Reflecting on the unsettling changes that had come over her, Joey slipped out of the sleeping bag long enough to don the shirt and sweater Luke had indicated in the rear of the cave. There were no underclothes and nothing to cover her legs, Joey felt as if she were swimming in the shirt and sweater, which reached well down her thighs But it was definitely better than nothing. She snuggled quickly back into the bag.
Lost in her thoughts, Joey didn’t hear Luke at first when he returned, brushing snow from his clothing. He tossed his hair out of his eyes and gazed down at her with a frown. Joey felt his anxiety like a physical thing in the brief moment that their gazes locked. What he saw in her face seemed to satisfy him, for he turned away again and busied himself with setting up a small fire just outside the mouth of the cave.
Joey knew in that moment her feelings had been right. They might be crazy, but they were most definitely right. She smiled to herself as she watched Luke coax a fire into life, cursing softly under his breath when he was forced to use several matches before he got it to catch. Even the slight heat of the newborn flames was a real comfort, as Luke moved away from the entrance, Joey could see where he’d made a kind of wall out of the tent just beyond the fire, blocking the wind and leaving space for smoke to escape.
Luke worked quietly and steadily, pulling gear from the packs and dumping fresh water he’d found into the largest of the pots, setting it to heat over the fire. He strung a cord between outcroppings on the cave wall and hung her damp clothes to dry. After he had done all the small things necessary to make an overnight stay as comfortable as possible, he brought an assortment of food over to Joey and crouched beside her to offer it.
Even the most dry and tasteless trail food was immensely tempting. By the time she had finished, the water was boiling, and Luke made her mugs of steaming tea and bouillon, insisting that she drink several until she protested she could not hold another drop.
Luke returned to check the fire, and Joey sank back into the sleeping bag, warmed inside and out. Whatever the effects of hypothermia, she seemed to have gotten off lightly, she felt incredibly good. Good enough so that her eyes found their way without hesitation to Luke’s back where he crouched by the mouth of the cave, gazing out into the darkness and swirling snow.
She thought again of the lean hardness of his legs touching hers, the arch of his hipbones, the flat planes of his belly, and the strength of his arms about her. He was wearing only a shirt and pants now, not even so much as a sweater, and she wondered at his ability to endure the cold, as she had wondered about so many other things. Having cared for her so well, he sat stubbornly across the length of the cave and seemed very far away. Too far.
“Luke,” she called softly.
He stiffened.
“Oh, don’t be so blasted antisocial for a change! I liked it better when you were friendly.” She knew it was the wrong tack when he stayed quite rigidly where he was, stirring at the fire with a half-burned twig. An errant snowflake escaped the heat of the fire and crossed the daunting distance to settle on his hair.
“Please,” she coaxed at last. “Won’t you come over here? You may think it impresses me to show how immune you are to cold and hunger and the things that affect us mere mortals, but it only makes me feel inferior. You don’t want to do that, do you?”
There was a slow relaxation of the taut muscles of his back, visible through the thin wool of the shirt. At first he was silent, then, with a slow shrug, he turned his face half toward her, so that his profile was illuminated by the fire against the backdrop of the tent beyond. “No. I wouldn’t want to do that.”