Off the Map (Winter Rescue #2) (10 page)

“I’m sorry, guys. We can’t fit any more people inside.” Carrie held up her hands and laughed, bearing the two slips of paper with Max and Ace’s names. “Between Scott, me, Jenga, and the guy from the Colville group, it’s going to be packed as it is.”

Although he never would have said so out loud, Scott was glad his closest friends were the lottery winners. He appreciated that so many people were willing to step up and show their support, but these guys were his inner circle. His family. He needed them more than he cared to admit.

But then, Carrie had probably rigged it that way. It was the sort of thing she would do—lie and cheat and break the rules—and all for his benefit.

She looked radiant, as usual, this time dressed for a rescue mission in several bulky layers. Thermals and swishy snow pants, her clothes were much more functional than fashionable. Even though he loved the sight of Carrie in jeans, or dressed up for a date, or wearing nothing at all, this was his favorite version of her. She was always happiest on a rescue, and she always glowed coming down from a long shift at work. She lived for this kind of thing—the high adrenaline and drama of other people’s misfortunes, yes, but also the chance to do something to help them.

His eyes met hers across the crowded meeting room, and all the noise and people faded into the periphery, leaving just the two of them. For one brief moment, there was no malicious intent in her face, no gleam that signaled she was coming in for the kill. In fact, she smiled, and he felt trapped inside it, even now. She was nothing to him—no longer his other half, neither his lover nor his friend—but he was as susceptible to her charms as he’d always been.

Susceptible.
Right. Who was he kidding? He fucking loved her, and there didn’t seem to be anything he could do about it.

She started moving toward him then, parting the crowd of well-meaning SAR team members, stopping briefly to murmur something to Newman before finally reaching his side.

“Scott,” she said, her voice difficult to read. But then she nodded at his torso, and there was no doubt about her current thought process. “Are you sure now’s the best time to be taking that out for an inaugural spin?”

He crossed his arms defensively over the red flannel vest, which now smelled of the light lavender fabric softener that seeped into everything Carrie wore. Nostalgia or paranoia, he couldn’t decide, but something had driven him to put it on before he left the house. “Every good luck talisman has to start somewhere.”

She narrowed her eyes. “Is this some kind of test?”

“No test.”

“A trap?”

“It’s not a trap,” he said carefully. “It’s a fresh start. A new beginning. I figured I owed the vest that much after all we’ve been through together.”

“What you…and the vest have been through together?”

He nodded.

“You’re giving
the vest
a second chance?”

He nodded again, even though her nostrils flared a clear warning.

“Scott, you cross your fingers when you tell a lie. I’ve seen you literally toss salt over your shoulder to ward off evil spirits. You’re the most superstitious man I know. You’re really going to toss all that aside on a whim and a chance to bait me even more?”

It wasn’t a whim, and he wasn’t trying to bait her. He wanted… He sighed. He didn’t know
what
he wanted. That was the problem. He wanted Carrie and he wanted Mara and he wanted to know how he could make this knot in his chest go away. Sixteen years of walking on the right side of fate certainly hadn’t done anything to loosen it.

“What does it matter?” he said. “Lucky vest, unlucky vest, bare ass naked—it’s not going to make a difference what I wear. Isn’t that what you’re always saying? That the outcome of this mission will be the same no matter what?”

“Well, that’s not strictly true. If you take the bare ass naked route, I think we can expect an unfortunate outcome.” She cast a pointed look from head to toe, lingering on the part no man cared to subject to frostbite. “And
I’m
not going to be the one volunteering to keep you warm out there. You’ll have to ask Ace. I hear he likes to snuggle.”

Scott laughed. Here he was, about to embark on a doomed mission in an unlucky vest with a woman he’d given every reason to hate him, and he laughed. That was the thing about Carrie. She could make even the worst moments feel like nothing more than temporary setbacks.

“Carrie, I—”

“I didn’t wash the vest to hurt you.” She stopped him before he had a chance to finish formulating his thoughts, and he could only be grateful for the interruption. He wasn’t sure what his thoughts were anymore. “I was trying to help.”

“I know.”

“And I’m sorry for how I acted before, back at my apartment.” The animated lines of her face smoothed away, leaving only the soft curves of her cheekbones and the perfect bow of her lips, filling him with an aching he couldn’t name. “I was mad.”

“
Was?
”

“Was. Am. Will continue to be for the foreseeable future.” She paused, and he knew it was his turn to apologize back, but he had no idea where to begin. He couldn’t just say he was sorry for a few days of bad behavior and walk away with a clean slate. His sins went soul-deep, reached even further than the day they’d first met. “I’m only saying this because I want you to know that I won’t let the way I feel about you affect my performance out there. I’m going to fly you as close to Mara as I can. We’re going to cover every inch of ground out there. And we’re going to find her. Okay?”

She finished her declaration by reaching for the front panels of his vest. He thought for a moment she was going to pull him in for a kiss—and he thought for an even longer moment that he couldn’t think of anything he wanted more—but she secured the zipper with a girlfriend-like efficiency and stepped back.

“Thank you,” he managed, though he had no idea what he was thanking her for. He should have been grateful for her professionalism and her willingness to put their differences aside for Mara—and in many ways, he was. But as she turned to Ace with instructions to catch a few hours of rest on one of the cots in the corner as they waited for the sun to rise, Scott felt nothing but guilt.

Because in that moment, with his beloved dog’s life on the line, he could only hear the haunting echo of
I won’t let the way I feel about you affect my performance out there
. And he could only wish that instead of risking her life
in spite
of her feelings, she might be willing to risk it
because
of them.

Which made him the very worst person of all.

Chapter Six

Ace snored like a pig with three snouts. Max tossed and turned on his cot so many times it was a wonder the bearings held. Only Scott slept quietly in the wee hours before dawn, snuggled up on the floor with a golden retriever possessed of the most gorgeous eyelashes known to human- or dog-kind.

Lucky dog.

Carrie got up from her own makeshift bed as quietly as she could, fearful of waking the three slumbering men who would be her only safety net for the next few days. Sleep, always elusive after seven cups of coffee, was even more of a tease when her nerves were on such high alert. Even though they had another hour or so before their crack-of-dawn departure time, there was no way she was getting any rest.

There wasn’t much privacy down in the church basement, so she slung her pack over her shoulder and made for the hallway, where she could at least stop staring longingly at the culvert of Scott’s body. She missed being the one to curl up in that spot, basking in his warmth and hoping for a belly rub.

With a sigh, she dropped to the hallway floor and rooted around in her bag until she extracted Voodoo Scott. He was looking a little worse for wear as of late, his smile now halfway across his face and his vest starting to unravel at the edges, but there was no denying this little guy had power.

Not only had she managed to get the
real
Scott to apologize and kiss her with this doll, but she’d also managed to wrest him into the red vest again. That was some freaky shit right there. When she’d seen Scott come down those basement stairs earlier, looking lost and scared and wearing the signature red flannel she’d thought he’d die rather than touch again, she’d realized there might be more to this cursing stuff than she previously thought.

Besides—she could either sit here believing in
something
, or she could picture the many ways her life was about to take a turn for the irretrievable worse. And they needed all the luck they could get out there. It couldn’t hurt, right?

She took a deep breath and offered an apology to the sanity she once possessed.

“I am going to fly in a helicopter,” Voodoo Scott announced in a deep, gravelly voice. “I am going to come out of it unscathed along with my entire team of compatriots.”

She marched Scott along the carpeted floor, but the voodoo action didn’t seem as effective without some kind of stage set around him. Unfortunately, there were no toy helicopters hiding in her SAR pack, and unless she wanted him to feast on trail mix or get busy with a rubber band, she didn’t have much in the way of playacting supplies.

Her hand hit the spikes of her travel hairbrush, and she pulled it out with interest. Her thick head of hair had a way of casting off the excess in disconcerting amounts whenever she brushed it, and there was more than a healthy handful waiting in the teeth. Since she had nothing but time while her boys slept in the next room over, she gave herself over to pulling the hair out of the brush and shaping it into a makeshift dog. It reminded her of those
Little House on the Prairie
books, when Laura Ingalls Wilder had to twist straw to burn for fuel during the long winter.

Nothing to see here, folks. Just a couple of tough-as-nails women, facing the bitter cold, trying to survive on straw sticks and hair dolls. Move it along.

“What a sweet doggie you are,” she crooned to the lump of hair as soon as she was done. It had legs and a head, which was good enough for her. “You must be very cold and tired out there, but I want you to hang on for a few more days. Can you do that, girl? Can you be brave for just a little while longer?”

The dog whimpered its agreement.

“Voodoo Scott is on his way—I promise. And he’s very eager to see you again.” She grabbed the doll and made a pretense of having him look for his long-lost clump of hair. After a pointedly short search, they met near a wall outlet. Naturally, Voodoo Scott was overjoyed to find his dog unharmed, and they rolled around on the floor for a while, enjoying the ecstatic reunion she was determined to give them both before this week was through.

“My one true love!” Scott cried. “Now I can be at peace.”

She wanted to add something about his other true love and the miraculous return to his senses that would bring Barbie Carrie back into the scene, but she refrained. As tempting as the idea was, she didn’t want this particular brand of pretend affection. She wasn’t so desperate for love that she’d resort to a relationship crafted of make believe.

But just barely.

“What are you doing out here?”

At the sound of Scott’s voice—his real voice, not the overly deep baritone she adopted when she was trying to sound like him—Carrie squeaked. Fortunately, the sound distracted him enough that she was able to shove hairball Mara under one leg and Voodoo Scott a little farther north, securely under her right butt cheek.
Oh, God.
He was going to suffocate under there.

“I couldn’t sleep,” she said, and waved her hands in front of her like a magician. She wasn’t sure what the action was supposed to accomplish, but it made her feel better. See? Nothing in her hands. No weird voodoo curses being invoked in an underground Presbyterian lair.

“Me either. I kept waking poor Jenga up, and she needs all the rest she can get.” Without being invited, he sat on the opposite side of the hallway, legs crossed, head tilted back to the wall, a picture of masculine repose. “I don’t know how anyone can sleep with Ace in there snoring loud enough to cause an avalanche. We always make him sleep at the edge of camp for a reason.”

“At least he’ll be easy to keep track of out there.”

“Oh, we’ve been trying to lose him for years. That man is indestructible.” He paused. “Why can’t you sleep? Is it because you’re nervous?”

“Not really,” she lied. No need to tell him that her internal organs were slowly winding around each other, or that his voodoo doll was slowly suffocating under all one hundred and thirty pounds of her weight. Some things were best left to a lady’s discretion.

“I was afraid you were going to say that.” He dropped his chin and stared at her, his sleepy eyes even sleepier from the late hour and exhaustion, but no less appealing because of it. “I’d feel better if you were scared.”

Irritation surged from her buttocks up. “Well, I guess you don’t get everything you want then, do you? In addition to all the other burdens you’re forced to bear by having me in your life, you’re going to have to suffer through flying into a snowstorm with a helicopter pilot who’s confident in her skills. You poor dear.”

“What are you sitting on?”

She was so startled by the fact that he didn’t immediately launch into an argument with her that she almost told him.
Oh, nothing. Just your face.
As it was, she caught herself with her mouth open wide, and she quickly shut it again before answering, “Carpet. Subflooring. My ass. The usual.”

“I saw you hide something under there.”

“You’re imagining things. It’s probably the lack of sleep. You should go back in there and snuggle with Jenga some more.”

He smiled, a lift at the corner of his mouth so small she almost missed it. It tugged on her heart as if the two were somehow linked—his happiness and her heart, her heart and every part of his soul. “I’d much rather snuggle with you.”

“What? No.” She cast him a panicked look. “Don’t come near me.”

But he already was coming near her, pushing himself off the wall and pouncing toward her like a wolf. She wasn’t fooled for a second—he wanted the sweet intoxication of a cuddle as much as she wanted to crash another helicopter—but her body wasn’t as quick on the uptake. Instead of fighting him off, flailing out a leg or arm to show she meant business, her traitorous limbs gave a feeble twitch that wouldn’t have stopped a kitten.