Darkness (28 page)

“It’s all right, I’ve got you,” she heard him say over the drumming in her ears. He wrapped an arm around her shoulders, slid the other one beneath her knees, and scooped her up in his arms. Then he started walking with her.

Chapter Twenty-Two

I
’m fine, put me down
, is what Gina wanted to say, but she didn’t, because she couldn’t.

Her throat was too tight to allow her to say anything at all.

She didn’t struggle, either.

Instead she looked at his hard, masculine features and realized to her dismay that in his arms was exactly where she wanted to be. She felt safe there. That wasn’t good, and she knew it, but at the moment she was too upset to even try to police what she was feeling. Giving up, she hooked her arms around his neck and rested her head on his wide shoulder and closed her eyes, working on getting her equilibrium back even as she surrendered to the novel experience of having a man take care of her. He smelled of snow and the outdoors, and he carried her as if she weighed nothing at all. After a few moments in which she resisted acknowledging it, she broke down and silently admitted that she found his display of easy strength mind-blowingly sexy. It appealed to some primitive part of her that she’d never even suspected existed.

She had to face it:
he
appealed to some primitive part of her that she’d never even suspected existed.

He’s not for you
, she warned herself even as she relaxed in his hold.

But she tightened her arms around his neck anyway. The hard muscularity of his arms, the wide expanse of his chest, the solid breadth of his shoulders cradled her, and for just that little span of time she was prepared to let them.

A few minutes later he stopped walking. She opened her eyes to discover that the flashlight that he still held lit up a wooden door set into the stone. The door was ajar, and Gina was still blinking at it in surprise as, stepping carefully over what was apparently a threshold, he carried her through it.

Her head came up off his shoulder as she looked around, wide-eyed.

Surprise gave her her voice back as Cal played the flashlight over their surroundings: a large natural cavern with a soaring domed roof and—furniture?

He’d said it was a hell of a cave.

“What is this place?”

But even as she asked the question, she knew what it had to be, or at least what its purpose once was: she’d studied up on Attu before arriving. The Japanese had used the extensive cave system that riddled the mountains to hide from, and launch sneak attacks on, the numerically superior American forces. The Americans had been forced into fighting a guerrilla war in which they’d ended up claiming most of the caves for themselves.

“Looks to me like it was used as a military barracks at one time,” Cal replied. He seemed to be striding toward a particular target—an old metal table surrounded by four folding metal chairs, still set up as if whoever had last used them had merely stepped away for a short period. The dust covering them was the only indication that they’d waited like that for a long, long time, Gina saw as the flashlight beam hit them. A moment later Cal nudged a chair out from under the table with his boot, lowered her feet to the ground so that he could pick it up and shake the dust off it, then settled her into it.

“Don’t move,” he told her. Dropping the backpacks on the ground beside her, he walked away.

Left alone in what was—except for the bobbing flashlight beam that was moving steadily away from her—pitch darkness, she instantly missed his arms around her, instantly felt cold and bereft. Folding her arms over her chest, she tracked his movements by watching the flashlight. But then the flashlight went stationary, as if he’d put it down on something, while she could still hear him moving around.

“Cal.”

“I’m right here.” His words were accompanied by a series of scratching sounds. The faint scent of sulfur had just reached her nose when a match flared to life. A moment later the tiny flame found its way into a storm lantern, and the area around it was lit by a spreading glow. The flashlight beam vanished.

The lantern, metal-framed and glass-sided with a single fat candle inside, came toward her. Cal was carrying it, and he set it down in the middle of the table.

“What happened to the flashlight?” Gina asked. She was glad to focus on the here and now, and practical things. If she could do it, she would stuff everything that had happened from the time she’d pulled him out of the sea until this moment into a mental box and never think of it again.

Except, maybe, for his kisses. And the way his kisses made her feel.

“It’s in my pocket. I turned it off to save the batteries.”

“Good idea.” She was looking around.

“I thought so,” he replied. She could feel him studying her. He was standing right beside her: with her peripheral vision, she could see his long, muscular legs, his oversize black boots, mere inches from her own. She was not, she discovered, quite ready to look up and meet his gaze. Uneasy as it made her to recognize it, the dynamic between them had changed. The sexual charge was unmistakable, but with it was a new sense of emotional intimacy that she actually found more disturbing.

The last thing in the world she meant to let herself do was develop feelings for this man.

“Feeling better?” he asked, and the gravelly rasp of his voice slid over her like a lover’s touch.

She actually shivered. From nothing more than the sound of his voice.

This is ridiculous
, she told herself sternly, and lifted her eyes to meet his even as she responded with a cool “Yes, thanks.”

His eyes were impossible to read in the flickering, uncertain light. His face likewise revealed nothing. His mouth was unsmiling. Grave, even.

Sexy.

Gina found that she couldn’t look at it, because looking at it made her pulse quicken and her body start to tighten deep inside. She had an instant, involuntary flashback to those blistering kisses. Heat flashed through her.

Rattled, she glanced away.

“You really did mean a barracks,” she said, with equal parts surprise and satisfaction at finding a neutral topic of conversation, as her gaze lit on what looked like stacks of broken-down metal bed frames piled against one wall.

“Looks like it.” He moved away from her, and her breath escaped in a soundless sigh of relief.

The farthest reaches of the cavern were deep in shadow, but she could see that more chairs like the one she was sitting on were piled against another wall, along with a number of folded tables, a stack of wooden pallets, and a row of metal garbage cans with the lids on. Open metal shelving held a hodgepodge of objects. Everything was covered with the fine silt that was the cave version of dust. But the room was dry and surprisingly warm and there was light.

Cal closed the door—he had to lift it by the handle to get it to move, and the hinges squeaked in protest—and returned to stand by the table just a few feet away. Knowing that avoiding doing so would reveal more than she wanted to, she met his gaze in what was meant to be a casual glance. From the thoughtful expression on his face as he returned her look, she figured he was on the brink of initiating a serious conversation. She tensed, wary about what the topic might be.

She did not want to talk about David. Or the plane crash that had killed her family. Or anything hard or painful. She was tired to the point of exhaustion, aching in every muscle, scared to death, shaken, grieving—and so aware of Cal that she could feel her body tightening just because he was near.

“We should be okay here until daylight,” he said. She got the feeling that it wasn’t what he’d intended to say, and wondered what he’d read in her face.

“That’s good,” she replied, grabbing on to the neutral topic gratefully.

He’d removed the watch cap and was running a hand over his hair. It looked seal black in the uncertain light. His eyes looked black, too, as they moved over her in an assessing way that worried her as she tried to work out what he was thinking. The chiseled planes and angles of his face were harsh with shadows. He looked tired and wired and big as a tractor trailer and tough as nails—and so handsome that her heart beat a little faster just from looking at him.

This is bad. You
cannot
fall for him
.

She found herself watching as he pressed a hand against his coat just below his waist, and immediately had the distraction she needed.

“Are you bleeding?” She frowned as she nodded toward his wound, which was what he was pressing his hand against through the layers of his coat and other clothes, she knew. “You probably tore the wound open carrying me.”

And how was that for being matter-of-fact about something that still had her pulse tripping?

He lifted his brows at her. “Honey—oh, sorry,
Gina
—you’re not that heavy. And if you think that’s the most strenuous thing I’ve done all day, you obviously missed something.” As she acknowledged the truth of that with a little grimace, he unzipped his coat and pulled up yesterday’s crumpled and dried-stiff shirt to peer down and probe at the Band-Aids still adhering to his honed abdomen. As she blinked in bemused admiration at the strip of tanned, hard-muscled flesh thus exposed, he added, “It’s not bleeding, I don’t think. It hurts some, is all. Not enough to worry about.”

“Let me look at it,” she said, resigned to getting as up close and personal as tending his wound required despite the fact that, right at this moment, the idea of touching his bare skin set off all kinds of warning bells in her head.

To her surprise, and relief, he shook his head. Dropping his shirt, he looked at her semihumorously. “Weren’t you the one who said something along the lines of ‘getting shot is supposed to hurt’?”

She was, but she now discovered that she didn’t like the idea of him hurting. Worse, she didn’t like the idea that she didn’t like the idea of him hurting. What that told her was that she really was starting to get in too deep with him, and her poor damaged heart recoiled at the thought. Under different circumstances she would have
insisted
on looking more closely at his wound, but, worried by the turn their association was taking, she glanced down at the backpacks instead and said in a neutral tone, “You should probably take some Tylenol. There should be some in the first aid kits.”

“I will,” he said. Even though she was no longer looking at him, she could feel him watching her like a cat at a mouse hole, and it made her uncomfortable. To forestall the conversation she knew in her bones was coming, she hurried into speech again.

“We need to eat.” She tried to remember what she’d shoved into the backpack during her fraught foray through the kitchen cabinets. “Something besides protein bars.”

“You’re right.” He crouched beside the backpacks, unzipped one, and started rummaging around inside it. That brought him close enough so that she could have laid her hand against his bristly cheek—and the unnerving part was, she wanted to. He pulled out a first aid kit and handed it to her. “You fish out the Tylenol, and I’ll find us some food.”

“Okay.” As she accepted the plastic box their fingers brushed, and instantly electricity shot through her. Her fingers withdrew noticeably too fast, their eyes collided, and something in the depths of his woke butterflies in her stomach. The desire in them was unmistakable, but there was more than that, and it was the
more
that scared her. Neither of them said a word, but contained in that exchange of looks was a silent acknowledgment that things had changed between them: they had forged a connection, a bond, that hadn’t existed before.

Unnerved, Gina hastily broke eye contact, opening up the first aid kit and delving inside it for a packet of Tylenol. When she came up with one he was no longer looking at her, but instead was pulling more items from the backpack.

“Tylenol,” she announced, waving the packet.

“Thanks.” Taking it from her, he ripped the little package open, popped the pills in his mouth, and swallowed.

“You don’t need water?” Gina asked, scandalized.

“Nah.” He went back to searching through the backpack and she set the first aid kit on the table.

“I forgot a can opener.” Chagrined, Gina followed his movements as he pulled out cans of tuna, soup, and beef stew, followed by a rolled bundle of clothing. From what she could see of it, the clothes were the generic white tee and black sweatpants that came in the backpacks, which was good because that meant she couldn’t identify whose backpack it was from the clothing in it. Which didn’t prevent her from suffering a fresh pang of horror and grief over the fate of her friends. The thought of which she immediately did her best to banish: right now her emotions were too close to the surface for her to do anything but keep resolutely moving forward. There would be time later to mourn—if she survived.

Cal reclaimed her attention by tossing the bundle of clothes in her lap.

“I’ll see about the food,” he said, and nodded in the direction of an arched opening in the stone wall opposite the door. “If you want to wash up, there’s hot water in there. I think they used that area as a bathroom. Here, take the flashlight.”

“Hot water?” Instantly dazzled, Gina reached for the flashlight even as she glanced wide-eyed in the direction he’d indicated.

Cal nodded. “Why do you think this room is so warm?”

“How is that even possible?” Gina was already on her feet, clothes tucked under her arm, flashlight beam leading the way as she headed off to check it out.

“Looked like a natural spring to me,” he called after her.

Turned out it was indeed a natural spring, a hot spring, bubbling up through the rock into a time-worn depression about the size of a kitchen sink that nature had carved into the floor. As the flashlight illuminated it, Gina eyed it with delight. At some point in the past, someone had put up pipes connected to an overhead can contraption that appeared to be designed to work as a shower, but the pipes were rusted and she had a healthy mistrust of what might lurk in the can, so she decided not to test it. There was also a crude toilet in a corner, the workings of which she refused to think about even as she used it. Afterward, kneeling on the smooth stone beside the hot spring, she cautiously checked the water: hot but not dangerously so, fresh, with only the slightest tang of minerals.