ringless. Then, as his thumb brushed over the pads of her fingers, he realised that they had taken a pounding. They were rough, the skin torn, her nails broken where she’d clawed at the ground as she’d fallen.
She must have been hurt, he realised, but she wasn’t complaining.
‘Come on,’ he said, with a briskness he was far from feeling. ‘This won’t buy the baby a new bonnet.’
And this time when she laughed it was with wry amusement. ‘When was the last time you bought a baby a bonnet, Jago?’
‘Now that, Miss Grenville, would be telling.’
‘Manda.’
‘Excuse me? You’ve decided that I’m a friend?’
‘I’ve decided that I don’t like being called “lady” or Miss Grenville and I never liked Miranda.’
‘Why not?’
‘It doesn’t matter. Please yourself. Shall we get on?’
There was a long pause, then he released her hand. ‘I’m moving to the left.’
She shuffled after him, studiously ignoring a stream of muttered oaths as the floor shook beneath them once more. He turned and caught her before she went down this time, holding her against him, tucking her safe against his shoulder. With her face pressed into his chest, his body protecting her from falling debris, Manda felt ridiculously secure, despite the fact that some vast megalith could at any moment crush the pair of them.
‘We really must stop meeting like this,’ Jago murmured when everything was quiet, continuing to hold her, her face buried in the hollow of his shoulder, her cheek tight against the heavy cotton of his shirt. The beat of his heart a solid base counterpoint to her own rapid pulse rate and in the darkness she clung to him as if to a lover.
She should move but, afraid of more aftershocks, her courage failed her and she couldn’t make herself pull away.
It was Jago who moved first. ‘Keep your eyes closed,’ he said, shaking off the grit and rubble that had fallen on him.
‘Okay, now?’
‘No. Wait…’ He rubbed his hands clean against his shirt then, very gently, laid them over her face, brushing away the dust from her lids and lashes.
‘Okay?’ he asked.
‘Okay,’ she said, close to tears as she slid her hands into his hair, a thick mop of unruly curls, using her fingers to comb out the small pieces of stone. Sweeping her fingertips across a wide forehead, pausing at an impressive bump.
It was little wonder he had a headache, she thought, wishing she hadn’t been quite so horrible about that, and on an impulse she kneeled up to kiss it better, before sweeping the pads of her fingers over dusty eyelids, bony cheeks, down the length of a firm jaw. Feeling the stubble of a day-old beard. Discovering the landscape of his face, imprinting its contours in her memory.
He grasped her wrist as she rubbed her thumb across his mouth, stopping her, and for a moment they remained locked together, the pad of her thumb against his lower lip. Then, without a word, he dropped her hand, looped his arm about her waist and turned away, moving slowly along the face of the wall, apparently exploring the carvings with the tips of his fingers as he continued to try and make sense of their surroundings.
‘My stuff should be along here,’ he said after a while.
‘Well, let’s get to it,’ she said, feeling as if she’d been holding her breath since that moment when anything might have happened. She made a move forward but he didn’t let go, stopping her. ‘What are we waiting for?’ she asked scratchily. ‘Your pack of matches won’t crawl out all by itself and jump into your hand.’
‘True, but blundering off into the dark isn’t going to help and if we’re not careful we could bring the whole lot down on us.’
‘True. And if we stay here talking about it long enough another aftershock might just save us the job,’ she replied impatiently. His closeness had become too intimate and she tried to tug free. His grip tightened just enough to warn her to keep still.
‘Slow down,’ he said, his arm around her waist immovable, powerful. Controlling. Their brief moment of rapport now history.
‘Why?’ she demanded. ‘Despite your little pep talk back there, I do realise that no one is likely to be looking for us any time soon.’
‘Do you? Really?’
‘What’s to understand?’
She’d been in the wrong place at the wrong time. Only time would tell whether she had been lucky or unlucky, but one thing was sure, she wasn’t going to sit around and wait for someone to come and dig them out.
‘I’ve seen these things on television, Jago. I know that out there it’ll be total chaos and, until we get any indication to the contrary, we have to assume we’re on our own. The longer we sit around doing nothing, the weaker we’ll get.’ Then, with a surge of excitement. ‘No, wait!’
‘What?’
‘In my bag! I’ve got a cellphone…’
‘Miranda-’
‘If it survived the fall.’
‘And if we could get a signal up here,’ he replied heavily, brutally crushing the wild surge of hope.
‘There’s no signal?’
She felt, rather than saw him shake his head, heard the muttered oath as, too late, he recalled the blow he’d sustained.
‘Are you okay?’ The chances were that he was suffering from concussion at the very least.
‘I’ll live,’ he replied. ‘Is there anything else that might be useful in this bag of yours?’
She suspected he’d asked more to keep her from falling apart again than for any other reason. She wasn’t fooled into thinking that it was personal, that he’d felt anything beyond lust when he’d kissed her. She mustn’t make that mistake ever again.
He’d protected her from falling masonry because, injured, she’d be even more of a liability. Even a speck of dust in her eye could have caused problems and he needed her fit and strong, not a feeble hysteric.
Heaven forbid he should feel obliged to kiss her again.
Heaven help him if he slapped her.
‘Water,’ she said. ‘I’ve got a bottle of water.’ She thought about it. ‘Make that half a bottle of water.’ Right now she would have given anything to have a mouthful of that. ‘Some mints. Pens. Wipes.’ She could really use one of those right now, too. What else? Her journal-no, forget that. ‘A foot spray-’
‘A
‘To cool your feet. When you’ve been walking in hot weather.’
‘Right. So, apart from the water and mints, that would be a “no” then,’ he said, definitely underwhelmed.
Just as well she hadn’t mentioned the deodorant and waterless antiseptic hand wash.
‘No matches, torch, string?’
‘String?’ She very nearly laughed out loud. ‘We’re talking about a designer bag here. An object of desire for which, I’ll have you know, there is a year-long waiting list. Not the pocket of some grubby little boy.’
‘So you’re the kind of woman who spends telephone numbers on a handbag. I hope I’m not meant to be impressed.’
‘It’s a matter of supreme indifference to me-’
‘I’m glad to hear it,’ he said, cutting her off. ‘I’m far more interested in its contents.’
And he was right, damn him…
‘I’ve got one of those little travel sewing kits,’ she offered sarcastically. ‘It has some cotton in it, if you’re looking for an Ariadne solution to finding your way out of this maze of ruins.’ Then, ‘Ruined ruins…’
‘A pick and shovel would be more useful, but I accept that’s too much to expect. I’ll bear the offer of needle and thread in mind, though, in case I’m driven to the point where sewing your mouth shut seems like a good idea.’
‘There are safety pins in the kit for that, always assuming I don’t use them on you first.’
‘Well, now we’ve got all that out of the way, is there anything that might be in the slightest bit of use to us, because I’m not wasting time hunting for it in the unlikely event that my feet get hot.’
