TWICE A HERO By Susan Krinard

“Tikal,” he repeated. “I would have known if anyone else was here.”

Great. She’d had just the luck to run into a lunatic in a very dark tunnel. She backed away. “Whatever you say. If you don’t mind, I have business to take care of.”

She calculated how best to slip around him and had gone a few yards when he reappeared beside her. His footfalls were eerily soundless; the hair stood up on her neck.

“I’ll join you, lad. My lantern broke, and I’ll need your light.”

Great. “Well, uh, that would be fine except I have something to do before I leave—”

“Nonsense. This is no place for a child.” His hand fastened around her arm again before she could dodge out of the way. The masculine scent of him, as primal as the jungle itself, nearly overpowered her. His strength was irresistible, though Mac had never been weak. Fighting him didn’t seem like such a good idea just now.

“You can take me to your camp when we’re out of here,” he said, steering her along. “I have supplies to replenish, and I want to see who arrived without my knowing about it.”

He sounded disgruntled, she thought. What did he expect—to have the entire jungle and its contents to himself? He’d be plenty annoyed when he saw all the tourists at Tikal.

“I can show you the trail back to Tikal,” she said. And you can bet we’ll part company the minute I get the chance.

“Will you, then?” he said, and gave an inelegant snort. “I’ll appreciate the help.”

She thought better of saying anything more at that point, though she was constantly aware of his presence at her side. He was big and well built, of that much she was certain. If he was crazy, she’d have a hard time throwing him off. Maybe he was some kind of hermit who’d come here to live in solitude. The Petén might be a good place for that, if you didn’t mind rain, mud, mosquitoes, and flies and didn’t stick too close to the tourist traps at Tikal.

Maybe this guy had been a hermit too long.

Now you’re really letting your imagination run away with you. . . .

“There,” the man said suddenly. “The entrance.”

And sure enough, there was a faint patina of illumination along the tunnel walls. Mac heard a faint hiss that grew louder as the brightness increased.

Rain. Not merely a drizzle, but torrents and buckets of rain, sheeting across the bright square that defined the exit.

Great. She’d deliberately come to Tikal during the August dry period, but apparently she’d cut it too fine. She’d be drenched, and the trail back to Tikal would be a soup of mud.

Her unwanted companion showed no surprise at the downpour. Before she could turn to examine him in the light, he said something unintelligible and pushed past her.

Mac stopped just inside the shelter of the tunnel. The man had plunged right out into the rain and stood with his back to her, hands on hips and head flung back in defiance of the weather. The rain made short work of plastering his shirt and pants flush to his body, confirming what Mac had already guessed by touch alone.

He was tall. Over six feet, she guessed, and not in the least skinny. Broad shoulders, taut back, firm buttocks. Wavy pale brown hair, just brushing the back of his collar, darkened to a deeper hue as the rain slicked it down. He was very impressive, even from a rear view. Perhaps even especially from a rear view…

Mac felt a jolt of chagrin at the direction of her thoughts. She’d never really let herself admire men in a purely physical sense, not since that one disastrous and very brief relationship in college. She had no use for the male fixation on butts and breasts and beauty, or similar female obsessions; that kind of ritual preening would never be part of her world.

But now she looked. Damn it, why not? This wasn’t Berkeley or San Francisco. She wasn’t part of the meat market people referred to as dating. She was out in a comparatively safe jungle where no one knew her, where all bets were off and magic waited just behind the next tree.

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