Her Last Line of Defense (6 page)

She wiped her forehead again, and this time, Luc noticed. “Hey, when was the last time you took a piss?”

“I beg your pardon.” She drew herself up with hauteur worthy of her late Grandmother Cook.

“Excusez-moi, mademoiselle.”
He gave her a low, mocking bow.
“Quand est la dernière fois que vous avez pissé?”

It didn’t sound any better in French. “Before we left.”

“Before we left my friend’s house.”

Well, technically yes. “Actually, at the hotel.”

He swore in French. “Fifteen hours ago? And you didn’t think that was a problem?”

She shrugged. “I’ve been busy.” And she hadn’t wanted to use the bathroom. Heck, there wasn’t any bathroom
to
use.

“Drink.” He shoved his canteen at her. The water had a somewhat chemical flavor from the purification tablets, but it was cool and soothing.

“You get a bladder infection or get severely dehydrated and I’ll ship you back to your daddy before you can say ‘Jack Robinson.’”

He was threatening her? “Shouldn’t that be
‘Jacques
Robinson?’” She glared at him and drank more water.

He glared back. “Now go into the bushes and do your business.”

She looked away. “I don’t know how.”

She’d finally surprised him. “What?”

“Go outdoors.”

He wiped a hand across his face and muttered several words under his breath. “I need to teach you that, too?”

She wanted to dig a hole in the larva-ridden ground and climb in. Mental toughness, mental toughness. She stuck out her chin at him. “Yes, you do.”

“It’s simple. Pick a tree, pull down your pants and do your business.”

“But how do I wipe?”

“You don’t.”

“Oh, Luc.” The idea of having to drip-dry was too much to stand right now.

“Okay.” He blew out another French-sounding sigh and selected a leaf from a nearby tree. “Learn this leaf. Memorize it. Love it, because this is your new T.P.
Don’t
use
anything
else.”

She accepted the leaf and hastily did her business behind some ancient tree. She felt as if she were vandalizing it. Anyway, the next rainstorm would take care of it.

When she returned, he handed her another canteen and pointed her to a big log, where she sat. “Drink.”

She tipped it to her mouth and grimaced. “What’s that?”

“Treated water with ORS—oral rehydration salts. You’ll need to drink all of this plus another. I want to see you running into the woods with another tree leaf within two hours.”

“Fine.” She forced herself to drink because she knew he’d meant it about sending her home. How humiliating that would be—not even managing twelve hours in the wilderness. Poor Claire, people would snicker, sent home because she couldn’t pee in the woods.

She chugged the rest of the canteen and he handed her another. “Here’s our next lesson—the jungle is full of fresh water. There’s no reason to get dehydrated or overheated. One school of thought says to drink what you can find and get rid of the parasitic infections later. But that’s a last resort. So treat your water.” He went on to describe several treatment methods, as well as how to drink from water vines and how to catch rainwater in a variety of containers. “San Lucas gets four hundred inches of rain per year—about ten times what Virginia gets, so that’s plenty. You still have to treat it since you don’t know what it carried down from the trees, but it’s easy.”

Claire was beginning to recover, with her second canteenful sloshing around in her stomach, and watching Luc’s firm lips shape words and sentences was a lot of fun. His five-o’clock shadow only made him look more dashing and dangerous. Apparently the only danger he ran away from was the notion of having sex with her. She didn’t know if that was a compliment or not.

“Claire! Claire!” He scowled at her. “Are you paying attention to me?”

“Of course.” She’d been drinking in every detail of his rock-hard body under the black T-shirt and green camo pants. But he meant if she was paying attention to what he was saying. She repeated the last few paragraphs of his lecture, grateful for how she could remember large chunks of information presented orally. Her brain had a digital audio recorder.

“Okay.” He slitted his eyes, not quite believing her. “You need to finish your sleeping platform if you’re better.” He extended his hand to help her stand and she accepted.

He misjudged her weight and pulled a little too hard, dragging her chest-to-chest with him. She stared into his eyes. They weren’t quite solid black but had some gold flecks in them. “Luc,” she whispered, her breasts nestled against his solid torso.

“Claire,” he whispered back. “I need you….”

“What?” Were his defenses crumbling faster than she’d hoped?

“I need you to…get off my foot and get busy!” His last words were almost a shout as he set her away from him. “Gon’ go hunt for dinner now. Don’t let the fire go out unless you’d prefer snake sushi.”

She slumped in disappointment as he disappeared into the brush. Then she remembered his last words. Snake sushi? Her stomach churned. She fed the fire with some dry branches and chanted under her breath, “Tastes like chicken, tastes like chicken.” And no chance for dessert tonight—granola bars
or
Luc. Both were off the menu.

Claire nodded. She was beat after only getting a few hours of sleep last night in Luc’s truck and working hard in the woods all day. She trudged off to her “pee tree” and gave herself a quick evening toilette. Not quite the spa tub and six-nozzled shower stall that she was used to. Heck, not even the toilet she was used to. Oh, well. There would be none of that at the settlement at Río San Lucas anyway. Pretty soon she would get used to it.

She walked back into the camp and stared at what was going to be her bed. Luc had checked the supports and leafy branches crossing them, and had pronounced the sleeping platform sturdy enough. He had rigged her mosquito netting to a branch above so it dangled over her bed like a princess canopy. To be on the safe side, she squirted on more insect repellent.

“Ready?” He straightened from the log and came to check on her.

“Ready.” She hopped awkwardly onto the sleeping platform, trying not to wince as the branches she’d used for bedding poked her in several tender places.

He showed her how to tuck the netting around herself. “Make sure you always, always do this. Mosquitoes can carry four different kinds of malaria, dengue fever and even yellow fever. Malaria medicine and vaccinations are never one hundred percent effective for everybody.”

Claire sighed. She was so tired that if a six-foot-long mosquito had swooped down on her like an eagle on a Chihuahua, she wouldn’t have batted an eye. “You sure do tell sweet bedtime stories, Luc.” She yawned. “Now unless you’re going to kiss me good night, you probably should get some rest, too.”

He backed away, his expression unreadable in the flickering firelight. “Good night, Claire. We’re getting up at oh-dark-thirty tomorrow.”

“Great.” Claire snuggled into the branches, not even caring that one poked her in the butt. Tonight was no time to be the lead character in “The Princess and the Pea.” The branches shifted ominously under her. Or more likely, she’d be the kid in the cradle after the bough broke.

So why did he have the urge to pull the netting aside and kiss every single injury on her warm ivory skin until they both felt a lot better?

He knew it was a bad idea—Claire Cook was a pretty society girl who got a bee in her bonnet to go out in the big, bad world to do some good. He shook his head. And she couldn’t find anything to do back home in Virginia?

Maybe she needed to get away from her father to do anything besides shop and have her cute peach toenails painted. He understood that well enough—he’d left home at eighteen to attend Tulane University, desperate to see something besides the backwoods of Louisiana. He’d messed around with odd jobs the summer after graduating from college and that fall had been the fall of 2001. After seeing the deaths of Americans at the hands of terrorists on live network TV, Luc had shown up at the army recruiting depot September 12.

The Army had taught him more than he could have imagined, and now it was his turn to pass his knowledge on. “Wake up, Claire.” He reached through the gap in the netting and shook her shoulder.

“Go ’way,” she muttered, slapping at his hand. He stared down at her. Civilians. Well, she was his “army of one,” as the old recruiting ads used to say.

“On your
feet!”
he bellowed in his best drill sergeant imitation.

She jerked to a sitting position, her bloodshot eyes staring wildly. “What? What?” She focused on Luc. “Oh, you startled me half to death.”

“Rise and shine, we’re burning daylight.” Without waiting to see if she was awake, he checked his map. “Today we work on map-reading and navigation. You got a good sense of direction?”

“Um. Sure.”

Luc raised an eyebrow at her hesitant reply. “I take that as a ‘no’.”

“I could use some practice,” she admitted, swinging her feet out of the shelter. She’d changed into shorts after going to bed and her legs were long, smooth and tanned. He gripped the metal compass case hard, rather than run his hand up her calf.

She started to stand and he stopped her. “Not in bare feet.”

“Oh, right. You were telling me last night about all the icky ground parasites that can burrow into your skin.” She reached for her boots and a fresh pair of socks that had been sitting in the tops of her boots.

He stopped her again. “Shake out your gear first.”

She shook out the socks. “See? Nothing to worry about.”

“Fine. Now the boots.”

With an indulgent sigh, she dumped over one boot and fastened it onto her foot without incident. The second was another story.

Claire squealed, hopping around on one foot. “What—what the heck is that?”

Luc shook his head. “Brown recluse spider. Along with the black widow, one of two venomous spiders found in the U.S. Distinguished by its dark brown, sometimes yellow color with a black line pointing to the spider’s rear. Venom occasionally causes tissue necrosis at the site of the bite.”

“Venomous? Tissue necrosis at the site of the bite?”

“Yes, Claire. They crawl into close spaces to hide and bite people when they stick in their hands—or feet.” The spider scuttled away toward the leaf litter and Luc stomped on it with his boot.

Wide-eyed, she stared at its mangled remains with disgust.

“Shake out your gear. In the jungle, you’ll have spiders way bigger than this, lizards, centipedes, millipedes, ants—you name it.” He handed her the boot.

“Yes, Luc.” She gave it another vigorous shake and peeked into the inside for good measure before gingerly lacing her foot into it. She grabbed a T.P. leaf from her stash and ducked into the brush.

When she came back, she reached for her tiny bottle of hand sanitizer and squirted it over her hands.

He rolled his eyes. “That crap stinks to high heaven. What are you doing in the woods that you need that junk for?”

She wrinkled her nose at him. “Good bathroom hygiene is important for good health.”

“O-kay.” Once she got to San Lucas, she’d probably faint to see people washing, babies pooping and animal carcasses being cleaned in the local drinking water.

“Do you have any more purified water? I’m kind of thirsty.” And probably hungry, too, judging by the way she looked around hopefully.

“What are our options for potable water?” He wanted to see if she remembered.

“Since we are at low altitude—any lower and we’d be underground—we bring the water to a boil and continue to boil for a minute.”

Very good, but he wasn’t going to tell her that. Soldiers didn’t get trained by touchy-feely stuff. And she wouldn’t get trained at all if he kept combining Claire and touchy-feely in the same thought. “And option two?”

“If you have no fire, drop an iodine-based water-purifying tablet in one liter of water, let sit for about a half hour and enjoy the chemical-flavored goodness.”

“Better than parasite-flavored goodness. And if the water is particularly nasty, drop in a second tablet and filter out the scum with your teeth.”

“Gross, Luc.” She made to sit down on a log but he stopped her.

“Grab your groundsheet. Never sit on bare wood or ground.”

“Why, more parasites?”

“Exactly.” He himself was squatting at the fire’s edge. He was used to it, not being around chairs for weeks at a time. He had poured her a cup of coffee and offered it to her when she returned with her groundsheet.

She looked into the metal mug in surprise. “I thought we were living off the land. Did you pick, roast and grind some coffee beans while I was asleep?”

“No talking back to your commanding officer.” He drank his scalding brew with a happy sigh. God, had he missed French roast in Afghanistan.

“Got any non-dairy creamer?” Her lips pursed gently as she blew into the mug. Her soft, pampered hands wrapped around the mug while she moved her mouth into the perfect kissing position before drinking a dainty sip. “Luc? Luc?”

“What? No, no creamer, and no coffee filter, either. We drink our coffee black in Special Forces—puts hair on your chest.”

She stared at his chest where he’d tossed on another black T-shirt after a quick wash in the river. “You must have a lot of hair on your chest.”

His nipples tightened at her sultry tone.

“Well?” She pursed her lips and blew again, her dark gaze never leaving his.

“I’ve never had any complaints.” He gulped at his coffee. The little minx, was she trying to seduce him again? She might think she wanted a bit of fun before she shipped out, but not at the expense of her safety. He wanted to stand up and get away from her, but his compass wasn’t the only thing pointing north. “Drink and let’s get going. Breakfast isn’t going to jump out of the water and onto the fire.” He rubbed his stubbly jaw. “Unless I teach you how to gig frogs. Mmm, mmm, mmm,
les andouilles
.” He made some lip-smacking sounds and her expression turned from sultry to disgusted. “What, a fancy girl like you never ate frogs’ legs at one of those fine French restaurants in our nation’s capital?”

She shook her head.

“Too bad. Maybe we can find some wild onions or garlic to flavor them.”

“Do I really have to eat frogs?” Her voice was almost a whisper.

He raised an eyebrow. “What did I tell you about insects?”

“They’re pure protein and keep your body from cannibalizing your muscles.” Her mouth pulled down. Whatever her squeamishness, she was definitely no dummy, quoting almost word-for-word what he told her.

“Frogs are the same, except with bones. And you gotta be fast to catch them. You got fast hands, Claire?” He cursed silently as she smiled at his Freudian slip.

“I’ve never had any complaints.”

Word-for-word again. Too bad he couldn’t tell her the words he longed to tell her.