“Well, I had. We’re both young, healthy adults. I know you’re not using a contraceptive because I know everything that we brought into this cabin with us. Am I right?”
“Yes,” she said timidly, like a child confessing a small transgression.
“I didn’t pack anything to take with me to the hunting lodge.”
“But it probably won’t even happen.”
“We can’t be sure. I’m taking no chances. So—”
“But if it should,” she interrupted excitedly, “we’d be found before the child was born.”
“Probably, but—”
“Even if we weren’t, I’d be the one responsible for feeding it.”
This talk about a child had his stomach churning. His mouth was set in its familiar, firm, hard line. It softened now when he saw how earnest Rusty was. Almost naive. “That’s just it,” he said roughly, his mouth moving toward her breasts. “I can’t stand the thought of sharing you with anyone.”
“But—”
“I’m sorry. That’s the way it’s got to be.”
She wanted to protest and pursue the argument. But he
used his hands and lips and tongue with such prurient talent that they dissolved in a mutual, simultaneous orgasm before she realized that once again he had withdrawn from her just in time.
They kept each other so sated with sex that they didn’t get hungry or cold or tired. They made love all that day and into the evening. Finally, exhausted, they wrapped themselves in fur and each other, and slept.
Only the unexpected rat-a-tat drumbeat of helicopter blades could have disturbed their dreams.
Chapter Ten
He was going to miss the chopper. He knew that. He always did. But he kept running anyway. He always did that, too. Jungle foliage blocked his path. He clawed his way through it toward the clearing. He was running so hard his lungs were on fire. His breathing sounded loud to his own ears.
But he could still hear the rotating blades of the chopper. Close. So close. Noisy.
I’ve got to make it this time, he cried to himself. I’ve got to make it or I’ll be captured again.
But he knew he wouldn’t make it, although he kept running. Running. Running...
As always, after having the nightmare, Cooper sat up, chest heaving with exertion and drenched with sweat. God, it had been real this time. The racket of those chopper blades seemed—
Suddenly he realized that he could still hear the helicopter. Was he awake? Yes, he was. There lay Rusty, sleeping peacefully beside him. This wasn’t Nam; this was Canada. And, by God, he heard a helicopter!
He scrambled to his feet and crossed the cabin’s chilly floor with running footsteps. Since the day they’d missed the search plane, the flare gun had remained on a shelf next to the door. He grabbed it on his way out. When he dashed across the porch and leaped to the ground, he was still naked, but the flare gun was clutched tightly in his right hand.
Shading his eyes with his left, he scanned the sky. The sun was brilliant and just even with the tops of the trees. His eyes teared because it was so bright. He couldn’t see a damn thing. He only had six flares. He mustn’t waste them. Each one had to count. But he could still hear the chopper. So he acted on impulse and fired two of the flares directly overhead.
“Cooper, is it—”
“A chopper.”
Rusty ran out onto the porch and tossed him a pair of jeans. When she had awakened, first with the intuitive knowledge that her lover was no longer lying beside her, then with the sound of the helicopter, she had hastily pulled on her tattered slacks and bulky sweater. Now she, too, shaded her eyes and searched the sky in every direction.
“He must have seen the flares,” Cooper cried excitedly. “He’s coming back.”
“I don’t see him. How do you know?”
“I recognize the sound.”