Her enticing curves pulled at him like a sensual magnet. He thought seriously about tackling Helen on the spot and wiping that patronizing look off her face with about two thousand kisses.
“Well, did you hear what I said?” She tapped her foot like an Army major, reprimanding a lowly private.
He did not like her condescending tone or the blasted foot tapping.
As they entered the stream together, he decided to retaliate. Zeb and Hector were approaching, carrying more shovels and pans. Before they got too close to hear, Rafe said, “You know what’s one of the first things I’m gonna buy when we get back to the future?”
“A BMW?”
“That’s the second thing.” He cuffed her gently on the chin. “First, I’m gonna buy me a Magic Marker, and I’m gonna connect the dots all over your sweet body.”
“Dots?”
“Yep, those cute little freckles that cover your skin, starting right here.” He put a fingertip on her right breast, just above the nipple.
“Oh.” Her mouth parted on a sigh.
Man, oh, man, he loved the way she responded to his mere touch. And, even better, her foot was planted firmly on the bed of the stream. No tapping now.
“Then down to here.” He traced the fingertip down to a point between her waist and belly button.
She made a kittenish sound deep in her throat. He really, really liked it when she made a small kittenish sound deep in her throat.
And still no foot tapping under the water.
“Over to here.” His finger moved even lower, stopping just above the vee of her trousers. She sucked in her stomach reflexively. He didn’t think she could move her foot if her life depended on it. Damn, I’m good.
“What’re you doin’?” Hector asked, splashing up to them.
“Playing a game,” Rafe choked out. Damn, I’m in trouble.
“Kin I play, too?” Hector begged. “Please, please, please?”
Rafe looked to Helen for assistance.
She made a motion of zippering her lips.
“Oh, hell!” Rafe let out a whoosh of air. “Listen, Hector, this was an adult game Helen and I were playing. I’ll find a children’s game to play with you later.”
“Oh, all right,” he said with childlike agreeability.
“Would you go get me that other shovel?” Rafe asked then.
Hector sloshed off to the other bank.
Helen taunted him then by swinging her hips as she walked by him.
And, damn it, he could swear both feet were tapping.
“These two weeks are gonna go by way too slow,” he called after her.
“Do you think so?” She stood on the far bank, and she was tapping her foot to beat the band, grinning from ear to ear. Then she started whistling. Whistling!
“I’d better go start dinner,” Helen said late that afternoon.
“Betcha heard my innards growlin’.” Zeb chuckled from where he was shoveling pay dirt, which Rafe had loosened from the hard bedrock. Then he dumped the gravel into buckets for eventual panning.
They’d been working steadily, except for a short lunch break, for eight straight hours. Her arms were numb from the repetitive motion of swirling the pan of gravel and water. She had a blister on her palm. Her back might not ever straighten again. Her thigh muscles screamed from the unnatural crouching position she’d been in most of the day. Maybe she would just crawl up the incline to the cabin.
“You better take el niño with you,” Rafe suggested as he leaned on his long-handled pickax, panting.
Hector’s shoulders drooped with exhaustion, and he cast pleading eyes to her. Although he hadn’t worked as hard or steadily as the rest of them, it was a long day for a little boy.
Helen tousled his overlong hair. “Maybe you could help me find some more carrots.”
His eyes lit up with gratitude at the reprieve. Then her words sank in. “Carrots again! Yeech!”
They all laughed.
“Hey, even carrots sound good to me,” Rafe chipped in. “I’m as starved as Zeb. My stomach feels like it’s shrunk in half.”
He took off the wide-brimmed hat he used to shade his eyes and swiped a forearm across his forehead. Sweat dripped down his bristled face — he hadn’t shaved that morning — and covered his bare skin with a sheen right down to the waistband of his low-slung Army trousers, held up by suspenders. Helen watched, fascinated, as one drop drizzled in a straight line from the middle of his collarbone, across his ridged abdomen, and right into the cavity of his navel.