Tears, he knew.
Her crying disturbed him on a visceral level, and why that should be he had neither the time nor the energy to try to sort out at the moment. What he knew for sure was that it wasn’t a positive development, details to be worked out later. Grimacing at the niggling unease his reaction to her tears caused him, he set himself to calming her.
He smoothed a hand over her hair: silk against his palm.
“Bad dream, honey?”
She replied with a sniffle and a shudder as she pressed even closer against him. Which might have worked fine for getting him to think about something else—like, say, sex—if it hadn’t been for the tears that were spilling like rain onto his chest. Or if the knowledge that she was crying didn’t make him feel like someone was working him over with a club.
“Gina. Talk to me.”
“It was just a stupid nightmare. I get them occasionally, okay? I’ll be all right in a minute. I’m sorry I’m crying all over you.”
Accompanied by a gasping breath, a tremor that shook her from head to toe, and more dripping tears, that truculent response made him tighten his hold on her and press his lips to the top of her head. He had a shrewd idea about the subject of her nightmare: the plane crash that had killed her family members. The difficulty she’d had talking about it earlier, along with her emotional response to the little she did say, told the tale.
“You can cry on me all you want. What I said earlier about crying women scaring me—that was just a dumb joke. Nightmares are the pits. I used to get one that made me cry every time I had it.”
He could feel her settling herself more comfortably against him. Silky skin, tits, legs, a beautiful naked woman in his arms who was his for the taking—and all he could think about was stopping her crying. She was shivering, and he tugged the sleeping bag more tightly around her shoulders. The softness of her breasts pressing against his chest, the slide of her smooth, taut thigh over his, the nudge of her bush against his hip, pointed him toward a hell of an enjoyable way to give her thoughts another direction fast. But her tears stopped him. Knowing that she was hurting stopped him. If he was right about the cause of her nightmare, and he was 99.9 percent sure he was, the pain she was suffering went deep. He knew, because he’d been there. What she needed most was to talk it out.
Forget the urgings of his cock: he was there to listen.
“Really?” She sounded deeply suspicious, but her tears seemed to be slowing.
“Yes, really. After my mom was killed in a car accident, I would dream that I saw her walking through my bedroom door. She would smile at me and disappear. I would wake up every time bawling my eyes out.” It was the truth, and although it had been at least twenty years since he’d last had that dream, he could still remember the wrenching agony of it—and how lost and alone he’d felt waking up crying in his bed and knowing that if he didn’t muffle his tears, if his father heard him, he’d come in and berate or beat some manliness into him.
He could feel her attention focusing on him like radar. “Was your mother killed in a car accident?”
“Yep.”
“How old were you?”
He told her.
“Oh, my God. Poor little boy.” Her hand moved up his chest in a sensuous slide that he was acutely aware of. Her arm curled around his neck and she pressed closer in silent comfort. He could feel the imprint of her naked body against his with every cell he possessed—right along with her sympathy, her sorrow for the little boy he’d once been. She said, “I’m so sorry,” and he dropped a kiss on the top of her head.
“It was a long time ago. But I understand nightmares.”
She took a deep breath. He realized that he no longer felt tears falling on his chest. Good.
“After your mother died, who took care of you?” Her voice was steadier. There was a note in it that told him how eager she was to focus on him rather than herself for the moment. He was fine with that if it helped her.
“It was just me and my dad until I left home after high school.”
She snuggled herself against him some more. “Then what did you do?”
Cal hesitated. The need for secrecy and anonymity had been ingrained in him over the last few years, but his background wasn’t confidential and, somewhat to his surprise, he found himself wanting her to know.
“I attended the Air Force Academy. Became a pilot. Then, Air Force Special Ops.”
“I knew you were military.” There was a wealth of satisfaction in her voice. She was no longer sounding so small and scared, and she’d quit shivering. He congratulated himself for that.
“Not anymore. Like I said, I’m a private contractor.”
“Doing what, exactly?”
“Right now, trying to stay alive.” His voice was dry. Ignoring the growing erection that her wriggling around against him wasn’t helping, he settled himself in to chat.
“You’re not going to tell me, are you?”
“Nope.”
She made a sound that combined annoyance with disgust, then said, “What about your father? Is he still alive?”
“Yes.”
“The two of you must be close.”
“We manage to exist on the same planet and that’s about it.”
“Is he very different from you? Like, an accountant or an insurance agent or something?”
“He’s a retired Air Force officer. When I was growing up, he was a hard-ass and I was rebellious. My mother was the buffer. When she died, our relationship went to hell on a slide.”
“That’s sad.”
Cal shrugged. He didn’t find it particularly sad. He and his father had no problems now that he was grown. They’d achieved a kind of détente, the key to which was never seeing each other. “It is what it is.”
She took a deep breath, then confessed what he’d been almost certain of all along. “That’s what my nightmares are about, too. My family—the plane crash that killed them.” She sounded like she was having a hard time getting the words out, but at least she was talking about it. That was the result he’d been aiming for with his own confessional: kind of an I’ll-show-you-mine-if-you-show-me-yours deal. A high school guidance counselor had once done the same thing for him, and not long after that the nightmares had stopped.
“There were only the four of you on board?” he asked carefully, not wanting to push her too far too fast.
He felt her jerky nod. Then she said, “Yes,” as if she was just remembering that he couldn’t see her, and added, “We were in Campeche, in the Yucatán, at the site of a newly discovered Mayan city. My father was Dr. Gavin Sullivan. He was an archaeologist and a professor emeritus at Stanford. He was pretty famous, at least in academic circles.” She stirred against him, and Cal got the impression that she was looking up at him through the darkness. “I don’t suppose you’ve ever heard of him?”
“No. But then, I don’t spend a whole hell of a lot of time in academic circles.”
“No, I don’t suppose you do.”
He detected what he thought was a flicker of a smile in her voice, and some of the tension in his gut eased. She was emerging from the miasma of the nightmare, and that was good. What he wanted to do was keep her talking until she got it all out. Tomorrow they were catching a plane out of there if he could find any possible way to manage it, and it would be better for both of them if she’d aired her fears before then. At the very least, he’d know exactly what he was dealing with.
He said, “So you flew out of Yucatán. Who was at the controls?”
“My father. He owned a Piper Cherokee that he flew to archaeological sites all the time. He was an experienced pilot. He—” There was a sudden catch in her voice and she broke off, then started again. “He was good at everything like that, everything he did, really. Sometimes—sometimes, though, he tended to overestimate his abilities. Or underestimate the risks.”
A shudder racked her. Cal guessed that she was thinking of the plane crash. He tightened his hold on her.
&
nbsp; “Who was acting as copilot?”
She took another deep breath. “David. He had his private pilot’s license—my father helped him get it for just that reason—but he hadn’t had it very long and he didn’t have a lot of experience. He was proficient enough, though, and getting better all the time. But he was another one to sometimes overestimate his abilities and underestimate risks. Probably it had rubbed off on him from my father.”
“The two of them worked together?”
“Yes. By the time of—the crash, David had been working for Dad for a couple of years as his graduate assistant while trying to earn his PhD. The two of them were tight. Almost father-son tight. Becca—she was my half sister from my father’s first marriage; she was the same age as David, twenty-six—worked for my father, too. He wanted a documentary made of his work and he hired her to be his videographer.”
“What about you? What were you doing there?”
“I was working for him, too. From the time I was a little girl I’d spent part of my summers and a lot of school breaks traveling with Dad to archaeological sites, usually really remote ones, which is why I know things like how to set up a tent, and make a furnace for a tent.” Her tone had turned slightly pointed, and Cal remembered expressing suspicion of her abilities in that regard. He rubbed an apologetic hand up and down her arm. She continued, “Dad offered me a job right out of college, to complete the team, he said. I was in charge of making all the necessary logistical arrangements, like where we would sleep and what food was available and finding us cars, porters, specialized equipment, that kind of thing. My father called me his ground control officer.” Again Cal got the impression that she gave a faint smile. “It was supposed to be a temporary position because I had plans to go on to grad school, but then there was David, and I stayed.”
“You fell in love.” Cal kept his voice carefully neutral. He discovered that he actually didn’t much like the idea of that, even if it was younger, more naive and idealistic Gina falling in love with her father’s almost equally young assistant. Even if the relationship was long over. Even if the guy was dead.
“We fell in love,” Gina confirmed, her voice soft with reminiscence. “David was handsome and smart and funny and kind of brash, and I was absolutely thrilled that he chose me. Becca had a thing for him, too, you see. Becca was beautiful, and she was like our dad, outspoken and ready to take on anything, anytime. I take after my mother: I’m quieter and more careful. My father used to call my mother ‘domestically inclined’ because she got tired of traveling around with him all over the world. She wanted a stable home life. She’s very organized, very down-to-earth. Also very loving and kind.”
“I like the sound of your mother.”
“She’s been my rock all my life. Dad was more like a shooting star blazing across the heavens. Dazzling, but—” She broke off.
“Not as reliable?” Cal guessed.
“He liked excitement. He was always on the go, always chasing the next big find, always testing himself and everyone around him. My mother used to say that one of these days he was going to get himself killed. Turns out she was right.” Her voice went a little unsteady as she said that last.
“Can you tell me what happened? With the plane?” His voice was carefully gentle. She’d told him a lot, but she was still circling the tragedy that haunted her like a wary animal fearing a trap.
She was silent for so long that he wasn’t sure she was going to answer. He did what he could: held her and waited.
Finally she made a restless little movement, and her arm tightened around his neck.
“There was a tropical storm coming in when we took off,” she said. “It hadn’t hit yet, but it was on the way. I wanted to either wait a few days until the storm system passed, or take a commercial flight out of Cancún, which was only a few hours away, but Dad and David and Becca voted me down. The three of them were all adventurers, natural-born risk takers, and an approaching storm that at that point wasn’t anything more than some wind and overcast skies was nothing to them. I was the official wuss.” She took a breath. “They were always calling me that, teasing me about being so cautious and careful. I hated having them think I was a wuss. If I hadn’t hated it so much, I might have stuck to my guns and insisted we take a commercial flight if we had to leave that day, or else wait until the weather cleared. But my father wanted to get back and wouldn’t hear of waiting, and as they all pointed out to me we could be almost all the way home by the time we drove to Cancún and got through the airport onto the flight I’d found, and anyway it wasn’t even raining yet. So I caved. I caved.”
Her voice caught, and she shivered. He hugged her closer.
“So you took off under the threat of an incoming storm,” he prompted. “How long were you in the air before it hit? Presuming it did hit.”
“It hit.” Her words were flat. Cal could feel her pressing closer, and he slid a comforting hand down the smooth curve of her back. “We’d been in the air about forty-five minutes when it started to rain. Only a little at first and then a deluge. Sheets of water pouring down, sluicing over the windows, drumming against the fuselage. Big peals of thunder along with flashes of lightning. We were over the jungle, there was no place to land, so that option was out. Dad tried getting above the storm, but he couldn’t. It was too big. We were flying in clouds so thick and black that it was like the darkest of nights. He had to switch to flying by instruments. The wind was the worst. We were bouncing all over the place, hitting wind shears without warning, going up and down like we were in an elevator. Dad was calm. David and Becca were calm. I was scared to death, but I tried not to let it show.” She paused, and Cal felt her fingers digging into the back of his shoulder. “Then a huge wind shear took us down in what felt like a free fall and somehow the tail broke off. The plane went into a dive and crashed in the jungle. I was thrown clear.”
She stopped. He could feel the tension in her body, hear her too-fast breathing, sense her rising agitation.
“The others?” he asked gently.
“They were still with the plane.”
He smoothed the hair back from her face and pressed another kiss to the top of her head. He knew how hard this was for her. His stomach went tight with reaction to her distress.
“Can you tell me the rest of it, honey?”
She clung to him like a barnacle to a boat, like he was her anchor, and the knowledge that this beautiful, brave, resourceful woman was depending on him to get her safely through her emotional storm messed with his own emotions. He felt her getting in under his guard, sinking in hooks where he took good care hooks should not be sunk, but there was nothing he could do to prevent it. He was deep in the maelstrom with her, and he sure as hell wasn’t letting her go.
When she spoke, her voice was so low he had to strain to hear. “I was knocked unconscious for a few minutes, and when I came to the plane was on fire. Just a little bit, just a few flames licking up around where the tail had been. The fuselage was all crumpled up like an accordion and was wedged in this grove of trees. I ran over to the plane. The cockpit was ripped open and I was able to see inside. My father was slumped over the controls. David—” Her voice quavered, but she swallowed and went on. “David was lying there on the nose of the plane, covered with blood. He’d gone through the windshield. I could see at a glance that he was dead. Becca—she was all twisted up in the wreckage. I thought she was dead, too. The only one I could reach was my father. I grabbed his arm and shook him. The fire was spreading, and I was screaming and trying to pull him out, but I couldn’t. He woke up and kind of shook himself and tried getting himself out and he couldn’t do it, either. His legs were trapped. The fire was racing toward us. I could feel its heat on my back but I wouldn’t look around because I was afraid of what I would see. We were both desperately trying to pull his legs free when he looked past me and said, ‘Get back, you have to save yourself,’ and pushed me away. Then the plane blew up. Just went boom and was engulfed in flames. I got
thrown backward, and that’s when my shirt caught fire. You were right: it was burning fuel. It rained down all over me.”
Her voice shook. He held her close and thought of the lacy tracery of scars on her arm, wincing as he imagined the pain she must have suffered getting them. The worst thing was, that pain was nothing compared to the psychological pain she still suffered, was suffering now.
He said, “It’s in the past, it’s over. I’ve got you now.”
She whispered, “I keep—seeing them die. Hearing them die. Becca was alive, too. I know, because she started screaming as the plane burned. My father screamed, too. They were alive. They screamed. And I—you know what I did?—I couldn’t stand watching, or listening, so I turned and ran away and left them to die.”
She started to cry, deep, harsh sobs that shook her from head to toe and stripped him raw inside. He held her and rocked her and kissed her and murmured whatever inane words of comfort came to him and felt his gut twist and his heart break for her.
That’s when he knew, for sure, that he had a problem.
Forget getting it on, he was getting involved.
Hell, face the truth: he was involved.
In the end, when she was all cried out in his arms, he loved her back to sleep.
Then, unable to sleep himself for the first time in as long as he could remember, he got up, got dressed, and started making preparations for the coming day.
As a last act before waking her, he headed out to the mouth of the cave to check the weather and see what he could see.
The fog had cleared. It was still snowing, but only moderately. No blizzard involved. There was a stiff wind, and it was still bitterly cold. Cal thanked God they’d had the protection of the cave during the night. The sun was just coming up, adding streaks of pink and orange to the leaden gray of the sky. The birds on the slope directly below him were stirring, emerging from their burrows and hopping around, making a surprising amount of noise. He ignored them, first squinting at the camp and then looking at it through binoculars to make sure.
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