Heartbreaker (10 page)

With one hand he let go of the rope, drew his left glove off with his teeth, and held it while she thrust her hand inside. The buttery yellow leather was thin and warm from his hand. It was also a great deal too large.

“It’s too big,” she objected as he reversed his grip to draw off the other glove. “You keep them.”

“We’re going to slide down the rope. Without something to protect your hands you might not be able to hold on.”

That silenced Lynn. Her palms already burned from the fall he had arrested, and it had lasted only a few seconds. The idea of falling so terrified her by now that she would have done anything to prevent it from happening—even taking his gloves while he suffered the rope bare-handed.

She rationalized it by telling herself that his skin was much tougher than hers.

Jess helped her with the other glove. Feet braced against chiseled layers of rock, newly gloved hands gripping the rope, Lynn waited, trying not to shiver.

Om
ran through her mind in an endless loop.
Om, om
.

“When I say go I want you to push out from the cliff with your feet and let the rope slide through your hands. Just kind of rest against me and let yourself drop. It’s not far, only about ten feet. Are you ready?”

Oh, God
. Lynn nodded. Beneath her, she felt his muscles tense.

“Go!”

L
YNN PUSHED OFF
from the cliff at the same time Jess did, not so much by choice but because his powerful thrust took her with him. The rope slid through her hands. Again, this was more by accident than design.

The sensation of falling made her stomach shoot into her throat. If she ever got down off this mountain, Lynn vowed, she would never so much as climb up on a kitchen stool again.

Jess swooped back in toward the cliff. Cradled by his body, Lynn perforce had to do likewise. Her slippery-soled boots made jarring contact with the rock wall. His chest thudded into her back. Knocked off balance, Lynn’s feet slipped. She tilted forward, her knees crashing into rock. Her fingers clenched the rope. Her sliding feet hit the toes of Jess’s boots and stopped. His body, now solidly in place, steadied her. Regaining her balance, she climbed into a precarious position and tried to ignore the quivering of her limbs.

Om
.

“You’re doing great,” he spoke in her ear.

By glancing up and craning her neck, Lynn could see Rory. They were below her now. The child hung in an almost upright position, her poncho caught on what appeared to be a broken part of the trunk, her arms draped over green-needled branches, her legs straddling another branch. Her perch looked far more secure than the flimsy web that had saved Lynn. Realizing that, Lynn felt her terror for her daughter go down a notch.

But just a notch. Rory was emphatically not all right. Her eyes were closed. Her face was white as milk. To all appearances she was unconscious.

“Rory!” Lynn cried. Her daughter didn’t answer, didn’t so much as move a finger in response.

“She’ll be okay.”

“You’ve got to get her! Now! Please! Please!”

“I can’t manage both of you at once. Let me get you down first. Then I’ll come back for her.” His tone was meant to be soothing, Lynn realized. Unfortunately, she was not soothed.

“She’s unconscious!”

“At least the way she’s situated she won’t fall.”

That was true, though the knowledge gave Lynn scant comfort.

“I can’t do anything about her until you’re on the ground,” Jess insisted calmly. Then he started moving again. Bound together as they were, Lynn had no choice but to move with him. She scarcely took her eyes off her daughter for the rest of the descent. So worried was she about Rory that she wasn’t even frightened any longer—except for her child.

It seemed to take eons to reach solid ground. When her feet at last touched down on the puddle-pocked hardscrabble, Lynn found to her surprise that her knees would not support her.

With a wordless murmur of dismay she started to crumple. Jess, behind her, caught her with an arm around her waist.

“Whoa,” he said.

“I … can’t stand up.”

“You’ve had a big day.” He kept one arm around her while he sawed through the rope that still bound them together, back to chest. When it was cut, Lynn sank to her knees. Only his arm around her kept her from keeling over onto her face.

“Please get Rory.” Supporting her upper body with her hands, Lynn turned her head to look up at her daughter, who at that distance was no more than a dot of vivid pink against the dark-green splash of evergreens punctuating the cliff.

“I’ll get her, don’t worry.”

Jess, Lynn saw, was bent over, his hands resting on his knees as he breathed deeply in and out.

“Are you okay?” she asked.

“Never better.” He straightened. “Better give me back my gloves.”

“Oh. Sure.” Lynn tugged the leather gloves from her hands and passed them to him. He pulled them on and turned back toward the sheer rock wall, adjusting his makeshift harness, tugging on the rope that was still connected to the top of the cliff to make certain it remained secure. Then, with an ease and grace that impressed Lynn, he started to climb the mountain, finding toeholds where she would have sworn there were none, clinging to impossibly small outcroppings of rock as he pulled himself up.

Watching his deft ascent, Lynn was surprised at how certain she felt that he would succeed in rescuing Rory.

And he did. Rory appeared unconscious when Jess reached the ground with her. As Jess traversed the last few yards Lynn got to her feet and reached for her daughter, steadying her as Jess cut through the rope that held them chest to chest. Lynn quickly pulled off her own poncho and spread it on the ground. Meanwhile, Jess lifted Rory’s bound wrists over his head and lowered her onto the neon-yellow plastic. Taking in those bound wrists, Lynn realized that climbing down with Rory’s deadweight tied to his body must have been even hairier than their own descent.

“Oh, her poor head!” Lynn crouched beside Rory’s supine form. She smoothed back her daughter’s bangs and the long tendrils of blond hair that had escaped from her ponytail, gazing in horror at the deep scrapes and bruising that marred the left side of her forehead from her brow to her hairline.

“She must have brushed a rock on the way down. Or maybe a falling one hit her.” Sinking to one knee, Jess cut through the rope around Rory’s wrists, then sat as he began freeing himself from his jury-rigged climbing harness. He was breathing hard, and sweat beaded his brow. For the moment, though, Lynn had no time or sympathy to spare.

“Rory!” Lynn’s attention was all on her daughter. She chafed Rory’s cold hands, laid a palm on her forehead, her cheek. The bright pink poncho was badly torn and stained. Ripping it the rest of the way off seemed the easiest way to remove it, so Lynn did.

“Let me check her.” Without waiting for permission Jess knelt beside Rory and ran his hands along the teen’s arms and legs, over her rib cage, down her spine, and finally used his fingers to mold her skull. He glanced at Lynn. “I don’t think anything’s broken. Probably she just caught a really good clout on the head.”

Under the circumstances Lynn recognized that her earlier admonition to Jess to keep his hands off her daughter no longer applied. In fact, she welcomed any rudimentary medical knowledge he might have.

“She’s so cold.” Fear thinned Lynn’s voice. Like herself, Rory was wearing a simple cotton turtleneck, jeans, and boots. Thanks to the torn poncho the outfit was wet through. “She needs dry clothes.”

The temperature on the ground seemed warmer than had the air whooshing up and down the cliff, but still it couldn’t have been more than sixty degrees. Too cold for an injured child to lie around wet.

Lynn felt her own turtleneck. It was damp in spots, particularly around the throat and cuffs, but not nearly as soggy as Rory’s. The same could be said for her jeans.

“Turn your back,” Lynn said to Jess.

He looked at her, started to say something, didn’t, and obliged. After a momentary undignified struggle with her boots, Lynn managed to strip down to her undies. Then, shivering, she performed the same service for her daughter. Rory was trembling visibly, Lynn saw with distress as she lifted her child’s head to put on the turtleneck. Goose bumps roughened every bit of Rory’s flesh not covered by her pink cotton bra and panties.

“Mommy.” Rory’s lids fluttered up. The achingly familiar form of address stabbed Lynn through to the heart.

“It’s all right, baby. You’re safe. Mommy’s here.” Lynn bent over her daughter, temporarily abandoning the turtleneck as she crooned reassurance.

“My head hurts.” Rory’s eyes closed again. “And I’m cold.”

“Rory!”

Rory didn’t answer, but it seemed to Lynn that her daughter’s shivering grew more pronounced. Frightened, she snatched up the turtleneck again. She had to get Rory warm and fast. It occurred to Lynn that her wet, cold, and injured daughter could go into shock.

“Put this on her. It’s dry.”

Jess dropped his flannel shirt on Rory’s stomach. Glancing up, Lynn saw that he was wearing a short-sleeved white T-shirt that looked like it had originated with Hanes or Fruit of the Loom. Though his back was nominally turned it was obvious that he hadn’t missed a thing.

“She needs a doctor,” Lynn said.

“The first thing to do is get her warm.”

Jess abandoned any pretense of keeping his back turned and dropped to one knee beside Rory.

“That goes for you too,” he added, his gaze flicking over the amount of shivering skin left exposed by Lynn’s ice-blue nylon-and-lace scanties. Though she was at least as well covered as she would have been if she were wearing a bikini—more so if one counted her brightly patterned trouser socks—Lynn felt acutely self-conscious under that look.

“Do you mind?” she demanded, bristling.

“For Christ’s sake, don’t you think I’ve seen women in their underwear before?” Jess asked, impatient, reaching for the shirt he had dropped. “I’ll put this on her. You get dressed yourself. You’re turning blue around the gills.”

Lynn hesitated, then nodded reluctant agreement. She was freezing—and Rory looked even colder. The emergency in which they found themselves took precedence over all other concerns, including modesty and Jess’s intentions toward her daughter. In any case the man’s behavior had been above reproach since their fall, Lynn had to admit. He had saved their lives, at no little risk to his own. He had been resourceful, reassuring, a complete gentleman and a brave man. So he had ogled her in her underwear; at least he hadn’t ogled Rory.

And now he had given up his shirt, which was made of thick brushed-cotton flannel. It was dry and warm from his body, and she was thankful to have it for her daughter.

Pulling on her own turtleneck again, Lynn watched as Jess eased Rory into the garment, then pulled it closed over her chest. As he began doing up the buttons, Lynn struggled into Rory’s wet jeans. Fortunately, the kids all favored baggy clothes or Lynn would never have been able to get them on at all. Slim though Lynn was, her backside was two sizes larger than Rory’s.

Jess had the flannel shirt buttoned almost up to Rory’s neck when Lynn took over. She brushed his hands aside, finished the task, then turned up the shirt’s collar for extra warmth and pulled the too-long sleeves down to cover the child’s icy hands. The tails reached past her knees. Rory’s socks were dry—her boots were apparently more effective than Lynn’s at repelling water—so Lynn left them alone and wrestled her own jeans up her daughter’s legs.

“All done?” A slightly ironic note underlay the question.

Lynn glanced up to encounter Jess’s gaze again. He was standing, looking down at the pair of them, his hands thrust into the pocket of his jeans and his arms held close to his body as if he were attempting to ward off the cold.

“Thanks for the shirt,” she said.

“No problem.”

While Lynn covered Rory with the remains of the torn poncho to keep out the wind, Jess moved about twenty feet away from the cliff, then turned to face the vertical rock wall, looking toward the precipice as he waved his arms. Lynn realized that he was trying to signal the group on the top of the cliff.

“Do you think they can see you?”

Sitting beside Rory, she was pulling her boots back on over damp socks as she spoke.

“Yeah. At least, I’m pretty sure they can. Though Owen will be careful to keep everybody well back from the edge this time.”

“Too bad he didn’t think about that earlier.” Lynn’s rejoinder was more than a shade caustic.

“Yeah, well, I guess we made the mistake of putting too much faith in our guests’ common sense. Live and learn. Ah, there’s Owen.”

The look Lynn sent his way was withering.

“You don’t happen to have a pen on you, do you?” He was patting the pockets of his jeans as he spoke.

“A
pen
?”

“Or a pencil. Something to write with.”

“Why?” Lynn was mystified.

“I want to send Owen a note.” He indicated the rope that still snaked down from the top of the cliff.

“Oh.” She patted her own pockets—Rory’s, actually—and felt a lump. Digging, she came up with a slim blue-plastic lipstick case. “What about this?”

“That’ll do,” he said, accepting it.

Jess dropped to one knee, pulled out his knife, hacked off a piece of Rory’s torn poncho, and used the lipstick to scribble something on the rough white lining.

“I assume you’re telling Owen to come and get us?”

Jess paused and glanced at her. “You’re kidding, right?”

“Not really.”

“Look around you, babe.” He went back to his writing.

“Don’t call me babe.” Lynn objected automatically—sensitized from years of battling sexism in the newsroom—while following Jess’s advice to look around.

Though the area where they had fetched up was relatively flat, about thirty feet away the ground began sloping toward the pine forest, the edge of which was about a quarter of a mile distant. With the sheer rise of the cliff behind them, down was the only way to go. Climbing back up was not an option.