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He followed her gaze as she looked around their surroundings and felt her horror as she saw the wreckage that now marred the serene forest floor. She crossed her arms and hugged her shoulders, and he guessed it wasn’t the coolness of the morning, but rather the evidence of their close call that caused her to visibly shiver.
“Hard to believe we both walked away, isn’t it?” he said.
She nodded, then turned back to look at him. “How’s your knee?”
“It’ll be all right,” he replied, oddly touched that she’d asked.
“Good, because if a search party doesn’t show up soon, we may have to hike out of here.”
He frowned irritably. He should have known she’d only asked about his knee because she wanted to make sure he didn’t hold her back. “We shouldn’t do anything too soon. It’s just a few minutes after dawn. We’ll stay here with the plane for a couple of hours at least.”
He could tell she didn’t like that idea, that she was ready for action now. And he could guess by the worried frown that marred the smooth skin of her forehead that she was probably thinking of Richard and Andrew.
“They’re probably back at your apartment by now,” he said as he struggled to his feet. “I’m sure Richard returned to Kansas City when you didn’t show up in Twin Oaks last night.” His knee screamed in protest as he attempted to put weight on it. He braced himself against a tree.
“You really think so?” The frown that had wrinkled her brow disappeared, and earnest hope shone from those big blue eyes.
Despite her face and clothes being dirty, her hair tangled and decorated with bits of leaves, she looked beautiful. For a brief moment Talbot wanted to take her in his arms, smell that sweet scent that emanated from her and ease away any of her worries by kissing those luscious lips.
The inexplicable tension in Talbot rose to a new level. “Richard might be a lot of things, but he’s always been a good father,” he said, his voice sounding harsh even to his own ears.
She stared at him, obviously surprised by his outburst. “You must be hungry,” she said. “Richard used to get surly when he was hungry.”
He’d expected her to answer his anger with some of her own. Her response momentarily left his speechless. When the ability to speak returned, he eyed her wryly. “I am hungry,” he agreed. “Maybe you could forage around in the forest and serve us up a nice breakfast of berries and roots.”
She ignored his sarcasm and, instead, eyed what was left of the plane. “If I could find my overnight case—and it survived the fire—I have a bag of corn chips and an apple in it. Surely that would hold us until the search party finds us.”
The anger he’d tried so hard to feel, the anger he needed to feel toward her abandoned him. Her gaze once again went to the wreckage wedged between the two trees. “Do you think my suitcase is still there somewhere?”
“I doubt it. If I was to guess, your case is someplace between here and the first place we hit the trees.” He shoved himself away from the tree. “We can take a look and see what we find.”
She 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.”
“Let’s just go,” he said, but this time his voice held only weary resignation.
They took off walking, Elizabeth supporting him as much as possible. It was slow going, and neither of them made any effort to talk.
The trees were close together, the underbrush thick and tangled. Squirrels jumped from tree to tree, chattering their anger at the intruders in their domain.
Elizabeth tried to focus on their surroundings, but Talbot’s nearness was overwhelming. His arm was around her and his body was pressed against hers as they made their way through the forest, and the strength and firmness of his body somehow didn’t surprise her.
She’d always secretly admired Talbot’s broad shoulders, slim hips and the stomach that held not one ounce of fat. She wondered what it would be like to be held in his strong arms, not in an effort to help him walk, but held tightly against him in a moment of desire.
She stumbled over a half-exposed thick vine and gasped as Talbot caught her and steadied her against his impossibly firm chest. “Are you all right?” His breath was warm against the top of her head, and she stepped away from him as if he’d breathed fire into her hair.
“I’m fine.” She drew a deep, steadying breath. “Why don’t we take a break?”
“Sounds good to me,” he readily agreed, and together they sank to the ground facing each other.
“How’s your knee?” she asked. She wanted, needed conversation to take her mind off the feel of his chest against her own.
“Sore,” he confessed.
She frowned thoughtfully. “I hope you aren’t doing further damage by walking on it.”
“I don’t have much choice.” He frowned and raked a hand through his hair. Elizabeth noticed the dark stubble that shadowed his cheeks and chin, a growth of whiskers that merely added to his attractiveness. “I’m sorry, Elizabeth. About all of this.”
She gazed at him in surprise, waiting for a cutting remark, a touch of sarcasm, a subtle indication that somehow everything that happened was her fault. There was none of those things. His eyes showed genuine contrition.
“There’s nothing to apologize for.” She pulled her knees up to her chest and wrapped her arms around them, still looking at him. “You didn’t crash your plane on purpose, right?”
“Right, but I do intend to have a conversation with my mechanic.” The hard glitter in his eyes made her grateful she didn’t have the responsibility of maintaining Talbot’s plane.
“So, tell me about Twin Oaks. Why did Richard want to take Andrew there so badly? Why did he want me to meet him there?”
Talbot leaned back against a tree and extended his legs in front of him. “I can only guess what Richard thinks by the conversation we had before he left. I told you, the last week or so he’s been pretty introspective, and when he does talk, it’s been about Twin Oaks. Twin Oaks was the place of our childhood, a time in our lives when everything seemed wonderfully right.”
Elizabeth leaned forward, captured by his words, by the very idea of a childhood where everything seemed “wonderfully right” when her own childhood had been so horrifically wrong. “Tell me about it,” she urged.
His features relaxed and a smile curved his lips, letting her know his memories were pleasant ones. “Twin Oaks is so tiny it doesn’t even warrant a dot on a map. We lived there until we moved to Morning View, Kansas. That was a year before our mom and dad’s deaths. Twin Oaks is the kind of town where everyone knows everyone else and there’re lots of potluck dinners and town gatherings.”
“Sounds lovely.” And what was even lovelier than his words was the warmth that emanated from his smile. She’d never before bathed in the warmth of Talbot’s smile, and it was a distinctly pleasant experience.
“It was,” he said. “I remember it as the only time in my life when I was carefree, and the biggest responsibility I had was going to school.” His smile widened and his eyes lit with humor. “And my biggest worry was if Mom was going to make another of her terrible surprise casseroles for dinner.”
Elizabeth gazed at him thoughtfully, suddenly realizing the burden that had been placed on him by his parents’ untimely death. “It must have been hard for you to be twenty-one and suddenly responsible for a fourteen-year-old.”
He shrugged, the smile gone. “The way I saw it at the time there wasn’t any choice. I became responsible for Richard, or I let him become a ward of the state and go into foster care. He’s my brother and I could never allow that to happen.”
He got to his feet. “We should get moving,” he said, and in his words she heard him slam the door to any discussion about his past.
Still, as they continued to walk, Elizabeth found herself thinking about the twenty-one-year-old Talbot taking on the role of parent for his younger brother.
When most young people were exploring their first real breath of freedom and adulthood, going to clubs and dating, Talbot had taken the reins of his father’s company and accepted the responsibility for a teenage brother. For the first time ever, she felt a grudging respect and admiration for Talbot.
“Are you sure we aren’t walking in circles?” she asked after another hour or so. They’d once again stopped to rest.
“I’ve been watching the sun and I’m pretty sure we aren’t.” He rubbed his knee thoughtfully. “But I’m surprised we haven’t come across anyone, not even a group of campers.”
Elizabeth looked up at the waning sunlight that broke through the trees, then looked back at Talbot. “We’re going to be here overnight again, aren’t we.”
“At this point it’s a strong possibility.” He frowned and raked a hand through his disheveled hair. “It’s going to get dark soon, and I don’t want us stumbling around in the woods then.”
Elizabeth fought the sense of unease that always permeated her when she thought of the dark. “I’m starving,” she said in an effort to change the subject.
“Yeah, me too. I’d love a big juicy steak, medium rare, and a baked potato smothered in sour cream.” He looked at her with a touch of humor. “And I suppose if your dream meal were in front of you, it would be a lettuce leaf with a drizzle of dressing.”
“A lot you know,” she retorted. “My dream meal would be a double cheeseburger with a side of French fries and the biggest chocolate shake in the world.” She picked a dried leaf from her hair. “Why on earth would you think I’d be interested in rabbit food?”
“Because whenever you and Richard came to my place for dinner, you usually didn’t eat much of anything.”
Elizabeth well remembered those nights when she and Richard had first been married and Talbot would request their presence at dinner. How she had hated those family gatherings! “I was always too nervous to eat,” she confessed.
He eyed her in surprise. “Nervous? You always appeared amazingly cool and collected to me.”
“I was a good actress,” she replied. “Inside I was a quivering bundle of nerves and knew if I tried to eat, I’d probably throw up.” She grinned at him. “Remember the Big Burger down the street from your house? I used to make Richard stop there on the way home and I’d get a burger, fries and a shake.”
She could tell he was surprised by her confession. “What made you so nervous?” he asked.
She hesitated a moment before replying. She couldn’t very well tell him that he made her nervous, with his gorgeous dark eyes and sculpted features. She couldn’t tell him that whenever she was around him, all she could think about was how it might feel if he kissed her, made love to her. At the time, she hadn’t even wanted to admit what she felt to herself.
She wasn’t about to tell him that her nervousness and tension around him was a result of an acute awareness of him, not as a brother-in-law, but as a virile handsome man whose eyes constantly held the chill of dislike.
“You,” she finally replied. At his puzzled look, she said, “Oh, come on Talbot, I knew how much you hated me. I knew you thought I’d gotten pregnant on purpose in order to trap Richard.”
