Allison awoke to the distinct feeling that she had just eaten a huge chunk of cotton wool and most of it was still clinging to her tongue and the roof of her mouth. Somewhere above her, a dehydrating sun blazed down, filtered from her face by a circular fabric dome.
She tried to raise her arms but found herself loosely swaddled in something soft that would have been too warm if it had not been for a constant coolness at her back. And she was moving, gliding backward it seemed, silently, smoothly to the sound of moving water.
An overwhelming panic engulfed her and she began to toss about, desperate to be free of her restraints. She had to be dreaming.
"Easy." The word fell on her ears as the improvised blind fell from her face. "You'll upset us."
A mid-morning sun glaring out of a blank blue sky blinded her for a moment. Then she was being pulled gently to a sitting position to face a dark silhouette topped with a Snowy River hat that could only be Heath Oakes.
As her mind and vision settled, she was astounded to find herself ensconced in a sleeping bag, sitting in the bottom of a moving canoe. The Tilly hat that had been protecting her face from the sun lay in her lap. Seated in the pilot's seat at the stern, his paddle resting across the gunwales, a suggestion of a grin on his lips, was her nemesis.
"Where am I?" she rasped, then coughed. Her throat felt like sandpaper.
"Floating down one of the quieter stretches of the North Passage at the moment," he said calmly. "Here," he reached under his seat and pulled out a canteen. "You sound as if you could use a drink...of water."
He unscrewed the cap as she freed her arms from the sleeping bag. When he extended the container toward her, she snatched it from his hand. Throwing back her head, she gobbled its contents. The ice cold water was the best she'd ever tasted and she couldn't get enough.
"Easy," he said again and reached to take it from her. "You'll make yourself sick."
When she ignored his advice, he wrenched it out of her hands.
"Give it back!" she cried and lunged. Hobbled by the sleeping bad she fell headlong into his arms. The canoe rolled wildly, sides all but dipping below water level with each buck.
"I said, take it easy!"
With a few swift, deft moves he managed not only to reseat her firmly in the bottom but also to save the canteen and its contents and stabilize the canoe.
Chastened by their brush with a dunking, Allison remained where he had plopped her amidships, the sleeping bag about her hips.
"What have you done?" she breathed looking about at the water and wilderness that surrounded them.
"I've shanghaied you," he said, calmly recapping the canteen and taking up his paddle.
"Kidnapped, you mean..." she said, remnants of the cotton wool sensation still in her mouth.
"No, shanghaied. I plan to see you work your passage. Not a very admirable thing to do but how else could I get you out here with me to show you what your grandfather loved and wanted us to preserve."
"And just exactly what did you do while I was out cold?" she raged.
"Nothing except load you into a sleeping bag and then into this canoe..." he said calmly, holding his paddles steady in the water to turn their craft slightly to the left. "Check your clothes if you're worried. I'm no pervert. I prefer my ladies awake and participating. And I've never been turned on by one who's inebriated."
"Drunk, you mean!" she yelled. "And I was not drunk!"
Her rage had brought out a pounding headache and she caught her head between her hands. "Take me back to the lodge right now! Otherwise, I'll have you charged with kidnapping!"
"Really? I'm shaking my boots. You'll feel better after lunch and a couple of aspirin."
She clenched her fists and sucked in her lips. "Don't you dare laugh at me! I'm deadly serious!"
"Well, then, that's too bad. Because I can't take you back. We're a good six miles downriver from the lodge, deep into roadless wilderness, and with the force of the freshet that's pushing us, Superman couldn't paddle us back upstream."
He dipped his paddle deep and nosed the canoe to the left. "Hang on. We're heading into some rapids."
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