Reilly's Woman (9 page)

"I'm not!" Leah protested indignantly.

"Yes, you are, and it's not going to change anything."

"I never said it would," she retorted.

"Then let's stop discussing what happened and be prepared in case the plane flies back this way."

Leah paused. Something in his voice made her ask, "Do you think it will?"

"I don't know." Nothing in his expression revealed what Reilly really thought or believed.

 

 

Chapter Five

 

A CLOUD BLOCKED out the western sun. A halo of gold formed around its gray-white shape, then streamed to earth to bronze the sage-covered ground.

Leah's blouse was damp with perspiration, clinging to her like a second skin. Her arm ached with an agonizing throb. That morning's exertion when she had tried and failed to use it to wave the blanket at the plane had increased its soreness.
 

Wearily she pressed her right hand against her forehead for a few seconds, then lifted her head, her hand pushing the hair away from her face. All day they had waited and the plane had not returned. It was nearing sundown.

Her clouded hazel eyes moved to Reilly, relentlessly watching the sky yet seeming to be miles away in thought. "How long do you think they'll continue looking for us?" She voiced the fear that had been recurring all day.

The remoteness remained in his bland jade eyes as he glanced at her. "It's hard to say. An extensive air search is expensive and time-consuming," he replied. "They'll probably look for a couple more days at most. After that, they'll ask local pilots to keep a lookout for any sign of wreckage and send out one or two search planes of their own."

The knowledge was sobering. The possibility of being stranded in this wilderness for more days seemed probable. Leah knew she couldn't think about that without sinking into a morass of guilt feelings. And Reilly was right, that wouldn't solve anything.

"I think I'll get us something to eat," she murmured.

Food didn't interest her. At lunch, she had chewed indifferently on a stack of beef jerky, knowing that she had to eat something. It was the latter motivation instead of hunger that prompted her to cook the evening meal. The side benefit would be taking her mind off their situation.

After three days, the choice of dried food dishes had dwindled considerably. Leah glanced through the few that remained, searching for one that at least sounded appetizing.

Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Reilly crouching in front of the suitcases. Curious, she shifted slightly to see what he was doing, and her lips parted in surprise. It was her suitcase he had opened and was searching through the contents.

"What do you think you're doing, going through my suitcase?" she challenged, rising angrily to her feet and striding to his side. He didn't even look up. "Those happen to be my personal things and you have no right going through them!"

He set a stack of her lingerie to one side and started going through her assortment of outer clothes. She tried taking them out of his hands to jam them back in her suitcase, but he picked them up and discarded them quicker than she could stop him.

"Did you hear what I said?" she demanded finally.

"I'm not stealing anything," Reilly answered her finally. "I'm trying to find if you have anything suitable for walking."

"You could ask!" Leah retorted bitterly. She tried to fold the items he had discarded. "You don't have to rummage through my things!"

"I've seen women's clothes before. There's no need to let your modesty embarrass you." He held up a pair of corded slacks of wheat tan and a long-sleeved blouse of white with tiny gold and brown diamond patterns crisscrossing it. "These should do."

Leah sat back on her heels, stating at his impassive face bewilderedly. "Should do for what?" she frowned. A piece of his earlier remark came filtering back. "What did you mean 'suitable for walking?'"

"We're leaving," Reilly announced calmly, and turned to her cosmetic case. "Do you have any face cream in here?" he asked as he snapped open the lid.

"Yes." She reached in and picked up the jar. "Why do you want it?" The answer to that wasn't nearly so important when his announcement sank in. "How are we leaving?"

"On foot, of course." He flicked a brief glance at her, then opened the jar and removed a dab of cream with his forefinger, rubbing it experimentally between his finger and thumb. "This cream is going to protect your pale face from the sun."

"On foot? You must be crazy!" Leah stared out over the vast desert mountain wilderness.

"It would be crazier to stay here." The cosmetic case was abandoned as Reilly opened his own suitcase.

"I know you think I'm stupid—" Leah began hotly.

"I think nothing of the sort," Reilly interrupted evenly.

"But I do know," she continued with barely a break, "that when you're lost and people are looking for you, you're supposed to stay in one place and not go wandering off. We don't even know where we are!"

He removed two of his dirty shirts from the suitcase and closed the lid. "I have a rough idea."

"Wonderful," Leah murmured sarcastically. When he rose to his feet she followed as closely as his shadow. "Does that mean we're somewhere in Nevada? I could have made that guess."

Reilly stopped shortly, nearly causing her to run into his broad back. His gaze was hard as steel when he looked at her.

"We're on the east side of the Monitor Range, which would put us roughly sixty miles from the nearest town as the crow flies. In this terrain, on foot, it would probably be ninety miles."

In this emptiness, it seemed impossible that they were even that close to civilization. "We could die out there," Leah argued.

"We could die here," he pointed out.

"Yes, but"—his reply put her off her stride for a second—"here, we at least have a chance of being found, of signalling the next plane."

"When will it come, Leah?" Reilly studied her rebellious yet frightened expression. "Tomorrow? The day after? Three days from now? When?"

"I don't know." Her hand lifted to wave the question aside. "But it will come. My parents and Lonnie won't stop looking until they find me. I know they won't!"

"I agree, but time is still the factor."

"Why?" she demanded.

"Because in three, maybe four more days we won't have the food, the water, or the strength to walk out of here." The lowness of his voice, his calmness, seemed designed to impress on her the gravity of their situation.

Wildly, she looked up the slope in the direction where he had said he had found the water. "But—"

"The water I found in the rock basin is drying up," Reilly explained. "It's evaporating in this heat."

Foolishly Leah had regarded their water supply as inexhaustible. She had forgotten Reilly's comment that water was invaluable in desert terrain.

A tide of helplessness washed over her. "You should have told me."

"Perhaps." Reilly adopted the same indifferent attitude about discussing what had already been done as he had when Leah had used all the water to wash her feet. What had been done was done, and as far as he was concerned, there was no purpose in rehashing the reason.

"If we tried to walk for help," Leah still didn't endorse the idea despite the logic of Reilly's reasons, "how would we know which way to go?"

"We'll go south."

"Why?" she persisted stubbornly. "Why not west? When we flew off course, we came east. Surely we should go back that way."

Reilly breathed in deeply, as if his patience with her questions was thinning. "The mountain ranges run in a north-south line. I don't know how many of them we would have to cross before we reached either a highway or a town. Finding a safe way over them and down would take too much time. That same reason rules out going east. To the north, I can see mountains. If we went that way, we would have to travel along the ridge. But south, we have a valley. The walking will be easier and we can make better time."

"We could also get lost," Leah point out.

"I won't get lost," he assured her dryly.

His confidence irritated her. He was absolutely positive he was right. With all of her arguments dismissed, she retaliated with lashing sarcasm.

"How stupid of me to forget that you're part Indian," she inserted cuttingly. "Of course you wouldn't get lost."

His carved features darkened ominously. "You're quite right."

She pressed her lips together. Her barb had somehow fallen short of its mark. Exhaling an angry breath, she glanced away.

"I don't care what you think," she muttered. "I don't think we should leave here. The search plane could find us any time."

 
"We're leaving in the morning at first light," Reilly stated calmly.

Leah tossed her head back defiantly meeting his cool gaze. "You can leave if you want. I'm staying here."

"No, you are not." His jaw tightened.

"And how are you going to stop me?" she asked pertly. "I somehow don't think you're strong enough to carry me all the way and I'm certainly not going to go with you willingly. That puts us at something of an impasse, doesn't it? I won't go and you won't leave without me, so that means we'll stay here."

"You're making a mistake." His eyes had narrowed into a lazy, measuring look.

"I don't think so." This time it was she who brimmed with self-confidence.

"All right," he nodded curtly in acceptance. "You can stay here. I'll leave in the morning."

Here eyes widened in amazement. "What?"

"It's probably the best solution anyway. I can make better time without you along and you can be here to signal the plane in case it flies back over this area again. If it doesn't, then within three day's time, at the outside, I shall have reached help and be able to send someone back for you," Reilly concluded, satisfaction gleaming in his eyes.

"You mean you'd leave me—here—alone?" Leah repeated in disbelief.

"It's the logical thing to do. This way we can cover both possibilities for obtaining help." He paused, as if studying the idea more thoroughly. "I'll have to take the canteen with me, but you can use the pan to fetch water. You can keep the dried food with you since I won't have a water supply to depend on. I'll take the beef jerky, though."

"No!"

A black eyebrow shot up in surprise at her vigorous protest, a studied arrogance in the action. "I shall need some food," Reilly commented dryly.

"I don't care about that," Leah frowned. "You aren't honestly going to leave me?"

"Why not?" He tipped his head to one side. "Are you going with me?"

"No."

"Then you must be staying here," he shrugged, and turned away.

Her fingers closed over the hard flesh of his arm, halting him when he would have walked away from her. She stared into his impassive face, lean and compellingly handsome in its proud, carved lines.

"You really would leave me here by myself, wouldn't you?" Leah murmured.

A faintly bemused smile crooked his mouth as if he didn't understand why she had doubted it. "Yes," Reilly answered simply.

"Well, you're sadly mistaken if you think you're going to leave me here alone while you go traipsing off," she vowed. "If you go, then I'm going too."

"But you were going to stay here to signal the plane," he reminded her with a wry shake of his head.

"I'm going with you," Leah stated emphatically. "I don't care how practical it is. You can't make me stay here."

The instant the last sentence was spoken, her teeth bit into her lip in angry memory. Only minutes ago she had been insisting that he couldn't make her go with him in the morning.

"In that case," Reilly drawled, "I guess you'll leave with me."

As he started to turn away, Leah caught the roguish glint in his eyes. "You tricked me," she hissed accusingly. "You never intended to leave me here by myself!"

He paused, an eyebrow raising in a complacent arch, glittering eyes dancing over his face. "Did you really think I would leave my squaw behind?" he mocked with decided jest.

She released his arm, and the open palm of her hand swung in an arc toward the deepening grooves beside his mouth. Reilly didn't attempt to check her slapping swing. He simply drew back so that she missed her target.

When her hand had swished by, he captured her wrist in his fingers, smiling openly at her burst of temper. Leah tried to twist free of his steel grip. Her left arm was throbbing too painfully to be of any help.

He held her easily. Her angry struggles only brought her closer to the firmness of his chest. A throaty chuckle rolled from his lips.

"I don't think it's funny!" Leah tossed back her head to glare at him coldly.

The amusement faded from his gaze as he stared down at her. The brilliant fire that leaped into his eyes dazzled her, halting her attempts to pull free. Her heart skipped a beat when his attention shifted lazily to her mouth.

His thumb slowly rubbed the inside of her wrist. His other hand came up to absently smooth the hair from her face. It stayed to cup the back of her neck. A shiver of anticipation raced up her spine. She was already swaying toward him when his hand exerted pressure to draw her lips to his.