by Brenda Novak
“At least twenty-five.”
“So she’s not matronly Alice from The Brady Bunch.”
He laughed. “Definitely not.”
Definitely not? “What’d you get her this year?”
“I’m not sure. I think my daughter picked out a nice purse.”
“Nice” meant expensive, at least in Maxim Donahue’s vocabulary. Adelaide had never seen him wear anything that wasn’t the best money could buy. She wondered what this young housekeeper would think of receiving a Gucci or Dolce bag. “Sounds like she does a fine job.”
He didn’t answer. He’d found a box of matches and was trying to light one. “Damn, they’re ruined.”
No fire. No heat. No help.
Adelaide pressed the heels of her hands to her eyes and brought the conversation back to Christmas dinner. “What time do you usually eat?”
“Midafternoon. You?”
She ignored the question. “That means she stays with you most of the day.”
He straightened as much as possible in the upside-down aisle of the shattered plane. “Why are you so interested in my housekeeper?”
Adelaide pulled her coat tighter. “It just seems…like an odd situation.”
“It’s not odd. She cooks and I pay her.”
“And she spends most of her Christmas with you, even though she’s only twenty-five!”
He angled his head to look at her through the crack between two suspended seats. “Okay, now I see where you’re going. But don’t get too excited, Candidate Fairfax. You’ll have nothing to report to the press when we get back, because I’m not having an affair with the hired help.”
“I’m not digging for dirt!”
“Then why would you care if my housekeeper is young, attractive and unmarried?”
Adelaide forgot about her prickling feet. “You didn’t tell me she was attractive.”
“Well, she is.”
“How attractive?”
Victory lit his eyes. “My housekeeper, Rosa, is nearly three hundred pounds, at least fifty-five years old and stays with us because she’s supposed to. She’s live-in help. Except for the relatives I mentioned, the rest of her family remained in Chile when she immigrated—legally—thirty-five years ago.”
Adelaide rocked back. “You set me up! What a jerk!”
A wicked grin curved his lips. “You knew it was me last night and you enjoyed it, anyway, didn’t you?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she grumbled.
“In the cave,” he said. “I’m saying there were moments you enjoyed our lovemaking even knowing I wasn’t Mark. You—”
“Stop it.” She scowled. “You’re deluded.”
He lowered his voice. “Am I?”
“Of course.” She met his eyes because she wanted him to believe her; she wanted to believe what she was saying, too. Crediting all that passion to fantasy made everything so much…simpler. But she was having too many flashbacks. His hands cupping her face with palms too large to be Mark’s. His mouth on her breast, warming her just when she thought she’d never be warm again. The sounds he’d made, the words he’d whispered. It was all unique to him.
“Would it hurt so much to admit it?” he asked.
She didn’t answer.
“I knew it was you,” he added.
“But it could’ve been anyone, remember?”
An expression of chagrin wiped the subtly coaxing smile from his face. “Could’ve been, but wasn’t.”
“I thought we decided to forget about last night, pretend it never happened.”
“Some of us are better at pretending than others,” he muttered. He was trying to hang a blanket across the opening to keep out the snow and cold.
“Was there a lot of blood?” she asked as she watched him.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Mr. Cox.”
The blanket he’d anchored on one end fell, forcing him to start over. “No.”
“What killed him?”
He sighed but shifted to the other side. “A head injury, I think. I didn’t want to look too closely.”
She could understand that. He was wearing the man’s boots. “Right.”
“We have a total of four blankets. Well, three,” he corrected, “if you don’t include this one.”
“That’s better than none,” she said, but she couldn’t manage any enthusiasm. She had yet to hear the swoop of a helicopter, which meant the Civil Air Patrol or whoever was out there searching for them, probably wouldn’t make it today. Temperatures were falling as it grew dark. And the wind was picking up.
Remembering the hopelessness they’d faced immediately following the crash, she shivered. In an hour or so they’d lose what little sunlight they had.
“What time is it?” she asked.
He checked his watch. “Almost four.”
They’d been in subzero weather for nearly twenty-four hours. “How’re your feet?”
“I don’t know,” he said with a shrug. “I can’t feel them. What about yours?”
“They burn.” She chafed them, hoping to relieve the pain. “Did you ever hear about that little boy, back in the eighties, who survived in these mountains for five days? He did it alone. Both his parents died on impact.”
“I’d rather not remember that, thanks.”
“He made it out. They found him.”
“He lost his legs.”
“He’s now a successful businessman.”
“So you were being optimistic in bringing it up?”
No, she was considering how she’d deal with something so traumatic, if she could deal with it. “Here, let me help—”
He lifted a hand. “Stay where you are and keep covered.”
“But it’s snowing again.” Which would make the crash site that much harder to spot, even if rescuers could get a helicopter in the sky.
“Other than hunkering down in here, there’s nothing we can do—at least not until morning.” He finally managed to block most of the opening, which cut down on the wind. “We’ll be okay,” he said over his shoulder as he finished.
She nodded, but that wasn’t enough for him. Squeezing through the narrow passage, he crouched in front of her and raised her chin so she had to meet his eyes. “We’ll be okay… Adelaide.” The way he said her name made it a challenge. He wanted to see if she’d object to his use of it, but she didn’t. It still brought memories she’d rather forget, but he’d done too much for her; she had no right to complain about anything.
“Okay.”
A day’s beard growth—something she’d never seen on him before—covered his lower jaw, and his hair fell across his forehead in windblown tufts. She liked him this way. In a suit, he was too suave, too perfect, too…formidable. Or maybe it was just that she preferred a more rugged form of masculinity because she dealt with men in suits every day.
“Great.”
“I—Let’s take inventory, see what we have.” She pulled out of his grasp.
He didn’t immediately move. She could feel his gaze lingering on her but pretended not to, and he eventually turned to his cache. “We’ve got a sleeping bag, some wool blankets, a pair of snowshoes, two boxes of matches—which are no good because they got wet—half a dozen colored smoke bombs—which we can’t light because we don’t have matches—and rations.”
“Rations?” Adelaide didn’t think she’d ever been so hungry.
“Looks like military stuff.”
“So it’s freeze-dried?”
“Some of it.” He opened a brown cardboard box the size of a large shoe box. “We’ve got bottled water, Cup-a-Soup, hot-chocolate mix, biscuits, cooked rice, granola bars, crackers and cheese, chewing gum, chicken pâté, orange-drink
powder, a tin of tuna fish, fruit snacks, pork and beans and some condiments.”
“That’s a lot to fit in a box that size.”
“They’re not the largest portions I’ve ever seen.” He slanted it so she could take a peek inside. “But we should have enough.”
Maybe. That depended on how long they had to survive out here.
CHAPTER EIGHT
They’d eaten the pork and beans for dinner and then drank some water, but now that the sun had gone down, they sat in the pitch-black, chewing gum and talking to keep their spirits up. Adelaide was across the aisle from him in the sleeping bag. He was wrapped in the blankets. But it was getting so incredibly cold he knew they’d soon have to huddle together. He would’ve suggested it already. They’d both be more comfortable if they gave in and made the most of what they had in each other. But he was afraid she’d assume he was using their situation as an excuse to touch her again, probably because he wanted to touch her again and shut out the desperation of their situation, the same way they had last night.
“Do you miss her?” It was Adelaide who broke the silence that had fallen since Maxim had said he didn’t think this storm would be as bad as the last one. The rising wind seemed to contradict him, but he felt it was more important to remain positive than to acknowledge reality.
“Who?” His mind was on his girls and whether or not they’d been notified that he hadn’t reached L.A. Megan and Callie were in school at San Diego State, but they’d be home next week, just in time for Christmas.
“Chloe,” she said.
Her mention of his late wife drew him back to the conversation. “Why do you want to know?”
“I guess I’m wondering whether you’re as impervious as you seem.”
Impervious wasn’t the right word. But this wasn’t a subject he had any desire to discuss, so he tried to dodge it by answering her question with one of his own. “What do you think?”
“It’s hard to tell. You don’t reveal much emotion. Unless you’re angry. I can always tell when you’re angry.”
He hadn’t realized she watched him closely enough to be aware of his personal habits. He’d made an art out of pretending he didn’t notice her. For the most part, he even tried to convince himself of that. What she called “anger” was actually frustration, because he felt envious of a man he didn’t even respect.
“How can you tell?”
“There’s a muscle in your jaw that tightens, and your eyes glitter with hate,” she said.
Not hate—determination. She was wrong again. But at least he wasn’t as transparent as he sometimes feared. “When have I been angry around you?”
“You’re always angry when you’re around me,” she said with a laugh.
Apparently, she had no idea how hard he worked not to betray the fact that he was attracted to her. When they were in a room together, he had difficulty looking anywhere else. It was as if he could feel every breath she took, no matter how many people were crowded between them. It wasn’t until she’d decided to run against him that he’d begun to dislike her. When she jumped into the race, he’d been almost as relieved as he’d been worried.
“I think you’re mistaking preoccupation for anger.” He tried to sound as indifferent as possible.
“Maybe.”
He couldn’t tell if she believed him or not.
“Are you going to answer my question?” she asked.
“About Chloe?”
“Yes.”
“I miss her for the sake of my children.” He hoped that would suffice. When it came to his late wife, his emotions were too confused to analyze. Her perpetually negative outlook had made him unhappy. But they’d had children before their marriage completely fell apart so he’d decided to stick it out in spite of her instability and neediness. And then she’d been diagnosed with cancer and somehow he’d felt responsible, as if wishing to be rid of her had made it come to pass. Trying to turn pity and compassion into love hadn’t succeeded. He’d fallen short, been unable to do it, even for his children. Sometimes he still felt as though he wore a scarlet letter on his chest—a C for callous.
“You weren’t in love with her.”
“My decision to stay with her had nothing to do with my political aspirations, if that’s what you’re driving at.”
“You stayed because of Megan and Callie?”
He doubted she’d believe him, but it was the truth. “Yes.”
“That’s how you made carrying on after her death look so easy.”
Guilt washed over him. He hadn’t been capable of mourning Chloe the way he’d wanted to, the way a husband should mourn the loss of his wife, especially one who’d died in such sad circumstances. He’d never even hinted that she was a burden. And yet he couldn’t deny that there were moments when he recalled how much she’d changed after the birth of their second child, how difficult she’d become, and was glad to have her gone. She must have known he was merely tolerating her or she wouldn’t have taken her own life.
What did that say about him?
“Just because we didn’t share the same closeness you and Mark did doesn’t mean it was easy to watch her suffer. When I learned what she was facing, I would’ve traded places with her if I could.”
She didn’t respond right away. When she spoke, she didn’t question what he’d said, as he expected. She made an admission. “Mark and I were having problems when he died, too.”
The frank honesty of those words surprised him. Did she know about Mark? Did she suspect? “What kind of problems?”
“I’m not sure exactly. He got so wrapped up in politics he grew almost…secretive.” She gave an awkward laugh. “I was beginning to wonder if he was seeing another woman.”
It wasn’t another woman that’d taken Mark away, but Maxim had no plans to divulge what he knew, especially to Adelaide. He remained silent.
“I felt he was forgetting everything we’d promised each other, you know? Everything we’d once been to each other. We’d started off so strong, had so much fun together.”
Being aware of the truth made it awkward to talk about Mark, but it didn’t stop the jealousy that sprang up out of nowhere. “He was probably just busy, stressed,” Maxim muttered. “You know how it is in politics.”
“You think so?” she asked as if she valued his opinion.
He knew what she wanted to hear. “Of course,” he said but winced at the lie. Only a fool would cheat on a woman like Adelaide, but Mark had been a fool, and more.
As it grew noticeably colder, Maxim thought about getting in that sleeping bag with her. He wanted to keep her warm, but it felt as though they were the only two people on earth, and that made barriers of propriety hard to maintain. It was difficult to worry about tomorrow when he wasn’t sure he’d make it through today.
He talked about the election, what the governor must think now that they’d gone missing, what they’d be doing if they’d stayed in Tahoe, what his girls were taking in school. He was trying to keep their minds off the cold, but it wasn’t long before she interrupted.
“Are…are you g-going to stay over there all n-night?”
Her teeth were starting to chatter. He couldn’t let her lose too much body heat before joining her in that bag, but he was afraid his body would give away the fact that the intimacy they’d shared before hadn’t been strictly a matter of necessity. He’d wanted to make love to Adelaide Fairfax for a long time. He’d even dreamed about it on occasion—like after that chamber mixer they’d both attended in Roseville a couple of weeks ago.
“I’ll come over in a minute,” he said.
“Okay.”
He waited for his arousal to disappear, but every time it did, the thought of joining her brought it back.
“Maxim?”
He was leaning forward, resti
ng his head in his hands. “Yeah?”
“W-what about now?”
He knew that asking required her to sacrifice her pride. She’d rather pretend she didn’t need him. For some reason, she tried not to need anybody.
Busy contemplating what to do, he didn’t respond, which prompted her to ask, “Hey, are you still there?”
At the panic in her voice, he closed his eyes. “Of course I’m here,” he said and took her hand. “I’m not going anywhere.”
“Oh. Right.” He expected her to let go, but she didn’t. She wound her fingers through his. “But…you d-don’t want to sh-share this bag with me?”
What the hell, he decided. Why worry about an erection? If he wasn’t hard already, he would be the second he touched her.
“Sure.” Silently cursing his unmistakable reaction to her, he felt his way over. With the dampness that seemed to permeate everything, their clothes hadn’t had a chance to dry. He was still in his boxers and she was in her underwear, but he stripped off his coat and Cox’s boots and climbed in. Then he used the blankets to cover the bag.
* * *
At first, Adelaide was timid about curling up against Maxim. They remained stiff, lying next to each other without speaking or moving. But as the minutes passed, she snuggled closer, eventually wrapping her arms around him. She could feel his erection pressing boldly against her abdomen—everything about Maxim Donahue was bold—but she didn’t react to his arousal. And he kept his hands to himself, letting her take what she wanted from his body without asking for anything in return.
Adelaide tried to be appeased by that, but she quickly realized one-sided cuddling wasn’t very satisfying. “Do you think you could act a little less…unwilling to be here?” she whispered.
He complied by shifting so she could lie on his shoulder, and she grew warm. She expected him to relax and drift off to sleep, but he didn’t. His erection remained firm and ready, an ever-present reminder of what they’d shared last night. Soon she caught herself changing positions so she could feel the pressure of it.
“Adelaide?” He spoke her name gruffly.
“Yes?”
“Any chance you could hold still?”
