Tender Taming (2 page)

“So what do I do?” she asked herself, raising helpless hands to the faint illumination of the green-glowing dials. “Play twenty questions with myself? Why didn’t I have the sense to find out what kind of road Alligator Alley was? Why didn’t I study up first on the swamp and the habits of venomous reptiles … ?”

“Ugh!” With a shudder she groped and reached for another cigarette. Her initialed silver lighter flared high with fire, stressing the completeness of her solitude. With the smoke issuing around her, she rolled the window back down a crack. The night noises increased—the nerve-racking chirping loudest of all. Glancing at the dash clock, she was dismayed to discover it was only nine fifteen. Just a quarter of an hour had elapsed!

“Stupid! Stupid! Stupid!” she hissed. If only she had thought to fill the damn tank back in Ft. Lauderdale! But she hadn’t known she wouldn’t come across a station. She should have known! She should have been prepared; efficient people were always prepared.

“I am not a nitwit!” she assured herself. “Everyone makes a mistake in judgment at some time or another.” And wasn’t that what she had always fought for? The right to make her own mistakes?

“This was one hell of a mistake!” she snapped with self-reproach. Tiny beads of perspiration were forming across her nose. I’m going to melt! she silently wailed. She sat still for another moment, then rolled the window all the way down with a vicious movement. She simply couldn’t endure the stifling heat.

A bump sounded on the rear of the car, and she twisted around in panic. Holding her breath, she waited. But there were no further thumps or jiggles. The blood stopped its crazy thudding through her veins slowly, and she gulped air back into her lungs. The clock read nine twenty.

“I can’t do this … I can’t do this … I just can’t!” she whispered, her voice verging on a sob. “I just can’t sit here doing nothing anymore! I’ll go crazy,” she muttered, the terrible feeling of claustrophobia closing in on her.

But her alternatives weren’t good; they involved leaving the safety of the car. Keeping her eyes narrowed speculatively on the light in the distance, she began to rationalize.

She could walk half a mile in ten minutes. Ten tense minutes and then she would be … where? Somewhere, at least!

The road was high. It wasn’t flooded. She had a flashlight in the glove compartment and she could keep it trained on the path. Animals were afraid of humans, weren’t they? As long as she didn’t bother them, she was safe.

The decision for action was making her feel better already. Stupid it might be, but it was her choice. And anyway, if she could make it to the service station, the proprietor could fill her tank tonight. Then she could be out of the dismal swamp and into a shower at a Holiday Inn.

The anticipation of a cooling shower was the deciding factor. Reaching into the glove compartment, Whitney extracted her flashlight. Her hand hesitated over a small spray can. Shrugging, she grabbed the can. Wryly admitting she had no earthly idea of what the effects of Mace might be on an alligator, she decided she might as well have the slight protection along with her anyway.

Whistling for bravado softly through her teeth, Whitney rolled the window up—in case of more rain—and climbed from the car. Training her eyes on the small pool of light from her flashlight, she started walking. Her slick heels, attractive and smart in the city, were a painful hindrance on the path. Nor was her soft beige jersey dress conducive to a stroll through the Glades. The sawgrass and brush grew closer and closer to the path as she walked, ripping against her clothing and flesh like mystical, haunted fingers that would hold her with evil intent. Her steps became hurried; she broke into a jog.

The sturdy gravel broke off abruptly and her feet sank into mud clear to her ankles. A nervous, frantic sob escaped her as she tried to flounder from the mud, losing her shoes in the process. Pull yourself together! she silently warned, fearing that panic would soon send her racing crazily into the sawgrass.

Each sucking step she took was an exercise in agony, but the lights ahead were so close that she could almost reach out and touch them. Allowing anticipation to outweigh caution, she once again tried to hurry. A root deep within the bog caught around a slender ankle and sent her sprawling into the swamp face first. Gritting her teeth against pain and hysteria, Whitney muttered a few well chosen oaths and stumbled her way back up. Wiping the mud from her face, she was dismayed and horrified to realize she had lost both the flashlight and the Mace, but the very real fear of a venomous snake kept her from sloshing too thoroughly through the unfathomable depth of the pitch-black, oozing earth to find them. Catching sight of a foot-long piece of broken root, she held it firmly in her right hand as she doggedly crept forward again, carefully, her form almost as dark as the night, with her beige dress doused in the mud and her hair sodden and clinging to her head. “I will not panic … I will not panic … I will not panic …” She repeated the words softly in a chant to quell the tremors that raged through her.

But she was panicking. Over the ceaseless noises around her, she could faintly detect a new sound.

Something was following her. Its pace increased with hers, then decreased with hers; a constant entity. Halting totally for a minute, listening with abject fear, Whitney realized that whatever it was patiently waited for her to make a move. The light ahead was close. No longer concerned with caution but giving way to the terror that gripped her, Whitney thrashed ahead recklessly, making for the ignominious security of the light.

Another root caught her foot and she slammed back down to the ground, thoroughly stunned. This time the noise behind her did not stop. A form rose above her in the darkness and she instinctively struck out with the club of broken wood, flailing feverishly.

A very human grunt of pain reached her ears and the wooden club was wrenched powerfully from her fingers. “Don’t hurt me!” she pleaded in a garbled sob. “Oh, God, please don’t hurt me!” It was too late to be thinking about it, but maybe her father and Gerry had been right. Maybe a woman’s proper place was home, her life in the kitchen … at least then she would have a life! At the moment her fear was so intense that she would have bargained with the devil himself just to know that she would live …

The beam of a powerful flashlight suddenly flared in her face. Blinking in the unaccustomed brilliance, Whitney choked, “Pleeease …”

A grunt was her only verbal reply, but she was gently hoisted from the mud by a pair of strong, masculine arms. She was not being attacked. The arms carried her toward the light that had been her own destination.

The man holding her seemed to have no difficulty maneuvering a silent and graceful trail through the muck, nor did it seem that her weight was any more troublesome than a feather to him. In a matter of minutes she could see that the light was coming from a small wooden cabin that appeared more inviting than the Washington Hilton. Another moment and they were mounting three planked steps and the door was being firmly kicked open by a high-booted foot. Inside, the cabin was surprisingly cool and comfortable, furnished sparsely but adequately with large leather and wood couches that sat upon deerskin rugs.

Whitney was deposited upon one of the couches, and she finally had a chance to take a good look at her unknown-assailant-turned-rescuer. Her eyes traveled from the high black boots to form-fitting, worn jeans that hugged tightly muscled thighs and trim hips, then on to the powerful chest she had leaned against. It was clad in a simple, now muddied, white cotton shirt. Above the broad shoulders were a strong, corded neck and a face that left Whitney speechless with amazement.

The man was an Indian. Or was he? The best of two races seemed to be combined in a profile as proud as a hawk’s—sharp, rugged and severe. The cheekbones were high, the nose long, straight and imperious with an ancient dignity. The lips were sensuously full, grim and tight.

His hair was raven black, almost blue black in the gaslight, and long—reaching to his neck. But the most startling aspect was his eyes. Brilliant as diamond studs against the handsome bronze of his face, they were a blue as bright as a summer sky and as intense as a blazing sun. They were bordered by high, well-defined brows and framed by lashes as musky and dark as the sinister night.

Totally unnerved, Whitney uttered a tactless exclamation. “You’re—you’re an Indian!” she stuttered. Remorse at her lack of diplomacy filled her immediately. He had dragged her from the mud and she was spilling muck all over his neat cabin. “I’m sorry,” she mumbled, tripping over her words as he continued to survey her silently. “Not that you are an Indian—” Oh, God! What a thing to say! What was the matter with her? But he wasn’t helping any, not saying a thing—just staring at her with what might be a quirk of sardonic amusement twitching the tight line of his lips.

“You do speak English?” Whitney snapped, irritated by his silence and the annoying feeling of inadequacy he was instilling within her. He was making her appear to be a blithering fool!

“Yes.” His voice was velvety; a deep, rich baritone.

Attempting to draw on some dignity—which was difficult when she was sitting in a huddle with bare feet, torn stockings and her hair and clothing plastered to her smudged body—Whitney spoke again, haughtily, slowly, thinking out her words before she uttered them. “Forgive me if I sounded terribly rude. I thought I was following a road to a service station. I can see now that this is your private property. If I could just use a phone—”

“A phone!” The black brows rose in ridicule. “Sorry. Southern Bell hasn’t installed lines yet in this block of the Glades.”

Whitney’s emerald gaze flared like firelight as she flushed uneasily. Without a flicker of facial movement or the slightest change in intonation, her towering host had aptly proved his complete knowledge of the English language. “Forgive me,” she repeated, unable to keep the acid from her own tone. “I’m afraid I’m unfamiliar with my surroundings.”

His arms were crossed negligently over his chest as he stared down at her with an austere, emotionless expression that still managed to convey to her his belief that she had just mumbled the understatement of the year. Whitney’s flush heightened as his electrifying blue stare wandered briefly over her entire person from muddied head to muddied toe with ill-concealed contempt. Yet despite the anger his gaze elicited, she experienced a new type of chill—one that hinted of fire rather than ice. It was as if his eyes could really send out jolting currents of heat. Unwittingly she found herself studying his form again, remembering the comfortable security of being carried in the strong arms … resting her head against the rock-hard chest.

“Umm—I—” she was babbling again, bewildered by the intensity of the physical reactions he was evoking from her while merely standing above her. Why was she behaving like a schoolgirl? He was ruggedly handsome and undoubtedly attractive; that she grudgingly acknowledged. But she had met many men with blatant sex appeal. Maybe that was the difference. This man’s inherent sexuality was in no way blatant or contrived. It was part of his essence, natural and almost untamed, like the elements around them.

“My name is Whitney Latham,” she offered, squaring her shoulders. “I know you think me a complete fool and I do apologize. But I really could use your help—” Something flickered through his ice blue gaze as she mentioned her name and then was gone. Something that appeared for that minuscule portion of time to be recognition and—and dislike! Why? Whitney wondered. Maybe she was imagining things. She had to be! His face gave away about as much as a statue of chiseled granite.

“There is little I can do to help you except offer you the hospitality of the cabin—such as it is,” he interrupted curtly as her voice trailed away. “I don’t know how you managed to get an automobile anywhere near here. I can’t even get a dirt bike or jeep back to the highway now.”

“Oh!” Whitney’s lips formed a circle of dismay.

“My brother will be by in the morning with the air-boat,” he supplied more kindly, her forlorn expression having touched whatever semblance of a heart he had. The hint of a grin twitching around his eyes, he left his towering stance to move with swift grace to the left side of the cabin, which served as a makeshift kitchen with a butane stove, sink, cabinets and some sort of small icebox. Setting a battered gray coffee pot upon the stove, he added, “In the meantime I can offer you a warm drink and a shower—cold, I’m sorry to say. And a dry place to sleep for the night.”

“Thank you,” Whitney murmured.

The coffee began to perk immediately, as if it had been hot and ready before she interrupted him with her unexpected arrival. In a daze Whitney watched the brown liquid bubble. The night had not gone at all as planned! She should be in a comfortable hotel room right now, sipping a cool, delicious glass of wine. She should be showered and clean, pampered with her favorite soaps and fragrances,
reading
about the Everglades. Instead she was a tired, dispirited, mess! The uninvited guest of an intimidating dark stranger in the middle of the forlorn and desolate swamp …

“Tell me,” he said, his blue gaze unfathomably upon her as he brought her a cup of the steaming black coffee, “how did you come to be prowling around my cabin?”

“Prowling!” Whitney repeated indignantly, bristling at his insinuation. “I wasn’t prowling! I was trying to get help. There is a sign out there that says gas—”

“The storm must have blown it down from somewhere.”

“Nevertheless, there is a sign by your road,” Whitney informed him stubbornly. “I needed gas so I followed the arrow off Alligator Alley. Then I ran out completely about half a mile back—”

“So you walked through the swamp in your bare feet?” He shook his head slightly as if acknowledging that there was indeed a Great Spirit who must look after fools and ignorant women.

“Yes. No,” Whitney retorted. “I lost my shoes in the mud—”

“Don’t you know a damned thing about the Glades? Only a complete idiot would come walking out in this terrain in the middle of a stormy night!” His tone was a growl, his stare a dagger that pierced her. “You must have wanted something very badly.”