“Sorry. I was checking to make sure I didn’t miss any cuts when I cleaned you up before.”
“I don’t think you did, but I have to admit, I’d love to get clean. You know. Soap. Hot water…”
She painted a picture he didn’t want to think about. A deep tub. Scented water. Candles. She, naked, lying back in the water, he between her legs…
Man. He was killing himself.
“The best I can offer you,” he said briskly, “is some warm water after supper. Meanwhile…” He burrowed deeper into the pack, as if he didn’t know each and every item it contained. “Let’s see what we have.” He took out the fire starter and, again, the paracord. Then he got to his feet, keeping most of his weight on his good leg. “Fire, first. We don’t have much time until it gets dark.”
She shuddered.
“It’s the one thing I don’t like about the jungle,” she said softly. “How fast night closes down, I mean.”
Night. The two of them in that tiny shelter…
Tanner turned away from her, picked up a branch, squatted down, took out his knife and began slicing off narrow, shallow strips of wood.
“Can I help?”
“No.”
“There must be something I can do.”
“No.”
“But thanks for offering,” she said.
Tanner looked up. Her expression was unreadable, but the folded arms, the fingers tap-tapping, said it all.
Okay. So yes, maybe he was being an idiot.
He nodded at the fire starter. “You can get that for me.”
She plucked the small tool from where he’d left it, handed it over as she knelt beside him. She smelled of vanilla. Of jungle flowers. Impossible. He knew he sure as hell didn’t. All this time, making their way through the all-but-impenetrable jungle? She ought to smell like sweat.
“Why are you cutting such strange-looking slivers of wood?”
He cleared his throat.
What he needed was to clear his head. The fire, food, some hot black coffee would do that.
“For kindling,” he said. “They’re called feathersticks.”
“Ah. I get it. You want something that can catch a flame as easily as possible.”
“Exactly.”
She sighed and sat back on her heels. “I’m not much good at making fires.”
“When would you have to be anything at making fires?”
“I have a fireplace in my apartment.” She laughed. “This is in Manhattan, you know? A fireplace is a big thing. It’s what the realtor concentrated on when she showed the place, as if a brick-lined hole in the living room wall was supposed to make me ignore the roaches in the kitchen.”
Roaches? In an apartment lived in by a general’s daughter? Well, why not? Anything was possible. He rented a house in Santa Barbara. Four rooms and a sagging porch, but you could see the ocean from that porch, and he’d once turned around and discovered a fox sharing the view with him.
“So I tried and tried to learn how to build a fire. I even asked Matteo to teach me.”
“Matteo,” Tanner said, without looking at her.