Heart of a Hero (20 page)

Sarah hugged herself tighter. Josh had been right on that count. She
was
a fool for not having recognized the coldhearted psychopath lurking behind her husband’s charming smile. She was a fool for allowing him to abuse her emotionally for so long, for allowing him to make her feel like a barren failure of a woman.

Men like Josh didn’t know how to care.

Tears pricked her eyes at the sudden unbidden and overwhelming memories. Sarah turned to face the river. She hated herself for what she’d allowed Josh to do to her. She hated
him.
And she detested his Machiavellian drive. He was a mercenary.
Like Hunter. Sure, Josh didn’t look like Tarzan here, and he didn’t carry guns and knives. He wasn’t paid to kill—not in a physical way. But he destroyed lives nevertheless. And like Hunter, he did it for cash. Josh was a mergers and acquisitions giant. His jungle was concrete and his weapons were stocks, bonds, coercion, fast cars and pretty women. And one of those pretty women was now carrying his babies—a famous model-of-the-moment who was attracting tabloid attention and dragging Sarah’s pain into the public eye.

Sarah furiously blinked back her emotions. She was
not
going to let Josh haunt her so many miles away. She would never allow a man to make her feel like that again. She steeled her jaw, ripped off her bloodied apron, bent down and yanked her torn cotton pants up over her shins. She scooped up the reddish-brown water and splashed it over her legs, wincing as she tried to wipe away the memories along with the dirt.

She didn’t know why she’d let Hunter’s bluntness get to her. Maybe it was the incredible tenderness she’d glimpsed briefly in his eyes, felt in his touch…and the way she’d reacted to it. Another wave of emotion threatened. She cupped the warm river water in her hands and splashed it angrily over her face, gasping from the pain that radiated from her cheek. Whatever she’d glimpsed in Hunter, it was gone now. And she wasn’t going to let it affect her. She’d come to Africa to kill that emotionally abused and needy part of herself. She’d come here to grow strong, to play a vital role as a human being, a woman.

She froze as the reality of her situation slammed home. She glanced at the bloody apron bunched up at her side. Lord, she was damn lucky even to be alive, to have been given a second chance. Her stomach churned as images of the carnage at the clinic hit her again. She stared numbly at the mesmerizing, slowly swirling water, but couldn’t make the pictures in her
mind go away. They churned in her head like the curling current of the river, making her dizzy, sick.

What was taking her so damn long? Hunter glanced up from his first aid kit and stilled. She’d stopped undressing. She was just standing there like a zombie, brown water lapping at her shoes, her pants rolled up under her skirt, her arms clutched tight to her waist. Then he realized she was trembling like a bloody leaf.

He reached for his rifle, slung it over his shoulder and pushed himself to his feet. He took a step forward, then held back. No. He’d shut down, shut her out, and he was going to make damn sure he kept it that way.

Deal with it, Burdett.

But she didn’t deal with it. Instead, she turned slowly to face him. Hesitatingly, lifting her eyes to meet his. She looked absolutely haunted, lost. Crushed. Even the bright, feverish fear that had lit her eyes was gone. She’d been completely, emotionally demolished in the space of a few minutes. The muscles in his neck bunched tight.

Guilt and compassion tangled in his brain, making his mind thick. Hunter shook off the sensation. He was determined to feel zip. She was a package. He’d get her delivered. That was it.

She took a step toward him. “Hunter…”

He held his ground, said nothing.

“Hunter, I—I’m sorry, I…My buttons…” She held her hands out apologetically. “I can’t seem to make my fingers work. I…I can’t stop the shaking. Could you please help me with my blouse?”

He blinked sharply. She wanted
him
to undress her? His mouth went bone-dry.

“Could you help me?”

“Ah…sure.” They were just buttons, right? How many times
in his life had he undone a woman’s blouse? Too many to count. So why in hell was he actually
afraid
to touch her again? This was beyond ridiculous.

She stepped closer and his heart began to thud. He adjusted the sling of his rifle, swallowed hard and lifted his hand, moving it up to the valley between her breasts. He gripped one teeny, round button with his fingers before he realized he’d need his other hand, too. He swore softly to himself—you’d think he’d be able to undo the buttons of a blouse without thinking this hard. He slipped the pearly button out of the fabric, moved his hands down to the next one, purposefully avoiding her eyes, trying to keep a laser focus on this simple task.

Then the back of his hand brushed against the soft, warm swell of her breast, and his control was shot. Heat speared his belly and began to stab with each beat of his heart. Hunter moistened his lips, forced himself to concentrate. He moved his hands to the next button, barely able to breathe. “There.” He blew out the breath he’d been holding, and looked into her eyes.

Was he imagining what he saw there? A flare of need? A yearning? A connection that went beyond the physical…words that needed to be spoken, but couldn’t be? His heart beat even faster. But she averted her eyes and turned away abruptly.

He used the momentary privacy to swipe the back of his hand hard across his mouth. Sweet heavens this woman had a crazy effect on him, not just mentally, but physically. He hadn’t seen
that
one coming.

With her back to him, Sarah hesitated, then slowly slipped her long-sleeved blouse off her shoulders, exposing a thin white cotton camisole with a hint of lace around the edges. Hunter was transfixed. He couldn’t have looked away if he’d tried.

He noted the ragged slash in the fabric, the fresh blood. A vengeful fire began to smolder deep within him. The wound
wasn’t that bad, but it looked rudely invasive against the virginal white of her cotton top. He fingered the hard lines of his weapon, seeking mental clarity in the familiar shape.
Cool. Stay cool.

She lifted the camisole up over her head, the movement lengthening the long muscles that cradled her spine. She wasn’t wearing a bra. He swore softly to himself as perspiration pricked under the paint on his face and dampened his back. It was getting damn hot out here. Watching Sarah undress wasn’t making things any cooler. But he’d be damned if he could look away. He swiped his wrist over his forehead and moistened his lips, forcing himself to concentrate clinically on the gash across her left shoulder blade.

It wasn’t deep, but needed to be cleaned and sterilized. And it required several surgical strips to pull the edges together. He tried to clear his throat. “Here, sit on this rock so I can work on you from behind.”

She acquiesced in silence. Hunter crouched down behind her, shifted his gun to his side and took a tube of disinfectant gel from his kit. He rubbed it over his hands before moistening a gauze pad with a ten percent solution of Povidone iodine. He touched the disinfectant-soaked pad to her skin.

Her body jerked in reflex.

He hesitated. He knew it stung like all hell. He wanted to tell her to take it easy, to relax. He wanted to talk her through it. But he couldn’t. He needed to think of her as a job. Anything else was dangerous. Besides, she was a nurse; she knew what was coming. He touched the pad to her skin again and wiped the wound clean. He could see no debris in it, but to be safe, he irrigated the cut thoroughly with a strong stream of the same antiseptic solution from a syringe. Sarah gasped, but still he said nothing. In silence he applied antibiotic ointment, then forced the edges of the now-clean gash together, holding them down
tightly with three suture strips. He made sure her skin was dry and then covered the whole thing with a transparent, waterproof bandage, sealing the wound completely. This was necessary in wilderness environments, especially tropical ones. In places like this, even a small nick could end up killing a person.

“Done,” he said.

She reached for her torn camisole, and as she stretched out her arm, Hunter caught sight of the smooth, full roundness of her breast, the profile of a dusky pink nipple. An involuntary spasm rippled through him.

He looked sharply away. But it was too late. Desire was already swelling and surging inside him. He bit it back, clenched his jaw. He checked his watch, the riverbank, the dense wall of foliage, the sky…
anything
not to look at that sweet ridge of spine down the center of her back as she slipped the camisole over her head. He had to keep his cool. He still had to clean the cut on her cheek. He had to touch her again.

She turned to face him. Hunter avoided her eyes, motioned for her to sit back down on the rock. He knelt in front of her, poured antiseptic solution onto a dressing and began to wipe the dirt from the cut on her cheekbone. She shivered and closed her eyes as the burn of the solution met her skin. His body responded instantly to her movement. Again, he fought off the unwelcome sexual longing.

He carefully picked a few embedded bits of dirt out of the cut with forceps, conscious of her breath on the back of his hand as he worked. Then he used the syringe to flush the cut. She winced, but still he said nothing. He applied the antibiotic and then sealed the edges with two suture strips.

“There you go. Wasn’t as bad as it looked.”

Her eyes fluttered open and Hunter’s heart tripped. Up this close he could see tiny flecks of gold in the chocolate-brown,
and he could see that her lashes were honey-brown on the tips. She truly was beautiful, in a very natural and pure way. A golden angel.

Jesus, he was losing it.

He ran his wrist over his forehead again, then silently cursed. The movement had transferred greasepaint onto his hands. He’d have to disinfect them again because he still had to tend to her knees and her arms.

He clubbed his errant thoughts aside, rubbed more sterilizing solution over his hands and began to work on cleaning and disinfecting the smaller scrapes and cuts on her knees and arms. She sat motionless, watching his every move.

He finally rocked back on his heels and looked up into her face. “There, that’ll keep you going for a while.”

She gave him a brave smile. “Thank you, Hunter.”

He couldn’t help but smile back. Without thinking, he reached up with both hands and removed the ripped blue-and-white cotton cloth from her hair. Tangled mahogany curls tumbled down around her face and fell to her shoulders, the sunlight bringing out burnished auburn highlights. For an instant, he could do nothing but stare. Sarah Burdett might look as soft and gentle as a broken angel, but inside this woman was a surprising core of iron-willed strength. He’d seen it.

She’d lived through a brutal massacre, escaped her attackers. She’d taken hold of that biohazard container and fled into the dark jungle with every intention of somehow getting her lethal cargo all the way to Atlanta. It was an impossible task. How in hell had she planned on doing that?

And to top it all, in spite of her fatigue, after all she’d been through, after
he
had saved her life, she still had the moral fortitude to question his profession and subtly show her disapproval. It made Hunter want to know more about what drove
this woman, what really fired her from the inside, what had
really
brought her to Africa.

But he wasn’t about to ask.

The less he knew about Sarah Burdett, the better. Because in a couple of hours they’d be on São Diogo Island and she’d be out of his hands. He turned abruptly away from her and began to pack up his first aid kit.

“You’d make a good doctor, you know?”

He didn’t look up.

“You have a healing touch. I’ve worked with enough medical professionals to know.”

He clenched his jaw, flipped the kit closed and reached for his gun. He shoved himself to his feet and stared up into the haze of viscous heat that hung over the river. The chopper would be here any second, and not a moment too soon.

Sarah frowned. Something was eating this man big time, something that had wired him with low flash points. She studied his rough profile as he scanned the sky, and a small ping of regret bounced through her heart at the thought that she’d never find out what it was. It was in her nature to want to help, to make people feel better…. But as fleetingly as it had come, the notion was gone. What she really wanted more than anything was to get out of this place and to get Dr. Regnaud’s container to safety. It was the one thing that had kept her going through the night. And it was holding her together now. Barely.

She watched Hunter scanning the sky, then the wide ribbon of brown water, then the grassy clearing behind them, his eyes moving gradually toward the thick wall of vegetation at the far end. He tensed. Sarah’s heart skipped a beat. She peered into the haze above the trees, trying to see what had alerted him, but couldn’t make out a thing. Nerves skittered through her stomach. She stood, came to his side. “What is it?” she whispered.

He lifted the muzzle of his gun, pointed to a spot just above the canopy. “Smoke. Over there.”

Sarah shielded her brow and squinted into the distance. “Where?”

Then all of a sudden she could see it. A faint wisp of white separated from the haze and curled up out of the trees. It grew dark and acrid as she watched. Then it began to billow and boil into the sky, black and furious—just like the smoke at the clinic compound had.

“Oh my God,” she whispered.

“It’s a village along the Oyambo.” Hunter studied the smoke with narrowed eyes, not a hint of emotion on his face. “They’re looking for you.”

Her heart dropped like a cold stone. “But…but why are they burning the village? If they didn’t find me, why would they
do
such a thing?”

He said nothing.

She clenched her fists in frustration and glared at Hunter.
“Why?”
she demanded. She needed an answer, needed to understand.

His features remained implacable. “They’ll backtrack now. They’ll pick up our trail before long.”