Dahlia expected a rush of violent energy to overtake her. She even braced herself for it, but there was nothing but cool morning air as Nicolas took the oars and drove through the water with long, smooth strokes. “You missed him,” she said. Somehow it didn’t seem possible. He was so sure of himself, almost invincible in his manner.
“I hit what I was aiming at,” he answered quietly. “We have to keep moving. I’m hoping I slowed them down, but we can’t count on it.” He forced the oars through the water with his powerful arms and the boat shot through the channel toward open water.
“I didn’t feel anything.”
His gaze brushed her face, an odd little caress she felt all the way through her body, just as if he’d touched her with his fingers. “I wasn’t aiming at you.”
She caught the fleeting glint of his white teeth in what could have been a brief smile. One dark eyebrow rose in response. “Has anyone ever told you your sense of humor needs a little work?”
“No one’s ever accused me of having a sense of humor before. You keep insulting me. First you accuse me of missing, and then you try to tell me I have a sense of humor.”
His face was made of stone, his tone devoid of all expression. His eyes were flat and ice cold, but Dahlia felt him laughing. Nothing big, but it was there in the boat between them, and the terrible pressure in her chest lifted a bit. “And it needs work,” she pointed out. “Get it right.” She even managed a brief smile of her own to match his.
The boat moved silently through the water, taking them through a labyrinth of channels until they were in open water. At once Nicolas started the motor. “You know the area much better than I do. Keep us away from the island where your home was and away from the cabin. You need a route that takes us under cover if possible. They’ll have spotters. We don’t know how well equipped they are, but if we hear a helicopter or small plane, I think it best to avoid them.”
“I may steal things for them,” Dahlia admitted, “but I’ve spent my entire life in a sanitarium. Even if this all came out, how much damage could I do to them? I’d be labeled crazy. And the sad truth is, I couldn’t go into a courthouse and be in close proximity with so many people and not have a meltdown. None of this makes sense to me.” She pinned him with her dark gaze. “Does it to you?”
“I’m giving it some thought,” he replied mildly.
She shook her head in exasperation at his steady, unshaken manner and turned her attention to guiding them, at top speed, through the bayou.
Nicolas looked at her. She was very small-boned, but perfectly proportioned. The more he was around her, the more of a woman she seemed to him instead of the child he first thought her. And that was becoming a problem. He wanted his mind fully on keeping them alive, not on the fascinating fact that the shirt she was wearing was soaked and nearly transparent. Although small, she had beautiful breasts, and he couldn’t keep himself from looking at them. He could see the darker outline of her nipples through the wet material. She had knotted the shirttails around the waistband of her jeans, and it called his attention to the curve of her hip and the memory of the brief, enticing glimpse of her bare butt as she slid down the roof. He had to admit, the glimpse had distracted him and he’d thought far too much about that particular part of her anatomy, not the smartest thing when on the run.
Nicolas couldn’t stop looking at her with her head thrown back, her thick, black hair streaming in the wind, her body perfectly balanced as she guided the boat. With her head back, he could see her neck and the outline of her body beneath the shirt, almost as if she wore nothing at all. His body stirred, hardened. Nicolas didn’t bother to fight the reaction. Whatever was between them, the chemistry was apparent and it wasn’t going to go away. He could sit in the boat and admire the flawless perfection of her skin. Imagine the way it would feel beneath his fingertips, his palm.