Two Alone Read Online Free PDF

back." She was vaguely surprised that her voice sounded so faint. She could feel her lips moving, but she wasn't sure she had actually spoken aloud. It seemed imperative to apologize for detaining him and being a nuisance in general. "I've got to rest for just a minute."
    "Yeah, yeah, that's fine, uh, Rusty. You rest." He was working at the hook and eye buried deep in the fox-fur collar of her coat. " Are you hurt anywhere?" "Hurt? No. Why?"
    "Nothing." He shoved open her coat and plunged his hands inside. He slipped them beneath her swea t er and began care- f ully pressing his fi ngers against her abdomen. Was this proper? s he thought fuzzily.
    "You might be bleeding somewhere and don't know it."
    His words served to clarify everything. "Internally?" Panicked, she struggled to sit up.
    "I don't know. I don't— Hold it!" With a sudden flick of his hands, he flipped back the front panels of her full-length coat. H is breath whistled through his teeth. Rusty levered herself up on her elbows to see what had caused him to frown so ferociously.
    The right leg of her trousers was soaked with bright red blood. It had also made a sponge of her wool sock and run over her leather hiking boot.
    "When did you do this?" His eyes, razor sharp, moved up to hers.
    "What happened?"
    D ismayed, she looked at Cooper and wordlessly shook her head. "Why didn't you tell me you were hurt?"
    "I didn't know," she said weakly.
    He slipped his knife from its scabbard. Pinching up the blood- s oa ked hem of her trousers, he slid the knife into the crease and jet ked it upward. With one heart-stopping stroke, it cut straight up her pants leg, neatly slicing the fabric all the way from her hem to the elastic leg of her underpants. Shocked and fearful, she sucked in her breath.
    Cooper, gazing down at her leg, expelled a long, defeated breath. "Hell."

Two
    Ru sty ’ s head began to buzz. She felt nauseous. Her earlobes were t h robbing and her throat was on fire. Each individual hair follicle in her head felt like a pinprick. The pads of her fingers and toes were tingling. She ’ d fainted once after having a root canal. She k new the symptoms.
    But, damn, did they have to afflict her here? In front of him? E asy, easy." He grasped her shoulders and lowered her to the grou nd. "You don't remember hurting yourself?" She shook her head dumbly. "Must have happened when we crashed."
    " I didn't feel any pain."
    "You were too shocked. How does it feel now?"
    O nly then did she become aware of the pain. "Not bad." His eyes probed hers for the truth. "Really, it's not that bad. I ' ve bled a lo t , t hough, haven't I?"
    " Yeah." Grim-faced, he rummaged through the first-aid kit. "I've got to sponge up the blood so I can see where it's co m ing from."
    He tore into the backpack she'd been carrying and selected a soft cotton undershirt to swab up the blood. She felt the pressure of his hands, but little else as she ga z ed up through the branches of the trees overhead. Maybe she'd been premature to thank God for being alive. She might bleed to death lying here on the ground. And there wouldn't be anything Cooper or she could do about it. In fact, he would probably be glad to get rid of her.
    His soft curse roused her from her macabre musings. She tilted her head up and looked down at her injured leg. Along her shinbone a gash ran from just below her knee to just above her sock. She could see flesh, muscle. It was sickening. She whimpered.
    "Lie down, dammit."
    Weakly, Rusty obeyed the emphatic order. "How could that happen without my feeling it?"
    "Probably split like a tomato skin the moment of impact." "Can you do anything?"
    "Clean it with peroxide." He opened the brown opaque plastic bottle he'd found in the first-aid kit and soaked the sleeve of the T-shirt with the peroxide.
    "Is it going to hurt?"
    "Probably."
    Ignoring her tearful, frightened eyes, he dabbed at the wound with the peroxide. Rusty clamped her lower lip with her teeth to keep from crying