Midnight Rainbow. Linda Howard

it. Take my advice: don’t think about it. Just eat it.”

      She put her hand on his as he started to open the cans. “Wait. Why don’t we save those for have-to situations?”

      “This is a have-to situation,” he grunted. “We have to eat.”

      “Yes, but we don’t have to eat that!”

      Exasperation tightened his hard features. “Honey, we either eat this, or two more cans exactly like them!”

      “Oh, ye of little faith,” she scoffed, dragging her own backpack closer. She began delving around in it, and in a moment produced a small packet wrapped in a purloined towel. With an air of triumph she unwrapped it to expose two badly smashed but still edible sandwiches, then returned to the backpack to dig around again. Her face flushed with success, she pulled out two cans of orange juice. “Here!” she said cheerfully, handing him one of the cans. “A peanut butter and jelly sandwich, and a can of orange juice. Protein, carbohydrates and vitamin C. What more could we ask for?”

      Grant took the sandwich and the pop-top can she offered him, staring at them in disbelief. He blinked once, then an amazing thing happened: he laughed. It wasn’t much of a laugh. It was rather rusty sounding, but it revealed his straight white teeth and made his amber eyes crinkle at the corners. The rough texture of that laugh gave her a funny little feeling in her chest. It was obvious that he rarely laughed, that life didn’t hold much humor for him, and she felt both happy that she’d made him laugh and sad that he’d had so little to laugh about. Without laughter she would never have kept her sanity, so she knew how precious it was.

      Chewing on his sandwich, Grant relished the gooiness of the peanut butter and the sweetness of the jelly. So what if the bread was a little stale? The unexpected treat made such a detail unimportant. He leaned back and propped himself against his backpack, stretching his long legs out before him. The first drops of rain began to patter against the upper canopy. It would be impossible for anyone to track them through the downpour that was coming, even if those guerrillas had an Indian tracker with them, which he doubted. For the first time since he’d seen the helicopter that morning, he relaxed, his highly developed sense of danger no longer nagging him.

      He finished the sandwich and poured the rest of the orange juice down his throat, then glanced over at Jane to see her daintily licking the last bit of jelly from her fingers. She looked up, caught his gaze, and gave him a cheerful smile that made her dimples flash, then returned to the task of cleaning her fingers.

      Against his will, Grant felt his body tighten with a surge of lust that surprised him with its strength. She was a charmer, all right, but not at all what he’d expected. He’d expected a spoiled, helpless, petulant debutante, and instead she had had the spirit, the pure guts, to hurl herself into the jungle with two peanut butter sandwiches and some orange juice as provisions. She’d also dressed in common-sense clothing, with good sturdy boots and green khaki pants, and a short-sleeved black blouse. Not right out of the fashion pages, but he’d had a few distracting moments crawling behind her, seeing those pants molded to her shapely bottom. He hadn’t been able to prevent a deep masculine appreciation for the soft roundness of her buttocks.

      She was a mass of contradictions. She was a jet-setter, so wild that her father had disinherited her, and she’d been George Persall’s mistress, yet he couldn’t detect any signs of hard living in her face. If anything, her face was as open and innocent as a child’s, with a child’s enthusiasm for life shining out of her dark brown eyes. She had a look of perpetual mischievousness on her face, yet it was a face of honest sensuality. Her long hair was so dark a brown that it was almost black, and it hung around her shoulders in snarls and tangles. She had pushed it away from her face with total unconcern. Her dark brown eyes were long and a little narrow, slanting in her high-cheekboned face in a way that made him think she might have a little Indian blood. A smattering of small freckles danced across those elegant cheekbones and the dainty bridge of her nose. Her mouth was soft and full, with the upper lip fuller than the lower one, which gave her an astonishingly sensual look. All in all, she was far from beautiful, but there was a freshness and zest about her that made all the other women he’d known suddenly seem bland.

      Certainly he’d never been as intimate with any other woman’s knee.

      Even now, the thought of it made him angry. Part of it was chagrin that he’d left himself open to the blow; he’d been bested by a lightweight! But another part of it was an instinctive, purely male anger, sexually based. He’d watch her knee now whenever she was within striking distance. Still, the fact that she’d defended herself, and the moves she’d made, told him that she’d had professional training, and that was another contradiction. She wasn’t an expert, but she knew what to do. Why would a wild, spoiled playgirl know anything about self-defense? Some of the pieces didn’t fit, and Grant was always uneasy when he sensed details that didn’t jibe.

      He felt pretty grim about the entire operation. Their situation right now was little short of desperate, regardless of the fact that they were, for the moment, rather secure. They had probably managed to shake the soldiers, whoever they worked for, but Turego was a different story. The microfilm wasn’t the only issue now. Turego had been operating without the sanction of the government, and if Pris made it back and filed a complaint against him, the repercussions would cost him his position, and possibly his freedom.

      It was Grant’s responsibility to get her out, but it was no longer the simple in-and-out situation he’d planned. From the moment he’d seen Pablo leaning so negligently against the helicopter, waiting for them, he’d known that the deal had gone sour. Pablo wasn’t the type to be waiting for them so casually; in all the time Grant had know him, Pablo had been tense, ready to move, always staying in the helicopter with the rotors turning. The elaborate pose of relaxation had tipped Grant off as clearly as if Pablo had hung a sign around his neck. Perhaps Pablo had been trying to warn him. There was no way he’d ever know for certain.

      Now he had to get her through the jungle, out of the mountains, and south through a swamp, with Turego in hot pursuit. With luck, in a day or so, they’d find a village and be able to hitch a ride, but even that depended on how close behind Turego was.

      And on top of that, he couldn’t trust her. She’d disarmed that soldier far too casually, and hadn’t turned a hair at anything that had happened. She was far too matter-of-fact about the whole situation. She wasn’t what she seemed, and that made her dangerous.

      He was wary of her, but at the same time he found that he was unable to stop watching her. She was too damned sexy, as lush and exotic as a jungle orchid. What would it be like to lie with her? Did she use the rich curves of her body to make a man forget who he was? How many men had been taken in by that fresh, open expression? Had Turego found himself off balance with her, wanting her, knowing that he could force her at any time—but being eaten alive by the challenge of trying to win her, of making her give herself freely? How else had she managed to control him? None of it added up to what she should have been, unless she played with men as some sort of ego trip, where the more dangerous the man, the greater the thrill at controlling him.

      Grant didn’t want her to have that much influence over him; she wasn’t worth it. No matter how beguiling the expression in her dark, slanted eyes, she simply wasn’t worth it. He didn’t need the sort of complication she offered; he just wanted to get her out, collect his money from her father, and get back to the solitude of the farm. Already he’d felt the jungle pulling at him, the heated, almost sexual excitement of danger. The rifle felt like an extension of his body, and the knife fit his palm as if he’d never put it down. All the old moves, the old instincts, were still there, and blackness rose in him as he wondered bitterly if he’d ever really be able to put this life behind him. The blood lust had been there in him, and perhaps he’d have killed that soldier if she hadn’t kicked the rifle up when she had.

      Was it part of the intoxication of battle that made him want to pull her beneath him and drive himself into her body, until he was mindless with intolerable pleasure? Part of it was, and yet part of it had been born hours ago, on the floor of her bedroom, when he’d felt the soft, velvety roundness of her breasts in his hands. Remembering that, he wanted