“Wow,” she said. Her eyes sparkled. It was like she’d said, I did that.
“You did it, all right,” he acknowledged gruffly. She looked at him, perhaps startled that he’d read her mind. Her smi
le grew even wider. She slapped at the water.
“That was the most amazing thing I’ve ever done. I was scared out of mind.” She jetted backward on her back and then spun around completely in a circle, only to swoosh backward again. Jake scurried to keep up with her.
“What are you, a damn otter or something?” he grumbled.
“I can’t help it. I like to swim. And that was fantastic.”
She let out a whoop at having conquered her fear. Maybe it was more than that. She came to a standstill and pushed with her hands, leaping up in the water like a playful dolphin. Jake went wide-eyed at the vision of his Mountaineer’s T-shirt plastered against her supple torso and firm, thrusting breasts.
“God bless it, girl, get ahold of yourself. Do you want Emmitt to hear?” he spat. But that’s not really what he meant. What he meant was more like, God bless it, what the hell are you doing to me?
Her eyes flashed at him and she sunk down to her chin in the water. Regret and embarrassment swept through him at his show of temper . . .
. . . at her wide-eyed hurt and disbelief.
“Where do we get out,” she asked coldly after a moment, her brows slanted angrily.
He waved at a landing thirty feet or so downstream. She immediately launched into the water. By the time he caught up to her, she was already standing and walking toward the sandbar, jerkily straightening the soaked, clinging T-shirt off her hips, bottom, and thighs at the same time.
“Harper, I’m sorry. It’s just . . . you were being really loud,” he said, sloshing behind her in waist-deep water.
“You’re mean sometimes,” she declared bluntly, pausing to gather her T-shirt at the thighs and wring it out.
“I ain’t mean.”
She glanced around, her gaze narrowing on his face. He knelt lower in the water, trying to shield any evidence of the hurt he’d felt at her proclamation.
“Do you really want to do it again?” he blurted out.
Her gaze strayed to the stark cliff face, and again he saw that flicker of exhilaration on her expression. “I think so. Do we have time to do it now?”
He looked at the position of the early morning sun in the sky and shook his head. “It’ll take too long for us to hike back up. We have to be careful not to leave a trail. It’ll take time, not only to get up there, but to sweep our tracks. We need to stay low in the cave for the rest of the day. Maybe tomorrow at dawn we can go again. Tomorrow afternoon, I’ll scout around a bit. If there’s still no sign of Emmitt in the area, he likely took the false trail all the way to Poplar Gorge. It’ll be safe to start for Barterton.”
He regretted bringing up his uncle when he saw all the color drain from her face. “So you think he did take the false trail?” she asked hopefully.
“Maybe for a ways he did. It’s hard to tell. Even if he catches on, it’ll take him a while to do it. He’ll have to backtrack. Then he’ll have to hunt out the new trail.”
“Do you think he could? Even with as careful as we were?” She blanched, obviously recalling his admonitions for her lead feet yesterday. “You were careful, I mean.”
“I doubt it,” Jake said with false assuredness, disliking the return of her anxiety. He fumbled beneath the waistband of his briefs, his actions hidden by the river. A few seconds later, he triumphantly held up the bar of soap he’d stashed in his underwear.
“It survived the fall.”
She smiled. “Do we have time?”
He nodded. She dove toward him eagerly in the shallow water, stopping in front of him and mimicking his position. They both knelt on their knees, facing each other. His heart leapt when she reached for him with both hands, grinning.
“Nice, clean soap,” she enthused, feeling for the bar between his clutching fingers. She lifted his hand above the water, cupped it with both her hands, and moved aside his fingers to expose the soap. She began rubbing. Lather began to spread on their skin. He watched, spellbound, pleasure tickling his nerves. It felt so good, he held on to the soap desperately, not wanting her to stop touching him.
She reached suddenly, scrubbing his cheek. He started, and she laughed. He reached, returning the gesture and including her nose. Her eyes sprang wide in surprise, and then she was reaching with both soapy hands, raking them down his face.
“Hey,” he muttered in a put-out fashion, pinching his eyes closed. “You got it in my eyes.”
“I’m sorry,” she soothed. She heaved water in his face. He blinked water out of his eyes, bringing her into focus incredulously.