Two Alone

“I am.”

He sneered. “I’m sure a high-ticket plastic surgeon in Beverly Hills can fix the scar.”

“Do you have to be so obnoxious?”

“Do you have to be so superficial?” He aimed a finger in the direction of the crashed plane. “I’m sure any of those guys we left up there would settle for a scar on their shin.”

He was right, of course; but that didn’t make his criticism any easier for her to swallow. She lapsed into sullen silence. He bathed her leg in peroxide and rebandaged it, then gave her one of the penicillin tablets and two aspirins. She washed them down with water. No more brandy for her, thank you.

Drunkenness, she had discovered, aroused her emotionally and sexually. She didn’t want to think of Cooper Landry as anything but a wretched grouch. He was a short-tempered, surly ogre harboring a grudge against the world. If she didn’t have to rely on him for her survival, she would have nothing to do with him.

She had already settled beneath the pile of furs when he slid in and embraced her as he had the night before.

“How much longer do we have to stay here?” she asked crossly.

“I’m not clairvoyant.”

“I’m not asking you to predict when we’ll be rescued; I was referring to this bed. Can’t you rig up a shelter of some kind? Something we can move around in?”

“The accommodations aren’t to m’lady’s liking?”

She sighed her annoyance. “Oh, never mind.”

After a moment, he said, “There’s a group of boulders near the stream. One side of the largest of them has been eroded out. I think with a little ingenuity and some elbow grease, I could make a lean-to out of it. It won’t be much, but it will be better than this. And closer to the water.”

“I’ll help,” she offered eagerly.

It wasn’t that she didn’t appreciate this shelter. It had saved her life last night. But it was disconcerting to sleep this close to him. Since he had taken off his coat as he had the night before, Rusty was keenly aware of his muscled chest against her back. She could therefore assume that he was keenly aware of her body because she wasn’t wearing her coat, either.

She could think of little else as his hand found a comfortable spot midway between her breasts and her waist. He even wedged his knees between hers, elevating her injured leg again. She started to ask him if that was necessary, but since it felt so much better that way, she let it pass without comment.

“Rusty?”

“Hmm?” His warm breath drifted into her ear and caused goose bumps to break out over her arms. She snuggled closer to him.

“Wake up. We’ve got to get up.”

“Get up?” she groaned. “Why? Pull the covers back up. I’m freezing.”

“That’s the point. We’re soaking wet. Your fever broke and you sweated all over both of us. If we don’t get up and dry off, we stand a good chance of getting frostbite.”

She came fully awake and rolled to her back. He was serious. Already he was tossing off the furs. “What do you mean, dry off?”

“Strip and dry off.” He began unbuttoning his flannel shirt.

“Are you crazy? It’s freezing!” Recalcitrantly, she pulled the pelt back over herself. Cooper jerked it off her.

“Take off all your clothes. Now!”

He shrugged off his flannel shirt and draped it over the nearest bush. With one fluid motion, he crossed his arms at his waist and peeled the turtleneck T-shirt over his head. It made his hair stick up funnily, but Rusty didn’t feel like laughing. Laughter—in fact any sound at all— got trapped inside her closed throat. Her first glimpse of the finest chest she’d ever seen rendered her speechless.

Hard as rocks those muscles were. Beautifully sculpted, too, beneath taut skin. His nipples were dark and pebbly from the cold, their areolae shriveled around them. It was all tantalizingly covered with a blanket of crisp hair that swirled and whorled, tipped and tapered beguilingly.

He was so trim she could count every single rib. His stomach was as flat and tight as a drum. She couldn’t see his navel very well. It was deeply nestled in a sexy tuft of hair.

“Get started, Rusty, or I’ll do it for you.”

His threat plucked her out of her trance. Mechanically, she peeled off her sweater. Beneath it she was wearing a cotton turtleneck much like his. She fiddled with the hem while she watched him stand up and work his jeans down his legs. The long johns weren’t the most alluring sight she’d ever seen.