Against the Odds (5 page)

He dug into his pocket, came up with one and held it up for her
to see. He smiled. “I won’t get lost, I promise.”

She nodded but instead of leaving, he walked back and knelt
beside her. “You’ll be all right, love. If you need me, just shout. Sound
travels a long way out here.”

She thought of being alone in the middle of the desert,
remembered the crash and felt like crying. Instead, she managed to smile. “I
hope you’re a good cook.”

Alex smiled back. “I can’t cook for spit, but I can barbecue
like crazy. Try to stay awake for a while, just till we know for sure your head
is okay. I’ll see you soon.”

She watched him walk away and wondered what would happen to her
if he didn’t return. What if he fell into one of the hundreds of ravines they
had spotted from the air? What if he got lost in spite of the compass? What if
he got bit by a snake or—

She closed her eyes, forcing away the thoughts. For long
moments, she just sat there, her back propped against the rock in the shade
beneath the ledge. The heat was still fierce, though the sun was moving toward
the horizon and pretty soon it would start getting dark.

And cold.

She remembered the forecast she had seen on weather.com and
wished she had the fleece jacket she had stuffed into her satchel, wished she
had the lipstick, Kleenex, hairbrush and all the other miscellaneous feminine
necessities she kept in her purse.

The heat made her eyelids feel heavy and she yawned. Her head
was still booming, her ankle throbbing, and she was tired clear to the bone.
Propping her foot up on a stone, she leaned back against the rock and closed her
eyes. But she didn’t let herself fall asleep. She had no idea what might creep
up on her if she did.

Or at least that was her plan.

It was the cold that awakened her. By the position of the sun,
she hadn’t been asleep more than an hour, but it was almost dark and Alex hadn’t
returned. Icy fear crawled down her spine. She had no idea how to survive out
here, or the vaguest notion of how to get back to Rio Gordo. If Alex didn’t
return...

Dear God, she had never imagined her very life might depend on
Alex Justice. But clearly it did.

Four

T
hough the air had begun to grow cold, Alex
was sweating. The javelina had evaded him, driven him deeper into the desert
than he had meant to go. The pig had gotten away—for the moment.

Tonight’s supper would have to be something a little more
exotic than free-range pork chops.

He grinned, thinking of the long white strip of meat he had
skinned and stuffed into his backpack. Fortunately, he had spotted the
rattlesnake sunning on a rock before he’d stepped on it. Fortunate for him. Not
so fortunate for the snake.

He caught sight of the rocky ledge up ahead that would serve as
their home for the night. Saw the moment Sabrina spotted him walking toward her
and stood up from the thick grass pallet he had made for her, balancing on her
uninjured foot.

She was shaking, he saw, and there was just enough sunlight
left to see that her face was pale. He had stripped off his short-sleeved blue
chambray shirt an hour ago and was carrying it in his hand. He lengthened his
strides until he reached her. He didn’t say a word, just draped the shirt around
her shoulders and thought how tiny she looked with it hanging nearly to her
knees, how glad he was she had come to him for help instead of trusting someone
else.

Sabrina caught the front of the shirt and pulled it a little
tighter around her shoulders. Her shaking eased and a little color washed back
into her cheeks. It took a couple of seconds for him to realize that instead of
looking up at him, she was staring at his chest.

“What is it? Your head? Your ankle? Are you all right?”

Her eyes moved over his bare torso, all the way down to the
jeans that rode low on his hips.

“What is it?” he asked again when she still didn’t speak,
beginning to get even more worried.

“It’s nothing...I’m fine. It’s just... I didn’t realize you
were...you were...” She pointed at his naked chest. “All those muscles right
there under your clothes. I didn’t realize you were so...so...” She looked up.
“Ripped.”

He laughed. He couldn’t help it. “I’m glad you like what you
see. I’ve liked looking at you since the first time I saw you.”

She jerked her gaze away from his body and back to his face.
“You have?”

“What did you think? I didn’t notice?”

“I’m hardly your type. I’m small and I’m...well, curvy. I
figured you for the type I saw in your office the other day—blonde and thin and
gorgeous.”

“Might be nice if she also had a brain.”

She looked past him, searching for the pig, didn’t offer to
return his shirt. “I guess you couldn’t get us any supper.”

“Actually, I did. Though it tastes more like chicken than
pork.” He urged her back down on the pallet. Checked her pupils again, saw they
still looked normal. Carrying his pack over to the pit, he set to work building
a fire. He’d stacked dry wood next to the circle of stones. Digging waterproof
matches out of his pack, he used dry leaves and grass to get the flames
going.

“I meant to get back earlier,” he said as he worked. “I was so
close to the boar it was hard to give up the hunt.”

“I don’t imagine you like to fail.”

“Not much.”

He continued working, taking a deep breath now and then to ease
the ache in his ribs, using the knife he’d used to kill and skin the snake to
whittle a makeshift spit. The fire was blazing, lighting their campsite with a
nice golden glow when he pulled the snake out of his backpack. He heard
Sabrina’s sharp intake of breath, and his gaze swung to where she sat once more
on the pallet.

“We’re eating a snake?” she said.

“Rattlesnake. The two of us had a little face-off. I won. It
actually tastes pretty good.”

She surprised him with a grin. “I know. I’ve had the
rattlesnake version of a crab cake at The Grill. It was delicious.”

He smiled. “I doubt my cooking skills compare to the chef at
The Grill, but it beats going to sleep on an empty stomach.”
Sleep.
Not likely. He’d imagined taking Sabrina
Eckhart to bed a dozen times. The thought of sleeping next to her had his sex
drive kicking into gear. This wasn’t the way his fantasy went, but still...

“How are you feeling?” he asked, figuring he had better change
the subject.

“Better. My head isn’t hurting the way it was. My ankle’s still
swollen. I put it up on a rock and fell asleep for about an hour. It still hurts
but at least I feel rested. How about you?” She frowned, then shoved to her feet
and hobbled toward him, reached out and gently touched his bare shoulder.

“You’ve got a nasty gash on your back. You should have said
something. The blood’s dried but you need to let me clean it.”

He nodded. “After we eat.” He tugged her down beside him. “You
need to keep the weight off that ankle.”

“I know.” To his amazement, she had pretty much been doing what
he said. As independent as she was, he wondered how long that would last.

“How’re the ribs?” she asked.

“Sore as hell, but I’ve had worse.”

“When you were a pilot?”

“Survival training. Took a fall into a rocky gorge. I was
pretty banged up when I walked out. Parachute training wasn’t any snap, either.
And a couple of cases I was working went south and ended up in a slugfest. Seems
like there’s always something.”

“Survival training,” she repeated, watching him as he worked
the snake onto the length of mesquite branch he’d stripped smooth with his
knife. “That’s how you know all this stuff?”

“It’s required for navy pilots.”

“I guess if you have to bail out of a plane it only makes sense
to know what to do after you land somewhere.” Her gaze slid away from his and
went toward the darkness, a curtain of black outside the glow of the fire. “They
might not find us for days.”

“Days we can handle. Longer than that, we may have to figure on
walking out.”

“Out to where? We don’t even know where we are.”

“I know our last location. I know there’s a road west of us
that runs from Rio Gordo to the border. It’s not much, but it’s a road.”

“If we have to walk...I don’t think I can make it, Alex.” And
the fear in her eyes said she was afraid she couldn’t handle it if he left her
there and went to get help.

“Let’s not get ahead of ourselves, okay? Whether they think we
decided to spend the night out here or not, it’s going to alert them when they
can’t reach us on the radio. Likely, they’ll be sending out search parties
tomorrow, day after at the latest.”

“There’s a lot of desert out there.”

A helluva lot.
But he didn’t say
that. He turned back to the meat roasting over the fire. “Smells good, doesn’t
it?” Succulent juices dripped into the flames and his stomach growled.

Sabrina surprised him with a smile. “Just like dining at The
Grill.”

She was doing her best to keep her spirits up. He appreciated
that. So far she’d been a trouper. Hadn’t complained, hadn’t cried. And even
with her soft red curls drooping into her eyes and her makeup mostly gone, she
looked sexy as hell. Alex wondered what she’d do if he leaned over and kissed
her.

He didn’t. She had made it clear she wanted nothing to do with
him in that way, and even if she was physically attracted to him, it wouldn’t be
fair to take advantage of her when she was scared and vulnerable.

Or at least that’s what he told himself.

* * *

They ate the snake, which wasn’t as easy to do as Rina
pretended. It was still a snake. Eating it all chopped up and mixed with
breadcrumbs and onions at The Grill wasn’t the same as eating it in chunks torn
off a stick.

Still, it wasn’t bad tasting. It was just the idea of eating a
reptile that made those lumps of meat hard to swallow. Afterward, she tended to
the cut on Alex’s back, being careful to remove the pieces of fabric, sand and
debris that were buried in the wound, trying to avoid starting the bleeding
again, intrigued by the feel of his smooth bare skin beneath her hands.

God, he had the most incredible body. Since it had been hidden
beneath his designer clothes, she had never really noticed.

“Didn’t anyone tell you a suntan is bad for your skin?” she
teased, noting the warm brown color and wondering if there was any sort of tan
line. Knowing Alex, she figured there wasn’t.

“I’ve got a pool at my house. Swimming’s a good way to stay in
shape.”

“And working out at the gym. That’s what I do.”

His gaze slid over her breasts, and she would have sworn there
was heat in those blue eyes.

He glanced away. “I’ve got a gym in one of the downstairs
bedrooms,” he said. “I use it a lot and I practice Tai Chi with a trainer
whenever I get the chance.”

Tai Chi. That was Bruce Lee stuff. She figured he must have a
pretty big place and was only a little surprised. The clothes he wore were
expensive. So was the BMW he drove and the airplane he flew. Sage had told her
he’d graduated from Yale.

“Sage said you were raised in Connecticut. How did you get to
Houston?”

He tossed a stick into the fire. Orange flames curled around
it, licked up over the wood. “A guy named Joe McCauley lived there. We met when
I was flying missions off the
Enterprise.
Joe was an
officer on the maintenance crew. We got to be good friends.”

“So Joe convinced you to come to Houston.”

He shrugged. “There was nothing for me in Connecticut. Joe got
out of the service a few weeks before I did. He thought I should come to Houston
and I figured it was as good a place to start as any. I met Trace through Joe’s
dad, who was a friend of Trace’s father.”

He looked up at her and smiled. “I got my P.I.’s license and
went to work for Trace. The rest, as they say, is history.”

Rina finished cleaning the last of the dirt out of the gash on
his back and he hissed in a breath as she poured alcohol into the wound. “Hey,
watch it!”

“You’ve got cuts and bruises all over, and a couple of injured
ribs and you complain about a little alcohol? Big baby.” But of course he was
nothing of the sort. He was strong and tough and at the same time oddly gentle,
and he had saved her life.

Rina put a gauze pad over the six-inch gash that probably
should have had stitches and would definitely leave a scar on that smooth,
tanned skin. She taped it in place, then took off his chambray shirt and held it
out for him to put back on.

“Keep it,” he said. “It’s getting pretty cold.”

“What about you?”

He just shrugged. “I’ll be fine. But we’ll have to share the
blanket. We don’t have any other choice.”

A little tremor went through her that had nothing to do with
the cold. “If we have to then we have to.” Her eyes met his. How blue eyes could
possibly look hot she had no idea, but they did.

They slept huddled together beneath the silver foil blanket,
which helped them generate a surprising amount of warmth. That and Alex’s
half-naked body. He refused to take his shirt back and as the temperature
dropped, Rina was glad. It was the only thing warm she had to wear, and besides,
she liked the way he looked with his chest bare.

Beneath those conservative pants and shirts he wore was a body
that was all lean muscle, wide shoulders and six-pack abs. Six foot two inches
of virile male, dark blond hair and blue eyes, and a movie star face to wrap up
the package. It didn’t seem fair that one man should look so good.

And she had stupidly blurted it out, which, as cocky as Alex
was, surely gave his ego a boost, something he most certainly didn’t need. He’d
surprised her when he had said he liked the way she looked, too.

But maybe that was only because they were out here alone and he
was trying to make her feel better.

As the fire burned down, they sat beneath the ledge and curled
up together beneath the blanket. As tired as she was, it didn’t take long to
fall asleep. She wasn’t sure how long she slept but a slice of moon hung over
the desert by the time she awakened with her ankle throbbing and her body
chilled. She was nestled against Alex’s side, his arm around her, his head back
against the rock.

His skin was hot, she realized as she snuggled deeper into his
heat, his breaths coming a little too fast. Dear God, maybe the wound she had
cleaned after supper was infected.

She reached up to feel his forehead, see if he had a
temperature, and her breasts pressed into his chest. Alex grunted in pain.

“Oh, Alex, I’m so sorry. Did I hurt you? You were so hot I was
afraid you were running a fever.” She tried to reach up again, but Alex caught
her wrist.

“The fever I’m running is a lot lower down. If you don’t quit
wiggling, I’m going to show you exactly how hot I am.”

Her eyes widened in shock and her face flushed. He didn’t have
a fever; he was aroused. “Oh...”

“Look, Sabrina, we’re stuck out here. We’re sleeping
together—sort of. I’m a man. It’s only natural for a guy to get turned on when
he’s half-naked and pressed up against a beautiful woman.”

Her heart was thumping. None of it registered except the last
few words. “You think I’m beautiful?”

The muscles across his chest tightened. “For chrissake, what do
you think? Don’t you ever look in the mirror?”

A soft warmth slipped through her, driving away the chill. Alex
Justice thought she was beautiful. In the two years she had lived with Ryan
Gosford, he had never said anything remotely similar to that.

“Thank you.”

“Thank you? That’s it? Do you have any idea how hard it is for
me to keep my hands off you? For that matter, how hard I am just sitting here
beside you?”

She swallowed, forced down the urge to lean over and press her
mouth against his just to see what he would do. “It’s only...only the
circumstances. You don’t even like me. And I don’t like you.”

This last was said in an effort to convince herself. Alex was
exactly the kind of macho, take-charge, steal-your-heart-and-walk-away kind of
man she refused to allow into her life.