Up Close and Dangerous (27 page)

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

C
AM 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 his 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.

“We should get some sleep,” he said, closely watching her every expression. “We’ve had a tiring day.”

The sun had set and full darkness was rapidly chasing the twilight.
Soon
, she thought as she stretched out and nestled under their cover. He put on his shoes to go out and feed the fire, then returned to lie down beside her. His heavy arm draped over her waist and he pulled her to him, turning her so her face was nestled against his throat. He smelled like the aloe wipes, and wood smoke, and man.

He put his hand under all the shirts she wore, cupped her breast, rubbed the roughened side of his thumb over her nipple and brought it to tingling erection. She inhaled sharply. She’d meant to be calm, but calmness was beyond her. Her heart was pounding so hard she could barely breathe. This shouldn’t matter so much.
He
shouldn’t matter so much. Unfortunately, what should or should not be had no relation to what was.

He kissed her, his mouth light on hers. She was so tightly wound that for a moment she couldn’t relax, couldn’t respond. Just as she was beginning to sink against him, return the pressure of his mouth, he moved his lips to her temple. “Good night.”

Good night?

Good night!
She stiffened in disbelief. She’d worked herself into a frenzy of worry and anticipation, and he wanted to
sleep
?

“No!” she protested, outrage in her tone.

“Yes.” He kissed her again, his hand still heavy on her breast. “You’re tired. I’m tired. Go to sleep.”

“Who died and put you in charge?” she demanded furiously. Oh, great; she’d descended to teenage taunts. This was twice in one day he’d destroyed her poise, she who never let turmoil ruffle the smooth surface of her life. She’d always been so careful not to let anyone matter this much to her, for this very reason…

She went very still as she gave up on her last shred of avoidance, which wasn’t working anyway. She could rationalize and hedge her bets all she wanted, but she was wasting both time and effort. Could she have fallen in love with him in just four days? As he’d pointed out, the time they’d been together was now the equivalent of about nineteen or twenty dates. Logically, he was right.