“You should eat something.” Mathias’s statement interrupted her flow of thought.
She glanced at the fried food that never set well in her stomach. The last thing she needed was a stomachache on the back of a mule.
“I’m not very hungry.”
“I haven’t seen you eat all day. Does that chip in your wrist feed you too?”
She pushed her sunglasses up her nose. “Now that would be technology at its best. Make sure you finish your chicken wings. You won’t get any on the trail.”
“Unlike you, I eat what’s put in front of me. You never know when your next meal will be. But I could always catch a few birds and have wings if I want.”
“I’ll have to thank Ross for giving me a bodyguard with such a range of skills.”
He grinned and picked up his last wing of the dozen he’d bought. He lowered his eyelid in a slow descent.
She straightened on the picnic table bench.
Did he just wink at her?
Chapter Four
“I don’t think we have enough food. We’ll need to go for more supplies.” Madeline had all her gear lined up in neat rows on her bed, grouped by category. Her clothing items were in the tiniest rolls he’d ever seen, not only laid out in size order but by color.
Not that she had much of a variety. Her clothing taste seemed to skew toward Amish chic with navy and black making up the majority. His gaze caught on a pair of panties in an ice blue color that fit her nickname. He imagined any man wanting more of Madeline would need a campfire to thaw those panties.
He jerked his eyes from the garment and raked it over the line of food items she already had laid out to pack. “We’ve got beans enough for the week.”
“We are not eating beans all the time.” She looked up at him. Today she’d swapped out her darker sunglasses for some tinted gray. While he still couldn’t see her eyes, he saw the outline of them.
It made him think of gray water. The churning water of a fast-flowing river many years ago. He quickly clamped off that thought.
“What’s wrong with beans?”
“Nothing. But I like variety.”
He grabbed two granola bars out of the neat row. “Look here. You’ve got a maple and oat bar and a cranberry one.” He tossed them down so they fell out of place just to see if she got riled.
Not surprisingly, she nudged the bars into line again.
“I have food in my pack too, Madeline. We’ve got more than enough for a week on the trail. If it takes longer, we’ll find someplace to get more.”
She pursed her lips. He’d noticed her lips more than once. Besides her rounded hips, they were surprisingly feminine, with a rounded bow and a full bottom lip. He wondered if any man ever made her gasp and cry out…
An unwanted heat hit his core. One major rule in the bodyguard business was no relations with the ward. Looking at Madeline’s stiff form, and judging by how much he knew he irritated her, they weren’t in any danger of slipping.
But that didn’t stop his gaze from being drawn to her plump bottom lip again. Or noting the way it puffed out over her dainty chin in the slightest way.
“Are you listening to me?” she snapped.
“Depends on what you’re saying.”
“I said,” she spoke slowly as if he didn’t understand English or a half-dozen other languages, “are you sure you have everything in your pack?”
“Absolutely.” He shot a glance at the window of her motel room. “Sun’ll be up soon. You’d better hurry if you want to get on the trail fast. We still need to collect the mules.”
Just the idea of riding a mule instead of a decent horse over rocks and down bumpy trails made his balls hurt. He’d seen his share of the animals at the 4-H fair and that was enough.
“Maybe someone didn’t pick up their horses today,” he grumbled.
“Hopefully for you, that’s the case.” She glanced down at his long legs. “You’re going to have a tough time on a mule.”
“Don’t remind me. I’ll help you pack.” He grabbed a garment without looking, but the instant his hand met satin, he dropped it. He stared down at one of her pairs of panties.
She made a grab for them and stuffed them into the bottom of her new backpack. “I’ve got it under control. Why don’t you fill up the water bottles with whatever decent drinking water you can find?”
Gladly. Anything to get out of this room and away from Madeline’s panties.
Her satin panties.
He flexed his hand, still feeling the smooth glide of them over his palm.
As he hurried out of the room with four water bottles in hand, he tried not to think about how those black satiny underwear must hug her full hips or how they’d look against her pale skin.
He strode toward the vending machines, watching the shadows for danger.
Madeline must be around his age. Yet he didn’t see a trace of a ring on her finger. Many bodyguards didn’t wear a ring because they couldn’t risk it getting snagged on something in a fight or their spouse used against them in a hostage situation.
But she didn’t give any indication she was with somebody.
That didn’t mean she couldn’t have called a special man last night when they were separated by a motel wall.
His gut instinct was that the woman was single.
She was pretty enough. At least what he could see of her without those damned sunglasses. Fine-boned and delicate. From putting his hand on her back, though, he knew just how fit and muscular she was.
In fact, he’d had a hard time forcing himself to stop touching her.
He fed the machine some dollar bills and grabbed the water it spit out. He scooped out some ice into each refillable bottle and lined them up on top of the machine like shots of whiskey.
Four o’clock in the morning, and he was already ready for a stiff drink. How would he feel after a week with Madeline?
The Ice Queen didn’t seem so icy in black satin panties.
He growled and almost ripped the cap off one of the purchased water bottles. He upended it into the insulated bottle and continued down the line, battling to keep his thoughts off things he had no business thinking.
After he finished and threw his trash in the recycling bin, he pulled out his phone and called the WEST Protection office. They were each on call, so somebody would answer.
His cousin’s sleepy voice filtered into his ear. “WEST Protection.”
“It’s Mathias, Corrine.”
“Hi, cuz. You woke me up.”
“Figured I did. I’m just calling to check in before we hit the trail.”
“Are you taking horses?”
He wasn’t about to admit to getting on the back of a mule. Corrine would have far too much fun with that information.
“Yeah, horses. Look, I don’t know how service will be. I’m going to switch to the sat- phone and ditch the burn phone.”
“A week’s too long, and you know it. We’ll come hunt you down after three days. There’s bound to be cell towers out there. I can see some on my map right now. But you’re right—satellite’s where it’s at.”
“Got it. How’s Silas doing?”
She sighed in his ear. “He’s nervous but puts on a brave face.”