Jayne tightened her lips. “You know, there are other words you can call upon when you’re upset.”
“Really,” he drawled.
“Darn or drat or a good doggone work just as well.”
He grinned at her, insolent and amused. And again muttered what seemed to be his favorite word.
“Or fudge,” she said lightly. “I have, on frustrating occasions when no one is about, muttered an ‘oh, fudge’ myself.”
“Oh, fudge,” he growled.
“See?” She smiled. If nothing else, she did know how to get men to do as she wished. It was a gift. “That works just fine, doesn’t it?”
Boone left the bed quickly, his back to her as he retrieved his T-shirt. Good! He was going to get dressed. As fine a specimen as he was, his bare chest had become quite distracting.
“Here,” he said, turning and tossing the garment to her. “Put this on.”
Jayne caught the shirt, then held it cautiously between two fingers. “I’m perfectly comfortable in my own clothes, thank you. Besides—” she sniffed “—you’ve worn this, and it hasn’t been washed.”
Boone pressed the bridge of his nose between two fingers, as if he had a headache coming on. “In less than a week I should be done here. Three months of work, down to a matter of days, and now this. I can keep you alive, but you have to listen to me. You have to let me do what I do best.”
“What’s that?” Jayne whispered.
“Lie.” He dropped his hand and glared at her. “As far as Darryl and those two idiots of his are concerned, you and I are hot and heavy.”
“Hot and heavy?” She took an unsteady breath. “You just…you dragged me away from the car back there…and you kidnapped me. What kind of woman would willingly become intimately involved with a man who literally dragged her to his…his cave as if she were nothing more than…”
Boone’s raised hand silenced her. “I know,” he said. “But we’re looking for two things here. One, we want to keep them away from you.”
Jayne shuddered.
“You wear my clothes, you stick close to me at all times, we spend a lot of time right here in this bed.” He took an unsteady breath of his own. “You’re mine. We make it clear that you’re mine. The guys know that if they try anything funny, they’ll have me to contend with.”
And Boone Sinclair looked as if he would be awe-inspiring to contend with.
“Two, we want to keep you alive.”
“Definitely.” Jayne nodded emphatically.
“If they think you’re going to keep trying to run away, one of them is going to get antsy and…do something drastic.”
Kill you. Boone didn’t say the words, but Jayne knew what he meant.
“So you stick to me,” he said, as if he didn’t like the idea at all. “You lie low, keep your mouth shut, and in a few days I deliver you home.”
She still didn’t know why Boone Sinclair was here. He could get them both out of this horrible place whenever he wanted, she had no doubt of that. So why didn’t he? What was so important that he would risk both their lives? “You never did tell me why you’re here,” she said softly.
“No, I didn’t.”
“If I’m going to have to…pretend to like you and all that, shouldn’t I know?”
He pinned his eyes to hers again. Oh, he had a way of looking at her that made her arms tingle and her toes curl. She unconsciously raised her arms to hug herself, to chase away the unexpected chill.
“No,” Boone finally said, and then he left the room, slamming the door behind him.
Chapter 3
A night of sleeping on the hard floor did nothing to improve Boone’s disposition. He had planned to ask Jayne if she minded sharing the bed—platonically, of course—but she’d been sound asleep by the time he’d returned to the room last night. Asleep! She either trusted him completely, a frightening possibility, or she had no self-preservation instincts whatsoever. Neither option was good.
If she’d come awake in the middle of the night and found him sleeping beside her, she probably would have come off the bed screaming. Which wouldn’t have necessarily been a bad thing, now that he thought about it. The occasional cry in the night was probably expected.
He rolled up and peered over the edge of the mattress to find Jayne still sleeping. She hadn’t put on his T-shirt as he’d told her to. She slept in a silky white slip. He hadn’t known women still wore slips! All he could see of the undergarment were the straps, one of which had fallen off her shoulder, but last night he’d caught a glimpse of white against the thigh that had escaped from beneath the sheet on his bed. He’d covered that thigh, feeling a little guilty for enjoying the sight so much, and Jayne hadn’t tossed the covers off in the night. If anything, she caught the covers to her more tightly and securely than she had last night, hiding there beneath white sheets and the twisted green comforter.
As he watched, her eyes fluttered, opened, latched onto his and went wide with terror.
Jayne Barrington, demure Southern belle and his unwilling hostage, sat up, bringing the sheet with her. “Oh, no, it wasn’t a nightmare,” she said breathlessly. “You’re…you’re real.”
“Not the response I usually elicit from women I spend the night with,” Boone grumbled.
She took in the makeshift pallet on the floor, and her frightened expression softened. “You could have slept on the couch in the other room.”
“You could have left room for me on the bed, so I wouldn’t have to sleep on the…darn floor.”
Her lip actually curled. “I don’t think so.”
Annoying as she was, the girl recovered quickly. “So, what’s next?”
“Make me breakfast?”
She looked as horrified as she had at the prospect of sleeping with him. “I don’t cook!”
“Of course you don’t,” he muttered, coming to his feet.
She quickly covered her eyes. “You’re naked!”
“I am not!” Boone glanced down at the underwear he wore, a pair of baggy silk boxers that were, by his standards, modest.
She did not drop the hand from her eyes, protecting herself from the sight of his scantily clad body as she continued in a much calmer voice. “Nearly naked. Don’t you have a pair of pajamas?”
Boone stared at her and shook his head. “No.”
“Maybe you could get some.”
He laughed at the absurdity of the suggestion. “I don’t think so.”
Jayne sighed and finally lowered her hand, but she didn’t look at him. Her eyes were turned to the window and the morning light that broke through the sliver of a part in the curtains.
Boone heard a footfall in the hallway outside the bedroom door. When he raised a finger to his lips, Jayne nodded her head and pursed her lips. She was spoiled and rich, a debutante who had no business here, but she was quick, he’d give her that.
He grabbed the corner post of the headboard.
“Not again,” Jayne whispered.
Boone shrugged and began to rock. Jayne lay down on the bed and covered her face with the sheet, squealing softly but appropriately when he reached down to pinch her lightly on one gently curving, sheet-covered shoulder.
Jayne had brushed