The tantalizing aroma of cooking food made her stomach growl. She was starving.
“How was it?” he greeted her as she stopped beside him to look down past his black head and broad shoulders to what was heating on the cooktop: two opened, individual-size cans of beef stew. She had no idea how he’d managed to get them open without a can opener, but she wasn’t surprised that he had managed. The man, as she had already learned, was efficient.
“Heavenly,” she replied, and he smiled. It was a crooked, charming smile that warmed his eyes and caused her heart to unexpectedly skip a beat, but before she could react in any other way he stood up, which brought him so close to her that she nearly took a step back. Tilting her head back to look up at him, she—barely—managed to stand her ground. It wasn’t fear of him that made it feel dangerous for her to stand so close; it was that the sexual charge between them was too strong.
“Keep an eye on this. I won’t be long.”
That prosaic remark was about the food. Repressing her misgivings—the fire was small and encased in an iron stove, for heaven’s sake; what could go wrong?—she nodded and watched as he headed for their primitive bathroom, then glanced around. He’d dusted off the table: as she looked at it, her eyes widened. Besides the lantern, maybe a half dozen rifles now rested on it, presumably found in the same search that had turned up the stove. From the look of them, they were leftovers from World War II.
While the thought of having more firepower was appealing, the sight of them gave Gina the willies: it looked like he was preparing to take on an army. Besides, she was skeptical that after all this time they would even still work.
Looking past them with effort, she discovered that he’d spread out their sleeping bag bed on two pallets that he’d dragged flush against the wall just behind the door. Two things struck her about that: first, her automatic assumption that it was their bed, which meant that they would be sharing it, and second, that behind the door was an interesting choice of placement for it. Anyone coming through the door would be blocked from seeing the bed and the people in it until the intruders were all the way inside the room. Did that mean that he was expecting somebody to come through the door? Or was it simply a precaution?
Either way, even considering the possibility was enough to send a cold chill snaking down her spine.
Once again, she was reminded that the name of the game here was survival.
As he’d promised, Cal was only gone briefly, and when he came back the stew was bubbling. The smell alone was making Gina salivate, but the sight of Cal all washed and clean and dressed in a snug white tee along with his own suit pants was enough to get her mind off her stomach and take her thoughts in a whole different and entirely unwelcome direction.
“Rifles, huh? Where’d you find them?” she asked as he dropped his coat and snow pants on top of the backpacks and then stopped by the table to gather the rifles up, partly because she wanted to know the answer and partly to redirect her thoughts again.
“Trash cans,” he said, nodding toward the row of them as he leaned the rifles carefully against the wall. “Ammo, too, and other things, all carefully stored. Everything looks mint.”
“Think we’ll need them?”
“Can’t have too many weapons.”
With that surprisingly cheerful-sounding observation, he joined her by the stove.
The fire in the stove was already burning itself out, but she noticed with approval that he took the time to smother it completely before carrying the cans over to the table, using his gloves as pot holders. He’d found a collection of measuring spoons and a single knife, which she’d carefully washed, and they each dug into the stew with a spoon while sharing the knife to cut the bigger pieces of meat. She’d gotten so warm as she stirred the stew and stayed by the stove waiting for his return that she’d shed her coat: it hung over the back of one of the chairs.