Chris had meant to only pretend to go down that way but, what she’d thought was ground wasn’t and she went sliding down the hill on her back.
Tynan ran across the clearing and leaped on top of her to keep her from sliding any farther.
Instinctively, Chris’s arms went around him, clutching him close to her. When he lifted his head and looked at her, she was aware of his body on top of hers with every fiber of her being. For a moment, she thought he was going to kiss her—and she welcomed him.
He was a half inch from her lips before he jumped up, leaving her lying on the steep bank. For just a moment, he turned away from her and she had the distinct impression that he was trying to control his emotions. When he turned back, his eyes were alight, but he seemed calm otherwise. “I told you to go back to the camp. And I thought you were too tired to go anywhere and needed to rest.”
“I lied,” she said with a smile.
“And do you often lie, Miss Mathison?”
“Not nearly as often as the other people in this party,” she said, blinking her eyes innocently. “You tell me the truth and I’ll tell you the truth. I think that’s fair.”
He seemed to start to say something, but changed his mind because he turned away from her and went back to the horse. “There’s a trail over there. You can use it to get back to the path that takes you to the camp.”
She stood, straightened her skirt and retrieved the medical kit that had come down with her. “Actually, I was searching for you because I wanted to have a look at your back.”
“My what?!” he said, turning toward her with a face full of fury. “Look, Miss Mathison, I don’t know what you’re after but I’ve had about all I can take.” He was moving forward, pointing the horse brush at her, and Chris was backing up. “Maybe you think I’m going to be one of those people in one of your stories but you’ve got another think coming. I was hired by your father to take you and Prescott through this forest and to take you home to him. I did not bargain for you following me everywhere I go nor did I expect for you to keep leaping out at me without a stitch of clothes on. Under different circumstances, I’d enjoy your entertainment, but on this trip I got a job to do and I plan to do it no matter what you do to tempt me. You, lady, are Satan in one beautiful package. Now get out of here and leave me alone. I don’t want to see you until I wake you in the morning—and I might even get somebody else to do that.”
He closed his mouth abruptly, turned his back on her and went back to the horse.
“All right,” Chris said. “I’ll return to camp and tell Mr. Prescott that your back is a mass of lacerations that look as if they may become infected and also tell him that something is wrong with your feet. I’m sure the mutiny will be over and done with in no time and you will no longer be our leader and you can return to wherever it is that you refuse to tell anyone. Good day, Mr. Tynan,” she said as she started toward the path he’d pointed out.
She’d gone no more than three feet before she heard a muttered oath behind her and what sounded like the horse brush being thrown down with some force.
“All right,” he said loudly and Chris turned toward him. “What am I supposed to do?”
“Remove your shirt and boots and lie down on your stomach there on that patch of moss.”
“I guess I should be glad you don’t want anything else,” he mumbled sulkily but did as she asked.
As Chris knelt beside him and looked at his back, she saw that the wounds were worse than she’d thought when she’d seen them from a distance. Most of them were healing well but a few had broken open yesterday. She imagined that they were very, very painful. Taking a deep breath, she opened her case and withdrew some salve.
“This will help ease the pain,” she said softly and began to soothe it on his skin. His back was broad and he was quite muscular but there was little more than skin covering his muscles, hardly any fat. He looked as if he’d been worked very hard and fed very little.
When she felt him begin to relax under her fingers, she said, “How long were you in prison?”
“Two years,” he answered quickly, then whispered, “Damn!”
“Mr. Tynan, I am a newspaper reporter and I work hard at observing. I don’t know anywhere else that a man can be worked at hard labor, starved and beaten—at least not in America.”
“And if there was such a place you’d get yourself thrown in there so you could write a story about it, right? Am I going to be your next story? ‘I went through the rain forest with an escaped prisoner.’ Something to that effect?”
“Did you escape? Somehow, I thought my father had you released.”
When he didn’t reply, she knew she’d hit close to home. “You see, Mr. Tynan, I know my father quite well. If he wanted someone to take me through an impenetrable forest, he wouldn’t hesitate when people said it couldn’t be done. He’d just find out how to do it. My guess is that he found that you’d been through the forest and it wouldn’t matter to him if you were on your way to the gallows. He has enough money and power to cut any ropes, even if they’re hanging around someone’s neck.”
“He’d trust his daughter to a murderer?” Tynan asked, turning his head to look at her.
She was thoughtful for a moment. “No, I don’t think he would. I believe that my mother and I are the only people he’s ever really loved. I wasn’t sure he was going to recover after my mother died, but I think he decided he still had me.”
“But you’re saying that he put you under the care of a criminal, someone rescued from the hangman’s noose.”
She paused in rubbing the cream into his wounds. “Mr. Tynan, you must be an innocent man. You’re perfectly right that my father would never entrust my care to a villain. Yes, of course, that’s it. You’re either innocent or you did something that wasn’t violent. Breach of promise perhaps.” Smiling, she resumed smoothing the cream on his back. By now, she was as much massaging his muscles as doctoring him.
“How close am I to the truth?” she asked and when he didn’t answer, she laughed. “You see, Mr. Tynan, we all give clues to ourselves, no matter how hard we try to conceal them. I’m sure Mr. Prescott has no idea that you are in pain every time you move, but if you watch, you begin to see things about people.”
She kept rubbing his back, greasing her hands and running them over the curves of muscle in his arms, massaging until she felt him relaxing completely. His breathing was soft and deep, as if he were asleep. All Chris’s motherly instincts rose within her. How she’d like to take this man home and feed him and see that he rested. She wondered if her father’s housekeeper, Mrs. Sunberry, had met him. If she had