Crash and Burn Read online

  Isa crawled onto the wing and flopped sideways into the lake, disappearing below the surface. Fear bolted through him, but a moment later, she was up and swimming.

  Nate turned his attention to the dog, who was whining and thrashing around in the rapidly filling rear of the plane. He slid his fingers beneath her collar and guided her to the door. Here’s hoping Huskies could swim…

  Maya bobbed into the lake and began to paddle.

  Heaving a breath of relief, Nate pushed himself out of the plane and kicked off in the direction Isa had gone. Behind him, with an ominous sucking sound, the Cirrus slipped beneath the surface. Gone.

  Seven years and over one thousand hours of flight time together—possibly the longest relationship he’d ever had. But he and his passengers were alive. If they made it out of this mess, he could buy himself a new plane. He adjusted the bags on his back and swam after Isa and Maya.

  “Oh no,” Isa moaned as he drew even with her.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “Maya!” she cried.

  The dog had left them in her wake, paddling swiftly toward shore with her red leash trailing behind her in the water.

  “It’s okay. She looks like a strong swimmer.”

  “But she’s Houdini! We’ll never see her again.” Isa kicked with renewed vigor. The cold water seemed to have brought her back to her senses, and she swam ahead of him with more strength and speed than he had expected.

  Still, it was a long ten minutes before they reached the shore. Nate was winded and shivering by the time he followed Isa onto the rocky shoreline. Her lips were purple and shaking, her cocoa eyes wide, her dark hair plastered to her head, and she looked so fucking beautiful, he almost pulled her into his arms and kissed her because they were alive.

  “We survived,” she whispered.

  “Fucking right, we did.”

  She flung her arms around him. For a moment, he just stood there, caught off guard by her impulsiveness, before hugging her back. Her whole body trembled against his—adrenaline, or cold. Probably both.

  “We lost Maya,” she said against his neck, a tremor in her voice.

  “What are you talking about?” He pointed toward the edge of the tree line, where the dog sat watching. “She’s right there.”

  “Oh!” Isa released him and crouched, extending her arms toward the dog. “Maya, you beautiful thing. I’m so glad to see you.”

  Maya walked toward her cautiously, wet and bedraggled but otherwise none the worse for wear. She pressed her head into Isa’s lap.

  “I can’t believe it. At the shelter, she was always trying to escape.” She stroked the dog behind her ears.

  “Maybe she just didn’t like being in a cage,” he said.

  “Maybe. So how long do you think it will be before they send out a search party for us?”

  He cringed inwardly at the hopeful expression on her face. “I’m not sure my distress call went through. If it didn’t, it’ll take a few hours for them to realize we haven’t arrived in Reno. They might be able to send out search and rescue for us today, but they won’t have many hours of daylight left. I think we should plan on spending at least one night here.”

  “At least one night?” Isa’s pretty face paled.

  “I deviated from our flight plan to skirt the forest fire. They may not know where to look.” He paused, glancing at the black smoke visible in the distance. The scent hung heavy in the air. “We can’t discount that fire either. I don’t know where it’s moving or how long we’ll be safe here.”

  “Crap,” she whispered, wrapping her arms around Maya and holding her close.

  “How’s your head?” he asked, gesturing to the goose egg on her right temple.

  “Hurts like a son of a bitch,” she said with a wry smile. “Don’t suppose we have any ibuprofen in those bags that hasn’t been ruined by all the water?”

  “Probably not.”

  “Oh no.” Isa stared at her hands, her expression stricken.

  “What’s wrong?” He crouched beside her. Her fingers were slightly pruned from their time in the water, but he didn’t see any obvious signs of injury.

  “My ring,” she whispered.

  She wasn’t wearing any rings, but he had a hunch that was the problem. “Did it come off in the lake?”

  “It must have.” Tears glistened in her eyes.

  “Wedding ring?” He rocked back on his heels, feeling a twinge of disappointment at the thought of her being married.

  She shook her head. “It was my grandmother’s—a gold butterfly. She gave it to me before she…before she died. She said that as long as I was wearing it, I’d always be able to feel her with me.” She blinked rapidly, her face tinged pink.

  Aw, hell. “I’m sorry, Isa.”

  “Yeah, me too.” She looked down at her hands and blew out a breath. “But I’d rather my ring be at the bottom of the lake than either of us. So what next?”

  Nate felt an irrational urge to dive back into the lake and look for her lost ring. “We should probably take stock of our supplies.”

  “I agree.”

  He set their waterlogged bags on the ground between them. “What did you pack in yours? Rocks?”

  “Dog food,” she said sheepishly, pulling the backpack closer. “I packed a few meals for Maya in case we got held up overnight in Reno.”

  “Foods’s good, but I think our first priority should be dry clothes.” Because they were already freezing from having gone in the lake, and the temperature was only going to plummet as the sun went down.

  “No dry clothes here,” Isa said as she pulled a soggy pair of jeans and a yellow shirt from her bag.

  “Let’s take everything we have and lay it out in the sun. Hopefully it’ll dry before nightfall.” He took his spare clothes out of his bag, untied her sneakers and his loafers, and walked over to an outcropping of rocks. He spread it all out, then shucked his T-shirt and jeans and laid those on the rocks too.

  “Um…” Isa said from behind him.

  “I figure I’ll warm up faster if I’m not in cold, soggy jeans. Plus, the more dry clothes, the better, right?” He turned to find her shamelessly checking him out in his boxer briefs, two spots of color on her cheeks.

  “Right.” She turned her back and started laying out her own clothes.

  He headed toward their bags to begin going through the rest of his stuff. When he looked up, Isa was walking toward him, wearing nothing but hot pink panties and a flesh-colored bra, all smooth skin and soft curves, and he damn near swallowed his tongue.

  Isa wasn’t normally a self-conscious girl, but walking around in her underwear in front of a man she barely knew? Let alone a sexy, rich, CEO pilot who’d just crash-landed them in the middle of the mountains in a forest fire? Yeah, her day had gone from adventurous to WTF in the span of an hour.

  Her head throbbed, and she focused on that rather than thinking about the eyeful Nate was getting as she knelt beside her bag. Nate, who looked outrageously delicious in his black boxer briefs. He was awfully tanned and toned for a man who worked eighty hours a week, but she was sure as hell enjoying the view. Maya—bless her—lay beside the bag exactly where Isa had left her.

  Thirty minutes later, they had organized their stuff into piles. Between them, they had a dozen granola bars, a bag of potato chips, and two bottles of water, plus the gallon-sized Ziploc bag of dog food she’d brought for Maya. Nate had one of those gadgety pocket knives that was bound to come in handy, and a first aid kit that included several sealed—and therefore not soggy—packets of ibuprofen.

  “Thank goodness.” She snagged one and ripped it open.

  “Not so fast.” Nate reached for the pills. “If there’s any bleeding in your brain, the ibuprofen could make it worse.”

  She gave him a look. “I survived a plane crash and swam out of an ice-cold lake. I’m willing to take my chances with a couple of ibuprofen.”

  Nate pressed his lips together but said nothing as she opened one of
the bottles of water and swallowed the pills with the smallest sip she could manage.

  “So,” she said.

  He gave her a long look, his expression hidden behind his mirrored lenses. “So.”

  “I’ve watched enough Survivorman to know we should probably be building a shelter by now,” she said.

  “Survivorman? Is that the show where the guy pretends to be lost in the wilderness?”

  “Les Stroud, yes, and he teaches you how to survive until you’re rescued.”

  Nate looked skeptical. “I don’t know how accurate a TV show like that is.”

  “Well, let’s hope we’re not out here long enough to find out. And on that note, I personally am in favor of making some kind of big SOS sign out here in case a rescue plane flies by.”

  “Agreed. And since we don’t have any way to start a fire, we should probably look for running water too. It would be safer to drink than the water from the lake.”

  “Okay.” She climbed to her feet. “What first?”

  “Why don’t you work on the SOS while I scout locations for a shelter?”

  Since it didn’t seem like Maya was going to make a run for it, Isa unclipped the leash from her collar so that the poor dog didn’t have to drag it around. She followed at Isa’s heels as she gathered sticks and whatever else she could find to make her sign.

  The lake before her was so pretty, it belonged on a postcard. Its glittering surface reflected the blue sky above and snowcapped mountains visible in the distance. She wanted to sit and take it all in, but as she started arranging sticks into the shape of an enormous S, something in her brain seemed to click into place. Like oh shit, this is really happening.

  Nate’s plane—and her butterfly ring—were at the bottom of that lake. They were stranded in the middle of nowhere with a forest fire nearby, and search and rescue might not even know where to look for them. She was going to spend the night somewhere out here, maybe more than one night, maybe…

  Nope, she wasn’t going there yet. She forced herself to focus on the present. She’d build the most amazing SOS ever, and a rescue plane might even find them before nightfall. After what felt like hours—and with the pain in her head blissfully reduced thanks to the ibuprofen—she walked around the finished product, surveying her work with a smile.

  “What the hell is that?” Nate said from behind her.

  Startled, she tripped and fell flat on her ass in the middle of the O.

  3

  Nate worked hard to contain his grin. Not because she’d fallen, but because she’d gathered fucking wildflowers to decorate her SOS signal. Bright purple and yellow flowers peeked out from between the pine boughs she’d carefully arranged. If that didn’t perfectly illustrate Isa’s personality, he didn’t know what did.

  She scrambled to her feet, planting her hands on her hips. “What?”

  “You made it pretty,” he said, allowing the grin to surface.

  “No, I didn’t.” She narrowed her eyes at him. “I made it colorful, as in easier to see from the sky.”

  Okay, point taken. “Nice job.”

  Her hair had dried while she worked, and it hung around her shoulders now in loose curls. Combined with the fact that she still wore nothing but her bra and panties, standing in the middle of her flower-filled SOS signal, she had just redefined the look of his fantasy woman.

  “How did you make out with the shelter?” she asked.

  But all he’d heard was “make out,” and damn, it had really been too long since he’d gotten laid, because he was acting like a Neanderthal right now. “Want to take a look?”

  She nodded, falling into step beside him as he led her away from the lake. About a hundred yards into the woods, they came to the fallen tree he’d used as the base for their shelter. He’d laid branches over it and woven pine boughs through, making a roof. The floor was heaped with heavy pine straw to protect them from the cold ground below.

  “It’s…small,” Isa said from behind him.

  “That’s the idea, right? Should keep us warmer.”

  “Right.” She crossed her arms over her chest.

  “With any luck, search and rescue will find us tomorrow.” In the meantime, though, it would definitely be awkward to crawl into this tiny shelter together tonight.

  “So what now?” she asked.

  “Sun’s getting low. We should probably finish up whatever we want to do around here so we can tuck into the shelter once it gets dark. We don’t have a fire, and I don’t know about you, but I’m not wild about wandering around out here in the dark.”

  Her eyes widened. “There are bears out here, right?

  Bears. Coyotes. Mountain lions. “Nothing out here messes with people very often. We should be fine.”

  She shivered. “I’m going to go check on my clothes. It’s already getting cold.”

  “Good idea.”

  They walked to the rocks where they’d left their clothes. His jeans were still damp, but his khaki shorts were dry, so he put those on with a T-shirt. Isa put on the black leggings and long-sleeved purple shirt she’d worn earlier.

  “So much better,” she said, rubbing her arms.

  Nate’s belly rumbled loudly. “Time to ration out some granola bars?”

  “Definitely.” She led the way to their bags. “Tomorrow, we could forage for food while we wait to get rescued.”

  “Not sure what we’ll find.” Nate handed her a granola bar and took one for himself.

  “I told you I’ve watched a lot of Survivorman. We could look for dandelions, clover, all kinds of things. We could try fishing too, but I’m not sure if I could ever get hungry enough to eat a raw fish.” She scrunched her nose.

  “Let’s hope we don’t find out.” Search and rescue would be out tomorrow looking for them, but would they know where to look? The forest fire complicated things. The scent of smoke hung heavy in the air.

  Isa scooped a handful of dog food and set it on the ground for Maya, who began to gobble it down.

  “I wonder if she knows how to hunt,” Isa said thoughtfully, watching the dog.

  “She might. If we don’t get rescued soon, I guess we’ll find out.”

  After they’d finished eating, they washed up by the lake, making use of the fact that they had toothbrushes and other basic hygiene items with them. They both put on their jackets, and then he packed everything into their bags and covered them with rocks to keep bears out. He and Isa separated briefly to answer nature’s call before heading into the woods together to the shelter.

  “Ladies first.” He motioned toward it.

  “First time I’ve ever spent the night with a man on the same day we met,” she said with a nervous laugh. She scooted inside, rolling over so that she faced him. “It’s not half-bad.”

  “Could be worse.” He lowered himself in next to her and called to the dog.

  Maya climbed in and curled up by their feet, and Nate positioned a pine bough over the entrance, sealing them in.

  “How’s your head?” he asked.

  “Much better.”

  “You tired?”

  “No.” She sucked her bottom lip between her teeth and stared at him.

  He wasn’t either. Despite their eventful day and the darkness falling outside, it was probably only about seven thirty, maybe eight o’clock. “So tell me about yourself, Isabel Delgado. Are you from Anaheim?”

  “Born and raised,” she said.

  “And what do you do when you’re not flying rescue dogs up the West Coast?”

  “I’m a marketing associate at Spring Hill Designs, but I just applied for a promotion to marketing manager, which would mean flying all over the country to visit client sites. That’s why I decided to work on conquering my fear of flying today.”

  “I didn’t exactly help with your fear of flying, did I?” Even before the crash, he’d been impatient and preoccupied, thinking about his meeting tomorrow morning with the CEO of a Fortune 500 company he’d been trying to land as a cli
ent for years.

  She shook her head. “After today, I’m never getting on another plane again.”

  “Oh, come on now. Don’t say that.”

  “You honestly mean to tell me you’ll fly again?” She sounded incredulous.

  “I’ll buy a new plane as soon as I get home,” he told her.

  “That’s crazy! We could have died today.”

  “But we didn’t, and after seeing how well that parachute works, I feel safer than ever in the Cirrus.”

  “I never knew planes had parachutes,” she said.

  “Most don’t. It’s part of what drew me to the SR22. Sure paid off today, didn’t it?”

  “You must be rich,” Isa blurted. “You can just buy another plane?”

  He laughed quietly. “Well, this one was insured, but yeah, I could afford a new one. I’m a single man. I own my own business, and I don’t live an extravagant lifestyle. Flying is my splurge.”

  “Tell me about your company.”

  “Sequoia Group has developed a marketing platform to manage social media content for large corporate clients.”

  “And you created it yourself?”

  “Five years ago.” The culmination of years of blood, sweat, and tears and worth every damn moment.

  “You’ve been flying for fifteen years and owned your own business for five. Just how old are you?” she asked slyly.

  “Thirty-three.”

  “Hmm.”

  He could barely see her now that night had fallen, but the air between them seem charged with a new kind of tension, one that made him acutely aware of the closeness of their bodies and the fact that it had been close to a year since the last time he’d had a woman in his bed. “Does that make me an old man?”

  She laughed, a rich, throaty laugh that did nothing to ease the lust building inside him. “I’m twenty-seven so no, I don’t think you’re old.”

  “Good.”

  A silence fell between them, heavy enough that he wondered if he was the only one feeling the tug of attraction between them.

  “So why was a CEO from the Silicon Valley flying from Anaheim to Reno today, or did you just fly out of your way to help Maya?” she asked finally.