Just a Kiss Away (45 page)

Sam’s scowl changed to a small smile of admiration.
One for Lollie.

“Keep it up!”

“Here, Medusa. Have a nut.” She gave the bird a peanut.

Crack! Chomp! chomp! chomp!

Smiling like the cat who had just eaten the canary, she leaned back in her comfortable sedan chair and watched Sam’s shoulders jerk with each loud crunch.

By afternoon they reached the native village after traveling over mountain trails so steep that Lollie had held her breath when she looked down. Sam hadn’t seemed bothered by the height, but when she’d fed Medusa, the chomping sound had echoed loudly as they moved through the tall mountains. It had sounded as if the mountaintops were cracking away.

They reached a deep gorge, and the natives set down the chair and helped her up. Medusa squawked and flew from her shoulder. She turned, her gaze following Medusa as she flew to a tree on the opposite side. Past the gorge was a village of nipa huts built on bamboo stilts that balanced the huts about six feet off the ground. The huts varied in size and seemed to be scattered randomly throughout the village. Their ages varied, from the bright greenish color of new nipa palm to the grayed brown of weathered palm.

Playing in the center of the village was a group of children, and women worked at everything from washing clothing and hanging it on the branches of wide acacia trees to cooking and basket weaving. Smoke from cook fires billowed up here and there, and a large bamboo-fenced area, not unlike a corral, housed carabao that wallowed in the muddy center.

Her native guides stood talking to their leader. At least she assumed he was the leader since he gave most of the orders. She’d determined through hand gestures and one-word speeches that his name was Mojala. He was the one who’d gobbled and scratched the ground like a turkey when she frowned at the meat he’d given her. Between the two of them, they managed to understand each other fairly well.

Sam had tried to get the natives to side with him, but he’d had no luck, to her delight. He’d let go with a few heated outbursts at first, most of them colorful descriptions of his retribution. She’d gagged him, and he’d continued shouting against the gag until he lapsed into stubborn, brooding silence.

Lollie tried not to gloat, an effort that took a great deal of willpower. Instead, she eyed the narrow bamboo bridge that spanned the deep gorge surrounding the village. The gorge reminded her of a castle moat and appeared to supply the same type of protection.

“Lallooee.”

She turned at the sound of Mojala’s voice. He pointed at the bridge and nodded. He wanted her to cross it. The bridge was little more than a rickety gangplank of gaping bamboo poles strung on hemp, and it swayed like a cradle in the wind that whistled through the gorge.

She frowned and pointed at the bridge. “Cross that?” Mojala nodded with grinning vigor.

The bridge looked . . . challenging.

“What’s wrong, Lollipop, afraid of a little hundred-foot drop”—Sam paused with meaning—”straight down?”

She looked from the bridge to the rock jutted riverbed at the bottom of the gorge. She didn’t want to cross it.

Sam laughed, then whistled, imitating the sound of something falling, and ended by saying “Splat!”

She glared at him, not appreciating his sick humor. He grinned back, leaving no doubt in her mind that he enjoyed her reaction.

Less than a week ago, she wouldn’t have crossed the bridge. She’d have sat her fanny down and refused to do it. But not now. The Lollie LaRue who had waited for the world to come to her existed no more, at least not if the new Lollie could help it. Her pride was at stake here.

Armed with more determination than courage, she started walking toward the bridge. Mojala grabbed her elbow, stopping her. He shook his head and held up a finger. She assumed he meant for her to wait. He pointed to her boots. She looked down, then up at him. He pointed to his bare feet: she was supposed to take her boots off.

Sam’s snort of laughter set her teeth on edge. She ignored him and sat down to untie her boots. She glanced up just as the two natives guarding Sam untied him, then gestured for him to sit down and remove his boots, too. She undid the second lace and then suddenly remembered the guerrilla hut.

“Wait!” She shot up like a bedspring and ran over to Sam just as he was starting to pull off a boot. She grabbed his right boot and pulled with all her might.

“Dammit, Lollie, let go!” Sam tried to jerk his foot back and kick her off him, but she clung to it and fell to the ground, struggling to get it off. Before he could grab her, the natives pressed spears to his neck and chest, holding him still.

The boot popped off his foot, and she scooted back, reached inside, and removed the knife he kept hidden there. She held it up, letting it dangle between her forefinger and thumb. “Thought I’d forgotten, didn’t you?”

Sam glared fire at her. “That was our only means of escape, you stupid—”

She aimed the knife at him and warned, “Don’t say it.” She could hear his teeth grind.

“Why would we need to escape?” she said. “You told me yourself they’re treating me like a princess. If we want to leave I’ll order them to let us leave.” She sat back down and pulled off a boot, then a sock.

“Some of the tribes here in the north are headhunters.”

She froze, halfway through pulling off her other boot. Her head whipped around, and she looked at Sam to see if he looked like he was fooling.

He wasn’t. He looked dead serious.

She looked at Mojala, not that it did much good, since she had no idea what a headhunter looked like. The natives, who had been so nice to her until now, grinned and pointed to the bridge. She turned back to Sam. “I don’t believe you.”

He shrugged. “It’s too late now anyway.”

She stood up and dusted off her fanny, ignoring him. One of the natives took her boots for her and started across the bridge. It rocked and swayed with his weight, but that didn’t seem to faze him. He’d tied her boots together and slung them over his tattooed shoulder, then grabbed the bamboo poles that served as handrails—wobbly handrails, since they were strung with hemp to the two thicker bamboo poles that served as footrails. The man walked with his feet turned out so his toes could curl over the bamboo, and he waddled across the bridge as if wasn’t moving at all.

Now it was her turn. She took a deep breath and stepped onto the foot poles. The bridge moved a little, but not too badly. She duck-waddled about halfway across before a gust of wind whipped through the gorge, making the bridge sway like a hammock in a gale.

Lollie did what she did better than anything in the world. She screamed.

The sound echoed through the gorge, up the walls, and into the sky. The natives jumped back, mumbling and pointing and shaking their heads. Villagers ran and scurried to see why the entire heavens were screaming. Some shouted that their gods must be very angry, for never had they heard such a sound.

The bridge wiggled and rocked so she couldn’t move. Her scream echoed back from the gorge below as if to say “Look down at me.” But she knew if she looked down she’d fall.

Just when she thought she might give in to the dizzying sway of the bridge, Sam was at her back. “Don’t look down. Lean back against my chest and take some deep breaths. I won’t let you fall.”

The second her head touched his shoulder a calmness washed over her. It was Sam the hero, there to save her again, even after she’d tormented him.

“Very slowly slide your foot back until you can lift it and stand on my foot. Understand?”

“Yes,” she whispered, already succeeding in getting her left foot on his. The wind set the bridge to rocking. It took longer to get her right foot on his, but she finally did. The minute they’d started to rock Sam had whispered near her ear that it was all right. She believed him.

“Now place your hands on mine, hold my wrist if you’ll feel better, and I’m going to walk us both the rest of the way. All right?”

She nodded.

He moved so smoothly she hardly felt the rocking of the bridge, and by the time she’d expelled her breath they were safely on the other side, on firm ground.

“Sam. Thank you.” She slipped her arms around his neck and held on tight until she stopped shaking inside. His hands brushed slowly over her back, calming her and just letting her rest within the haven of his arms. She could hear the muttering of the natives surrounding them, but she didn’t care. She just wanted him to hold her.

Finally she pulled back and looked up at him. His face searched hers, and she felt as if he were trying to make sure she was okay. Suddenly the need to kiss him was so strong that she started to move toward his mouth. She could see the same urge in his own gaze. He lowered his head.

A spear suddenly jabbed between them. Mojala stood there frowning at Sam and giving him some angry order. She assumed he was telling Sam to let her go. He waved the spear in front of their noses, so they had to let go of each other, but not before she heard Sam swear under his breath. They both stepped back.

The minute there was space between them a horde of native girls swarmed around Sam like orphans around a Christmas tree. They oohed and aahed and ran their hands all over him as if to see if he was real.

Lollie ignored the men who were fingering her singed blond hair and stroking her hands. She watched with horror as the girls giggled and laughed and stroked Sam. She wanted to grab handfuls of their hip-long black glossy hair and snatch them bald. She shook off the native man who was trying to kiss her left foot and started to walk over and extract Sam from that group of females when she was stopped cold by the sound of his laughter.

She looked right at his preening face and decided
he
was one she should snatch bald. He’d slid his arms around two of the girls—naturally the prettiest ones—and he smiled at them as they laid their heads against his shoulders. He liked it. Those women were fawning all over him, and he lapped it up like cream.

She was so upset she could have spit, and he must have sensed her stare because his laughing gaze met hers. She scowled. He shrugged with such forced innocence that it took every ounce of her pride and willpower to stand there instead of ripping through the crowd. Of course she wasn’t sure whom she’d rather rip apart, the native women or Sam.

Someone touched her arm, and she assumed it was one of the native men, so she turned around, intending to lap up the natives’ fawning, like Sam had, a little sauce for the goose. An old woman with hair whiter than a cotton bud stood beside her. Her face had all the wrinkles of time and age, and yet her small black eyes showed a childlike twinkle that said, “I’m not dead yet.” She was stocky and solid, with a bosom from shoulder to waist and the shortest legs Lollie had ever seen. The woman was all knees and only tall enough to reach Lollie’s shoulder.

“Come ‘ere, ducks,” she said in what Lollie thought might be some sort of English accent.

“You speak English!” She could have hugged the little woman.

“Not ‘exactly. Them’s there what would argue that what I speaks ain’t English at all, ducks. Now come along ‘ere. I ‘aven’t got all day, you know.” The woman spun around and marched down the dirt path toward the village.

Lollie hurried along behind the woman. “I guess that means you aren’t headhunters.”

“Not bloody likely,” she shot back over an aged-slumped shoulder.

“You’re native, aren’t you?” Lollie asked, recognizing that the woman had all the native features including three tattooed designs on her arms and neck.

“Me ‘usband were from London. A bloody fine man ‘e was, too, me ‘Arry. ‘E was a sailor on the
Victoria Crown,
finest bloody ship to sail the seas. I lived there for five years, I did. Till ‘im ‘n’ me came back ‘ere. The fever was what took ‘im. That was in ‘ninety.”