Page 13

In seconds, though, it flared from the size of her hand to waist high, and from there to over her head.

The pile went up in a firestorm that swept down the beach at shocking speed.

No fire department on earth could’ve put that out.

She and Alex scrambled back from the intense heat as the debris burned with a roar of sound.

“What if there are houses down the beach?” she demanded, appalled.

“No house survived two-hundred mile per hour winds for fourteen hours. A stone structure might’ve survived the hurricane, but it won’t burn.” Alex shrugged, pragmatic. “Burning this stuff off is how a clean up crew will get rid of it, anyway.”

With deep misgivings, she watched the fire rip down the beach.

The good news was the wind was headed out to sea.

If they were lucky, they hadn’t just set the entire island on fire.

And the salt factory was across the island, well upwind of this conflagration.

Still, the ease with which Alex had taken radical action without concern for peripheral damage sent up warning flags in her head.

The debris burned hard for maybe thirty minutes. Here and there, where the pile had been mostly small brush and dead vegetation, the fire started to blow out.

Katie spied a small shape well out on the water. “Is that a boat?”

Alex pulled out binoculars to have a look. “That’s our ride,” he announced. “Time to head down to the water. Keep your feet moving and your shoes won’t burn as we cross over the embers.”

She stared at the remnants of the fire in front of her, maybe fifty feet wide . Whoa, whoa, whoa . “I don’t walk across beds of coals, Alex.”

“Walk lightly and quickly on your entire foot. Don’t run. You’ll be fine.”

She scowled ferociously at him, but he only shrugged back. “Hey. You’ve got shoes. The first time I did it, I was barefoot.”

Barefoot? Was he serious? She opened her mouth to ask him when and where he’d tried something like that, but he said briskly, “Follow me.” He turned and started walking smoothly across the smoldering debris field.

This was how life was always going to be with him, wasn’t it? He would blithely lead her into danger, and she’d follow along like a lamb for the slaughter. She sighed and headed out across the coals, distributing her weight across her entire foot with each step.

Heat rose around her, and the soles of her shoes felt uncomfortably warm, but in a few seconds, she stood on the other side of the glowing ember field. Her heart was racing like a runaway horse, and one spot on her leather hiking boots smoldered a bit, but otherwise, she was intact.

That hadn’t been so bad, after all. Darn it. She hated it when he was right.

A dark-skinned man angled a crappy little fishing boat toward them. It barely looked seaworthy and was in desperate need of barnacle scraping and a paint job. He stopped about a hundred feet shy of shore and gestured for them to come out to him.

“How are we supposed to get out there?” Katie asked blankly from the edge of the beach.

“Swim. Why do you think I had you put your gear in a waterproof bag?”

She scowled at him again. “I thought it was for rain.”

“C’mon.” Alex was already stripping off his shirt, pants, and shoes, and stowing them in his rubber bag.

“I don’t have a bathing suit!” she cried in sudden horror.

“You have underwear. Same difference.”

“Not the same, thank you very much.”

“I’m sure Pedro won’t mind if you swim out there naked. God knows, I’ll enjoy the view.”

Thinking homicidal thoughts about Alex, she stripped down to her underwear and stuffed her clothes in her bag. “You’re such a jerk, sometimes,” she muttered.

“You knew what you were getting into when you insisted on coming with me,” he said stonily.

He was right. But that didn’t make her any happier to be swimming out to a total stranger’s boat in lingerie, darn it. She was so getting even with Alex for this.

To make matters worse, the water was freaking cold. Apparently, the hurricane had stirred the ocean, pushing shallow, warm water ahead of its path and pulling cold, deep water up to the surface in its wake.

Her teeth chattered like a high-speed typewriter by the time she climbed the rickety ladder into the back of the boat.

The driver’s gaze raked down her nearly naked body once and then, blessedly, the man turned away to face the wheel. The boat engine started with a cough. She took the towel Alex passed her.

Swear to God, the scrap of terry cloth was covered with grease stains. But it was that or freeze to death. She threw Alex a long-suffering look and wiped herself down with the disgusting towel.

He was doing this on purpose, punishing her for not staying at home like he’d wanted her to. Tough. She might not like the whole idea of him going to Cuba one bit, but if he did insist on going, no way was she letting him go alone. He was her man, and she was protective.

After a few frigid minutes of the brisk breeze drying her skin, she shivered her way back into her jeans and t-shirt. She added a sweatshirt from her bag and gradually began to feel her fingers and toes once more.

The boat bumped along over waist-high waves that Pedro assured them were wonderfully calm seas after the recent storm. She failed to convince her stomach of that, however, and ended up barfing ignominiously off the back of the boat. She felt better afterward, but the whole experience sucked.

Pedro said something about it being about seventy miles from Inagua to Baracoa, and Alex said something about the trip taking about four or five hours.

She didn’t think she was ever going to get off that bobbing little boat and see solid land again.

Clearly, she was not Navy material like her brother, Ian.

Alex suggested she try to sleep and made her a nest in some piled fishing net, which stunk of raw fish. She was so miserable, though, that she curled up in it and managed to pass out for a couple of hours.

Finally, as a spectacular sunset stained the western sky in a dizzying display of color, a black hump took shape on the horizon below the sunset.

“There it is,” Alex said. “Cuba.”

“How come there aren’t any lights—“ She broke off. Because of the hurricane. She supposed coming ashore right after the storm like this would make it a lot easier to sneak onto the island. At least, that was probably the idea.

But as the shore drew near, she saw there would be nothing easy about this at all.

Giant waves pounded the rocky crags and cliffs that formed the coastline.

, sending up massive geysers of white spray in the twilight.

If she and Alex tried to swim ashore in that they’d be torn to pieces on the rocks.

“How on earth are we getting from here to there?” she asked him.

“Wind blew us off course. The landing point’s a little further north along the coast. Pedro says there’s a beach at our rendezvous point.”

She sensed another swim in her near future. Fantastic.

They motored up the coast to a stretch of shoreline without the intimidating cliffs.

However, Pedro still refused to pull in close to the shore.

Apparently, the storm surge was still way up the shoreline and he didn’t want to risk running aground on the remains of some sort of dock that had stood at this spot a few days ago.

When she slid over the edge of the boat, she was startled to discover that she was only standing in chest high water. The boat pulled away into the darkness behind her as she started the long swim to shore behind Alex.

It took forever to reach land. She was nearly as chilled as last time when they finally slogged through the wet sand to another thick wall of debris from the storm. This pile contained evidence of human habitation: sawed lumber, bricks, and mangled sheets rusty aluminum.

“Now what?” she murmured below the sound of the surf behind them. “Are we going to set the coast on fire and send up the mother of all here-we-are beacons?”

“Not hardly. Now we get dry, get warm, and get clothed. Then we wait for our guide.”

Perversely, it made her feel better to know he was cold and miserable, too. She reached for her bag of clothing, but Alex stopped her. “The fastest way for us to warm up is to share body heat. Skin to skin. Didn’t you learn that from your brothers or Nursing 101?”

Crud. She should’ve remembered that. “I’m not thinking on all cylinders, tonight.”

“Symptom of encroaching hypothermia. Most people only associate it with winter cold exposure. They don’t realize hypothermia is a real problem even in a mild climate like this, particularly if a person is wet like we are, now. “

“Thank you, professor,” she replied dryly. He opened his arms and she wasted no time accepting the invitation to press herself against him from head to foot.

He wasn’t any warmer than her and was also shivering, but before long, warmth built between their bodies. Still, it took them a long time to warm up. She muttered against his chest, “Wouldn’t this go faster if we had sex? The exercise and friction would help, right?”

He chuckled into her hair. “True. But our contact could show up at any second. I didn’t think you’d appreciate being discovered in flagrante delicto .”

“Is that fancy Latin for humping like bunnies?”

“It is.”

“I’m so glad I fell for a Harvard educated genius. Life is nothing if not educational around you.”

“You have no idea,” he murmured back, a distinctly sexual edge in his voice.

He had yet to show her most of the dark sexual tastes he claimed to have. One of these days, though, she was going to get him to really cut loose with her and take her there. A shiver of anticipation rattled down her spine. If only danger wasn’t so danged sexy.

“Still chilled?” he asked.

“I wasn’t shivering from cold,” she grumbled.

He laughed low in her ear. “Ahh, one of these days, my little innocent, we’ll appease your curiosity.”

“Promises, promises.”