Eden scooted to his side of the truck and looked over. The more McBride tried to get out, the deeper he became stuck. “Maybe. There’s a bathtub that—”
“Could you stop with the history lessons and give me a hand here?”
When Eden raised her hands as though to clap, he narrowed his eyes at her.
“Come on,” she said, teasing, “you’re a big-deal FBI agent. What would you do if I were a drug dealer and about to escape?”
In the flash of an eye, Jared fell forward so that he landed on top of her. His feet and half of one leg were still buried in the mud, but the upper half of him was inside the truck and holding her down.
“Would you mind!” Eden said, looking up at him, utterly still beneath him.
“No, I don’t mind at all,” he said happily.
“The gearshift is sticking me and it hurts.”
“Good try. The gearshift is on the side. So if you were dealing drugs, how would you get away from an FBI agent who is handicapped with his legs pinned down?”
She glared up at him. “I’d get my gun out of the glove box and shoot you in the head.”
“Try it.”
Eden started to reach for the little black plastic glove box by her head, but she knew that if she moved, he’d love it. “Get off of me.”
“Not good enough.”
“I mean it. Get off of me!”
“No,” he said, looking away, as though remembering. “I don’t remember anybody saying that to me. I think they knew I’d not obey that command.”
She squinted at him and didn’t care that she was making wrinkles at the corners of her eyes. “If you don’t get off of me, I’ll go back to the house, stand in front of a camera, and tell whoever is watching that you are becoming emotionally involved with me.”
Jared blinked at her a couple of times, then stood upright in the mud. “You sure know how to play dirty, don’t you?”
“I’ve learned a lot since I was seventeen.” Solemnly, she sat upright and turned the key in the engine. It started, but the truck wouldn’t move in the deep mud. She looked at McBride. “Could you give me a push?”
Just before he moved, he had a glint in his eyes that made her eyes widen.
“Oh, no, you don’t,” she managed to say just before he gave her a push that sent her flying out the side of the truck to land on her fanny in the mud. She pulled her hands out and tried to stand up, but fell back down. She looked up to see McBride, thick mud on him from the knee down, sitting behind the steering wheel of her brand-new Mule.
“You’re getting it dirty,” she wailed.
“A dirty machine to match the mind of its owner,” he said as he started the engine, then tried to reverse it.
Eden grabbed a handful of mud and threw it at him. Her aim was perfect, and she hit him on the side of the face. When he turned to her, wiping mud out of his eyes, she grinned at him.
“
I’ll get you for that,” he said, then leaped out of the truck.
She rolled, and he landed facedown. Eden let out a howl of laughter, and when he lifted his face and she saw the mud, she laughed more.
“You—” Jared began and made a grab for her ankle.
Eden tried to get away, but the mud was too deep and too slippery. Her head went back and the side of her face hit the mud. “Yuck!” she said as she scraped off two inches of it. Mud was crawling down the back of her neck to the inside of her shirt. “You are—”
She didn’t finish telling him what he was because just then the sound of a helicopter came to them, and they both looked up. Eden knew without a doubt who the ’copter belonged to and where it was going to land. She also knew that she was going to have to meet whoever was inside while she was plastered in mud.
“At least it’s not Brad,” she muttered in disgust. She’d rather face the president of the United States like this than the man she was beginning to like so much.