It would be crazy to give in to this trembling feeling of vulnerability. Curiosity, that's all it was, but with the darkness outside and the wind howling in the trees, it would take nothing at all for her to be back there, begging him to love her...
She had always thought of herself as a proud person, but with Gray, pride often deserted her. Once, she'd been so desperate to keep him in her life that she'd refused to believe he didn't love her. Now she knew better, but her imagination seemed determined to fight against reason.
As a doctor, she understood what was happening. Stress could create its own insanity. She'd been in a state of crisis ever since Chris failed to call on Wednesday. Until now she'd kept herself busy—flying north to find Gray, persuading him to help, staring through the window of his plane searching for anything that might be a sign of Chris and Jordy.
Now she was trapped by weather, helpless to do anything, but her body didn't know it was time to rest, to recoup energy for dawn and the end of the storm. Her nerves were stretched tight and her body was ready for action, but there was nothing to do now but wait and sleep.
Her nerves couldn't accept that, so she was left with this heightened awareness and an insane need to do something to relieve the tension. Anything. Some primitive part of her believed that tangling in those sleeping bags with Gray would relieve the terrible tension she'd been living with for days.
But she was a civilized woman. She knew how to control her more dangerous urges. She could turn one of the bags around, and then if she rolled toward him in the night, she'd be staring at the covered shape of his legs.
Would he strip naked before he got in his sleeping bag?
"Are you done in there?"
"Yes!" She heard the panic in her voice and spread both hands flat, one on each of the bags. If she turned the bag around he would know the reason. He'd know she was afraid.
With moonbeams drifting over them, she might turn and reach for him. Would he still want her? If he woke with her in his arms, would he—
"Come out and have something to eat."
She sucked in a tattered breath and crawled out of the tent. She'd read that people often became overwhelmingly aroused in the wake of violence or tragedy, but she hadn't known it could also happen in the time of waiting, when nerves were stretched.
Gray was crouched against the big tree. As she stumbled to her feet, he held something out to her. "Sandwich," he said. "It's either egg or tuna salad. I can't tell which in this light."
She took the sandwich in her free hand and stood with the beam of the flashlight pointing at the ground as she took a bite.
"It's egg salad."
"Turn off your light. Save the batteries."
She flicked the switch and Gray faded to a thick blackness in the looming shadow of the tree.
"Sit down, Emma."
"I'd rather stand."
She needed to walk, to pace away her restlessness, but darkness and the uneven ground held her trapped. In her mouth, the bread grew to an unmanageable lump. She fought to swallow, but when she forced the mouthful of egg salad and bread down her throat, she was left with a choking lump.
She held the remains of her sandwich in one hand, the flashlight in the other. All ten fingers felt dead, frozen with a coldness she knew originated in her soul.
"Chris might be here," she said. "What if he's in these trees?" She twisted her head and saw only dense blackness. Even with light, the trees were so thick everywhere in this godforsaken country.
"He could be anywhere," she realized, her voice rising wildly now, "anywhere at all we flew today, and we wouldn't know. Why didn't we look when we landed here? We could have looked in the trees! We should have looked!"
Gray grasped her shoulders. Her body moved as if he'd shaken her, but she couldn't feel his hands.
"Maybe he's a hundred feet away and we're eating while he's unconscious somewhere, just over there. We have to look. For God's sake, Gray, we have to look!"
"Emma, stop it!"
He jerked the sandwich from her hand and tossed it behind him. Then he wrestled the flashlight from her grip.
"It's night," he growled. "It's dark and there's a storm." His low tones seemed to move with the sound of the wind overhead. "We need to sleep. When morning comes the wind may have blown itself out, and we'll search again."
His hands pressed into her upper arms. She knew without his touch she would float away.
"He could be here." She heard her own words, an indistinct whisper under the wind. "Isn't it possible? What if he's lying a few feet away from us and we didn't even look?"
His hands rubbed her arms through the bulky layers of rain jacket and sweater. "If Chris and Jordy were ashore here, the kayaks would be up above the high water line on the beach."
"I didn't look," she wailed. "I didn't look for kayaks."
"I looked. They're not here, Emma."
Her rain jacket squeaked on his and she realized she'd leaned into him. His hands were sheltering her, pressing against her back now, his voice soothing and careful, gentling her. Tears welled up and she pushed them away. She knew tears would shred her fragile hold on control.
"Have you slept at all since Chris became overdue?"
"Last night. I slept last night because I believed you would find Chris, that it would be all right."
"Keep believing."
She pushed herself away and wrapped her arms across her midriff "Are you going to light a fire?"
"If a fire will make you feel better, we'll make one."
"If I weren't here, would you curl up in the dark without a fire?"
"If you weren't here, I'd sleep in the plane." She heard the shrug in his voice. "There isn't room for both of us in the plane, and you need to stretch your leg."
Was he deliberately using every chance to remind her of her weakness? Her fingers curled with the uncharacteristic urge to strike him, but she wanted the soothing sound of a fire crackling, the sight of flames.
"So what do we do, wander around and pick up bits of branches and bark to burn?"
Chapter 7
A blue spark shot into the flames and popped.
"Driftwood makes colorful flames." Gray added a piece of wood shaped like a modern sculptor's vision of a seagull in flight. "The salt water dries, leaving deposits of minerals behind."
A flash of orange illuminated the seagull as Emma studied the flames from her place against the big tree. She'd helped him collect a few pieces of driftwood when he showed her what they needed. Then he'd pulled out a knife he wore on his belt and used it to make slivers of bark to use as kindling. At the touch of a match struck on Gray's fingernail, the fire grew from a tiny flame to a crackling source of warmth and reassurance.
Even with a weak leg, there was no reason she couldn't build a fire just like it. There might be some trick to the arrangement of the wood to create the right draft, but she really shouldn't have this feeling that he'd used some kind of bushman's magic.
Irrationally, she felt awkward and incompetent because he was at ease with fire and tents. The tent was erect, ready for her to need sleep. Gray had provided the food, the shelter, and the fire. She'd suggested they make coffee, but he had vetoed the idea.
"The last thing you need is a stimulant," he'd said, but he'd nestled a pot of fresh water in the fire—water from a jug in his pack. "Instant hot chocolate," he'd told her, tearing open two packets and pouring their contents into two empty cups.
She could have told him that chocolate was a stimulant, too, but he'd probably retort that the powdered milk in the mix would act as a sedative. She'd have liked to argue with him, but the very urge was a warning. If she screamed at him, the sound could easily grow and eat her from the inside out, leaving her helpless and out of control, like a patient's parent screaming in the waiting room.
She sat quietly, trying to create a picture of Gray in the operating room, completely and utterly out of place; but the operating table wouldn't resolve in her mind and she was left wit
h an image of Gray's face, heavy brows hunched over narrowed eyes as he watched her.
While the water heated, he collected the litter from their meal and tossed it and the empty hot chocolate packets into the fire. He bent and picked up the bit of sandwich he'd taken from her earlier. That, too, went into the fire. Then he put what was left of the food back in the pack and picked it up.
"I'll put the pack back in the plane. No sense encouraging bears."
The skin on her back crawled as the circle of his flashlight disappeared. He probably expected her to spend the night quivering and whining about wild animals. She was damned if she'd let that happen.
"If a bear comes, it's your job to look after it."
"I'm in charge of marauding bears and howling wolves. You get to look after any broken legs."
She had seen enough broken bones that the image of Gray with a fractured leg was too real. His face would be rigid with control. She would have to touch him knowing she must hurt him, knowing he would fight to prevent her seeing the pain.
The crunch of gravel told her he'd reached the other side of the log pile and must be at the seaplane. What was he thinking as he stuffed that pack into the plane? Had she ever been able to read him? Yet she wanted him back in sight where she could take comfort from the simple fact of his presence.
"It's a deal. I'll look after the broken bones."
He slammed the door to the luggage compartment and she called out, "My father treated you once for a break."
When he didn't shout back, she felt the darkness close in. Chris, she thought, but knew she mustn't let herself think about Chris. She must starve her imagination.
Gravel crunched, then Gray's voice came from a distance.
"Don't get your shirt in a knot over the bears."
"I'm not." The image of marauding bears seemed remote now, with the fire burning only feet away and Gray within reach of her voice. "What do bears eat?"
"Berries and salmon and honeycombs." In his voice she heard a hint of the dimple she remembered. "Humans come far down on the list. You can sleep in the plane if you'll feel better, but you won't be able to stretch out there."
She drew her knees up and hugged them close to her. "The tent's fine."
She felt better for eating, steadier. Gray had undoubtedly been right about coffee being a bad idea. Morning would be the time for stimulants, not tonight when it would interfere with sleep.
Not that she'd sleep anyway, with only the trees between her and the storm and no way of knowing where Chris was. She had to keep believing that if something terrible had happened to her son, something final, she'd know deep inside.
She'd known something was going to happen the day Paul died. He'd swilled down his morning coffee and she'd felt something as he pulled on his coat—a moment of tension, a sense there was something crucial about this morning.
I'll never see him again. That had been the thought in her mind, but Paul was going to Toronto to begin the job that had been a big promotion, and it had been easy to tell herself it was only this further distancing she sensed.
"Paul," she'd said. He'd turned to look at her, but there'd been nothing to say beyond, "I'm sorry," because they'd been drifting apart from the moment they married. Maybe they'd never really been together.
In the fire, the water began to boil. What was Gray doing? She'd heard him close the luggage compartment, had expected the crunching gravel to announce his return.
She took the cloth Gray had used and carefully lifted the pot, pouring the steaming liquid into the cups. She stirred the instant mix, breathing in the scent of milk and chocolate. It smelled incredibly delicious, although being instant it probably contained a list of chemicals that belonged on government warning bulletins.
She held her mug in her hands and drew in the scent, sitting down again and feeling the lurch of nausea that had become familiar over the last few days. For just a moment she'd forgotten, and it came back to her with a sickening awareness.
What if she couldn't find Chris?
He could be dead, the heart monitor silent, a flat green trace on the screen. The shudder that jerked through her was so complete she didn't hear Gray's approach until his legs appeared on the far side of the fire.
She fixed her gaze tight on the laces of his boots. Hiking boots, she supposed. They looked like the light mountain boots Chris had bought for mountain camp, except Gray's were scarred by use, the leather softened until it seemed to be part of the ground he walked over.
She saw her arm lift and point. "Your chocolate is in the cup, right over there."
Amazing that her voice could sound so ordinary, that she heard it as if a stranger were speaking, that she could watch him lift the cup and place the mug at his lips. She even heard the sound of his breath blowing on the surface of the hot chocolate, as if her ears had amplifiers attached.
"They had flares to use if they got in trouble. Why didn't someone see flares?"
He crouched down, facing her, and she couldn't see his boots anymore. She stared at his arms resting on his knees. The steam from his hot chocolate drink rose in a cloud, illuminated by the flickering fire.
"A flare is only useful if there's someone to see it. They may have set some off, but in these narrow channels, probably no one saw."
She worked to make sense of his words, staring intently at the steaming mug.
"Emma, you have to stop exhausting yourself with imaginary scenarios."
She felt the pull, as if he were drawing her eyes up to meet his, but she wouldn't shift her gaze from that mug, from the way his fingers linked together to form its cradle.
"Ever since Chris became overdue, I keep thinking of my patients' parents. They're usually in the waiting room when I'm operating—imagining, fearing, hoping. I've been so lucky with Chris. I've worried when he's late home or when he catches a virus, but it's never been serious." She made a sound that might have been a small laugh. "I don't have much practice in being powerless, in waiting."
A log rolled over and sparks showered up. As the flare died, a long, inhuman cry sounded on the air and Emma gasped.
"It's a wolf," said Gray. "A long way off."
"How can you tell the distance?" The mournful wail still echoed in her chest.
"I can tell. He won't bother us."
She realized she hadn't the energy to worry about the wolf. "I try not to, but I keep thinking of Chris preparing for this trip. He wanted to come so badly. The wilderness and the dangers frightened me, but I never told him. I kept telling myself I hadn't stopped him from rappelling up rocks or learning to take a kayak in the rapids, kept thinking if I stopped him now, I'd be crippling him, limiting his life with my fears."
The wolf cried again, but it seemed farther away now.
"Maybe I was wrong. Maybe I should have stopped Chris, told him it was too dangerous."
Gray set his cup aside and she flinched. If he were going to touch her again, she needed to be braced against it.
"When Chris was small, when did you stop walking him to school?"
She smiled. "He was in second grade, and I would stand at the corner until I'd seen him cross safely. Then—well, I couldn't hold his hand or watch him forever. There were crossing guards and he had to grow up."
"You must have known a drunk motorist might kill him in a crosswalk. You couldn't control that, but you couldn't keep walking him to school forever. This is the same, Emma."
She realized she was tired, overwhelmingly tired. She wondered why the wolf had howled on the night air, and why he'd stopped now. Like dogs, she thought, dogs barking at night.
"Earlier, you told me you're engaged to a wonderful man. Does he have a name?"
"A name?"
"This man you're going to many." His voice sounded harsh. "Don't you remember his name, or is he some fiction you created to see if I'd react?"
"Alex." Suddenly, the need to cry grew in her throat and she scrambled to her feet. "Alex," she said again, because her voice felt like her only
anchor.
"Tell me about him."
Therapy, she thought. He was trying to hold her here, keep her sane with conversation.
"He's a partner in the clinic where I work, a pediatrician." She tried to form Alex's image in front of her eyes and couldn't make it come clear. "He's wonderful with the children. He has a... sort of magic with kids. I've seen him with a hysterical little boy, calming him with just his voice. He's... he's a nice man."
Gray stood, carrying her eyes up with the motion. He loomed in front of her, his face a mystery in shadow. "You don't love him."
"Of course I love him. You have no right—"
"Why would you marry a man you don't love, Emma?"
"I—Damn it, Gray, why are we talking about Alex when Chris is out there?"
He took her cup and set it somewhere behind him before he took her shoulders. She knew what was coming, knew she must pull away, yet felt powerless.
"Stop handling it, Emma. For tonight, let the control go."
She needed something to scream at, but screaming would shatter her control. "I can't."
He shook her roughly. "Damn you! You'll break if you go on this way."
The movement of her body, the feel of his hands on her split something inside.
"Don't you tell me what to do!" She shook her hair back.
His hands tightened, harder, and suddenly she was fighting him, struggling in his grip and screaming words without meaning. Her hands balled into fists and hammered against his chest.
His lips moved, but she couldn't hear the sounds. Then his hands gentled, sliding up into her hair. His elbows bracketed her rib cage.
"Oh, God," she gasped as the fury drained out of her. "What am I doing?"
"It's okay." His thumbs slid out of her hair, smoothing her lids closed. "Close your eyes. Let it go, Emma."
She came up against his chest with a soft thud, her sweatshirt against his heavy plaid mackinaw. Suddenly her pulse was pounding and she didn't know if it was fear for Chris or panic that she'd disappear in Gray's grasp.
Then Gray's lips covered hers, drew hers in and sent the world spinning. Her hands were trapped between their bodies as his lips brushed roughly over hers, then fastened hard and hungry... and she spun away, lost everything but the hunger that exploded in her veins and dragged a groan from him—or perhaps from her.
If You Loved Me Page 11