Up Close and Dangerous (Page 53)

Physically, maybe, but it was a huge boost to her morale, which had suffered some major blows already today, and it was just midmorning.

“Although,” he continued reflectively, “I wish I’d remembered about the battery before now.”

“Why? Neither of us was capable of doing anything about it,” she pointed out. “You were too injured to move, and I was too sick.”

“If I’d known what the payoff was for starting a fire, I’d have dragged my naked body through the snow to get to that battery.”

Bailey burst out laughing. The ridiculousness of that image was just too much to resist—not the naked part, because she thought he’d be damn fine to look at, judging from the parts she’d already seen, but anyone being willing to drag themselves naked through snow for a kiss.

He reached out and hooked his fingers in her waistband, dragged her backward. “Sit down,” he instructed. “We need to have a talk.”

There was an iron note of command in his voice. Bailey lifted her eyebrows at him. “Is that tone of voice supposed to make me click my heels and salute?”

“It worked on the men under my command.”

“Of which I’m not one,” she pointed out.

“Thank God. If you were, there are regulations against some plans I have involving you. Do you want to hear about them or not? If you do, sit down.”

He pulled on her waistband again. More than a little stunned, she found herself sitting beside him on the stuffed trash bag. The contents were a little uneven and she listed to one side; he put his arm around her shoulders to hold her upright.

“I’m being honorable here,” he said, slanting a glittering look at her, “and giving you fair warning. But this is probably the only time, so don’t get used to it.”

She started to ask, Fair warning about what? but was afraid she knew the answer. Maybe “afraid” was the wrong word. Alarmed, yes. Annoyed. Terrified. And most of all, excited.

“When I thought we would be rescued, I tried my damnedest not to do anything to scare you off,” he said as casually as if they were discussing the stock market. “I knew you’d be back on your own territory, able to call the shots and avoid me if I made my move too soon. But now, I know rescue isn’t coming, and I have you to myself for days, maybe as long as a couple of weeks. It’s only fair to tell you I plan to have you naked in a day or so, once we’re at a warmer altitude and we’re stronger, feeling better.”

Bailey opened her mouth to say something, anything, then closed it because no words came to mind. Her mind was oddly blank. She should be…what? All her usual responses to a come-on seemed to have taken a vacation, because she couldn’t think of a single one. She tried again to say something, only to once more close her mouth. She should shut him down cold, the way she usually did when people tried to push past her defenses, and it flummoxed her that she couldn’t.

“Is there a reason you’re imitating a guppy?” he asked with a little smile, tilting his head to the side.

Afraid she wouldn’t be able to say anything coherent, she shook her head.

“Any questions?”

A million of them flooded her brain, most of them wordless, all of them things she couldn’t say. She shook her head again.

“In that case, we need to get to work. We have a lot of preparations to make.”

He started to stand, but this time it was Bailey who did the waistband-grabbing.

“I left the pack of aloe wipes, and your clean change of underwear in there,” she said, indicating the shelter. She was glad her voice was working again, though what she was saying seemed completely inane. “You need to get cleaned up, or you’re sleeping outside tonight.”

Five minutes later, she could still hear him chuckling inside the shelter.

Getting her mind back on practical matters was an effort, but she was galvanized by the realization of how much needed to be done before they began trying to get themselves off the mountain.

One of the first things, as Cam had said, was to rehydrate themselves, and that meant melting as much snow as possible, as fast as possible. The rocks he’d placed around the fire absorbed heat, but didn’t seem so hot that the plastic mouthwash bottle would melt, so she packed the bottle with snow and put it on the outside of the ring, against the rocks.

The second thing, as far as she was concerned, was Cam himself. He was woefully unprepared for this weather. She had plenty of clothes, not a single item of which would fit him. On the other hand, she had plenty of them, and if one might not fit him, maybe two together would. His shoes were the big problem, but she had the leather from the seats. She needed to make a sort of overshoe that would provide insulation, keep the snow out of his shoes, and give him traction—a tall order, because she wasn’t a cobbler. She couldn’t cut and sew the leather into the proper shape. Neither could she waste the leather by cutting it in a way that wouldn’t work at all.

She got the notebook and pen to try drawing a diagram of how she needed the leather to fold, so she could work out the cuts beforehand. She clicked the pen and drew the point across the paper, but the paper remained blank. The ink in the pen was frozen. Frustrated, she laid it against the warming rocks, too. Some of the snow in the mouthwash bottle had already melted, she saw. No doubt about it, fire was a marvelous thing.

The plane had been sabotaged, and Cam’s logic about who had been behind it was hard to refute. Seth had tried to kill her, and hadn’t cared at all that he would have killed Cam, too. That was difficult to accept, difficult to comprehend. The last two days had been a nightmare of pain and freezing cold and sickness, of pushing herself far past her endurance. But sitting there watching the fire, she felt her spirits rise. No wonder primitive people danced around a fire; they were probably hysterical with joy to have heat and light. She leaned forward, stretched her hands out, and felt the heat on her palms. She would never, ever take heat for granted again.