Yeah, he was acting strangely. She was making him feel strange. Protective. Lusty.
He let his hand drop from her throat. “Don’t take too much weight, Casey,” he warned. “It could be a long portage.”
“Hey, we’re back in my territory now,” she said, shrugging. “Dry land. I’m a runner, remember? This I can handle.”
He let his gaze wander down over those long, tanned legs and tried not to imagine them bent across his back. She caught his glance and a hesitant smile quirked her lips.
“You know,” she said softly, “I thought that once we’d made love, you’d stop acting like a cranky bear.”
He choked. “A cranky bear?”
“Yeah. You’ve been grunting all the way from our last campsite.” She tilted her head and examined him. “I thought…making love…would ease things between us.”
“Well,” he admitted, “it eased something.”
“I’ll say.”
“Is that why you did it?” he asked abruptly. “To put me in a better mood?”
He wished he could bite back the words, but there they were, reverberating between them. She looked surprised. Uncertain. He could have kicked himself. What did it matter why she’d made love to him? He wasn’t looking for happily-ever-after. And, he suspected, neither was she.
“Because…I wanted to.” Her smile softened, grew hesitant. “And because…you’re a good man, Dylan.”
Something inside him shifted…moved. With a dangerous sliding sensation. You’re a good man, Dylan. He searched her eyes. He dug his fingers into the softness of her hair. Yeah, he was a “good man.” A “nice guy.” He’d once been told he had a “good shoulder,” too. In his experience, nice guys always finished last.
He dropped his hands. He stepped away from her. He needed to focus. On the trip. Not on Casey. Not on this thing building between them.
“C’mon, Case.” He rolled his shoulders. “We’d best get going or we’ll never make it home by September.”
She shifted the weight on her back and eyed the thickness of the forest. “You brought your machete, I trust?”
“No. Remember, take only pictures, leave—”
“Only footprints.” She wrinkled her nose. “I know.”
“It won’t be so bad,” he told her. “I’ll lead.”
“Uh, Dylan… Are you sure there aren’t any wild animals in there?”
“Only the two-legged type.” He waggled his brows at her, which was about as much levity as he was capable of. “C’mon, Casey. The sooner we find the next stream, the sooner we can have lunch.”
She perked up. “Lunch? What’s for lunch?”
He couldn’t resist. He flashed her an evil grin.
“Peanut butter.”
CASEY TRUDGED AFTER Dylan as the sun slanted long shadows through the trees. After seven hours of portaging back and forth and around and about, thirty pounds of weight felt more like a hundred upon her back. The straps dug deep into her shoulders and sweat bathed her shirt between the shoulder blades, though a cool evening breeze had started to sway the ferns.
All day, she had felt as if she were walking on air. She’d spent the morning watching his strong back as he paddled the canoe, remembering how she’d dug her fingernails into the ridge between his shoulder blades as he’d made love to her. And when they’d first started portaging, she’d watched his legs as he walked, the pumping of his muscles, and tried not to dissolve into jelly on the forest floor. Dylan MacCabe knew how to make love to a woman, and Casey had never felt so utterly, totally satisfied.
She’d spent the day wanting him.
But as the day wore on, and they backtracked and regrouped and set off on another false trail again, her mood had darkened even as Dylan’s had turned brighter and lighter. Because for all of Dylan’s whistling, for all of his easy quips, nothing could dispel the knowledge tied like a knot in her gut that they were hopelessly lost in the woods.
Lost.
She hadn’t been paying attention. She’d allowed herself to be distracted by him. She’d long ago lost her bearings on her copy of the map. She’d allowed herself to follow blindly, without thinking; she’d allowed him to lead and she had followed like a dull-witted duckling. And now, almost twenty-four hours after she’d chucked her misgivings about getting physically involved with him, she was quivering as if she were on the verge of a nervous breakdown.
Everything was mixed up in her mind. The lovemaking. The total release she’d felt in his presence. The sense of safety. The warmth shimmering between them. The sure, terrifying knowledge that they wère lost in the wilds.
She knew better than to drop her guard, even for a little while. She knew better than to place her hope or trust or reliance in any one else’s hands but her own.
“We may as well camp here,” Dylan said, his voice falsely bright. “It’s a good clearing, there’s fresh water just over there. If we go any farther we might not find a better site.”
“We should find the canoe,” she argued. “At least let’s find the canoe. It’s has to be down river from here.”
“It’s ahead, but it could be a good mile or two.” Dylan slipped his pack off his shoulders and let it fall to the ground. “We’ve walked enough for today.”
“We need to find the canoe.”
Dylan glanced up at her, his brow furrowing. “Casey, it’s going to be dark soon. We need to pitch camp, fire up the stove, get dinner—”
“Forget dinner.” She shoved her thumbs under the straps of her backpack and looked him square in the eye. “I just think…we should forge on, see if we can find our gear.”
He eyed her strangely. She tried to still the quiver of her mouth. She flexed her fingers over the straps of her backpack. She met and held his gaze.
“Listen, Casey.” His voice turned soft. “We have all the gear we need for the night.” He patted the components of his pack. “A tent, a sleeping bag, a stove, food. You’re tired, we both are. We didn’t get a heck of a lot of sleep last night.”
She let her gaze skid away from his. Didn’t she know that well enough? Didn’t she still feel the soreness between her thighs? Hadn’t she spent the day in a half-dreaming state, remembering…? And in the process, he’d gotten them both lost.
“I’m not tired,” she insisted. “I can walk more.”
“Tomorrow.”
It was a command, not a statement, and she felt herself bristle at his tone of voice.
‘“tomorrow?” she repeated, knowing her voice sounded strained. “What makes you think we can find it any easier tomorrow?”
“We’ll both have had a good night’s sleep tomor row.”
“So? Will that make the map any clearer?”
“No. But it’ll make us more clear-eyed.”
“We’re lost, aren’t we, Dylan?”
She met his eyes squarely. She clung to his gaze, knew she was clinging to him—and hated herself for doing it She shouldn’t have gotten herself in this situation, letting herself be led around without paying attention. Now she was all turned about. She couldn’t remember which direction they’d come from; she’d lost all sense of north, south, east and west. She stood as still as stone in the midst of these woods with the trees towering high above them, feeling as if she were at the center of a vortex with the world spinning around her.
“Yes, Casey,” he said quietly. “We’re lost.”
Panic rushed through her, jolted weakness through her limbs, stole warmth from her body until she felt gooseftesh ripple her skin. I’m lost. I’m alone. All the world around her looked strange, and she didn’t know which path would take her home.
And she knew this was foolish, she knew she was panicking over something beyond being lost in the middle of the woods, but she couldn’t help herself. Everything had moved too fast for her—this relationship with Dylan, the lovemaking, and now…now this.
But this she could handle. They could find their way out of these woods, at least. Rescue lay in her backpack—
she’d planned it that way.
She slung the pack off her shoulders, dropped to her knees, and tore at the bundles.
“Casey, listen.” He stood close. Just above her. “Think of this as another experience for your story. It would have been a pretty boring piece if you hadn’t gotten lost at least once—”
“You’d be surprised,” she interrupted, wondering at the evenness of her voice, “how resourceful I can be when it comes to spicing up a boring story. I’d rather my adventures be fictional than real.”
“Then why did you come with me?”
“I’m wondering about that myself,” she muttered, yanking her overnight bag from the bottom of the pack. “You talked me into it, Dylan. You have a way of talking me into things.”
“Then let me talk you into calming down.”
He crouched down, placed a hand on her shoulder. Her head shot up. She stared into his face. The crinkles around his eyes, the soft comforting smile. His hand felt so warm on her skin.
How easy it would be to bury her head into that broad shoulder, to burrow within his warmth, maybe even lose herself in a few hours of lovemaking until darkness fell. Three years. Three years. She’d thought she’d learned to be self-sufficient. Now, with one night of lovemaking, she discovered she’d fallen into the same old trap—she was as weak and helpless as ever before.
She pushed away from him, thrust her hand into her bag and felt around, searching.
Dylan frowned at her. “What are you doing?”
“Looking for something.” She curled her fingers over the hard block of plastic. “Here. I’ve got it.”
She pulled out her cellular phone and prayed that it hadn’t inadvertently been turned on during all the battering these packs had suffered. She prayed the batteries hadn’t worn out. She flipped it open, turned it on and saw with a rush of relief the blink of the LCD.
She started pressing 9-1-1 just as Dylan seized the phone from her hands.
He glared at it as if it were some rotting animal carcass. “What the hell is this?”
“A cellular phone. I’m sure you’re familiar with them, Davy Crockett.”
“I know what it is. Why do you have one?”
“For just this circumstance. We’re lost, Dylan. We need help.”
“Like hell we do.” He snapped the phone closed. “We started this trip on our own power, Casey. We’re going to end it that way.”
She felt a quiver deep inside her. “Oh, really? And how long will we do this? Until we’re hopelessly lost? Until we can’t give the search-and-rescue guys any due as to where we are? Until the food runs out—”
“There’re fish in those streams. And berries ripening in the woods.” He hefted the phone in his hands, then stretched his arm back. “We sure as hell don’t need this—”
“Don’t!” She seized his arm, which was braced and ready to throw, stopping him from lobbing the phone deep into the darkening woods. “For God’s sake, Dylan, don’t!”
She reached for his hand, caught on, and clawed at his fingers until he let the phone go. He dropped it in her hands, then seized her by the shoulders.
“What is with you, Casey? I’ve never seen you like this.”
“We’re lost,” she said, as if that could explain everything. “We’re lost.”
“And we’ll find our way out. We’re not in the Himalayas. There’re no predators in these woods. We’ll find our way out—together. You have to trust me.”
“No.”
She hadn’t meant to speak, but the word lingered between them, small and mean—and truthful. For that was what it was all about, Casey realized. Trust. She didn’t want to trust Dylan. Not with her body, not with her heart. She didn’t want to trust anyone, anymore. And for three years she’d avoided any situation where she had to depend on another human being.
Until now.
“Casey…hell.” He dug his fingers deep into her arms. “What is going on in your head? Why are you so terrified? Don’t you trust me?” He shook her, hard. “Does this have something to do with that husband you won’t talk about?” He must have seen something flicker in her eyes. “What the hell did he do to you?”
She raised her face to his and tears rose up in her throat, pushed by a swell of emotion she couldn’t name, a swell of emotion she couldn’t stanch, and it rose up, sticking like a ball of lead in her throat and pushing tears out of her eyes.
The words came, soft and full of sobs.
“He didn’t do anything, Dylan.” A tear rolled off her cheek. “He just died.”
9
CASEY WRENCHED OUT OF Dylan’s grip. She covered her mouth and turned away from him. She couldn’t believe she’d just dropped that bomb on him. She didn’t want his pity—she didn’t want anyone’s pity. She didn’t need pity. She’d managed to build a whole new life for herself over these past three years and she’d put all that pain behind her.
At least, she thought she had.
“Casey…I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be,” she said, more harshly than she intended. “It wasn’t your fault. It wasn’t anyone’s fault. Sometimes airplanes just fall out of the sky.”
The words fell so easily from her lips. She wondered if Dylan could understand how long it had taken her to admit that It had not been an easy lesson. She’d lived such a charmed life before the accident. Somehow, Charlie’s death had seemed to be her karmic payment for having lived—until then—a blissfully blessed life. Even now, her own past seemed like a dream.
No, not a dream, she told herself. A dream implied color and movement. Her old life seemed more like a print on a sparkling Christmas card—lovely, but frozen in time.
She kept her back to Dylan and hugged her elbows, then crushed her arms against her chest. Words bubbled up inside her, but she couldn’t say them all at once. How could she explain how she had been, all those years before? She had been a different woman. A woman who, at the age of sixteen, had met the man she’d considered the love of her life. From that moment on, her life had followed a predictable and welcome path—attendance at a local college, marriage to the high-school sweetheart, the sacrifices to buy their little dream house, the golden retriever, the plans for children…
And it had all exploded into shards one sunny spring day, when engine failure downed a twelve-seater that Charlie had taken home from a business trip in upstate New York.
That day, she had realized that the ground she walked upon was a fluid, shifting thing, liable to heave beneath her and knock her down without a moment’s warning. On that day, her old life had ended.
Suddenly Dylan loomed before her, holding out the cellular phone. “Here,” he said softly. “Take it.”
She stared at the phone—anything to avoid looking into his clear blue eyes. She was afraid that if she looked at him and saw kindness or understanding or pity, she would collapse into a quivering ball of tears. She simply could not find the words to explain. She wasn’t sure she understood herself why all this was coming out here and now.
She took the phone into her hands.
“It must have been a terrible tragedy,” he said, standing so close to her that she could feel his warmth, smell that man-scent of him, a strange mixture of sunlight and sweat. “He was a young man?”
Her words came out husky, dry. “He was twenty-eighty when he died.”
“You knew each other long?”
“We had been married for five years. Dating for five years before that.”
“He stole you out of the cradle, then.”
She managed a humorless twitch of a smile. “I was sixteen when we met I felt quite old enough to choose a husband.”
“I see.”
She saw him making quick mental calculations. Determining her age. He probably thought her much older than her thirty years. Most people did.
“I imagine,” he continued, “that a number of lives were destroyed after that accident.”
“Everyone on the plane died.”
“Those we
ren’t the lives I was talking about.”
She glanced up and met his calm blue gaze. She tried to swallow the swell of emotion in her throat. “A year and a half in therapy. Yes, I’d say a few lives were destroyed.”
“Casey, I’m—”
“Sorry. I know.” She tightened her arms across her chest. “God, I learned to hate those words. Even though I know there’s no other way to express sympathy. I just…I just heard them so much after Charlie died.”
“Well, if it’s any comfort, you’ve done well for yourself.”
“Have I?” she asked, hefting the cellular phone aloft “Have I, really?”
“Yes, you have,” he insisted. “Look at the career you’ve built, the places you’ve gone—”
“And look how quickly I collapse into a ball of nerves,” she interrupted, “as soon as I get into a situation where I have to depend on someone other than myself.”
That was the crux of it, she realized. That was what was causing this fresh rush of pain through her, as if the membrane she’d stretched across the memories had burst. Here, lost in these woods with Dylan, she was in a situation, for the first time in three long years, where she had to depend on another human being for her welfare.
She had vowed never to depend on someone else again. She’d been clear about that soon after Charlie had died. She’d sold the house of her and Charlie’s dreams, shipped the golden retriever to her sister in Connecticut and taken every penny of the settlement money with the airline to start this career of hers. To travel far, far away from the nucleus of her earlier life. Far away from her family. Her hometown. Her old job. She needed to keep traveling, keep moving, staying nowhere for more than three to six weeks, so that she would never again feel the ties that bound her to the rest of humanity. It hurt too much when they were ripped apart.
Then Jillian’s voice came to her. Casey remembered all those little barbs—gentle barbs, for Jillian—about how not to confuse finding a new life with running from the old one.
In the dimming light of these deep woods, she suddenly saw herself clearly for the very first time.
“Casey?”
She glanced up at him. The rosy fingers of the sunset stretched through the trees and lit one side of his face. The world came into sharp focus; the screech of a jay in the leaves above, the rustle of a squirrel in the underbrush, the moist fecund scent of the quiet woods. Dylan’s breathing, even and soft.
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