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Page 56
Ignoring the throbbing at her temples, Mariah held her breath as the man stared down at her. She could see now that his eyes were a light shade of brown, the color of dry, solid earthor of turbulent rivers.
A few moments before, they had been soft, almost caring. The sweet and troubled eyes of the Thorn of the screenplay. She had wanted to take his hand, to tell him that all that had hurt him had not been his fault.
But then, quite suddenly, those eyes had grown chilly. Perhaps she had imagined their earlier warmth.
And now, he stared at her with apparent incredulity, with his thick, dark brows creating formidable arches.
She wanted to shout at him, "Why do you seem so surprised? I'm supposed to work for you. It was in the screenplay." Instead, she remained silent, watchful, ambivalent.
When he turned away without saying anything, though, she hurriedly said, "I've nowhere to go. I haven't even a change of clothes. You can't leave me stranded here in the woods."
But she didn't believe her words. He could abandon her.
The last thing she wanted was to stay around this travesty of the man she'd come to know from the screenplay. That Thorn had been kind, heroic. This one, though he'd come through in the end, had nearly been forced into it by her actions, and then he'd done so ungraciously.
But what choice did she have? Even if Pierce had sent for her from somewhere downstream, she'd no way of getting there, no way of finding him even if she could scrounge up transportation.
Where was Pierce, that ancient son-of-a-gun? He'd have answers to give about what had happened to her. Was she really, incredibly, in the past, or was her telltale headache a sign that she was lying somewhere injured, dreaming this entire episode?
If that were so, her dreams should follow the screenplay, shouldn't they? But things were unfolding so differently here.
She looked around. The two still stood on the packed-dirt riverbank. The air smelled damp, and the water gurgled be-

 
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