Blooming in the Wild Page 0,80
woods here somewhere.”
She nodded. “She certainly has hired some scary enforcers. How on earth did you and the others get away from Camille’s armed men?”
Joel’s stomach growled loudly. “I’ll tell you over lunch. I’m starving, and you must be too.”
She shook her head. She sat down on the rolled-up sleeping bag, looking suddenly exhausted. “I thought—we were going to die out there,” she said. “And I—I thought he was going to…rape me.”
She looked at Joel, her mouth quivering. “And you acted as if you didn’t even know me.”
He winced, making his head throb worse. “I thought Matt was right, and that Camille was after me, or him and me. I figured if I paid attention to you, she’d get even more irrational and jealous.”
She accepted this with a nod and sniffled. “But then you protected me. Mahalo. That was really sweet.”
“The bitch wanted to humiliate you.” He looked her in the eye. “But she didn’t succeed, because you’re a tough tita.”
She smiled, or tried to. “Li said he was going to c-cut me. I’ve never been so frightened, Joel.”
He ached to take her in his arms, but something told him to hold off. He needed to feed her first. She was a little shocky and needed energy. “Of course you were,” he said. “Guy’s a slime ball. Bet he isn’t feeling too chipper now. Explain to me what the hell you did to him?”
He dug in his bag and pulled out a couple of sugared colas and handed one to her. “Drink this.”
She sipped hers while he slapped together a quick meal. Between bites of a barbecued pork sandwich and the macaroni salad he fed her from his own fork, Bella recounted her quick thinking with the flowers in the bouquet. By the time she was finished, the sparkle was back in her eyes and she was eating with more energy, if not enjoyment.
“That’s one to tell your grandkids around the campfire,” he said. “I can’t believe you knew to do that. Not too many people would.”
She shrugged. “They would if they were florists.”
He raised his eyebrows at that. “I guess. But it was damn lucky that bouquet fell over in your struggle with him.”
She stopped with her sandwich in her hand, gazing at something only she could see in the clear pool. Then she looked over at him. “Yes,” she said. “Lucky.”
A small shiver rippled across his skin. Sometimes, she could be a little eerie. He shook his head at his own imagination. He’d met natives of lands far away who spent their entire existence in the shadows of the jungle, and some of them had a kind of knowing that was mysterious to his Western mind, but this was no native woman. It was Bella.
Joel took her empty plate and soda can and set it with his.
“What happened after I…after Li dragged me away?” she asked. “I saw that thug hit you. And that reminds me, I want to put something on your bruise. I have a first aid kit in my bag. DelRay’s mini-special,” she joked.
Joel nodded and then winced as the motion made his head throb. “I wouldn’t say no to a painkiller.”
As she fished in her bag, he began to talk. “When an opponent gets close enough to hit you, that means they’re within your reach too. I went a little crazy, I guess, worrying what Li would do to you. I managed to grab the big guy’s legs in a scissor hold and knock him down. At that point, Matt leapt into action and wrestled the weapon away from him.”
Bella handed him two painkiller tablets, and he swallowed them with a last drink of soda. “Never would have expected it of the kid,” he went on. “Or that Tanah and Cassie would manage to drop that awning on Camille.”
She grinned. “They dropped the awning on her?”
“Damnedest thing,” he agreed. “Don’t think it hurt her, but it gave us time to come up with a plan. I’d go after you, and we’d meet at the back and try to grab either the raft or the Jet Skis. They’d follow if they could, but if that didn’t work, barricade themselves in one of the cabins with the weapon and wait for us to bring back help—and the law.”
“Wow,” Bella said, stunned. “You were all so tough.”
He gave her a look. “You were the toughest of all, tita. That little creep is scary, but you faced him down and got away with only a scratch.”
He indicated a