Alaskan Nights (2 page)

Breaking through the surface, Isabella gulped air into her burning lungs.

The plane began to shift.

Wrapping one arm around the man’s neck, she shoved off the side of the plane as hard as she could. The plane continued falling over onto its back and settled to the floor of the lake, completely submerged beneath the water.

Struggling through a one-armed backstroke, she dragged the man’s dead weight with her. Oh, God, please don’t let him be dead. Her toes touched the rocky lake bottom. Heaving, coughing, her limbs shaking from exertion, adrenaline, and the bitterly cold water, she stumbled backwards, dragging the man’s limp body up the gravely beach. Slipping on her cold-numbed feet, she landed hard on her butt, the man draped over her legs, his face against her thigh.

She didn’t feel any breath on her cold, wet skin.

He just lay there, still as death.

Isabella scrambled from under him and rolled him onto his back. Her fingers on his throat, her ear next to his nose, she felt no pulse, heard no breath.

As she’d learned in CPR class, she laced her fingers together and began chest compressions. She’d always been a stickler about keeping up her first aid certifications because of the places she and Cam traveled. There was no way to know if medical help would be nearby. Usually it wasn’t.

On the second compression, a bubble of water expelled from his mouth. Grabbing the front on his shirt, she jerked him onto his side to keep him from choking. He gagged, convulsed as he vomited water, then lay utterly still once again.

He was breathing. She felt for a pulse. His heart was beating, though not very strong.

“Come on, come on, wake up!” She lightly slapped his whisker-roughened cheek.

Nothing.

She glanced up at the cabin from where she sat. It seemed very far away all of a sudden. Rolling the man onto his back, she noticed something off about his left shoulder. She ran her hands over him, and her stomach flip-flopped. Dear Lord, his shoulder was dislocated.

Okay. She’d had to reset Cam’s shoulder once when they’d been in the Andes and he’d taken a fall. He’d talked her through it, though. Biting her bottom lip, she wished he were here now to help her.

Her stomach took another dip.

The man wore an open, red plaid flannel shirt over a black T-shirt. She needed to get him out of the flannel to see better. Heaving him up on his right side, she yanked on his sleeve, trying to pull it off, until she realized that politely removing the soggy shirt would be impossible. She grabbed the sleeve of the shirt and the shoulder and jerked as hard as she could. The sleeve ripped away at the seam.

Okay. Better. She finished removing it and then shoved him down onto his back.

She checked his pulse again. Getting stronger. “Don’t wake up now,” she pleaded. “If you just wait a few minutes, this will be easier on both of us.”

Sitting on her bottom, the gravel digging into her flesh, she positioned her foot in his armpit and wrapped her fingers around his arm just above the wrist. Her stomach threatened to return her breakfast.

“Breathe, Hammond. Breathe,” she instructed herself between chattering teeth. “Come on, Cam, help me here.”

Slow, steady pressure. She pulled, and pulled. His arm gave with a soft pop. The sound made her gag, but it was over. His arm was back where it belonged. With a sob of relief, she raised his arm and tested its movement.

“Okay, okay. You can wake up now,” she told him as she swiped at her tearing eyes with her forearm.

He didn’t move. In fact, he looked very peaceful. Except for the lump over his right eyebrow. Talk about a goose egg. “Don’t you dare die,” she whispered, running her fingers lightly over the bump.

Shivering uncontrollably now, she ran her hands over the rest of his body to check for bones that didn’t feel right. He didn’t seem to be bleeding. Nothing else stuck out at odd angles. Gently spearing her hands through his thick, dark hair, she used her fingertips to check his scalp for more bumps but found none. Just the one on his forehead.

His hair was long, hanging over his collar, very dark brown and soft. He had a diamond stud earring in his left ear. The watch on his left wrist wasn’t overly expensive, but it was waterproof and still ticking.

Isabella said rose up off the gravel, her skin so cold she couldn’t feel the blood that oozed from the scrapes on her knees. She stripped off her waterlogged socks, bra and underwear and pulled on her slightly damp jeans and sweatshirt, then stuck her bare feet into the blessedly almost dry hiking boots.

Rubbing her arms, trying to get some warmth back into her, she wondered what the hell she was supposed to do with him now. She had to get him into the cabin and out of his wet clothes. She didn’t want to save his life just for him to get hypothermia or pneumonia or whatever else he could get from cold-water exposure. Especially if she was going to be stuck with him until her ride returned in three weeks. She didn’t even want to contemplate what kind of sickness he could get from a lungful of untreated lake water.

“Well, I guess this solves my loneliness problem, now doesn’t it?” she muttered, hands on her hips as she stood over him and tried to decide the best way to move him to the cabin. “Please, don’t get up.” She shook her head at her wandering tongue. “Jeez, I’m losing it.”

Clomping up to the cabin in her untied boots, she looked under the building. The small structure sat on four-foot tall stilts, the area beneath serving as a storage area. She’d stashed a blue plastic tarpaulin there when she’d arrived. Originally intended as a rain jacket for her tent if she decided to go off for an overnighter, it would have to do. She didn’t have anything else big enough or strong enough to drag the guy.

Returning to the unconscious man’s side she tried, once again, to wake him. They were only fifty or so feet from the front of the cabin, but he was a big man. Not fat, not at all. In fact, he seemed a little too thin for his size. His cheeks, covered in about two day’s growth of whiskers, were slightly sunken, which enhanced his masculine, almost sensual lips. His stomach, flat and solid, indented slightly below his ribs. He had sinewy arms and a long, lean body. Even his wet, denim-encased thighs looked impressive. Rather handsome, she thought as she stared at his wide shoulders and shapely pecs.

She’d been hauling packs and traipsing through jungles, up mountains and through deserts for ten years with Cam and had always been proud of her physical strength and stamina. Never had she struggled to keep up with her male traveling companions. But after spending a month in a hovel, being fed nothing more than rice and flatbread, drinking water that was tainted with Lord only knew what and having lost a good twenty pounds, she wasn’t exactly up to her physical best.

She’d come here to regain her strength and the missing weight. To eat her fill of all the fresh fish she could catch in the stream and lake, and gorge herself on the potatoes that had been flown in with her. To hike up the hills and around the lake. To strengthen the muscles that had nearly atrophied with cramped quarters and malnutrition.

Dragging around a full-grown man had not been her expected choice of exercise.

Leaning down, hovering over the man’s face, she shouted, “It’s time to wake up!”

Nothing. No response. Not even an eyelid flickered.

What if he never woke up? It wasn’t as if she had any IVs lying around to hook into him. He’d have to eat if he was going to survive. She didn’t know much about head wounds, other than they could kill a person or make them wacko when they did regain consciousness. For all she knew he could be some sort of axe murderer. Memory loss. Amnesia. What if this guy didn’t even know who he was?

Ugh. She had to stop with the imagination.

“Hey! Flyboy!” She patted his cheek again, forcing herself not to actually slap him. She wasn’t the panicking type, but caring for an unconscious guy wasn’t part of her vacation plans.

“Fine,” she muttered as she spread the tarp on the ground next to the man’s still form. Pushing him up on his side, she pulled the tarp under him then laid him back down. Stepping over him, she grabbed his collar and belt loop, and toppled him facedown onto the tarp. Then, for good measure, pressing her shoulder against his side, she shoved at his big body until he was on his back in the center of the tarp. Half reclined against him, sucking cool, damp air into her lungs, she flopped her head back onto his chest.

Ho-boy, was he ever solid. Her heart gave a little flutter at the thought, and she had to laugh at herself. This was ludicrous. He might have an incredible body, but she still had to get him into the cabin.

The tarp was six foot by six foot, and this guy’s feet hung off the end. Damn, they grew them big in Alaska. The pilot who’d dropped her off had been six and half feet tall and built like a redwood.

With more pushing and shoving, she got him diagonal so that he was fully on the thick plastic canvas. By then she was breathing hard and her legs felt like rubber.

Fifty feet to the steps. That’s all.

How in heaven’s name was she going to get him up the stairs? She’d have to worry about that when she got there. Grabbing fistfuls of the tarp, moving backwards, using a lot of the colorful language she’d learned while on a Merchant Marine ship a few years back, she dragged the tarp over the rocky ground.

Halfway there, she stopped to shake the painful cramps out of her fingers and glare down at the inert man. “You couldn’t have been some short, skinny guy could you? Maybe a woman? A little itty-bitty woman?”

She swiped at the damply clinging hair on her cheeks and blew out a frustrated breath. As soon as the stinging ache subsided in her hands, she grabbed the tarp again. “You know...” she huffed as she struggled to drag him closer to the cabin, “if you die on me after this... I swear I’ll never forgive you.”

The heel of her boot caught on a protruding tree root and she landed with a thump on her butt. Her ass was going to be black and blue, but at least she’d made it to the cabin. She crawled over to the bottom step, her lungs straining for breath as she laid her head on her arms. Being so out of shape sucked. She hated the weakness. She hated...the tears gathering in her eyes.

“Stop it, Hammond. One step at a time. The past has nothing to do with this moment.”

The drizzle had slowly turned into a light rain while she’d worried over the man, and she needed to get him inside, out of his wet clothes, and do the same for herself.

“Hey! You in there?” she shouted, lightly slapping his cheek again, hoping something would wake him up.

Peaceful as could be, lying there with the rain dripping on him. If it hadn’t been raining, she would’ve left him outside. But no, he picked the first rainy day in a week to take a nice little flight.

Isabella gathered her strength and stood. Idly glancing around for inspiration, she rolled her shoulders, trying to dispel the tightness in them, but saw nothing that might help her get him up the six steps to the porch. “All right, big guy. I have a feeling your backside’s going to be sore. Don’t blame me.” She’d have to drag him up the steps. There was nothing else to do.

Bending over behind him, she grabbed hold of the shoulders of his shirt and shoved him into a semi-sitting position. Wrapping her arms under his, she laced her fingers together over his chest. Once again she noticed his muscles. Through the wet clothes, his body was warm to the touch, which, she figured, was probably a good sign he wasn’t going into shock. Unless he was developing a fever. Fever could kill.

Shit. Shut the hell up. He’s going to be fine. Just knocked out.

In a coma.

No! Knocked out. Bump on the head.
If she had any ammonia she could have tested her theory, but she didn’t have any. And the small first aid kit inside didn’t have any smelling salts. It didn’t have much of anything.
God, how stupid I was to come here.

One excruciating step at a time, she pulled him up the stairs. The back of his jeans had an annoying habit of catching on the wood. Her back strained, her fingers ached where they were laced together, and her legs shook. “Come on. Come on,” she grunted as she jerked his big body toward the top. Finally reaching the porch, she dragged him back far enough so he sprawled out flat, his big feet dangling off the first step.

She plopped down beside him, leaned against the wall of the cabin, and tried to catch her breath. Her arms and thighs quivered from overexertion. “You better not be some crazed lunatic. I’d hate to have to shoot you after going through all this trouble trying to save your life.”

She watched his chest rise and fall in steady, regular breaths. Laying a finger against his throat, she felt his pulse. Much stronger now, but when she lifted his hand off his chest and dropped it, it plopped limp on the wooden-slat floor. Nice hands, she thought idly as she placed it back to his chest, letting her finger trail down over his. Long, lean fingers. Wide, square palm. Clean nails, short and blunt. Just a sprinkling of dark hair on the back and knuckles.

“I’m losing it. Admiring an unconscious guy’s hands. Maybe it’s a good thing you showed up, because I think I’m going a bit nuts. Mosquitoes and horseflies don’t carry on much of a conversation. But then again...” She laughed a bit hysterically. “…neither do you.”