As she'd expected, he awoke instantly. What she didn't expect—wasn't prepared for—was the speed with which he reacted.
Jake thrust off the blanket in the same instant he flipped onto his opposite side. His shoulder grazed her bent knee. The contact was brief, but hard enough to send a stunned Amanda off balance.
Amanda gasped, and lurched to the right. Her hand shot out, her palm crushing the grass as she tried to steady herself. From the corner of her eye, she caught the glint of muted light touching deadly steel. Her gaze snapped to the side. She'd barely had a chance to focus on the long, curved steel blade before Jake hurled it.
A golden curl resting against her cheek stirred as the knife whipped past; the throw was that close.
A startled whimper seeped from Amanda's throat, and all the strength drained out of her arm. As she collapsed onto the ground, she heard rather than saw the thunk of the blade sinking into a tree trunk on the opposite side of the clearing. Her body went rigid. Her heart stopped, lodging itself in the vicinity of her dry, fear-tightened throat.
Sweet Jesus, the man had tried to kill her! Worse, he'd very nearly succeeded!
Panic coiled in her stomach. Wild surges of it rushed in her veins. From the inside out, she began to shake. Her lashes swept down, and she curled her arms around her waist. Air rushed into her lungs in one jagged inhalation. The grass she crushed flat beneath her cheek felt dewy, cold, and as frigid as death.
"What the—?" Jake blinked hard, and shook his head to clear it. He gouged the sleep from his eyes with the roughened pad of his thumb and index finger, but... dammit! When he looked around again, not a thing had changed.
His curses were loud and explicit, slamming off trees and grass. His gaze volleyed between Amanda and the knife, unable to decide which made him angrier, the blade he'd sunk up to the carved mahogany hilt in a pine tree trunk, or the woman who'd curled herself into a fetal ball in the grass near his hip.
A shaky sob drew his att
ention to Amanda. His hooded gaze settled on her and settled hard. Her normally pale cheeks were ashen, but she didn't look like she was hurt. He didn't see any blood—thank God!—and no cut marred her flawless white skin. She was, he noted absently, shaking from head to toe.
Good. That made two of them! Keeping his fury out of his voice was an effort Jake chose not to make.
"What the hell goes through your head, woman?"
His lethal glare detected her flinch. It wasn't satisfying. After what she'd just done—what she'd almost made him do—Jake wanted a hell of a lot more from her than terror. Begging for forgiveness would be a good start! "Look at me, damn you! I want your eyes open when I strangle the life out of you."
Whether she heard him or not was debatable. One thing he knew for certain; she didn't open her eyes. The lower lip she caught between her teeth was pearly pink and moist; it quivered almost as much as the rest of her. His angry shouts had only made her shake more violently. And whimper.
The sound gouged through Jake's gut like a dull knife.
His fingers were still shaking when he plowed them through his sleep-tousled hair. That... annoyed him enough to spear Amanda with a hot, angry glare. "I hope you had a good reason for what you just did, lady," he growled, his tone low and gritty with an emotion he didn't dare name—let alone acknowledge he felt. "A damn good reason. One that's worth dyin' for... because, darlin', I don't think you know how close you came to doing exactly that."
Not know? Amanda thought. As if she could ever forget! To narrowly miss being stabbed to death by a wild half-breed wasn't an everyday occurrence for the attendants of Miss Henry's Academy For Young Ladies. It was an event to be remembered, if only because Amanda had never come so close to dying in her life!
Still, for all Jake's fury, his words did serve an unintentional purpose. They tickled her memory. The reason she'd come over to his side of the camp shot through her mind. Also, his callous tone—she was the one who'd almost died, for heaven's sake, what was he going on about?!—burned the edges off her fear and sparked a flame of indignation deep inside of her.
Someone was out there. Someone was watching them. The hair at her nape still prickled with awareness. Goosebumps still tingled on her forearms and legs.
She opened her eyes, and pulled the man crouching beside her into focus. Jake's features were hard. The copper flesh between his brows was pinched in a warning scowl, and the muscle in his cheek pulsed erratically as he clenched and unclenched his teeth.
His expression would have intimidated her, had she time to be intimidated. She didn't. She had to warn Jake about whoever was out there, and she had to do it before whoever it was took them by surprise. "I... I heard a noise, Mr. Chandler."
"A noise? That's it?" Jake rolled his weight back on his heels. His hands hung limply between his knees. Too limply, Amanda thought. It was as though he was making a conscious effort not to wrap his fingers around her throat and squeeze—the way his eyes said he wanted so badly to do.
His sleep-tousled hair swayed around his shoulders when he shook his head in disgust. "Well, isn't that dandy! You almost get my knife planted in your skull just because you wanted to tell me you heard a noise. Shit, lady, should I even ask what you'd do if you saw a bear?" He held up a hand when she opened her mouth to answer. "Forget I asked."
Resentment coiled in Amanda's stomach. She welcomed the distraction. Anger was good, it was healthy... and it was much, better, much safer than the terror that had preceded it.
Feeling suddenly small and vulnerable curled up in a shivering ball at his feet, she pushed herself into a sitting position. She had to look up to meet his eyes, but at least she didn't feel so vulnerable, so miserably feminine! Her fingers, she was glad to find, didn't shake too much when she tucked a thick, sleep-tangled curl behind her ear.
Her gaze lifted, and meshed with his hard, steely glare. "I did hear a noise."
"I'll bet." His tone said he doubted it, as did the sharp glint in his eyes. Amanda bristled. "Know what else I'd bet on? I'd bet the noise you say you heard was made by a squirrel. Or the wind."
"Are you calling me a liar?" Her chin tipped, her green eyes shimmering a challenge.
One black brow slanted a reciprocal dare. His voice remained as cold as the look in his eyes. "No, princess, I'm calling you an alarmist. There's a difference."