Barrett, Julia Rachel - Pushing Her Boundaries (Siren Publishing Classic)

by Julia Rachel Barrett

  Mace looked around their makeshift shelter. He reached beneath the downed tree, grabbing one of the quart bottles. “Here’s one. We can’t drink it all; we only have two quarts of clean water.”

  “Fuck that, Mace, we drink it all and we refill the bottles from the lake.” Maggie struggled to sit up in the cramped space. Mace rearranged the sleeping bag so they could both sit. She shared the water with him, insisting that they each drink half. “We’ll drink the other in the morning and then it’s going to be lake water, and don’t give me any shit about giardiasis, no pun intended.”

  He gave her a half-smile. “I’ve read about the Boundary Waters, Maggie. There are beavers up here. Beavers are the main carriers of giardiasis.”

  “Big deal. Giardia tends to sift out of lake water, so we’re less likely to catch it. The dangers of dehydration are much more immediate, you know that as well as I do, Dr. Williams. Besides, we can treat ourselves to a course of Flagyl when we get out of here.” She grinned at him. “Fun, huh?”

  He grinned back. “Nothing like being wind bound in the Boundary Waters with a woman like…” Mace stopped. He had no idea how Maggie felt about what they’d done, again.

  Maggie looked into his eyes. “A woman like what, Mace? What were you about to say?”

  Mace licked his lips. “I was about to say, a woman like you, but I don’t know if those are words you want to hear. You’re an enigma, Maggie. Seems like you want me, but you pull me close and then push me away. As I said before, I feel like a piece of meat.”

  He watched her sigh and she dropped her gaze. “We need to prioritize. Our first priority is to get out of here alive. Everything else will have to wait.”

  “If you say so.”

  She gave him a look that he interpreted as Don’t you dare. “I say so. Okay, let’s take stock. What do we have with us, anything we can use?”

  Mace decided if Maggie could be all business, so could he. “I’ve gone through everything. We have warm clothes, if we use the lake as you suggest, plenty of water, and we have this tarp and one sleeping bag. I have a pack of matches and we have the single-burner stove, but not a crumb of food and nothing to cook in even if we had food.”

  Maggie reached into a pocket of her pack. She pulled out a flashlight and two airplane-issued packs of peanuts. She set the flashlight down between them and handed him the bags of peanuts. “Here, these are yours, I can’t eat them.”

  “What are you talking about?” Mace rolled his eyes. “You eat one, I’ll take the other.”

  “No, Mace, I can’t eat them. A bag of salted peanuts will give me an instant migraine and I can’t risk it. If I get a bad migraine, I’ll be useless and you’ll be stuck with a partner who can’t help get us out of here.”

  “But you have some pain pills…”

  “Yeah,” she interrupted him, “but they’re pain pills, they won’t prevent it.” She thought for a minute. “Crap, I better take my birth control pill or we’re double fucked. The last thing I need on this trip from hell is my period.” Maggie pulled out the baggie of pills and popped a birth control pill into her mouth. She swallowed without water. “Okay, one thing out of the way, on to the next. What do we do tomorrow?”

  He was tempted to take her in his arms and kiss her senseless. More fucking was what he wanted to say, but he didn’t. “We’ll have to see what the weather is like before we decide upon our next move. For now, I’d say we put on some dry clothes and try to sleep. It’s cold, it’s rainy, there’s nothing to eat. Sleeping until dawn makes the most sense. If we’re lucky, these winds will die down overnight.”

  The two dug through their packs. Mace pulled out a long-sleeved Henley and a pair of polypropylene leggings. He saw Maggie watching as he put them on. He waggled his eyebrows at her and she punched him in the arm, making him laugh out loud. She set her own polypropylene long underwear between them, but instead of dressing, she grabbed the flashlight.

  “I need to get up,” she said. “I have to find a place to pee.”

  “Put on your clothes before you leave the shelter.”

  “No, I don’t want to get them wet. I’ll be quick, I promise. And then you can use the flashlight if you need to.”

  Mace laughed at the note of embarrassment in her voice. “Don’t sweat it. I can just stand under the tree and take a piss.”

  “Men…”

  He tweaked her under the chin. “One of the few advantages.”

  “Few advantages? What are you talking about?” Maggie struggled to her feet with his assistance. “Men have all the advantages.”

  Mace looked up at her. “Men can only come once. Women are multi-orgasmic. I consider that a marvelous advantage.”

  Maggie burst out laughing. “Well, you got me with that one.” She headed into the woods.

  “Hey,” Mace called out, “stay where I can see you.”

  “Not on your life,” she called back. “There are a few things I don’t intend to share with you. Deal with it.”

  A big grin on his face, Mace rose to his feet and headed in the opposite direction, shaking his head. By this point, most women, and many men, would be panic-stricken. Not Maggie. Not only did she keep her head and her sense of humor under duress, she could fuck like nobody’s business. What a woman. Sure, we can postpone a discussion about the two of us, but there’s nothing to discuss. I’m hers, she’s mine. She just doesn’t know it yet. End of story.

  Chapter Nine

  The rain had stopped, but the wind blew hard, bending the trees nearly in half. Maggie stood on the protected shore in the gray dawn, staring south, toward safety, the direction home. No bloody way can we make it out of here today. She knew they weren’t in danger of starving to death…yet. The lack of food bothered her less than the fact that Robert and Patty had the food pack. The only consolation was that they had no stove. Still, they must have brought some food that didn’t need to be cooked.

  You’re assuming they made it across the open water. For all you know, they capsized and drowned. What an awful thought. You know, you can be a real bitch. Maggie shrugged. It didn’t matter. There was nothing she could do for Robert and Patty. They were on their own, and judging by the way their canoe handled in nasty conditions, she assumed they’d landed on the far shore. Last she saw of Patty’s bobbing head, it looked like they’d made it halfway across the open water. It pissed her off no end that they’d left her and Mace to struggle along behind in a canoe that wallowed like a pig in a trough, without even a glance at them, not a single glance.

  Who does that? Who takes people into the wilderness, gives them substandard equipment, and pretty much ditches them? Who doesn’t take weather and water conditions into consideration? Idiots. Robert and Patty are idiots. I hope they survive because I want to tell them exactly what I think of their wilderness smarts. She remembered Robert’s words when he’d lectured her on the Boundary Waters or, as he insisted upon referring to it, the BWCA. “I’ve been canoeing up here for years. I know these waters like the back of my hand.” Maggie snorted. You’ve obviously never looked at the back of your hand, Robert.

  Suddenly Mace stood next to her, shoulder to shoulder. She thought he was still asleep and she hadn’t heard him approach. She glanced at him, but he looked south, assessing the water and the weather.

  “Doesn’t appear promising,” he said. He handed her the second water bottle. He’d already drunk half of it. “Your half. Drink it.”

  She followed his order. Together they refilled both bottles. When they rose to their feet, Mace glanced back at their makeshift shelter. “Is there anything to eat on this island?”

  Maggie shook her head. “I found blueberry bushes and wild strawberry plants, but it’s too late in the season for berries. There are some mushrooms, but not a species I can identify so I’d rather not take the risk. We can chew pine needles.”

  “Pine needles?”

  “Yeah, pine needles are loaded with vitamin C.” She smiled at Mace. “We can keep the scurvy at b
ay.”

  Mace reached for the nearest pine tree and grabbed a handful of needles. He stuck them in his mouth and chewed. “Taste like turpentine. Want some?”

  “Sure, why not?” Maggie laughed and took a bunch of needles from him. He was right, turpentine. She spit out the green mass. “Yuck.”

  Mace did the same. They stood in silence. “Maggie, we can’t stay here. This isn’t a designated campsite and unless Robert and Patty managed to locate someone with a cell phone or satellite phone, nobody is going to come looking for us, at least not for a few days. By then we might be in pretty bad shape.”

  “But don’t all the wilderness books tell you to stay put?”

  “They tell you to stay put when someone is looking for you, but nobody is looking for us.”

  “What about Robert and Patty?”

  Mace’s expression didn’t change. “Those two couldn’t find their way out of a paper bag. Let’s get real. I’m assuming they made it across, because that canoe was designed for weather. You saw it knife through the water. Chances are, they’re stranded on the far shore with no way to contact anyone and they assume we’ve capsized and drowned. If they were going to come back for us, they would have turned around and run with the wind. They could have made it to this island in an hour. If they’d been able to contact the park rangers, we would have seen a boat by now, but we haven’t seen a soul. Robert and Patty can hold out for a week, easy. They have food for four people, plus pots and pans and the water filter.”

  “We have the stove,” Maggie interrupted.

  “Doesn’t matter, they can build a fire. And Maggie,” he looked at her, “they have the tents, three sleeping bags, and three sleeping pads. They’ve got everything they need to survive, we don’t.”

  “So what do you propose? Look south.” She nodded her head. “The wind is out of the west and those waves are at least four to five feet high. We’ll capsize the minute we hit open water.”

  “I’ve been thinking about that. We can’t make it all the way back to the portage, not in one day, but we can make it in two days, three at the most. And we need to get ourselves back, before we’re too weak to paddle.”

  Maggie stared at Mace. He looked utterly serious. “How?”

  He pointed to the canoe. “This behaves like a sail, right?” She nodded. “So we treat it like a sailboat. We’ll have to plot a zigzag course, paddle almost directly into the wind, and then make a run with the wind for wherever we decide our heading is. How many miles do you estimate we are from the portage?”

  “Maybe six, could be eight.”

  “Then we divide the trip into two days, three to four miles a day. If the wind and weather cooperate, we might make it back by tonight.”

  “Even if the weather improves today, the situation hasn’t changed. Nobody will be waiting for us on the other side of the portage,” Maggie said.

  “True, but I’ll bet good money there’ll be fishermen and other canoeists on either side of the portage. And I think we passed a mechanized portage for small fishing boats. We’ll find someone there, I guarantee it. You remember the map, right? I wasn’t paying any attention.”

  “Yes, I remember the map.”

  “Then you have an idea of where we should head.” Mace folded his arms across his chest and waited for her to speak.

  Maggie looked directly across the channel. A finger of land lay about a half mile away, across relatively calm water. It would be an easy paddle, but heading straight east wouldn’t get them any closer to their goal. She studied Windy Point, off in the distance. Three or four miles of open water separated them from Windy Point and if they made the attempt, they would be broadside to the wind and the swells. Not a viable option. On the eastern shore, two-thirds of the way to Windy Point, there was a channel leading away from the open water to another portage into another lake, and what Robert had described as a stream and a beaver pond. He’d mentioned that it would make a good day trip.

  “Do you see that headland across the water, to the south?” She pointed it out for Mace. He nodded. “There’s a channel that leads back in there. It’s on the far side of the headland, around the corner. If I remember the map correctly, the headland juts out and the channel sort of dips behind it. I’m pretty sure I saw at least two marked campsites, which means a fire grate and a latrine and, if we’re lucky, other campers. Chances are we’ll be out of the wind, and the water will be pretty calm. We’ll just have to be careful. We don’t want to go in too far and make the last day too long.”

  Mace reached for her hand and gave it a reassuring squeeze. His touch increased Maggie’s confidence. We can do this. We can make our way back to civilization.

  Still holding her hand, Mace spoke. “Listen, Maggie, I want to discuss our plan now because once we’re on the water, the wind may be too strong to hear much.”

  “Yes, I’m listening.” She tightened her hold on his hand.

  “We’re going to cross this channel on a diagonal course to the far shore, to that big gray rock to the south. Do you see it?” He pointed it out to her. Maggie nodded. “Then we head south by southwest, almost directly into the wind. We paddle as hard as we can, and when we pass that headland, we tack and surf the waves down the channel. Sound good?”

  Maggie’s eyes filled with tears, and for a moment she was incapable of giving him an answer. Of course his plan sounded good. It was eminently workable and it was the only reasonable thing to do under the circumstances. But she’d been struck by the memory of their night together in the cabin. Was that just two days ago? Mace had sworn that if anything went wrong, he’d get her out of here. At the time, she thought he was just humoring her, making her feel better so she’d sleep. Now, he was doing exactly what he’d promised. He would get her out of this predicament. Maggie realized she trusted him, not only with her life; she was beginning to trust him with her heart. “Yes.” She nodded, attempting to steady her voice. “It’ll work.”

  “C’mere, Maggie.” Mace gathered her close and pressed her head to his shoulder. She wrapped her arms about his waist. They stood together in silence. The wind whistled through the treetops far above, but nothing touched them on the sheltered beach. He rested his chin on the top of her head.

  “I swore that if something bad happened, I’d get you out of here. I meant it.”

  Tears slid down Maggie’s cheeks, but she kept her voice even. “I know that, I know now that you weren’t just humoring me. I know, Mace.”

  “What do you know, Maggie?”

  She buried her face deeper into his shoulder. “That you’re not the man I thought you were, back when I first saw you at the airport. I judged you unfairly.”

  He stroked her hair now and she closed her eyes, loving the feel of his hands on her.

  “How were you unfair?”

  “I…I judged you by every other man I’ve known. I thought you were like all the rest.”

  “What did all the rest do?”

  “They used me, gained my trust, and took advantage of me… They made me fall in love with them and then they dumped me or hit me or cheated on me.”

  Mace lifted her face with both hands and looked into her eyes. His fingers caressed her tear-streaked cheeks. “Maggie, I’m not like that. I will never, ever dump you or hit you or cheat on you. And Maggie, you didn’t love them. Remember that. You didn’t love them.”

  “I didn’t?” She knew the smile she gave him was a little crooked.

  “You sure as hell didn’t.” He lowered his hands to her shoulders and moved her a little away from him. His voice was soft. “Maggie, I wish we had the luxury of finishing this conversation, but it will have to wait. We have to get packed up and out on the water before the chop grows worse or it starts to rain again. We can talk later, all right?”

  “Or maybe not talk?”

  “Yeah.” Mace laughed. “Or maybe not talk.”

  As they climbed back up the bank, Maggie called after him. “How long do you think it will take us to go into ke
tosis?”

  Her words stopped him in his tracks. “We may already be in ketosis, but I’m guessing by tonight at the latest. Why?”

  “Because it will help. Even if we find berries or something, we’re probably better off not eating anything at all.”

  Mace looked her up and down. “You might be right, but neither of us has a whole lot of fat to burn.”

  “We have two days’ worth, that’s all we need. Well, that and headache pills. I’m getting a headache.” He shot her a look of concern. “No, it’s not a full-blown migraine yet. You’ll be the first to know.”

  * * * *

  The paddle to the far side of the channel was relatively easy. For the most part, they had the waves at their back and the canoe had yet to hit the worst of the wind. Mace kept one eye on the water ahead and the other on Maggie. She didn’t flag, but he’d seen her take two headache pills before they shoved off and he knew she’d stuck the rest of them, along with her birth control pills and the book of matches, in the pack she’d strapped around her waist, muttering, “I can afford to lose everything, except these.” Both wore life jackets and they’d jammed the gear beneath the seats in the canoe, with most of the weight up front to keep the front end from riding too high in the wind.

  Mace concentrated, trying to time their turn into the wind. If he turned the canoe too soon, the waves might carry them to the shore and smash them against the rocks; if he turned too late, they’d waste their precious energy reserves, and they’d capsize, or worse.

  “Maggie,” he yelled, “paddle hard on the port side. Hard.” Without a word or a look back, she followed his instructions.

  Using his paddle as a rudder, he steered them into the wind, slightly broadside to the waves, heading south by southwest. “C’mon, you bastard,” Mace muttered under his breath. The heavy aluminum canoe wanted to turn broadside to the waves, and it took all his strength to keep them pointed in the right direction. By his estimation, they would have two or three miles of this, the canoe riding up the waves and splashing down the other side, spray drenching them both. Their goal was to make it past the headland and then tack, turning to run with the wind and the waves directly into the channel. They had no other option.