“That’s what you said a mile ago. And I don’t know about you, but I’m starting to doubt his word. That guy wasn’t exactly the most trustworthy law enforcement officer I’ve ever met. You know, since he sold us out to the bad guys and all.”
That finally stopped him. “Motherfucker,” he said under his breath and swung around. “He told us to put on our seatbelts. He knew they were going to play a game of bumper cars with us.”
She nodded. “Exactly. He lied to us. There is no motel. If there was, we would have found it by now. We’re lost.”
“We’re not lost.”
“Oh, please.” Exasperated, she flopped her arms in the air. “For all we know, the next town could be twenty miles away. And besides that, we’re in Deliverance territory out here. What if we do find the motel and the locals aren’t real big on southern hospitality?”
“We’re not lost,” he said again, enunciating each word. “SEALs don’t get lost.”
Out of all the very valid points she’d just made, leave it to him to get hung up on that. “You’re not a SEAL anymore.”
“It’s not something you turn off when you leave the teams, vixen. The training stays with you for life and SEALs. Don’t. Get. Lost.”
She held up her hands in surrender. “Okay, you cling to that delusion. In the meantime, I want to check your phone for a signal again.” She’d been forced to give it back when he realized she still had it, and anxiety had been playing her spine like a piano ever since. What if Marcus texted again? So far, the phone hadn’t found a signal since the crash, which was both a blessing and a curse.
“I told you,” he said and grabbed the phone from his pocket. “Battery’s dying. We can’t keep checking it. We’ll need the juice when we do finally have a signal again, which…” He checked the screen. “Is not now. Fucking thing.” He pocketed it again. “What do you remember from the GPS?”
She sighed and sat down on a large rock beside the road to give her aching feet a rest. “I don’t know. I was more concerned with the car following us.” She closed her eyes, thought back, tried to picture the map in her mind. “I’m pretty sure there is a town, but it’s closer to the state highway we needed to take to get to Atlanta. That’s still at least seven, maybe eight miles away.”
Vaughn crossed to her, nudged her over so he could sit, too. He groaned as he lowered himself to the rock and rubbed the leg he’d been favoring. “Damn.”
“We should rest.” Cold seeped through her leggings from the stone and for the first time, she realized how much the temp had dropped. Her breath was starting to fog against the air with each exhale, too. And of course as soon as she noticed it, she started to shiver. “It’s getting colder.”
“Could be worse. We’re lucky this part of the country seems to be having a mild February.” He hesitated, then wrapped an arm around her and pulled her in against him. “Still, it’s cold enough that we’re in very real danger of hypothermia. We should set up a camp, build a fire, and wait out the dawn.”
“You can do that?” For all of the survival skills she’d honed in the last five years, she’d never mastered the art of wilderness survival. Honestly, hadn’t wanted to try. The urban jungle was more her speed. “You can build a fire?”
“Well, I could….” He smirked. “If I were still a SEAL.”
She bumped him with her shoulder. “Asshole.”
“I think I prefer the more colorful ‘twatwaffle.’” He stood and held out a hand to help her up. “I’ve been dying to ask. What the hell is a twatwaffle, anyway?”
Ignoring his hand, she got to her feet. Not out of any sense of stubbornness, but because she was afraid of hurting him. “When we reach civilization, look in the mirror. You’ll find a perfect example right…” She drew circles around her own face with one finger. “There.”
He gave a bark of laughter, and she couldn’t help but grin. She missed a lot about their short-lived relationship—the strangely easy rapport they’d had and, dear God, the mind-blowingly hot sex—but most of all, she’d missed bantering with him. He’d always been able to make her laugh with his dry wit, something she hadn’t expected when she first met the big, brooding man in the elevator at Jude and Libby’s wedding.
In truth, she’d found Vaughn a little intimidating during that first meeting, and her inner rabbit had kicked in. She’d run as far and as fast as she could away from him—only to return to her room and find her fiancé in a frightening rage after an encounter with his ex-girlfriend.