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Yes, she’d heard the wind calling her name, but she heard that all over the damn place.

Gina increased her pace. She didn’t like the horses being so far away. Not that a wolf was going to get them. But there was the odd bear or pack of raging coyotes. Not to mention that Spike might just take it into his head to run home.

Teo’s scurrying footsteps scattered rocks and dirt every which way as he hurried to catch up. “Animals sense what we don’t,” he said. “If there’s a tomb below, that’s gotta feel … I don’t know … hollow to them.”

Gina didn’t bother to point out that when the horses had actually lost it the area had still been a good hundred yards away.

Because they had sensed something. She just didn’t think it was that hole beneath the earth.

Gina approached Spike and Lady Belle, murmuring reassurances. The mare lifted her head and nickered a welcome, as if nothing had happened at all.

Spike snorted and stomped and shook his mane, but he didn’t bolt, and if he was still bothered by … whatever, he would have. Unfortunately, the bolting he’d done thus far had been enough.

“My tent’s missing,” Gina said, then cursed. “My camera bag, too.”

Why she’d brought the thing along she wasn’t sure. She certainly didn’t want to take any more pictures of this place. The first one had caused trouble enough.

Teo stared back the way they’d come. The moon had disappeared behind the clouds again. They could barely see three feet in any direction; they certainly weren’t going to be able to find anything now.

“You can have mine.” Gina felt rather than saw him glance at her. “I’ll sleep outside.”

“I promise I won’t jump you if you don’t jump me.” Gina’d meant the words to be flippant; instead they came out kind of bitchy. And really, she was okay with that.

“I … uh … well, certainly,” Teo managed. “I would never force my attentions on a lady.”

Gina’s lips curved as she turned away. Since he’d started to talk like an eighty-year-old man with a stick up his butt, she’d made him uncomfortable.

Join the club.

The idea of sharing a small, enclosed space with Teo made her as twitchy as a horse in a barn full of flies.

“It’s going to rain.” She heaved the tent in his direction. He caught it with a muffled oof. “You can’t sleep outside.”

An hour later the horses were taken care of. Gina had made a fire; Teo had pitched the tent. They’d eaten, and now they lay inside the shelter, staring at the canvas ceiling as distant thunder loomed.

Or at least Gina stared; she wasn’t sure what Teo was doing except tossing and turning, every shift of his body reminding her of that body shifting against hers on his bed in the hotel. The constant movement also squirted the maddening scent of oranges and sunshine across the far too short distance that separated them.

He was driving her batty!

“Okay.” She sat up. “Let’s play cards.”

“I’m sorry?”

“You aren’t, but you should be.”

“What?”

“You should be sorry for coming here, for lying, for trying to seduce me, for stealing my ranch. But you aren’t. Because you got what you wanted. Or you soon will.”

He moved again, making more noise than Spike on a rampage. An instant later, the portable tent light—a combination of lantern and flashlight—flared to life, illuminating Teo sitting cross-legged on his bedroll, hair mussed as if she’d just run her fingers through it over and over and over.

Gina clenched her hands until the knuckles crackled in the sudden stillness. She could still feel that hair against her palms and that mouth against hers.

Hell.

“I am sorry.” He lifted his gaze, which, unfettered by his glasses, had softened to the shade of the sage in Fanny’s spice garden. “But not for everything.”

Gina wasn’t sorry about everything, either. She might be mad about some of it, but she wasn’t sorry.

Source: www.allfreenovel.com
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