Granted, they were total strangers forced into close proximity. It was one thing to spend the night protecting an exhausted victim. Another entirely to bunk down with a healthy female who didn’t need anything from him. The long, dark hours stretched in front of him. Awkward as hell if something didn’t break the tension.
The stick in his hand glowed. He held it over his head like a lighter.
“‘Free Bird,’ ‘Free Bird…’” He chanted the concert mantra, thinking back to his partying teenage years.
“Pardon?” She glanced at him over her shoulder with blank eyes.
Hazel eyes that shifted from dark brown to golden green in the firelight. A sharp—unwelcome—jolt of anticipation stabbed through him at the thought of seeing more of her.
He pitched the stick back into the flames. “‘Free Bird.’ The song. If you hold up a lighter and request the song, it’s concert code for an encore… Okay, never mind. Explaining a joke doesn’t work.”
“That’s what I hear.” She gave him a small, obligatory smile.
Standing, she shrugged out of her yellow and black parka and shook the melting snow free with efficient snaps of the wrist. She spread the coat out flat near the fire to dry, dropping her ski mask alongside. Behind her, the mouth of the cave was an opaque sheet of swirling dark, as if they’d been sucked into a black hole. Just the two of them. And her dog.
And her survival knife, which he’d noticed she never once let out of reach.
She tugged a long braid from the bib of her snow pants. Now that he looked closer, she was younger than he’d initially thought, somewhere in her twenties. Younger than his own twenty-eight. The thick snow and her confidence in such an extreme setting must have led him to jump to conclusions. The wrong ones.
He’d expected her to be tougher, more muscular, rather than a thin and wiry gymnast sort. Her face was pale and narrow with creamy skin and a full mouth that didn’t need lipstick to draw his attention. The dim firelight glinted off a long, sapphire blue streak through her brown hair.
Not what he’d expected at all.
“My name’s Wade.” And he should start ditching his gear to dry too. Should. Would. Soon.
“Hi, Wade.”
“And you are?” he asked. Not that she answered. She just kept her back to him as she unzipped her black snow pants, revealing… a hot pink wind suit? Now that was another surprise.
He shrugged out of his parka and draped it over his survival pack. “I thought we should at least know each other’s names before we strip out of these wet clothes.”
“I promise not to so much as peek.” She peeled the outer gear past her bulky boots.
Holy crap, those legs of hers went on forever and ever. He looked away. “Just trying to make some chitchat to pass the time.”
“People who come to this part of Alaska aren’t here for the conversation.” Draping her clothes, she drifted into his sight line again.
“You have a valid point. Talk about a last-frontier kind of place. I can see the appeal of a getting away from it all for vacation.” Except now that he looked closer at her, he wondered if perhaps she had some Inuit heritage… or in this region of Alaska, perhaps Aleut or Yupik. Maybe she’d come from California because of a family tie? His curiosity was piqued.
And yeah, it had something to do with her legs in pink track pants and that funky sapphire stripe in her braid.
What other surprises did she have bottled up inside that killer body of hers? “I’m not asking for a birth certificate or blood type. Just your name.”
“Excuse me for being concerned about survival rather than niceties.” She tugged off her boots and pulled the liners out to dry.
She was carrying this avoidance a bit far.
Unease shifted inside him. He wished the airwaves were clearer so he could radio back to the base, ask some questions about the mystery woman. But he wouldn’t get a clear signal up here until the storm passed.
At least the GPS was working. “You’re surprisingly calm.”
“Panic is a waste of valuable energy stores. As are tender sensibilities. We both should strip down to our underwear and let any perspiration on our clothing dry.”
She unzipped her pink shirt, revealing gray thermal, which went up and off too. Leaving a body-hugging synthetic Under Armour that clearly outlined lush br**sts in a sports bra. Then she peeled away her pants and thermals, revealing silky leggings that left zippo to the imagination, God help him.
His mouth dried up. His hands went on autopilot, adding his gloves to the drying gear.
Yeah, he was all about the rescue. He was a professional. But he was also male. And breathing. And wondering what she wore on the bottom. His polypro long johns weren’t going to make for much cover if he stared at her any longer.