“WHY AREN’T YOU married?”
Taylor laughed at the odd question and snuggled closer to Brian. They were sprawled on the sleeping bag, with the parachute draped over them. They’d spent the past six days sitting or lying together in the dark, because the more they moved around, the more calories they used, and they didn’t have any to spare.
At least it wasn’t pitch-black inside. Once Brian had trimmed away the spruce branches on the inside of the cave, they could see the trunk hadn’t completely sealed the opening. A quarter-inch stream of light seeped through at the top.
It occurred to Taylor that they might have suffocated without that opening. Besides allowing air inside, the narrow slit permitted them to tell night from day, and to observe that the forest fire had burned out as far as they could see. The smoke was gone. The sky was blue. But the landscape had been reduced to charred ashes and skeleton trees. Devastation and desolation. No birds. No chipmunks or squirrels. No elk or moose or bears. Nothing living remained.
“We could barely tell there was a cave here before that tree came down,” Taylor said. “How is anyone going to find us with that enormous tree blocking the opening?”
“Once I chip away enough of that spruce, we can shove part of the parachute out. It’ll be a white flag on black soot. For anyone hunting from the air, it’ll make something big to spot.”
Taylor’s stomach growled, and she looked to see if Brian had noticed. She hadn’t yet turned out the headlamp after her early morning trip to the back of the cave, despite the knowledge that the batteries couldn’t last. It was one more reason to be anxious.
Brian was stretched out with his head on his PG bag and his arm up across his eyes. If he’d noticed her stomach protesting, he wasn’t saying anything. What was there to say? They were running out of food.
For the first time in her life, Taylor was truly starving. The sun had risen on their seventh day of captivity. Her stomach growled again.
Brian chuckled and said, “Insistent little bugger. Wants to be fed, I suppose.”
“If I’m hungry, you must be starved.”
“Don’t change the subject.”
“What’s the subject?”
“Why aren’t you married?”
“I’d rather talk about food. Or the lack of it. We’re running out, Brian. What are we going to do?”
“Since there’s nothing we can do, I prefer to talk about other things. Like why you didn’t marry one of those three guys you had on the hook.”
“Do you realize that all we’ve eaten—between us—in six days, not counting that steak and potato, are two cans of beans, a granola bar, and an apple? That all we have left is two Snickers bars, and we’re going to eat one of those for breakfast?”
“We still have six packets of coffee.”
They’d used the frying pan to heat water to make hot coffee, and had shared a cup each day before they’d eaten their single meal, so their stomachs wouldn’t realize how empty they were.
We really are going to starve. We should have eaten less. We shouldn’t have been so greedy the past six days. We should have spread out our food to make it last longer.
Taylor was silent so long Brian prompted, “Well? Why aren’t you somebody’s wife?”
Instead of answering his question, Taylor reached up and turned off the headlamp and set it aside. They’d kept the headlamp off except to make meals or trips to the latrine, to treat Brian’s wounds, and to allow him to mark the passing of each day by writing in the small notebook from his PG bag. Today, he hadn’t even done that.
Taylor laid her ear against Brian’s heart—she found its steady beat calming—and said, “Why do you care why I’m not married?”
“I just wondered.”
“I could say ‘nobody’s asked’ but you’d know I was lying.” All three of her engagements had been announced not only in The New York Times but in the daily Jackson Hole News & Guide. “I suppose the truth is ‘the right person hasn’t asked.’ ”
“What was wrong with the three guys who gave you a ring?”
Taylor shrugged. She knew Brian could feel the gesture because they were lying so close. She’d spent all her waking hours talking about stupid stuff that didn’t matter, until her throat was raw and sore, because talking about anything more significant suggested that she’d accepted the inevitability of their deaths. She didn’t want to talk about important things, like why she’d stayed single instead of marrying one of the three men who’d professed to love her. She didn’t want to accept the fact that her life might be ending when she had this awful, aching hole inside her that had never been filled.
So she said, “I’m dying for a Pinky G’s pizza with sausage and pepperoni.”
“Personally, I could go for a Liberty’s bacon cheeseburger and sweet potato fries.”
“I keep thinking of all the hungry children in Africa, and how Leah used them as a reason for us to clean our plates. I never really understood what it meant to be hungry.”
“Now you do?” Brian asked.
“I’m starting to. I can’t imagine living an entire life—start to finish—like this.”
She fell silent, with the question Brian had asked hanging between them. She gritted her teeth and pressed her lips flat. She wasn’t going to speak. She was going to keep her mouth shut and her problems private. This was Brian Flynn. What if they did get out of here? Imagine the ammunition he would have to make her life miserable.
The silence stretched between them in the darkness.
At last Brian asked, “What’s wrong, Tag?”
“You mean aside from the obvious?”
“You’ve been talking nonstop since we got stuck in here. I worry when you’re quiet.”
While she’d been blabbering away about clothes and makeup and vacations she’d taken and holidays with her sisters—innocuous facts about her life that didn’t matter—Brian had been content to listen. Suddenly, he was probing for very private, very personal information about her three engagements.
What’s changed?
She didn’t like the answer that came to mind.
Brian doesn’t think we’re going to be found. He believes we’re going to die of starvation. He just doesn’t want to frighten me by admitting it aloud.
If all hope was gone, there was no longer any reason to keep anything from him. She took a deep breath, a breath of inevitability, and let it out.
“Shall I discuss the prime specimens of manhood who proposed marriage to me?” she said, breaking the silence.
“By all means.”
“I should get a pass for getting engaged to Joe Bob Trent.”
“Why is that?”
“I was only eighteen, too young and stupid to know better. I think I should get credit for calling that one off.”
“Fair enough. What about Craig Rudolph Hempstead, III? You were twenty-four when I saw that announcement. Educated guy. Yale, according to the paper. Wealthy, due to inherit his father’s copper mines in South America. Athletic, a sailor in the America’s Cup. Philanthropic, supported Greenpeace. What was wrong with him?”
“He hit me.”
She felt Brian’s body go rigid.
“Just once,” she hurried to add. “That was enough. I hightailed it as fast as I could.”
“Good for you. And the third guy? The most recent one?”
Taylor sighed. “Dr. Harold Norwood? Nothing was wrong with him.”
“Then why did you cut old Harry loose?”
“I don’t know. I just…got cold feet.” When Brian made no comment, she added, “You must admit, I don’t have the greatest role models for the institution of marriage. King’s been married and divorced four times. Most of those relationships caused havoc for everyone involved when they ended. My mom was married twice—that I know of—and quit both times. What’s the point of getting married if it’s going to end badly?”
“Who says it has to end badly?”
“Statistics,” she said flatly.
“Then why get engaged in the first place?”
She made a face. “For the obvious reason, of course.”
“What is that?”
Taylor reminded herself that what she said here was never going any further. It was all right to tell Brian her deepest desires, because they were the last thoughts she’d be revealing to anyone. “I want to share my life with someone who loves me as much as I love him.”
“And none of those guys loved you?” He sounded incredulous.
When she didn’t speak he said, “Oh. I see. You didn’t love any of them. If that was the case, why get engaged?”
In a small voice she said, “I think there’s something wrong with me.”
“What are you talking about?”
“I want to be in love. I just…don’t trust a man to keep on loving me. I figure he’s going to get tired of me eventually, so I run before he can.”
“Get tired of you? Are you crazy?”
“Admit it, Brian. If I hadn’t walked away from you in high school, you would have left me eventually.”
“I liked you, Tag. A lot.”
She noticed his use of liked, even though he’d qualified it with a lot. That was a far cry from the love he’d supposedly felt and verbally expressed.
“I was willing to defy Aiden to keep dating you in high school. He thought you were going to hurt me if I stuck around. Turned out he was right.”
“You were hurt when we broke up?” She felt him nod.
“I hadn’t nearly had my fill of you.”
“Be honest. How much longer would we have lasted as a couple?”
“I guess we’ll never know.”
“You sound mad.”
“You didn’t just walk away, Tag. You ran like a scared rabbit. You never gave us a chance. Now I see why. With you it’s ‘Don’t get too close. Don’t love too much. Or I’m out of here.’ I guess I was lucky you left me when you did.”
“I’m sorry if I hurt you, Brian. I did care for you. Too much, maybe.”
“Why didn’t you say something at the time?”
She put a palm to his bristly cheek. “I guess I was afraid.”
“Of what?”
“That if I stayed, the pain of losing you would be devastating.” She put a hand to his lips to keep him from interrupting. “When I thought the plane was going to crash and I might die, the thing I regretted most in my life was walking—all right, running—away from you in high school. I thought about what I might say to you if I got a second chance.”
He eased her hand away from his lips and took it in his own. “What would that be?”
“That I wish we could try again. That there was a spark of…something…between us I think can be rekindled.”
She felt his body stiffen. “You have feelings for me? Now? Still?”
“Leftover feelings. Unfinished feelings. ‘Wonder if we could ever recapture what we had’ feelings.”
He eased her head off his shoulder onto the T-shirt she was using as a pillow and sat up. “I don’t want to hear this. Not now. Not when it’s too late.”
His words confirmed their fate, the impending doom that had loosened her tongue. Their lives would end in this cave. She understood Brian’s frustration. Why consider what might have happened between them, when there was no happily ever after to be had?
Brian held up his wrist so he could see the face of his watch, which glowed in the dark. “We missed breakfast. And lunch. You want to eat something now, or wait until later?”
She sat up, aware that, once again, she’d done most of the talking. Did Brian still have feelings for her? If he did, he wasn’t admitting to them. Not even when he wouldn’t have to act on them. She hadn’t believed she could be hurt. But she was. She wasn’t sure what she’d wanted him to say. Whatever it was, he hadn’t said it. He hadn’t said anything.
“Maybe we shouldn’t eat anything today,” she suggested.
“We keep eating until there’s no food. I’ll get a Snickers for us to split.”
He hissed in a breath when he angled his leg to get up and she said, “We should check your wound first.”
“Yeah. Okay.”
She retrieved the headlamp and turned it on. “How does your leg feel?”
“It hurts.”
His jeans had been shredded by the grizzly at the spot of the wound, but the second time she’d treated him, he’d ripped the opening wider, so he wouldn’t continually have to strip. She aimed her headlamp at the wound and asked, “Does it feel better or worse than yesterday?”
Taylor had been worried that Brian’s wounds would get infected, and she’d been insistent about cleaning the four claw marks with Jack Daniel’s—for its antiseptic effect—and applying Neosporin at least twice each day. Unfortunately, they’d run out of Neosporin two days ago, and there was only a swallow or two of Jack Daniel’s left in the plastic bottle.
“My skin feels tight,” Brian said.
That likely meant the wounds were swollen. Swelling was one of the signs of infection. She pressed a fingertip against a red spot near the deepest gash.
“Ouch! Take it easy.”
“I don’t like the looks of that fourth gash.”
“I don’t much like it, either,” he said. “But there’s no pus, so I don’t think it’s infected.”
Taylor wasn’t so sure. She reached over to press her hand against his forehead to check for fever, but he swatted it away.
“I’m fine, Tag. Don’t fuss.”
His body always felt warm to her, but she made a note to feel his skin the next time they were lying close together to see if she could detect more warmth than usual. “I should put—”
“The whole thing’s scabbed over,” he said irritably. “I don’t think we should waste the last of the whiskey. I’d rather drink it than pour it over my leg.”
Taylor couldn’t disagree. A scab had formed over each of the four stripes, but she didn’t like the tenderness around the deepest wound. “All right,” she said at last. “But if the swelling gets worse, let me know.”
“Roger that. Your turn to yell your lungs out? Or mine?”
“Yours. But let’s eat first.”
They’d been taking turns, once every half hour during the daylight, crawling up to the cave opening and shouting for help for three minutes, in hopes that someone doing a grid search would hear and rescue them. So far, neither of them had detected any sound at all on the other side of the tree trunk—not even a birdcall or the skitter of a small animal.
Whoever was doing the yelling also used that three minutes to pry away slivers along the top of the trunk with Brian’s Swiss army knife, expanding the opening a little bit more each time.
Brian unwrapped the Snickers bar and cut it in half. “I have to admit, when you’re hungry, something full of sugar hits the spot.”
“Think of all the protein we’re getting from the peanuts,” Taylor said with a wry grin.
She nibbled at the chocolate and nougat and peanuts, relishing the sweetness on her tongue. “You realize all this sugar is just going to make us hungrier in about a half hour.”
“I don’t think I could be any hungrier,” Brian said. “I can’t believe how little energy I have after a week on short rations.”
She decided to broach the elephant in the room. “I wonder if we’re just fooling ourselves. We’re almost out of food, and there’s no sign that anyone out there even knows we’re still alive.”
“I’m making progress on that stump.”
Taylor didn’t point out that the entire tree trunk would need to be gone for either one of them to get out. She licked her fingers to get the last bits of chocolate off them. She turned her headlamp toward Brian and saw a speck of chocolate on the side of his mouth.
“Hold still.” She used her fingertip to catch the chocolate and then pressed it against his lips. “You missed a bit.”
His tongue came out and licked it away.
“I would have kissed it off,” she said, “but then I’d be getting all that sustenance instead of you.”
“I would have been just as happy to retrieve it from your mouth as from your finger.”
Taylor laughed. “Promises, promises. You haven’t kissed me even once since the last time we made love.”
Taylor flushed. She hadn’t brought up the subject of their lovemaking, or rather, the absence of it since their first day in the cave. She wasn’t sure why they hadn’t indulged again. She’d been willing, and she thought Brian had been as well, but neither of them had done anything about it.
“I guess I owe it to myself to see if there’s any more of that chocolate I might vicariously enjoy.” Brian’s hand cupped her nape to draw her close, and his mouth captured hers in a gentle kiss.
She felt a rush of pleasure as he teased her lips apart with his tongue and they tasted each other. Her hands slid into the hair at his nape, and she groaned as his hand cupped her breast.
Abruptly, he let her go. His breathing was uneven, and his eyes glittered with desire.
“Why did you stop?” she asked.
He took another step back and said in a voice harsh with unrequited desire, “I can’t give up hope that we’re getting out of here. I can’t! I refuse to believe otherwise. If we do this, we’re liable to end up with complications neither of us wants.”
Taylor felt a flare of anger, followed by a painful ache in her chest. Obviously, Brian had been listening when she’d admitted to having “feelings” for him. She was appalled to see the result of her openness: he was concerned that she might make demands on him if they were ever free. At the same time, he’d made it more than clear—by his silence—that he had no intention of making any kind of commitment to her.
“Don’t worry, Brian,” she said, her voice filled with scorn. “I won’t expect a proposal. Or a ring I’d eventually have to give back.”
He grabbed her by her arms and shook her. “Damn it, Taylor! You aren’t thinking straight. I didn’t see a package of pills come out of your pocket. What if you get pregnant?”
She didn’t have the heart to tell him that she hadn’t been taking pills since she’d broken up with good old Harry.
“The chances—” she began.
“It might not happen,” he interrupted. “It probably won’t happen. But what if it did? I don’t want either of us to be forced into a marriage we don’t want. Or end up fighting over custody of a child.”
She opened her mouth to speak, but before she could, he added, “And I wouldn’t want you to end the pregnancy.”
He let go of her and said, “I love having you close, but it’s been hell keeping my hands off you. I’m not pushing you away because I don’t want you. I want you all the time.” He shoved a hand through his hair, leaving it askew. “I’m trying to be reasonable here.”
She was shocked. And pleased. And confused.
He wanted her? He couldn’t keep his hands off her? Was his desire merely physical? Or were there emotions attached? And who said they had to be reasonable? Especially at a time like this?
“All right,” she conceded. “No sex. But I don’t see why we can’t enjoy a little kissing and cuddling.”
Brian scoffed. “You don’t?”
She shook her head.
“Aw, hell. Come here.”
She pulled off the headlamp and stepped into Brian’s open arms. They closed firmly around her, providing comfort and security. That was good enough for now.
He murmured, “If I could survive wanting you in high school without having you, I suppose I can survive wanting you without having you here. Turn that face up to me, so I can kiss you silly.”
Taylor laughed. “I think I reached silly a day or so ago.”
But she made sure he found her lips in the darkness.