Close to You (16 page)

Allie scrambled to her feet and came to a skidding halt on the edge of the drop. They both watched as the GPS rolled, bounced off some rocks, and eventually disappeared into the foliage below.

“I'm guessing you were about as good at baseball as you were at Scouts, huh, Slugger?” Allie dusted off her brown leather pants and faced him. “If Kat was watching her tracker, we should see a chopper any minute now, because she just watched our altitude drop like a rock and will think one of us has taken a dive off a cliff.”

“What about the emergency beacon—could it have set that off?”

Allie shook her head. “Unlikely. It has a cover you have to flick back so you can't set it off accidentally.”

They both watched the horizon for a few seconds, waiting to see if their ears could catch any hint of the
thwack-thwack-thwack
of a chopper engine. Nothing, except rustling trees, the sound of birds chirping, and the wind blowing.

Jackson got to his feet and brushed himself off. “Worse comes to worst, we could stay here and wait for them to come get us.”

Allie gave him an incredulous look. “One, you may have no pride, but I do. Two, for all we know, that thing has shattered into a thousand little pieces on its little journey down the cliff and is no longer functional. And three, aren't you here to pass some kind of character test?”

Oh yeah, that. For a few blissful moments, he'd forgotten about that.

“Now, I may be wrong—it has happened once before—but I'm guessing you sitting on your behind waiting to be rescued isn't quite what your uncle has in mind.” Allie looked up from where she was stashing the supplies back into the backpack. “So we're going to have to find where we're going or die trying.” Zipping the pack shut, she picked it up and handed it to him.

He took it and swung the canvas bag over his shoulder. “Who knows what he had in mind? Nothing makes sense about this whole thing.”

She tilted her head. “How so?”

How so? What was there that made sense about being at the bottom of the world, at the whim of an octogenarian who wouldn't give any details about how he was going to decide whether he was going to fund Jackson's latest venture or not?

Jackson shrugged. “Well, I don't even know what he's looking for. Was the night on the boat part of the test, or was he just messing with me? No idea.”

It was the first time either of them had referred to that night since leaving Wellington three days before. He wasn't even sure if she remembered the part of the conversation where he'd lost his filter and let his guard down.

She twisted an errant lock of her hair around her finger, then bit her bottom lip for a second. “I can't remember if I said it in the middle of my charming puking and all, but thanks for looking after me that night.”

“Anytime.” He resisted the urge to palm himself in the forehead.
Anytime?
What did that even mean?

A wry grin appeared on her lips. “Hopefully not.”

“Right, of course.” The bumbling teenager was back. Wicked.

She opened her mouth as if to say something else, then abruptly turned and started walking, her bow and arrows bouncing against her back.

“Where are you going?”

“To the top. Like we agreed. We can't work out anything from down here, where we can only see one-eighty degrees. If we're going to figure out where we are, we need to be able to see all around us.” She nimbly climbed up a rock and then scrambled up another steeper set.

He followed, trying to keep pace. “So where are you from, anyway?”

“What?”

He shrugged. “We're going to be stuck with each other, what? A few hours? Figured since I've swept you off your feet twice now, we should at least get to know each other a little.”

She paused and scrutinized him for a second. “Auckland. I grew up in Auckland. My family have been in New Zealand forever. If you heard my mother, you'd think we found the place.”

Auckland was New Zealand's largest city, if he recalled the guidebooks correctly, toward the top of the North Island.

“Did you like it?”

She shrugged. “Can't really complain about growing up here. What about you?”

“Iowa. A little town called Pennington. The population might sneak over ten thousand if you counted a few four-legged friends.”

A glimmer of a smile. “Can't say I picked you as the rural type.”

“Farm boy. Fifth generation.”

“And you don't know how to read a map?”

Whoa, talk about a jab to his man-pride. “I can read a real map just fine. What we've got here is closer to hieroglyphics.” Plus, in the concrete jungle of L.A., his GPS told him everything he needed to know. It was time to change the subject from his wilderness inadequacies. “What about your family?”

“My father's an investment banker. My mother . . .” She trailed off. “I was about to say my mother's just Veronica, but that wouldn't mean anything to you. My mother is kind of what you would get if you crossed Martha Stewart with Margaret Thatcher.”

“Sounds like quite a force.”

She grimaced. “Like a category-five hurricane.”

“So what does she think of this?” He gestured at her outfit and the surrounding wilderness.

Allie burst out laughing. “Oh, she loves it.” A deaf person couldn't have missed her sarcasm. “What about your parents?”

He thought of his parents and smiled. “They've been married almost forty years. Pretty much the definition of salt-of-the-earth types. They love each other, love their family, and work as hard as you can imagine.”

“You the only boy?” She skipped over a fallen tree trunk.

“I am.”

“Heading back to take over the farm one day.”

She managed to get him right where it hurt. “I'm not really a farm guy. I'd be a terrible farmer. Thankfully, my sister married a guy who is through and through.” He knew his parents still harbored hope he would return home one day and take over. But the truth was, short of a Saul of Tarsus kind of transformation, it wasn't going to happen. Just the thought of spend
ing the rest of his life stuck in a small town, subject to all the uncertainties of farming he'd watched his parents suffer under his whole life, made him break out in hives.

Time to change the subject. Not that he hadn't revealed far more personal stuff on the boat, but now not knowing if Allie remembered any of it was starting to bother him.

“So, apart from it making your mom so happy, what do you love most about
Lord of the Rings
?” That should be safe. Get them back on track. And maybe even provide some useful insights into what his uncle might be wanting from him.

Allie didn't say anything—for a few seconds, he thought she might not have even heard his question. Then she paused, turned back, and studied his face. “The unlikely heroes. Hobbits—they don't have anything of what the others do. They don't have the immortality or wisdom of the Elves. The brute strength of the dwarves. The bravery or history of man. The wisdom of the wizards. Yet, it's the humble hobbit who is chosen for the mission of saving Middle-earth. It reminds me that we all have the capacity to be greater than we think we can be.”

“But Frodo almost gave in to the power of the Ring.” He might not know much about Tolkien, but even he hadn't missed that detail.

Allie tilted her head. “He did. That's another part of Tol­kien's genius. There's not one character in the books whose exploits are possible on their own. Who is without flaw or failing. Frodo can't complete his mission without Sam. And it's Sam's words that we remember when everything feels lost to us, ‘But in the end, it's only a passing thing, this shadow. Even darkness must pass. A new day will come.' ” The words slipped from her tongue as easily as if she'd been reading them from a page.

“Can you quote all of the books like that?”

“Just the parts that resonate the most.” As Allie said the words, her face shuttered, as if she'd said too much, and she started to walk again, leaving him to ponder her back.

One thing was certain, his arms still resonated with the way she'd felt in them. The citrus smell of her hair, how she'd burrowed into his chest like a trusting child. The memories refused to diminish, as much as he'd spent the last three days trying to scrub them from his mind.

He was saved from his disruptive line of thought as the climb suddenly got steeper. He focused now on the need to climb up boulders, scramble through undergrowth, and dodge low-hanging tree branches.

After about ten minutes, he felt like he was about to have a heart attack, while Allie skipped on ahead of him like they were going for a gentle stroll through a meadow.

Just as he thought he was going to have to tamp down his pride and beg for her to slow down, they got through some dense bush to find themselves almost at the top. Allie stopped so fast he nearly found himself eating a bunch of arrow tails.

“What are you doing with these, anyway?” He tapped her quiver. “Planning on catching us dinner?”

She looked up at him. “You joke, but I happen to be a crack shot.”

“The same way you're a great throw?”

“Look, Butterfingers, don't even try and blame that one on me.” Allie walked a few steps and unshouldered her bow. Pulling an arrow out, she examined its tip. “I should paint this red.”

“Why?”

“Gondor used red arrows to summon its allies in times of need.” She smiled. “There's some random Tolkien trivia for you. Now, where were we? Oh, that's right, you were questioning my archery abilities.” She fitted her arrow onto the wire.

“What are you doing?”

She shrugged and started to pull the string back. “Talk is cheap.”

That thing was pointed way too close to him for his comfort. And the wire appeared to be pulled pretty taut. And she didn't even seem to be looking.

“Do you mind? At least give me a chance to—”

The word had barely left his mouth when a few things seemed to happen at once. A sensation of air moving at his side, a sound of a
thunk
right behind him, and the realization that Allie's bow no longer held its arrow.

He tried to turn to see where it had gone, only to find himself caught on something. Twisting around awkwardly, he caught sight of the arrow, its shaft still vibrating where it had impaled the end of his cloak on a tree.

* * *

A
llie sucked a breath in through her lips. It felt wispy and thin, as if she couldn't get enough in to fill her lungs, and not just because they were at high altitude. She'd been centimeters away from turning the guy into a shish kebab. She didn't even know what had happened. One second she'd been messing around, about to admit she didn't have a clue what she was doing when it came to using a bow and arrow. Then the next . . . Well, one-half of the pair was gone, Jackson's cape was nailed to a tree, and he had the shell-shocked facial expression
of someone who knew he'd just come very close to meeting his maker.

Slinging her bow over her shoulder, she tried to keep her expression bored, as if she shared DNA with William Tell or something.

Jackson looked at his clothing pinned to the tree, then back at her. He opened his mouth, but nothing came out. He tried again. “Please tell me you did that on purpose.”

She lifted an eyebrow.

He studied her face for a second. “On second thought, I don't want to know.” Reaching down, he pulled the arrow out of the wood and fingered the gash in his cloak. “Mind if I keep this as a souvenir?” He held the arrow up.

“Be my guest.”

“I've never met anyone quite like you, Allison Shire.”

It could've been meant in a hundred different ways, but the manner in which his eyes darkened and his gaze seemed to linger on her lips sent a sizzle through her body.

She had to say something to neutralize the situation. Nothing good could come of indulging in her growing attraction, especially not when they were alone in the middle of nowhere with hours before anyone would come looking for them. She forced herself to laugh. “You've never been to New Zealand before, Jackson Gregory. I promise you, I'm nothing special.” So she'd been told plenty of times.

He opened his mouth as if to argue, but then closed it. Even he couldn't fight her on that. Yet why had a small part of her hoped he would?

Turning, she grabbed the map from him. “Come on, let's work out where we are. Otherwise, at this rate, they really will have to send search parties out to find us.”

At least Kat had been kind enough to mark where they needed to get to on the map. And the pilot had marked where he had dropped them off. So how hard could this be, really?

She pointed to where X marked the spot. “Okay, so we landed about here, and we've been tramping about twenty minutes or so, but most of it was uphill, so we can't have gotten far. I'm pretty sure the closer the lines are, the steeper the terrain.”

Jackson leaned in, getting close—way too close—as he studied the flimsy paper. His breath fanned down the side of her face. She fought the crazy desire to rest against him. “So do you think we're here?” He pointed to one spot where a number indicated a peak. “Or here?” He pointed to another close by to the right. Both were in the general direction of where they wanted to be heading. At least that was encouraging.

She looked at the scenery surrounding them, trying to overlay what she was seeing onto the lines on the map in front of them, but it might as well have been in Arabic for all the sense she could make of it.

“No idea. If I had to make a guess, I would go with that one.” She stabbed at the peak on the left. “But that's ninety percent finger-in-the-wind kind of stuff. Please tell me you gleaned something of use from the course yesterday.”

He stood up with the compass and turned around slowly, stopping when he was facing away to her left. “Okay, this is north. So now we should orient the map.”