by Linda Howard
“You punched me.”
Even as sleepy as she was, as punch-drunk, she was still capable of logic. “How? You were behind me. I can’t punch backward.”
“When you sat up.” He moved his arm just enough for one half-opened eye to glower at her. “You punched me in the stomach.”
They glared at each other, sleepy and irritable. She could feel herself weaving. Heaving a sigh, she closed her eyes again while she thought about what he’d said. “Not a punch,” she finally insisted, having fumbled her way through her cloudy memories and making a decision. “That was my elbow, not my fist.”
“My stomach appreciates the difference. Go back to sleep.”
“What time is it now?”
He looked at his watch. “About half an hour after the last time you asked.”
This wasn’t good. If she woke up every time she moved her foot, she wasn’t going to get much rest at all.
He heaved his own sigh. “Okay, let’s try this.” He flipped the sleeping bag to the side. “Lie down on your back.”
“Hey!” She reached for the sleeping bag, protesting as the chilly air reached her.
“I’ll cover us up again. Damn it, would you just lie down?” He didn’t wait for compliance, just kind of sandwiched her in his arms and laid her back. Then he hooked his right arm under her knees, lifted her legs, and he shifted into the spoon position around her before draping her legs over his thighs. “How’s that?”
It was actually very comfortable, at least for now. “Good,” she muttered.
He stretched to reach the edge of the sleeping bag, and pulled it around them again, making sure the fabric wasn’t tight around her feet. A deep sigh eased from his chest as he settled down, not an impatient sigh but one of relaxation; he curled his left arm under his head, and went back to sleep like a stone dropping into dark water.
The moment, the situation, etched itself on her brain. Carefully (DOT) she turned her head just enough that was she able to see his face. This close to him, even in the dim light, she could see every thick, dark lash, the details of his strong facial bone structure, the small scar across the bridge of his nose. He wasn’t a pretty man, by any means, but he was definitely a man. As angry as she’d been at him, as much as she’d resented the way he’d siphoned off so much of her business just by being him, she had also never been immune to him. If he was anywhere in the vicinity, she was acutely aware of his exact location, the rough, scratchy timbre of his voice; the powerful, restrained grace of his movements. It was as if her skin was a compass to his magnetic north, and she’d hated that weakness in herself.
Angie lay awake for a few minutes—a very few—listening to the rain and the heavy, rhythmic sound of Dare’s breathing. She was in the one place she’d never thought she would be—in bed with him, in his arms—and it felt so natural she wasn’t certain she really was awake.
She needed to think, but … later.
He woke her by gently lifting her legs off his. “What’re you doing?” she muttered fretfully, because she’d managed to get some decent sleep in that position. She should be sleeping like a dead person, but instead they seemed to be destined for one to wake the other every little while.
“Gotta go.” He sat up and scrubbed both hands over his face, his bristly growth of beard sounding like sandpaper on his rough palms.
“Go where? It’s still pouring down.” More asleep than awake, she gave him a look that managed to be both befuddled and grumpy.
“Not ‘go where,’ just go. As in, piss. How about you?”
Oh, God. Angie groaned. “I wish you hadn’t mentioned it.” But he had, and now she knew she wouldn’t be able to go back to sleep until that problem had been taken care of. She turned her wrist to see what time it was, but was too groggy to focus her eyes. “I can’t see my watch,” she muttered, letting her arm fall back to the mattress. For all she knew, her watch wasn’t working anyway, after being exposed to all that rain and mud. “What time is it?” As soon as she asked, she wondered what difference the time made.
“Almost noon.”
Well, no wonder she needed to go. She pondered the situation for a moment longer, as dread and resignation grew. She struggled to sit up, braced herself on one arm as she tried to psych herself up to leave the warm cocoon of the sleeping bag. Hoping against hope, she said, “Please tell me this place has a flush toilet.”
He snorted. Okay, that was answer enough.
“Portable toilet?” At least then she wouldn’t be squatting behind a bush somewhere. She tried not to think of the effort involved, with a sprained ankle that wouldn’t support her weight.
“Out back.”
Whew! That still meant putting on boots, slicker, getting down the ladder, and going out in the rain, hopping on her one good foot, but it was worlds better than that bush she’d been thinking about.
“I can maybe find something for you to pee in,” he said, but sounded doubtful. “Think you could hit a bottle?”
“I think I could hit a portable toilet,” she growled. “What do you think I am, a precision pisser? Women don’t practice things like that.”
His mouth quirked, a movement that made the small scar in his cheek look even more like a dimple. She had the feeling that anyone else would have laughed out loud, but Dare didn’t strike her as a man who laughed very much. She wondered if he ever had, if he’d been more open when he was growing up, and his transition to an ill-tempered, closed-in man had happened during his years in the military.
Hard on that thought came the realization that she herself had done exactly that. When she was younger she’d laughed more, been more outgoing, then she’d let embarrassment and self-doubt shut her down for a while, make her pull back from people. Once those walls were up, though, staying behind them was easier than letting herself be exposed and vulnerable. Reaching out to her friends again had taken an effort, but she was so glad she’d done it. Was that what had happened to him? He’d gotten caught behind his own walls?
“In that case, how about a bucket?” he asked prosaically. “There’s one I use for the horses.”
The image that brought to mind made her want to laugh, but her own issues kept her reply solemn. “No, thank you. I’ll manage.”
“Ladies first, then. Let’s get you down the ladder; I can wait.”
She was tempted, but common sense raised its sluggish head. “You go ahead. I’m going to pull off these pants and put on my sweatpants again; no point in getting another pair of pants wet when mine already are.”
He didn’t argue with that logic, just collected her wet and dirty sweatpants and dropped them close by the mattress, where she could easily reach them. After stomping his feet into his boots and pulling on his slicker, he let down the ladder and disappeared from view.
A bucket?
Alone, Angie let a wan smile curl her lips. She might have taken him up on the proposition, if it hadn’t been for the distasteful prospect of emptying said bucket. If she could have handled it herself, no problem, but she wasn’t letting Dare Callahan handle a personal chore like that for her. Uh-uh.
On the other hand, he had seen her naked boobs—almost all of her, in fact. At any other time she’d have been mortified, not because she was so modest, but because she’d actually told him not to laugh at her boobs because they were little. Maybe when she felt more normal, when she wasn’t still numb from the horror of what had happened last night, followed by the sheer struggle just to survive that had whittled her down to little more than willpower—or stubbornness—all of this would bother her more. Right now, it just didn’t, even though normally she hated betraying any sign of vulnerability. Too much had happened for her to worry about whether or not her boobs were little, or that he’d laugh at her.
But he hadn’t laughed, and somehow she didn’t think he would. He wasn’t what she’d expected. The damn man was nothing short of heroic, and that really bothered her, because it proved that once again her judgment had been faulty. How could
she trust anyone, when she couldn’t trust herself?
All of that was a subject for later, though, because already she could feel herself tiring, and she hadn’t even made the trip to the toilet yet. Gathering her strength, she tugged his baggy long thermal underwear off and her cold, wet, dirty sweatpants on, shuddering as the clammy material clung to her legs. The sensation was awful, but she comforted herself with the thought that the situation was temporary. As soon as she got back from the toilet, she could change back into the unlovely but blessedly warm thermals.
Her ankle was a problem. More precisely, the elastic bandage wrapping it was the problem, because she couldn’t get her boot on that foot. The bandage would get wet. The only thing to do was unwrap it, which she set about doing. She winced when she saw her ankle; it was an unsavory black and blue and green, swollen to twice its normal size, and removing the pressure of the bandage made the joint throb like blue blazes.
Nothing she could do about it, though, so she shoved the pain aside and pulled on her left boot. It was wet, too, inside and out, another item to go on her list of things to ignore. Next came her rain slicker, but it, at least, didn’t make her shudder when she came into contact with it. She zipped and snapped, pulled the hood up, and was as ready as she could be, except for the fact that she was on the second-story sleeping platform and she needed to be at the bottom of that long ladder.
“A journey of a thousand miles,” she muttered, and hopped to the ladder.
Actually getting on the ladder was the toughest part. She had to grasp it, sit down, locate a rung with her left foot, then lever herself up and around. Once she was properly situated, she was strong enough to hold herself on the ladder using just her upper body strength while she took another step down with her left foot. The process wasn’t pretty, but it was effective.
It also took an enormous amount of effort when her body hadn’t rebuilt its reserves. Every muscle in her body was trembling, and she was breathing like a bellows; just as she neared the bottom rung, she heard the scrape of a door opening.
“Fucking nipples on ice!”
The hoarse, muted roar would have made her fall off the ladder if it hadn’t been for the telltale noise of the door. Holding tight to the ladder, she peered through the rungs at him, where he was almost completely hidden by the dark shadows at the back of the camp building. The expression made her blink. “I’ve never heard that one before,” she commented faintly. “Innovative.”
Rapidly he strode forward, his expression both disbelieving and furious as he gripped her waist and peeled her off the ladder. He stood her up for a brief second as he switched positions, bending down to hook his left arm under her knees and lift her off the floor, holding her tight against his wet slicker. “You could have broken your damn fool neck!”
“But I didn’t,” she pointed out with impeccable logic, even though she was still gasping for breath. “So I saved both time, and wear and tear on you.” She hooked her left arm around his neck, and felt a ker-THUNK kind of thud in her chest as her heart reacted to how natural it felt to be held like this, to feel free to sling her arms around him.
If anything, he looked even more furious. “I can handle getting you up and down the ladder.”
He was just standing there, instead of taking her outside, and her exertion in getting down the ladder had made the situation more dire. “I wasn’t impugning your manhood,” she said impatiently. “Just handle getting me out to the toilet. Pee now, chew out later.”
Muttering more obscenities under his breath, he strode to the back door. It wasn’t a regular door, but part of the wall itself that had been cut out and hinges installed, and was secured by sliding a two-by-eight into steel brackets. “Hold your hood in place,” he growled. “The wind’s still gusting.”
She grabbed her hood and held it as he turned sideways and maneuvered her through the door. It was like walking under a waterfall. The rain felt like a solid sheet of water, hammering at them. The portable was placed against the back of the building, just a few steps away, but if she hadn’t been wearing a slicker she’d have been drenched in a second. Ducking his head against the onslaught of water, Dare pulled open the toilet door and stood her up inside. “I’ll wait here,” he half-yelled, because the drumming of the rain on the plastic roof of the toilet sounded like, well, actual drumming.
She started to tell him not to be silly, to go back inside, but realized he wasn’t going to budge no matter what she said, so the best thing she could do was not waste time. She took care of business as fast as possible, cleaned her hands with the gel hand sanitizer, then opened the door. He had her swooped up into his arms and back inside the cabin before she could get her bearings.
He put her down so he could secure the heavy door and peel out of his dripping slicker. Balancing on one foot, Angie removed her own slicker, and he hung them over a rail to drip dry. She drew in a breath that was rich with the smell of hay, horse, and feed, which reminded her of her own horses. “The bastard,” she blurted. “He stole all four of my horses. I know he won’t take care of them; he can barely ride.”
“Then maybe he’ll get thrown and break his neck,” Dare said with a calm intent that told her he meant the comment literally.
“I hope so,” she muttered, and she was being just as literal as he was.
“We’ll get your horses back. Mine, too, if the nitwit didn’t run himself to death,” he said as he put his hands on her waist. “Alley oop.” Without pausing, he tossed her onto his shoulder. She grunted as the impact drove out her breath, but didn’t waste time complaining. Instead she grabbed him to steady herself as he began the upward climb; she was more than glad to let him carry her, because she was wiped out, almost back to square one. She was exhausted and cold, but at least she wasn’t soaking wet.
He turned his back and gave her some privacy while she pulled off the sweatpants and worked his thermal underwear back up her legs and hips, though to be honest she was already so close to conking out she wouldn’t have cared if he’d looked; it wasn’t as if he hadn’t put them on her the first time. Lying back on the mattress, she almost dozed off while he was rewrapping her ankle. Maybe she did actually go to sleep, because the next thing she knew he was sliding close against her and pulling the sleeping bag over them, enveloping them in a warm cocoon.
She snuggled back against him, oddly content. Feeling him so close to her was deeply comforting, something she desperately needed right now when she felt so off balance. Eventually everything would settle into place and she’d get a grip on things, but that time wasn’t now. For now, being warm and having him there was enough.
There were so many important things to think about, but a thought, an idea, would rise to the surface of her consciousness and then drift away, her mind too tired to hold on to it. She could actually feel sleep coming, feel herself sinking closer and closer to that delicious edge of unconsciousness, until it enveloped her as surely as his arms were wrapped around her.
Chapter Nineteen
The next time she woke, Angie had the feeling that several hours had passed, that she had finally, at last, gotten enough sleep to make a difference to her exhausted body. Outwardly nothing had changed; it was still raining, the light was still dim and gray, and they were still nestled under the sleeping bag. Somehow she knew, though, that it was now late afternoon. Dare must have slept, too, because if he’d been awake again and moving around, he hadn’t disturbed her, and she had to think he would have. She wasn’t used to sleeping with anyone, which had contributed to her restlessness, and she thought the same could probably be said about him.
He was still asleep now, his body hard and warm against hers, totally relaxed. His arm was heavy around her, his breath hot against the back of her neck, his chest rising and falling in a slow, deep rhythm. Feeling him there like that made her want to turn into his arms, press her face against his chest, and just inhale the heated scent of his skin; for a moment, she was still just sleepy enough that she almost did i
t, almost took that step, then reality slapped her in the face and with a small jerk she stopped.
Which, of course, woke him up. He took a deep breath and slowly exhaled, his arm tightening around her in what she would almost call a hug, if they were on hugging terms. The ridiculousness of the situation made her smile. They’d faced a life-or-death situation together, they’d slept cuddled as close to each other as they could get, and they weren’t on hugging terms? She knew one thing for certain: She would never, ever again view him as the enemy. She couldn’t; he wasn’t. He maybe never had been, but circumstance and her own lack of self-confidence had kept her from seeing him as he was. She didn’t think he’d ever be an easy man to get to know, his grumpy state was likely permanent, but at the center of him was a solid streak of steely willpower that kept him going when lesser men would have given up.
“You okay?” he muttered, his rough voice guttural with sleep, but he didn’t seem really interested in the answer because he nestled his cheek against the back of her head and relaxed again, as if he were going back to sleep. A moment later, though, she knew he wasn’t, because the hard-on he’d warned her not to bitch about began pushing against her butt.
She thought about bitching anyway, just to jerk his chain, but sex was another one of those areas where she wasn’t as confident as she’d like to be. In her experience, it was more trouble than it was worth: In exchange for suffering the uncertainty of exposing her emotions, as well as her less-than-perfect body and her less-than-perfect judgment, to a man who might or might not appreciate any of them, she would get to experience a climax brought about by a hand. Climax-by-penis was a fairy tale, as far as she was concerned, so why not just bypass the middle man, so to speak, and take care of her climaxes herself? The process was a lot neater, less complicated, and easy on the emotions.
Not that she was going to have sex with Dare Callahan. She didn’t want to go there and she couldn’t imagine why he would, either, except as an automatic kind of thing. She felt about as sexy as roadkill, and probably looked not much better. She couldn’t even feel flattered by his hard-on, because it was just a reaction to waking up, and had nothing to do with her, personally. He’d have one even if she wasn’t there.