Darkness(87)

“First, I wasn’t flying the plane when it got shot down. Second, as far as I’m aware nobody had any reason to suspect we might get shot down. Now that I’m flying, believe me, us getting shot down just ain’t gonna happen.”

That cocky flyboy answer earned him a jaundiced look. But, whether it was idiotic of her or not, it also made her feel better. It both unsettled and alarmed her to discover that her trust in him apparently knew no bounds.

“Which brings me to something I’ve been meaning to do,” he said, and stopped walking to pull the pistol out of his pocket. She stopped, too, looking silently down at the gun in his gloved hand before glancing up at him. Even through the veil of thickly falling snow, he seemed suddenly bigger and more formidable. His jaw was set, his mouth was unsmiling, and Gina realized that he’d gone into warrior mode: she was face-to-face with the hard-eyed, scary man she’d first encountered. For a second she was taken aback. Then she got a grip and reminded herself that he was now her bear.

“In case of—anything,” he said, his tone as grim as his face—the slight hesitation told her that the “anything” he was referring to was something bad—“I want you to be able to protect yourself. I’m going to give you this, along with a quick lesson in how to use it.”

Okay, now she got it: the “anything” referred to his death or incapacitation. Nice. Gina looked at the gun, looked at him, and held out her hand.

“Can I hold it?” she asked sweetly.

A slightly wary look flickered over his face. He passed the gun to her, grip first. It was big, black, and heavy.

“Basically, all you have to do is point and shoot,” he instructed, leaning close. “But first you have to release the safety, right here—”

Before he could finish, she released then reengaged the safety lever on the back of the slide, ejected the magazine and the chambered round, snapped the magazine back into place, and pulled the slide back to rechamber a round, all in a series of crisp, practiced movements that, when she finished and looked at him, had him rocking back on his heels with his eyes wide.

Pocketing the gun, she raised her eyebrows at him. “What is it they say about assumptions? I traveled to some very unstable regions of the world with my father. I learned to use a gun.”

Recovering from his surprise, he practically crowed with delight, then wrapped his arms around her, rocking her from side to side as he hugged her against him.

“So, okay, I’m an ass,” he said, clearly getting her “assume makes an ass out of you and me” reference. “That was awesome. You are awesome. Gorgeous, sexy, smart, can handle a gun. Honey, you’re my wildest dream come true.”

He was grinning as he said it, but then as he looked down at her and met her eyes his grin faded. A serious, intent expression took its place. Gina was instantly dazzled by the look in his eyes. He kissed her, a slow, lush kiss that made her all melty and dizzy and had her kissing him back as if the world would stop spinning unless they generated sufficient heat. The thought that beat like a pulse through her brain as she twined her arms around his neck and returned the hungry insistence of his mouth was, maybe, just maybe, he was her wildest dream come true.

Sleet broke them apart. Not just a sprinkling of sleet. A deluge, as if the angry-looking clouds overhead had gotten tired of politely seeding the island with snow and had decided to disgorge their contents in a massive, freezing moisture dump.

“Holy shit,” Cal said as he flipped the waterproof hood of his coat up over his cap. One arm was still around her and his mouth was close to her ear as he raised his voice to be heard over the loud rushing sound of the falling sleet. “We got to move. If we don’t get in the air soon, the wings will ice over and we won’t be able to take off.”

Grabbing her hand, he took off at a brisk walk—anything faster was dangerous to impossible given the worsening conditions underfoot—and pulled her along with him. Bending her head against the pounding sleet, Gina didn’t know whether to be glad or sorry that the camp was only about half a mile away. The thought of trying to steal a plane and fly away in it made her stomach knot. The thought of trying to steal a plane with possibly iced-over wings and fly away in it into a sleet storm caused her stomach to twist into a pretzel.

By the time they were close enough to see the buildings, Gina was so cold and so physically miserable that she would have been pulling out the tent and taking shelter in it until the weather improved, and never mind what Cal thought about that, except for the fact that they’d left the tent behind in the cave to lighten the backpack’s load. She was shivering uncontrollably, her face stung, and she could no longer feel her hands and feet. They skirted the camp’s perimeter, skulking low like animals on the prowl for fear that their dark shapes against the white snow might be visible even through the gloom and the driving curtain of silvery sleet. It was early afternoon, although the weather made it seem much later. The main building appeared to have only a few occupants: Gina saw a couple of indistinct shapes moving past the windows. She could only suppose that anyone not at camp when the sleet storm hit had taken shelter in place, as she would have liked to have done. While Cal searched the shadows for sentries—there didn’t appear to be any—she listened to the rattle of the generator, looked at the light pouring out of the windows, and felt envy mix with her fear. What she wouldn’t give to be inside where it was warm and dry! The only thing she wanted more than to thaw out was to be safe.