Heartbreaker (11 page)

“Maybe the whole group can’t get down here”—Lynn was willing to recognize the truth of that—“but the Jeep can, can’t it? I mean, drive around or something? Rory needs to be seen by a doctor.”

Jess gave her a wry smile. “There are some places even a Jeep can’t go, and I’m afraid this is one of them. We’re going to have to walk out. Luckily, I know where we are. There’s a gravel road about a day’s hike from here where the Jeep can pick us up. That’s where I’m telling Owen to meet us.”

“But Rory needs a doctor!”

“There’s nothing I can do about it right now. Anyway, I don’t think she’s badly hurt. She was talking, and she looks to be getting a little of her color back. She’ll be all right.”

“And what if she’s not?”

“Listen, you ought to be thanking your lucky stars you’re both still alive.”

Lynn ignored that to focus on her more immediate concern. “You mean you don’t have some kind of contingency plan in case something like this happens? A helicopter or something that can reach inaccessible places to take injured people to the hospital?”

“Nope.”

“Nope?”
Annoyance at the nonchalance of his single-syllable reply lent a shrill note to Lynn’s voice.

Jess met her look with a level gaze of his own. “We’re in a federally designated High Wilderness Area, in case you hadn’t noticed. The land is wild and primitive and largely inaccessible to any kind of machine. That’s the attraction of it. Presumably that’s one of the reasons your group decided to sign up for this trip. Or did you think this was some kind of Disneyland adventure, where everything’s fake?”

That last bit of sarcasm on top of her fear for her daughter brought all her near-forgotten antipathy for this Marlboro Man wanna-be flooding back.

“Not everything, just the cowboys,” she said nastily.

Jess stopped writing again to stare at her, “What?”

“You. And your brother. And the rest of your crew. Fakes, every one of you, with your stupid cowboy hats and your stupid cowboy boots and your stupid cowboy horses.”

“I managed to save your ass, lady.”

There was an edge to Jess’s voice. That and the reminder that she and Rory owed him her life put the crowning touch on Lynn’s outrage. She hated to be beholden to anyone, especially a too-handsome fake cowboy.

“Well, you better figure out some way to get my daughter to a doctor, pronto, or I’ll
sue
your ass, buddy. And you can bet your sweet life I won’t do it halfway!”

S
O HE WAS
a sucker for tough broads, Jess thought ruefully, staring at Lynn as she spat threats at him. In
Grease
he’d preferred Rizzo to saccharine-sweet Sandy. He liked Madonna. He liked Sharon Stone. Right from the start, when he and Owen had met this latest group of tourists at the airport, he’d zeroed in on that quality in Lynn.

Attitude, that was what she had, in spades. And it turned him on. To quote Owen: Little brother likes babes with balls.

Beautiful
babes with balls. To be strictly accurate, his first thought upon setting eyes on Lynn when she had come striding down that airline ramp had been,
whoa
, Babe-raham Lincoln.

His appraisal had started with her feet in their sexy spike heels, swept up over a pair of breathtaking legs in sheer hose, approved a slim black skirt that ended at midthigh, and noted with interest the other assets imperfectly concealed by her businesslike blazer and silk blouse.

She’d had discreet gold hoops in her ears, a no-nonsense mouth rendered kissable by pale-pink lipstick, big blue eyes with thick brushes of lashes, and an elegant upswept hairdo the color of daffodils.

And a go-to-hell look on her face when he’d smiled at her.

As Owen had said out of the side of his mouth as they’d gathered up the group’s luggage, that one was Jess’s type of woman.

A bitch.

That bit of brotherly candor unfortunately had proved all too true.

Now the babe with balls was turning her bitchery on him. After he had just saved her life yet. And her daughter’s too.

Talk about ingratitude!

He wasn’t in the mood for it: He was bone-tired, he was freezing to death, he had rope burns on his hands, he had the mother of all cricks in his neck, and he still had to face the headache of getting her and her kid back to civilization in one piece.

And she was threatening to sue him? And Owen, and Adventure, Inc.? He should have left her hanging in that tree.

Too late now.

“I guess that’s why we have liability insurance,” Jess said mildly, and stood up, note in hand.

Heading toward the cliff, he could feel her fury rising behind him, silent but palpable. The muscles in his back tensed. In his experience babes with balls were inclined to throw things at the object of their ire.

Which in this case meant him. As it usually did.

But she didn’t.

“By the way, you’re welcome,” Jess said over his shoulder as he sent his note snaking up the cliff. “I’d be glad to save your life again anytime. Babe.”

S
HE NEEDED A CIGARETTE
. Trudging behind Jess, tromping through a primeval alpine forest along a barely discernible trail between stands of moss-covered undergrowth so thick and high it could have hidden a baker’s dozen grizzlies, stumbling over rocks and roots and sliding on slippery things she preferred not to try to identify, that was the thought uppermost in Lynn’s mind: She needed a cigarette.

She was marooned in this wilderness hell with a grumpy fake cowboy, an injured teenage daughter with the hots for said cowboy, a thirty-pound pack that felt ten times heavier, and no cigarettes.

Adventure, Inc.’s literature had promised:
You’ll get in touch with your body in a whole new way
.

They were right: She’d never before experienced a nicotine fit the magnitude of the one she could feel coming on. By the time they got back to civilization she would not have smoked a cigarette in
two whole days
!

And that was the best-case scenario. Given the track record of the trip so far, there was about as much chance of things going as planned as there was of spotting a hospital around the next bend.

Scanning an old mountain-goat trail for discarded butts was obviously a waste of time, but Lynn found herself doing it anyway on the off-chance that they were following in the footsteps of a nanny goat with a tobacco habit. It was hopeless, of course, just as discovering a stray cigarette on her person or those of her companions was hopeless. She’d turned her own clothes inside out, and Rory’s too, out of pure desperation, though her daughter was an avid anti-smoker.

Jess had no cigarettes. She’d already broken her seething silence long enough to ask him. He’d given her a superior smirk as he informed her that
he
didn’t smoke.

Lynn hated that kind of smug nonsmoker.

There were no cigarettes in either of the packs Owen had sent down the cliff. Lynn had already torn them apart, checking.

Her own cigarettes were tucked away in a saddlebag, left behind with that stupid horse. Of course, she couldn’t really blame herself for that. Though she was a planner by nature, it was a little too much to ask to plan to fall off a cliff.

She needed a cigarette.

To distract herself Lynn dwelt on the growing discomfort at the backs of her heels. The farther she walked, the worse the pain grew. Obviously, the combination of damp socks and new boots was giving her blisters.

Huge blisters.

If Adventure, Inc.’s to-bring list had not specified boots as the only acceptable kind of footgear, she would be wearing comfortable sneakers right now, not shiny English riding boots that were devilish to walk in. Everyone else had opted for cowboy boots, including Rory, whose I-told-you-so had been the first words she had said to her mother when the group all met up at the corral for their initial ride.

And that was Adventure, Inc.’s fault too, for not being specific enough. If they had been she’d have been spared embarrassment and blisters, and the tight, tall leather shanks would not be chafing the area just below her knees with every step she now took.

Lynn dwelt on that too.

From there she dwelt on her tired knees, her sore back, the stinging in her palms.

She dwelt on her shoulder, which ached where it had slammed into the cliff.

She dwelt on her antipathy for the man she had—for the moment—no choice but to follow.

She dwelt on her anxiety about Rory. But that was so acute that it produced an even greater craving for a nicotine fix.

She needed a cigarette!

It was growing dark. Whether she disliked Jess or not was soon beside the point when there were things all around them in the shadows. Things that rustled. Things that slithered. Things that squeaked. She picked up her pace, trying to close the distance between herself and Jess’s unyielding back, with little success.

Even with his pack, which had to weigh at least as much as hers, and Rory in his arms, he was moving faster than she thought she could ever move again.

She was so tired. What she needed was a rest—and a cigarette.

“Wait!” bubbled to her lips more than once as the distance between them gradually increased, but Lynn forced it back. She would ask for no quarter from Jess Feldman, ever.

“Whooo-ooo!” The sharp flutter of wings near at hand accompanied the cry and almost surprised a scream out of Lynn. It was an owl, of course, she told herself, as brilliant reflective eyes in a pale round face swooped past her to vanish again in the dark. Nothing but an owl.

Up ahead Jess stopped, waiting. With a feeling of relief Lynn tromped over roots and rocks and miscellaneous debris littering the path to his side.

“Get the flashlight out, will you?”

With a brusque jerk of his head he indicated his backpack. Get it yourself, Lynn almost said, but to be fair, with Rory in his arms he didn’t have a hand free.

“How’s Rory?” Gritting her teeth, Lynn unzipped his backpack and foraged for the flashlight.

“She’s all right, I think. She was murmuring something a while back. She seems comfortable enough.”

A glance at Rory confirmed that. Her head lay on Jess’s shoulder, and her body was curled high against his chest. Zipped into a goose-down jacket—like the ones she and Jess wore, courtesy of the cliff rescue line—and wrapped in a silvery space blanket, she looked toasty warm and just a tad too cozy for her mother’s peace of mind.

A suspicious glance at Jess’s expression reassured her somewhat. At the moment he did not look like he had a sexual thought in his head. What he did look was very tired.

Lynn found herself wishing there was someone to carry
her
. She was tired too, so tired she could drop where she stood and sleep for a thousand years.

Jess had even more reason to be tired than she did. Rory weighed less than a hundred pounds, but even so, carrying her for so long must have required considerable strength. He was holding her in his arms too, like an infant, in deference to her injured state, instead of hauling her slung over his shoulder or in some other masculinely efficient way.

If Lynn hadn’t been feeling so out of sorts, she might have felt a glimmer of gratitude toward him for his care of her daughter.

But she was feeling out of sorts. No, out of sorts was too mild a way to put it. What she was feeling was downright mean.

The smooth, cool plastic of a disposable lighter touched her probing fingertips. Lynn almost wept. What good was a lighter without cigarettes?

“Why would anybody pack a lighter and no cigarettes?” she demanded of no one in particular. It was a question she’d asked before, both out loud and silently, from the time she’d discovered the lighter in one of the packs when she had first searched them and concluded that cigarettes must be in there too, only to have her hopes dashed.

“Maybe to start a fire with, so we won’t freeze.” This was the first time Jess had answered a question he must have recognized as purely rhetorical, and Lynn would just as soon he hadn’t bothered. His sarcasm did nothing to improve her mood.

“Oh, shut up,” she said.

“Mom?” Rory’s voice, thin though it was, was more welcome than even a cigarette would have been.

“Baby, are you awake? How do you feel?” Lynn abandoned her search of the backpack to come around to look at her daughter. Rory’s forehead was shiny with salve from the first-aid kit in one of the packs. Lynn hoped that the shine magnified the degree of discoloration; half of Rory’s forehead looked black. If not, the injury was growing worse—but then, bruising usually did get worse before it got better, she reminded herself.

Lynn prayed that bruising was all it was.

“My head hurts.” Rory paused, looking as if she had to work to collect her thoughts. “What happened?”

“We fell off the cliff.” Lynn smoothed her daughter’s hair away from the greasy salve, touched her cheek, and smiled at her.

“I thought so. Jess saved us, didn’t he? Or at least me. He brought me down the cliff. I thought it was a dream.”

“It wasn’t a dream,” Lynn said sourly.

“Then he saved my life. That makes him a hero, doesn’t it? Thanks, Jess.”

Rory smiled up at him, her arms curling close around his neck, then planted a quick kiss on the underside of his jaw. The kittenish performance sent quivers of alarm through Lynn. Unable to do anything more constructive, she glared ferociously at Jess, who just happened to be looking right at her.

Did she read guilt in his expression? Or something more sinister?

“My pleasure.” Dismissing Lynn with a glance, Jess smiled back at Rory. “You are very welcome.”

His gaze moved back to Lynn’s face. This time she had no trouble reading the silent mockery in his eyes. “Hey, Mom, do you think you could hurry with that flashlight?”

“I’m doing my best.” Gritting her teeth against responding to that
Mom
—she knew perfectly well he had called her that just to irritate her—Lynn went back to fishing for the flashlight. Her fingers found the distinctive shape at last, and she pulled it out. Sized to fit in a palm, it was small and lightweight but powerful. Unfortunately, the net effect when Lynn turned on the light was to make the deepening shadows around them seem even darker in comparison. She glanced around uneasily.