Darkness (27 page)

Not a hard-eyed, hard-muscled mercenary who’d just killed a man and who’d gotten her friends killed and was probably going to get her killed before he died himself. At best, he could be counted on to provide her with a bout or two or three of steamy sex before disappearing from her life.

She knew herself: if she had sex with Cal she’d get attached to him, and if she got attached to him she’d wind up trying to put the pieces of her broken heart back together all over again.

How totally stupid would she have to be, to open herself up to something like that?

Probably, if she survived this and made it back home, she ought to try dating again, she decided.

In the meantime, she needed to get her act together and deal with the man in front of her.

Cal hadn’t moved. The rigidity of his back made her stomach muscles tighten. His hands were curled into fists at his sides. It occurred to her that she actually knew very little about him—such as how he took rejection. Was he angry or—

Her hands were unsteady as—in instinctive, unthinking reaction to what had just happened between them rather than because of the temperature, which this far into the cave was relatively mild—she zipped her coat back up. The metallic sound it made was jarring to her senses. He heard it, too: she saw his head lift.

“Cal.” Her voice was husky. It didn’t help that her bra now felt about two sizes too small, or that her mouth still tingled from his kisses, or that the hungry throbbing deep inside her hadn’t abated.

He turned to look at her. Since the flashlight was tucked in his pocket still, the small circle of illumination surrounded him. She was able to see his face, while hopefully she was deeper in shadow and he couldn’t see hers well enough to read anything in it. His eyes were still black and hot. His mouth was iron with control. His body radiated tension.

His eyes slid over her, registering, she could tell, her zipped-up coat. He said, “Hmm?” without any intonation at all.

She took a breath. “Can we talk?”

“About what?” There was a harshness to his voice that confirmed, as if any confirmation was necessary, that he was still at least as turned on as she was.

Her lips compressed. “About what just happened. About the fact that we—kissed. About why I can’t let it go any farther.”

He took a breath. It was deep and ragged enough that she both saw and heard it. When he spoke, his voice was slightly less harsh than before. “You have a perfect right to call a halt anytime you want. I’m fine with it, okay? So is there anything else you want to talk about?”

She searched his face. Those ruggedly handsome features could have been carved from stone for all the emotion they revealed. Yet she could see the enormous amount of self-control he was exercising in everything from the curl of his fingers to the tension in his stance.

She said, “I’d really like to know what you’re feeling.”

He made a sound that was the grim equivalent of a derisive hoot. “So who’s playing at being Dr. Phil now?”

“I’m not playing at anything.”

His eyes were black and unfathomable as they held hers. “You want to know what I’m
feeling
? Fine, I’ll tell you. How about—horny?”

At the sudden blast of heat that flamed at her from his eyes, the world seemed to tilt on its axis. She couldn’t tear her gaze from his. The truth, the horrible, incontrovertible truth, was that she felt the exact same way, although she would never have put it so crudely. Plus her state was specific to him, while she guessed that for him being sexually aroused was probably something way more frequent and generic, as in, any young and reasonably attractive woman in his vicinity would do. But to her dismay she discovered that giving a name to what she was feeling only seemed to make the condition worse. If he came toward her now, if he took her in his arms and kissed her again, she wasn’t sure she’d have the strength to call a halt a second time.

“You don’t have to look so worried.” His voice was dry. She abandoned the hope that he could not see and read her expression. Obviously he could. “I’m not going to jump you. What just happened was an accident.”

Gina frowned. “You make it sound like we had a car wreck.”

“That pretty much sums it up, doesn’t it?” Pulling the flashlight out of his pocket, he masked its brightness with his hand and gestured down the passage with it. “Come on, let’s go.”

Gina didn’t move. She was having to work to keep her breathing even. Her body was still all soft and shivery with arousal and, despite how ready he seemed to be to dismiss what had just happened, electricity still arced palpably between them. None of which was good for achieving the kind of working partnership that she felt their situation called for. Striving for honesty, she also wanted to do what she could to clear the air. Their survival—
her
survival—might depend on it.

“Cal, listen: I loved what we just did. It was good. Great, actually. That was some truly impressive making out.” Watching his face tighten, she hesitated. When she continued her tone was earnest. “It’s just— I can’t go any farther. I can’t get involved with you.”

His eyes narrowed. After a moment he said, “Honey, there’s a big difference between getting it on and getting involved. And that thing we just did? It falls smack dab into the category of getting it on.”

That whole speech, from the generic “honey” to the getting-it-on shot, made the hackles rise on the back of Gina’s neck. Clearly he hadn’t liked what she’d just said. Well, she didn’t like his reply right back.

“All right,” she said, her tone several degrees cooler. “I can’t
get it on
with you.”

“Probably a good call under the circumstances. How about we forget it ever happened?”

Gina nodded, nettled but trying not to show it. “Consider it forgotten.”

Her knees still felt wobbly, but she managed to step away from the wall. Not for anything was she going to let him know how shell-shocked she still felt from the intensity of the desire he had roused in her. There was no future in wanting him: she not only could not, she
would not
let this thing—the blazing sexual attraction, the tentative friendship, the building trust, whatever it was that the sum of those parts added up to—simmering between them grow into anything more.

The truth was, there was no way he would be in her life beyond Attu.

Provided they even survived Attu.

That thought was the wake-up call, the reality check she needed as she walked toward him. Forget sex; think survival, she told herself grimly. It was enough to at least cool her blood a little, and to take the hot, shivery feelings that she still couldn’t seem to rid herself of down to a manageable level.

Without waiting for her to reach him, he turned and started walking away, heading down the passage with the sliver of light skipping ahead of him.

“I still want to warn Keith,” she said to his retreating back. It was absolutely true, but it was also in the nature of underscoring the fact that she hadn’t given in: she might be walking after him now rather than walking away as she’d been doing before he’d grabbed her and they’d kissed, but that did not mean he was the one calling the shots. Necessarily. Only if she agreed with what he suggested. She’d spent most of a lifetime giving in to people who thought they knew best, against her better judgment, and she wasn’t about to make that mistake again.

“We’ve had this conversation.” He flung that over his shoulder at her.

“Yes, we have.” Her tone was sugar sweet. “And nothing’s changed.”

That stopped him. He turned to wait for her. “I meant what I said.”

She smiled at him. “And I meant what I said: you don’t get to tell me what to do.”

“Honey, I’m bigger than you, and badder than you, and way more experienced with living through the kind of situation we’re dealing with here than you. So I think that makes me the one in charge.”

“I am absolutely prepared to listen to everything you have to say. And make my own decisions on the basis of your recommendations.”

He snorted. “Be careful I don’t let you live with that.”

“Is that a threat? Because I’m not impressed.” With a glinting look thrown his way, she walked on past him into the dark. “And don’t call me honey,” she added over her shoulder. The flashlight beam danced ahead of her, pointing the way down what seemed to be a long, narrow passage.

He caught up with her. She flicked a glance up at him to find that his eyes glinted and his jaw was hard.

“You don’t like ‘honey’?” There was steel in his voice. “As long as you’re doing what I tell you, I’ll call you anything you want: baby, sugar, darling, sweetheart—”

“Gina,” she snapped. “If you can’t manage that, Dr. Sullivan works. And I’ll do what you tell me just as long as I agree that it’s the best thing to do.”

Their eyes met and clashed. The air was suddenly charged with hostility. Or, to be more exact, hostility infused with sex. Because the sparks were definitely still there.

“
Gina
,” he said with elaborate emphasis. “Do you honestly believe that you have a snowball’s chance in hell of getting yourself off this island alive without me?”

The passage crooked to the left again and sloped downward. Gina rested a hand on the smooth stone of the wall as she negotiated the turn. “I think waiting for rescue might be our best option.”

He made an impatient sound. “If you ‘wait for rescue,’ you’ll wind up dead.”

“Sooner or later someone is going to come looking for us,” she argued stubbornly. “I think we should hide until then.”

“Yeah. No.” His tone said
Discussion over
. “You saved my life. I’m going to do my level best to save yours. Which means we’re getting the hell off this island just as quick as we can.”

“What about escaping by boat?”

He shook his head. “We have a thousand miles of ocean to cross. We’d be caught before we got anywhere near land.”

“There are other islands around. Attu is part of a chain. And the Commander Islands are only a few hundred miles away.”

“The Commander Islands are Russian territory, and the rest of the Aleutians are deserted. If we even made it to any of them, which I doubt we would because they’ll be coming after us with everything they have, we’d be in the same position there as we are here. Running and hiding until they find and kill us.” He gave her an assessing look. “I can fly us out of here. Trust me.”

The sad thing about it was, she did. Trust him. About wanting to save her life, at least. Not that it made any difference as to how she felt. Stealing a plane and trying to fly away in it to safety sounded . . . undoable. Her heart sank at the prospect.

I could tell him
, she thought, but outside of the accident investigators who’d come to her in the hospital and the therapist who’d helped her at least put the memories in a box, she had never talked about the plane crash in detail to anyone. Not even to her mother, who she knew didn’t really want to know, and whom she didn’t want to burden. Even now, all these years later, the memories had the power to make her feel sick and weak and dizzy, and she’d learned that the only way to cope was to avoid them at all costs. Anyway, strictly apart from her phobia, she thought that his escape plan was a really, really bad idea. That thousand miles of ocean he’d said they had to cross by boat? The distance didn’t change just because they were in a plane.

“You do whatever you want. I’m going to hide.
And
try to warn Keith.”

There was a moment of charged silence as her words hung in the air. The air in the cave had changed subtly, Gina noted as, ignoring the darkening face of the man who was now a step behind her, she followed the flashlight beam around a pile of fallen rocks. Deep into the mountain as they now had to be, it was drier, and warmer, and outside sounds were nonexistent. When she reached out to touch the wall the stone felt cool rather than cold, and bone dry.

“This is you being pissed at me because I kissed you and got you hot, isn’t it?” Cal’s voice grated as he caught up to her. She refused to look at him, so she couldn’t be sure, but she thought he was scowling at her: a man on the brink of losing his temper. “What’s the big deal about that anyway? Are you married or something?”

The question hit her like a blow to the stomach. She winced before she could stop herself.

“No.” Her voice was sharp.

“Oh, yeah? Then what’s with the face you just made? And why did you say you
can’t
get it on with me? Sounds like married-woman guilt to me.”

She glared at him. “I’m a widow, okay?”

“A widow.” His eyes flickered, slid over her. “How old are you?”

“Twenty-eight.”

“How long has your husband been dead?”

Gina focused her gaze straight ahead. Except for the small circle of stone floor revealed by the flashlight beam, there was nothing to see but pitch darkness. “I don’t want to talk about it.”

“But, see, I do.” She could feel his eyes on her. “You want to tell me how long, or do you want me to start guessing?” He paused, seemed to wait, then continued: “A year? Two?”

“Five years,” she snapped.

“You’ve been a widow for five years.”

“I just said that, didn’t I?”

“How’d he die?”

“I
really
don’t want to talk about it.”

“How’d he die, Gina?”

She shot him a furious glance. “My God, can’t you just let it alone?”

“No. He must have been young. In his twenties? So probably an accident. Did he die in an accident?”

She felt the floor start to tilt beneath her. To keep from stumbling, she had to stop walking and put a hand on the wall to steady herself.

Cal stopped, too. He loomed up beside her, frowning down at her. She refused to look at him.

“What kind of accident?” he persisted.

“It was a plane crash,” she said, and closed her eyes as the darkness started to shimmy around her.

“Ah,” Cal said, adding something that she couldn’t quite hear, because the blood pounding in her ears drowned everything else out. Her heart raced and her stomach churned. Leaning against the wall, she took a deep, even breath as she fought to get herself under control again. Then she gritted her teeth, opened her eyes, and shoved away from the wall. Chin up, ignoring his frowning gaze, she took a few tentative steps. Her knees felt so weak that she had to stop and lean against the wall again.