Her Kind of Hero: The Last Mercenary. Diana Palmer

should be safe enough here for the time being,” he remarked as he put down the backpack and opened it, producing a small bottle of water. He tossed it to Callie. “I imagine you’re thirsty.”

      She opened it with trembling hands and swallowed half of it down at once, tears stinging her eyes at the pleasure of the wetness on her tongue, in her dry mouth.

      He set up a small, self-contained light source, revealing his companion. He moved closer, frowning at her enthusiastic swallowing as he drew a first aid kit from his backpack. “When did you last have anything to drink?” he asked softly.

      “Day…before yesterday,” she choked.

      He cursed. In the same instant, he pulled off the mask he’d been wearing, and Callie dropped the water bottle as her eyes encountered the dark ones of her stepbrother, Micah, in the dim light.

      He picked up the water bottle and handed it back to her. “I thought it might come as a shock,” he said grimly, noting her expression.

      “You came after me yourself?” she asked, aghast. “But, how? Why?”

      “Lopez has an agent in one of the federal agencies,” he told her flatly. “I don’t know who it is. I couldn’t risk letting them come down here looking for you and having someone sell you out before I got here. Not that it would have been anytime soon. They’re probably still arguing over jurisdictions as we speak.” He pulled out a foil-sealed package and tossed it to her. “It’s the equivalent of an MRE—a meal ready to eat. Nothing fancy, but if you’re hungry, you won’t mind the taste.”

      “Thanks,” she said huskily, tearing into it with urgent fingers that trembled with hunger.

      He watched her eat ravenously, and he scowled. “No food, either?”

      She shook her head. “You don’t feed people you’re going to kill,” she mumbled through bites of chicken and rice that tasted freshly cooked, if cold.

      He was very still. “Excuse me?”

      She glanced at him while she chewed a cube of chicken. “He gave me to three of his men and told them to kill me.” She swallowed and averted her eyes. “He said they could do whatever they liked to me first. So they did. At least, they started to, when you showed up. I was briefly alone with a smaller man, Arabic I think, and I tried to make him mad enough to release me so I had one last chance at escape. It made him mad, all right, but instead of untying me, he…put his knife into me.” She chewed another cube of chicken, trying not to break down. “He said it was a…a taste of what to expect if I resisted him again. When you came in through the window, he was just about to violate me.”

      “I’m going to take care of that cut right now. Infection sets in fast in tropical areas like this.” He opened the first-aid box and checked through his supplies. He muttered something under his breath.

      He took the half-finished meal away from her and stripped her out of the T-shirt. She grimaced and lowered her eyes as her mutilated bra and her bare breast were revealed, but she didn’t protest.

      “I know this is going to be hard for you, considering what you’ve just been through. But try to remember that I’m a doctor,” he said curtly. “As near as not, anyway.”

      She swallowed, her eyes still closed tight. “At least you won’t make fun of my body while you’re working on it,” she said miserably.

      He was opening a small bottle. “What’s that?”

      “Nothing,” she said wearily. “Oh God, I’m so tired!”

      “I can imagine.”

      She felt his big, warm hands reach behind her to unfasten the bra and she caught it involuntarily.

      He glanced at her face in the small circle of light from the lantern. “If there was another way, I’d take it.”

      She drew in a slow breath and closed her eyes, letting go of the fabric. She bit her lip and didn’t look as he peeled the fabric away from her small, firm breasts.

      The sight of the small cut made him furious. She had pretty little breasts, tip-tilted, with dusky nipples. He could feel himself responding to the sight of her, and he had to bite down hard on a wave of desire.

      He forced himself to focus on the cut, and nothing else. The bra, he stuffed in his backpack. He didn’t dare leave signs behind them. There wasn’t much chance that they were closely followed, but he had to be careful.

      He had to touch her breast to clean the small cut, and she jerked involuntarily.

      “I won’t hurt you any more than I have to,” he promised quietly, mistaking her reaction for pain. “Grit your teeth.”

      She did, but it didn’t help. She bit almost through her lip as he cleaned the wound. The sight of his big, lean hands on her body was breathtaking, arousing even under the circumstances. The pain was secondary to the hunger she felt for him, a hunger that had lasted for years. He didn’t know, and she couldn’t let him know. He hated her.

      She closed her eyes while he put a soft bandage over the cleaned wound, taping it in place.

      “God in heaven, I thought I’d seen every kind of lowlife on earth, but the guy who did this to you was a class all by himself,” he growled.

      She remembered the man and shuddered. Micah was pulling the shirt down over her bandaged breast. “It probably doesn’t seem like it, but I got off lucky,” she replied.

      He looked into her eyes. “It’s just a superficial wound so you won’t need stitches. It probably won’t even leave a scar there.”

      “It wouldn’t matter,” she said quietly.

      “It would.” He got up, drawing her up with him. “You’re still nervous of me, after all this time.”

      She didn’t meet his eyes. “You don’t like me.”

      “Oh, for God’s sake,” he burst out, letting go of her shoulders. He turned away to deal with the medical kit. “Haven’t you got eyes?”

      She wondered what that meant. She was too tired to work it out. She sat down again and picked up her half-eaten meal, finishing it with relish. It was hard to look at him, after he’d seen her like that.

      She fingered the rolled-up pair of camouflage pants she was wearing. “These aren’t big enough to be yours,” she remarked.

      “They’re Maddie’s. She gave me those for you, and the shoes and socks, on the way out of Texas,” he commented when he noticed her curious exploration of the pants.

      He worked with some sort of electronic device.

      “What’s that thing?” she asked.

      “GPS,” he explained. “Global positioning. I can give my men a fix on our position, so they can get a chopper in here to pick us up and pinpoint our exact location. There’s a clearing just through there where we’ll rendezvous,” he added, nodding toward the jungle.

      Suddenly she frowned. “Who’s Maddie?” she asked.

      “Maddie’s my scrounger. Anything we need on site that we didn’t bring, Maddie can get. She’s quite a girl. In fact,” he added, “she looks a lot like you. She was mistaken for you at a wedding I went to recently in Washington, D. C.”

      That was disturbing. It sounded as though he and this Maddie were in partnership or something. She hated the jealousy she felt, when she had no right to be jealous. Old habits died hard.

      “Is she here?” she asked, still puzzled by events and Micah’s strange skills.

      “No. We left her back in the States. She’s working on some information I need, about the mole working for the feds, and getting some of your things together to send on to Miami.”

      She blinked. “You keep saying ‘we,’” she pointed out.

      His