And she kissed him back. Instantly, instinctively, without any thought at all.
Her mouth opened to his. His tongue filled her mouth, scalding hot, demanding her response. And she gave it, answering his lips and tongue with a hungry intensity that seemed to spring up out of nowhere. Her body burned for his. She went all soft and shivery inside.
As quick as he’d kissed her he was lifting his head and pushing her away.
“Good-bye,” he said. He didn’t smile.
Gina didn’t smile, either. Her heart was thumping, her body was throbbing, and good-bye was both the last thing on earth she wanted to say—and the smartest thing she could say.
“Good-bye,” she said for the second time.
Then she turned and started picking her way across the slippery ground without waiting for him to answer. Their relationship, if it could even be called a relationship, was over, just like yesterday’s hair-raising episode was over, and in the cold, clear light of dawn all she wanted to do was put it behind her and forget about it and him. She would walk across the narrow peninsula of land that formed the neck of Chirikof Point, then follow the shoreline around to Massacre Bay, where her group was staying in the buildings that had once made up LORAN Station Attu.
Would she be sorry to see the last of him? Maybe some small part of her would be.
But there was no other choice. And even if there had been, she still would have walked away.
She would make his call for him, and then she would settle back into the stable routine of the life she had made for herself. Danger and excitement were not, and never again would be, her thing.
“Gina,” he called after her.
Lips compressing, she glanced back. Fingers of fog curled around the outcropping, making the landscape look like something out of Kafka. Shrouded in the deep gray of the sleeping bag, he looked as massive as one of the towering rocks behind him.
“Thank you,” he said. “Again. For saving my life.”
“You’re welcome,” she replied, and meant it.
She walked away without looking back a second time.
IT TOOK her almost five hours to travel the eight-plus miles back to camp. Although the storm had passed on during the wee hours of the morning, the storm surge she had feared had, in fact, occurred all over this eastern part of the island, cutting off many of the routes she might have taken. Most of the lowlying areas near the coast had flooded, with water in some places lying in depths of one to two feet. The deceptive film of ice that covered everything made it tricky to judge what was water and what was dry land. In addition, there were drifts of snow in unlikely places, so Gina abandoned the easier route that hugged the coastline in favor of keeping to higher, rockier ground. Footing was treacherous so she had to go slowly. By the time she got close enough to actually see her destination, from about halfway up Frazier Mountain to the east of the camp, she was cold and hungry and thirsty and so tired she had to work to keep putting one foot in front of the other.
So cold and hungry and tired, in fact, that her fear of running into one of the “strangers” he’d warned her about had receded into the category of things-to-worry-about-after-I-don’t-fall-and-break-a-leg-or-collapse-from-exhaustion.
After hours of walking she hadn’t seen a single, solitary soul, which reinforced her conviction that Arvid and Ray or whoever had volunteered for the search party must be out looking for her in the boat. Once she got back to camp, it would be an easy matter to contact them via the radio and tell them to come back in. Merely thinking about how much worry she was causing them, to say nothing of the time spent searching for her that was being taken away from their projects, made her feel guilty. Visiting Attu required reams of paperwork and countless official permissions. It was expensive and difficult to arrange. They all had research to carry out, both on their own and to fulfill the terms of the grant, and only a limited amount of time on the island. The likelihood was that none of them would be back.