“Bullshit.”
His face hardened. “Yeah, okay, I searched your backpack. While we’re stuck here I need to get some sleep and the way things are right now I don’t like the idea of sacking out in the company of a woman I don’t know. A woman who just happened to be on hand with a boat when I crashed into the sea. A woman who turned around and came back to help me when anybody with a lick of sense would have run for the hills. A woman who not only can operate a Zodiac like a pro but carries a tent with her and can set it up and start a fire and make a furnace out of a pan and some rocks, all in the space of about five minutes. A woman who’s young enough, and pretty enough, to make me think she couldn’t possibly be out to kill me, or in cahoots with anybody who’s out to kill me. I don’t know, maybe that’s all just as coincidental as you say. Then again, maybe it’s not.”
Well, she’d known he didn’t trust her.
“Seriously?” She understood from the expression on his face that he was, indeed, dead serious. “If I was out to kill you, or in cahoots with someone who’s out to kill you, as you put it, why would I bother to pull you out of the sea in the first place? If I hadn’t, you’d already be dead.”
“You tell me.”
“This is ridiculous. You’re being ridiculous.”
“Probably. Come here.”
“What?” She frowned at him warily. “Why?”
“I’m going to search you.”
She stiffened in outrage. “Oh, no you’re not.”
“You hiding something?”
“No!”
“Then what are you worried about?”
She glared at him. “To begin with, you have no damned right to even suggest searching me. I’ve been saving your ass ever since I first laid eyes on you. I’ve put my own safety at risk helping you. I’m all that’s stood between you and freezing to death, bleeding to death, and drowning. And you have the balls to say you want to search me? How to put this, popsicle boy: Hell no!”
He met her furious gaze, and she read implacable determination in his dark eyes.
“Come here, Gina,” he said softly.
“No!”
“Don’t make me make you.”
She bethought herself of their isolation, the storm, and the whole nice bear thing. Lips compressing, she opted for a compromise, shrugging out of her parka and handing it to him. “There. Search it. Knock yourself out.”
He did, turning out the contents of her pockets—gloves, binoculars, ChapStick, her small notebook and pen, a pocket comb—and running his hands over her coat while she fumed. He felt the hem, the sleeves, the fur lining, the hood. If anything had been concealed in it, she thought, he would have found it.
Of course, nothing was, so he didn’t.
“Happy?” she asked with bite when he was done.
“Coat’s clean,” he said, laying it across his legs. His gaze slid over her body, lingering in a way that made her once again uncomfortably aware of the snugness of her thermal shirt. Glancing down at herself, she saw to her dismay that the shape of her nipples was visible, jutting through the layers of her bra and shirt. If their prominence was anything to judge by, the temperature in the tent was clearly much colder than she’d realized while she’d been wearing her heavy coat. Her body’s reaction did not, of course, have anything to do with him. “Come here.”
She frowned. “What?”
“You heard me.”
“Are you kidding me?” No, he was not. His intention to search more than just her coat was apparent in his expression. She folded her arms over her chest. “No!”
“You satisfied that I’m not carrying a weapon?” he asked.
Gina narrowed her eyes at him. Given that she’d pretty much seen him naked, yes, she was. Not that she meant to give him the satisfaction of telling him so.
“I can see from your expression that the answer’s yes. I, however, am not satisfied that you’re not carrying a weapon.”
“Too damned bad. You are not searching me.”
He sighed. Levering himself up onto one elbow, he wedged the flashlight into a strap on the backpack so that it provided more or less general illumination. Then he looked at her. “We can do this one of two ways: you can take off your clothes and pass them to me piece by piece and let me check each one out and then look your naked body over with the flashlight, or you can scoot on over here and let me pat you down.”
She quivered with indignation. “How about hell no to both?”
The look he gave her was his answer: she had no choice. He might be in a weakened state, but even so he was far stronger than she was. Just as he had threatened, he could make her. If it came to a physical fight, he would win, no doubt about it. And flight was out. She couldn’t even scramble out of his reach. All he had to do was sit up, and with the furnace blocking the far end of the tent he’d be able to grab her without even crawling after her.