The Passionate G-Man

And then he had to wait while she took a brush from her purse and set to work on her hair. “I won’t be much longer,” she said when she caught him staring at her. “It’s just that I can think better once I’ve washed and brushed. I’d give anything if I had my toothbrush.”

Closing his eyes, Lyon braced himself to endure the next few hours.

“This is it?” Jasmine shipped the oars. He’d used the phrase earlier and she liked the sound of it. It sounded...brisk. Decisive. If there was one thing she could use about now, it was a shot of brisk decisiveness.

He appeared to be waiting for further comment. When none was forthcoming, he began the painful, awkward business of getting to his feet. She offered to help.

“Just stand back, okay? No, don’t touch me!”

She wasn’t about to touch him.

Well, yes...maybe she had reached out to him, but that was purely instinctive. It would take someone really heartless to stand by and watch a man suffer the way Lion—Lion?—the way he was suffering. “Watch out for the wet place on the floor,” she cautioned.

“Deck.”

“I knew that.”

The look he sent her would have blistered paint. “Hold the boat steady when I start to swing my left leg over the side, will you?”

She grabbed the sides. Her hands hurt like the very devil, but she grabbed and held on until something in the way he was looking at her tipped her off that this wasn’t what he’d had in mind.

Crouched over, one hand on his back, the other gripping the scarred wooden trim that ran all the way around the edge of the boat, he glared at her over his shoulder.

Jasmine glared right back. “I’m doing the best I can. If you don’t like it, hire someone else.”

Under the heavy growth of beard, his face was roughly the color of wet plaster. He was sweating. The temperature had to be somewhere around zero minus ten. Personally, Jasmine had never been colder in her entire life than she’d been last night, and he was sweating.

“Pick up one of the oars,” he said through clenched teeth.

She picked it up. He obviously read her mind, because he said, “If you’re going to knock me in the head, wait until I’m on shore, will you? You don’t want to show up at your motel with a dead man on board. Too much explaining to do.”

She took a deep breath, puffed out her cheeks, which made her face start itching all over again, and said with deceptive mildness, “All right, I’m holding onto the oar. I’m pretty sure this one won’t try to get away, but what about the other one?”