Her Miracle Baby. Fiona Lowe
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shovel, but I could use the face masks to dig with.’
‘You plan to dig this cave yourself, do you?’ His voice held a slight edge.
Every movement cost him pain—even in the shadowy dark she could see that. He deserved a break after all he’d done, trying to save Tom. ‘My ribs aren’t bruised or broken. I’ve seen you grimace with every lift and sudden movement.’
He grunted. ‘I’m not alone there. You can hardly walk. Let’s just dig the damn cave so we can both rest.’ He fell to his knees and started digging.
She sighed. She’d upset him, trying to help him. Graeme had accused her of being far too independent and not playing the ‘societal game’. That was another reason why she belonged at the base of the mountain with the farmers who treated their partners as equals.
She shrugged, carefully knelt beside him and handed him a mask. Silently, they dug side by side, developing an unspoken rhythm, alternating the scooping out and dumping of the snow, slowly hollowing out space where they could both sit.
An hour later, warm from the physical work, Meg crawled into the snow cave. She’d dumped the contents of the medical kit at the back of the cave and flattened the backpack to sit on.
Will crawled in next to her, the small space contracting even more. Her heart seemed to flip in her chest. Just like on the plane, his presence unnerved her, but this time she couldn’t ignore him. This time his presence would help her survive.
He piled the bracken and tree-fern fronds up at the front and then turned and sat next to her. ‘I think this cave might get an architectural award.’ His lightning-quick grin streaked across his face as he settled next to her, and then he turned off the headlamp.
‘Creative use of minimal space?’ She tucked the space blanket around them both as his thigh came to rest against hers.
‘Natural heating.’ He put his arm around her waist and pulled her gently toward him, closing the tiny space between them.
A blaze of heat flared inside her, which she tried to squash. He was only cuddling her to prevent hypothermia.
‘Modern furnishings.’ She patted the backpack, trying to ignore the slight pressure of his hand on her waist.
‘Look, we’ve even got natural light.’ He pointed to the moon low on the horizon, rising slowly.
‘So we have.’ The words came out on a sigh as she looked at the moonlight that had come too late, and thought of Tom.
He squeezed her arm. ‘We’ll find him in the morning.’ His low voice vibrated with understanding. ‘You marked where he was.’
How had he known she was thinking of Tom? She blinked back the tears that hovered ready to spill, the events of the evening threatening to overtake her. ‘The morning…’ Her voice trailed away.
‘Meg, the morning will come and the rescuers will come. You know that. The flares went up and Tom gave the co-ordinates over the radio before we went down. They will find us.’
‘But not tonight.’
‘No, not tonight. They’ve got no hope of finding us in this storm, and they’d be risking their lives at the same time.’
Damn it, he was right. ‘These drifts will be twice the height in the morning if this snow keeps up. They’ll have to come in on horseback first.’
‘True, but those mountain men know what they’re doing. Even Banjo Patterson knew that. They will come.’
She smiled at his reference to The Man From Snowy River, and in the dark of the cave she let his voice infuse her with some of his strength.
She so wanted to relax into him, rest her head on his chest, feel and hear his heart beating. Affirming life. Proof that they had survived the crash, that together they would survive the night.
But that would be weak and she couldn’t be weak, so she sat ramrod stiff. She’d learned the hard way that the only person she could depend on was herself. Snowstorm or not, nothing would change that. She knew that once the rescuers arrived she and Will would go their separate ways, strangers again.
She just had to get through the night.
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