“I did,” she said. “There’s a path, right here.”
He brushed past her and examined the area, one brow cocked. “Perhaps you’d point it out to me. My vision isn’t as keen as yours.”
Mac just managed not to glare at him. She marched forward. Trailing lianas slapped across the nose. Damn it, it had to be here. A few broken branches, at least. Something.
The stranger leaned against a convenient tree trunk, arms folded. “Do you need assistance, Miss MacKenzie?”
Definitely patronizing, that was the word for his tone. She ignored him and paced a few yards away, still searching. It wasn’t her imagination; the break in the dense vegetation simply wasn’t there.
Mac wanted very badly to sit down and swear in the myriad creative ways Homer had taught her, but she’d be damned if she’d let Liam’s annoying clone see her defeated. Great set of priorities, Mac, she chided herself. But she was coming up blank. She’d have to make a circuit of the ruins, keep searching…
“There is no path.”
She whirled to face him in spite of her best intentions. “I didn’t fly here,” she snapped.
“But he did abandon you.”
“The guide? Yes. I mean—no, he cut me the path, and it was right here.”
He pushed himself away from the tree. “I know these ruins. The only path is the one I made, on the other side of the temple. It leads to my camp.”
Great. Mac lined herself up with the stele and made another attempt at the jungle wall.
“It’ll be dark in a few hours,” he said behind her. “Whatever suffragist cant you hold dear, Miss MacKenzie, or however you came here, you can’t travel through the jungle alone.”
She almost shivered at the certainty in his voice. Better to be alone in the jungle than here with you, she thought irrationally. But he refused to read her mind. He strolled up beside her, close enough that she could feel the heat of his body even amidst the sweltering humidity.
“And I doubt your unusual lantern will cut you a way through the forest,” he said. His gaze dropped to the flashlight hanging from her belt.
It momentarily occurred to her that the flashlight was probably in more danger from this hunky weirdo than she was herself. Hadn’t he said he’d broken his lantern?
“Oh, it’s not so unusual,” she said hastily. “You can probably pick one up in Tikal. In fact”—she backed farther away from his solid, muscular bulk—”I’m sure they have them. Cheap, too.”
He cocked his head at her. It was a peculiarly boyish gesture very much at odds with the rest of him. “In Tikal? Interesting. I’ve never seen one like it. Do you mind if I take a closer look?”
Before she could protest he’d liberated it from her belt and was turning it over in his broad, callused hands. Mac found herself watching his examination with reluctant fascination.
It really was as if he’d never seen a flashlight before. And that was crazy, because he wasn’t unkempt enough to be the jungle hermit she’d thought at first he might be. His accent was as American as hers, with a slight lilt that might have been Irish. He spoke too distinctly to be completely wacko.
So, she admitted, she was still curious about him. Too curious. Too interested in a total stranger who was almost charismatically attractive but also arrogant and insulting. Not to mention strange.
And as for his resemblance to a certain photograph—could it be possible that he was a descendant of O’Shea’s? No. O’Shea had died without children to carry on his name. Mac felt instinctively for the pendant around her neck and remembered that it had been lost in the tunnel, along with Homer’s cap.
She was lucky that was all she’d lost.
“If you don’t mind,” she said, holding out her hand. He ignored it. Her Liam clone had become quite obsessed with switching the flashlight on and off, focusing the beam on the trunk of a tree and then the crumbled stone of a nearby building, drawing patterns with the light.
“How does this work?” he demanded, shaking the flashlight until the batteries rattled. “Electricity?”