Live To Tell Page 5

  And how to be around Blake for a month without falling for the crocodile hunter and becoming his prey.

  Chapter 4

  The phrase sleeping with the enemy kept popping into Jo’s head as she washed herself with water from a bucket behind the tent. The night was hot and sticky, and she’d give a lot for a proper shower before bed. A swim would have been wonderful but after this morning’s experience, she wasn’t going anywhere near the creek.

  And Blake wasn’t the enemy. He was a lifesaver; his presence made it possible for her to stay and write her series. So why did she have such confusing feelings about him?

  She finished swabbing her face and neck, wrung out the damp cloth and pressed it against the back of her neck. He was only trying to scare her away with his talk of mating signals between them. If she was sending any such things, surely she would know.

  “Bathroom’s all yours,” she said, carrying the empty bucket around to the front of the tent for him to refill with clean water from their supply.

  She stopped in her tracks. He had stripped down to khaki shorts and boots and nothing else. In the flickering light of the lantern, his flexing muscles gleamed as if oiled as he set the camp to rights for the night.

  She watched, fascinated in spite of herself. Nigel had been happy to leave things where they dropped and had teased her for trying to keep order, calling her Miss Efficiency.

  Now she was watching Mr. Efficiency as he began to get the campfire ready for next morning. “You don’t have to do that. I’ll do it tomorrow,” she said, her conscience nagging. He was supposed to be assisting her, not doing the job for her. Not that he was tough to watch, she thought.

  “Old habits die hard,” he said mildly. “Leaving things lying around camp is asking for trouble in the outback.”

  “Nigel didn’t think so.”

  Blake lifted his head. “Missing him already?”

  “What do you think?” she asked, avoiding answering his question.

  He finished hooking the billycan over an arrangement of sticks he’d placed across the fire then speared her with an unnervingly direct look. “I think you haven’t given him a thought since he flounced off at the airport.”

  Since she couldn’t defend herself, she felt bound to defend Nigel. “He didn’t flounce. He left because he was almost taken by a man-eating crocodile.”

  “Hardly a man-eater,” Blake corrected.

  His lack of feeling was as infuriating as her own overabundance of it. “The beast leaped out of the river and attacked him. In my book, that makes it a man-eater. Or don’t you count near misses? Perhaps you’d prefer to see actual blood.”

  Blake straightened. “You’re overreacting. That crocodile has lived in this river system for fifteen years without bothering anyone. Ask the indigenous people. They’ve swum in this creek for years.”

  “Maybe it only eats nonindigenous people,” she responded.

  “And maybe someone has been feeding it from the landing, luring it in.” His gaze narrowed. “Crocodiles only recognize food and nonfood. To them, there’s no difference between a piece of meat and the hand holding it. All this animal has learned is that anything a human holds out from the rock landing is food.”

  Her palms felt icy and she rubbed them together although the night was warm. “You think Eddy Gilgai deliberately taught the crocodile to feed close by so it would attack humans?”

  “His presence in the area, coupled with the rotten remains Andy found, make the theory seem likely. The difficulty will be in proving anything.”

  “Did Andy find any more clues after we left for the airport?”

  “Plenty of tracks, but nothing that would hold up in court.”

  “If he had found something, would you still be here?”

  In the flickering lamplight, his eyes gleamed. “Why don’t you ask me outright why I decided to stay?”

  Annoyance rippled through her, although she wasn’t sure if it was at him for being so smug or at herself for caring what he thought. “I know why you stayed. You think I’m an incompetent city type who can’t be let loose on her own in the bush. If I get into trouble, it looks bad for Diamond Downs.”

  His wide shoulders lifted and fell. “You said it, I didn’t.”

  “You’re wrong about me,” she snapped. “I was a news reporter before I joined the magazine. I’ve investigated crime, drugs, you name it, without falling apart. I’d already started building a shelter before you showed up.”

  His gaze went to the bush building materials she’d piled on the camp fringe. “So I see.”

  “I wasn’t counting on a crocodile trying to eat my partner.”

  “From the look of things, your partner wasn’t much help anyway.”

  “We’d barely settled in.”

  Blake braced an arm against the tent frame. “This isn’t a holiday camp. If it was a real survival test, you wouldn’t have the luxury of settling in. You’d get moving and do what you must to keep yourself alive.”

  She tried not to be distracted by muscles she couldn’t remember seeing outside a gym and rarely enough inside it. His body had been sculpted by hard use rather than vanity, she thought. With his build, he’d make a great male model, although she couldn’t imagine Blake being willing to pose for hours. “I intend to survive,” she assured him.

  His gaze leveled. “I think you will.”

  She brushed aside the glow his approval brought. “I won’t have much choice, since I’ll be on my own after tomorrow.” She was grateful that he’d interrupted his routine to help her tonight, but she couldn’t monopolize his time indefinitely.

  No matter how appealing the idea, a traitorous inner voice insisted.

  “Anxious for me to leave, Jo?”

  “Yes. I mean no. Yes and no.”

  He leaned closer, the warmth of his body enveloping her in a masculine glow. “Make up your mind.”

  “This project is my responsibility. You have the crocodile park to run and your foster father to worry about.”

  “I can keep a better eye on Des from here than from the park. And my deputy is accustomed to running the show when I’m away rounding up rogue crocodiles. He can consult with me by phone if he needs to.”

  Her throat felt dry. “You can’t be planning to stick around for the whole month?”

  “Depends.” He lifted a hand and brushed his finger lightly down the side of her face. Whispers of need coiled through her, hot and urgent, until she almost leaned into his hand.

  Shaken by the strength of the temptation, she stiffened her spine. “On what?”

  “On what you want.”

  She found her voice with an effort. “I want to prove I can survive out here, so anything you can teach me is welcome.”

  “Oh, I think we have plenty to teach each other.”

  “I was talking about bush survival.”

  “That, as well. Have you heard of the code of the outback?”

  She shook her head.

  “My brothers and I dreamed it up when we were boys. The code says you don’t give up and you don’t back down. You also stand by your mates.”

  “Is that what you’re doing?”

  “All of it. There is something between us, Jo. You felt it the moment we met. Under the code, we don’t back away from what we feel, and we don’t give up if what we feel is right. What I feel for you is very, very right.”

  “This isn’t why I came to the Kimberley.” Why she had come, she couldn’t readily answer, but it couldn’t have been for this.

  “Maybe not, but it’s why you’re staying.”

  He made it sound like forever, which was impossible. He was right about the attraction. It wasn’t going to go away. Neither was he, she understood. Which left her where? Previously, when men had disturbed her emotional balance, she’d ended the relationship. But she couldn’t dismiss Blake while she needed his help with the assignment.

  Things had been fine between her and Nigel until he’d told her how important she�
�d become to him, she thought. Instead of being flattered, she’d started to pull away, not wanting to have to live up to his expectations. So what did she want from a man? Spending this time in the outback, she hoped to find some answers.

  She stuck her hands into her pockets. “If we’re going to work together, we need some ground rules. And I don’t mean that code of yours.”

  “It works for me, but go ahead.”

  She began to tick points off on her fingers. “First, you don’t mollycoddle me. I need to make my own mistakes and learn from them.”

  “I guess bringing coffee to you in your sleeping bag in the morning is out?”

  He sounded almost disappointed and she shook off the urge to smile. “Be serious. I’ll get up when you do and pull my own weight in everything.” If it killed her, she thought. Remembering the crocodile, she wondered if she should have stuck with Blake’s code of the outback while she was ahead.

  “Sounds reasonable so far,” he agreed. “Anything else?”

  This was the tricky part. “This is my show. I’m in charge.”

  The muscle she saw working along his jaw told her he didn’t like the condition. He was probably used to being the leader, calling the shots. Well, not this time. The silence stretched as he thought.

  “I can live with it,” he conceded, his easy tone belying his tense body language. “With one exception.”

  She watched him warily. “What?”

  “If I see you doing something that could get you injured or killed, I’ll step in and take over with no arguments from you. Agreed?”

  The condition was reassuring and she nodded her acquiescence. “In that event, I’d be a fool to argue. Do we shake hands on the deal, or what?”

  “Or what,” he said.

  Releasing his hold on the tent, he stepped closer and his hands closed around her shoulders, pulling her against him. She should have expected this. He’d warned her he was attracted to her. And heaven knew, she was attracted to him. Still, she was unprepared for the onslaught of sensations as his lips found hers. Her mind reeled.

  The mouth that she’d dismissed as hard and uncompromising was anything but, she discovered when his lips teased hers apart. His were firm and sensuous, tormenting her with featherlight forays to the corners, then claiming her whole mouth as if to share air. Not an unpleasant act, she discovered, breathing in the masculine scent and taste of him as her reason threatened to slip.

  She was out of her element, exhausted. How else could she explain her sudden bout of weakness, as if her limbs had turned molten? Desire bubbled up, making nonsense of her claim to be in charge. The night didn’t help, dizzying her with a thousand pinpoints of starlight so that she had to cling to Blake as her world spun.

  His breathing sounded fast and shallow. His fingers massaging her shoulders made her shift restlessly, as if to steer his hands to more intimate places. Eyes closing, she dropped her head back and allowed him access to her exposed throat. His lips lingered on the pulse she could feel fluttering like a trapped bird.

  Somehow, she managed to find her voice. “Blake, this isn’t a good idea.”

  His cheek nuzzled hers, the beginnings of a beard rasping against her softness. The contrast felt wonderful. “You make it sound as if we have a choice,” he murmured.

  Strange how hard it was to argue. “There’s always a choice.”

  He kissed the hollow at the base of her throat. “Between?”

  A moan struggled to break free. The fog in her mind resisted logical thought, but she made a valiant effort. “What we’re doing and—not doing it.”

  He was planting kisses along her collarbone, pushing aside her top to worship her sun-kissed flesh. Shivers rippled. Needs clawed. Trying to blame the late hour, the alien surroundings or the stresses of the day seemed pointless. The only reason she was in Blake’s arms was because she’d fantasized about it all evening. He was right about the lack of choice. The only question had been when she would find herself in his arms. Never in her wildest dreams had she thought it would be so soon.

  Too soon. She felt as if she were falling into a bottomless pit, but couldn’t seem to stop herself. “We barely know each other,” she tried.

  He traced a finger down the cleft between her breasts, her answering shiver almost ending the argument there and then. “I thought we were about to remedy that.”

  She twisted away, the effort almost too much. “You’re assuming I want to.”

  His smile deepened and desire glinted in his eyes, echoing her own. “I know you want to. But until you’re ready to acknowledge the truth of it, I can wait.”

  “For how long?”

  “As long as it takes.”

  She shook her head. “No woman likes to be predictable.”

  “That’s the wonder of you, Jo. You’re not in the least predictable.”

  Except in this, she thought, astonished to be having the discussion with Blake at all. It had nothing to do with kissing or lovemaking. This was Shakespeare’s “marriage of true minds” and Blake was taking her to that place of unbelievable intimacy at a speed that terrified her. She didn’t want to feel this way about any man.

  There was no logic to feeling threatened by closeness, but the fear had haunted her for as long as she could remember. She assumed she was afraid of losing someone she loved, although that didn’t explain the sense that being special to someone was somehow dangerous. She’d tried getting help to fight the fear, but so far, nothing had worked.

  “It’s late,” she said before she said anything more revealing.

  He looked up at the sky. “Actually, it’s early. Do you want to sleep, or watch the sun come up over the plains?”

  If she had any sense, she would crawl into her sleeping bag and hope for oblivion. But she sensed that Blake would be in her mind no matter what she did. In her dreams, if she managed to fall asleep. Strangely, she felt wide-awake now. “As long as you don’t expect me to function too well later, I’d like to watch the sun come up,” she said. “I need to finish that shelter today.”

  “There’s more to the outback than survival,” he pointed out. “There’s savagery no city person can imagine, and beauty almost beyond bearing.”

  Her wide-eyed look met his. “I didn’t know you were a poet, too.”

  “You can’t live in the outback without becoming poetic. Not if you have any soul at all.”

  He had one, she didn’t doubt. She had been on the verge of misjudging him, she realized. Writing him off as a muscle man who was happiest chasing through the bush with a gun slung across his shoulders. She hadn’t allowed for all the times he would need to be still, to read the signs around him and make sense of what had happened or would happen. The patience to wait sometimes for days until a crocodile lost its fear of the unknown and approached a trap he’d set for it, so it could be moved without harm to safer territory.

  All this and a mouth that threatened to command her soul, she thought. What had she gotten herself into?

  The experience was all Blake had promised and more.

  While she’d changed her shoes and grabbed a jacket, he had put on his own shirt and collected a torch from the car.

  The torch was almost superfluous, the starlight illuminating the path to a grassy hilltop overlooking a spiderweb of rivers and creeks on one side and the immense plains on the other, ringed by mountains that would have looked at home on the moon. On her own, she would have been terrified of meeting a hunting dingo or wild buffalo, and the distant coughing sound that Blake told her was a crocodile would have frozen her blood. With him at her side, the sounds exhilarated more than they frightened.

  Instinctively she dropped her voice, not wanting to intrude on the timeless landscape. “It would have been a sin to sleep through such beauty.”

  His heated gaze told her they wouldn’t have been sleeping, and she shivered. The predawn chill seeping into her bones made her glad of the jacket. Nor did she object when Blake’s arm slid around her shoulders, and he
brought her closer to him. She told herself the sudden fast beating of her heart was due to the spike in her body temperature. Nothing to do with being in his arms.

  Dawn came as a spill of dusky coral across the cobalt sky. One by one, the stars winked out, replaced by a glow that slowly stained the darkness with orange and pink threaded with turquoise. Her breath caught as orange fire lit up the sky. The sunrise as she had never seen it before. No wonder early civilizations had convinced themselves that the sun was a god, prostrating themselves before it in awe.

  She turned toward the first rays, letting them steal the chill from her face. “Do you make a habit of this?” Do you bring many women up here to watch the sunrise?

  “When I’m out catching a croc, I work more by night than by day, so I’m often around to see the sun come up,” he said, answering only the question she’d asked. His arm tightened around her. “You’re a big improvement on a team of unshaven, unwashed men.”

  Laughter bubbled up. “Is that supposed to be a compliment?”

  “It’s meant to be.”

  At least they weren’t other women, she thought on a glow of satisfaction she didn’t want to feel but couldn’t seem to dispel. She settled her back more comfortably against him and found herself watching him as much as the sunrise. His head and shoulders were silhouetted against the sky as he leaned against the outcrop, totally at ease.

  What was he thinking? she wondered. Of the sunrise or her? Annoyed with herself, she swung her gaze back to the vast plains, distracting herself by trying to identify the birds flying in to feed off the lush grasses and the insect life thronging the waterways. There were parrots and magpie geese and wild ducks, long-legged jabirus and clouds of budgerigars flocking to the water below their vantage point. A lone wedge-tailed eagle soared on thermal currents high above.

  Thinking of the concrete canyons where she normally spent her days, she felt an instinctive tug of resistance. How could she be happy shut away indoors when so much beauty and freedom were here for the taking?

  She felt rather than saw Blake tense. “What is it?”