Hidden Fire (10 page)

“Damn it, at least do me the courtesy of looking at me,” she snapped. “And you know darn well what I'm talking about.”

He stood up and towered over her but said nothing.

“Yesterday, you…” Her voice petered out. She swallowed and tried again. “You were…nice. I guess I thought you'd forgotten—”

“What a little thief you were?” He snorted. “Like hell. You played me for a fool once. That's not something I'm likely to forget in a hurry and it sure as hell isn't going to happen again. As for yesterday? A few kisses? So what? A way to pass the time while we waited for the creek to go down.”

Gili instinctively clutched a fisted hand to her chest, right where a sharp pain lanced through. For a moment, she felt as if she'd taken a body blow. The breath left her lungs in a gasp. She struggled to inhale, to fill her body with enough air to get her brain working again.

When she had control of herself, she flicked a glance at Morgan. Damn it, did he have to stand there with such a superior look on his face? Then, as she watched, he grimaced and what she could have sworn was regret flashed in his dark gaze.

“I'm sorry.” He held a hand out to her then let it drop to his side. “I shouldn't have said that.”

“Forget it, it's not important.”
Oh yeah, it was
. “I didn't lie to you about what happened on that dig, Morgan. Jeremy made fools of both of us.”

“With
your
help.” He held up his hand when she opened her mouth to refute the statement. “I talked to him, Gili. I'm fully aware who set up the whole scenario. He told me whose idea it was.”

Gili struggled to make sense of his words. Surely he didn't mean… One look at his face told her he did. Jeremy had obviously told him it was
her
idea to distract Morgan while Jeremy stole the ring.

She wanted to yell at him. To scream out her innocence. She dragged in a sharp breath, opened her mouth and then snapped it closed. To hell with him. She didn't owe him an explanation. She didn't owe him anything at all.

“Go home, Gili.” His voice had softened, but his face was just as implacable. “There's nothing for you here.”

“I came to find the
Dreamtime Fire
and that's exactly what I plan to do. It may be time to retreat now, but I'm not giving up. Not yet. Not until I've exhausted all avenues.”

“I'll have one of the workers take you into Winton. You can get a plane from there.”

She laughed. “You really think I'm going to get on any plane? Wake up, Morgan. You don't have the right to give me orders and I sure as hell don't plan on obeying any you dish out.”

She turned and clambered up the loose pile of dirt near the entrance to the mine. Once she was at the top, she flicked him a hard glance. “You coming?”

“Where?”

She raised her eyebrows. “I assumed you'd want to take me back to your ranch—sorry, station—seeing Charlie abandoned me here.”

His long legs ate up the distance between them. Gili found her gaze dragged downward to the play of muscles under the denim of his trousers.

Heat sizzled through her as she remembered those six idyllic weeks in Iran. The feel of his long bare legs brushing against her own. The fiery caresses that made her cry out his name in longing. The taste—

She cut the memories off. That time was done with and Morgan believed the worst of her. She should be mad with him, and part of her was.

Hurt? Yeah, plenty of that, too.

But in amongst it all was the attraction that had never died. The hunger to feel his arms about her again, but more importantly, the desire to have him look at her with something other than contempt.

Not going to happen, Gili. Jeremy has done too good a job.

The harsh Australian sun licked at her bare shoulders, creating a heat that matched the one inside her body. She squinted against the glare, staring at Morgan. She had a desperate need to reach out and touch, but she resisted. She'd already proven herself to be an idiot where this man was concerned.

She had to get away on her own for a bit. She needed time to regroup and shore up her defences before she faced Morgan again. Because, one way or the other, despite the turmoil inside her, she had to finish this job. Her parents' safety depended on it. And whether Morgan realized it or not, so did his.

Dragging up a measure of confidence she was far from feeling, she grinned and snapped her fingers at Morgan. “Hey, I just had an idea. How about
you
take me into Winton? I understand it's not that far away. It shouldn't take you too long.”

“You going to catch that plane, Gili?”

“Actually, I thought I'd hire myself a truck. Then I can come and go whenever I want to.”

She nodded over his shoulder. “That mine might be private property, but the rest of the Opalton fields are a tourist attraction, open to the public.”

There was silence for a few minutes as Morgan absorbed what she'd said. Then he tilted his head back and stared up into the sky. “Wrong time of day for traveling. It'll be dusk soon. Too many emus and kangaroos on the road at that time. Hit a kangaroo and it'll make a hell of a mess of your vehicle. Not worth the risk.”

A cocky, smart-ass grin curved his lips as he lifted his hands. “Sorry to disappoint, but besides the fact it's too late, I budget for going into town once a week and today isn't it. I'd get no work done if I took off for the bright lights at the smallest whim.”

Gili groaned. Trust Morgan to make this hard. “This isn't a whim. I'm stranded out here. And hey, just think about it. You'll be shot of me then. Can't you at least take me to your…station?”

He gave her a mocking smile, his brows lifted high. “Same problem. It's almost dusk. The homestead is at least an hour away. I don't intend to put myself—or any passenger—at risk of running into a ‘roo.”

He jumped down from the rise and headed back to the fire pit.

“Hey, I thought you wanted to get rid of me.”

“Changed my mind,” he threw over his shoulder. “At least I'll know what you're up to if I keep you out here.”

“Aww, come on, Morgan, you can't just leave me standing here. What am I supposed to do?”

Pausing, he turned back to her. “I don't usually like visitors, but I'll make an exception.”

“What are you talking about?”

He shrugged. “You'll have to stay with me, I guess. One thing though. We're camping, and I have one sleeping bag, so unless you brought your own supplies, you'll have to share my bed.” He grinned again and walked away whistling.

Gili's mouth dropped open. She snapped it closed and glared at Morgan's back as he hunkered down and set a match to the fire. She didn't know where the hell she was with him. One minute he was scowling at her. The next he was laughing and joking.

Damn men and their contrary signals.

“Feel the fire, Missy. It be your destiny.”

Gili awoke with a start. The thump of her pulse resounded inside her head. Her breathing was fragmented, releasing one moment, catching the next. As if her heart had missed its natural rhythm and skipped a beat. Heat surged through her blood, a molten caress designed to melt her resistance. She trembled, caught in the grip of a fierce need for sexual completion. Tossing restlessly, she pressed her thighs together to try to ease the throbbing deep inside her.

With a soft moan, she slid her hand between her legs and pressed the palm against her swollen flesh. The denim fabric created a friction that about drove her over the edge. She shuddered in reaction, forcing herself to deny the need to raise her hips. Hunger ate at her. Fire licked along her veins. Tension tightened the muscles in her lower belly. God help her, she felt ready to snap, need gnawing at her from the inside out.

“Well, hell,” she whispered, struggling to get her breathing under control. She closed her eyes and concentrated on relaxing her body, one muscle group at a time. Finally, she sighed in relief. Her hormones stood down, although the muscles in her gut still quivered.

Shame she didn't remember whatever the dream was that had brought her to the edge of such a cataclysmic climax. It must have been a beauty.

She wasn't normally given to erotic nocturnal fantasies, but it didn't take much to figure out where this one had come from. Her emotions had been on overdrive ever since she'd seen Morgan again. After six years, she hadn't expected her reaction to be so strong.

A shiver ratcheted through her. Although it was freezing inside the darkened mine, sweat dampened the jeans and light top she'd worn to bed. This was Western Queensland—stinking hot during the day in the Australian summer. How then could it be so freakin' cold at night?

She'd never expected to have to spend the night in the mine. She thought Charlie would come back for her. Her mouth quirked. Seems Charlie had his own agenda.

And now here she was, stranded with the one man who could make her seriously question everything she stood for and believed in. She plucked at her sweaty top. To make it worse, she didn't even have a fresh change of clothes with her. In fact, she didn't have any clothes at all, except for the shorts, top and underwear she'd left at the station.

A bubble of hysterical laughter burst to life, but she bit it back. All this didn't matter a damn right now. Her priority was to find the opal and get her father off the hook. But first, she had to get through the night.

Her arms shook as she clambered to her knees on the thin blanket she'd earlier wrapped around herself. A glance at the luminous dial of her watch showed she'd only been asleep for a couple of hours. She groaned. It would probably be better if she didn't sleep at all. Maybe then she'd avoid the weird dreams and the voices she'd heard in her head.

“I did warn you that sleeping with just a blanket wasn't going to be enough. Better if you'd shared my sleeping bag.”

Gili yelped. “Morgan! You scared the living daylights out of me.”

The campfire Morgan had built just outside the mine had died down to a cluster of red coals, casting very little light beyond the entrance. Gili peered across the expanse of the tunnel, relying on her memory to work out where Morgan had bunked down for the night.

A shadow, darker than the surrounding area, moved, elongated. The clang of metallic items caught her ears. A bitten-off curse as Morgan kicked something over.

“Hang on, I'll get some light going,” he muttered. “I've got a carbide lantern here somewhere.”

“N-no, it's alright. I'll just curl up again and go back to sleep.”

She couldn't let him see her like this. She ran her hand over her chest. Her nipples were hard, throbbing. She tweaked at one and felt the pull shoot through her body and center at the juncture of her thighs, intensifying the ache already there. She moaned, biting her lip to try to keep the sound inside, but to no avail.

A hissing noise from the opposite side of the mine drew her attention. Pushing herself to her feet, she reached down for the blanket and twitched it about her shoulders. Her thigh muscles quivered and a burst of sensation rolled through her. Biting off another fevered moan, she pressed her legs together even harder and tried to gain control of her libido. She drew in a deep breath to dispel the tension gnawing at her belly and all she could smell was the musky scent of sexual excitement. Hers! God help her, it wouldn't take much to drag her back to the edge of a thundering orgasm.

Even before she'd arrived in Australia, she'd known that being around Morgan Hunt would be hard, just not this damned difficult.

The striking of a match pulled her across the tunnel, feet shuffling so she wouldn't fall. Morgan applied the flame to a curious, jug-like structure on the ground in front of him. The hissing stopped and the area around the campsite lit up.

Gili moved closer, wrinkling her nose. “It stinks.”

“Acetylene gas, created by mixing water with calcium carbide crystals. Far better than relying on batteries.” He adjusted the reflector shield behind the flame and set the lantern aside. “So, you joining me or not?”

She swallowed the groan that surfaced as he disappeared back inside the sleeping bag. Morgan's muscled body in nothing but a tight black t-shirt and briefs was enough to turn any girl into a screaming heap of need.

“Come on, woman, make up your mind. I want to get some sleep. I've got work to do tomorrow.” Morgan flipped one side of the sleeping bag up, silently inviting her in.

“I, ah…it doesn't look big enough for two of us.”

Her chest heaved as she struggled to come up with a reason not to join him. At the same time, her body hungered for his nearness. Goosebumps broke out on her arms from the combination of the cold atmosphere and uncertainty. Her body trembled and her teeth chattered.

He leaned over and grabbed her around the ankle, dragging her closer. “For crying out loud, get your rear end in here before you get hypothermia. And strip off those jeans before you do. They're damp. They'll just make you feel colder and I don't fancy sleeping with an iceberg.”

“Ah, I can't.”

He shook his head. “Please yourself. If you want to go back to the other side of the cave and shiver for the rest of the night, who am I to stop you? Me? I'm going to get some sleep.”

With a grunt, he rolled onto his side, his back to her.

Gili waited a second, but he didn't look at her again. She huffed out a deep breath. Well, she sure as hell couldn't stand here all night. She'd just have to tell him.

“I don't have any panties on under these jeans. I washed them out and they're hanging up in the bathroom at the homestead. I figured I'd be back there tonight.”

Morgan rolled back to face her, but didn't say anything. Then he gulped and pointed at his pack. “There's a pair of cotton boxer shorts in the top of my pack. You can borrow those. Oh, don't worry, they're clean.”