Damn. He had heard. He’d been faking sleep the whole time, and she’d been too stupid to realize it. “Okay,” she said. “You’ve had your fun. Let me go.”
“Or you’ll hit me again?” He tugged on her hand, and she was hard-pressed not to fall right on top of him. “Is that how women in your time… persuade their men?”
“You’re not my—” She bit off the sentence. “O’Shea—”
“Call me Liam. We’ve braved death together, haven’t we?”
This wasn’t possible. She couldn’t be feeling what she was feeling, letting herself be affected by the things he said and his gaze and touch. She wasn’t a total idiot. Her hormones weren’t supposed to control her mind.
But down by the lake it hadn’t been her mind that responded to his kiss, that made her lash out. Her mind hadn’t even been remotely involved.
This was desire. Reckless, crazy desire. Something she’d only felt glimmers of in her own time.
His fingers had worked their way up past her wrist and under the rolled-up sleeve of her borrowed shirt. “Maybe you need a lesson or two, Mac. We made a good start by the lake this morning.”
“You’ve… got to be kidding.”
“One lesson for another.” Feather touches dipped into the soft hollow of her elbow. “Fair trade.”
“You’d be a lousy student.”
Gradually he was pushing up from the cot, revealing no signs of pain. “Are you afraid?”
“Of what? You? I thought we’d been through—”
“That a woman has nothing to teach me.”
She grabbed his wrist and detached his hand from her arm. “I’m not your idea of a woman, thank God.”
He propped himself on his elbows without so much as a wince. “You’re right. I’ve never met a woman like you.”
His straight face and steady stare made it seem almost like a compliment. He was damned good at that, making you trust him. Making you forget you’d ever had any common sense whatsoever.
The tent’s exit was only a few feet behind her. She had the pendant. All she had to do was walk out. He wouldn’t try to stop her. It wouldn’t be worth his effort to continue the game. Not to a man like him.
She turned quickly, before she could change her mind.
“A woman,” he drawled behind her, “who isn’t afraid of bullets but hides her body in men’s clothes. Who claims equality with men and runs away when they come within spitting distance. Do I have that right… Miss MacKenzie?”
She came to a dead stop. “It’s just possible that a woman might not be interested.”
The cot creaked. In self-defense she turned to face him again. He was on his feet, legs apart, unexpectedly steady.
“No,” he said. “Not you. You have too much passion in you.”
“Uh, I have to… get back to my own time,” she said, fumbling over the non sequitur. “I don’t belong here.”
“You’ve discovered how to return?”
There had to be something certain, something she could hang on to. She pushed her hand into the pocket of her borrowed pants, clutching the pendant. “I… think so.”
“Then I’ll escort you—to make certain you reach your destination.”
“I think it would be better if we just said good-bye here.” She thrust out her hand. “It was… nice to have met you.”
“Nice?” He ignored her hand. “That isn’t the way I’d describe either one of us, Mac.”
There must be a way to end this conversation and distract him from his dangerous—yes, that was the term—focus on her.
Of course. The watch she found at the site of the attack; she’d meant to show it to him anyway. She fished the chain from her pocket, careful not to pull out the Maya pendant along with it.
“I picked this up off a bush right after you were shot at,” she said. “One of the guerrillas, or whatever they were, must have lost it. I thought maybe—”
He’d snatched the watch from her hand before she could complete her sentence. “You found this where we were attacked?”
“Yes. It must have snagged—”
But he wasn’t listening. He backed away and sat down on the cot, hard, his knuckles white as he gripped the watch.