Darkness(24)

Crawling out of the tent, she was fuzzy-headed with fatigue until a wayward gust blasted her in the face. The arctic coldness of it was enough to shock her back into wakefulness. Pelting down just a few feet beyond the edge of the tent, a wall of sleet reflected orange from the fire. She knew it was mostly sleet now because of the sharp pattering sound it made as it hit. The small fire looked pitifully inadequate against the raging, shrieking blizzard surrounding them. The heat it put out was a puny defense against the encroaching cold. The smell of smoke was strong; her senses hurriedly reached past it to latch onto other smells—dampness and the sea.

Beside the fire, draped in the Mylar blanket, the man was a hulking shape slumped against the rocks. She couldn’t be sure, but she thought he was looking out into the storm again. As if he was afraid someone might be out there.

Not liking the anxious feeling that thought gave her, she aimed her flashlight at him.

“Ready?” she asked as he blinked and looked her way. Teeth chattering, she moved toward him. The sweatpants and spare socks from her backpack were tucked beneath her parka, where, in theory at least, they were being warmed by her body heat. Her plan was to get him dried off fast with the hopefully not too bloodied turtleneck, get him into the sweatpants and socks and then the tent, and take care of whatever else needed doing—like, say, treating his injury—in there, where there was less chance of both of them expiring from exposure to the cold.

He didn’t reply.

She reached him and saw why: he was not naked. Not even close. Even with the Mylar blanket draped over him, she could see that he was still struggling with the buttons on his shirt. As far as she could tell, not one stitch of his clothing had been removed.

“Oh, my God,” she said, exasperation in every syllable. She was so tired she could barely move, aching all over, and cold to her bone marrow. The weather was growing worse by the minute and the fire that was warming the air was spitting and hissing in warning that the next influx of blowing snow that landed in it might well snuff it out. The only thing she wanted to do was curl up inside her sleeping bag in her tent and wait the storm out.

Instead she was going to be undressing this sinister stranger. Then giving him her sleeping bag and sharing her tent with him.

“My fingers don’t seem to be working,” he said gruffly. Without another word, she pulled off her gloves and thrust them into her pocket. Pushing the Mylar blanket aside, she plucked the hand warmers off him, shoved them into her pocket, too, and started unbuttoning his shirt for him.

His shirt was icy and stiff, almost frozen dry. She had to work to get the buttons through their buttonholes. As her increasingly chilled fingers brushed the glacial dampness of his skin beneath, she was reminded of what bad shape he was in. No surprise that he wasn’t able to undress himself. The wonder was that he was conscious and talking.

She unfastened the rest of his buttons as quickly as she could, noticing in the process that a wedge of curly black hair covered his chest and tapered down to a narrow trail that disappeared beneath the waistband of his pants. She noticed, too, that his chest was wide and about as solid as a concrete wall, and beneath the cold and clammy skin he was all steely muscles and heavy bone.

The guy was seriously big, and seriously buff. Ordinarily she might have found that attractive. Okay, she did find it—him—attractive. Under the circumstances, however, alarm was the more appropriate response.

Once more she wondered who he was. She didn’t even know his name. Which, now that she thought about it, was ridiculous.

She looked up from unbuttoning his cuff. “Think you could tell me your name now? Seeing as how I’m taking off your clothes?”

His eyes were dark and unreadable as they met hers. “I thought—no suggestive comments.”

Gina moved on to the other cuff. “That wasn’t a suggestive comment. It was an illustrative one, designed to make the point that, under the circumstances, I should probably have something to call you besides, hey, popsicle boy. So, name?”

“Popsicle boy?” His lips twitched. For just a moment a flare of amusement lit his eyes. But still he seemed to hesitate. Why? God, she didn’t want to know. Gina had just flicked another, frowning glance at him when he said, “Cal.”

“Cal?” He didn’t respond. “Cal—what?”

“Let’s just stick with Cal.”

That was it. No last name forthcoming. Or maybe that was his last name. No, more likely it was a nickname.

Not that it made any real difference. Whatever his name was, whatever he was into, he’d become her responsibility. Or, to be more precise, she’d made him her responsibility, by fishing him out of the sea and dragging him up off the shore and, in general, saving his life. And that would be because, she realized with a not particularly welcome flash of insight, when she’d seen his plane crash, when she’d spotted him alive in the water, she had immediately, instinctively identified with him. As in, they were members of the same club.

Plane Crash Survivors Anonymous, anyone?

“Nice to meet you, Cal.” Her voice was dry.

“Likewise.” He paused, then added deliberately, “Gina.”

So he remembered her name. At the time she hadn’t even been sure it had registered with him.

She could feel him watching her as she quickly unbuttoned his other cuff and reached for his belt buckle, but she didn’t look up again.