LITMIR.BIZ

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nudged his share of the corn chips toward him. “You’d better eat up. You’re going to need all your strength to help me drag your butt out of these woods.”

      As she and Talbot finished the last of the apple and chips, Elizabeth fought myriad emotions. She was angry with him for not filing a flight plan, for not taking precautions. How utterly like him to assume he could control, could handle the entire world all on his own.

      However, Elizabeth knew not to give in to the emotional pulls, knew that a lot of energy could be wasted being angry. And she needed every ounce of energy she had to get them out of these damn woods.

      “You ready?” she asked when they’d finished eating.

      “You’re angry with me.” He struggled to his feet.

      “Don’t be ridiculous,” Elizabeth scoffed. “What makes you think I’m angry?”

      “You have a little twitch next to your right eyebrow. I’ve noticed it before when you’re mad.”

      Elizabeth reached up and touched her eyebrow. She started to protest, then changed her mind. “Okay, maybe I’m a little bit irritated,” she confessed.

      “Don’t you ever vent?” he asked, more than a touch of irritation in his own voice. “When you get angry, don’t you ever scream and rage, throw things and curse?”

      “What would be the point?” Elizabeth snapped her suitcase closed and also stood. “Ranting and raving never solved anything. I learned very early in life that venting only gets you into trouble. Besides, you should talk. I’ve never seen you lose your cool. I always found that annoying about you.”

      “Let’s not start listing the things we find annoying about each other. It would take far too long, and we need to get out of here.” He took a step, then grimaced with pain.

      Elizabeth once again moved beneath his arm, allowing him to lean on her enough to take some of his weight off his injured knee. Instantly she felt the warmth of his body transferring to her, an oddly intimate sensation that set her frayed nerves further on edge.

      “Which way should we go?” she asked him, trying to ignore that, despite an escape from a plane crash and a night spent in the woods, he still smelled good.

      He frowned and gazed around them, then pointed in the direction of the wrecked plane. “I think we should go that way,” he said.

      “Are you sure?” Elizabeth asked.

      “Hell no, I’m not sure, but it’s my best guess,” he replied, his voice containing a surly edge.

      “Fine,” Elizabeth retorted. “And getting grouchy isn’t going to make your knee feel any better or make a rescue team suddenly appear.”

      “Let’s just go,” he said, but this time his voice held only weary resignation.

      They took off walking, Elizabeth supporting him as much as possible. It was slow going, and neither of them made any effort to talk.

      The trees were close together, the underbrush thick and tangled. Squirrels jumped from tree to tree, chattering their anger at the intruders in their domain.

      Elizabeth tried to focus on their surroundings, but Talbot’s nearness was overwhelming. His arm was around her and his body was pressed against hers as they made their way through the forest, and the strength and firmness of his body somehow didn’t surprise her.

      She’d always secretly admired Talbot’s broad shoulders, slim hips and the stomach that held not one ounce of fat. She wondered what it would be like to be held in his strong arms, not in an effort to help him walk, but held tightly against him in a moment of desire.

      She stumbled over a half-exposed thick vine and gasped as Talbot caught her and steadied her against his impossibly firm chest. “Are you all right?” His breath was warm against the top of her head, and she stepped away from him as if he’d breathed fire into her hair.

      “I’m fine.” She drew a deep, steadying breath. “Why don’t we take a break?”

      “Sounds good to me,” he readily agreed, and together they sank to the ground facing each other.

      “How’s your knee?” she asked. She wanted, needed conversation to take her mind off the feel of his chest against her own.

      “Sore,” he confessed.

      She frowned thoughtfully. “I hope you aren’t doing further damage by walking on it.”

      “I don’t have much choice.” He frowned and raked a hand through his hair. Elizabeth noticed the dark stubble that shadowed his cheeks and chin, a growth of whiskers that merely added to his attractiveness. “I’m sorry, Elizabeth. About all of this.”

      She gazed at him in surprise, waiting for a cutting remark, a touch of sarcasm, a subtle indication that somehow everything that happened was her fault. There was none of those things. His eyes showed genuine contrition.

      “There’s nothing to apologize for.” She pulled her knees up to her chest and wrapped her arms around them, still looking at him. “You didn’t crash your plane on purpose, right?”

      “Right, but I do intend to have a conversation with my mechanic.” The hard glitter in his eyes made her grateful she didn’t have the responsibility of maintaining Talbot’s plane.

      “So, tell me about Twin Oaks. Why did Richard want to take Andrew there so badly? Why did he want me to meet him there?”

      Talbot leaned back against a tree and extended his legs in front of him. “I can only guess what Richard thinks by the conversation we had before he left. I told you, the last week or so he’s been pretty introspective, and when he does talk, it’s been about Twin Oaks. Twin Oaks was the place of our childhood, a time in our lives when everything seemed wonderfully right.”

      Elizabeth leaned forward, captured by his words, by the very idea of a childhood where everything seemed “wonderfully right” when her own childhood had been so horrifically wrong. “Tell me about it,” she urged.

      His features relaxed and a smile curved his lips, letting her know his memories were pleasant ones. “Twin Oaks is so tiny it doesn’t even warrant a dot on a map. We lived there until we moved to Morning View, Kansas. That was a year before our mom and dad’s deaths. Twin Oaks is the kind of town where everyone knows everyone else and there’re lots of potluck dinners and town gatherings.”

      “Sounds lovely.” And what was even lovelier than his words was the warmth that emanated from his smile. She’d never before bathed in the warmth of Talbot’s smile, and it was a distinctly pleasant experience.

      “It was,” he said. “I remember it as the only time in my life when I was carefree, and the biggest responsibility I had was going to school.” His smile widened and his eyes lit with humor. “And my biggest worry was if Mom was going to make another of her terrible surprise casseroles for dinner.”

      Elizabeth gazed at him thoughtfully, suddenly realizing the burden that had been placed on him by his parents’ untimely death. “It must have been hard for you to be twenty-one and suddenly responsible for a fourteen-year-old.”

      He shrugged, the smile gone. “The way I saw it at the time there wasn’t any choice. I became responsible for Richard, or I let him become a ward of the state and go into foster care. He’s my brother and I could never allow that to happen.”

      He got to his feet. “We should get moving,” he said, and in his words she heard him slam the door to any discussion about his past.

      Still, as they continued to walk, Elizabeth found herself thinking about the twenty-one-year-old Talbot taking on the role of parent for his younger brother.

      When most young people were exploring their first real breath of freedom and adulthood, going to clubs and dating, Talbot had taken the reins of his father’s company and accepted the responsibility for a teenage brother.

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