His eyebrows lifted when he saw her standing in the doorway. “I’m sorry, did I wake you?”
“I wasn’t asleep. What were you doing outside?”
“Just looking around.”
“You shouldn’t be walking around on that leg. Are you trying to do as much damage to it as possible?”
“I’m trying to get you back to your family,” he retorted. “And I found our way out.”
Her heart jumped into her throat. “You did? What? How?”
“An ATV. One of the big two-passenger four-wheelers hunters use. It’s stored in a small shed out back.”
“A locked shed, I presume?”
“It was.”
She shook her head. “Did you find a key to the ATV?”
“No. But we won’t need one. As soon as you’re ready, we’ll get on the road.”
“You’re going to hot-wire it?”
He nodded, apparently having no concern about his ability to do just that.
“We, um, won’t be in danger of being arrested for breaking and entering or theft as soon as we reach a town?”
“We aren’t stealing anything. We’re borrowing—and the owner will be reimbursed for his trouble.”
She looked around the trailer, suddenly, unaccountably nervous about leaving it. “What should I do to get ready?”
“Let’s try to find you some pants and socks, maybe a pair of shoes. They’ll all be too big, of course, but it’ll be better than trying to ride on the back of an ATV wearing nothing more than a shirt.”
She nodded and turned back toward the bedrooms.
They found her a pair of black sweatpants with a drawstring waist and some thick white tube socks that covered her all the way to her knees. Shoes were more of a problem. They finally uncovered a pair of rubberized lace-up boots that were ridiculously large, but she was able to keep them on by lacing them tightly around her ankles.
“I look ridiculous,” she said ruefully, glancing down at her outfit.
As if by impulse, Donovan reached out to smooth a strand of hair away from her face. “You look fine.”
Something in his voice made her reach out to him. “Donovan—”
He turned away. “We’d better get going. It’s almost 4:00 p.m. now, and we don’t know how far we are from a town.”
“I know we have to concentrate on getting rescued now,” she said evenly, though his rebuff had stung. “But when we get back, we need to talk.”
“When we get back, we’re both going to be very busy,” he replied. “First thing we do is make sure the guys who grabbed us are identified and brought to justice. After that, I’ve got a week’s worth of work to catch up on. I’m going to be tied up for quite a while—as I’m sure you will be.”
“And what about us?”
He shrugged, refusing to meet her eyes. “I doubt that we’ll see each other much. Except for your connection to Bryan, you and I don’t exactly move in the same circles. If you break things off with him, as you say you’re thinking about doing, there will be no reason for us to see each other at all.”
She bit her lip. He couldn’t make his message much clearer. He had every intention of taking her back to civilization and then walking away from her.
“I’ll miss you,” she said quietly.
His cheek muscles flexed. “You’ll get over it.”