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for him to talk, so that’s what Sidney did. She had to lie close because it was a single sleeping bag.
    She needed to distract him from his grief and refocus him on something else. “I detest being closeted every day and night with these models. I’ll be glad when this gig is over. They won’t leave me alone. I’m just not into girly talk and she-she.”
    “You could stay somewhere else.” He reached for her free hand and eased it beneath his shirt. The poor guy needed human touch, she thought as he rubbed her hand over his muscled stomach, and he felt good to touch, she decided.
    “Do you ache—I mean, do you have some physical problem that might cause you to want to end it all? If you do, there are all sorts of counselors for pain—and for grief, by the way. Have you tried that?”
    “No to the second part, but yes, now I do ache. Your hand feels good. Do you mind?”
    “Not if it helps you. I’ve done massage when needed. I’vebeen in lots of make-do situations, and most of the time it’s just people helping people, letting them know that someone cares. But I would sure like to escape those models. That’s why I brought my sleeping bag up here—to get away from them since there’s nowhere else to stay besides my room at Amoteh. Where are you staying? With your family?”
    “In my family’s cabin along the beach. It’s quiet, private, except for the wind chimes and the waves. It’s pretty plain, one room, no luxuries like at the Amoteh Resort.”
    “Sounds like heaven.”
    The mist had turned to a gentle rain and Sidney knew she couldn’t stay all night—a photographer with a bad cold could ruin a shoot. Then she sneezed. “Look, I’ve got to go. Come down off this hill with me? We’ll go someplace for a beer and talk some more.”
    “Everything is closed.”
    “We could go to my room and raid the refrigerator there, but those models would be on you like flies on sugar. They’re man-hungry and you’re in no emotional shape to fight them off. They’re already half mad at me, so I’d have to let them have you—for the sake of the shoot. Now, you wouldn’t want that, would you? A bunch of sex-starved, booby bimbos chasing you?”
    He chuckled softly, deeply in the night. “No, I sure wouldn’t want that.”
    At least his humor was there. Maybe she had done some good after all. Sidney sat up and looked for her socks. Danya took her foot and slowly slid one sock on and then the other. Sidney had the strangest sense that she was being tended somehow.
    It was a gentle, but uneasy sensation that caused her to jam on her hiking boots and lace them tightly. “You want to talk at your place, or what?” she asked abruptly as she stood. “If not, then I’m going to have to go back into that bimbo hell and try to find a quiet corner where someone isn’t sobbing over some girly movie, or someone isn’t wanting to give mea facial or pluck my eyebrows. The light won’t be good for shooting tomorrow, so they know they can stay up late—hunting me.”
    He handed her the sports bra and her cotton briefs. There was nothing intimate about it, only one buddy helping another. She stuffed them into her sleeping bag and Danya stood. He bent down to roll her bag and lift it over his shoulder. “Let’s go.”
    “I can carry that. Who do you think waits on me?”
    “I don’t doubt it a bit. It’s just that you’ve helped me tonight, and I’d like to return the favor…so I wouldn’t be in your debt. You understand.”
    Sidney did understand. She never liked to be in anyone’s debt and Bulldog had taught her to be self-sufficient. But if Danya needed that link to keep him off that cliff, she could sacrifice. He carefully led her down the rocky trail from the chieftain’s grave site. Around her smaller one, his hand felt good, strong, and companionable. Maybe he needed that link with her. Maybe she needed it with him. Ships in the night, Sidney reminded herself. At least she wasn’t at the mercy

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