THE PERFECT TEN (Boxed Set)

weren’t brown or gray-skinned and the leaves weren’t green. They were every color but. If not for working so hard to stay upright, she’d pause to admire the wicked colors, but not right now.
    With Rayen dragged along on a hunting expedition that might involve killing croggles and Tony stuck in that prison unit, Gabby had to find out as much as she could while she was semi-free. Getting Jaxxson to talk at all would be tough, but he might if she started with a subject that interested him.
    She asked in a scratchy voice, “How many kids are here in Camp Croggle?”
    “Water,” he ordered again.
    Not a lively conversationalist.
    She made a face at his back, or tried to but her face muscles weren’t cooperating. Why should she be surprised at Jaxxson? He was just another self-consumed brainiac healer, like her father, right down to the bedside manners of a turnip. Only her dad was a physician, not some wannabe doc like Jaxxson.
    A real doctor would have realized the reason she hadn’t kept drinking was because she couldn’t. Getting the lip of the water bag he’d hung around her neck up to her mouth became more impossible as her condition deteriorated.
    Her swollen arms were so tight they didn’t want to bend and neither did her puffed-up fingers that felt as though the skin would split any minute. But her throat ached with a dry, burning heat so she fumbled with the bag made of strange, aqua-colored leather hanging from a woven grass lanyard. She managed to lift the opening to her lips.
    And pour some water in her mouth.
    The rest ran down her chin and chest, dribbling over the front of her dress that was dirty from being dragged through the jungle. The multi-colored cloth would hide most of the wet stains. Dropping the water sack to lay against her chest again, she swiped a fat hand at her face and missed half the water still trickling down. Sort of like getting a shot of Novocain in her arms, hands and face...but without the pain relief.
    She focused on Jaxxson’s back walking ahead of her and asked, “Where’s this healing hut?” 
    “We’re close.”
    “Where did Rayen, Mathias and Callan go?”
    Not a word. The old silent treatment?
    Being the new kid at a new school every six to eight months when her nanosurgeon-dad-turned-consultant accepted new contracts with different national and international medical programs meant a lot of stares and silence from her peers. You’d think after that, and being ignored by her dad for the past six years, she’d have gotten used to being treated as an inanimate object. A useless dead weight.
    But she hadn’t.
    On the other hand, she should be glad Jaxxson hadn’t looked back at her the whole time she’d followed him since she could probably beat out the Creature Of The Deep for a scary-looking award. Her filthy arms and face were swollen and streaked with red lines, hair stuck out unintentionally all over the place and sweat glued her clothes to her body.
    Not that she should care, but grouchy up ahead looked like he’d stepped out of a television ad for sexy shaving cream with that sarong wrapped around his waist, his nicely-defined chest, smooth, olive-tone skin over an appealing masculine face and taut muscles that flexed across his back.
    Wait. Back muscles?
    That had nothing to do with shaving cream ads.
    The infection must be frying her brain. Had to be the only reason she’d consider anyone who was even remotely related to medicine attractive. Underneath all that prime packaging lived the cold heart of an arrogant male with a God complex.
    She’d met plenty over the years.
    Sons of a few of her father’s associates had taken an interest in her, until they clued into the fact she wasn’t her mother, the classic trophy wife.
    Gabby had set her sights on being anything but. The more anti-trophy-worthy she could make herself, the better.
    Jaxxson came to a sudden halt in front of a massive tree that reminded her of giant California redwoods you could drive a car through. Except this one’s striped bark had a tiger-skin look to it and, way up high, polka-dotted yellow leaves flickered beneath that crimson-red daytime moon. But the moon had trekked some from one side of the sky to the other since she’d first seen it, like the arc of a sun going from horizon to horizon.
    She kept plodding along to close the distance between her and Jaxxson. Why had he stopped here?
    He turned with his arms crossed, as if waiting on an errant child. His dark-brown