“For warmth, yeah, but we survived without a fire for two nights, so we know it isn’t strictly necessary. I was thinking about using the fire to signal our location. We can’t do it now because the wind dissipates the smoke, and I’ll be damned if I’ve found any location that’s completely sheltered, considering how it swirls.”
Bailey turned and looked in the same direction where he was looking. The day was clear, the air so cold and crisp that details stood out. The massive mountains reared against the sky, white peaks outlined by pure blue. She could see the snow line, and below that rich green, which promised warmer temperatures and at least the possibility of food. “How far down do we have to go?”
He shrugged. “I don’t know. I’m hoping the snow line will be far enough down. This is a federal wilderness area, so the forestry service monitors it for fires. Anything that seems to be man-made gets checked out.”
So they could be rescued in a day or two, depending on how long it took them to get out of the winds. Two days ago, even yesterday, she would have been ecstatic at the possibility, but now…now it was too late. Two days ago she had been heart-whole. Oh, being warm and well-fed would be nice, but what if, once they were no longer bound together by necessity, Cam’s interest in her waned? She didn’t trust emotion anyway, and she certainly didn’t trust it under emergency conditions.
She was torn, and she hated that. On the one hand, the sooner she could get some separation from him the better. On the other hand, oh dear God, she wanted this to last. She wanted to believe in a happily-ever-after, a love that lasted a lifetime. She knew people who seemed to love each other that long, the way Jim had loved Lena, but a niggling doubt had always kept her from buying into the concept. Maybe Jim had loved Lena, but what if Lena hadn’t loved Jim? Jim had been mega-rich; maybe Lena had looked around but not seen anything better. Bailey didn’t like being that cynical, but she’d seen too much to believe in the fairytale version of love.
Love was a crapshoot, Bailey thought, and she’d never been a gambler. She had no idea what to do, how to handle this situation. Part of her wanted to just let go and enjoy being with him as long as it lasted; after all, it was unrealistic to expect a lifetime of happiness, and probably impossible to boot. Only an idiot was always happy.
Was the period of happiness worth the unhappiness that followed a breakup? Most people seemed to think so, because they got on the love train time and time again. After getting tossed off they’d mope around a while, maybe act out and do something stupid, but eventually they were back at that station, ticket in hand, ready to board. She hadn’t thought the momentary gain was worth the pain, so she’d watched the train circle around without her. Now she’d been ambushed and tossed into the baggage car, and no longer seemed to have a choice.
Cam trailed a finger down her cheek. “You’ve wandered off. You’ve been staring into space for five minutes.”
Wrenched back to the here and now, her mind was momentarily blank. “Ah…I was thinking about what happens when we go home.” She mentally applauded herself. Good save! That was a very reasonable response, under the circumstances.
He looked grim. “I can’t tell you. Without evidence of what he did, probably nothing, and we can’t go around making charges without something to back them up or he can sue us for slander.”
“He’d love that. That would give him a public forum to air all the things he’d said about me, and you can bet Tamzin would back him up.” She felt sick at the thought of a lawsuit that would dredge up every ounce of muck Seth could find or fabricate. She wasn’t afraid of real muck, because people who didn’t take chances seldom got dirty. There were no shady dealings in her past, no affairs with married lovers, no drugs, no police record of any kind.
None of that would stop Seth, though. He could probably put on the stand fifty people who would swear they’d slept with her, or done drugs with her, or that she’d told them of a sleazy plan to marry a dying man and con him into signing over control of his fortune to her. In fact, probably the only reason he hadn’t done that already was that control of the trust funds hadn’t been in Jim’s will, where it could be challenged. Jim had set up the funds before he died—before they married, in fact—and put her in charge, and her performance had been excellent. Seth would look like a fool challenging that. Moreover, the monthly disbursement was very respectable. Nothing compared to the whole of the trust fund, of course, but very respectable.
“I think we have to let him know that we know,” Cam said. “And have told our suspicions to a third party, so if anything else suspicious happens to you, the finger will point straight to him. Unless he’s gone crazy on meth or something like that, he’ll understand that there’s nothing he can do.” He leaned over and kissed her, then briefly caught her lower lip between his teeth and gave a gentle tug. “I also suggest you move in with me, so he doesn’t know exactly where to find you. You’d have to be nuts to stay in that house all alone.”
Her heartbeat skittered with excitement, and her stomach clenched with dread. Bemused both by his proposition and her mixed reaction to it, she said, “There’s a big gap between kissing a few times and moving in together, Justice. Moving makes sense. Moving in with you, not so much.”
“I think it makes a lot of sense,” he said mildly. “But we’ll talk about it later. Right now we need to get busy or we’ll have to sleep in the open.”
He dug a pit for the fire while she gathered rocks and wood for both the fire and constructing the shelter. The fallen tree provided most of the wood, because it had been down long enough that the wood was dry on the inside and the branches easily snapped off. They followed the same procedure as before with the battery, and within half an hour small flames were merrily licking at the firewood.
Because there were two of them working, and because Cam had a much better idea what he was doing than Bailey had had that first day, the shelter quickly came together. The angle of the tree where it lay across the large rock created, at the highest point, a space large enough that they could sit up. Cam had positioned the fire so some of the heat would radiate against the rock, and thus into the shelter. Sheltering the fire from the wind was still a problem, so he stacked limbs in a berm on the other side of the fire, building it higher until the flames stopped dancing so wildly.
The end of the job saw them both a little sweaty and a lot dirty. The dirt factor made Bailey’s nose wrinkle, but it was the sweat that was dangerous. Cam sat by the fire while she crawled into their new “home,” complete with the pieces of foam she’d insisted they bring along—at least they were almost weightless—to clean up and dry off as best she could.
When she crawled out, once again bundled in layers and layers of clothing, Cam was carefully placing pinecones around the edges of the fire. “Wow,” she said. “Now the campsite will smell all Christmasy. That’s a touch I hadn’t thought of.”
“Smart-ass. After the cones are roasted, we can eat the nuts out of them. I wish I’d remembered this yesterday.”
“Really? Pine nuts? They really come from pinecones?” Funny how she’d always thought pine nuts were just called that for some unknown reason. Crouching beside the fire, she poked at the cones. Who would have thought? She was ecstatic at the thought of food—warm food, at that. Nuts, any kind of nuts, would go a long way toward easing their hunger.
“They really do. Watch them and don’t let them catch on fire,” Cam instructed as he slid into the shelter. “I’m going to get dried off before this sweat freezes on me.”
She sat down and held her hands toward the fire. After a moment she realized she was listening intently to the sounds Cam made as he undressed and briskly dried off, imagining him naked even though she knew he wasn’t, any more than she had been. Had he listened to her moving around as she removed individual pieces of clothing, and imagined her naked? Or had he been too busy gathering up the pinecones?
Abruptly she realized that their cleaning up could almost be construed as a prelude to sex, as
if they had been preparing themselves for each other. She hadn’t been uncomfortable with him at all during the three nights they’d already spent together, but sex hadn’t been on the table then. Now it was. And while sex in itself didn’t make her uncomfortable, the prospect of sex with him was enough to make her nervous and self-conscious.
Maybe she was reading more into the situation than was really there. After all, he was still recovering from a fairly serious head injury. He was a smart man; he knew he shouldn’t overexert himself right now.
Uh-huh, she thought wryly. That’s why he’d been pulling a sled through the snow all day.
On the other hand, he had been pulling a sled all day. He was probably exhausted. Sex was probably the last thing on his mind.
Sure. This was the same man who’d had a hard-on the very first day, when he’d been half-dead, and had sported one several times since then. From what she could tell, sex was the last thing on his mind…before he went to sleep, and it was the first thing on his mind when he woke up.
He’d been very low key, she realized. He hadn’t been pushing her at all. The thing was, he wasn’t a low-key personality. He was calm, but he was decisive and determined. He made up his mind to do something, then he did it come hell or high water. That wasn’t low key.
The question was, did she want to have sex with him? Yes! And no. She was terrified of things going that far between them, but her objection was on a mental and emotional level. On a purely physical level, she wanted his weight on top of her and his hips wedged between her legs. She wanted to feel him inside her.
She had to decide: yes or no? If she said no, he’d stop. She trusted him absolutely on that part.
A smart woman would say no. A cautious woman would say no. Bailey had always been smart and cautious.
Until now. She glanced at the shelter’s entrance, and every instinct in her whispered: yes.
29
CAM HAD ANOTHER IDEA: HE EMPTIED OUT THE METAL first-aid kit again, and filled it with snow, then placed it on the hot coals at the edge of the fire and added a handful of pine needles. The tea was supposed to be nutritious, he said, and something hot to drink would go a long way toward their comfort.
Bailey was so on edge she could barely sit still. Half an hour ago the idea of a hot drink would have had her in raptures, but now she couldn’t wrench her thoughts from the coming night. Automatically she pulled a pinecone apart as he’d shown her, searching for the small, dark nuts; not every individual leaflet of the cone had one. In the first cone she’d found maybe ten or twelve, but they were so small that didn’t amount to much. The good news was, the cones were plentiful. Roasting them, then collecting the nuts, took some time, but it wasn’t as if they had pressing engagements elsewhere.
Finally they had collected enough nuts for both of them to feel as if they’d actually eaten something. To her surprise, even though she ate no more than what she could cup in her palm, she was surprisingly full. They needed more roasting, so the taste wasn’t all that great, but she didn’t care; food was food. She wasn’t at the grub-eating stage yet, but for the first time she knew what it was to be hungry enough that grubs weren’t out of the question.
As the snow in the first-aid box melted, Cam added more until there was enough liquid for both of them to have about a cup. She watched the water take on a pale green tint as the pine needles steeped.
“They teach this stuff in the Scouts, huh?” she finally asked, just to break the silence. “How long were you in?”
“All the way, Cub Scouts through Eagle Scouts. It was something fun to do, and all that prior experience came in handy when I had to study escape and evasion techniques in case my plane was shot down.”
“Shot down?” She stared at him. “I thought you flew a tanker.”
“I did. That doesn’t mean an enemy fighter wouldn’t send an air-to-air missile at me if the chance came up. Think about it. You take out a tanker, there are a lot of fighters that won’t be able to stay in the air. That’s why a tanker isn’t up there all on its lonesome.”
She felt sick to her stomach at the mental image she had of a missile striking a refueling tanker. How likely was it anyone would survive that size explosion and fire?
She’d also thought flying a tanker was one of the safer jobs for a pilot to have. Now she saw it as sitting in front of a huge gas can, with morons throwing matches at it. How did military wives stand the stress? And exactly what kind of nutcase was Cam’s ex-wife that she couldn’t stand it when he got out of the military?
Unaware of where her thoughts had gone, he stuck his finger in the tea and quickly jerked it back out. “I think that’s hot enough,” he said. She passed him the cap from the deodorant can and he quickly dipped it into the gently steaming liquid, getting it about half full before carefully passing it back to her.
Cautiously she took a sip. It tasted the way she expected pine needles to taste: green and piney, slightly bitter. She didn’t care. Beautiful, wonderful, welcome heat spread through her insides as she swallowed, and she closed her eyes in bliss. “Oh, God, that feels good,” she moaned. She took another sip, then extended the cup to him. “Try it.”
“I noticed you said it ‘feels good,’ not that it tastes good,” he said as he took the cup and drank. The same expression of pleasure that she imagined she’d worn spread across his face. He wrapped his fingers around the heated plastic and sighed. “You were right on target.”
He dipped again and they shared that cup, too. “Here’s to the Boy Scouts,” she said, lifting the cup in a little salute before passing it to him.
Feeling warmer than they had in four days, and with their hunger pains temporarily banished, they sat and watched the sun slide down the sky. Nothing about this felt unusual, she realized. She had acclimated, not just to the altitude but to him, and being alone with him. Television, shopping, doing market analysis on her computer—that all seemed to belong to another world, another life. Life had very quickly boiled down to the basics: food and shelter.
“I would say I could get used to this,” she commented, “but I’d be lying.”
His lips curved. “You don’t think you’ll ever be the outdoor type?”
“It’s okay in small doses, like going rafting on vacation. But I want plenty of food, I want a tent, I want a sleeping bag. I want a way to leave when I get tired of it. This survival stuff is for the birds.”
“It was fun when I was a kid, but I wasn’t freezing cold, I didn’t have a concussion, and no one was practicing her sewing on me—without anesthesia.”
She gave him a quick look. “You weren’t screaming,” she pointed out.
“That doesn’t mean it was anything I’d recommend.”
The Ace bandage wrapped around his head was dirty, but with luck that meant it had prevented any dirt from getting to the cut. He hadn’t suffered any fever at all, which meant there was no infection. All in all, she felt proud of the job she’d done taking care of him.
He reached up and touched the Ace bandage. “Think I could lose this, now?”
She shrugged. “It’s been keeping your head warm.”
“It’s been annoying the hell out of me, too. I can tie something else around my head. By now, a smaller bandage will do.”
Because she agreed, she unwrapped the bandage and removed the gauze pads that covered the wound. All the swelling was gone, and though he sported a huge bruise on his forehead and the sutured cut itself was reminiscent of Frankenstein’s monster, he seemed to be healing fairly well. She pulled one of the aloe wipes from the pack and was gingerly dabbing at the cut, trying to remove some dried blood. He bore her ministrations for about a minute. “Give me that,” he finally said with a growl of impatience, taking the wipe from her and vigorously scrubbing it through his hair.
“Itching, huh?”
“Like a son of a bitch.” The wipe came away rust-colored by the blood that had dried in his hair. Most of it had been washed away by the mouthwash she’d poured on hi
s head, but obviously not all. He used another wipe to make certain he’d gotten it all out, which meant that his head was very damp by the time he finished and he had to use a flannel shirt to towel dry his hair before it froze. Bailey reached for the first-aid supplies, but he shook his head. “Leave that until morning. It’ll be fine tonight.”
They finished the pine needle tea, and he used a stick to nudge the first-aid box off the hot coals. An idea niggled at her. She got another shirt, used it to pick up the box, and quickly wrapped the fabric around it.
“People used to heat bricks and wrap them in flannel, then put them between the sheets to get the bed warm,” she said as she crawled into the shelter with her makeshift bed warmer. They had dumped all the spare clothing they used as cover in the shelter and she quickly arranged everything in the layers that worked best for keeping them warm, putting the heated bundle in the middle.
She’d been sleeping with her boots on but now she worked them off, sighing with relief as she flexed her feet and ankles, then she slipped her feet under the first-aid box. Warmth immediately began seeping through the two pairs of socks she wore.
Cam crawled in behind her. Seeing what she’d done, he laughed and began unlacing his leather overshoes, pulling his shoes off with them. His shoulder bumped hers as he sat beside her, leaning against the rock at their backs, their feet nestled together.
Her heartbeat kicked into a higher gear. Their conversation had been mundane, but beneath the calm surface she was aware of the constant sizzle of desire. When their fingers touched as they passed the cup back and forth, or when she’d touched his face as she unwrapped the Ace bandage, she had trembled with the need for more. She’d wanted to twine their fingers together; she’d wanted to lay her palm against his bristly jaw and feel the strength of the bone beneath his skin. She wanted to feel his arms closing around her, tugging her close against him the way he had during the nights.
She had spent her lifetime never feeling quite safe, and she hadn’t realized it until she slept in his arms. It made no sense that she’d feel that way with him, because she’d never before been in such danger, but there it was. She fit with him, like two pieces of a puzzle locking together.