Up Close and Dangerous (Page 67)

“They teach this stuff in the Scouts, huh?” she finally asked, just to break the silence. “How long were you in?”

“All the way, Cub Scouts through Eagle Scouts. It was something fun to do, and all that prior experience came in handy when I had to study escape and evasion techniques in case my plane was shot down.”

“Shot down?” She stared at him. “I thought you flew a tanker.”

“I did. That doesn’t mean an enemy fighter wouldn’t send an air-to-air missile at me if the chance came up. Think about it. You take out a tanker, there are a lot of fighters that won’t be able to stay in the air. That’s why a tanker isn’t up there all on its lonesome.”

She felt sick to her stomach at the mental image she had of a missile striking a refueling tanker. How likely was it anyone would survive that size explosion and fire?

She’d also thought flying a tanker was one of the safer jobs for a pilot to have. Now she saw it as sitting in front of a huge gas can, with morons throwing matches at it. How did military wives stand the stress? And exactly what kind of nutcase was Cam’s ex-wife that she couldn’t stand it when he got out of the military?

Unaware of where her thoughts had gone, he stuck his finger in the tea and quickly jerked it back out. “I think that’s hot enough,” he said. She passed him the cap from the deodorant can and he quickly dipped it into the gently steaming liquid, getting it about half full before carefully passing it back to her.

Cautiously she took a sip. It tasted the way she expected pine needles to taste: green and piney, slightly bitter. She didn’t care. Beautiful, wonderful, welcome heat spread through her insides as she swallowed, and she closed her eyes in bliss. “Oh, God, that feels good,” she moaned. She took another sip, then extended the cup to him. “Try it.”

“I noticed you said it ‘feels good,’ not that it tastes good,” he said as he took the cup and drank. The same expression of pleasure that she imagined she’d worn spread across his face. He wrapped his fingers around the heated plastic and sighed. “You were right on target.”

He dipped again and they shared that cup, too. “Here’s to the Boy Scouts,” she said, lifting the cup in a little salute before passing it to him.

Feeling warmer than they had in four days, and with their hunger pains temporarily banished, they sat and watched the sun slide down the sky. Nothing about this felt unusual, she realized. She had acclimated, not just to the altitude but to him, and being alone with him. Television, shopping, doing market analysis on her computer—that all seemed to belong to another world, another life. Life had very quickly boiled down to the basics: food and shelter.

“I would say I could get used to this,” she commented, “but I’d be lying.”

His lips curved. “You don’t think you’ll ever be the outdoor type?”

“It’s okay in small doses, like going rafting on vacation. But I want plenty of food, I want a tent, I want a sleeping bag. I want a way to leave when I get tired of it. This survival stuff is for the birds.”

“It was fun when I was a kid, but I wasn’t freezing cold, I didn’t have a concussion, and no one was practicing her sewing on me—without anesthesia.”

She gave him a quick look. “You weren’t screaming,” she pointed out.

“That doesn’t mean it was anything I’d recommend.”

The Ace bandage wrapped around his head was dirty, but with luck that meant it had prevented any dirt from getting to the cut. He hadn’t suffered any fever at all, which meant there was no infection. All in all, she felt proud of the job she’d done taking care of him.

He reached up and touched the Ace bandage. “Think I could lose this, now?”

She shrugged. “It’s been keeping your head warm.”

“It’s been annoying the hell out of me, too. I can tie something else around my head. By now, a smaller bandage will do.”

Because she agreed, she unwrapped the bandage and removed the gauze pads that covered the wound. All the swelling was gone, and though he sported a huge bruise on his forehead and the sutured cut itself was reminiscent of Frankenstein’s monster, he seemed to be healing fairly well. She pulled one of the aloe wipes from the pack and was gingerly dabbing at the cut, trying to remove some dried blood. He bore her ministrations for about a minute. “Give me that,” he finally said with a growl of impatience, taking the wipe from her and vigorously scrubbing it through his hair.

“Itching, huh?”

“Like a son of a bitch.” The wipe came away rust-colored by the blood that had dried in his hair. Most of it had been washed away by the mouthwash she’d poured on his head, but obviously not all. He used another wipe to make certain he’d gotten it all out, which meant that his head was very damp by the time he finished and he had to use a flannel shirt to towel dry his hair before it froze. Bailey reached for the first-aid supplies, but he shook his head. “Leave that until morning. It’ll be fine tonight.”

They finished the pine needle tea, and he used a stick to nudge the first-aid box off the hot coals. An idea niggled at her. She got another shirt, used it to pick up the box, and quickly wrapped the fabric around it.

“People used to heat bricks and wrap them in flannel, then put them between the sheets to get the bed warm,” she said as she crawled into the shelter with her makeshift bed warmer. They had dumped all the spare clothing they used as cover in the shelter and she quickly arranged everything in the layers that worked best for keeping them warm, putting the heated bundle in the middle.