Wild Men of Alaska Collection - By Helmer, Tiffinie Page 0,13

him. Maybe if they ate, figured out a way to warm up this busted plane, she’d be a little more open for sharing, talking. He wasn’t going to get anywhere with her and their relationship if he didn’t at least try.

A gust of wind, heavy with sleet, shook the plane. He shivered, realizing he still had on his wet shirt and his pants zipper wide open. He really needed the use of his other arm. To hell with his zipper. It didn’t bother him to be hanging out. But the shirt needed to go.

He struggled with the buttons, one-handed.

“Oh, for hell sake.” Wren brushed his hand out of the way. “You’re more work than a two-year-old.” She quickly freed the buttons of his shirt. She didn’t spare him a glance as his naked chest was revealed.

That was an ego buster. He’d worked hard on his body since they’d been apart. Building muscle had been his focus, that and his job, which the muscle came in handy for. And she didn’t even look. He had pecs, damn it, and abs.

She helped him peel the shirt free from his good arm and then carefully inched it over his broken one. She didn’t pause in what she was doing until the fabric fell away from his bullet-grazed shoulder.

She gasped, her fingers lightly tracing the area where her bullet had cut into him.

“See, I told you there was a scar,” he softly murmured, enjoying the delicate touch of her fingers on his cold skin.

Her eyes narrowed to slits.

Shit, he said the wrong thing again.

“You chose this scar and it’s not a scar. It’s a tattoo. Of a wren.”

And here he thought she’d appreciate the gesture.

“It’s a sight better than the ragged scar you left me with. It was damn hard to explain at the gym that my girlfriend shot me. If I’d gotten it in the line of duty, that would have been different. So I got the tattoo to camouflage it.” And it hurt a hell of lot worse than the bullet had.

“Of a wren?”

“Well, yeah. It was your mark, after all. Your brand.” He shrugged. “I liked it. Seems poetic in a way. Like you’re always with me.”

She briefly met his eyes, hers showing surprise and maybe a little wetness. He couldn’t tell for sure since she bent to rummage through his bag, yanking out a dry shirt. She found another button-down one, which would be the easiest—if not warmest—to get into with his broken arm.

He wanted to look into those expressive eyes again. “Wren.”

“Can we get you dressed so that I can eat something?”

She refused to look at him as she inched the fabric carefully over his broken arm. But he caught the rapid blinking. Was she crying? Had he chipped through that icy shell she’d been encased in since they’d boarded this doomed airplane?

CHAPTER EIGHT

Why had he tattooed himself with a symbol of her? What kind of man does something that?

She’d shot him.

Didn’t he hate her for that? She hated herself for what she’d done to him. What did this all mean?

And, damn it, why did he have to look so good?

He’d been fit and lean before. Now he was mouth-watering. Her fingers begged to trace each definition in his rock-hard body. Did the man even have body fat? How could he with all that delicious muscle?

Holy Mother of Pearl. She was toast.

Something had to be stirred up between them, or she would have him for dinner. She wriggled the soft flannel shirt over his shoulders and faced him to button it up. She concentrated hard on the task at hand, not how enticing he smelled, or how his breath lightly blew wisps of her hair. He was the perfect height for her. His chin easily rested on her head. She missed how he’d tuck her into his side, and she’d snuggle her face in the crook of his neck.

She finished the buttons and smoothed the fabric down his front without thinking. He sucked in his breath as her fingers brushed over the ridges of muscle on his stomach.

She shouldn’t have done that.

“Wren,” he groaned, his fingers brushing hair away from her face.

“Oh, you need your boots tied.” She dropped to her knees and grabbed the laces before she did something really stupid and grab him. She thought he groaned again, but maybe it was the wind. She tied his Timberlines and glanced up.

She shouldn’t have knelt at his feet.

Her face was even with his gaping zipper and what was