Two Alone (10 page)

Cooper broke the telling stare and, with an impatient curse,
turn
ed away. "Cooper!"

He
spun back around. "What?" "Be..
.be careful."

Within a heartbeat, she was anchored against his chest and his mouth was above hers, taking from it a scorching kiss that burned her soul. It surprised her so that she slumped against him. His arms tightened around her waist and drew her up so close and high that her toes dangled inches above his boots. She sought to regain her balance by clutching handfuls of his coat.

His lips ground against hers. They were possessive and hard. But his tongue was soft and warm and wet. I
t
filled her mou
t
h, explored, stroked. A desire that had been building for forty-eight hours overcame his iron control. His self-discipline snapped, but he was still masterful. This was a no-nonsense kiss that had nothing to do with romance. It was a kiss of passion. Raw. Carnal. Selfish.

Dizzily
Rusty
threw one of her arms around his neck and tilted her head back to give him deeper access, which he took. His stubbled jaw scraped her skin, but she didn't care. His mustache was surprisingly silky. It tickled and tantalized.

All too soon for her, he broke the kiss, pulling his head
back
abruptly and leaving her lips parted and damp and wanting more. "I'll be back as soon as possible. Goodbye, honey."

Honey?
Honey?

He released her and turned toward the door. That's when she noticed Quinn Gawrylow sitting at the table, mindlessly chewing his perpetual wad of tobacco and watching them with the still, silent concentration of a cougar.

Rusty's heart sank like lead. Cooper had kissed her for the old man's benefit—not for his own. And certainly not for hers.

She shot his broad back a venomous look as he went through the door. It slapped closed behind him. Good rid
dance, she thought. How dare he
—

Then, realizing that the old man's eyes were still on her, she looked at him with a vapid good-little-wife smile. "Do you think he'll be all right?"

"Reuben knows what he's doing. He'll take care of Mr. Landry." He waved down at the pallet still spread out in front of the hearth. "It's early yet. Why don't you go back to sleep?"

"No, I, uh—" she cleared her throat noisily "—I'm too keyed up to sleep. I think I'll just sit here for a while." "Coffee?" He moved toward the stove. "Please."

She didn't want any, but it would give her something to do and help pass the time. She set her crutches and the flare gun on the hearth within easy reach and lowered herself into the chair. The knife's scabbard poked her lower abdomen. Why i
t
hadn't plunged right into her when Cooper had pulled her against his—

Her heart fluttered with the memory. It hadn't been only the knife's hardness she'd felt against her middle. He'd probably derived a lot of joy out of humiliating her like that.

Feeling rebellious, she defiantly took the knife out of her waistband and laid it on the hearth. Accepting the cup of teaming coffee from Quinn, she settled down to wait through what would probably be the longest day of her life.

Cooper calculated that they'd gone no farther than a mile when Reuben commenced to talk. Cooper could have gone the whole fifteen miles without a conversation, but maybe talking would make the time pass more quickly and help take his mind off Rusty.

"H
ow come you don't have any kids?" Reuben asked him.

C
ooper's instincts slipped into overdrive. Each or his senses
was
on the alert. That prickle at the back of his neck, which
c
ould always be relied upon to warn him that something wasn't
q
uit
e
right, hadn't gone away. Ever since he'd heard Rusty's
scre
am and found her in a standoff with the Gawrylows, he had b
e
en suspicious of the two men. He might be doing them a grave Injustice. They were probably on the level. But probabilities
were
n't worth a damn. Until he had Rusty safely turned over to the authorities, he wasn't giving either of the recluses the benefit
of
the doubt. If they proved to be reliable, then they would have
earned
his undying gratitude. Until then—

"
H
uh?" Reuben probed. "How come you—"

"I heard you." Cooper was following Reuben's lead. He didn't let the man get too far ahead of him, nor did he crowd up too close behind him. "Rusty has a career. We're both busy. We'll get around co having kids one of these days."

He hoped that would end the discussion. Children and families were topics Cooper always avoided talking about. Now, he didn't want to talk at all. He wanted to pour every ounce of energy into reaching that river as soon as possible.

"If I'd been married to her for five years, we'd have five kids by now," Reuben bragged rashly.

"But you're not."

"Maybe you ain't doing it right."

"What?"

Reuben gave him a sly wink over his shoulder. "You know, screwing."

The word crawled over Cooper like a loathsome insect. It wasn't that he was offended by the word. He used far worse on a daily basis. It was that he was offended by
t
he word in connection with Rusty. It didn't occur to him that only the night before last he'd used it himself. He was too busy hoping that before the da
y
was out, he wouldn't have to pound Reuben's face
to
mush; but if he made many more references to Rusty in that
con
text, he just might.

"
I
f she was m
y
woman—"

"Bu
t
she isn't." Cooper's voice cracked like a bullwhip.

"She will be,
th
ough."

With that, Reuben, wearing the grin of a madman, spun
aroun
d and aimed his rifle at Cooper's chest. Cooper had sub
c
onsciously been bracing himself all morning for such an attack.
He
raised his rifle a split second after Reuben, but Reuben got
o
ff the first shot.

"What was that?" Rusty jumped, realizing that she'd been drowsing in her chair.

Quinn was sitting where she'd last seen him, at the table
.
"
H
mm?"

"I thought I heard something." "I didn't hear anything."

"I could swear—"

"The logs in the fireplace shifted. That's all."

"Oh." Chagrined by her nervousness, she relaxed again in her
c
hair. "I mus
t
have dozed off. How long ago since they left?" "Not long."

He got up and moved toward her, kneeling down on the hearth to add logs to the fire. The warmth seeped into Rusty's skin and he
r
eyes drifted closed again. Sad and dirty as this cabin was, at
least
it provided a roof over her hea
d and protection from the cold
wind. She was grateful for that
. After spending days—

H
er eyes popped open at his t
ouch. Quinn, still kneeling in
front
of her, had
his
hand
folded
around her calf.

"
I
thought you
m
ight want
t
o prop up your leg again," he said.

H
is voice was as gentle as a saint's, bu
t
his eyes were Lucifer's own as they stared up at her from within their cavelike sockets
. Terr
or gripped her, but common sense warned her not
to
show it.

"No, thank you. In fact," she said in a thin voice
,
"
I
think I'll walk around a bit to exercise it."

She reached for her crutches, but he grabbed them up first. "Let me help you
.
"

Before she could protest, he caugh
t
her arm and pulled her out of the chair.
H
e had caught her off guard and the momentum caused the front of her body to bump against his. She backed away instantly, but found that she couldn't go far because his other hand was at the small of her back, urging her forward.

"No!"

"I'm only trying to help you," he said smoothly, obviously enjoying her mounting distress.

"Then please let me go, Mr. Gawrylow.
I
can manage."

"Not without help. I'll take your husband's place. He told me to take care of you, didn't he?" He ran his hand over her hip and Rusty went cold with fear.

"Don't touch me like that." She tried to squirm away from him but his hands were everywhere, "Get your hands off me."

"What's wrong with my hands?" H
i
s expression suddenly turned mean. "Aren't they clean enough for you?"

"No...yes
…
I
..
.
I
just meant that Cooper will—"

"Cooper won't do anything," he said with a sinister smile. "And from now on I'll touch you however I want."

He yanked her against him. This time there was no doubt about his intention. Rusty funneled all her strength into getting away from him. She placed the heels of her hands on his shoulders and arched her back, trying
t
o push herself away and at die same time to dodge his kiss.

The crutches slid out from under her arms and fell
t
o the floor. She had to support herself on her sore leg and a pain shot up the jagged scar. She cried out.

"Go ahead, scream.
I
won't mind." His breath was foul and hot against her face. She turned her head away, but he caught
h
er jaw between iron fingers and pulled it back around. Just
bef
ore his mouth made contact with hers, they heard thudding
footst
eps outside.

"Help me," Rusty screamed.

"Reuben?" the old man shouted. "Get in here."

Quinn turned his head toward the door, but it wasn't Reuben who came crashing
th
rough. Cooper's sweating face was a fierce mask of hatred and rage. His hair was littered with twigs and leaves.
T
here were bleeding scratches on his cheeks and hands. His shirt
w
a
s
specked with blood. To Rusty, no one had ever looked better.

F
eet wide apart, Cooper barked, "Let her go, you filthy animal."

Rusty collapsed to the floor when Gawrylow released her. He
s
pun around. As he did so, he reached behind his back. Before
Rust
y fully realized what had happened, she heard a solid thunk. Then she saw the handle of Cooper's knife in the center of
Qui
nn's chest. The blade was fully buried between his ribs.

The old man was wearing a startled expression. He groped for
t
he handle of the knife. His searching fingers closed aroun
d it
as he dropped to his knees. Then he fell face down onto the
fl
oor
and was still.

Rusty gathered her arms and legs against her body, forming herself into a ball. She clapped her hands over her mouth and stared at the still form with wide, unfocusing eyes. Her breath was trapped in her lungs.

Cooper, knocking furniture aside, rushed across the room and
cro
uched in front of her. "Are you all right?" He laid a hand on her shoulder. She recoiled in fright.

He froze. His eyes went as hard as slate as he said, "No need to thank me."

Gradually Rust
y
lowered her hands and released her breath. She gazed up
at
Cooper, her lips white with fear. "You killed him." The words had no sound; she mouthed them.

"Before he killed me, you little fool. Look!" He pointed down at the dead man's back. There was a small handgun
t
ucked into the waistband of his pants.

"Don't you get it yet?" he roared. "They were going to waste me and keep you. Th
ey planned to share you between
them."

She shuddered with revulsion. "No!"

"Oh, yeah," Cooper said, nodding his head. Apparently exasperated with her, he stood up and rolled the body over. Squeezing her eyes shut, Rusty averted her head. She heard the body being dragged across the floor and out the door. She heard Quinn's boots thump on the steps as Cooper dragged him down them.

She wasn't sure how long she stayed curled up in that fetal position on the floor. But she still hadn't moved when Cooper returned. He loomed over her. "Did he hurt you?"

Miserably she shook her head.

"Answer me, dammit! Did he hurt you?"

She raised her head and glared up at him.
"No!"

"He was about to rape you. You
do
realize that, don't you? Or are the
stars
in your eyes still keeping you from seeing the light?"

Not stars, but tears filled her eyes. She was experiencing a delayed reaction to her horror. "What are you doing here? Why did you come back? Where's Reuben? What are you going to say to him when he gets back?"

"Nothing. Reuben won't be coming back."

She clamped her teeth over her quivering lower lip and closed her eyes. Tears rolled down her cheeks. "You killed him, too, didn
't
you? That's his blood on you."

"Yes, dammit," he hissed, bending over her. "I shot him in s
elf-defense
. He walked me into the woods just far enough to separate us, then he turned a gun on me with every intention
o
f
killing me and making you his 'woman.'" Staring up at him, she shook her head in disbelief, which seemed to infuriate him. "And d
on't
you dare pretend to be surprised. You had whipped them into a sexual froth and you know it."

"Me? How? What di
d I
do?"

"Brushing your hair for God's sake!" brushing —

"Just being you. Just looking the way you do."

"Stop yelling at me!" she sobbed. "I didn't do anything."

"Except cause me to kill two men!" he shouted. "Think about that while I'm out burying them."

He stalked out. The fire in the
fireplace burned out and the ca
bin grew cold. But Rusty didn't care.

She was still sitting in a heap on the floor and crying hard when
h
e came back. She was tired. There wasn't a place on her body at didn't ache either from sleeping on the ground or walking
o
n crutches or suffering Quinn Gawrylows squeezing caresses. She wanted good, honest food. She'd gladly trade her Masera
t
i
for
a glass of milk. Her clothes had been ripped by tree branches
o
r
ravaged by this barbaric hoodlum she was marooned with,
t
he fur coa
t
she had prized so highly had been used as a litter.

And she had seen men die.

Five in the plane crash. Two at the hands of the man who now threw himself down beside her. He roughly raised her head by placing his callused fingers beneath her chin.

"Get up," he ordered. "Dry your face. You're not going to spend the rest of the day sitting around crying like a baby."

"Go to hell," she spa
t
, lifting her chin out of his grasp.

He was so furious, his lips hardly moved when he spoke. "Look, if you had a good
t
hing going with Reuben and his pa, you should have told me. I'm sorry I ruined it for you."

"You bastard."

"I would have been all too glad to leave you in this paradise and strike out for the river by myself. But I think I should
t
ell you that Reuben had a lot of children in mind. Of course you might not have ever known if the kids you hatched were his or his daddy's."

"Shut up!" She raised her hand to slap him.

He caught it in midair and they stared at each other for several tense seconds. Finally Cooper relaxed his fingers from around her wrist. Snarling angrily, he stood up and kicked a chair as far across the cabin as he could.

"It was
e
ither them or me," he said in a voice that vibrated with rage. "Reuben fired first. I got lucky and deflected his rifle just in time. I had no choice."

"You didn't have to kill them."

"No?"

An alternative didn't leap into her mind, but she was sure that if she thought about it long enough she would come up with
one
.
Temporarily conceding, she lowered her eyes. "Why didn't you just keep going?"

His eyes narrowed to slits as he looked down at her. "Don't think I didn't consider it."

"Oh,"
she
ground ou
t
.
"
I c
an't wait until I'm rid of you." "Believe me, the feeling is mutual. But in the meantime
w
e
've got to tolerate each other. First thing on the agenda is to get this place cleaned up
.
I'm not spending another night in this stink hole."

Her jaw went slack with disbelief. Slowly her eyes roamed the grimy interior of the cabin. "Clean this place up? Is that
w
hat you said?"

"Yeah. We
'd
better get started, too. The day's getting away."

He righted the chair he'd just kicked over and made his way inward the pile of dingy bedding where Reuben had slept the night before. Rusty started laughing and her laughter was tinged with impending hysteria.

"You're not serious?"

"Like hell I'm not."

"We're spending the night here?"

"And every night from now on until we're rescued."

She came to her feet, propping herself up on one crutch while she watched him strip both beds and pile the bedding in the
middle
of the floor. "What about the river?"

"That might have all been a lie."

"The Mackenzie River is real
,
Cooper."

"But where is it from here?"

"You could keep walking in the direction they said until
you
found it."

"I could. I could also get terribly lost. Or injured and
stranded.
If you went with me, we might not make it out before
t
he first real snow, in which case we'd probably die of exposure. If you stayed here and something happened to me, you'd die of starvation before the winter was over. And I'm not even sure the direction Reuben led me in was the right one. I've got
359
other choices from this cabin, and getting around to them all would take over a year."

Hands braced on his hips, he faced her. "None of those alternatives sounds very appealing to me. On the other hand if we clean this place up, we can survive. It's not the Beverly Hills Hotel, but it's shelter and there's a constant supply of fresh water."

She didn't appreciate his sarcasm and her mutinous expression let him know it. His whole demeanor suggested that she was foolish nor to see all that without his having to explain it, and issued a challenge she wasn't about to back down from. She had been weak this morning, but she never would be again. Pushing up the sleeves of her sweater, she said, "What do you want me to do?"

He hitched his head backward. "Start with the stove."

Without another word, he gathered up the foul bedding and carried it outside.

Rusty attacked the black iron stove with a vengeance, scouring it from top to bottom, using more elbow grease
t
han soap, since she had more of that. It was hard work, especially since she had to keep herself propped up on one crutch. She moved from the stove to the sink, then to the windows, then every stick of furniture got washed down.

After he had boiled the bedding in a caldron outside and hunt; it up
t
o dry—or freeze, if
t
he temperature turned much colder— Cooper came inside and washed the stones of the hearth. He
foun
d a colony of dead insects beneath the woodpile. They had no doubt died of old age since it was almost a certainty
t
hat the hearth had never been swept. Keeping the door and windows open to air the place out, he shored up the front porch and Hacked firewood on the cabin's south side
t
o protect it from the weather's brunt.

Rusty couldn't sweep the floor, so he did. But when he was
fin
ished, she got down on han
ds and knees and scrubbed it. H
er sculptured nails broke off one by one. Where a mere chip would have sent her into a tizzy not long ago, she merely
s
hrugged and went on with her scrubbing, taking satisfaction
in
the
r
esults of her labor.

Cooper brought in two beheaded and plucked birds—she didn't recognize the species—for their dinner. She had made an inventory of the Gawrylows' hoard and was pleased to find a fair
amount
of canned goods. They had apparently made their
Oct
ober trip to Yellowknife and were well stocked for the winter.

A go
urme
t
cook she wasn't, but it di
dn't take much talent to boil
t
h
e fowl together with two cans of vegetables and a sprinkling
of
salt. By the time the stew was done, the aroma was making he
r
mouth water. Darkness was settling in before Cooper carried
in
the bedding.

"Is it deloused?" she asked, turning from
t
he stove.

"I
think so. I boiled the hell out of it. I'm not sure it's quite dry, hut if
I
leave it out any longer, it's going to freeze. We'll check it a
ft
er dinner and if it's not dry, we'll hang it up in front of the fire."

He washed his hands at the sink, which was sparkling
co
mpared to what it had been.

T
hey sat down to eat at the table Rusty had sanded clean.

Cooper smiled when he unfolded what had once been a sock and was now acting as a napkin and placed it in his lap, but he didn't comment on her ingenuity. If he noticed the jar with the arrangement of autumn leaves serving as a centerpiece, he said nothing to indicate it. He ate two portions of the stew but didn't say a word about it.

Rusty was crushed. He could have said something nice—one single word of encouragement. Even a puppy needs to be patted on the head now and then.

She dejectedly carried their tin dishes to the sink. While
she
was pumping water over them, he moved up behind her. "You worked hard today."

His voice was soft and low and came from directly above her head. He was standing very close. His sheer physical
l
y overwhelmed her. She felt tremulous. "So did you."

"I think we deserve a treat, don't you?"

Her stomach rose and fell as weightlessly as a balloon. Memory of
t
he kiss he had given her that morning
f
illed he
r
mind, while a potent desire to repeat it flooded her veins. Slowly she turned around and gazed up at him. Breathlessly she asked. "What did you have in mind, Cooper?"

"A ba
t
h."