Jake shrugged it off and sat back down in the same place he’d been before. Leaning against the tree he said, “I know it’s not much, but I figured it would be better than that dress. We’ll find you some other clothes when we get to the hotel.”
“Hotel?” Olivia settled beside him, doing her best to ignore the twinge of pain in her ribs.
“If my compass and intel are correct, and given that both came from D, I’m sure they are, we’ll be in town by mid-morning, or a little after. It’ll be a little later than planned, but that’s okay. We’ll get cleaned up, eat a real meal, and a good night’s sleep before heading home the next morning.”
“D?” she smiled curiously.
Jake gave her a lopsided grin. “Derek West. He’s a genius. Literally.”
She’d come back to that later. “And this hotel...please tell me it at least has a shower.”
Even though she’d had one this morning and had just used Jake’s wipes to clean herself off, Olivia still couldn’t wait to stand under some hot, soothing water in a place she could relax. Somewheresafe.
Jake grinned. “It does. Granted, it’s not a five-star resort, but it’s a room.”
Olivia sighed and rested her head against the tree. “Plan B sounds fantastic right about now.”
He laughed quietly. “Well, like I said, it’s nothing fancy, but I can guarantee it’ll be a damn sight better than this. I would have picked someplace nicer, but—” He cut himself off abruptly.
“But, what?”
Jake’s expression softened. “When we made contingency plans, we weren’t expecting to have you along for the ride.”
A sad smile formed on her lips. “No, I guess you wouldn’t have.” After a beat of silence, she shook her head in wonder.
Curiosity flared behind his eyes and that tilted smile returned. “What?”
Sounding almost wistful, she told him, “I must have gone over my plan to escape a hundred times. I tried to think of every possible situation that could mess things up for me, and how I could still make it out of there if any of those things happened. But in all the scenarios that played through my mind, not one included having you here with me.”
****
Jake was glad he wasn’tthe only one still amazed at the day’s turn of events. His smile grew again, and damn, if it didn't feel good.
“I guess we both got a pretty good shock today, huh?”
Olivia snorted, the sound more adorable than it probably should’ve been. “You can say that again.”
She leaned her head back against the tree and closed her eyes. Jake thought she’d fallen asleep, but after a few minutes of silence, her voice cut through the jungle’s night air.
“I would have tried to escape sooner, you know.”
He shifted, leaning on his left shoulder in order to see her face better. With no accusation in his tone, Jake asked, “Why didn’t you?”
Olivia turned, facing him more directly, too. “During those first few days, I'd convinced myself that someone was out there, looking for me. I didn’t know those men had”—she looked away, fighting against tears Jake knew were there, but couldn’t see—“I didn’t know everything they had done to the others. Not until one of them brought me an American newspaper. He thought it wasfunny.”
She nearly spat that last word out, and though, he glad to see some of Liv’s fire again, Jake wanted to find whichever asshole she was referring to and beat his goddamn face in.
“The day I saw that article, I knew I was on my own.”
His chest hurt. The whole damn thing ached. Unable to keep from it, he reached over and grabbed hold of her hand.
Giving it a gentle squeeze, he said, “It’s okay, Liv. You don’t have to tell me any more tonight.”
Her lips curved slightly as her fingers returned the gesture. “It’s fine, Jake. I’m fine.”
She was far from fine, and he was getting damn tired of those smiles that weren’t really smiles. Olivia seemed to actuallywantto talk now, but Jake felt torn between duty and his protective instincts. Any intel she could share was valuable, but damn it, he’d heard about all he could stand to for one day.
“A man came to my tent this morning,” she continued. “He took me to a building at the other end of the camp and ordered me to take a shower. To make myselfpresentable.” She made that cute-as-fuck snorting sound again. “I wanted to tell him to go to hell, but the idea of a shower was too good to pass up.”
