The Stranger and I. Carol Ericson
She eyed the contained energy in that hard body and could easily believe it.
“Look, Lila. It’s better to stay out of sight for now. I need to sort some things out in my head.”
“Better for whom?” she asked. “You need to rest and have that wound properly cleaned and dressed. I need to eat, and I’m sorry, I really need a shower.”
His grin ended in a gasp as he clutched at his thigh again. “I have camping gear in the back and that first-aid kit. That’s probably the safest way to go right now. I’ve been checking the mirror since we left the compound. Nobody followed us. That’s one advantage of the desert. You can see for miles. It’s no accident the HIA put the compound out here.”
She announced, “Okay. We’re going to stop at that shopping center when we get to Twentynine Palms. I’m going to pick up a few things, and then we’re going camping.”
An hour later they sat on logs around a fire at the Cottonwood campsite in the Joshua Tree National Park. Justin looked over at the woman poking at the flames. She amazed him. Instead of making her swoon, the sight of his blood bubbling through his jeans called her to action. For a moment at the compound he thought he’d have to haul her out over his shoulder. For a moment.
With little assistance from him, she pitched the tent, treated his gunshot graze and started a fire, humming a tune all the while.
While she cleaned and dressed his wound, her strong, nimble fingers trailing over his skin stirred a slow burn in the pit of his stomach. He didn’t need this complication right now.
The blaze from the campfire illuminated her fine features. She looked like an escaped wood nymph from the Black Forest, but her coloring resembled one of those Nordic heroines.
Noticing his scrutiny, she smiled, but those lush lips quivered with the effort. She plucked up stamina from somewhere to keep going, but the path to total collapse loomed ahead. He hoped to God he could catch her when she folded.
Against his better judgment, he shifted a little closer to her. “What kind of research were you doing in Mexico?”
She clasped her hands around her knees and rocked back and forth. “A group of us went down to dive and do research at La Bufadora. There’s a decline in the fluorescent strawberry anemone there, and we’re testing the water for toxins.”
His eyebrows shot up. “Strawberry what?”
Wiggling her toes at the fire, she laughed. “The fluorescent strawberry anemone. I swear, that’s what it’s called. We drove down in a caravan, and I decided to leave early. My car broke down, and the rest is history.”
Obviously she took life head-on, no shrinking violet, despite her ethereal appearance. “So as a graduate student, do you teach, too?”
She nodded and grimaced. “I spend half my time doing research and the other half as a teaching assistant in undergraduate marine-biology classes.”
“Have you always been interested in marine biology?”
She laughed again, the sound of gurgling water. “Is that your polite way of asking why a woman of my advanced years is still in school?”
He tilted his head, taking in the large, clear eyes set in a smooth face, a sprinkling of freckles across her nose. “I’d hardly call late twenties advanced.”
She leaned forward and winked. “Must be good genes. More like early thirties, and no, while marine biology is my first love, I made a detour for a while.”
Closing her eyes, a spasm of pain arched across her face. As much as he wanted to learn more about her, he respected others’ private demons. After all, he had his share.
She opened her eyes. “How about you? Did you want to be a secret agent when you were a little boy?”
The reference to his boyhood pinked his armor. He’d just wanted to survive his childhood, make it out in one piece. He schooled his face into a noncommittal mask. “Not exactly. I wanted to be a cowboy, then an astronaut, then a superhero.”
Nodding, she said, “I see, the quiet life. I know someone poured from the same mold.” Her expressive eyes misted over as she stared dreamily into the fire.
The blaze crackled, and she fell back to earth. “When can I go home?”
He stirred the fire with a stick. “When I can get you there safely. If all goes well tonight, maybe as early as tomorrow.”
Leaning toward him, she asked, “Do you really think Prasad could be responsible for what happened at headquarters?”
He pictured Prasad’s eager young face as he told him, “I have more at stake here than you. I’m an American and I’m a Muslim.” His background check came back squeaky clean. Justin himself trained him…and Chad. Nausea swept through his body, and he gripped his hands in front of him. That’s what happened when you got too close—betrayal or desertion.
“Justin?”
He looked over at that angelic face, her hair creating a halo that seemed to float around her head.
She reached out and touched his clasped hands. Her warmth spread through him like honey, sweet and thick, and he savored it. Just for this one moment…
Her fingertips played along the grooves between his knuckles. She felt his tension begin to seep out, and she let it bleed into her, drinking in their closeness. He had to feel their connection, too. Or maybe not.
He stood up slowly. “You must be exhausted. Time for that shower.”
He began dousing the fire, and she jumped up to help him. The man obviously could tolerate only small doses of intimacy at a time.
When they finished, she asked, “What will you do?”
He rubbed his hand across the stubble that made him look nine kinds of sexy. “Probably go down to that clearing south of Loma Vista.”
She widened her eyes, and her heart skipped. “Alone? You’ll go down there without any help?”
“Much of what we do in this agency is alone. Besides, we do have another agent down there.”
She guessed much of what he did in the agency was alone. Lone Wolf—he’d earned that name somehow.
“One more thing, Lila, you can’t tell anyone about this. The police agencies don’t even know about us. The government will take care of that incident at the compound.”
“What about Chad’s family?”
“They’re back East. They’ll be notified.”
“And the rest of them?”
“Same thing.”
She shivered thinking about the elegant Victoria and nerdy Dave. Real people with real families. She asked, “What about your family?”
His body stiffened, dark clouds scudding across his face. “Don’t have one, except for my sister. She’s married and thinks I have some government job where I travel a lot. Not too far from the truth.”
He gestured toward the squat building beyond the rocks. “You shower first, and I’ll wait outside.”
The Cottonwood campground consisted of forty campsites and ten shower complexes. They enjoyed this one to themselves, as the late-summer months didn’t attract many campers to the desert.
Lila tiptoed into the empty building that housed four shower stalls and cranked on the lukewarm water. The spray hit her back, and she soaped up her body, scrubbing away the sand and dust along with her tension and fear.
Justin stood guard outside, and after knowing him less than twenty-four hours, she knew he’d protect her. He seemed to believe they might be safe now. God, she hoped so. She ached to see Tyler again and hold him in her arms.
She