Two Alone (19 page)

"I thought you'd be gone longer."

"I could have been anybody," he roared.

"Like who?"

"Like...like..."

Hell, he couldn't
t
hink of a single other person who might have barged in
t
he way he just had, never guessing that he
’
d find a breathtaking sight like this one in a rude cabin in the Canadian wilds. He fel
t
the front of his pan
t
s strain with his instant erection. Either she genuinely had no idea what effect she had
on him, or she did know and was maliciously using it to slowly

drive him crazy. Whichever, the result was the same.

Frustrated, he tore the pelt from his head and shook snow out of it. Gloves went flying. He tore at the tongs tying on his snow-shoes.

"Back to my original question, what the hell are you doing?"

"Taking my stitches out."

The peg in the wall caught the coat he tossed in chat general direction.
"What?"

His stance-—that know-it-all, arrogant, condescending, masculine stance—grated on her like a pumice stone. Not to mention his superior tone of voice. She looked him directly in the eye, "They're itching. The wound has closed. It's time they came out."

"And you're using a razor?"

"What do you suggest?"

He crossed the floor in three angry strides, pulling his hunting knife from its scabbard as he came. When he dropped to his knees in front of her, she recoiled and drew the blanket tightly around herself. "You can't use
that?

His expression was forbearing as he unscrewed the handle o
f
his knife and shook out several implements that Rusty hadn't known until now were in there. Among them was a tiny pair of scissors. Instead of being pleased, she was furious; "If you had those all along, why did you cut my fingernails with
t
ha
t
bowie knife?"

"I felt like it. Now, give me your leg." He extended his hand. "I'll do it."

"Give me your leg." He enunciated each word as he glared up at her from beneath his brows, "If you don't, I'll reach into that blanket and bring it out myself." His voice dropped to a seductive pitch. "No telling what I might encounter before I find it."

Mutinously she thrust her bare leg out from under the blanket. "Thank you," he said sarcastically.

"Your mustache is dripping on me."

The frost was beginning to melt.

He wiped it dry on his shirt sleeve, but he didn't release her bare foot. It looked small and pale in his large hand. Rusty loved the feeling, bu
t
she fought against enjoying it. She waged a war within when he tucked her heel into the notch of his thighs. She gasped over the firm, solid bulge that filled her arch.

He raised sardonic eyes up
t
o hers. "What's the matter?"

He was daring her to tell him. She would die before she even le
t
him know she had noticed. "Nothing," she said nonchalan
tl
y. "Your hands are cold, that's all."

The glint in his eyes told her that he knew she was lying. Grinning, he bent his head to his task. Clipping the silk threads presented no problems to either of them.
Rusty
was
t
hinking that
sh
e could just as easily have done it herself. But when he picked
u
p a small pair of tweezers and pinched the first clipped thread between them, she realized that the worst was yet to come.

"This won't hurt, but it might s
ting a little," he cautioned. H
e ga
ve
one swift tug to pull the s
t
i
t
ch out. Reflexively Rusty's foot made a braking motion against him.

"Ah, God," he groaned. "Don't do that."

No, she wouldn't. She definitely would not. She would keep her foot as still as stone from now on, even if he had
t
o tear the stitches out with his teeth.

By the time the tweezers had picked the last thread out, tears of tension and anxiety had filled her eyes. He'd been as gentle as he could be, and Rusty was grateful, but it hadn't been pleasant. She laid her hand on his shoulder.

"Thanks, Cooper."

He shrugged her hand off. "Get dressed. And hurry up with dinner," he ordered with the graciousness of a caveman. "I'm starving."

Soon after that, he started drinking.

Nine

T
he jugs of whiskey had bee
n among the Gawrylows' supplies.
Co
oper had discovered them the day they cleaned out the cabin.

H
e had smacked his lips with anticipation. That was before he
t
asted the whiskey. He had tossed back a healthy gulp and swallowed i
t
w
ithout chewing—
t
he stuff
had looked viscous enough to chew. I
t
was whi
te
lightning, moonshine, rotgu
t
, and it had
idled and burned inside his stomach like a meteor.

Rusty
had laughed at his coughing/wheezing spasm. He
was
n't amused. After he'd recovered the use of his vocal cords,
h
e had darkly informed her that it wasn't funny, that his esopha
gus
had been seared.

Un
til now, he hadn't touched the jugs of whiskey. This time,
there
was nothing funny about his drinking it.

Af
ter he had built up the fire, he uncorked a jug of the smelly
stuff
. Rusty was surprised, but
said nothing as he took a tentat
ive swig. Then another. At first she thought he was drinking it in order
t
o get warm. His expedition outside had been brief, but long enough to freeze his mustache. He was no doubt chilled to the marrow.

That excuse didn't serve for long, however. Cooper didn't stop with those first two drinks. He carried the jug with him to the chair in front of the fireplace and drank what must have equaled several cocktails before Rusty called him to the table. To her irritation, he brought the jug with him and poured an intemperate amount of the whiskey into his coffee mug. He sipped from it between bites of the rabbit stew she had cooked.

She weighed the
advisability
of cautioning him not to drink too much, but after a time, she felt constrained to say something; the regularity with which he drank from the tin mug was making her uneasy.

What if he passed out? He'd have to lie where he fell because she'd never be able to lift him. She remembered how much effort it had taken to drag him out of the crashed fuselage of tin-airplane. A great deal of her strength then had come from adrenaline. What if he ventured outside and got lost? A thousand dreadful possibilities elbowed their way
t
hrough her mind.

Finally she said, "I thought you couldn't drink that."

He didn't take her concern at face value. He took it as a reprimand. "You don't think I'm man enough?"

"What?" she asked with bewilderment. "No. I mean yes, I think you're man enough. I thought you didn't like the taste of it."

"I'm not drinking it because I like the taste. I'm drinking it because we're out of the good stuff and this is all I've got."

He was itching for a fight. She could see the invitation to
on
e
in his eyes, hear it in his snarling inflection. Rusty was
t
oo smart to pull a lion's tail even if it was dangl
ing outside the bars of the
cage. And she was too smart to wave a red flag at Cooper when his face was as blatant a warning of trouble as a danger sign.

In his present mood he was better left alone and unprovoked, although it was an effort for her
t
o keep silent. She longed to point out how stupid it was to drink some
th
ing
t
ha
t
you didn't like just for the sake of getting drunk.

Which was apparently what he intended to do. He nearly overturned his chair as he pushed himself away from the table. Only trained reflexes that were as quick and sure as a striking tattler's kept the chair from landing on
t
he floor. He moved back the hearth. There he sipped and sulked while Rusty cleaned their dinner dishes.

When she was finished, she swept the floor—more to give elf something to do than because it needed it. Unbelievable
i
t seemed, she'd come to take pride in how neatly she had arranged and maintained
t
he cabin.

Eventually she ran out of chores and stood awkwardly in the
ce
nter of the room while deciding what to do with herself,
C
ooper was hunched in his chair, broodily staring into the fire-lace as he steadily drank. The most sensible thing to do would
to
make herself scarce, but their cabin had only one room. A
w
alk was out of the question. She wasn't a bit sleepy, but bed as her only alternative.

"I, uh,
t
hink I'll go to bed now, Cooper. Good night."

"Sit down."

Already on her way to her bed, she was brought up short. It
wasn
't so much what he'd said that halted her, but the manner
in which he'd said it. She would prefer a strident command to
that
quiet, dead
ly
requ
est.

Turning, she looked at him inquisitively.

"
Sit down," he repeated.

"
I’m goi
ng—
"

"Sit down."

His high-handedness sparked
a
rebellious response, but
Rusty
quelled it. She wasn't a doormat, but neither was she a dope. Only a dope would tangle with Cooper while he was in this frame of mind. Huffily, she crossed the room and dropped into the chair facing his. "You're drunk."

"You're right
.
"

"
F
ine. Be ridiculous. Make a fool of yourself. I couldn't care less. But it
’
s embarrassing to watch. So if you don't mind, I'd rather go to bed."

"I do mind. S
t
ay where you are."

"Why? What difference does it make? What do you want?"

He took a sip from his cup, staring at her over the dented rim of it. "Whi
l
e I'm getting plashtered, I want to sit here and shtare at you and imagine you..." He drank from the cup again, then said around a juicy belch, "Naked."

Rusty came out of her chair as though an automatic spring had ejected her. Apparently no level of drunkenness could dull Cooper's reflexes. His arm shot out. He grabbed a handful o
f
her sleeve, hauled her back, and pushed her into the chair,

"I told you to shtay where you are."

"Let go of me." Rusty wres
ted her arm free. She was as app
rehensive now as she was angry. This wasn't a silly drunk's prank, or an argumentative drunk's unreasonableness. She tried
co
nvincing herself that Cooper wouldn't hurt her, but then she really didn't know, did she? Maybe alcohol was the catalyst that released his controlled violence. "Leave me alone," she said with affected courage.

"I don't plan on touching you." "Then what?"

"Call th
is a masochistic kind of.. .self-fulfillment." His eyelids
dr
ooped suggestively. "I'm sure you can substitute the correct name for it."

Rusty went hot all over with embarrassment. "I know the correct name for
you.
Several, in fact."

He laughed. "Save them. I've heard them all. Instead of thinking up dirty names to call me," he said, after sipping from his mug, "let's talk about you. Your hair, for instance."

She crossed her arms over her
middle and looked toward the c
eiling, a living illustration of supreme boredom.

"You know what I thought about the first time I saw your li.iir?" He was undaunted by her uncooperative spirit and refusal to answer. Leaning forward from the waist, he whispered, "I
t
hough t about how good it would feel sweeping over my belly."

Rusty jerked her eyes back to his. His were glazed, and not entirely
from liquor. They didn't have th
e vacuous look of the seasoned drunk. The dark centers of them were brilliant, fiery.
H
is voice, too, was now clear. He wasn't slurring his words. He made it impossible for her to misunderstand him—even
to
pretend to.