Kiss Me (Fool's Gold 17)

Cookie had provided everyone with a hand towel and some kind of soap that was supposed to be ecologically safe to use in the wilderness. The nature-friendly cleanser had made Andrea and Martin happy.

The brush seemed to get sparser the closer she got to the stream. She found a dry spot at the end and crouched in front of the rapidly flowing water.

For a minute or so she simply watched the bubbling and gurgling progress of the stream. The air smelled fresh and damp, with a hint of coolness that teased at her cheeks. She unfastened her watch and set it on a flat rock, then squeezed the soap over her hands and rubbed until there was a thin lather. Then she plunged her hands into the stream.

A fish brushed her, and she jerked her hands out of the water with a little shriek. Unfortunately her hands were still slick and she had to drop them into the stream again to clean them.

Ew.

She reached for her towel. As she picked it up, she heard a slight rustling from behind her.

Standing quickly, she turned, but there wasn’t anyone there. No animals, either, at least not any she could see. If some furry resident had been spying on her, she’d probably scared him off with her scream about the fish. Even if she hadn’t, nothing around here was big enough to be a problem, right? She rubbed her hands on her towel. It wasn’t as if there were bears or anything. Or snakes.

She shivered and took a step back. A sudden loud rustling on her left made her jump again. She whirled around and covered her mouth with her hand as something very big lunged toward her. Something huge and scary and—

“I heard you scream,” Zane said as he stepped out from behind a tree. “What happened?”

Her first instinct was to throw herself at him and beg him to protect her. Good sense intervened, and she settled for taking a step toward him and offering a shaky smile.

“Nothing. I’m fine.”

“Uh-huh.”

She cleared her throat and went for the casual smile. Her attempt at nonchalance wasn’t helped by her instant and oh-so-familiar physical response to the man’s nearness. It was the usual list of reactions—faster heart rate, weaker thighs and knees, dilated blood vessels and hormones performing bits from the balcony scene in Romeo and Juliet.

“I might have called out in surprise,” she admitted when it became apparent he wasn’t budging without some kind of an explanation. “A fish touched my hand.”

“Hey, you almost caught your dinner.”

She caught a glimmer in his eyes and laughed. He wasn’t as humorless as some people might think.

“How are you holding up?” he asked.

She tossed her towel over her shoulder and smiled. “Great. I really like the riding. Except for my...” She cleared her throat. “I’m not used to sitting on a saddle.”

“Butt numb?”

“A little.”

She waited for him to say it would get better, but when he didn’t, she filled in the silence.

“Rocky seems nice. He’s a little tall for me, but I guess that’s a good thing in a horse.”

Zane’s blue eyes continued to stare straight at her. His lips didn’t move, but somehow she heard the word “idiot” as clear as if he’d shouted it from those snow-covered mountaintops.

“You don’t actually want short horses,” she continued, even though she knew it was a mistake to keep talking. “Except maybe for children. You don’t have any, do you? Children, I mean. Not short horses.”

He was quiet a long time before he answered.

“No.”

“I didn’t think so. Maya didn’t mention any. Plus, I probably would have seen them at the house, huh?”

He tugged on the brim of his hat. “You about ready to head back?”

“Sure. I just need to get my watch.”

She relished the excuse to turn away. Man, oh, man, had she really said short horses would be good for children? Could she have sounded more stupid? Had there been a wall nearby, she would have banged her head against it a few times, just to give herself something to think about other than feeling humiliated.

As there was no wall, she crossed to the flat rock where she’d left her watch.

“It’s gone.”

Completely. There was the rock, and on top of it was exactly nothing.

She checked around it to see if it had fallen off, then checked her pockets, but she hadn’t put it there and forgotten about it.

Zane walked over to stand next to her. “What did it look like?”

“My watch? It was silver. Not expensive or anything. Just a regular watch.”

“Shiny?”

“I guess.”

“Raccoons.”

Determined not to say anything stupid for at least the next ten minutes, she considered his single-word statement. Raccoons? Okay. He probably hadn’t started a word-association game, so what did he mean?

Going with the safest response, she cautiously repeated, “Raccoons?”

“They like shiny things. Take off with them whenever they can.”

“You’re saying a raccoon stole my watch?”

“Probably.”

She really wanted to point out that they couldn’t possibly tell time, but knew instinctively that was a bad idea.

“Can I get it back?”

“Sure. If you can find it.”

Could she? She glanced around at the underbrush, the trees, the stream.

“Is it safe for me to go exploring?” she asked.

“You’re not likely to be attacked by raccoons, but you’ll probably get lost, fall down a ravine, break your leg and starve to death. But if the watch is that important to you, have at it.”