Manna From Heaven (10 page)

Just when Charlie thought she could not take another step, there it was in front of them, just as Jake had promised: a cabin, foursquare and solid, nestled at the foot of a trio of tall pines. It was small, dark, and deserted-looking, about the size, perhaps, of a one-story detached garage, with a dirt road or track approaching it from the north and ending right in front of where they stood. As eager as a starving man suddenly presented with a feast, Charlie was all for rushing right inside. Jake, curse him, had to circle the place twice, staying well back in the trees, studying it from every angle.

“I’m dying here,” Charlie finally protested through chattering teeth when he seemed ready to begin the circuit yet again.

“Not if I can help it.” His hand gripped hers more tightly, and he glanced down at her, then relented. “All right. Come on.”

To her relief, he headed straight toward the front, and only, door. Two wooden steps led onto a narrow covered porch. The door, which seemed to be made of wood with a glass insert, was in the center. He passed Sadie over, then, while Charlie waited, jiggling with impatience, he knocked softly, then tried the knob. When that didn’t work, he turned, and without a word drove his elbow through the lowest of the six glass panes. The sound of shattering glass made Charlie jump. By the time she recovered, he had already thrust
his hand through the hole he had made, and was unlocking the door.

“Watch the glass,” he said, opening it and heading inside.

“Isn’t this called breaking and entering? What if there’s a burglar alarm?” she asked nervously, not having previously considered this aspect of it. Shivering, wet clothes squelching with every step, stepping carefully because the last thing her poor feet needed was to be cut by broken glass, she followed him inside.

“We couldn’t get so lucky.”

Good point. The idea of a convoy of police cars converging on the cabin was enough to make her heart go pitter-patter. But it wasn’t going to happen, of course. Frowning, she put Sadie on the floor. The little dog stayed close at her heels.

“Is there a phone?” Charlie asked, straightening.

“How can I tell? It’s darker than hell. But I don’t think so. In case you didn’t notice, there weren’t any utility lines around outside.” He had stopped just a few feet inside the door, and seemed to be working on getting his bearings in the nearly pitch dark. Charlie was, perforce, right behind him.

A faint musty smell enveloped her, and it was even darker inside than out, but at least the cabin was warmer than the woods. Now that she was out of the wind, Charlie realized just how strongly it had been blowing. She shivered, then found she couldn’t stop. If she didn’t already have hypothermia, it would be a miracle. Never in her life could she remember being so cold. What she wanted more than anything else on earth—except to go home—was a hot bath and dry clothes.

“I don’t think there’s any electricity either.” Her hand had been groping the rounded log surface of the wall beside the door, instinctively searching for a light switch, but she found nothing.

“I’m not surprised. I think whoever owns this must use it as kind of a hunting camp. I doubt if there’s even running water, or any heat except maybe a woodstove.”

“Can we … ?” At the alluring image this brought to mind, she momentarily perked up.

“Nope. Smoke.”

“Right.” She drooped, wrapping her free arm around herself in a futile attempt to seek warmth. Since her arm was as wet and cold as the rest of her, it didn’t help.

Jake closed the door, and started hauling her about the cabin after him as he subjected the premises to a search with the aid of the luminous blue dial of his wristwatch. It was no more than a single room, perhaps twelve by fourteen feet, lacking even a bathroom and furnished with what seemed to be the barest of necessities. Stumbling blindly in his wake, Charlie finally stubbed her toe on a metal furniture leg, cried out, and decided to call a halt right there. Feeling for the cause of her pain, she discovered a bed, and sank down on the corner of it, already anticipating the jerk on her wrist as he was forced to stop. She could sense rather than see his frown as he turned.

“That’s it,” she said, narrowing her eyes at him although she was aware that it was too dark for him to see her expression. “I’m not moving another inch. I stubbed my toe, and I’m putting you on notice right now that you owe me a pair of five hundred dollar, black, ostrich-skin cowboy boots.”

“You want to blame me? Fine.” His impatience was obvious in his tone.

Ignoring his looming presence, no longer caring one whit if he didn’t like what she was doing, she pulled the thin trouser sock from her damaged foot and massaged her throbbing toe. Jake loomed for a second or two longer, then apparently abandoned all thought of intimidating her into motion and moved toward the head of the bed. He stopped before he had quite reached the end of his tether but far enough away to cause her arm to hang in the air. Ignoring this indignity, Charlie heard the sound of a drawer being opened. Not that she cared. Her toe really hurt.

“Bingo,” he said.

A sudden brightness made her blink. Startled, Charlie glanced around. Jake had found a flashlight, and was aiming its beam at the floor. By its light, she could see several things: cheap gray-flecked linoleum rendered even more unappealing by Jake’s muddy footprints smeared across it, his big feet in their black socks, and part of the metal bedframe, box spring and thin ticking-stripe mattress of the bare bed on which she sat.

“Oh, goody.” If her response was unenthused, it was because she felt unenthused. She’d gotten excited when he said
bingo,
expecting some really momentous discovery such as a working telephone, and in that context a flashlight just didn’t cut it. Looking at it disparagingly, she bethought herself of something and felt a renewed upsurge of fear. “Won’t they see the light?”

“It’s not bright enough. Anyway, the windows all have blinds.” He had already moved on to a chest beside the bed. Charlie gave a long-suffering sigh as her arm
was stretched in a different direction, and pulled the sock from her other foot. This one tingled and throbbed too, and ached as if deeply bruised when she rubbed it.

“Hey, look at this.”

Something landed on the bed behind her. Charlie glanced around. After the flashlight, she didn’t expect much. Jake was already walking toward her, and the flashlight played over his find: a pair of oversize brown plaid bermuda shorts, some ratty-looking gray sweatpants, a faded green flannel shirt big enough to serve as a tent, and a moth-eaten blue blanket.

“Feel like slipping into something more comfortable?”

Her upsurge of enthusiasm suddenly fell flat.

“You’re forgetting the handcuffs,” she said. Showing her dry clothes when she couldn’t get them on was rather like strewing seed just outside a hungry bird’s cage: cruel.

“No, I’m not. How could I?” He crouched in front of her, placing the flashlight on the floor so that the beam provided just enough illumination to allow them to see each other and the small circle of their immediate surroundings. With a flicker of surprise, Charlie watched him pull a screwdriver and a hammer from the pocket of his soaked black coat.

“They were in the drawer with the flashlight,” he said in answer to her look. “There are more tools, too, but these are what we need. Get down here on the floor, and let’s see if I can get these handcuffs off.”

The thought was so alluring that, for the first time in quite a while, Charlie moved with alacrity. She slid off the bed onto her knees. Sadie, who’d been sitting at her
feet, sidled under the bed, where she lay down, propping her muzzle on her paws and watching the proceedings with apparent interest Jake paid no attention to their audience as he positioned Charlie’s hand flat on the linoleum, then maneuvered the screwdriver until the business end was wedged into the place where the chain was linked with the cuff.

“Don’t move now.”

Before Charlie had quite worked out the implications of that, he brought the hammer down on the head of the screwdriver with enough force to jar her bones all the way from her wrist to her teeth—and split the link cleanly in two. She snatched her newly freed hand out of harm’s way, shook it in an attempt to get rid of the tingly feeling that ricocheted back down from her teeth to the ends of her fingers, and stared at him with real approval.

“Jake,” she said, impressed. “You’re a god.”

“Well, I like to think so,” he replied with becoming modesty, then grinned and stood up, stretching his arms wide. She stood up, too, and immediately shrugged out of her soaked suede jacket It landed on the floor with a wet-sounding plop. Getting rid of it felt wonderful. She had not realized how heavy it was until her shoulders were suddenly free of the burden.

Jake had stopped stretching and was frowning at her.

“You’re as blue as a Smurf.”

“Yes, well, freezing to death does seem to have that effect on people, I’ve heard.”

Paradoxically, the tartness of her voice seemed to ease his concern.

“Here, get those wet clothes off and put these on.” He
reached behind her, picked up the shirt and sweats, and thrust them at her.

Charlie took them with fingers that felt clumsy because they were still so cold, then hesitated, glancing up at him. What was left was slim pickings. “What about you?”

“I’ll make do with the shorts and blanket. That way, if we end up hitchhiking, it won’t be any trouble for me to stick out a leg.” He smiled then, a funny, charming smile, with his mouth turning up crookedly and his eyes crinkling. It occurred to Charlie with some force that he was one hot, sexy guy. “Don’t argue. Strip.”

She frowned. “Turn around.”

Dazzling as the idea of dry clothes was, she was not stripping with him just standing there watching. Especially not after the unsettling little epiphany she’d just had.

There was the way he was looking at her, too. His gaze was moving over her with an arrested expression as if he were really seeing her for the first time. Glancing down at herself, she realized that her black T-shirt with the Sugar Babes legend was wet through, and clung to the firm globes of her breasts like a second skin. Her nipples were hardened and puckered from the cold, and thrust boldly through the stretchy cotton and the flimsy nylon bra that covered them. His gaze lingered on her breasts for a moment, she noticed, then slid swiftly down over her slim waist, narrow hips, and long, slender legs.

Charlie’s eyes widened and her mouth went dry as it occurred to her that her partner in extreme survival was checking her out.

When his gaze lifted seconds later and their eyes met, the expression in his made her heart skip a beat. Raw sexual heat flared out at her before he abruptly turned his back.

“So strip already,” he said in a tone that was faintly grim. “And hurry up. Under the circumstances it’s not smart to spend too much time in one place.”

10

“W
ANT TO EXPLAIN
S
UGAR
B
ABES?”

It was the first thing he’d said to her in the minute or so that had passed since he’d started undressing. During that time, he had shed his coat and shirt—it was a pullover sweatshirt, Charlie had discovered, watching with fascination as he tugged it over his head—and he was currently in the process of unbuckling his belt. The question was directed at her without his ever looking around. Charlie was so mesmerized by the striptease taking place in front of her that it took her a couple of seconds to realize that he was talking about the writing on her T-shirt.

“Oh—I’m a singer. My sister and I perform as the Sugar Babes.” His back was magnificent, she thought. Really, really magnificent. Broad shouldered and deeply tanned, with muscles that flexed every time he moved, it was mouthwatering enough that just looking at it made her forget that she was supposed to be removing her own wet clothes as well.

“Older or younger sister?” His biceps flexed as he stood on first one foot and then the other to pull off his socks. They were great biceps, she thought. The kind of biceps that women salivate over.

“Older. There are only the two of us. And my mom. My dad died five years ago.” Realizing that he was almost finished undressing and she hadn’t even started, Charlie hurriedly pulled her T-shirt over her head and dropped it on the floor. Unbelievably, she was even colder without the soaked shirt than she had been with it. Fortunately her hair was very nearly dry. Shaking it back from her face, rubbing her hands briskly up and down her goose-pimpled arms, she cast him a quick look to make sure that his back stayed firmly turned—not that the idea of being naked in front of him didn’t turn her on, because it did, but she barely knew the man, after all, and she didn’t think she was quite ready to take that particular step—then discarded her bra and pulled on soft, dry flannel.

It was pure bliss.

“So how old are you?” he asked.

“Twenty-seven. What about you?”

“Thirty-four.”

“Old man.” She said it teasingly.

With another quick look at him, she shed her jeans along with her panties, then quickly pulled her knees up to her chest inside the voluminous shirt, which covered her well enough in that position so that only her small bare toes peeked out.