Page 37 of Last Chance Cowboy
Zane looked at the lineup of supplies that he had bought for Cara and checked his watch.
She should be here soon, and he had all the pieces of the pack that he’d purchased for her laid out in a line.
He would show her each and every one of them, and then he would pack it up and give it to her.
A recruit receiving her rucksack, basically, and that was how he was going to think of it. He was her commander for this exercise. And she was his totally green recruit. Learning the ways of this land and the wilderness.
He’d had the opportunity to choose what he wanted to study when he went into the military. Besides having nowhere else to go, the military had provided him with a chance to get some education. He’d done the CMST training — Combat Medical Specialist Training—and the SERE program — Survival, Evasion, Resistance, Escape— which focused on wilderness survival, psychological resilience, and navigation, among other skills.
He knew how to survive in the mountains, the desert,swampland, in extreme cold, extreme heat, high elevation, and lowlands.
As climates went, eastern Oregon wasn’t the most extreme he’d been in, and she wouldn’t need much in the way of specialty gear. Depending on the time of year.
In the distance, he heard the sound of tires on gravel and then the motor of her car.
Hypervigilance was something he had been gifted through trauma. The military hadn’t given it to him, but he’d certainly honed it there.
He was standing, facing the driveway, when she appeared, hands behind his back. He knew that he had a drill sergeant stance, and it did something to help drain the heat from his blood. The anticipation was making his muscles feel like coiled springs. That made his heartbeat just a little bit faster.
It was the kind of thing he had learned to control, because when you were in survival situations, you had to learn to control the flow of adrenaline.
Adrenaline.
What a ridiculous thing. To get a shot of adrenaline because he was going to see a woman.
Because she was there, in her little car, in her frilly little dress.
Adress.
With hiking boots on. He couldn’t help but take a long look at her legs as she got out of the car, and at those ridiculous boots.
“I’m reporting for duty,” she said.
If she had saluted, he might have gone right back into the house and closed the door behind him, locked it. Because he feared that if she had done that, he probably would’ve found it cute, when he knew that if it had been anybody else, he would’ve found it annoying, and he wanted to feel about Cara just like he did everyone else.
Never mind that it seemed an impossible task.
“All right, I have your supplies over here,” he said. “This is your kit to keep. I got you as small a pack as I could, but this is what you should be carrying with you when you go on a hike.”
She wrinkled her nose. “Is that a fanny pack?”
“I figured that it would be easier for you to carry a pack around your hips. But you wear it on your lower back, because it’s so big. But you have your whistle, your space blanket, a lighter, some potable water drops, and I also included a ferro rod because you never know when you might have a problem with your lighter. You can’t count on it. Being able to start a fire is important. There’s a flare gun, a knife, a compass, and some nylon rope. Here’s a canteen,” he said, picking that up and thrusting it toward her. “You can clip it to the side of your pack.”
“This is a lot of stuff. A lot of stuff that I don’t know how to use,” she said.
“And that’s the entire point of the lesson. You’re going to learn how to use all of this. That way, if you’re ever stuck in the wilderness overnight, you’re going to be warm, you’re going to be as dry as possible, and you’re not going to be dehydrated. You’re also going to have a whistle so that you can signal for help, and you’re going to have a flare gun to fire off in case you need to help people pinpoint your location, and you’re going to have a compass so that you can figure out where you are.”
“I have no idea how to use a compass.”
“Well, you’re going to learn that too. In addition to what sorts of things you can eat around here without making yourself sick.”
She grimaced. “That seems like a heavy responsibility.”
“It’s pretty easy. I’m going to give you a mushroom crash course, but probably it’s best if you just stay away from them.”He raised his brows. “High risk, low reward, all things considered.”
He was moving through it all quickly, but that made him feel more comfortable. As he was in the role of instructor, he didn’t feel like treating her softly. Didn’t feel like getting closer to her. Didn’t feel tempted to think back on when he had rescued her from her sorry state and lifted her up, held her close.
Yeah. He didn’t need to think about any of that.
