“You take it.” He rested a hand lightly over his wound as he pulled his legs out of the depths of the bag. She saw no blood on the bandage, but it was obvious the wound was hurting him. “The thing’s all yours.”
He was referring to the sleeping bag, she knew.
“I don’t want it.” Her sweatpants rendered him minimally decent, not adequately dressed. She watched his bare calves and big feet crammed into her socks swing toward her and was reminded of how nearly naked he was—and also of the ordeal he’d so recently gone through. He really needed to stay wrapped up and keep still—wait, stop, she didn’t care if he hurt himself, remember? Crossly she added, “Get back in there. It’s going to get cold in here later, when the heat from the rocks dies out. I’m dressed for it. You’re not.” When he made no move to obey, she snapped, “Get back in the damned bag.”
He shook his head. “That would be ungentlemanly.”
She made a scoffing sound. “Why mess up your track record?”
That made him smile again. Which in turn made him way more handsome than she cared to think about. In response, the scowl she was directing at him turned ferocious. He was sitting up now with his knees bent and his arms resting on his knees. Strapping bare shoulders, arms, chest, abdomen, calves—his position equaled way too much raw masculinity on display for her comfort.
He said, “Look, I’m going to unzip the sleeping bag and open it up, and we can both use it as a blanket. You stay on your side of the tent, I’ll stay on mine. How about that?”
Gina considered. The pad beneath them would be enough to keep the ground’s cold from penetrating. Used as a blanket, the sleeping bag wouldn’t provide as much warmth, but it should provide enough.
She would be relatively toasty. He would probably avoid freezing to death.
Both were consequences she could live with.
“Fine,” she said ungraciously. As he twisted around to start unzipping the bag, she winced before she could stop herself at the flexing going on with his abdominal muscles and the Band-Aids, gave up on the whole wishing-him-dead thing, and added, “Stop moving around. You’ll start bleeding again. I’ll do it.” Eyes narrowed, lips tight, she crawled toward him. “Stay out of my way,” she warned.
He stopped, slanting an unreadable look at her. “Whatever you say.”
Chapter Thirteen
In just a few minutes Gina had the bag unzipped and spread out over the floor. Taking care to avoid the pan of rocks, she slipped beneath the sleeping bag and stretched out on her side with her back to him. Lying down felt surprisingly wonderful, even on so unforgiving a surface. She was so tired she was practically boneless. Every muscle in her body was sore.
On the other side of the tent, she could feel him stretching out, too.
“Here,” he said.
Gina rolled onto her other side and looked at him with mistrust. Even with both of them hugging opposite sides of the tent, there wasn’t more than a foot of space separating them. He lay on his side, facing her. The flashlight was on the ground now. Its beam cut through the space between them like a lightsaber. Above it, his face was deep in shadow. She could just make out the muscular shape of his bare shoulder and arm.
He was in the act of shoving the backpack toward her. “Pillow,” he said.
Having him lying so close was unsettling. Gina regarded him with open suspicion as she accepted the backpack.
“Good night,” he said before she could say anything, and switched off the flashlight.
The tent instantly went as dark as the inside of a sewer pipe. Gina turned her back to him again, tucked the backpack—most uncomfortable pillow ever, she could see why he’d given it up—beneath her head, wrapped her arms around herself, and closed her eyes. The memory of the way he had kissed her surged to the forefront of her mind, making her tense. Right on the heels of that came the memory of how his hands on her body had felt. Deep inside, she felt a curl of desire. Instantly, every cell in her body seized up in instinctive rejection.
What kind of person gets a thrill from a guy she doesn’t know and doesn’t trust?
“HOW DOES your group communicate with each other? Does everybody have a radio?”
That deep, rasping voice so close at hand, coming abruptly out of the blackness, made her start guiltily, as if there were any way he could possibly be aware of what she had just thrust from her mind. Taking a quiet, steadying breath, she opened her eyes. The darkness was so complete that she might as well have kept them closed. The nylon wall flapped inches away as a gust of wind shook the tent, but she could only hear, not see it.
“Yes,” she replied, totally composed, totally over what had just been going on with her.
“Now that your friends can’t reach you on the radio, they’re going to come looking for you, aren’t they?”
“Yes.” But not before the storm clears, and not before daylight. She didn’t say that, though. It was probably a good thing for him to think that it was possible that her fellow scientists could stumble upon them at any moment. It made her feel a little safer, at any rate.