Prey

Angie lay awake for a few minutes-a very few-listening to the rain and the heavy, rhythmic sound of Dare’s breathing. She was in the one place she’d never thought she would be-in bed with him, in his arms-and it felt so natural she wasn’t certain she really was awake.

She needed to think, but… later.

He woke her by gently lifting her legs off his. “What’re you doing?” she muttered fretfully, because she’d managed to get some decent sleep in that position. She should be sleeping like a dead person, but instead they seemed to be destined for one to wake the other every little while.

“Gotta go.” He sat up and scrubbed both hands over his face, his bristly growth of beard sounding like sandpaper on his rough palms.

“Go where? It’s still pouring down.” More asleep than awake, she gave him a look that managed to be both befuddled and grumpy.

“Not ‘go where,’ just go. As in, piss. How about you?”

Oh, God. Angie groaned. “I wish you hadn’t mentioned it.” But he had, and now she knew she wouldn’t be able to go back to sleep until that problem had been taken care of. She turned her wrist to see what time it was, but was too groggy to focus her eyes. “I can’t see my watch,” she muttered, letting her arm fall back to the mattress. For all she knew, her watch wasn’t working anyway, after being exposed to all that rain and mud. “What time is it?” As soon as she asked, she wondered what difference the time made.

“Almost noon.”

Well, no wonder she needed to go. She pondered the situation for a moment longer, as dread and resignation grew. She struggled to sit up, braced herself on one arm as she tried to psych herself up to leave the warm cocoon of the sleeping bag. Hoping against hope, she said, “Please tell me this place has a flush toilet.”

He snorted. Okay, that was answer enough.

“Portable toilet?” At least then she wouldn’t be squatting behind a bush somewhere. She tried not to think of the effort involved, with a sprained ankle that wouldn’t support her weight.

“Out back.”

Whew! That still meant putting on boots, slicker, getting down the ladder, and going out in the rain, hopping on her one good foot, but it was worlds better than that bush she’d been thinking about.

“I can maybe find something for you to pee in,” he said, but sounded doubtful. “Think you could hit a bottle?”

“I think I could hit a portable toilet,” she growled. “What do you think I am, a precision pisser? Women don’t practice things like that.”

His mouth quirked, a movement that made the small scar in his cheek look even more like a dimple. She had the feeling that anyone else would have laughed out loud, but Dare didn’t strike her as a man who laughed very much. She wondered if he ever had, if he’d been more open when he was growing up, and his transition to an ill- tempered, closed-in man had happened during his years in the military.

Hard on that thought came the realization that she herself had done exactly that. When she was younger she’d laughed more, been more outgoing, then she’d let embarrassment and self-doubt shut her down for a while, make her pull back from people. Once those walls were up, though, staying behind them was easier than letting herself be exposed and vulnerable. Reaching out to her friends again had taken an effort, but she was so glad she’d done it. Was that what had happened to him? He’d gotten caught behind his own walls?

“In that case, how about a bucket?” he asked prosaically. “There’s one I use for the horses.”

The image that brought to mind made her want to laugh, but her own issues kept her reply solemn. “No, thank you. I’ll manage.”

“Ladies first, then. Let’s get you down the ladder; I can wait.”

She was tempted, but common sense raised its sluggish head. “You go ahead. I’m going to pull off these pants and put on my sweatpants again; no point in getting another pair of pants wet when mine already are.”

He didn’t argue with that logic, just collected her wet and dirty sweatpants and dropped them close by the mattress, where she could easily reach them. After stomping his feet into his boots and pulling on his slicker, he let down the ladder and disappeared from view.

A bucket?

Alone, Angie let a wan smile curl her lips. She might have taken him up on the proposition, if it hadn’t been for the distasteful prospect of emptying said bucket. If she could have handled it herself, no problem, but she wasn’t letting Dare Callahan handle a personal chore like that for her. Uh-uh.

On the other hand, he had seen her naked boobs-almost all of her, in fact. At any other time she’d have been mortified, not because she was so modest, but because she’d actually told him not to laugh at her boobs because they were little. Maybe when she felt more normal, when she wasn’t still numb from the horror of what had happened last night, followed by the sheer struggle just to survive that had whittled her down to little more than willpower-or stubbornness-all of this would bother her more. Right now, it just didn’t, even though normally she hated betraying any sign of vulnerability. Too much had happened for her to worry about whether or not her boobs were little, or that he’d laugh at her.

But he hadn’t laughed, and somehow she didn’t think he would. He wasn’t what she’d expected. The damn man was nothing short of heroic, and that really bothered her, because it proved that once again her judgment had been faulty. How could she trust anyone, when she couldn’t trust herself?

All of that was a subject for later, though, because already she could feel herself tiring, and she hadn’t even made the trip to the toilet yet. Gathering her strength, she tugged his baggy long thermal underwear off and her cold, wet, dirty sweatpants on, shuddering as the clammy material clung to her legs. The sensation was awful, but she comforted herself with the thought that the situation was temporary. As soon as she got back from the toilet, she could change back into the unlovely but blessedly warm thermals.

Her ankle was a problem. More precisely, the elastic bandage wrapping it was the problem, because she couldn’t get her boot on that foot. The bandage would get wet. The only thing to do was unwrap it, which she set about doing. She winced when she saw her ankle; it was an unsavory black and blue and green, swollen to twice its normal size, and removing the pressure of the bandage made the joint throb like blue blazes.

Nothing she could do about it, though, so she shoved the pain aside and pulled on her left boot. It was wet, too, inside and out, another item to go on her list of things to ignore. Next came her rain slicker, but it, at least, didn’t make her shudder when she came into contact with it. She zipped and snapped, pulled the hood up, and was as ready as she could be, except for the fact that she was on the second-story sleeping platform and she needed to be at the bottom of that long ladder.

“A journey of a thousand miles,” she muttered, and hopped to the ladder.

Actually getting on the ladder was the toughest part. She had to grasp it, sit down, locate a rung with her left foot, then lever herself up and around. Once she was properly situated, she was strong enough to hold herself on the ladder using just her upper body strength while she took another step down with her left foot. The process wasn’t pretty, but it was effective.

It also took an enormous amount of effort when her body hadn’t rebuilt its reserves. Every muscle in her body was trembling, and she was breathing like a bellows; just as she neared the bottom rung, she heard the scrape of a door opening.

“Fucking nipples on ice!”

The hoarse, muted roar would have made her fall off the ladder if it hadn’t been for the telltale noise of the door. Holding tight to the ladder, she peered through the rungs at him, where he was almost completely hidden by the dark shadows at the back of the camp building. The expression made her blink. “I’ve never heard that one before,” she commented faintly. “Innovative.”

Rapidly he strode forward, his expression both disbelieving and furious as he gripped her waist and peeled her off the ladder. He stood her up for a brief second as he switched positions, bending down to hook his left arm under her knees and lift her off the floor, holding her tight against his wet slicker. “You could have broken your damn fool neck!”

“But I didn’t,” she pointed out with impeccable logic, even though she was still gasping for breath. “So I saved both time, and wear and tear on you.” She hooked her left arm around his neck, and felt a ker- THUNK kind of thud in her chest as her heart reacted to how natural it felt to be held like this, to feel free to sling her arms around him.

If anything, he looked even more furious. “I can handle getting you up and down the ladder.”