Jared Caine? How the hell...?
The man stopped in front of her and his head dipped, as if he were checking her over.
The hum that started low in her abdomen was also disturbingly familiar.
It can’t be Caine. I must be hallucinating. Or seriously concussed. Or both.
“Hello, Katherine.” The deep voice, curt and businesslike, hauled her back to one of the lowest points in her life—even lower than this one, and that was saying something.
“What are you doing here?” she managed, still hoping she’d conjured him up from the depths of her sunstroke.
But then the shifting sunset glinted off the dark waves of his hair—no longer subdued by the buzz cut of five years ago—and cast a golden glow over his rugged features for the first time. A jolt of awareness hit her insides like a lightning strike, frying the tight knots of tension in her gut.
“Rescuing you,” he said, with only the barest hint of sarcasm. “Now, get in the car before you fall on your face.”
* * *
Jared Caine watched the horrified shock widen Katherine Whittaker’s emerald-green eyes as he searched her slender frame for any signs of injury.
She looked grubby and tired but otherwise okay—the sight of him more distressing than whatever had happened to have her sending her sister a garbled text about being in a spot of trouble hours ago.
It looked like more than a spot to him.
He forced himself to take a deep breath.
You’ve found her. She’s okay. Now all you have to do is get her on a plane back to New York and you can forget about her again.
The tension which had been grinding in the pit of his stomach since noon—and during the long hours of the afternoon, as he and a team of his men had combed the five square miles to where his IT guys had managed to triangulate her phone signal—began to ease. At least he’d found her before dark.
“I don’t need rescuing,” she said, her dazed expression hardening with animosity.
The fist which had been tightening around his throat for the last twenty minutes as he watched the sun head for the horizon thumped his larynx with a one-two punch.
“You’re kidding, right?” His gaze drifted over her, taking in the butt-hugging cut-offs, the dusty shirt, the tank top showing the subtle curve of her breasts, the filthy feet which... Where the heck were her shoes?
She planted one fist on her hip, the other one clinging to a carved wooden box that looked almost as heavy as she was. “No, I’m not kidding.”
She puffed with indignation, but the sweat-soaked hair stuck to her forehead stayed firmly in place. Unfortunately it did nothing to disguise her high cheekbones, the full, mobile mouth or the sunburnt patch on her nose. Or the exhaustion shadowing her mermaid-green eyes.
“I’m good,” she said, her arms tightening on the wooden box and her chin jutting out. “I don’t know how you found me, but you can just unfind me again. Okay?”
“No, that’s not okay.”
Frustration and extreme irritation twisted his insides.
It was a reaction he recognized. From the last time Dario had asked him to ride herd on his kid sister-in-law—and the single heartbeat of madness when he’d reacted without thinking to the sharp, spicy taste of that mouth.
“I’m not unfinding you,” he said. “And I’m not leaving you here. Dario wants you on a flight back to New York as soon as you’re found.”
Her eyebrows launched up her forehead. “I’m not going back to New York,” she said, sounding adamant for a woman who looked as if she was about to collapse. But then the box she was holding slipped. She struggled to regain it, stumbled, and then yelped as her bare foot landed on a rock.
“Okay, this conversation’s over,” he said.
Stepping forward, he scooped her and the box into his arms.
She gasped and went rigid. “Put me down.” The angry glare infused the rest of her face with a shade of red to match her sunburn.
“Nope.” The spicy scent of lemon, sea salt and female sweat tightened the screaming tension in his gut as he marched up the track toward his car.