Not that it was easy to concentrate on the bizarre little dance they did there on the lakeshore, pursuer and pursued. Liam looked ready to turn her over his knee for real this time. And her lips were humming with the remembered pressure of his, the thrust of his tongue, the wholly overwhelming sensation of being in his arms and feeling the rampant evidence of his desire. However completely astonishing, unbelievable, and outrageous the entire thing was.
“What’s the matter, Iggy?” she taunted.
He froze, skin flushed under its tan. “Don’t call me that!”
“Can’t handle a woman fighting back?”
She darted under his outstretched arm. She’d been angry with him before, but—Damn, but this was almost… fun. Her mind tripped on the word. Fun, trading insults with this arrogant jerk who thought he owned the world?
But it seemed as though her newborn twin, the reckless adventurer Mac Sinclair, had possessed her body completely. A body that was keenly aware of Liam’s, so ominously close and patently dangerous. A body that had more curves and softness than she’d ever remembered, as wild as a wood nymph and as fearless.
“I can take whatever you dish out,” she taunted. “Tell me, how exactly did you get that middle name?”
He choked—she couldn’t think of another definition for the sound he made—and lunged toward her. This time she wasn’t quite fast enough. His fingers were like clamps as they closed around her arms.
“You think it’s funny, you little minx? You think you’re a match for me?”
Her heart was hammering. He was close—oh, so close, his scowling mouth a finger’s breadth from her own. She fluttered her lashes. “Oh, you’re so big and strong. I wouldn’t dream of considering myself your equal.”
He was startled into laughter. “I could make you say that in earnest.”
There was something about his intensity that made the hair stand up on the back of her neck. “We have a name for men like you in the future,” she said. “It isn’t very nice.”
Abruptly he released her and stepped back, the anger gone from his eyes. “And do they have a name for a woman like you?”
“Probably not what you’re thinking, O’Shea.”
“And what am I thinking?”
“Something insulting, I’m sure.”
He turned away. “You’re wrong. Unless you know I’m thinking about Peregrine Sinclair and how you happened to turn up the day after he abandoned me in the jungle.”
“What?”
The motions of his body were tight and hard, but he made no move toward her. “Did he hire you, Mac? Did he send you to delay me, or to drive me out of my mind?”
A whole array of unconnected facts clicked together in Mac’s mind. Good grief. He didn’t really think—how could he—how paranoid could anyone—But she had the photograph. She admitted knowing who Perry was. He didn’t accept her time-travel story, didn’t trust her, had provoked her again and again in ways that hadn’t made sense until…
She didn’t laugh. “You think—you think that I, that Perry left you here and I had something to do with it?”
“Did you?” he asked.
Good grief. She didn’t even know the source of the quarrel between Great-great-grandfather Perry and Liam O’Shea. And now Liam thought she might be involved in what could turn out to be something far more fatal than mere abandonment. Suddenly she was glad that she’d omitted to provide him with her last name.
“Damn you,” he said softly while she floundered for words. His gaze dropped to her mouth, and the harsh twist of his own lips relaxed. “I ought to—”
A crack of violent sound slammed through the heavy air, echoing like thunder. Mac flinched, and Liam hurled himself toward her, knocking her to the ground and rolling with her to shield her body.
When they came to a stop he released her immediately but continued to crouch over her, scanning the jungle.
“What was that?” she said, catching the breath knocked from her lungs.
He uttered an expletive that almost made her blush. “Gunfire. Guerrillas. I told you there’s unrest all through this country.”
“Who’s fighting whom?”
He was completely focused on the jungle, wary and absorbed. “Get back to camp.”