with just enough ventilation to make it nice and smoky inside.
He had her find another piece of wing to lean against the fuselage, thus protecting the pit from the afternoon rains. They would have to check the fire in there regularly, keep it going, but not too high.
“How long will it take?” she asked.
“A couple of days. The dried meat will be good for about a week. When the snake is cured, we can smoke fish, too—though with the river nearby, I don’t really think we need to.”
She dropped into the chair beside him. “You’re very convenient to have around.”
“Back at ya, and then some.” They shared one of those looks that said everything they couldn’t quite say aloud.
It was getting late by then. The moon rode high over the clearing and the fire kept the bugs at bay. For a while, neither of them spoke. He was avoiding climbing back into the plane and trying to sleep in the backseat that had been his sickbed. Would she sleep in the tent? He didn’t remember where she’d slept those first few nights, but last night she’d left him and taken the tent.
She was looking at him again.
He met her watchful gaze. “What?”
“We might never get back to SA, you know.”
“We will.” As he said the words, he realized he believed them. “And didn’t we agree not to play the what-if game?”
She waved a hand. “That was when you were blaming yourself. This is … well, you know, just getting real.”
“We’ll get back. That’s real.”
“And you know this, how?”
“We might have both been born of money, grown up having it easy, but that doesn’t make us any less tough and smart. We’re survivors. We have tools, the right clothing, decent footwear. And in terms of abundant food sources, getting stranded in the jungle is not a bad choice. If nobody comes to find us, when my ankle is healed enough, we’re going to walk out of here. Our chances are good. Better than good.”
She studied his face. He wondered what she was seeking. “If—when we get back, I want my job, Dax.”
He swore low. “Come on. I may be fatheaded and overbearing, but I know quality help when I have it. Did I say something to make you think I wasn’t aware of your value to me and to Great Escapes?”
“You kissed me.”
So that was it. “A lapse. I apologize.”
“Why apologize? I kissed you back.” She licked her lips, as if the taste of him lingered. “And I liked it when you kissed me. I liked it a lot.”
So much frankness made his breath catch and heat pool in his groin. He said, rough and low, “We have an understanding. I’ve been trying to abide by it. You’re not helping me to keep it, when you talk like this, when you look at me that way.”
She refused to look away. “It’s so simple now, here. I see everything through a lens of that simplicity, of the need to survive. I see that there are a thousand ways to die here. I see that we’re something else to each other, here. Something important. We are each other’s survival, each other’s lifeline. And if you’re wrong and I do die here, I don’t want to die regretting the fact that I never made love with you.”
He clutched the aluminum arms of the chair to keep from reaching for her and he said, with careful coolness, “I feel the same. But it’s okay. You’re not going to die. I thought I just explained that.”
She smiled. How could a smile be that sad and at the same time that full of primal knowledge? And then she broke the searing gaze they shared and stared into the fire. After a minute, in a voice barely above a whisper, she spoke again, “I used to think you were trying purposely to tempt me.”
“Yeah, well. You thought right. And you never gave in, were never anything but beautiful and charming, quick with the comebacks—and strictly professional.”
“We could make another agreement … for now, while we’re here in this wild place and it’s just you and me, surviving, taking what joy we can any way we can find it.”
His mouth was dry. He gripped the chair arms all the harder. “What agreement?”
“We change the rules, for now, just for as long as we’re here, in the jungle. And when we get home, I get my job back and we become strictly professional with each other again.”
Yes. The affirmative was there, on the tip of his tongue. It was an urgent need in him to say whatever she wanted him to say, so that he could have her and have her now. He managed, somehow, not to let that yes out. “You really think that’s possible, to go back? In my experience, it never works.”
“I intend to make it work. I will make it work.”
He found that he believed her, as he believed they would get back to San Antonio. She was an extraordinary woman and if she said she could do a thing, who was he, a mere man, to doubt her? “I’m not going to be able to keep arguing about this, Zoe. I don’t want to argue. I want to get in that tent with you and kiss every inch of you.”
Her mouth trembled. And her eyes were dark right then, dark and as full of secrets as the night itself. “So don’t argue.”
“I have one more question.”
“Ask.”
“Johnny?”
She laughed, then, a low, throaty, knowing sound. “There is no Johnny.”
“I knew it.”
“I knew you knew. And now I have a question.”
“Name it.”
“Did you bring condoms with you?”
“I always have condoms with me.”
She almost smiled at that—but not quite. “Well, all right, then.” She swept upward, out of the chair, and stood above him, holding down her hand.
He looked up at her and knew he would never forget the sight of her at that moment, of her red hair haloed in firelight, her blue eyes shadowed, full of hot promises that he fully intended to make her keep.
Still, he couldn’t stop himself from asking one more time, “You’re sure?”
“Take my hand, Dax. Let’s go to bed.”
Zoe didn’t doubt herself, didn’t second-guess. The course was set. She would follow it.
She would glory in it.
When he reached up his lean hand to her, she took it, grasped it tight, helped pull him
