The Complete Mackenzie Collection Read online

  Suddenly he jerked his head back. “I don’t believe this,” he muttered. Reaching up, he prised her arms from around his neck and set her away from him. He looked even more savage than he had a moment before, the veins standing out in his neck. “Stay here,” he barked. “Don’t move an inch. I have to check the plane.”

  He left her standing there in the sand, in the growing twilight, suddenly cold all the way down to the bone. Deprived of his warmth, his strength, her legs slowly collapsed, and she sank to the ground.

  Chance swore to himself, steadily and with blistering heat, as he checked the plane for fuel leaks and other damage. He had deliberately made the landing rougher than necessary, and the plane had a reinforced landing gear as well as extra protection for the fuel lines and tank, but a smart pilot didn’t take anything for granted. He had to check the plane, had to stay in character.

  He didn’t want to stay in character. He wanted to back her against one of those big boulders and lift her skirt. Damn! What was wrong with him? In the past fifteen years he’d held a lot of beautiful, deadly women in his arms, and even though he let his body respond, his mind had always remained cool. Sunny Miller wasn’t the most beautiful, not by a long shot; she was more gamine than goddess, with bright eyes that invited laughter rather than seduction. So why was he so hot to get into her pants?

  “Why” didn’t matter, he angrily reminded himself. Okay, so his attraction to her was unexpected; it was an advantage, something to be used. He wouldn’t have to fake anything, which meant there was even less chance of her sensing anything off-kilter.

  Danger heightened the emotions, destroying inhibitions. They had lived through a life-threatening situation together, they were alone, and there was a definite physical attraction between them. He had arranged the first two circumstances; the third was a bonus. It was a textbook situation; studies in human nature had shown that, if a man and a woman were thrown together in a dangerous situation and they had only each other to rely on, they quickly formed both sexual and emotional bonds. Chance had the advantage, in that he knew the plane hadn’t been in any danger of crashing, and that they weren’t in a life-and-death situation. Sunny would think they were stranded, while he knew better. Whenever he signaled Zane, they would promptly be “rescued,” but he wouldn’t send that signal until Sunny took him into her confidence about her father.

  Everything was under control. They weren’t even in Oregon, as he’d told her. They were in Nevada, in a narrow box canyon he and Zane had scouted out and selected because it was possible to land a plane in it, and, unless one had the equipment to scale vertical rock walls, impossible to escape. They weren’t close to any commercial flight pattern, he had disabled the transponder so no search plane would pick up a signal, and they were far off their route. They wouldn’t be found.

  Sunny was totally under his control; she just didn’t know it.

  The growing dusk made it impossible to see very much, and it was obvious that if the plane was going to explode in flames, it would already have done so. Chance strode back to where Sunny was sitting on the ground, her knees pulled up and her arms wrapped around her legs, and that damn bag close by her side. She scrambled to her feet as he approached. “All clear?”

  “All clear. No fuel leaks.”

  “That’s good.” She managed a smile. “It wouldn’t do us any good for you to fix the fuel pump if there wasn’t any fuel left.”

  “Sunny…if it’s a clogged line, I can fix it. If the fuel pump has gone out, I can’t.”

  He decided to let her know right away that they might not be flying out of here in the morning.

  She absorbed that in silence, rubbing her bare arms to ward off the chill of the desert air. The temperature dropped like a rock when the sun went down, which was one of the reasons he had chosen this site. They would have to share their body heat at night to survive.

  He leaned down and hefted the bag, marveling anew at its weight, then took her arm to walk with her back to the plane. “I hope you have a coat in this damn bag, since you thought it was important enough to risk your life getting it,” he growled.

  “A sweater,” she said absently, looking up at the crystal clear sky with its dusting of stars. The black walls of the canyon loomed on either side of them, making it obvious they were in a hole in the earth. A big hole, but still a hole. She shook herself, as if dragging her thoughts back to the problem at hand. “We’ll be all right,” she said. “I have some food, and—”

  “Food? You’re carrying food in here?” He indicated the bag.

  “Just some emergency stuff.”

  Of all the things he’d expected, food was at the bottom of the list. Hell, food wasn’t even on the list. Why would a woman on an overnight trip put food in her suitcase?

  They reached the plane, and he set the bag down in the dirt. “Let me get some things, and we’ll find a place to camp for the night. Can you get anything else in there, or is it full?”

  “It’s full,” she said positively, but then, he hadn’t expected her to open it so easily.

  He shrugged and dragged out his own small duffel, packed with the things a man could be expected to take on a charter flight: toiletries, a change of clothes. The duffel was unimportant, but it wouldn’t look right if he left it behind.

  “Why can’t we camp here?” she asked.

  “This is a stream bed. It’s dry now, but if it rains anywhere in the mountains, we could be caught in the runoff.”

  As he spoke, he got a flashlight out of the dash, the blanket from the back, and a pistol from the pocket in the pilot’s side door. He stuck the pistol in his belt, and draped the blanket around her shoulders. “I have some water,” he said, taking out a plastic gallon milk jug that he’d refilled with water. “We’ll be all right tonight.” Water had been the toughest thing to locate. He and Zane had found several box canyons in which he could have landed the plane, but this was the only one with water. The source wasn’t much, just a thin trickle running out of the rock at the far end of the canyon, but it was enough. He would “find” the water tomorrow.

  He handed her the flashlight and picked up both bags. “Lead the way,” he instructed, and indicated the direction he wanted. The floor of the canyon sloped upward on one side; the stream bed was the only smooth ground. The going was rough, and Sunny carefully picked her way over rocks and gullies. She was conscientious about shining the light so he could see where he was going, since he was hampered by both bags.

  Damn, he wished she had complained at least a little, or gotten upset. He wished she wasn’t so easy to like. Most people would have been half-hysterical, or asking endless questions about their chances of being rescued if he couldn’t get the plane repaired. Not Sunny. She coped, just as she had coped at the airport, with a minimum of fuss. Without any fuss, actually; she had bitten the blood out of her lip to keep from distracting him while he was bringing the plane down.

  The canyon was so narrow it didn’t take them long to reach the vertical wall. Chance chose a fairly flat section of sandy gray dirt, with a pile of huge boulders that formed a rough semi-circle. “This will give us some protection from the wind tonight.”

  “What about snakes?” she asked, eyeing the boulders.

  “Possible,” he said, as he set down the bags. Had he found a weakness he could use to bring her closer to him. “Are you afraid of them?”

  “Only the human kind.” She looked around as if taking stock of their situation, then kind of braced her shoulders. It was a minute movement, one he wouldn’t have noticed if he hadn’t been studying her so keenly. With an almost cheerful note she said, “Let’s get this camp set up so we can eat. I’m hungry.”

  She squatted beside her bag and spun the combination dial of the rather substantial lock on her bag. With a quiet snick the lock opened, and she unzipped the bag. Chance was a bit taken aback at finding out what was in the bag this easily, but he squatted beside her. “What do you have? Candy bars?”

  She