by Sandra Brown
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 hands around her calf muscles, he raised her leg to inspect it closer. “No signs of new infection. Swelling’s gone down.”
“The scar,” she whispered roughly.
He looked up at her. “There wasn’t much I could do about that.” His lower lip thinned until it was hardly visible beneath his 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.”
“Do you have to be so obnoxious?”
“Do you have to be so superficial?” He aimed a finger in the direction of the crashed plane. “I’m sure any of those guys we left up there would settle for a scar on their shin.”
He 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 penicillin tablets and two aspirins. She washed them down with water. No more brandy for her, thank you.
Drunkenness, she had discovered, aroused her emotionally and sexually. She didn’t want to think of Cooper Landry as anything 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 settled beneath the pile of furs when he slid in and embraced her as he had the night before.
“How 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 to 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 a 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, we stand a good chance of getting frostbite.”
She came fully awake and rolled to her back. He was serious. Already he was tossing off the furs. “What do you mean, dry off?”
“Strip and dry off.” He began unbuttoning his flannel shirt.
“Are you crazy? It’s freezing!” Recalcitrantly, she pulled the pelt back over herself. Cooper jerked it off her.
“Take off all your clothes. Now!”
He shrugged off his flannel shirt and draped it over the nearest bush. With one fluid motion, he crossed his arms at his waist and peeled the turtleneck T-shirt over his head. It made his hair stick up funnily, but Rusty didn’t feel like laughing. Laughter—in fact any sound at all— got trapped inside her closed throat. Her first glimpse of the finest chest she’d ever seen rendered her speechless.
Hard as rocks those muscles were. Beautifully sculpted, too, beneath taut skin. His nipples were dark and pebbly from the cold, their areolae shriveled around them. It was all tantalizingly covered with a blanket of crisp hair that swirled and whorled, tipped and tapered beguilingly.
He was so trim she could count every single rib. His stomach was as flat and tight as a drum. She couldn’t see his navel very well. It was deeply nestled in a sexy tuft of hair.
“Get started, Rusty, or I’ll do it for you.”
His threat plucked her out of her trance. Mechanically, she peeled off her sweater. Beneath it she was wearing a cotton turtleneck much like his. She fiddled with the hem while she watched him stand up and work his jeans down his legs. The long johns weren’t the most alluring sight she’d ever seen.
But Cooper Landry unclothed had to be.
In seconds he was standing there, silhouetted against, the dim glow of the fire, stark naked. He was beautifully shaped and generously endowed—so marvelously made that she couldn’t help her gaping stare. He quite literally took her breath away.
He draped the articles of discarded clothing on the bush, then pulled a pair of socks over his hands and ran them over his body, drying it thoroughly—everything— before removing the socks from his hands.
Kneeling, he tore into one of the backpacks looking for underwear. He pulled on a pair of briefs, all with a supreme lack of self-consciousness, much less modesty.
When he turned toward her and noticed that she hadn’t moved, he frowned with irritation. “Come on, Rusty. Hurry up. It’s damn cold out here.”
He reached for her sweater, which, so far, was the only thing she’d taken off. She handed it to him and he hung it up to dry. Holding out his hand for more clothes, he snapped his fingers quickly and repeatedly to hurry her along. “Come on, come on.” Casting one anxious glance up at him, she pulled the T-shirt over her head and passed it to him.
The cold air was a breathtaking shock to her system. Immediately she was chilled and started trembling so violently she couldn’t handle the button on her one-legged trousers.
“Here, let me do that, dammit. Or I’ll be standing out here all night.” Cooper dropped to his knees and straddled her thighs. Impatiently he pushed her hands out of the way so he could unfasten the button and pull down the zipper. With a detached air he eased the trousers down her legs and tossed them haphazardly toward the nearest bush.
But he was brought up short by what he obviously hadn’t expected. A pair of extremely feminine, extremely scanty bikini panties. He’d seen the lace-edged leg, but that was all. For what seemed like an eternity, he stared at them before saying gruffly, “Take them off.”
&nb
sp; Rusty shook her head. “No.”
His face became fierce. “Take them off.” Rusty shook her head emphatically. Before she could brace herself for it, he pressed his open hand directly over the triangular scrap of silk and lace. “They’re wet. Take them off.” Their eyes, like their wills, clashed. It was as much the chill in his stare as the chill in the air that prompted Rusty to slide the damp garment down her legs.
“Now dry off.”
He handed her a cotton sock like the ones he’d used. She ran it over her lower body and her legs. Keeping her head bowed, she groped blindly for the underwear Cooper handed her. He hadn’t chosen long johns because they would chafe her injury. She pulled on a pair of panties similar to the ones she’d just taken off and which were now dangling from the lower branches of the bush, fluttering like a victory banner the morning after a fraternity beer bust.
“Now the top.”
Her brassiere was just as frivolous as the panties that matched them. The morning she left the lodge, she had dressed in clothes befitting her return to civilization. After having to wear thermal underwear for several days, she had been good and sick of it.
Leaning forward, she grappled with the hook at her back, but her fingers were so numb from the cold she couldn’t get it to open. Muttering curses, Cooper reached around her and all but ripped the hook from its mooring. The brassiere fell forward. She peeled the straps down her arms, flung it away and faced him defiantly.
Beneath his mustache, his mouth was set in a hard, unyielding line. He paused for only a heartbeat before he began roughly rubbing the cotton sock over her throat, chest, breasts, and stomach. Then, reaching around her again, he blotted the sweat off her back. They were so close that her breath stirred his chest hair. Her lips came perilously close to touching one of his distended nipples. Hers, hard and peaked from the cold, grazed his skin.
He pulled back quickly and angrily dragged a thermal top over her head. While she was working her arms into the sleeves, he ripped the damp fur they’d been lying on off the pallet and replaced it with another one. “It’s not as soft, but it’s dry.”
“It’ll be fine,” Rusty said hoarsely.
Finally they were cocooned again. She didn’t resist when he pulled her close to him. She was shivering uncontrollably and her teeth were chattering. But it wasn’t long before they began to warm up. Their bodies were in chaos because of what their eyes had seen. Erotic impressions lingered in their minds.
Lying in his embrace fully dressed had been unnerving enough. Lying there with him wearing only underwear wreaked havoc on Rusty’s senses. Her fever had broken, but her body was burning like a furnace now.
His bare thighs felt delicious against hers. She liked their hair-smattered texture. Because she was braless, she was sharply aware of his hand resting just beneath her breasts, almost but not quite touching them.
He wasn’t immune to the enforced intimacy. He’d exerted himself by switching out the pelts and changing clothes so quickly, but that wasn’t the only reason he was breathing heavily. His chest swelled and receded against her back rhythmically but rapidly.
And then there was that other inexorable evidence of his arousal.
It prompted her to whisper, “I don’t think I need to... uh...prop my leg on top of yours.”
A low moan vibrated through his chest. “Don’t even talk about it. And for God’s sake, don’t move.” His distress was obvious.
“I’m sorry.”
“For what? You can’t help being beautiful any more than I can help being a man. I guess we’ll just have to tolerate that from each other.”
She honored his request and didn’t move so much as a muscle. She didn’t even reopen her eyes once they were closed. But she did fall asleep with a tiny smile on her lips. Inadvertently, perhaps, but he had told her that he thought she was beautiful.
Chapter Four
It made a difference in their relationship.
The forced intimacy of the night before didn’t draw them closer together. Rather, it created a schism of uneasiness between them. Their conversation the following morning was stilted. They avoided making eye contact. They dressed with their backs to each other. They moved awkwardly. Their motions were jerky and unsure, like those of invalids who had just regained the use of their limbs.
Taciturn and withdrawn, Cooper whittled her a pair of crutches out of two stout tree branches. Aesthetically, they weren’t much to rave about, but Rusty was immensely grateful for them. They allowed her mobility. She would no longer be confined to the bed.
When she thanked him, he only grunted an acknowledgement and stamped off through the underbrush toward the stream to get water. By the time he returned, she was accustomed to the crutches and was hobbling around the clearing on them.
“How does your leg feel?”
“Okay. I cleaned it with peroxide myself and took another pill. I think it’s going to be okay.” She had even managed to dress in her one remaining pair of slacks and put her boots on. Enough of the soreness was gone that the additional pressure of clothing didn’t irritate the wound.
They drank from the thermos in turn. That passed for breakfast. Cooper said, “I’d better start building that shelter today.”
They had awakened to find their cocoon dusted with snow. This time the flakes weren’t merely grains; they were real and ominous, harbingers of the first winter storm. Both knew how harsh the winters in this area could be. It was imperative that they have a shelter to use until they were rescued. If they weren’t rescued, a temporary shelter would be of little consequence, but neither wanted to think about that.
“What can I do to help?” she asked.
“You can cut up that suede jacket into strips.” He nodded toward a jacket that had belonged to one of the crash victims and handed her an extra knife. “I’ll need plenty of thongs to tie the poles together. While you’re doing that, I’d better see if we’ve got food for dinner.” She looked at him quizzically. “I set some snares yesterday.”
She glanced around her apprehensively. “You won’t go far, will you?”
“Not too far.” He shouldered his rifle and checked to see that he had pocketed a box of ammunition. “I’ll be back before the fire needs to be refueled. Keep the knife and rifle handy, though. I haven’t seen any bear tracks, but you never know.”
Without another word he turned and dissolved into the dense screen of trees. Rusty stood leaning on her crutches, her heart thumping fearfully.
Bears?
After several moments, she shook off her paralyzing fright. “This is silly,” she muttered to herself. “Nothing’s going to get me.”
She wished she had a radio, a television set, anything to relieve the oppressive silence. It was only occasionally broken by the cracking of twigs and the rustling of leaves as unseen forest animals scurried about on their daily forages. Rusty’s eyes searched out these silence-breakers, but they remained hidden and thereby more intimidating. She couldn’t put Cooper’s mention of bears out of her mind.
“He probably said that on purpose just to frighten me,” she said out loud as she viciously sliced through the tough suede with the knife he’d left behind for her use. It was smaller than the one that constantly rode in the scabbard attached to his belt.
Her stomach growled. She thought about fresh, hot and buttery breakfast croissants, toasted bagels and cream cheese, warmed glazed donuts, pancakes and bacon, ham and eggs. That only made her hungrier. The only thing she could do was to fill her empty stomach with water.
Soon, however, drinking so much water created another problem. She put it off as long as possible, but finally had no choice but to set aside her handiwork. Painstakingly, and without a smidgen of grace or coordination, she stood up and propped her arms on her crutches. Going in the direction opposite to that Cooper had taken, she found a spot in which to relieve herself.
As she struggled with her crutches and her clothes, at the same time checking for creepy crawlies on the ground,
she marveled that this was really Rusty Carlson, real-estate princess of Beverly Hills, seeking a place in the woods to pee!
Her friends would never have guessed she could come this far without going stark, staring mad. Her father would never believe it. But if she lived to tell about it, he would be so proud of her.
She was in the process of refastening her pants when she heard the nearby movement. Swiveling her head in that direction, she listened. Nothing.
“Probably just the wind.” Her voice sounded unnaturally loud and cheerful. “Or a bird. Or Cooper coming back. If he’s creeping up on me as a joke, I’ll never forgive him.”
She ignored the next rustling noise, which was louder and nearer than the last one, and moved as fast as she could back toward the camp. Determined not to do anything so cowardly as to whimper or cry out, she clenched her jaw in fear as she stumbled along over the uneven ground.
All her bravery deserted her when the form materialized from between the trunks of two pines and loomed directly in her path. Her head snapped up, she looked into the beady eyes, the hairy, leering face, and let out a bloodcurdling scream.
Cooper was in a hurry to get back, but he decided to dress the two rabbits before he returned. He had told himself that he wasn’t testing her fortitude when he’d gutted the rabbit where she could see it.
But he knew deep down inside that’s exactly what he’d been doing. Perversely, he had wanted her to cringe, to retch, to get hysterical, to demonstrate some feminine weakness.
She hadn’t. She’d borne up well. Far better than he’d expected her to.
He tossed away the entrails and began scraping the insides of the pelts. They would come in handy later.
The fur was warm and he could always use it to make Rusty—Rusty. Her again. Couldn’t he think of anything else? Did his every single thought have to come full circle back to her? At what point had they become a pair as inseparable as Adam and Eve? Couldn’t he think of one without thinking immediately of the other?