Impact (3 page)

Chapter Four

“Tonight? Tomorrow?” Wren said. “Lori’s wedding is the day after tomorrow. We can’t miss the wedding.” That’s the reason Wren had gotten on the blasted plane to begin with. “What about your parents? And the wedding guests? They are going to be so worried.” She’d caused her friends and family too much worry over her short lifetime. Besides, she couldn’t spend the night with Skip out here in the wilds with a dead body, no bathroom, no bed, no coffee!

“Wren! Keep it together.”

She took a deep breath, held it until her lungs hurt and released it in a big huff. “Got it. Is there a plan?”

“Shelter. Chances are this front will bring our first snowfall. At any rate, it’s going to rain and get really cold.”

Colder than it already was? She’d forgotten how hostile this part of Alaska could be when it blew.

“I don’t want to sound insensitive, but what about Jim?” Were they going to spend the night next to a dead body?

Skip’s jaw tightened. “We need to move him.”

What about predators? She couldn’t bring herself to voice the thought, giving it power. But it was a serious probability. Who knew what lurked out there? She swung around, trying to see as far as she could with the drooping clouds. The tundra was pock-marked with alder bushes and scrubs. Anything could be hiding out there. Bears weren’t to bed for the winter yet.

She shivered and regarded Skip. His arm was swelling, his hand almost twice the normal size. “We need to brace your arm first.” She glanced around, took out Skip’s knife that she’d pocketed after cutting him down and sliced the seatbelt free from the plane. Now what to splint it with? Planes weren’t made of wood. She climbed back into the tail where the luggage was stowed.

A webbed netting held the bags in place upside down. She cut one side and worked her bag free. Tossing it to the middle of the plane, it slid to a stop on the ceiling/floor between the seats. She unzipped it and pulled out her curling iron.

“You got to be kidding?” Skip scoffed.

“It’s rigid. Got a better idea?”

In her bag, she also pulled out a water bottle and Tylenol. “Might want to start with this.”

“Got anything stronger?” he mumbled before tossing the pills back and shutting up.

“Want to bite down on something?”

“Just do it.” He ground his teeth together.

“Fine.” She climbed over her bag and carefully took his arm. It was a clean break, as near as she could tell between the elbow and wrist. She knew from experience that if they could immobilize it, the pain would lessen. “Brace yourself, this is going to hurt.”

“Talking about it isn’t helping.”

“Okay.” She took a deep breath and tightened her grip on his hand, moving the arm back into place the best she could. Skip did really well until she was almost done, and then he hollered, followed by cursing that was more colorful than anything she’d heard in jail.

She did her best to ignore it and do the job. She was good at that. Tunnel vision, her mother used to call it. Whatever. She focused, and when his arm looked as straight as she could get it, she made quick work of bracing it with the curling iron. But the seatbelt was proving troublesome. The fabric was slick and didn’t want to stay tight.
“This isn’t working.”

“Duct tape,” Skip gritted out. He pointed to the back. “There’s a toolkit. Any bush pilot worth his weight has duct tape.”

“Hold this, and don’t move it.” She didn’t want to go through that again.
She doubted he did either.

“Don’t worry.”

She regarded his pale Aleut skin, the sweat beading on his upper lip. Could you get sick with a broken arm? Infection? What if the bone had cut open blood vessels? An artery?

What if he died on her, too?

“Hey, I’m not going to die,” Skip growled.

Had she voiced that out loud?

“We’re both going to make it out of here alive. All we have to do is survive the night. We’ve lived through the worst.”

She didn’t agree. Surviving the night alone with Skip just might do her in.

“Stop thinking like that.”

He couldn’t still read her like a book, could he?

Damn it. She’d worked so hard on not letting her emotions play over her face like a movie. She needed space away from him, but the only space she was going to find was out there in the wide open wilderness.

And that would definitely kill her.

Chapter Five

Skip loved the vivid expressions on Wren’s face. He’d forgotten how fun it was to talk with her, be with her, and love her. She’d been the most open, emotionally free woman he’d ever known.

He wanted her back.

He’d needed alone time to do that. Being stuck somewhere on the bluffs of Bristol Bay in a plane wreck was more than he’d counted on. He certainly didn’t appreciate Jim’s death giving him that time.

Jim.

They needed to do something about him, but first they needed to see to Wren’s injuries.  She finished duct taping the curling arm to his arm, using his knife to cut the toe off one of her socks to protect his skin from the adhesive.

“I need to check that cut on your forehead,” Skip said, his fingers reaching up to smooth her hair back.

“It’s okay.” She jerked out of his reach.

He curled his fingers with regret that she didn’t want him to touch her. Surely, things weren’t that bad between them.

“The cut nee
ds to be cleaned and bandaged.”

“I can take care of it.”
She tightened her lips.

“How?” He gestured with his good arm, hitting the top of the seat hanging above them. “You see a bathroom? A mirror. Don’t be stu—”

“Don’t call me stupid.” Her expression shut down.

Ah crap. His tone was sorry when he spoke again. “I wasn’t calling you stupid. I was going to say stubborn. You’re stubborn as hell, Wren, but never stupid.” He remembered her dad and his constant verbal abuse. Skip had even confronted the bastard when they were teenagers, and her father had gone after Wren with words that sliced and stomped her struggling spirit. She’d been called stupid so many times in her life that she’d begun to believe it, which Skip believed was the reason she’d looked for an escape. And drugs had been her vehicle.

Wren’s gaze dropped to her hands. He wanted to reach out and enfold them in his. Maybe that would stop their shaking. But she had that prickly wall around her so he changed the subject back to the cut on her forehead. “Hand me that first aid kit, and let’s clean you up.” This time she didn’t argue.

She unclipped the first aid kit from where Jim had pointed out its location before they’d left King Salmon. That seemed d
ays ago rather than mere hours.

She set the kit between them and opened it. He reached in and found the antiseptic wipes. Only problem was that he couldn’t tear the plastic to get to the wipes. She didn’t say anything when he handed her the package, but her look spoke volumes. While she used the wipe to clean the dried blood off her face, he rummaged through the kit looking for anything that would help cover the wound. He laid out bandages, gauze, Neosporin, and tape. Wren finished with one wipe and went to grab another, but he was quicker and got to it first. “Let me.”

“I can do this.” She ground her teeth.

She really didn’t want him to touch her, but he was dying to get his hands on her. Even in this impersonal way. “You can’t see everything I can. Come on, there’s a lot we need to do. Arguing is a waste of time. It’s already getting darker than I’d like.”

She glanced out of the windows, noticing the black clouds smothering what daylight remained. Night would be coming early, way before they were ready for it. He just hoped the snow would hold off until they could get things situated
for the long, cold night ahead.

“Fine.” She huffed out a breath that fanned across his face, bringing the scent of mint. She must have chewed gum before getting on the plane. Did she still suffer from motion sickness? There was so much he wanted to reacquaint himself with about her.

He reached up with the wipe and began slowly cleaning away the dried blood around the cut. Since he’d somersaulted the plane, most of the blood had flowed into her hair. Without running water, there wasn’t a lot he could do about her hair. The blood melted into the dark strands, blending in. He concentrated on the cut. It was a few inches long, traveling back into her hairline. She’d have a scar, but one that would be easily hidden by her hair. The bleeding had stopped, coagulating over the cut, until he attempted to clean it, then it started to seep again.

“You really need stitches.” He glanced down at the first aid kit. It was stocked with the suppl
ies he needed to stitch her up.

“No way am I letting you stick a needle in me.” She moved back out of his reach.

“Don’t think I could sew you up right with only one wing working anyway. See if there aren’t some adhesive strips in there or super glue.” Many a time he’d super glued a cut closed. Worked great when you were constantly around the water and not close to medical facilities.

She rummaged through the contents, as he held the wipe over the seeping cut and tried not to be distracted by the faint scent of lemon verbena. She must still use the same body wash. He loved knowing she hadn’t changed so much, gave him hope that he might be able to reach her.

“I found them.” She tore open the package and held the strip up to him. He exchanged the wipe for the strip and, using his teeth to take the covering off the adhesive, placed one over the cut. He reached for another one that she had ready and did the same with the next.

“Neosporin.”

She handed him a gauze pad with Neosporin already on it, anticipating his needs. She could always do that, knowing what he needed before he asked. He’d never been so in tuned with a woman before, or since.

That insight of hers had been amazing in bed.

He placed the bandage over the cut, reaching for the length of tape she had ready for him. Once the cut was covered, he became aware of how close he was to her. His head bent over hers, his fingers lightly stroked the strands away from her face. She glanced up at him, her eyes wide.

He was helpless not to lean in. Her breath caught, and her eyelids fluttered. Her lips parted, and her tongue nervously wet them.

He groaned.

The sound gallivanted her into motion. She jerked away, scampering back out of his one-armed reach.

Damn it. He’d been so close to tasting her again. Now she looked at him as though frightened. What reason did sh
e have to be frightened of him?

“Wren—”

“We need to get things done before the storm hits.”

He wanted to say to hell with everything, grab her and yank her back into his arms where she never should have left. If she hadn’t—

No point in going down that road.

Time to get things battened down. Once their shelter was secure, and Jim taken care of, they had all night to become reacquainted.

He glanced out the window. “We’re going to need a flashlight.” He’d also need Wren’s help with Jim. One handed wasn’t going to get a two hundred pound-plus man, dead weight, out of this plane. “Did you see a tarp or anything back there?” Skip asked. They needed to cover Jim with something. Even though, the body was a shell, and Jim wouldn’t feel the cold, it went against everything in Skip to just lay the man out in the storm.  He hoped Jim’s spirit was someplace warm and comfortable—nestled in the loving arms of his ancestors.

Skip was almost jealous of Jim as another blustery gust, this one carrying needles of rain, shook the plane.

Wren glanced at Jim, still hanging upside down in the pilot’s seat. She swallowed hard. “I’ll check.”

He had to give it to her. Most women would be squeamish over what they were about to do. But Wren didn’t show any signs of it, and he was watching her every move. This new, stronger, confident woman intrigued him more than his memories. If he wasn’t careful, he’d get caught staring.

“How about this?” She held up a Mylar blanket she pulled out of the survival kit. “There are four, enough for us and
...
him.”

“Okay.” Unconventional, since a survival blanket was beyond helping Jim, but then this was Alaska. The land of the unconventional.

Wren handed him the small folded silver blanket and then crawled back toward her suitcase and began systematically going through the contents.

He caught a glimpse of black underwear and a hot pink bra before she found what she was looking for.

“I knew I’d need these.” She held up a pair of Under Armour.

“Good thinking.” Question though, was she going to strip in front of him to get them on under her clothes? She wouldn’t get the full effects of the garment unless it lay next to her skin.

Man, what he wouldn’t give to lay next to her skin.

“Could you, um, turn around?” She did a cute little circle motion with her finger.

He didn’t want to turn around. He did, though it was a struggle in the small confines of the plane, and was rewarded with her image in the broken window. He really should shut his eyes. But he wasn’t that much of a gentleman. Hell, he wasn’t even close. She whipped off her sweatshirt and the sexy navy tank top underneath, her nipples hard beads against her icy blue bra. Her honeyed skin had him licking his lips. She covered up too quickly. He wanted to see more and had to bite his tongue to keep from asking. Then she shimmied out of her jeans and his mouth watered.

Hips rounded and lush, soft and creamy thighs, little dimples at her knees. He wasn’t going to make it. She wiggled into the tight black Under Armour and followed that with her jeans. He really shouldn’t have watched.
Now he ached to touch.

“Okay, you can turn around.”

No he couldn’t, not with the kind of wood he had branching out. “I need some fresh air.” And the arctic wind would do the trick of settling things back down to size. What the freaking hell was he doing?

He had a broken arm.

Like that would stop him. Okay, they were in a fight for their lives. One of them was already dead, sharing the same breathing space. Well, his and Wren’s breathing space anyway. God, he was fucked up.

He should be more concerned with how they were going to get out of here instead of how
he was going to get inside her.