Read Online Bound to Happen by Mary Kay McComas - Free Book Online Page B

what she did or how she acted anyway. There would be no pleasing Joe Bonner.
    He had already put his heavy load down in the shade along the sloping shoulder of the road, when he turned to see Leslie struggling lamely to remove her own. Mutely he stepped up beside her and untied the knot in the blanket that had slipped down below her bust line. Her skin quivered when his hand accidentally brushed the upper fullness of her breasts, but he didn’t seem to notice. Unlike Leslie, he didn’t appear to experience the same tingling sensation. In fact he gave every indication that he was perfectly comfortable and totally unaffected standing in her personal space, touching her body, their faces mere inches apart. Leslie, on the other hand, was weak in the knees and fighting to control her irregular breathing. She was afraid to move her head or look into his face for fear of brushing noses with him and prolonging the awkwardness of the moment.
    With her pack untied, Joe took it and moved away immediately, leaving Leslie reeling from his sudden withdrawal of his close physical contact, incidental though it was.
    Leslie frowned. Get a grip on it, she told herself sternly, you’ve been out in the sun too long and walked too many miles in his shoes. She rationalized her reactions down to simple physiology. The tingling was blood rushing back into the areas of her body constricted by the weight of her pack. The dizziness and rapid breathing were induced by exhaustion. And a warm rock would look just as strong and comforting right now as his broad chest and thick arms did.
    Satisfied and very much relieved with this analysis, Leslie gratefully sank down beside the first large, warm-looking rock she saw.
    “Hungry?” Joe asked.
    “No. But I am thirsty.” She was too tired to eat.
    Perched on his own rock several feet away, Joe reached into the cooler and handed her one of the canning jars he’d filled with cool, clear water from the stream earlier. Leslie took it and drank deeply before she screwed the top back on and set the jar down between them.
    She lowered her head back to rest it on the rock and closed her eyes. She could almost hear her muscles slowly unwinding, crackling and snapping with tiny bursts of spasmodic pain as they uncurled and became limp.
    Joe hadn’t missed much of what his traveling companion was going through. He’d seen her shoulders begin to droop. He’d heard her steps begin to drag. And he was sure the bright red flush in her face was caused more from heat and fatigue than overexposure to the sun. She might lean toward stupid sometimes, he thought, but she was a tough little cookie.
    “Stubborn little witch,” he muttered under his breath, aware that she was probably too far gone to hear him, glad that he’d taken matters into his own hands and finally stopped for the rest she’d refused to ask for.
    Joe couldn’t resist the unexpected chuckle that rose up within him. This Leslie Rothe was a strange woman. She didn’t seem to care that she looked like a refugee from a bag-lady camp or that she was miles into some of the wildest and most treacherous terrain in America’ without any protection, save maybe himself, if worse came to worst. But she’d walk herself blindly into the ground without a whimper to prove herself and to show him that he’d been wrong about her.
    There was a lot of pride and gumption bottled up inside that sleeping pile of rags and warm female flesh. She probably had more dignity than brains, which wasn’t always so bad, in his opinion. If she couldn’t have her fair share of both, it was just as well she had an overabundance of pride to get her over the rough spots in life. He had to respect that in her at least.
    Well, she’d earned her sleep, he decided with a great deal of benevolence. He could afford to feel kindly toward her at the moment, her stubbornness had taken them to within two or three miles of his cabin, and it was early in the afternoon. She could have a