Read Online Northern Exposure by Debra Lee Brown - Free Book Online Page B

help you.”
    â€œHelp me? Me,” he said again, as if the notion were ridiculous.
    â€œYes.”
    They had, in fact, helped each other. They’d crouched together under the overhang until the danger was over, then Joe had used her ice ax as a makeshift shovel to clear the trail below them. A tiny flame of satisfaction burned inside her, knowing she’d been right and he’d been wrong about the tool coming in handy.
    When the rock slide started, Joe had ditched his pack at the pass, and now there was no way to retrieve it. The trail above them had been completely destroyed. All they had in the way of gear were the contents of her pack. Lucky for him, for them both, she was prepared.
    â€œLet me see that cut.” He brushed the hair away from her face and peered at the nasty incision she’d sustained during the slide.
    â€œI can do it,” she said, and pulled away. He ignored her, pressing an iodine wipe firmly to her temple. “I said, I can—ow! That stings.”
    â€œYou’ll live.” He held her chin and swabbed at the cut, then cleaned the dried blood from her face with some sterile cotton.
    She let him do it. Why, she didn’t know.
    The look on his face as he performed the task was one of detached concentration, sprinkled with a dose of mild distaste. She felt like a stray mutt who’d been rescued by the local animal shelter.
    â€œOh, here, give me that.” She snatched the cotton from him when he began to inspect the cuts on her hands. “I’m perfectly capable of cleaning myself up.”
    He nodded at her broken nails, the undersides of which were caked with dirt. “Manicure didn’t last.”
    â€œVery funny.” He was a real comedian, wasn’t he?
    She fished a couple of antiseptic wipes out of thefirst-aid kit and went to work on her face and neck, then her hands and arms, managing to remove most of the dust and grit and dried blood. What she wouldn’t give for a shower.
    Now she knew what the phrase “hit by a Mack truck” really meant. Exhaustion warred with adrenaline, producing an almost euphoric state she suspected was mild shock.
    Joe didn’t look any better off, though she suspected a guy like him would go to his grave before he’d admit he was whipped. From the moment he’d grabbed her hand and had pulled her to safety under the overhang, he’d taken charge of the situation. He’d told her what to do, and she’d done it, without question.
    But by the time they’d made their way to the bottom of the pass, him carrying her pack, and had moved a quarter mile into the cover of the trees, searching for a flat, protected spot in which to camp, Wendy had regained some of her strength and all of her convictions.
    She’d refused to allow him to pitch her tent without her help. It was her tent, after all. He’d actually believed she’d just sit there, idle, and let him do it for her. After an argument about the proper way to filter water from a nearby creek, and after an awkward moment when she needed to relieve herself but he refused to allow her out of his sight, they’d settled in to their cramped quarters for the night.
    Now he just looked beat. Exhausted. Not that she could tell by his actions or words, which, like everything else in Joe Peterson’s world, were carefully controlled. But she could see it in his eyes and in his face when he thought she wasn’t looking.
    â€œYou hungry?” he asked, and produced another of her Power Bars.
    â€œNo, just tired.”
    He ripped open the foil wrapper and downed the peanut-butter-flavored energy snack in three bites. Then he unzipped her new, goose-down sleeping bag and moved out of the way so she could climb in. “Here. Get some sleep.”
    Until this moment she hadn’t considered the fact that there was just the one sleeping bag between them. One toothbrush, one washcloth, one everything. “What