Run Wild (Escape with a Scoundrel) - By Shelly Thacker Page 0,52

to know exactly how long an hour was?

After only a few minutes, his tense muscles relaxed.

Looking down at him, Sam felt... satisfied. That was the only name she could put to the feeling. Satisfied. That she had prevailed, that he had finally listened to reason.

Reluctant to examine her emotions any more closely than that, she turned away and busied herself by bundling up the foodstuffs and putting them back in the creel. Then she took inventory of their other supplies: a few stubby candles, two cups and some eating utensils, the reel of fishing line and some hooks, a length of rope, and the horn of gunpowder and a dozen bullets taken from Leach and Swinton—ammunition that was useless now, since they had lost the pistol.

What she wouldn’t give for some medical supplies and some real food, she thought with a frown. And a blunderbuss. Unfortunately, they had no such help in facing their enemies. All they had was...

Each other.

Sam closed the fishing creel and pushed it aside. With the inventory done, she had nothing else to occupy her attention. She glanced around the cave, trying to avoid looking at the rogue.

Because every time she did, she found herself thinking of what had happened between them at the cave entrance. Her humiliating emotional outburst. Even now, she could feel her cheeks burning. She felt horribly embarrassed to have shown such weakness in front of anyone—especially a man. Especially him. But for once, he hadn’t mocked her.

Instead, he had held her. With a tenderness she hadn’t suspected he possessed. Just when she thought she had figured out exactly what kind of man he was, he had astonished her.

But what astonished her even more was the fact that she had liked the feeling of his arms around her.

The thought made her shiver. It was an outlandish idea. A dangerous idea. The man was an outlaw. A veteran of the prison hulks. Unpredictable. Not to mention hostile. And impossible.

And she had liked the feeling of his arms around her.

For a moment, just a moment, she had felt... safe, warm. Protected.

That disturbed her in a way she couldn’t begin to explain. Nervously, Sam swept her damp hair around her, busied herself trying to unknot the dozens of little tangles.

But even as she did so, she couldn’t help sliding a cautious, sideways glance at the man who lay stretched out on the cave floor.

How could she have felt safe in his embrace? She didn’t even know his name, for heaven’s sake! Had she lost her mind? Had the tumble over the falls scrambled her senses?

She kept thinking of the words he had whispered: We just have to trust each other.

Could she do that? Trust him? She had learned six years ago that it was dangerous to trust a man—even one like her uncle, who had seemed so respectable, honorable, and kind at first.

Since fleeing London, she had remained wary and cautious around men. Held herself cool and haughty and remote. Trust meant weakness. Vulnerability. And she would not allow herself to be vulnerable.

Tossing her hair over her shoulder, she turned away from the rogue. There was no mystery here, no cause for alarm. Her emotions had become momentarily unsettled, that was all. It was perfectly understandable, after the ordeal she had been through the past two days.

What she felt toward him was merely gratitude. Ordinary gratitude that he had saved her life in the whirlpool, at great cost to himself.

Nothing wrong with that. Her gratitude, he could have.

Her trust she could not give him.

Dark shadows flickered around them, and Sam realized that her makeshift torch had burned low. She tried to think of a way to keep the fire burning. She had kept her eye out for twigs or brush or dried leaves as they had walked through the cave, but she had seen precious little vegetation of any kind.

They had no fuel but what they had brought with them. Opening the fishing creel, she took the whiskey bottle out, uncorked it, and poured a bit over the biscuit tin. The flames crackled and sizzled and leaped so high that they almost singed her hair.

“Are you trying to incinerate us, or is that merely a creative way to dry your hair?”

Sam shot a glance behind her, the bottle still in her hand. “I’m trying to keep the fire going. And you’re supposed to be asleep.”

“Can’t.” The rogue lay on his side, watching her through half-closed eyes. “Do you have to use up all the whiskey