I would have.
    The reassuring thought made him settle back into the pool. A kid was still a kid, no matter what the sex. As for his own body’s urgent woman-hunger, that was just a sign of his returned health. It had nothing to do with a gray-eyed waif whose delicate hands had touched nearly every aching inch of his body.
    But it was the aching inches she hadn’t touched that were driving him crazy.
    “Dammit!” he exploded, coming out of the water with a lunge.
    He stood dripping on the stone rim of the pool, furious with himself and the world in general, and with one Janna Wayland in particular. Viciously he scrubbed his breechcloth on the rocks, wrung it out and put it on, concealing the rigid evidence of his hunger.
    Then he turned around and got right back into the Tub again. This time he remembered the bar of camp soap that Janna always left in a nearby niche. Cursing steadily, he began washing himself from head to newly healed feet. When he was finished he rinsed thoroughly, adjusted the uncomfortably tight breechcloth once more and stalked back to camp.
    Janna was calmly tying twists of greenery to branches she had laid between two tall forked sticks. The stems of the plants turned slowly in the sun and wind as the leaves gave up their moisture. In a week or two the herbs would be ready to store whole or to crumble and pound into a powder she would use to make lotions, pastes, potions, and other varieties of medicine.
    “How do your feet feel?” she asked without looking up from her work.
    “Like feet. Where’s Mad Jack?”
    “Gone.”
    “What?”
    “He was worried when he didn’t find me in any of the usual places, so—”
    “Where are the usual places?” Ty interrupted.
    “Wherever Lucifer’s herd is. Once Jack found out I was all right, he went back.”
    “To where?”
    “Wherever his mine is.”
    Ty reached to readjust the breechcloth again, remembered that Janna wasn’t a boy and snatched back his hands, cursing.
    “Do you think that zebra dun of yours would take me to Sweetwater?” he asked.
    “I don’t know. She likes you well enough, but she doesn’t like towns at all.”
    “You two make a fine pair,” he muttered, combing through his wet hair with long fingers.
    “Catch,” she said.
    Reflexively his hand flashed out and grabbed the small leather poke she had pulled from her baggy pants pocket.
    “What’s this?” he asked.
    “Mad Jack’s gold. You’ll need it when you get to town. Or were you planning to work off whatever you buy?”
    “I can’t take gold from a thirteen-year-old girl.”
    She looked up briefly before she went back to arranging herbs for drying. “You aren’t.”
    “What?”
    “You aren’t taking gold from a thirteen-year-old. I’m nineteen. I only told you I was thirteen so that you wouldn’t suspect I was a woman.”
    “Sugar,” he drawled, giving her a thorough up-and-down look, “you could have walked naked past me and I wouldn’t have suspected anything at all. You’re the least female female I’ve ever