nodded and set off walking at a brisk pace. He stumbled after her, trying to suck up the pain that ripped through his knee with each step. He’d rather suffer than allow her to see any weakness.
They hadn’t gone very far when she turned back to him. She stopped walking and placed her hands on her hips. “Sit down,” she commanded.
“I’m all right,” he protested.
“Yeah, sure. Walking always makes you break out in a sweat.” She strode purposefully to where he stood and placed herself under his arm. “I don’t want you to blame me when you’re permanently crippled because you went chasing after my suitcase,” she said as she led him to a tree.
Reluctantly he sat, knowing it was useless to pretend he wasn’t in pain. “Maybe if I stay off it a bit longer…” His voice trailed off in frustration.
“I’m perfectly capable of foraging on my own.” Once again she set off walking away from him.
Talbot watched her, reluctantly admiring the length of her shapely legs, the slight wiggle of her slender hips. He wasn’t surprised that she was handling the situation rather well.
She’d always had the kind of self-confidence that intimidated men. At least, most men. She certainly didn’t intimidate him.
He rubbed his knee, realizing that as long as he stayed off it, pain wasn’t an issue. Unfortunately there was no doubt in his mind that eventually he was going to have to get up and walk out of here.
As he continued to massage the sides of his kneecap, he frowned, listening to the silence that surrounded him. There was noise—birds called from the tops of trees, and here and there the leaves rustled as squirrels jumped from limb to limb. But these weren’t the sounds Talbot most wanted to hear.
What was conspicuously absent was the dull roar of highway traffic, the laughter of a family setting up a campsite. No sounds of human presence at all.
He looked up as Elizabeth came back into view, a triumphant grin on her face and a small battered suitcase in her hand. “I found it!” she announced as she sat down next to him. The case was battered and dented, but appeared to be in one piece. “I looked for your cell phone, but I couldn’t find it.”
She placed the case on her lap and opened it. Talbot instantly smelled the sweet berry scent emanating from the interior.
The first thing he saw in the opened suitcase was a pair of red lace panties, and his mind instantly produced a vision of her wearing them and nothing else. Heat filled him, and he attempted to shove the vision away.
She quickly buried the panties beneath a mound of innocuous clothing, then grabbed a plastic zippered bag and slammed the case shut.
“I don’t know about you, but at the moment a breakfast of corn chips and apple sounds wonderful,” she said, her cheeks stained a light pink. “I’m starving.”
Talbot was starving, also, but his hunger had nothing to do with a desire for food. It was a hunger he’d suffered for a long time, one that filled him with anger and shame.
He watched as she tore open the bag of chips, then carefully separated them into two piles. “I hope the search party brings water. I have a feeling after eating these chips, we’ll both be thirsty,” she said.
Talbot knew it was time to tell her the truth, and he dreaded it. So far, she had shown her usual aplomb in the unusual situation. But he wasn’t sure how she would react to his little confession. “Uh, about that search party…”
She looked up at him, a chip midway to her mouth. “Yes?” Her eyes narrowed.
“I’m guessing there isn’t one.”
“What do you mean? Of course there’ll be a search party. Doesn’t the FAA send people out when a plane disappears? Wouldn’t the airport where we were going to land send word that we didn’t get there?”
“I wasn’t flying into an airport. I was using a friend’s airstrip, and I was flying VFR.”
“What does that mean?” Her eyes narrowed even more.
“It means ‘visual flight rules.’ I was not under FAA control or supervision, but rather, my own.”
“Gee, why doesn’t that surprise me?” she said dryly.
She nudged his share of the corn chips toward him. “You’d better eat up. You’re going to need all your strength to help me drag your butt out of these woods.”
As she and Talbot finished the last of the apple and chips, Elizabeth fought myriad emotions. She was angry with him for not filing a flight plan, for not taking precautions. How utterly like him to assume he could control, could handle the entire world all on his own.
However, Elizabeth knew not to give in to the emotional pulls, knew that a lot of energy could be wasted being angry. And she needed every ounce of energy she had to get them out of these damn woods.
“You ready?” she asked when they’d finished eating.
“You’re angry with me.” He struggled to his feet.
“Don’t be ridiculous,” Elizabeth scoffed. “What makes you think I’m angry?”
“You have a little twitch next to your right eyebrow. I’ve noticed it before when you’re mad.”
Elizabeth reached up and touched her eyebrow. She started to protest, then changed her mind. “Okay, maybe I’m a little bit irritated,” she confessed.
“Don’t you ever vent?” he asked, more than a touch of irritation in his own voice. “When you get angry, don’t you ever scream and rage, throw things and curse?”
“What would be the point?” Elizabeth snapped her suitcase closed and also stood. “Ranting and raving never solved anything. I learned very early in life that venting only gets you into trouble. Besides, you should talk. I’ve never seen you lose your cool. I always found that annoying about you.”
“Let’s not start listing the things we find annoying about each other. It would take far too long, and we need to get out of here.” He took a step, then grimaced with pain.
Elizabeth once again moved beneath his arm, allowing him to lean on her enough to take some of his weight off his injured knee. Instantly she felt the warmth of his body transferring to her, an oddly intimate sensation that set her frayed nerves further on edge.
“Which way should we go?” she asked him, trying to ignore that, despite an escape from a plane crash and a night spent in the woods, he still smelled good.
He frowned and gazed around them, then pointed in the direction of the wrecked plane. “I think we should go that way,” he said.
“Are you sure?” Elizabeth asked.
“Hell no, I’m not sure, but it’s my best guess,” he replied, his voice containing a surly edge.
“Fine,” Elizabeth retorted. “And getting grouchy isn’t going to make your knee feel any better or make a rescue team suddenly appear.”
