“There will be other chances to escape,” Rafe assured her a short time later when they moved on. She certainly hoped so.
As they proceeded on their grueling ride toward Sacramento, she and Rafe couldn’t stop pondering their remarkable adventure. They both accepted that somehow, someway, they had landed in a time warp, and they discussed the repercussions of their situation.
“This is the damnedest thing that’s ever happened to me.” Rafe shook his head in confusion.
“And you think I bee-bop through the ages all the time?” Helen heard the shrewishness in her voice but was unable to control its stridency. Fear churned in her stomach, and Rafe’s flippant attitude about the potential dangers they faced made it even worse.
“Rafe, aren’t you worried about what will happen to us in Sacramento? I mean, they might really kill you if they believe you’re this Angel Bandit guy.”
“I have a plan, hon. Trust me.” He winked.
“A plan?” She rolled her eyes, trying to imagine the leap of faith needed to trust this scoundrel. “And me… Well, what’s going to happen to me? I sure as heck am not going to turn tricks in an 1850 mining town.”
He grinned.
“It’s not funny.”
She saw him struggling to force a more serious expression on his face, but he couldn’t stop grinning. The ass!
“The idea of you turning tricks just boggles the mind.”
The fact that Rafe considered her so sexually unattractive that she couldn’t even be a hooker in a female-starved mining town shouldn’t bother her, but it did. She felt like crying. She was hot and tired and afraid and homesick. And she sat fighting back tears because a vulgar, arrogant creep judged her lacking in some way.
“You’re more the kind of woman a man keeps to himself.”
She jerked her head to attention.
“Sort of like a secret gift a guy hordes for himself.”
She should tell him to stop. Right now. But her tongue stuck to the roof of her mouth.
“On the outside, you’re all cool professional. Flame hair skinned back. Kissable lips pressed into a forbidding line. Sultry voice turned shrill. Smoldering eyes cool. Every sexy curve of your tempting body covered by sexless, drab clothing.”
“Oh, my God,” she whimpered, mesmerized by his wicked words.
“But your man — your lover — knows. I know…”
She gasped.
“… that underneath, when you let your hair loose on the pillow and part your lips, your voice is a hot whisper of invitation. Your eyes mist with desire. And every move you make in those loose military clothes,” he continued, inclining his head to indicate her garments, “well, I suspect that underneath there are five-foot-eight inches of pure ripe-to-be-turned-on woman, waiting to explode.”
“You are the most outrageous, egotistical — ”
“Yep,” he went on, ignoring her tirade, “you were born to f — ”
“No! Don’t you dare utter that word!”
“What?” he asked with wide-eyed innocence. “I was going to say, You were born to fan a man’s flame.” He blinked at her with exaggerated confusion. “What did you think I was gonna say?”
Fan a man’s flame? She glared at him warily. He’d done it again, disconcerted her, turned her knees to jelly and her brain to mush. The cad! “So, do I fan your flame?” she let slip before she had a chance to bite her tongue.
“Oh, baby,” he said in a silky whisper. His eyes held hers, and the expression on his face turned solemn. “How can you even ask that question?”
“How can I ask? I’ll tell you how. You’re always taunting me, making fun of me. You make me feel… inadequate.”
His eyes shot up. “Are you serious? Man, oh, man, maybe you should learn to listen to what people don’t say sometimes, not what they do say. It might be a real education for you.”
“Stop talking in riddles.”
His eyes glittered angrily. “You’re my impossible dream. Don’t you know that?”
“No, don’t say that — ”
Rafe immediately seemed to regret his impulsive words, but he went on angrily, “I’ll say it, all right. Damn it, you want to know the truth? Well, here it is. This is 1850, and thousands of men are rushing to California to find the pot at the end of the rainbow, their El Dorado. Well, you’re my El Dorado, sweetheart, and always have been. The unreachable prize.”