“Okay.” As she accepted the plastic box their fingers brushed, and instantly electricity shot through her. Her fingers withdrew noticeably too fast, their eyes collided, and something in the depths of his woke butterflies in her stomach. The desire in them was unmistakable, but there was more than that, and it was the more that scared her. Neither of them said a word, but contained in that exchange of looks was a silent acknowledgment that things had changed between them: they had forged a connection, a bond, that hadn’t existed before.
Unnerved, Gina hastily broke eye contact, opening up the first aid kit and delving inside it for a packet of Tylenol. When she came up with one he was no longer looking at her, but instead was pulling more items from the backpack.
“Tylenol,” she announced, waving the packet.
“Thanks.” Taking it from her, he ripped the little package open, popped the pills in his mouth, and swallowed.
“You don’t need water?” Gina asked, scandalized.
“Nah.” He went back to searching through the backpack and she set the first aid kit on the table.
“I forgot a can opener.” Chagrined, Gina followed his movements as he pulled out cans of tuna, soup, and beef stew, followed by a rolled bundle of clothing. From what she could see of it, the clothes were the generic white tee and black sweatpants that came in the backpacks, which was good because that meant she couldn’t identify whose backpack it was from the clothing in it. Which didn’t prevent her from suffering a fresh pang of horror and grief over the fate of her friends. The thought of which she immediately did her best to banish: right now her emotions were too close to the surface for her to do anything but keep resolutely moving forward. There would be time later to mourn—if she survived.
Cal reclaimed her attention by tossing the bundle of clothes in her lap.
“I’ll see about the food,” he said, and nodded in the direction of an arched opening in the stone wall opposite the door. “If you want to wash up, there’s hot water in there. I think they used that area as a bathroom. Here, take the flashlight.”
“Hot water?” Instantly dazzled, Gina reached for the flashlight even as she glanced wide-eyed in the direction he’d indicated.
Cal nodded. “Why do you think this room is so warm?”
“How is that even possible?” Gina was already on her feet, clothes tucked under her arm, flashlight beam leading the way as she headed off to check it out.
“Looked like a natural spring to me,” he called after her.
Turned out it was indeed a natural spring, a hot spring, bubbling up through the rock into a time-worn depression about the size of a kitchen sink that nature had carved into the floor. As the flashlight illuminated it, Gina eyed it with delight. At some point in the past, someone had put up pipes connected to an overhead can contraption that appeared to be designed to work as a shower, but the pipes were rusted and she had a healthy mistrust of what might lurk in the can, so she decided not to test it. There was also a crude toilet in a corner, the workings of which she refused to think about even as she used it. Afterward, kneeling on the smooth stone beside the hot spring, she cautiously checked the water: hot but not dangerously so, fresh, with only the slightest tang of minerals.
At that point, a spa tub at the Ritz-Carlton couldn’t have looked better to her.
When she unrolled the bundle of clothes, a ziplock bag with a hotel-size bar of soap, a folded washcloth, a mini toothpaste, and a new travel toothbrush fell out.
Her cup runneth over.
“You stay out of here,” she called to Cal, whose answering grunt at least told her that he’d heard.
That was all she needed: she stripped, and bathed, and rinsed out her undies and hung them up to dry on a pipe, which, given that both her bra and underpants were flimsy nylon, she expected they would do in a few hours. She hadn’t realized how grungy she’d been feeling until she was clean and dressed again in the tee, which was of the Hanes underwear variety, and sweats. Both were a man’s medium, which meant they were too big for her, but even though the elastic waistband hung loosely from her hip bones, it was enough to keep them up. Underneath she went commando, because the included boxers were impossibly large.
Combing out her hair, she twisted it into a loose knot at her nape, shrugged into her coat, which she left unzipped, pulled her boots on over fresh white half socks, and, carrying her discarded clothes, headed back toward the main room.
Cal was down on one knee in a corner and gave her only a cursory glance as she entered. Tucking her bundled clothes and the flashlight into the emptier of the two backpacks, she headed toward him. He’d kindled a fire in a small iron camp stove that clearly he’d found somewhere in the room. She eyed the stove with some misgivings as she approached, but an upward glance following the wisp of smoke it put out told her that there was ventilation: the smoke drifted off through a crack in the ceiling and she suspected that he had chosen the location for exactly that purpose. And one of the great things about a room carved out of stone was that it was not conducive to a spreading fire.