Darkness(68)

“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’?”