Expecting the Boss's Baby / Twins Under His Tree. Karen Rose Smith

safe side. She’d saved the empty water bottles and she was refilling them with the sterilized river water.

      He marveled at her resourcefulness. She’d probably be halfway to San Cristóbal by now, living off the land, if not for his holding her back.

      She sent him a look. “I can read your mind, you know.”

      “Okay. Now you’re scaring me.”

      “It’s your nature to be fatheaded and overly sure of yourself. Just go with your nature. No dragging around being morose, okay?”

      He laughed then, because she was right. There was a bright side and he would look on it. They were both alive and surviving pretty damn effectively, thanks to her.

      “It can only get better from here,” he said.

      “That’s the spirit.” She hooked her canteen on her belt, pulled a couple of lengths of twine from her pocket and handed him one. “Tie up your firewood.”

      He did what she told him to do—just as he’d been doing for most of the day. After the wood was bundled, they gathered up the stuff they had left on the rock and headed for the trail.

      Back at camp, he propped his ankle up to rest it. They ate more of the dwindling supply of freeze-dried food and pored over the maps.

      She had marked the location he’d made her write down the night of the crash. It appeared that their own personal jungle was somewhere in the northernmost tip of the state of Chiapas, about a hundred and twenty-five miles from the state capital of Tuxtla Gutiérrez and the airport where they were supposed to have landed. There were any number of tiny villages and towns in northern Chiapas, and deforested farmland and ranches were supposed to cover most of the area where they had gone down.

      Actually, he calculated that they shouldn’t be in rainforest, but they were. And that meant that they must have been blown farther south after he noted the coordinates that final time. And that meant who the hell knew where they were? Their best bet remained to follow the river until they found human habitation.

      And when would they be doing that?

      At least a week, maybe two, depending on how fast his ankle healed.

      That evening, as the sun dipped low, they slathered themselves in bug repellent and returned to the river with the fishing pole and a plastic bag containing grubs he had found under rocks at the edge of the clearing.

      He assembled his pole and baited his line while she gathered more wood and tied it into twin bundles and then sat down with him to wait with him for the fish to bite.

      They didn’t have to wait long. He felt the first stirrings of renewed self-respect when he recognized the sharp tug on the line.

      “Got one.” He played the line, letting it spin out and then reeling it in. Finally, he hauled the fish free of the water. It was a beautiful sight, the scaly body twisting and turning, gleaming in the fading light, sending jewellike drops of water flying in a wide arc.

      Zoe laughed and clapped her hands and shot her fist in the air. “Way to go, Girard! That baby’s big enough to make dinner for both of us.”

      He caught the squirming fish in his hand and eased out the hook. “You know how to clean them?”

      She groaned. “Unfortunately, yes.” She did the messy job while he baited his hook again.

      He landed another one, just because he could. The meat would probably stay fresh enough for their morning meal. They could try smoking them to preserve them, and they would. Tomorrow. For tonight, two was more than enough. He cleaned that second fish himself, found a stick to hang them on and they started back.

      Zoe took the lead with the two bundles of firewood and a full canteen. Dax, leaning on his cane, carrying the fish and his pole, followed behind.

      They were almost to the clearing when the giant snake dropped out of the trees and landed on Zoe.