Tromping away from the mounded stones, he headed toward what was left of the helicopter. His thick-tread hiking boots crunched through the ankle-deep snow still lying along the uneven turf in stubborn, shadowed patches.
When he reached the wreckage, he made a three-sixty around it, hunkering down here and there to inspect what was left of the landing skids, the jumbled cockpit, the smashed tail assembly. He let out a low, admiring whistle. He had expected worse. The craft would never fly again, but neither had it been demolished.
For that, he supposed, he could credit the pilot. He’d been good, damned good.
But there were more important things to consider now than the vagaries of fate. Overhead, clouds were settling in. He sniffed the air and frowned. Snow. He intended to be back at the cabin before it hit. Quickly he retrieved a small ax from the belt at his waist, then set about chopping away at a stand of young pine, his movements made slow and awkward because of the still-bleeding gash on his left arm. From a distance at least, the branches would obscure the chopper from prying eyes.
He would assure Courtney, should she ask, that he’d hidden the wreck to protect her from any unsavory types who might be looking for a downed helicopter with a kidnapped heiress aboard.
He grimaced. Maybe someday he’d even tell her the truth.
An hour passed before he’d piled up enough branches to satisfy him. But before he tossed them over the copter, he approached the wreck one more time and peered through the spider veins of smashed Plexiglas that had been the cockpit bubble. Maybe there was still something salvageable inside. Raising his right boot, he took dead aim on the center of the ruined panel and gave it a hard kick.
The damaged Plexiglas split, cleaved in two. Ignoring his protesting back, he jerked the bigger of the two sections free and tossed it aside, then leaned into the mangled opening. The sharp stench of spilled fuel assaulted his nostrils and an involuntary shudder rippled through him. It had been a flat-out miracle that the copter hadn’t exploded in a ball of flames. He thought of Courtney being in the copter when it hit and shuddered again.
Jaw tight, Jack forced the thought away. Mindful of the jagged metal protruding nearly everywhere, he began to rummage through the copter’s ruined interior, hoping to find something worth salvaging.
He spied a first-aid kit jammed beneath a rear passenger seat. With considerable effort he pried it loose, wishing he had thought to look for it yesterday. Luckily he’d had enough emergency supplies at the cabin to care for Courtney’s injuries.
The rest of his search proved fruitless. Back aching, arm hurting, Jack eased himself out of the wreck and straightened. He’d put it off long enough. He needed to get back to the cabin. In her current state, Courtney wouldn’t appreciate being left alone for too long. If he timed it right, she might even be glad to see him. Glad to see J.D., he corrected.
Working quickly, Jack layered the pine branches over the wreckage. When he finished, he shrugged into his coat, gathered up his shovel and rifle and started down the slope. Four steps later he came to an abrupt halt. Out of the corner of one eye, he’d seen it. Lying in the snow some dozen yards from where he stood. A dark, lethal-looking object.
He walked over to it, bent down to retrieve it, then turned the .38 caliber Smith & Wesson over in his palm. White heat flooded through him at the notion of it having been used to threaten Courtney.
He shut away the image. In its place another image, every bit as disturbing, rose up to haunt him—Courtney lying on his bed at the cabin, shivering, unconscious, naked. It was an image he had been battling vainly to suppress all day.
Damn, she was beautiful. Even more beautiful than he’d remembered. It had been impossible not to look. He’d assured himself it was because he’d needed to check her for injuries.
But the memories seared him. Memories of ivory-white legs and coral-tipped breasts.
Quickly he’d covered her, but she’d continued to shiver violently. He’d had no choice but to massage her legs, her arms, knead warmth back into her cold flesh. She’d moaned softly, instinctively shifting toward the warmth of his body sitting next to hers.
Warmth, hell! His body had been on fire.
Furious, Jack jammed back the thoughts, but not before he felt an unwelcome stirring in his loins. Lust, pure and simple, he told himself. It had been nearly two years since he’d been with a woman. Not since Wendy. Even then, his marriage had been over and done with long before they’d both admitted defeat and gone to see a lawyer. Such a prolonged abstinence made his response to Courtney perfectly natural, he assured himself. And had nothing at all to do with memories of a hot, storm-edged summer night spent naked with her tangled in the sheets of his bed, his body craving hers the way an addict craves narcotics.
His hand shaking, Jack checked the safety on the Smith & Wesson, then tucked the weapon into the waistband of his jeans. Memories like that he could do without. It was imperative that he remain detached, impersonal. About Courtney. About everything. If he didn’t, he could damn well get them both killed.
He glanced again at the wreck, a sudden thought occurring to him. The damned chopper had a radio. Had it survived the crash? There was only one way to find out.
Ten minutes later Jack Sullivan headed down the forested slope toward the cabin and Courtney.
* * *
Courtney pushed herself to a sitting position in J.D.’s bed and cast an anxious glance toward the door. Blast it all, where was he? He’d promised to be back in an hour or two. From the lengthening shadows beyond the cabin’s curtainless windows, her best guess put his absence at closer to five hours and counting. Five hours seemed more than enough time to bury a couple of bodies, didn’t it? She shuddered. How on earth would she know how long it took to bury a body?
“Come on, J.D.,” she murmured. “Get back here.” Even J.D.’s company was preferable to none at all.
At least she’d managed to sleep away most of the five hours, the only exception being the twenty-minute ordeal she’d gone through when her bodily needs had finally coerced her into hobbling outdoors. That twenty minutes had convinced her, as J.D. could not, to abandon any notion she might have had of hiking out of these woods anytime soon. Alone anyway.
Between the chill mountain air and her aching left ankle, she’d had to concede that she would never make it. Not without help. Like it or not—and she most certainly did not—for the time being she was dependent on her enigmatic host. A reality that hardly boosted her flagging spirits.
Again she stared at the door, willing it to open. But it remained stubbornly closed. How far from the cabin had J.D. said the copter had gone down? Less than a mile? Could she find him if she tried limping after him? She closed her eyes. In which direction?
Her memories of the crash and its aftermath were fuzzy at best. The only indelible impression she had was of her rescuer’s tenderness and caring. The man had cradled her against him, allowed the warmth of his own body to seep into hers as he’d carried her to the cabin. And he’d done it with an injured left arm.
Courtney sighed, undone by the ambiguity of her emotions where her benefactor was concerned. On the one hand, he scared her to death. On the other... She trailed her fingers through the tousled mane of her blond hair. On the other, there was something about him that niggled at her. Something almost familiar. Which was, of course, absurd. If she’d encountered a talking grizzly bear anywhere in her past, she would have remembered.
Again her gaze tracked to the door. “Some guardian angel,” she grumbled. If J.D. stayed away much longer, he was going to have to turn in his wings.
Courtney frowned. Guardian angel? Now where had that come from? How could she think of J.D. as anything even remotely celestial?
And then she remembered. In her semiconscious state after the crash she had demanded to know who was lifting her away from the wreckage.
I guess for now, a husky voice had murmured, you can consider me your guardian angel.
She stared out the neare
st window. Could guardian angels be harmed? What if hers had met with some disaster? A fall. A real bear. Or worse.
What if her kidnappers had managed to get off some sort of distress signal before the copter crashed? Even if they hadn’t, when the appointed time for a rendezvous had come and gone, would their boss have had a backup plan ready to set in motion? J.D. had mentioned the possibility of confederates roaming the hillsides searching for them. What if they’d found J.D.? Would he lead them here? Would he—?
A board creaked and Courtney nearly leapt from the bed. It was only the settling noises of the log house, but it might as well have been a bomb. Her whole body shook.
Annoyed by her increasing agitation, Courtney flung back her bedcovers and eased her legs out over the side of the bed. She needed to distract herself. Her imagination was fast becoming her worst enemy. She would be back in Butte soon enough, she assured herself. Even now, Fletcher Winthrop was likely marshaling forces to find her. But she needed to be pragmatic, as well. The good guys didn’t know where to look. Her first line of defense, therefore, would be up to her. She drew in a steadying breath. Up to her, even though what she wanted most in the world to do was to crawl back into bed and pull the covers over her head.
She’d spent a lot of time these past four years learning how not to be a victim. But she knew only too well how easy it was to fall back into old patterns. Especially under times of stress. She would have to be on her guard in more ways than one.
Gingerly, Courtney tested her bad ankle on the planked wood flooring. Her earlier venture outdoors had only served to aggravate the injury. She’d used a fire poker as a makeshift crutch then, and took it up again now. Half hobbling, half hopping, she made her way to the fireplace. First things first. The cabin was freezing. The fire J.D. had built up had long since died back to glowing embers. Lying in bed, Courtney hadn’t found the chill as noticeable, but if she intended to reconnoiter the cabin, she would have to rebuild the fire.
Balancing on her good foot, she struggled for several minutes to get the flames crackling again. Sweating, exhausted, she leaned against the mantel and drank in the revitalizing warmth of the fire. Eyes closed, for a moment she could almost believe that she was home.
As a child, she had often sneaked into her father’s study and nestled herself in his massive red leather chair in front of the faux marble fireplace. She would sit there for hours and imagine the arms of the chair to be her father’s arms, and that he really hadn’t abandoned her to yet another business trip after all. To her child’s heart, she would’ve traded every fancy present he’d ever brought home to her, just to have had more of his time.
Courtney let out a shaky sigh, wondering how her father was getting along. Had he made any progress at all? Regained consciousness? Or had he—?
Enough! she ordered herself sharply. She didn’t dare let her thoughts grow morbid. She needed to stay focused on the situation at hand. Determined, Courtney gripped her makeshift crutch and began her painful trek about the cabin. No longer elevated, her swollen ankle now throbbed to every beat of her heart. But she didn’t stop. She needed to familiarize herself with every square inch of the place, even if to do so tweaked her conscience. She was, after all, violating J.D.’s privacy, wasn’t she?
Courtney stifled a humorless laugh. Privacy? The man had certainly afforded her none when he’d stripped her of her clothes. Not that he’d had much choice, she admitted. Still, the idea of those big hands of his gliding across her naked flesh, even on so noble a quest as seeking broken bones, did little to quell the odd heat that suddenly sifted through her.
She told herself it was from embarrassment.
Annoyed at her unsettling thoughts, Courtney concentrated on her search. In a dilapidated dresser she found more clothes—more faded jeans, flannel shirts and underwear. She shook her head. She supposed she should give the man credit. He certainly seemed immune to Madison Avenue’s dress-for-success hype.
The rest of her quest turned up an assortment of hiking equipment, enough dehydrated food and bottled water to make it through Armageddon I and II, a ten-inch hunting knife and a locked steel box. Courtney ignored everything but the knife. Carefully she withdrew the wicked-looking blade from its hand-tooled leather sheath. The tempered steel glinted ominously in the fiery orange glow of the fire. She didn’t even hesitate. Resheathing the knife, she immediately carried it over to J.D.’s bed and tucked it under her pillow. The full ramifications of such an act she would consider later. Right now she would take any illusion of safety she could get. Especially since there was still no sign of J.D.
Stutter-stepping her way to the closest window, she peered out into the heavily shadowed forest. What if he really had been hurt? Shouldn’t she at least try to find him? As though to mock her, a light snow began to fall. A heavy ground mist obscured all but the closest trees. Courtney’s shoulders slumped. If J.D. was hurt, he would have to get back to the cabin on his own. She wouldn’t have the first idea where to look.
Another thought, equally unpleasant, came to her. What if the man had just plain deserted her? Decided she wasn’t worth the hassle? Hadn’t he been more than a little blunt about his feelings toward uninvited guests? And what if there was more to it than that? Perhaps he didn’t cherish solitude, so much as require it. Courtney’s heart skipped a beat. Maybe she should’ve paid more attention those nights she flipped past “America’s Most Wanted.”
For a weary moment her gaze shifted longingly toward the bed. Her ankle now ached abominably, and she had to fight the seductive urge to lose herself to the oblivion of sleep. If she slept long enough, maybe J.D. would come back and she could stop worrying about him. And about herself.
All the more reason that she didn’t dare lie down, not yet.
Leaning more heavily on the fire poker than ever, Courtney made her way to a door in the cabin’s back wall. She had assumed it opened to the outside just as the front door did, but she wanted to be certain. She was astonished to find instead a small workroom. A canvas drop cloth covered the wide knotty pine table that took up most of the space in the room. A series of mysterious lumps and bumps suggested a number of objects underneath the cloth. Sliding onto a hip-high stool beside the table, Courtney lifted the cloth and gasped. Before her were a dozen or more of the most exquisite wood carvings she had ever seen, all of them focused on a single subject—wolves. A pack of wolves on the hunt, a pair of wolf pups tumbling at play. Each piece remarkable in its precision, its minute detail.
She found herself drawn to one piece in particular. A work in progress. A lone wolf with its right front foreleg caught in a trap. The agony on the animal’s face was stunning, overwhelming. She could feel its suffering. Feel its terror, its fury at being caught in the cruel jaws of the trap.
Courtney fingered the charm at her throat, fighting a sudden impulse to yank the canvas back over the carvings. She knew where her thoughts were headed, and she didn’t want to go there. She’d been fighting her memories since the instant that helicopter had spun out of control.
But she was so tried, exhausted. And every muscle in her body ached. More than that, her defenses were down. They had been ever since that call from Fletcher about her father’s heart attack. And then the kidnapping... She just didn’t have the strength to stave off the memories any longer.
Jack Sullivan would win this one. Just as he had won ten years ago....
It had been her nineteenth birthday. Courtney had spent the day packing personal possessions in preparation for the move she and her father would soon make to their new log house retreat in Elk Park. The log house was now habitable, and in fact she intended to spend the night there. But it was still hard to leave the stately old Victorian mansion on Granite Street, where she’d grown up. In a lot of ways it was Courtney’s last connection to memories of her mother, who had died in a car accident when Courtney was barely seven years old.
Most of the family possessions had already been moved to the new house. But Courtney was t
aking her time with the last few items, like her mother’s elegantly wrought silver hairbrush. Courtney sat on the floor of her nearly empty bedroom and caressed the soft bristles, feeling an unexpected rush of emotion. Birthdays it seemed, even after twelve years, could still be hard to get through without a mother.
Her mood was scarcely boosted by the fact that she’d spent the day alone. Her father was on another one of his business trips, this one to Japan. He wouldn’t be back for two weeks. Courtney let out a melancholy sigh. A phone call would have been nice, but at least he’d remembered to send flowers. Or rather, Courtney thought morosely, his secretary, Sarah Carpenter, had remembered to send flowers.
You could be in Hawaii, she reminded herself. Lolling on a beach in a sexy bikini, getting an eyeful of brawny surfer types wearing their own brand of skimpy attire. Last summer she’d done just that. Two of her best girlfriends had gone back this year for more sun and surf. But Courtney had declined to join them.
She grinned sheepishly, tucking the silver hairbrush into a nearby box. Not that she was missing out on her quota of ogling. The construction crew doing the work out on the Elk Park property had more than its share of pinup candidates. In fact, there was one carpenter in particular that she found almost too intriguing. Tousled dark hair, muscled biceps and taut buttocks encased in worn denim jeans had had her spending entirely too much time peeking out of the newly hung windows of the first-floor family room. Outrageous behavior, Courtney had chided inwardly, considering that she was practically an engaged woman. But then, it didn’t hurt to look, did it? Besides, she assured herself, she was just curious about the man’s eyes. He was forever wearing safety glasses, and she just wanted to know what color his eyes were. His eyes. That was all.
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