Linda Howard - Prey

“Thanks,” she said after several minutes of silence and companionable sipping.

“You’re welcome. Sorry it isn’t coffee, but-”

“Not for the water.” Her voice was a little stronger now that she’d eaten, and having something hot to drink was working its magic. “For getting me here. For everything.”

Dare snorted. “What did you expect? That I’d leave you out there on your own?” Thank God she hadn’t yet thought to ask what he’d been doing out at night in such godforsaken weather in the first place.

She looked down at the cup in her hands, concentrated on it. “No, but… you could tell me how stupid I was to get myself into this mess. You could toss me a wet wipe and make me take care of myself. You could…”

“I could be an ass,” he growled.

“Yeah.” The single word wasn’t much more than a breath.

“You’re not stupid. You didn’t get yourself into a mess, you got caught up in someone else’s shit, and you were trying damn hard to get yourself out of it. As far as cleaning you up and all that, if I’d thought you were capable of dressing yourself, I’d have let you do it. But you weren’t, so I took care of it. That’s it. No big deal.” She didn’t have any idea how hard it was for a man to undress and wipe down a woman he had no shot at getting into the sack, and he wasn’t about to enlighten her.

“I think saving my life is a pretty big deal.”

He rubbed his jaw. Put that way, his comment hadn’t been the most graceful one in the world, but what the hell, he’d never known his way around a pretty phrase. He was blunt, his temper burned on a fairly short fuse, and he didn’t have a lot of patience. Throw those three characteristics together, and they didn’t produce a man who had a slick way with words. “I can still be an ass,” he said gruffly. “This good stretch probably won’t last long.”

Unbelievably, a very faint smile twitched at the corners of her mouth. “Probably not,” she agreed.

All right, this was more the Angie he knew, the one who could throw him straight into pure fury faster than anyone else he’d ever met. But he was so glad to see that crappy effort at a smile that he didn’t let her punch any of his buttons. He was feeling relieved on several points: She was still at the end of her rope, but she was rallying. Her ankle might be cracked, but it wasn’t a compound fracture, so taking care of it wasn’t an emergency. They had shelter, they had food and water, they had warmth. Getting here had been hell, but they were going to be all right.

He downed the rest of his water and she did the same. “Let’s both get some rest,” he said as he took the cups and set them aside. There was some mud on the mattress-big surprise there-so he cleaned it away, then arranged the sleeping bag on top of it and helped Angie slide inside it. She gasped in pain when she bumped her ankle, then settled down and pulled the edge of the bag around her, almost covering her head.

“I’m so tired,” she murmured.

“Then go to sleep. I’m going to get into some dry clothes, then stretch out beside you and get some sleep, myself.”

She made a noise in her throat, her eyes drifting shut.

He set about pulling off his own wet clothes. A couple of times he glanced toward Angie to see if she was watching, but she was making like a turtle with that sleeping bag, and all he could see was the top of her head. In any other circumstance, his ego would be bruised. Yeah, right.

He tried to come up with a plan for tomorrow-well, today , since it was morning now, though the rain still drummed on the roof and the day didn’t look a whole lot brighter than it had when they’d first arrived here-but he couldn’t think straight. He was warmer, he’d had something to eat, and now exhaustion was taking over.

He moved the propane camp heater closer to their feet, but not so close that he could accidentally kick it, then turned off the lantern and in the deep shadows stretched out on the mattress beside her. His feet hung off; it was a double-sized mattress, which was damn small by his standards but it was what fit best inside the sleeping stalls, and he usually slept on the diagonal just to give himself a little more length. Sometimes he folded his dirty clothes and placed them on the floor at the bottom of the mattress so he’d have something to rest his feet on, but right now he was too tired to get up and he didn’t give a shit whether his feet hung off or not.

He’d thought he would drop right off to sleep, but he didn’t. Even as tired as he was, he could still feel the burn of adrenaline pumping through his system. The ordeal wasn’t over. They were safe, for now, and relatively comfortable, but this situation wasn’t over by a long shot. There was still a killer out there, and a bear that would have to be hunted down and eliminated. The storm was over, but heavy rain was still complicating everything. He wouldn’t be walking anywhere until the weather cleared, however long that took.

“Dare.” His name floated into the shadows, just a whisper, as if she thought he might be asleep and didn’t want to wake him if he was.

“What?” he responded. God, if she had to piss, he was going to cry. The portable toilet was behind the cabin, and not only was the rain still pouring down, but he’d have to get her down the ladder, into the toilet, back up the ladder… it boggled the mind. Hell, he’d make her pee in a cup if that was the problem.

She didn’t need anything like that, though. Instead she said, “I can’t get warm. I’m so cold.”

“Do you want some more sugar water to drink?” Everything in him protested at the idea of getting up, but he’d make the effort.

“No. I-” She broke off, was silent for a few moments, then she took a shuddering breath. “Would you get… would you get under the cover with me? You’re so warm, and I’m so cold I hurt.” She sighed, made a sound from deep in her throat that was a cross between a moan and a gasp, and then she said one more word:

“Please.”

As little as ten hours ago, if anyone had even suggested to Angie that she’d ever, under any circumstances, ask Dare Callahan to get in a sleeping bag with her, she’d have thought about seeing if that person could be committed for his or her own safety, because obviously said person was nutty as a fruitcake. But just eight hours ago she’d been peacefully asleep in her own camp, and the night’s hellish events hadn’t yet begun.

A lot of water had gone under the bridge since then, literally as well as figuratively. There had been times when she hadn’t been certain she’d live another minute, but her only option had been to keep pushing, keep trying. Even after Dare had found her the pain and miserable cold had seemed unending; the only difference was that she hadn’t been alone. He’d been there, strong and never-faltering even though she’d known, in the part of her brain that wasn’t preoccupied with the struggle to survive, that the cold and rain and relentless effort were all wearing him down, too.

She had been so terrified that she felt as if some part of her soul had been permanently altered, in a way she couldn’t yet fully comprehend. She had been smashed down to a tiny portion of herself, all of her resources pulled inward and devoted to survival, and only now could she feel herself begin to unfold again, feel her mind and body trying to resettle into normalcy.

There was, as yet, a disorienting sense of unreality about the whole situation that allowed her to ask Dare to get under the cover with her and share his body warmth, and to be unsurprised when he didn’t hesitate.

“Just lie there,” he said, getting on his knees and unzipping the bag all the way around so it would lie flat. “You don’t have to do a thing. I’ll pull the bag from under you.”