Her head came up off his shoulder as she looked around, wide-eyed.
Surprise gave her her voice back as Cal played the flashlight over their surroundings: a large natural cavern with a soaring domed roof and—furniture?
He’d said it was a hell of a cave.
“What is this place?”
But even as she asked the question, she knew what it had to be, or at least what its purpose once was: she’d studied up on Attu before arriving. The Japanese had used the extensive cave system that riddled the mountains to hide from, and launch sneak attacks on, the numerically superior American forces. The Americans had been forced into fighting a guerrilla war in which they’d ended up claiming most of the caves for themselves.
“Looks to me like it was used as a military barracks at one time,” Cal replied. He seemed to be striding toward a particular target—an old metal table surrounded by four folding metal chairs, still set up as if whoever had last used them had merely stepped away for a short period. The dust covering them was the only indication that they’d waited like that for a long, long time, Gina saw as the flashlight beam hit them. A moment later Cal nudged a chair out from under the table with his boot, lowered her feet to the ground so that he could pick it up and shake the dust off it, then settled her into it.
“Don’t move,” he told her. Dropping the backpacks on the ground beside her, he walked away.
Left alone in what was—except for the bobbing flashlight beam that was moving steadily away from her—pitch darkness, she instantly missed his arms around her, instantly felt cold and bereft. Folding her arms over her chest, she tracked his movements by watching the flashlight. But then the flashlight went stationary, as if he’d put it down on something, while she could still hear him moving around.
“Cal.”
“I’m right here.” His words were accompanied by a series of scratching sounds. The faint scent of sulfur had just reached her nose when a match flared to life. A moment later the tiny flame found its way into a storm lantern, and the area around it was lit by a spreading glow. The flashlight beam vanished.
The lantern, metal-framed and glass-sided with a single fat candle inside, came toward her. Cal was carrying it, and he set it down in the middle of the table.
“What happened to the flashlight?” Gina asked. She was glad to focus on the here and now, and practical things. If she could do it, she would stuff everything that had happened from the time she’d pulled him out of the sea until this moment into a mental box and never think of it again.
Except, maybe, for his kisses. And the way his kisses made her feel.
“It’s in my pocket. I turned it off to save the batteries.”
“Good idea.” She was looking around.
“I thought so,” he replied. She could feel him studying her. He was standing right beside her: with her peripheral vision, she could see his long, muscular legs, his oversize black boots, mere inches from her own. She was not, she discovered, quite ready to look up and meet his gaze. Uneasy as it made her to recognize it, the dynamic between them had changed. The sexual charge was unmistakable, but with it was a new sense of emotional intimacy that she actually found more disturbing.
The last thing in the world she meant to let herself do was develop feelings for this man.
“Feeling better?” he asked, and the gravelly rasp of his voice slid over her like a lover’s touch.
She actually shivered. From nothing more than the sound of his voice.
This is ridiculous, she told herself sternly, and lifted her eyes to meet his even as she responded with a cool “Yes, thanks.”
His eyes were impossible to read in the flickering, uncertain light. His face likewise revealed nothing. His mouth was unsmiling. Grave, even.
Sexy.
Gina found that she couldn’t look at it, because looking at it made her pulse quicken and her body start to tighten deep inside. She had an instant, involuntary flashback to those blistering kisses. Heat flashed through her.
Rattled, she glanced away.
“You really did mean a barracks,” she said, with equal parts surprise and satisfaction at finding a neutral topic of conversation, as her gaze lit on what looked like stacks of broken-down metal bed frames piled against one wall.
“Looks like it.” He moved away from her, and her breath escaped in a soundless sigh of relief.