Her Emergency Knight

by Alison Roberts

  The look she received made Jennifer feel ashamed of her outburst. The way she’d felt after verbally abusing Guy when he had caused the tail section of the plane wreckage to slide when she’d still been trapped inside it. She was far too exhausted to try and analyse why she felt so ashamed of herself. Instead, she looked away.

  ‘Sorry,’ she muttered. ‘But I’d really like to get out of here.’

  ‘You and me both, babe.’ Guy stepped ahead and within a minute they were back in what felt like a familiar routine. Slogging on, with Guy leading the way, marking their route at intervals, pushing a track through heavier undergrowth, watching the sun and changing direction occasionally.

  They needed food. And water. When they came across another waterway, Jennifer had no idea whether it was the same stream that had fed the waterfall, and she didn’t care. They could quench their thirst and now they had a new track to follow along its banks.

  An hour ticked miserably past as she forced her body to keep functioning. And then another. But Jennifer knew she was slowing badly. Had Guy intended to stop for a rest or was he watching for her? It was getting harder each time she put one foot in front of the other and Guy looked just as close to the end of his tether.

  ‘Sorry.’ It was the first time Jennifer had spoken since her last apology but she didn’t notice she was repeating herself. ‘I am trying to keep up.’

  ‘You’re doing OK.’

  ‘It’s getting darker, isn’t it?’

  ‘We’ll have to stop soon and build a shelter.’ Guy closed his eyes wearily. ‘Another day should do it. I’m pretty sure we’re going in the right direction.’

  ‘Well, somebody’s been here before anyway.’

  Dark eyes snapped open. ‘What makes you say that?’

  ‘There was a bit of metal nailed to a tree. Is that to mark possum traps or something?’

  ‘Where was it?’ Guy was on his feet again now, staring intently at Jennifer.

  ‘Back a bit. I can’t remember how far.’

  ‘Stay there.’ And Guy was gone, striding back the way they’d come with a barely noticeable limp.

  Jennifer sat and waited. She heard twigs crack as Guy headed back and then the sounds faded again. Long minutes passed and Jennifer could feel a curious lethargy taking over as sleep started a seductive pull.

  Suddenly she found her upper arms being gripped. She was pulled to her feet and Guy was leaning down. Planting a firm kiss on her lips.

  ‘You’ve done it, babe,’ he said softly. ‘You’ve found a track. I found the marker and the next one and I think I know exactly where we are.’

  ‘Really?’ His excitement was contagious. Or was it the effect of that kiss? Jennifer’s smile felt strange. Rusty. ‘You mean we’re nearly out of here?’

  ‘I think there’s a hut maybe two or three kilometres away. If I’m right, it’ll have a stove and a radio. Can you make it?’

  ‘You bet.’ Jennifer stumbled in her eagerness to follow.

  ‘Take it easy,’ Guy cautioned. ‘And be careful. You don’t want to break an ankle now.’

  He showed her how the small triangle of metal pointed in the direction they needed to take. They found another one ten minutes later, and Jennifer could feel a welcome surge of renewed hope. And energy. Safety beckoned. They were almost there.

  ‘We have to cross this stream.’ Guy was scanning what seemed more like a small river. The light was definitely fading now but Jennifer could still make out the pale gleam of a piece of metal on the far bank.

  ‘There’s the marker!’ She stepped forward, her foot sinking into several inches of icy water.

  ‘Wait! This isn’t the best place to cross.’

  ‘But the marker’s right there. We have to cross here.’

  ‘It’s too fast. That centre point is deeper than it looks.’

  ‘It wouldn’t even come to my knees.’

  ‘There may be a hole we can’t see in this light. Or underwater snags. The current would be enough to knock you off your feet and you don’t want to get swept away among boulders.’

  ‘But—’

  ‘Just shut up a minute,’ Guy ordered. ‘And let me think.’

  The longer he waited, the darker it was going to get. If they left it too long, they wouldn’t be able to find further markers on the other side and they would be doomed to spend another night in the open, instead of reaching a hut where they would find shelter and warmth. Possibly even food and the promise of imminent rescue.

  Jennifer took another step. The water was only ankle deep for the most part, for heaven’s sake. The bottom had small stones that provided reasonably firm footing and there were larger boulders as anchor points if she needed them.

  ‘We’re wasting time,’ she informed Guy. ‘I can do this. Just watch.’

  She almost made it. Even in the knee-deep water she was able to stand up against the current. But then a branch came downstream, went between her legs, caught on a rock and twisted sideways. Jennifer was felled instantly.

  Immersion in the icy water was enough of a shock to make her gasp, and her mouth filled with water she couldn’t prevent herself from inhaling. She couldn’t cough. Couldn’t breathe. She was being swept downstream like the branch, about to hit her head on a boulder and drown, but it was all happening so fast there was no time for terror.

  Her rescue seemed to happen just as fast. Guy had entered the water downstream. He caught Jennifer and hauled her to her feet, then half pulled, half carried her towards the shore. She sank to her knees when he released her. She coughed, spluttered and then burst into tears. The terror caught up with her then. And the mind-numbing chill of being soaked in water that wasn’t far above freezing level.

  ‘Come on.’ Guy clearly wasn’t going to waste any more time. ‘You’re alive. You’ve got to keep moving until we get to the hut.’

  ‘I can’t.’ Jennifer huddled, her arms wrapped around her legs. ‘I c-can’t m-move.’ The shivering was so violent it was painful.

  Guy muttered what had to be something Jennifer wouldn’t have wanted to hear anyway. He pulled her roughly to her feet and then bent to put an arm behind her knees.

  ‘Hang on,’ he instructed grimly.

  Jennifer wrapped stiff arms around his neck and held on, even though she knew the splint on her arm must be cutting into his shoulder. She could feel the jerk of unsteady movement as he negotiated the track and adjusted to his burden. She could feel the limp that became progressively more pronounced, but she could do nothing more than hang on. And pray.

  Her awareness of anything more than the sound of Guy’s rasping breaths, the pounding of his heart and the tight grip of his arms faded. Jennifer had no idea how long he carried her like that. A distant memory nagged until she caught it. The day her mother had died. The bewilderment and pain. The solid feel of her father’s arms and the sound of his voice trying to create an anchor in a child’s shattered life. She could even hear the rumble of his deep voice.

  ‘It’s OK, Jenna. I’ve got you. We’ll get through this together, you and me.’

  It was a shock to open her eyes at the jolt of being lowered to the ground and to see Guy’s face instead of her father’s. Had he spoken those words? No. Jennifer shook her head to try and orient herself.

  ‘We’ve made it.’ Guy’s voice sounded ragged. ‘We’re safe, Jenna. Look.’

  The hut sat in a small clearing, a large, dark shape against an even darker background.

  ‘It’s the Welcome Flat hut,’ Guy told her. ‘A mansion compared to most tramping huts, and the only two-storied one that I know of. It’s years since I’ve been here, but it should have a coal stove and a radio.’

  Jennifer stared at the solid wooden door. ‘What if…it’s locked?’

  ‘Huts are never locked.’ Guy led the way and turned the handle. ‘See?’

  Not only was the hut open, it had been left immaculately tidy by the last people to use it. Fuel for the stove was abundant and in what seemed like no
time at all the light from the flames revealed other treasures. Like a hurricane lamp that created enough light for them to see the supply of canned and dried food left in case of emergencies and a radio. Guy seemed to have no problem in turning it on and changing frequency while searching for a response.

  ‘Welcome Flat Hut,’ he said repeatedly. ‘This is Guy Knight requesting assistance. Is anybody receiving?’

  Then, miraculously, a response came.

  ‘Department of Conservation base station here. Are you from the plane that went down two days ago?’

  ‘Affirmative.’

  ‘How many of you are there?’

  ‘Two.’

  ‘Are you injured?’

  ‘Not badly. We’ve walked out from the crash site.’

  Jennifer huddled near the stove but the warmth didn’t seem able to penetrate her layers of wet clothing. She had stopped shivering and felt incredibly drowsy, but if she was entering a more advanced state of hypothermia she couldn’t have cared less. She listened to the discussion of whether to send a search-and-rescue team in to meet them at first light or a helicopter to evacuate them.

  Apparently it was a six-hour tramp to where vehicles could access the track from the main highway at the Karangarua River. Guy didn’t seem to think Jennifer was able to do the walk, and she wasn’t going to argue.

  She didn’t even protest when Guy came over and ordered her to take off all her clothes. Her fingers refused to cooperate, however, so she stood there like a statue while Guy pulled soggy garments from her one by one. He left her bra and knickers on but she was past caring.

  Having draped the clothes over a chair close to the heat of the stove, Guy took off his leather jacket and hung it over Jennifer’s shoulders. Then he astonished her by picking her up in his arms again.

  ‘Come on,’ he said. ‘I know how to warm you up.’

  Was he going to take her to lie on one of the bunk mattresses with him? Skin to skin, as the common lore regarding treatment of hypothermia suggested was best? He’d already kissed her. He’d stripped off her clothes. The thought of further intimacy didn’t bother Jennifer. Nothing bothered her. Even being taken outside into the cold night air.

  ‘Wait a minute!’ The words were spoken aloud as the chill bit into her exposed skin. She tried to move but the grasp of Guy’s arms was way too firm. ‘What the hell do you think you’re doing?’

  They had finally reached safety. Warmth. Even in her fuzzy mental state Jennifer knew she needed warmth above anything else.

  ‘Don’t argue,’ Guy ordered brusquely. ‘Trust me.’

  She had done precisely that for two days now. Another few minutes probably couldn’t hurt, and it seemed far less time than that when Guy stopped and put her gently onto her feet.

  ‘Hot pools,’ he said. ‘As good as a bath, I promise.’

  He was pulling off his own clothes as he spoke, and Jennifer stared. Maybe it was the relief of being still being alive after such a harrowing experience or maybe her brain had ceased to function in any normal fashion, but Guy suddenly seemed the most desirable man Jennifer had ever seen in her life.

  He stripped down to boxer shorts and Jennifer wasn’t surprised to see the lines of hard muscle without a trace of fat on him anywhere. Then he dropped the shorts and Jennifer felt a hot wash of acute embarrassment. Not that Guy seemed to share it. He slid the jacket from her shoulders.

  ‘You may as well leave your undies on,’ he said calmly. ‘They’re soaked anyway. You can take them off when we’re back at the hut.’

  He led her into one of several steaming pools and held her when her legs wobbled. He found a spot that allowed him to sit and hold her with the water level up to their necks.

  ‘Don’t let any of the water get up your nose,’ he warned. ‘New Zealand’s hot pools are notorious for causing amoebic meningitis.’

  They stayed there long enough for the warmth to reach Jennifer’s core and for her brain to start taking a more active interest in her surroundings again.

  Too active. She was sitting almost in a naked man’s lap. A man who was a loner by choice and despised the type of person he thought she was, but a physically extremely attractive man. Someone who had, undoubtedly, saved her life. More than once.

  The force of the gratitude she had no way of adequately conveying stayed with Jennifer as they made their way back to the hut. She stayed by the stove, wearing Guy’s leather jacket and nothing else while she waited for her clothing to dry and the baked beans and tinned casserole Guy was heating to be ready to eat.

  The warmth from burning coal soon heated the whole interior of the small building but neither of them wanted to move far from the source of the heat. Guy put mattresses from the bunks on the floor and they sat there to eat.

  ‘Feeling warmer?’

  ‘Yes, thanks.’ Jennifer tugged at the jacket, which was long enough to cover her decently but still left a rather long length of thigh exposed. ‘I’ll be glad when my clothes are dry.’

  ‘They’ll take a while yet. I’ll make us a cup of tea. Do you mind having it black?’

  ‘Hardly.’ Jennifer’s smile was wry. ‘I’m not sure that I’ll ever take having milk in hot drinks for granted ever again. Or even having hot drinks.’

  ‘There’s a lot of things you might not take for granted,’ Guy agreed quietly.

  Jennifer nodded, her gaze catching his. ‘Like being alive,’ she murmured. ‘I have you to thank for that, Guy.’

  ‘You managed it by yourself,’ he countered.

  ‘I wouldn’t have without you pushing me. If I hadn’t been trying to prove I wasn’t some useless, soft townie, I would have given up before I even climbed onto that snow slope.’

  ‘You never know what you’re capable of until you really try. You’re not soft, Jenna. Not by a long shot. And you’re certainly not useless.’

  ‘I felt useless,’ Jenna whispered. ‘Waiting for Digger to die.’

  Guy closed his eyes and Jennifer winced at having caused him pain. She reached out and touched his face, offering a touch instead of words because she knew that she could never find the right ones to convey the turmoil of emotions hanging between them.

  He seemed to understand. He caught her hand and held it against the roughness of stubble on his cheek. Then he turned his head and she felt the contrast of the softness of lips as he pressed them against her palm.

  Jennifer’s quick intake of breath made him glance up and catch her gaze again, and that was a big mistake.

  She looked like a child. Huge, blue, vulnerable eyes. All the pain of loss, the determination to survive and the gratitude for his assistance were stamped clearly in the blue depths, and for a moment Guy was lost. It was an automatic gesture to take her into his arms, but he was running on more than instinct as he responded to her upturned face and covered her lips with his own. And suddenly making love seemed the only thing they could possibly do. An affirmation of life, maybe, that only they could share.

  They had been through too much together to be considered strangers, but they would probably never see each other again when this was over and that didn’t matter. With every touch they were confirming that something good still existed despite loss. That the effort to survive had been worthwhile.

  Jennifer seemed as hungry for the physical release as Guy certainly was. They had a pocket of time in which they were still isolated from reality, and Jennifer exceeded the qualities of any partner Guy might have conjured up to provide a fantasy. Pale, soft skin felt like silk beneath his hands. Surprisingly full breasts tasted like honey and the faint musky scent of her arousal drew him irresistibly closer.

  He wanted Jennifer more than he had ever wanted any woman, and yet he was able to go more slowly than he ever had before. To take care not to hurt her arm or her feet. To touch and taste and linger in wonderment at how poignant the sharp sensation of desire could be. And she was as generous a lover as he could have wished for.

  She returned every touch and answered
every incoherent murmur. She took over the lead every time he paused so that it became a kind of dance. A courtship ritual that would never lead beyond brief fulfilment—but that simply didn’t register as significant because they had just spent so many hours together taking each moment as it came.

  And when this moment came, it was blinding in its satisfaction. Guy had never experienced anything remotely comparable. The release for them both seemed to exhaust any last possible reserves of energy and, entangled in each other’s limbs, they finally slept.

  CHAPTER SIX

  A HELICOPTER had certainly been the best choice.

  The sound of the approaching aircraft was enough to wake both Guy and Jennifer from an almost comatose state of exhaustion. Any awkwardness at finding themselves still naked and closely intertwined beneath an old woollen blanket and a layer of clothing evaporated the instant they both tried to move.

  The groans were simultaneous but the pain was enough to freeze Jennifer, whereas Guy managed to roll over and sit up. He picked up items of Jennifer’s clothing, which were now dry.

  ‘You might like to put something on,’ he said drily. ‘We’re going to have company any minute.’

  Jennifer tried again. She twisted away from Guy and used her right arm to lever herself into a sitting position. The pain and effort required were unbelievable. How on earth had they managed to make love only hours ago? Jennifer couldn’t even remember her broken arm having been any kind of obstacle. In fact, when she remembered just how active they had been at times, a flush of deep embarrassment washed up to heat her face.

  It wouldn’t be so bad if Guy had said something to at least acknowledge what had happened. Or ask how she was feeling. He didn’t even make personal communication in the form of eye contact, however, and by now he was half-dressed and Jennifer was still totally exposed in her nakedness. The engine noise of the helicopter was deafening. It seemed to be hovering directly over the roof of the hut.

  ‘They’ll probably be able to land near the hot pools,’ Guy said. ‘That’ll save having to winch us up.’