Up Close and Dangerous Read online

  He watched her do this, a quizzical little frown on his face. “Are you practicing for a sobriety test, or something?”

  “I’m measuring you. You’re an inch or so longer than seven feet—my real feet, not the twelve-inch kind. I don’t want to make the shelter too short for you.”

  She tried to make their bed maybe an inch longer than that—rather, she tried to make one side of it longer than that, because overall the thing was kind of lopsided because of how the trees were positioned. She figured she’d take the short side.

  Over the crosshatch of limbs and needles, she put the foam pads she’d removed from the plane’s seats. She had six short pads and one long piece from the bench seat, and she figured that would give more cushioning than they’d have in sleeping bags. Given her druthers, though, she’d have taken the sleeping bag—at least that way she’d be warm. Staying warm tonight, without a fire, would be a real challenge.

  When she had the pads positioned, she went to work with the bigger limbs. Obviously she needed some sort of frame, and just as obviously her roll of duct tape was called for to lash the limbs together, but she was oddly reluctant to use it. The roll was a small one, and wouldn’t go far. If she used strips of cloth to tie the skeleton frame together, at least the strips could be reused if she didn’t get it right the first time, whereas the tape, once it was used, was gone.

  The ruined silk jacket was perfect for cutting into pieces.

  At first she tried making an inverted V-shaped thing, but that was evidently beyond her building skills, which wasn’t surprising. After the rudimentary frame collapsed for the third time, she made an executive decision and stopped wasting time on that method.

  Returning to where Justice lay under the mound of clothing, she crouched beside him and said, “Remember when I said I suck at construction?”

  He cracked his eyes open. “Is this your way of telling me we’re sleeping in the open tonight?”

  “No, this is my way of asking for help. Help! Just give me some instructions. Pointers. Anything. If you have any experience at this, you know more than I do.”

  “I thought you’d been rafting before.”

  “I have. I’d like to point out that you don’t raft on top of a snow-covered mountain.”

  “Didn’t you set up a tent?”

  She made a scoffing noise. “I was a college student. Of course not. We slept in sleeping bags, around a campfire.”

  “Okay.” He thought a moment. “What type were you trying to build? An A-frame, or a lean-to?”

  “A-frame. I can’t get it to stand up.”

  “Make the base first. Lay out the long sides with two parallel long branches, then lay the cross braces on top, one on each end, and secure all four corners.”

  That sounded easy enough. Returning to the site of collapse, she sorted out the variety of limbs, sticks, and branches into the two best fits for the length of the bed, which she then placed, one on each side. Then she positioned two shorter limbs, one on each end, and used the strips of silk to tie each short limb to the two longer ones. When she finished she wiggled the frame to see how sturdy it was, cautiously pulled each knot tighter, and wiggled the frame again. Good enough.

  “What now?” she called.

  “Now you need to establish the height. Get four branches that are taller than you want the height to be.”

  That was easy, but all four branches still had a lot of limbs and needles attached. Using the knife, she trimmed off what she could. “Got it.”

  “Take two and make a rough X with them. The point where they cross will be the height of the shelter. You want to tie the second pair where they cross at the same height as the first pair. Then get two shorter pieces and put them below the crossing point of the Xs, as braces.”

  Hmmm. She thought she saw where he was going with this. She got busy with her silk strips, and when she was finished she had what looked like two letter As, with horns sticking out the top. “Now I tie these to the base, right?”

  “First get another long limb and put it in the notches of the two Xs, and tie it off on both ends so the upper frame is as long as the base. Then you attach the whole thing to the base.”

  Even with his instructions, the shelter’s frame sort of listed to the left and sagged at the back, but when she looked for the sun she saw that it had slipped behind the mountains, and time was too short for her to try to improve her handiwork. Instead she tied bracing pieces of limbs wherever the thing seemed to need it most, which was pretty much all over. When she judged it sturdy enough to stand, at least for one night, she moved on to the roof.

  Technically, she supposed big black trash bags draped over the top didn’t qualify as a real roof, but they were the closest thing to a tarp that she had. She taped the trash bags to the wooden frame, then threw the cargo net on top of that to anchor them in case the wind got up, and for added weight and insulation wove the pliable tree branches, needles intact, through the webbing of the net.

  The trash bags didn’t completely cover the sides of the A-frame, but she didn’t have enough of them to do the job. She attached more limbs to cover the gaps, then even more limbs, then began sticking clumps of needles everywhere she could stick them. With one eye on the steadily decreasing light and part of her attention focused on the dropping temperature, she forgot to keep her movements slow and easy. Instead, a sense of urgency drove her faster and faster, until her breath was coming in audible gasps.

  As she stood up to reach for yet another limb to cover a tiny gap she’d just noticed, her vision went black. She stumbled, reaching out in panic to grab something, anything, but her hand waved uselessly in the air as she pitched headlong into one of the trees.

  When her vision returned she was on her knees in the snow, one arm wrapped around the slender evergreen, her heart hammering in panic. Not wanting to risk falling, she stayed on her knees, gritting her teeth as she clumsily covered the small gap. Nausea, oily and bitter, rose in her throat, and she swallowed it back.

  She still had to enclose the ends, and her only way to do it was by crawling. After standing the limbs and branches to cover the back, she piled snow against them; heaven knew the snow wasn’t going to melt, and it made an effective barrier against the swirling wind. The front end could be only partially enclosed, because they had to get inside somehow; more branches, starting at the sides and working in, leaving barely enough open space for him to crawl through. To cover the entrance, she clumsily tucked the biggest piece of leather into the inside of the frame and let the flap hang down; it didn’t completely cover the entrance, but it didn’t have to. The gap that remained she could fill by pulling one of the trash bags containing her clothes into it.

  The biggest problem facing her now was getting upright, staying upright, and somehow getting Justice into the shelter. She couldn’t drag him, because she was dragging herself. Carefully she pulled herself to a standing position, gripping one of the trees for support. Her knees threatened to buckle beneath her, and her head gave such a vicious throb that she almost blacked out again. When the threat passed, she stared tiredly at the ramshackle, lopsided structure. It would do because it had to do; they had no other options.

  WOBBLING, STAGGERING, SHE made her way down the slope to where Justice lay. In actual distance it wasn’t far, no more than thirty feet—just far enough to get out of the path of the plane if it should start sliding. Still, for the effort it took her to go those thirty feet, it might as well have been a mile.

  “It’s ready,” she gasped, staggering to her knees beside him. Her hands were numb and clumsy with cold, the mountains were doing a slow swirl around her, and she was fighting off nausea again. “I don’t know how you’re going to get there, though, unless you can crawl.”

  His eyes opened, the irises pale amid the dark bruises that had already formed. “I think I can stand. If I can’t, then I’ll crawl.” He took in the pallor of her skin, the way she was shaking and shivering, the dampness of her sweatpants from the k
nees down, and his brows lowered. “What the hell have you done to yourself?” he asked sharply. “Never mind; I know. You’ve been half killing yourself trying to make a shelter for us. Damn it, Bailey—”

  She felt ridiculously hurt, as if what he’d thought mattered to her, and because that hurt made her angry her own tone was sharp. “You know, you don’t have to sleep in it. You can freeze your ass off out here, if you want.”

  One muscular, bare arm shot out from under the clothes, a hard hand gripped her forearm, and the next thing she knew she was flat on the survival blanket. It infuriated her that, as weak and wounded as he was, she was so weak herself after all her exertions that she was about as effective as a rag doll in resisting him.

  His gray eyes had gone frosty. “We’re sleeping together, whether it’s in the shelter or out here. First, though,” he said grimly, “you’re going to get under these clothes with me and lie down for a little while, before you pass out.” As he spoke he was slowly, laboriously shifting onto his left side to face her.

  Lying down felt like heaven to her achy body and swimmy head; the idea of being warm was such a delicious dream that she almost cried at the thought of it. Anger and hurt made her want to wrench away and stomp off to lie in the shelter in glorious solitude, but the reality was that she didn’t feel capable of stomping anywhere. Denied the satisfaction of physical resistance, she resorted to words. “You ungrateful jerk. I’ve always thought you were an ass, and now I’m sure of it. I’ll be damned if I give you any more of my chocolate.”

  “Yeah, yeah,” he said, tugging her closer to him and struggling with the heavy layers of clothing so he could get them over her. Once that was accomplished, he pulled her even closer until she was nestled in his arms, against his half-naked body.

  What felt like a blast furnace of heat enveloped her. Realistically she knew it wasn’t, that at best he was only moderately warm, but she was so cold in comparison he might as well have been on fire. Her cold face pressed into the warm crook of his neck and shoulder, his arm was around her back pressing her even closer, and the sensation of heat on her icy, throbbing hands was at once so painful and so wonderful that she almost burst into tears. Instead she shoved her hands against his naked sides in search of more warmth. He flinched and swore, but he didn’t remove them.

  Bailey continued her litany of unhappiness, mumbling it against his warm throat. “When you go to sleep, I’m going to rip all those stitches out of your head. See if I don’t. And I’m taking my clothes, too; you can keep warm with your own clothes, all three pieces of them. And I want my mouthwash bottle back.”

  “Shh,” he murmured. His hand was moving in slow strokes over her spine, up and down, up and down. “Rest now. You can finish giving me hell when you feel better.”

  “I’ll give you hell on my own schedule, not yours. Are you smiling?” she asked furiously, jerking her head up to see because she could have sworn she heard that telltale note in his voice.

  If he had been, he managed to wipe the evidence away before she could see it. “Who, me? Not in this lifetime. Come on, put your head down,” he said, moving his hand to the back of her head to apply a little pressure. “Get closer.”

  Closer? The only way she could get closer was if she pulled off her clothes as well. She gave in to the insistence of his hand, once again pressing her face to the warmth of his skin. “Stop humoring me. I absolutely hate that, and it won’t work.”

  “Never thought it would.”

  Damn him, he was still doing it. She thought about pinching him, but that would require effort, and complete lassitude was washing over her. She wanted nothing more than to lie right there for the foreseeable future, her aching head on the warm pillow of his shoulder.

  She didn’t dare go to sleep. Darkness was coming at them like a runaway freight train, and she still had so much left to do. “I need to get up. It’s getting dark—”

  “We have a good hour of daylight left. We can afford five minutes for you to rest and get a little warmer. I’ve been adding snow to the mouthwash bottle as it melted, so we have about a pint of water if you need a drink.”

  Did she ever. She hadn’t noticed him moving around, but she’d been kind of occupied so that wasn’t surprising. He pulled the bottle out from beneath the covers.

  She could see some tiny dark specks of dirt floating in the melted snow, but she frankly didn’t give a rat’s patootie. She was so thirsty she could have drank all the water, but she allowed herself only three sips, swishing the wonderful liquid around in her mouth until it warmed before swallowing it. “That was good,” she said on a sigh, recapping the bottle. He returned it to its place under the covers, then once again tugged her close.

  Wrapped tightly in his arms, surrounded by his heat, Bailey let all the tension seep out of her muscles. What the hell; as angry as he’d made her, the hard truth was that they were in this together. Faced with the brutal cold of a night at high altitude, they could either live together or die separately. It was just for one night; tomorrow they would be rescued. She would join up with Logan and Peaches, who by now must be crazy with worry, and maybe they could join the rafting party farther down the planned route. White-water rafting seemed kind of tame after being in a plane crash, she thought drowsily. There was adventure, and then there was adventure; nothing like a life-and-death situation to get the adrenaline pumping.

  Gradually, another hard truth dawned on her.

  Justice was half-dead from blood loss, his head was sliced open, and he undoubtedly had a concussion. He’d already been close to life-threatening hypothermia, and God only knew what other injuries he’d sustained. He’d been through all that—and the damn man had a hard-on.

  13

  “CRAP,” BAILEY SAID GUILTILY, EXAGGERATING ONLY A little. “You need to pee, don’t you? I’m sorry, I should have asked a long time ago.”

  A couple of seconds ticked by before he said, “I’m okay. I can wait.”

  “Well, if you’re sure…”

  “I’m sure.” His tone was faintly annoyed.

  She didn’t allow even a hint of a grin, because with her face pressed against him the way it was he’d feel her facial muscles move. If he’d had any thoughts of some convenient sex—she was convenient, so he’d have sex with her—attributing his erection to a bodily function instead of a manly one was sure to tell him that she certainly wasn’t thinking of him in terms of sex. How on earth he thought he could possibly do anything was beyond her, but she’d noticed that men often had no sense of reality when it came to their penises.

  Her sense of reality, however, was strong, and it had told her they were in dire circumstances. Even if he hadn’t been injured, she didn’t have time or room on her to-do list for a play session. And besides, there was always the classic reason for saying no: she had a headache—a real one, so severe that only the urgent need to fashion a shelter for the night had kept her going.

  Speaking of which…Up and at ’em, girl, she told herself, pushing her physical complaints aside. “If you’re sure you don’t need to pee—”

  “I’m sure,” he growled. Now he sounded definitely testy.

  “Then let’s get this show on the road, Captain Justice.”

  More than an hour later, she literally dragged herself into the ramshackle shelter beside him and collapsed on the pieces of foam rubber, which she’d covered with the space blanket on the theory that heat rose, so they’d be warmer lying on top of the blanket than under it. It made sense to her, so she’d gone with it.

  Justice had been white with exhaustion and pain by the time she got him up the slope. Covering the short distance, their progress made in laborious inches, had been a nightmare that left them both shaking. Before that, with his help, she’d gotten him into clean clothes. She’d made trips up and down the slope, dragging the trash bags of clothing and other supplies, but at last everything was done and night had fallen.

  She was shaking with cold again, but she managed to reach out and d
rag one of the full trash bags closer until it covered most of the opening into the shelter. They lay in the total darkness for a few seconds, the only sound the harsh gasp of her breathing; then he turned on her battery-operated book light. The small light threw harsh shadows on his strong-boned face as he struggled closer to her, his expression revealing nothing of what the movement must have cost him.

  Silently he eased her into his arms again so they were lying as close together as they could get, and he arranged the piles of clothing over both of them. Then he turned the light off, to save the battery, and they lay there together until her breathing was less labored and their shivering had almost ceased.

  “When you feel like it,” he said, his voice deep and soothing in the utter blackness surrounding them, “we’ll finish off that Snickers and drink the rest of the water. I think we both could use a couple of aspirin, too.”

  “Uh huh.” That was all she could manage by way of an answer. She was so tired that every cell in her body ached. Yes, she was hungry, but if getting food required moving then she could do without eating. The pieces of foam were as cushiony to her battered body as any bed she’d ever slept in, and there was something deeply comforting about lying so close to him that she could feel his breath stirring in her hair, feel his chest moving as he breathed. His scent and warmth enveloped her. Resting her aching head on his shoulder, she slept.

  CAM KNEW THE instant she went to sleep; the tension flowed from her muscles, her breathing evened and deepened, and she lay bonelessly against him. He rested his lips against her cold forehead for a moment, then turned his head a little so his cheek was against her’s and he could share what little warmth he had. If they lived through the night it would be because of her dogged determination—that and the mind-boggling amount of clothing she’d packed.