so long to voice her worries, but Mr. Big Shot had been so adamant that she leave the photographer alone to work. Camille looked back at Bella, still smiling, and Bella turned away again, looking out at the sea sparkling in the sun.
“I think there may be. I watched her take some of the shots, and they looked out of focus, not centered, that kind of thing.”
“Ask her to show you the work she’s done so far,” Regina said decisively. “I hope you’re simply mistaken, but report right back to me. This is crucial, Bella.”
“I will.” Bella hung up the phone and sighed again, knowing she faced a further confrontation with Camille, one of the people she really liked on the trip. Well, maybe she could keep it light, just ask to go over the day’s shots. Her stomach knotted at the thought of beginning again with a new photographer. They’d have to send Frank back to ferry him or her out.
She’d speak with Camille as soon as she got back to camp. But, oh, if only she could keep running and forget it.
Bella picked up her pace, arms and legs pumping smoothly, racing deeper into the forest. Her feet flew along the ribbon of lava, worn by countless years of rain and footsteps. How many of her ancestors had walked this way? Her eyes wide, she scanned the forest as she ran, seeing what they had seen.
To her left, a solid embankment rose steeply, the ropy pewter of a’a now entwined with vines and shrubs that had found footholds in crevices. To her right, the forest had taken hold, growing up through and among the ribbons of lava. The trail led up a gradual slope through a tunnel of living green.
She was breathing hard, but she felt good—wonderful, in fact. Her breath was quick and hard, her body exulting in the chance to cut loose from the chains of civilization and run free through her forest.
But wait. Her forest? She paused for a moment on the brink of a sharp turn in the trail, jogging in place, her eyes wide as she explored the powerful feelings coursing through her. Yes, hers. It felt right and good that she should think of this place as her own. All around her the deep heartbeat of the island and the steady, hushed murmur that was life, flowed through the trees, the plants. And just ahead, water, like a silken whisper, beckoned her to come and drink.
A steady thud intruded in her newfound idyll. She whirled. Footsteps pounded up the trail after her. Her heart leapt, and on impulse, she reached up, grasped a vine and used it to scramble up the steep bank beside her, over the small ridge and into the shadows of the trees growing on top.
From her hiding place, she could see the trail below. A shaft of sunlight streamed down onto the trail, and into its beam ran the only man she wanted to see even less than the amorous Kobe. Joel Girand. He paused for a moment, and she tensed instinctively, poised to run away.
But she stayed, caught by the sheer masculine power and grace of his nearnaked body in the sunlight. The warm light poured over his damp hair and the tanned skin on his powerful, athlete’s frame, highlighting the dew of perspiration.
His broad chest heaved with his hard breaths, the swell of his pectorals dusted with only the faintest tracing of reddish-gold hair. But that appeared again, a darker trail that headed south across his washboard-abdomen and into his low-riding shorts. His happy trail, as Claire would say. Bella had been close enough to caress that intriguing line. Her fingertips twitched. She could almost feel the crisp, silky texture of that hair, and the heated plush of his skin underneath.
Au’e! On her last trip to Nawea, she and her cousin Zane had spent time every day running and hiking the trails above Nawea, he in brief shorts, but she’d felt companionship, liking—not this heated, unwilling awareness.
Joel stood for an instant, his breath audible in the quiet air. She could see his gaze flick up the trail, and then he turned his head, zeroing in on the vine she’d used—still swinging. And there was no breeze, not a breath of one.
Bella’s heart leapt, and she clenched her hands, willing the vine to be still. With mingled elation and fear, she felt it cease all movement.
Too late. Something made him follow it with his gaze, up the