Wildstar

He gave a soft sigh. Without speaking again, he rose and pulled on his trousers and left her alone, allowing her privacy to wash. When he returned, he helped her dress, making a game of finding their numerous articles of cloth­ing that he'd strewn around the floor when he'd made love to her.

"This has to be," Devlin said with dry amusement as he

reached for her corset, "among my more unique experi­ences . . . playing lady's maid in a mine cave."

Jess bit her lip. It was obvious Devlin had a good deal of experience playing with women's clothing, for he knew just how to tie the laces of her corset, and in just which or­der each garment went. He was proficient and casual about dressing her, just as he'd been proficient and casual about comforting a hysterical woman last night . . . and making love to her. What had been unique and special for her— her introduction to womanhood—had been nothing in the least extra-ordinary for him.

When they were both dressed, and she had brought some semblance of order to her wild, sleep-tumbled hair, he snuffed the light again to save oxygen and fed her bites of biscuits and ham in the dark. He was tenderness itself, never once mentioning the intimacies they'd shared. But his discretion didn't assuage Jessica's conscience in the slightest, or relieve her acute embarrassment. Devlin had told her they'd be rescued. He'd also told her that one day she would find a man who would give her the family she wanted. He couldn't have made it plainer. He wasn't that man. Her face burned in remembrance.

She couldn't blame him for what had happened. He had tried to refuse her advances, but she hadn't heeded him. Now all she could do was pretend their lovemaking had never happened, and instead concentrate on stopping Burke and his hired killers.

She had a long while to contemplate her rashness, for it took even more time than Devlin had predicted for the de­bris to be cleared. The shouts of men outside the blocked tunnel grew louder as the long night wore on. After sev­eral hours, when they judged it to be near daybreak, Jess and Devlin moved to the upper level, a safe distance from the cave-in in case more rubble was loosened in the dig­ging. There they waited, sitting quietly, not touching, not talking, simply hoping.

It was already morning before a hole was opened about the size of man's head. Jess blinked at the blinding daylight and nearly sobbed when she heard Clem's ragged voice calling to her.

"Jessie? Jessie, you in there?"

"Yes! We're here. Please, hurry and get us out!"

"Godamighty! She's alive!"

She heard the cheers that rose from outside, and the frantic digging that followed. Clem's litany of foul oaths as he cussed every boulder and piece of rock in his way was like angels' music to her ears.

It seemed like an eternity before the opening was large enough to permit a person to squeeze past the fallen tim­ber that braced one wall. Finally the digging stopped. With Devlin helping push from behind, Jess crawled out into the open, skinning her palms and knees.

She was dragged the last few feet by a dozen masculine hands, and then pulled to her feet and crushed in a violent bear hug. Hardly able to stand, Jess gulped deep, urgent breaths of sweet air and clung to Clem.

She didn't realize she was crying until Clem drew back, his own grizzled face wet with tears. "Dammitall, Jess, you sceered ten years off my life."

"Mine, too." She angled her head frantically to regard what had been the entrance to the Wildstar mine. "Dev­lin's still in there . . . please, help him," she pleaded, un­necessarily. An army of grim-faced miners was already hard at work, rescuing the other survivor of the explosion.

"Jess . . ." Her father's choked voice sounded from a short distance away, making Jess whip her head around. He was trying to climb down from the back of a buck-board wagon, she saw in dismay, while Flo was trying just as hard to hold him back.

Shaking off Clem's hold, Jess stumbled over to her fa­ther. And then Riley was taking her face between his cal­loused hands and showering her with desperate kisses, and she was laughing and crying and babbling. "Riley, you shouldn't be out of bed. . . . Flo, you should have stopped him. . . . Riley, don't . . . your wound."

"Forget about my wound! I'll be fine. What about you? God, Jess, are you all right?"

"Yes . . . just shaken up a bit—"

"What in tarnation happened?" Clem interrupted as he lumbered up behind her.

"Somebody set a fire in the tunnel and then blew up the entrance while we were inside."

The mule skinner's curse was low and fluent, while Ril­ey's face went paper-white.

"That does it," Riley muttered under his breath.

Before Jess could ask what he meant, Devlin came to stand beside her. She glanced up to find him searching her face, his gray eyes clouded with smoky intensity in the early morning sunlight.

She didn't know where to look. It had all seemed so clear to her last night in the dark. She had needed him so desperately. She'd wanted him to drive away her fear, wanted the simple reassurance that she was still alive, the comfort of his touch. But now . . . she didn't know how to act, or what to say.

As if he knew how confused and vulnerable she felt, he smiled a quick mercurial smile that held a bewitching mas­culine charm. Jess felt her heart jump to her throat. Dusty, unshaven, weary, he was still the most stunningly attract­ive man she'd ever known. She couldn't look at him with­out remembering the possession of that hard expert body, without a dozen shocking, vividly carnal images playing in her head. It was all she could do to drag her gaze away.

She had to get hold of herself. She had to at least try to give the appearance of normality around Devlin. Devlin. He'd asked her to call him Garrett, but she couldn't— wouldn't—do it. Being on a first-name basis with him would fairly shriek impropriety, and she wanted nothing to suggest how familiar, how intimate, they'd been last night. Addressing him as "Devlin" was much wiser, especially if she was to keep up the pretense that nothing had happened between them. "Devlin" was safer, more distant—or at least it gave the illusion of distance.

Glad that her father had kept his arm wrapped tightly around her waist, Jess chose her words carefully. "Riley, Devlin saved my life. I would have gone crazy in there if it hadn't been for him."

"Thank you, Mr. Devlin." The unashamed quaver in the older man's voice indicated how precious his daughter was to him. "I don't know how I can ever repay you."