Two Alone (6 page)

He yanked his eyes back toward the fire and the moment passed. But they didn't speak to each other for a long time. Rusty closed her eyes and pretended to doze, but she watched him as he busied himself around what was gradually coming to look like a bonafide camp. He sharpened the hatchet on a stone. He checked the roasting rabbit, turning it several times.

He moved with surprising agility for a man his size. She was sure chat some women would consider him handsome, particularly now that his chin and jaw were deeply shadowed by a twenty-four-hour beard. The wide, curving mustache was sexy...if one liked facial hair. It sat directly on top of his lower lip, completely obscuring his upper one, making the thought of going in search of it intriguing.

She found herself staring at his mouth as he leaned down and
s
poke to her. "I..
I
beg your pardon?"

H
e looked at her strangely. "Your eyes are glassy. You're not
goi
ng delirious again, are you?" He pressed his palm to her forehead. Impatient with him and herself for her adolescent fantasies,
she
swatted his hand aside. "No, I feel fine. What did you say?"
"
I
asked if you were ready to eat." "That's an understatement."

He assisted her into a sitting position. "This has been cooling
for
a minute or two. It should be about ready." He slid the
rab
bit off the spit and tore off a leg at the joint. He passed it to
R
us
t
y. Hesitantly she took it, staring at it dubiously.

"You're going to
e
at it if I have
to force it down your throat.

"H
e
t
ore off a bite of meat with his strong white teeth. "It
’
s not
hal
f bad. Honest."

She pinched some of the meat off the bone and put it into he
r
mouth, making herself chew and swallow it quickly. "Not
so
f
ast," he cautioned. "It'll make you sick."

She nodded and took another bite. With a little salt, it

woul
dn't have been bad at all
. "There are some very nice res
tau
ran
ts in Los Angeles tha
t
have rabbit on
t
he menu," she said con
vers
ationally. She instinctively reached for a napkin, remembered
that
she didn't have one, shrugged, and licked her fingers.

"Is that where you live, Los Angeles?"

"Beverly Hills, actually."

He studied her in the fireli
ght. "Are you a movie star or so
mething?"

Rusty got the impression that he wouldn't be impressed if she told him she was a three-rime Oscar winner. She doubted if
C
ooper Landry pu
t
much stock in fame. "No, I'm not a movie star. My father owns a real-estate company. It has branches all over southern California. I work for him."

"Are you any good at it?"

"I've been very successful."

He chewed a mouthful and tossed
t
he cleaned bone into the
f
ire. "Being the boss's daughter, how could you miss?"

"I work hard, Mr. Landry."
She took umbrage at his sly im
plica
t
ion that her father was responsible for the success she had achieved. "I had the highest sales
r
ecord of the agency last year."

"Bravo."

Miffed that he was so obviously unimpressed, she asked snide
l
y, "What do you do?"

He silently offered her another piece of the meat, which she tore into as though she'd been eating fresh, unseasoned roasted rabbit
c
ooked over an open fire every day of her life.

"I ranch," Cooper replied.

"Cattle?"

"Some. Horses mostly"

"Where?"

"Rogers Gap."

"Where's that?"

"In the Sierra Nevada."

"Never heard of it."

"I'm not surprised."

"
Can you
make a living a
t
just ranching?''

"I do all right."

"Is Rogers
G
ap close to Bishop? Do people ski there?"

"We have a
f
ew runs. Serious skiers consider them a real chall
e
nge. Personally I think they're some of the most spectacular
in
the continent."

"Then why haven't
I
ever heard of this place?"

"
We're a carefully guarded secret and want to remain that way.
We
don't advertise."

"
Why?"
Her interest was piqued. She never passed up an
opportunity
to locate new and interesting property for her clients in invest in. "With the right developer handling it, you could
make
something out of Rogers Gap. If it's as good for skiing as
you
say,
it could become the next Aspen."

"
G
od forbid," he said under his breath. "That's the point. We
don't
want to be put on the map. We don't want our mountains littered with concrete condos or the peaceful community
in
t
he overrun by a bunch of pushing, shoving, rude skiers from
Beve
rly Hills who are more interested in modeling their Rodeo
D
rive duds than preserving our landscape."

D
o
e
s everyone in town hold to this philosophy?"

"
Fortun
ately, yes, or they wouldn't be living there. We don't
have
much going for us except the scenery and the
tranquility
."

Sh
e
tossed her denuded bones into the fire. "You sound like
a hold
over from
t
he sixties."

"
I
am.
"

Her
eyes were teasing. "Were you a flower child, advocating universal harmony? Did you march for peace and participate in
war
protests?"

"No," he replied sharply. Rust
y's goading grin collapsed. "I couldn’
t wait to join up. I wanted to go to war.
I
was too ignorant
to realize
that I would have to kill people or get killed myself.
I hadn’t
bargained on getting captured and imprisoned. But I
did. After seven months in that stinking hole, I escaped and came home a hero."

He practically snarled the last sentence. "The guys in that
P
OW camp would have killed each other for a meal like the one you just ate." His gray eyes looked like glittering knife-blades as they sliced toward her. "So I'm not overwhelmed by your Beverly Hills glitz and glamour, Miss Carlson."

He stood up abruptly. "I'm going for more water. Don't wander off."

Don't wander off,
she silently
mimicked. All right, he had put her in her place, but she wasn't going to wear sackcloth and ashes for the rest of her life. Lots of men had fought in Vietnam and returned to lead happy, productive lives. It was Cooper's own fault if he was maladjusted. He thrived on his own bitterness. That's what fueled him. He nursed it. He cultivated his quarrel with society because he felt it owed him something.

Maybe it did. But it wasn't her fault. She wasn't responsible for whatever misfortune had befallen him. Just because he walked around with a chip on his shoulder the size of Mount Everest didn't make him a worthier human being than she was.

He returned, but they maintained a hostile silence while she drank her fill of water from the thermos. Just as wordlessly, he assisted her as she hobbled out of the clearing for a few minutes of privacy. When he eased her back down onto the thick pallet, which had become the nucleus of their world, he said, "I need to check your leg. Hold the flashlight for me."

She watched as he unbound the bandages and pulled them back to reveal a jagged, uneven row of stitches. She stared at it in horror, but he seemed pleased with his handiwork. With his
hand
s around her calf muscles,
he raised her leg to inspect it
c
loser. "No signs of new infection. Swelling's gone down." "The scar," she whispered roughly.

H
e looked up at her. "There wasn't much I could do about that." His lower lip thinned until it was hardly visible beneath
hi
s mustache. "Just be glad I didn't have to cauterize it."

"
I am.
"

He sneered. "I'm sure a high-ticket plastic surgeon in Beverly Hills can fix the scar."

"
D
o
y
ou have to be so obnoxious?"

"Do you have to be so superficial?" He aimed a finger in the di
rec
tion of
t
he crashed plane. "I'm sure any of those guys we
left
up there would settle for
a
scar on their shin."

H
e was right, of course; but that didn't make his criticism any
easier
for her to swallow. She lapsed into sullen silence. He bathed her leg in peroxide and rebandaged it, then gave her one
of the
he penicillin tablets and two aspirins. She washed them
down
with water. No more brandy for her, thank you.

Dr
unkenness, she had discovered, aroused her emotionally
and
sexually. She didn't want to think of Cooper
L
andry as
any
t
h
ing but a wretched grouch. He was a short-tempered,
surly
ogre harboring a grudge against the world. If she didn't have to rely on him for her survival, she would have nothing to
do
with him.

She
had already set
tl
ed beneath the pile of furs when he slid
in
and embraced her as he had the night before.

"H
ow much longer do we have to stay here?" she asked crossly.
"
I’m
not clairvoyant."

"I
'm not asking you to predict when we'll be rescued; I was

referring
t
o this bed. Can't you rig up a shelter of some kind? Something we can move around in?"

"The accommodations aren't to m'lady's liking?"

She sighed her annoyance. "Oh, never mind."

After a moment, he said, "There's group of boulders near the stream. One side of the largest of them has been eroded out. I think with a little ingenuity and some elbow grease, I could make a lean-to out of it. It won't be much, but it will be better than this. And closer to the water."

"I'll help," she offered eagerly.

It wasn't that she didn't appreciate this shelter. It had saved her life last night. But it was disconcerting to sleep this close to him. Since he had taken off his coat as he had the night before, Rusty was keenly aware of his muscled chest against her back. She
could
therefore assume that he was keenly aware of her body because she wasn't wearing her coat, either.

She could think of little else as his hand found a comfortable spot midway between her breasts and her waist. He even wedged his knees between hers, elevating her injured leg again. She started to ask him if that was necessary, but since it felt so much better that way, she let it pass without comment.

"Rusty?"

"Hmm?" His warm breath drifted into her ear and caused goose bumps to break out over her arms. She snuggled closer to him. "Wake up. We've got to get up."

"Get up?" she groaned. "Why? Pull the covers back up. I'm freezing."

"That's the point. We're soaking wet. Your fever broke and
you
sweated all over both of us. If we don't get up and dry off, land a good chance of getting frostbite."

She came fully awake and rolled to her back. He was ser
ious. Alread
y he was tossing off the furs. "What do you mean, dry off?"