There was nowhere to sit without getting their pants wet, so she stood with her back to him while he bared her arm and peeled off the bandage. “It doesn’t look any worse,” he said, to her relief. “It’s still red around the puncture site, but the redness isn’t spreading.” He put more antibiotic on the wound, slapped another bandage over it, and she eased her arm back into her shirtsleeve, did up the buttons.
“While we’re out here, I should probably check your head,” she said.
He touched the thick bandage on his head. “Is there enough gauze to redo this?”
There was, but only one more time. What if they weren’t rescued tomorrow? The thought sent a chill down her spine, or maybe that was a chill from the fever. Either way, the idea of a third night on the mountain was horrendous.
Nevertheless, his bandage needed changing. “I don’t have to use as much this time,” she finally said. “I’ll put a pad over the cut, and wrap the Ace bandage around your head to make sure no trash or debris gets into the stitches.”
There was still no place to sit, and he was so much taller than she that even unwrapping the Ace bandage was awkward. Finally he pulled one of the trash bags over and carefully knelt on it, while she still stood. “Is that better?”
“Much.” Carefully she removed the rest of the bandage, hoping the antibiotic salve she’d put on the stitches would prevent the gauze from sticking. It had, for the most part. There were a few places where she had to tug on the gauze to pull it free, but nothing drastic. At least, he didn’t scream or curse, for which she was grateful.
Her repair job looked almost as bad as the cut had, she thought, biting her lip. Dried blood crusted around the holes where the stitches were, and in a thin line along the cut, making her wonder if she hadn’t pulled the edges together tightly enough. Then she realized that some of the swelling had gone down, which meant the stitches weren’t as tight as they should be. “It’s going to leave a hell of a scar,” she warned. “You may need plastic surgery.”
The look he gave her was mildly incredulous. “For a scar?”
“I’m not a doctor, remember? This isn’t exactly a neat job.” She felt embarrassed, as if she’d failed at some test, though she didn’t know what else she could have done. Left the cut open until the swelling went down? That didn’t seem like a viable alternative. Not only would the cut have been more likely to get infected, but wouldn’t leaving it open make the scar worse?
“Does it bother you? The scar,” he asked.
“Hey, it isn’t on my head. If it doesn’t bother you, then don’t worry about it.”
He grinned as she used an alcohol wipe to clean off the dried blood. “You aren’t oozing with sympathy, are you?”
“I’m not an oozer. Sorry.”
“What I meant was, does it bother you to look at it?”
“I won’t be looking at it, because I’m going to cover it with a bandage. But scars in general don’t bother me, if that’s what you’re asking.” Picking up the tube of antibiotic salve, she squirted a line of it over the stitches, from one end to the other. Covering the wound took two sterile gauze pads; she used strips of tape to hold them in place, then rewound the Ace bandage around his head. “There. You aren’t as good as new, but you’re better than you were yesterday.”
“Thanks to you,” he said as he climbed to his feet. She reached out to help him, holding him until she was certain he was steady. He looped one strong arm around her, tilted her chin up, and kissed her.
18
BAILEY FROZE IN DISMAY, CAUGHT IN HIS SURPRISINGLY powerful grip. She hated having to deal with sexual issues. They’d been getting along so well; why did he have to ruin things by making a pass? He was stronger than she’d expected, given his physical condition, which meant she might have to put some muscle into pushing him away, but she didn’t want to maybe cause him to fall and make his concussion worse—
But the kiss was light and brief, his lips cold against hers, his head lifting before she could put thought into action. “Thank you,” he said again, and released her.
She stood there in the cold, flummoxed. Okay, now she was officially confused. Was that a pass, or not? If he’d intended it to be, then it was the most nonsexual pass she’d ever experienced, which kind of defeated the purpose. If the kiss had been intended as a “thank-you,” then just saying the words would have sufficed.
She was the first to admit she wasn’t the best at catching sexual signals, and it seemed to her that relationships were hair-raising enough without one or both of the people involved operating on mistaken assumptions. In her book, it was better to ask and be certain, even if that wasn’t how these situations were usually handled. She shook off her mild shock and resumed helping him to the shelter, wedging her shoulder under his left arm and putting both arms around his waist. “Was that a pass?” she demanded, frowning up at him.
He paused, his expression mild as he glanced down. “Why do you ask?”
“Because I couldn’t tell. If it was a pass, then I want you to know up front that sex isn’t in the cards. If it wasn’t, then never mind.”
He actually laughed, his arm tightening around her shoulders in a brief hug. “Trust me, when I make a pass at you, you’ll know it. That was just a thank-you.”
“Saying ‘thank you’ would have been enough.”
“So would saying ‘you’re welcome,’” he said drily.
Color burned in her pale face. “You’re welcome. I’m sorry. I was being pissy, and I didn’t mean to be.”
“It’s okay.” They had covered the four yards or so to the shelter. He dropped his arm from around her and eased to one side, indicating for her to enter the shelter first. She did, realizing for the first time how much easier getting in and out was when no one else was inside. “Wait, let—” she began, but he was already crawling in behind her. She drew her legs up to give him as much maneuvering space as possible. He got turned around, his long legs making things difficult for him, then he stretched out on his stomach and pulled the trash bag closer to plug the entrance.
They settled in, straightening and arranging the heap of clothing so they were better able to cover themselves. Bailey sighed as she relaxed her aching body, lying on her side facing him. After doing nothing but lying around and dozing for most of the day she should be bored and restless, but instead she was still so tired she felt as if heavy weights were attached to her legs and arms. She also felt incredibly grungy; being dirty and sick was somehow much worse than being clean and sick.
Depression settled on her like a wet rug. “Why didn’t they come today?” she asked, her tone desolate.
Cam rested his head on the piece of foam that served him as a pillow. They were lying face-to-face, close together in the dimming light as the sun sank lower, bringing another icy night closer and closer. Her gaze roved over his battered face. She could still see the way his lashes curled, and the day’s worth of whiskers that adorned his jaw, but soon he would be only a darker shadow in the gloom of the shelter, before the darkness became complete.
“I don’t know,” he finally said. “The ELT should have brought a helicopter right to us.”
“Maybe it’s damaged,” she suggested, her heart sinking as the possibility registered with her. If no one knew where they were—
“ELTs can take a lot of abuse, especially with the plane as relatively intact as it is.”
“Intact?” she echoed incredulously. “Have you looked at it lately? The left wing is gone! Half the cabin is gone!”
One corner of his mouth curled in faint amusement. “But we’re both alive and in one piece, and most of the aircraft is still there. I’ve seen crashes where all that was left was a few burned pieces of metal.”
“Like if we’d crashed into a rock face?” For a moment she flashed back to those sickening moments before impact, when she’d stared at the craggy rocks looming ever closer and knowing that she was about to die.
“Like that. That’s why I wanted to get
us down to the tree line. We were going down, no way to stop it, but the trees made the difference between living and dying.”
“They cushioned the impact.” She shuddered a little, remembering the incredible force with which they’d hit, the sensation of being body-slammed by a giant. She couldn’t imagine what the crash would have been like without the trees, but she did know they wouldn’t have lived through it.
“Exactly. The trees right on the edge of the tree line are pretty spindly, and wouldn’t have done much to help, but I didn’t want to descend so far that they were too sturdy. I needed small to medium trees, I guess: strong enough to slow us down, absorb the impact, but limber enough to give.”
“Good idea. It worked.”
“I guess it did. We’re alive.”
She wanted to tell him how impressed she’d been with him then, watching him coax every bit of lift he could from the air currents, fighting gravity, using his skill and strength to keep them in the air as long as he had, but though her throat worked the words wouldn’t form. To her horror she felt tears forming and she clenched her teeth, willing the tears not to fall. She wasn’t soggy by nature, despite those annoying times when she woke to find tears on her cheeks. She didn’t know what that was all about. She did know that she refused to let herself turn into a weakling, sobbing because she’d been upset and scared. Finally she managed to say in a reasonably even tone, “You saved our lives.”
Even in the dimness his sharp eyes didn’t miss much. His expression softened as he touched her hair, smoothing a strand away from her face. “And then you saved mine. I’d have gone into shock and died if you hadn’t stopped the bleeding. I guess we’re even.”
She had a strange but potent urge to turn her face into his hand and kiss his palm. What on earth was wrong with her? First tears, and now this? Maybe the fever was getting worse. Maybe she was suffering from post-traumatic stress. A plane crash was pretty damn stressful; she was entitled to a few ragged nerves.
“Have you had wilderness survival training, or emergency response, anything like that?” he asked curiously.
The change of subject gave her a chance to silently pull herself out of the emotional tailspin she seemed to be in. Still, she had to swallow a couple of times before she could speak again, and her heart was pounding as if she’d just had some sort of close call. “No, why?”
“Because you made a lot of commonsense decisions, and did all the right things with what limited resources were at hand.”
“Commonsense, that’s me,” she said, surprised into a wry laugh. She’d experienced the havoc wrought by decisions made on the spur of the moment because one or both of her parents simply felt like it, or because they wanted something, and God forbid they stop to consider how devastating the fallout would be for their children. She never wanted to be that way. “My common sense is why Jim chose me to oversee—” She stopped, unwilling to talk about her personal life.
“All that money?” Cam finished for her, and smiled when her eyes widened in surprise. “It’s common knowledge. Our secretary told me about it, but she’s a scary woman, in league with the devil, and she knows everything.”
Bailey gave a small hoot of laughter. “Karen? Wait until I tell her you said she’s in league with the devil!”
“Hell! You know Karen?” Shock had him raising up on one elbow to stare down at her in consternation.
“Of course I know Karen. Wingate Group has used J and L for how many years? Before I married Jim, I was the one who called her to make arrangements for flights.”
“I should have known,” he muttered. “Hell. Shit. If you tell her that, she’ll make my life miserable until I either die or crawl over hot coals to apologize.” He eased down onto his back and stared upward. “Promise me you won’t tell her.”
“Don’t tell me you’re afraid of your secretary.” She snickered, delighted to uncover this facet of Captain Tight-ass Justice. She could see the smile that threatened to break out, and loved that he recognized and privately enjoyed the benefits of an alpha female secretary.
“She owns us,” he said with exaggerated gloom. “She knows where everything is, how everything works, and everything’s that going on. She handles everything. All Bret and I do is show up, sign what she tells us to sign, and fly the planes.”
“You could fire her,” she suggested, just to provoke him.
He snorted. “Get real. We raise ’em smarter than that in Texas. I might have to do more than sign a few papers if she wasn’t there.”
“You’re from Texas?”
“Don’t tell me I’ve lost the accent.” He eased onto his side again, curling his arm under his head.
“No, but I’ve read that pilots sort of naturally adopt a drawl, so you could have been from anywhere.”
“The Yeager syndrome,” he said. “I didn’t have to adopt a drawl. I was born with it, though Yeager was from West Virginia and I’m a born-and-bred, died-in-the-wool Texas boy and the accents are totally different.”
“If you say so.” She let doubt drip from every word.
“Yankee. You have to be born to the music of the tongue to hear the variations.”
She had to laugh, especially when the slightly teasing note in his voice invited her to. She wanted to tell him that “music of the tongue” sounded like something from the Kama Sutra, but bit the comment back just in time. If she didn’t intend to let him venture into sexual territory, then she shouldn’t lead an expedition there herself.
“Where are you from?” he asked.
“Kansas, originally, but I’ve lived in Ohio, California, Oregon, Maryland, and Iowa.”
“As a kid, or since you’ve been grown?”
“Mostly as a kid. Once I was out of college, I picked a place and stayed there.” Roots were nice. Stability was nice.
“My folks didn’t move around. They still live in Killeen.”
“Where’s that?”
“Didn’t you learn any geography in all those schools you went to? It’s about halfway between Dallas and San Antonio.”
“Sorry,” she said, rolling her eyes. “There wasn’t a lot of emphasis on Texas geography in the schools I went to.”
“The level of ignorance today is shocking. How can a school not teach about Texas?”
“Beats me. So you grew up in Killeen?”
“Yep. My parents still live in the same house I grew up in. I have one brother and two sisters, and we all went to the same school, a lot of the time had the same teachers. I moved around plenty when I was in the air force, though. Seeing new places was fun, but the moving itself was a pain in the ass. Why did you move around so much?”
“Divorce ping-pong,” she said. “Played with kids, instead of balls.”
“That’s a bitch. You have brothers and sisters?”
“Of an infinite variety.”
“They come in something other than male and female?”
She chuckled, enjoying the banter. “One brother and one sister, two half brothers I never see, three half sisters I never see, and a whole raft of stepbrothers and stepsisters whose names I have to think about, and most of whom I wouldn’t recognize if we collided head-on.” She thought she’d recognize the guy with red hair and a cleft chin, but she never could remember his name. He was her mother’s second husband’s son, one of them, with his second wife—her mother had been his third. Thinking about it all made Bailey’s headache worse.
“Are you close to your brother and sister?”
She noticed he didn’t ask about her parents, but then he was a smart guy so he probably figured that would be a pointless question. “My brother, Logan. He and his wife, Peaches, were the ones I was going rafting with. My sister, not so much. She has her own issues.”
On a peripheral level she noticed how comfortable she was now, not physically, but mentally. Rescue would reach them tomorrow, and this whole nightmare would be over. She wouldn’t recommend being in a plane crash, not fun on any level, but she thought she’d gain
ed a friend from the experience. She felt a small ping of astonishment that she would ever consider Captain Sourpuss Tight-ass Justice a friend, but she’d discovered he wasn’t a sourpuss, and the only thing tight about his ass was the way it looked, which was pretty damn yummy.
“You’re going to sleep,” he commented. “I can tell by the way you’re breathing.”
She hummed an agreement in her throat. He adjusted his position, pulling her closer, and she settled into his arms, against his warmth, as if she had always slept there.
19
ON THE THIRD MORNING, THE DAY DAWNED SUNNY AND bright. When Cam crawled out of the shelter, he discovered that he was considerably stronger than he had been the day before, plus his headache had lessened. The swelling of his eyelids seemed to have lessened, too. He didn’t feel like jumping hurdles or running marathons, but he walked unaided, albeit slowly, and without having to hold on to anything.
Bailey was feeling better, too; her fever had broken during the night, drenching her with sweat. That hadn’t been a good thing, not in below-freezing weather. She had made him roll onto his side facing away from her, and she had pulled off her damp clothes and put on dry ones. Considering the very limited space in the shelter, he wished he could have seen the contortions, but he hadn’t cheated by taking a peek. After she’d turned into a statue when he kissed her, he didn’t want to spook her again. In the same spirit, he’d made doubly sure he hadn’t prodded her with an erection even though he’d awakened several times with a real urge. The time was coming, though…
But first they had to get off this damn mountain.
Their food situation was becoming critical. There were two candy bars left, and they were becoming weak from lack of food. The fact that they’d both slept most of the past thirty-six hours had helped because they hadn’t burned many calories, but if they weren’t rescued today…