TWICE A HERO By Susan Krinard

Heaven must be punishing him for past misdeeds, sending a suffragist avenging angel. Except he’d long since stopped believing that Heaven gave a damn about Liam O’Shea, bad or good. And Mac had a far more likely employer.

Perry.

Liam swung his legs over the edge of the cot, not even bothering to check the ground for scorpions. It kept coming back to that same bloody suspicion, and he couldn’t let it go.

He’d given her every chance to betray herself, but she’d responded as if she didn’t even recognize his suspicions, as if she had nothing to hide.

Liam stood and paced the length of the tent, ignoring the sweat that trickled from his temples and splashed onto his bare shoulders. What in hell was he to make of her? She had the photograph. She knew Perry’s name. She’d shown up the same day Perry had abandoned him—alone and with no sign of an accompanying party.

But if Perry had hired her—crazy as the thought still seemed—his former friend had chosen a very poor tool. If Perry’s plan had been to slow Liam down, to delay his journey to the coast and back to San Francisco, it wasn’t succeeding.

Mac wasn’t even making the attempt. If she’d played the lost and helpless female in need of his help, or the wanton willing to warm his bed in exchange for his protection, he could have made sense of it. But Mac?

She rejected his protection as if it were an insult. She told him crazy stories she expected him to accept as truth.

He’d heard of eccentric female travelers who risked their lives and honor in foreign lands, but he’d never imagined them to be anything like Miss MacKenzie.

Where would Perry have found her? Fernando didn’t recognize her, and he’d left with the others before returning to Liam’s employ. If she’d ever been with Perry in the jungle, Fernando would have known. But if she hadn’t been hired by Perry, who or what was she?

Liam paused at the entrance to the tent and lifted the flap. No light spilled from either champas; she’d probably be sleeping the sleep of the dead just to spite him. That would be just like a woman.

He knew nothing about her, let alone what she might do next. And yet, for all her strange ways, she was still a woman. And like all women, she was weak, needy, fundamentally flawed.

Like Ma. Like Siobhan.

He knew nothing about Miss MacKenzie, but he would learn.

* * *

Liam had the lakeshore to himself for nearly an hour past dawn before Mac turned up.

He paused with his razor against his chin as Mac emerged from the narrow path. Her gaze swept the length of the tiny lake, a blue-brown jewel in a setting of green, and came to rest on him.

He shifted his seat on the folding camp stool and resumed his shaving, watching her out of the corner of his eye. From a distance of several yards he could see her air of uncertainty; she was as easy to read as a babe in arms. Uneasy around him, to be sure—less certain of herself than she pretended.

A very good beginning to the morning.

He smiled injudiciously and earned a nick at the corner of his mouth. Her rumpled clothing, the shirttail that hung almost to her knees, and her mussed hair lent her an almost endearing vulnerability. She suddenly seemed like a lost child, in spite of her sharp tongue and bold behavior. Certainly as incapable of caring for herself in this wilderness as any child would have been.

But he knew, in spite of her outward lack of curves, that she was a woman. He knew it with his body. He’d felt the pressure of her small breasts against his chest, lifted her scant weight in his arms.

He felt it even now.

“Good morning, Mac,” he said.

She started, clearly thinking that her arrival had gone unremarked. She patted briefly at her hair as if to tame it into order, tugged at her shirttail, and threw back her shoulders in familiar defiance.

“Fernando told me I could find you here.”