Two Alone Read Online Free

check their pulses?" He watched the taint color in her cheeks fade and gave her a twisted smile of ridicule. "That's what I thought."
    "I got you out, didn't I?"
    "Yeah," he said dryly, "you got me out."
    She didn't expect him to kiss her hands for saving his life, but a simple thank-you would have been nice. "You're an ungrateful—"
    "Save it." he said.
    She watched him lever himself away from the tree and stagger inward the demolished aircraft, pushing aside the branches of the tree with much more strength than she could have garnered in a month.
    Sinking down onto the marshy ground, she rested her head on her raised knees, tempted to cry. She could hear him moving about in the cabin. When she raised her head and looked, she saw him through the missing windshield of the detached cockpit. He was emotionlessly moving his hands over the bodies of the pilots.
    Minutes later, he thrashed his way through the fallen tree. " You were right. They're all dead."
    How did he expect her to respond? Nah-nah-nah? H e dropped a white first-aid box onto the ground and knelt beside it. He took o ut a bottle of aspirin and tossed three of them down his throat, swallowing them dry. "Come here," he ordered her rudely. She sco oted forward and he handed her a flashlight. "Shine that directly into my eyes, one at a time, and tell me what happens."
    She switched on the flashlight. "The glass over the bulb was cracked, but it still worked. She shone the light directly into his right eye, then the left. "The pupils contract."
    He took the flashlight away from her and clicked it off. "Good. No concussion. Just a rotten headache. You okay?"
    "I think so."
    He looked at her skeptically, but nodded.
    "My names Rusty Carlson," she said politely.
    He barked a short laugh. His eyes moved up to take in her hair. "Rusty, huh?"
    "Yes, Rusty." she replied testily.
    "Figures."
    The man had the manners of a pig. "Do you have a name?"
    "Yeah, I've got a name. Cooper Landry. But this isn't a garden par t y so forgive me if I don't tip my hat and say, ‘ Pleased to meet you. ’ "
    For two lone survivors of a disastrous plane crash, they were off to a bad beginning. Right now Rusty wanted to be comforted, reassured that she was alive and would go on living. All she'd gotten from him was scorn, which was unwarranted.
    "What's with you?" she demanded angrily. "You act as though the crash was my fault."
    "Maybe it was."
    She gasped with incredulity. "What? I was hardly responsible for the storm."
    "No, but if you hadn't dragged out that emotional, tearful goodbye to your sugar daddy, we might have beat it. What made you decide to leave ahead of him—the two of you have a lovers' spat?"
    "None of your damned business," she said through teeth that bad been straightened to perfection by an expensive orthodontist.
    His expression didn't alter. "And you had no business being in a place like that—" his eyes roved over her "—being the kind of woman you are."
    "What kind of woman is that?"
    "Drop it. Let's just say that I'd be better off without you."
    Havi ng said that, he slid a lethal- looking hunting knife from the leather scabbard attached to his belt. Rusty wondered if he was going to cut her throat with it and rid himself of the inconvenience she posed. Instead, he turned and began hacking at the smaller branches of the tree, cutting a cleaner path to make the fuselage more accessible.
    "What are you going to do?"
    "I have to get them out."
    "The...the others? Why?"
    "Unless you want to be roommates with them."
    "You're going to bury them?"
    "That's the idea. Got a better one?"
    No, of course she didn't, so she said nothing.
    Cooper Landry hacked his way through the tree until only the major branches were left. They were easier to step around and over.
    Rusty, making herself useful by dragging aside the branches is he cut them, asked, "We're staying here then?"
    "For the time being, yeah." Having cleared a path of sorts, he slipped into the fuselage and signaled