Arnaud raised his voice. “We’re here, trapped below you. A little worse for wear but we’re alive.”
“Traitor,” Bijou hissed between her teeth. She covered her face again, smearing more mud. “I’ll never live this down.”
“Bijou?” Remy’s voice was directly overhead. A small amount of dirt rained down.
“The ledge is crumbling,” Arnaud cautioned. “You’ll have to stay back from it.”
“Well back,” Bijou whispered. “Like the other side of the bayou. Why do these things always happen to me?”
“Bijou.” There was a short pause. “I need to hear your voice. Are you all right?” This time the tone wasn’t so commanding and for some insane reason tugged at her heartstrings.
She sighed, resigned, and sat up slowly, shoving dripping hair from around her face. “If you can call smelling like sewer and being covered in germs all right, then I’m perfectly fine.”
“Damn it, woman.” Relief poured into Remy’s voice. “You took a few years off my life.”
“Poor you,” she called back. “You should have been here for the last few hours.”
“You really are fine,” Remy said. “If you can come back with your sassy sarcasm.”
“Well, for heaven’s sake, Remy, I was the one someone was tryin’ to kill. And, I’m the one who ended up in the bayou, not you.”
“I was wonderin’ what that smell was,” Remy called back.
She hissed out a swear word between her teeth.
Arnaud grinned at her, his eyes briefly warming. “You really do like this man.”
“No, I don’. At least not right at this very moment.” She raised her voice. “Is my car still there, Remy?”
“Sort of. It’s been vandalized. Your fan was here and must have been in a really bad mood.”
That now-familiar uncomfortable heat whenever she was in Remy’s presence was beginning to drift through her body, warming her in spite of the wet clothes. She closed her eyes and shook her head. She stank. She was in an impossible situation, looked like a drowned rat and she was getting all hot and bothered just at the sound of his voice.
Remy stretched out carefully in the dirt and peered over the side. He needed to see for himself that she was alive and in one piece.
“Look at me, Blue.”
He could see she was reluctant. He wasn’t going to tell her that she looked beautiful, with mud smeared all over her and her thick braid looking like a drowned tail, but she did. He was thankful she was alive, although her shirt was nearly transparent and she was lying very close to another man—too close. He waited until her long lashes lifted and she looked him straight in the eye. The impact on his body felt like a wicked punch.
His eyes met hers, assessing the damage. “You look like a drowned rat.” She was close to tears, and if he said anything nice at all she would cry and then she wouldn’t forgive him. His gaze shifted speculatively to Arnaud and then back to her. “What happened to your arm?”
She huffed at him. He desperately needed to gather her up and hold her. She was hanging on by a thread—by her pride. She was cold, miserable and exhausted as well as embarrassed for him to see her looking and smelling as if she’d just gone for a swim in the bayou.
The relief Remy felt at seeing Bijou alive made him feel weak. He was grateful he was lying on his belly, stretching his weight along the bank to keep it from crumbling. That gave him an excuse not to stand, because at that precise moment he wasn’t altogether certain he could. He didn’t like the close proximity of the other male. His leopard liked it even less, raging and snarling as wild and hard to control as Remy had ever known him to be.
Bijou had to be close to the emerging for his leopard to be so difficult. That, and the scare she’d given them. When he’d seen the tracks of the SUV going over the bank, the cut ropes and saw the mess the stalker had made of her car, he’d felt physically ill.
“I have more rope in the trunk of my car, Remy,” Bijou said. “If you thread it through the master anchor we have on the tree and knot it, using the same knots, we can climb out of here.”
“No problem,” Remy said, and slithered backward until he was certain he wouldn’t bring the cliff down on top of them when he stood up.
Gage came striding through the cypress grove. “What the hell happened here, Remy?” He demanded. “Is your woman alive? Okay?”
“If he has a woman, she isn’t here,” Bijou called. “Should I expect la famille to show up, all one hundred of you, because I can assure you, I’m not adequately dressed for company.”
“I have a woman,” Remy snapped between his teeth, “and she’s extremely difficult. You should have stayed put, Blue.” He walked quickly away before he erupted in temper. The leopard was pushing so hard he wanted to leap down and shake her. She’d scared him past anything he’d ever known before. Or his leopard. However it worked, they were connected, and she didn’t have the right to run off because she was a little uncomfortable with how her first time had gone.
“Of course you can expect la famille to show up. We get in each other’s business. It’s what we do best,” Gage called down to her, unapologetic. “Glad you’re alive there, Bijou. Who’s your friend?”