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With a sigh he put his arm round her and held her to him, then fell silent, his breathing deep and steady on the still air.
* * *
Quin woke and opened his eyes on to the darkness that heralded the dawn. Everything was still, the only sounds the single calls of birds anticipating the sun, the gurgle of the river against the boat, the creak of ropes and the breathing of the woman in his arms. Comfortable, he closed his eyes to drift down into sleep, the memories of the old nightmare dissolving like mist in the morning.
Woman? Hell’s teeth! It was Cleo, he would know the scent and the shape of her anywhere, even after the fleeting physical contact they had shared. ‘Cleo,’ he whispered as he shifted to face her. The last thing they could afford was for her to wake up with a shriek to find a man in her bed. Although she was in his and how the blazes she got there...
‘Hmm?’ She curled up tighter against him, her head burrowing into the angle between his shoulder and neck.
‘Wake up. Quietly.’ Her hair tickled his nostrils and he had to control the urge to kiss the top of her head. Or let his hands stray. Or shift his aching groin any closer to her soft, warm mysteries.
‘Quin!’ It was a shriek, but a whispered one, muffled against his bare shoulder.
Quin grabbed for the sheet as he pushed her gently back into the cabin, offering up silent thanks for the darkness. He was three-quarters naked and as aroused as any man who wakes up wrapped around an attractive woman at that time in the morning could expect to be.
‘I fell asleep,’ she whispered through the crack in the hangings. ‘I’m sorry, I meant to creep back in here once you’d settled.’
‘Why? What was I doing?’ Talking in his sleep, he supposed. How damned embarrassing.
‘Talking in your sleep,’ Cleo confirmed. ‘You were saying that you did not give a damn and that you didn’t care. And something about your father.’
‘And I woke you, I’m sorry. It was just an old dream.’
‘It doesn’t matter. Only your voice was getting louder and I didn’t think you would want the guard to come over to see what was happening.’ He could hear her shifting round inside as though uncomfortable. ‘So I thought a hug might quieten you. And it did.’ They sat there in silence for a minute, on each side of the barrier as the darkness began to break into shimmering grey.
‘You said something about not being like your fathers. But that doesn’t make sense,’ Cleo said eventually. It wasn’t quite a question.
Oh, hell. Quin dropped his forehead on to his bent knees. He supposed he had better tell her, because if he was going to spend the next few nights prattling about his sordid history goodness knows what she would make of it. And he had discovered, on the very few occasions he had confided in anyone, that the nightmares stopped for months.
‘Put on a robe and we’ll talk on the river bank,’ he said, pulling on trousers and a shirt. He lifted the protesting goat over the side and tethered her to a tree as a convenient excuse for being out at that hour, then went back to help Cleo, who was sitting on the side of the boat, legs dangling.
She put her hands on his shoulders and let herself be swung to dry land with a soft chuckle. ‘You are strong.’
‘You are easy to lift. You should have more flesh on your bones, but you work too hard.’ Not that the flesh that did cover her lovely, lithe body was not soft and curved and enough to ruin a man’s sleep for months.
‘You smell better than Delilah,’ he added in an attempt to lighten the conversation. The goat bleated at him when he untied her rope and set off along the path, upstream to where the current had carved a tiny crescent of beach. ‘Go and have a drink,’ he told her and let the rope drop.
Cleo came and sat beside him on a water-washed tree trunk. ‘I will get fat and lazy, lying about on the boat all the way to Cairo.’
‘Good.’ Quin leaned forward, his forearms on his thighs, and contemplated the sand between his feet. ‘The lazy part, at any rate. You deserve a holiday.’ And she would need her strength when they reached Cairo because whatever happened, it was not going to be easy on her. It was the right thing, but even so...
‘Tell me,’ she said and, to his surprise, turned sideways on the log, put her feet up and rested back against him. ‘Tell me why you have two fathers.’
Quin had no idea whether it was instinct or if she realised that she was making it easier for him by creating some distance and yet giving him the comfort of her touch. When she discovered the truth about his birth she might well decide to move away. He took a deep breath and put it to the test.
