McKettrick's Choice - Linda Lael Miller [78]
Lorelei.
Bathing.
Oh, God.
CHAPTER 25
THE POND WAS TEPID, a black expanse splashed with dancing fragments of moonlight. Having taken off her shoes and rolled the legs of her trousers almost to her knees, Lorelei waded back to shore to shed her clothes. She had never undressed in the open air that way, and there was a glorious freedom in the very recklessness of such an act. After pulling a bar of soap from her bundle, she splashed back into the water.
Melina soon joined her, though she still wore her bloomers and camisole.
Belatedly, Lorelei remembered the pins in her hair. She’d already lost most of them, but a few still held. Once she’d tossed them ashore, she ducked under the surface and came up with a sigh of purest pleasure.
Using the soap, she lathered her hair, rinsed it, and went through the whole process again. She scoured every inch of her body, and was floating peacefully on her back, soaking cool evening air and moonlight into her flesh, when Melina suddenly cried out.
Lorelei scrambled to her feet, shook her wet hair back from her face. “What is it?”
Melina gave a squeal and splashed for the bank. “Leeches!” she shrieked. “They’re all over me!”
Lorelei stood absolutely still, too stunned to react.
“Lorelei!” Melina shouted. “Get out of the water!” She was sitting on the bank now, kicking her feet and clawing at her bare arms. Dark, liver-colored blotches clung to her flesh.
The sight spurred Lorelei out of her stupor. She rose out of the pond just as Rafe and Holt came crashing through the brush.
Lorelei ducked behind a scanty bush, as conscious of her nakedness as Eve after the Fall.
“What the devil?” Rafe demanded.
“Leeches!” Melina shrieked. “Do something! Do something!”
Lorelei looked down at herself, and her stomach lurched. The dreadful creatures clung to her thighs, her stomach, her bosom. She gave a little cry of despondent horror and nearly swooned.
Holt caught her by the arms before she got to her knees. “Take it easy,” he said. “They’re not poisonous—they’re just ugly.”
Lorelei was too distraught to weep, or to worry that she was naked. It seemed a bothersome detail, in comparison to those disgusting things attached to her, drinking her very blood.
“Help me,” she pleaded.
“Stand still,” Holt said. He pulled off one leech, and then another, tossing them into the brush. Just down the bank, Rafe was squatting beside Melina, who was prone and squirming, performing the same task.
“Turn around,” Holt urged. “They’re all over your back and your—well, they’re all over you.”
“Oh, God,” Lorelei whimpered.
“I think I’ve just found religion,” Holt remarked.
“Don’t you dare tease me!”
He merely chuckled and went on plucking away the leeches. Each one clung tenaciously, and the pulling hurt, but Lorelei didn’t care. She just wanted the beastly globs gone.
“If Emmeline hears about this,” Rafe called merrily, “I’ll be sleeping in the bunkhouse until I’m older than Pa is now.”
Holt laughed. “I reckon it qualifies as an emergency.” Lorelei felt a leech let go of her left buttock, and wished the ground would open up and swallow her.
“Please hurry!” Melina wailed.
“Stop that squirming,” Rafe counseled.
At last, at last, the humiliating ordeal was over. Holt gave Lorelei a cursory inspection. “Good as new,” he said. “Where are your clothes?”
Lorelei’s face flamed. “There—that bundle beside the rock,” she said desperately. It seemed to her that Holt McKettrick took his sweet time fetching her nightgown, and he indulged himself in a long, brazen look at her before he handed it over.
“You were watching us bathe!” she accused, as soon as she’d pulled the garment over her head.
Melina, apparently free of leeches, sat shivering in the blanket from her bedroll.
“I swear we weren’t,” Rafe declared. “We were just up the trail a ways.”
“Lucky thing, too,” Holt said. He was trying not to grin, and he was a miserable failure at it. “If you’d had