Her Mountain Man (7 page)

His climbing partner today, Josh Merton, didn’t help keep Paul’s mind off Sierra. “What’s the story with you and that hot brunette?” he asked, as he and Paul prepared to set anchors for a new route up the pool wall.

“She’s a reporter interviewing me for a magazine article,” Paul said.

“I thought you didn’t talk to reporters.”

“She’s not just any reporter.”

Josh laughed. “I can see that. I guess for a woman who looked like that I might sacrifice my principles, too.”

“It’s not like that.” Paul stepped onto a jutting chunk of rock and found a handhold in a crevice overhead. He began to climb.

“Don’t make the route too tough,” Josh said. “Remember, this is for kids. Some of them have been pretty sick, I guess, so the idea is to challenge them, but not freak them out.” Josh had volunteered to help with several groups of kids from The Children’s Hospital in Denver who were participating in four-day vacations in the San Juan Mountains sponsored by the local Elks Lodge.

“Right.” Paul looked up the slope, studying his options.

“You ought to come help with the climb,” Josh said. “There’s supposed to be seven kids and their families participating. We could always use more volunteers.”

“No, thanks,” Paul said. Josh was the kind of guy who was at ease with anyone and everyone, but Paul wasn’t so comfortable around crowds of strangers, especially a bunch of critically ill children and their families. He wouldn’t know what to say to them, and he didn’t think he’d be able to hide his emotions.

“Will you be too busy romancing your reporter friend to help me out?” Josh persisted, beginning a route parallel to Paul’s.

“She’s only here until Monday,” Paul said. “And I’m talking to her because she’s Victor Winston’s daughter.”

“Oh.” A shower of gravel bouncing down the slope emphasized the single syllable as Josh scrambled for a new foothold. “That’s heavy.”

“Yeah.” When he’d agreed to talk with Sierra, he hadn’t thought much about the potential emotional impact of such a meeting. He’d been focused on the chance to learn more about his childhood hero—the chance to, in a way, bring the man whose body he’d hauled down the side of a mountain back to life.

“So, is she glad you found her dad, or upset that you brought the whole story back into the open after so many years?” Josh asked. He stopped a little above Paul on the wall, flattened against the rock and looked back at his friend.

“She hasn’t said.” Paul hammered an anchor into the wall. Though she’d relaxed a little around him yesterday, Sierra had been careful not to reveal too much of herself.

He’d enjoyed hearing about her childhood with Victor, but when he’d pressed for more, she’d cut him off. Was it because her parents separated when she was so young?

The idea that his hero had abandoned his wife and daughter bothered Paul. Wouldn’t Sierra have seen her dad on weekends and summer visits? Yet she hadn’t known about Victor’s netsuke collection. Paul wondered if it would be possible to find out when Victor had begun collecting. Had the gift to his daughter sparked his interest? If so, why hadn’t he shared that interest with his only child?

The more time he spent with Sierra, the more questions he had. And he couldn’t say all his questions concerned her father. The woman herself drew him. He couldn’t remember when he’d enjoyed being with someone more. And that one kiss…

“Are you going to lean there against the rock all morning, or are you going to climb?”

He looked up and saw Josh several yards above him. Silently cursing his inability to concentrate, he quickly hauled himself up beside his friend.

They made it to the top of the wall without further comment, setting anchors along the way, then hurried back down. Indy greeted them enthusiastically as they dropped to the ground, barking and licking Paul’s face. “Good boy,” Paul said, rubbing the dog’s ears.

The two men rested a moment against the sun-warmed rock, enjoying the view of the hot-springs pool a short distance away. A few swimmers did laps in the lanes on one side of the steaming pool, while a trio of small children took turns on the water slide. The familiar sights made Paul feel more at home here than any place he’d lived since leaving his parents’ place for Everest the summer after he’d graduated from high school. Until he’d decided to move to Ouray, he’d drifted from place to place. Ouray was the first community where he’d felt like putting down roots.

“Speaking of hot chicks, I saw Kelly at Smuggler’s last night.” Josh returned to his favorite subject—women.

Paul began gathering his climbing gear. “Was she with that real-estate guy?”

“I don’t know. She was on her way back from the ladies’ room when we passed in the hall. Then I lost her in the crowd.”

“She was probably with him. Keith somebody or other. She seems really into him.”

“She told you that?”

“Sure. Why not?”

Josh shook his head. “How is it you stay friends with all the women you used to date? All my ex-girlfriends would just as soon cut out my liver and feed it to their dog.”

“That’s because you let things get serious and then you break it off. They end up angry and hurt. The women I date are friends. I never let things get too deep. We have a good time, but keep it light.”

“Yeah. And why is that?”

“Why is what?” Paul took off his climbing helmet and added it to the pile of gear.

“Why are you only out for a good time? Don’t you want to find someone to be with long-term?”

Long-term? A word that meant commitment, even permanence. “I don’t live the kind of lifestyle that’s compatible with relationships,” he said. “My future’s too uncertain.”

“Everyone’s future is uncertain,” Josh said. “As for your lifestyle—mountain climbing didn’t stop Victor Winston from having a family.”

Paul remembered the hurt in Sierra’s expression when she’d talked about her father. “Maybe all that will happen for me later,” he said. “Right now I’m too busy to settle down.”

The two friends carried their gear to Paul’s Jeep. “Where’s your next expedition?” Josh asked.

“I’m not sure. I’m considering climbing in Nepal next summer.”

“So you’ll be here for ice season.” In winter, a portion of the Uncompahgre Gorge at the south end of town was transformed into walls of thick ice, which drew professional and amateur climbers from around the world.

“Maybe,” Paul said. “I’ve been invited to join a team that’s climbing Fitz Roy Mountain in Argentina this winter. I haven’t decided yet.”

“You ought to stick around,” Josh said. “A lot of female climbers show up for the Chicks with Picks events. You might meet somebody who wouldn’t freak out about the whole mountain-climbing thing.”

There were a few professional women climbers who might understand the attraction of peak-bagging. He knew of at least one couple who climbed together, though the thought made Paul shudder. Having someone he loved climbing with him would be too much of a distraction. Worrying about her safety would be too stressful, the possibility of seeing her suffer too painful.

He shoved the last of the gear into the Jeep and closed the tailgate. “I don’t know about dating a woman climber,” he said. “I couldn’t impress her with my exploits. And if she was a better climber than I am, I don’t know if my fragile ego could handle it.”

“I’ll have to be sure to mention that if that reporter decides to interview me.”

“Sierra? Why would she interview you?”

“For background on you. All the dirt and gossip.”

“What dirt and gossip?”

“I’d have to make something up,” Josh said. “It would be worth it to get to know her better.”

“Forget it.” He called Indy and ordered the dog into the Jeep, ignoring the flare of anger at his friend. Was it the idle threat of rumors, or Josh’s interest in Sierra that upset him so?

“The Railbenders are playing at The Outlaw tonight,” Josh said. “You going to be there?”

“I might.”

“I’ll save you a spot at my table—at least until I find a good-looking woman to fill it. You could bring Sierra with you.”

Would she agree to come to The Outlaw with him? Could he somehow convince her that doing so was necessary for her story? But how pathetic was he if that was the only way he could get a date? “I don’t know if Sierra would be interested,” he said.

“Isn’t that her, headed our way? You can ask her.”

Paul whipped his head around and saw Sierra, hair blowing across her face as she trudged up the road toward them. He was out of the Jeep, going to meet her, before he even realized what he was doing. He had that crazy vertigo feeling again, as if the world had tilted.

Sierra was red-faced and out of breath by the time Paul reached her. “You should have called and I’d have come to your hotel and picked you up,” he said, taking her arm and escorting her the last few yards to his Jeep.

She didn’t resist, and even leaned on him a little. “I like to walk,” she said when they stopped.

At the vehicle, Indy greeted her with a happy bark and much waving of his plumed tail. Josh stepped forward, hand extended. “Hello,” he said. “I’m Josh.”

“Sierra Winston, meet Josh Merton,” Paul said as the two shook hands. “Don’t believe half of what he tells you, especially if it’s about me.”

“Why is that?” Sierra asked.

“Don’t listen to him,” Josh said, still grinning. “He’s fallen and landed on his head a few too many times. It’s made him paranoid.”

“I’m only trying to protect her from you,” Paul fired back. “The local women don’t buy your ladies’ man act anymore.”

“He’s just jealous because I won the best legs competition at Rotary Park last year.” Josh winked at Sierra. “He only got honorable mention.”

“Only because I’d spent the summer in the Himalayas,” Paul said. “I was a little pale.”

“A little pale? The judges had to wear sunglasses to keep from being blinded by the glare.”

Sierra laughed. “You should take your act on the road,” she said. “It’s very entertaining.”

“We were a big hit in Katmandu,” Josh said. “Though they didn’t get all our jokes in Tanzania.”

“The two of you have climbed together?” Sierra asked.

“A few times,” Paul said.

“We climbed Everest together,” Josh said. “It was the trip of a lifetime, but now I prefer to stick to the local fourteeners or scaling the ice here in the winter.”

“Fourteeners?” she asked.

“Colorado has fifty-four peaks over fourteen thousand feet in elevation,” Josh explained. “Fourteeners for short. I leave the bigger stuff to this guy here.” He clapped a hand on Paul’s shoulder.

Paul shrugged off Josh’s hand. “What can I do for you?” he asked Sierra.

“We need to sit down together and continue our interview,” she said.

“Right.” He’d promised to talk to her today. What would she think of him when he spilled his story? And how much of it was he willing to tell her? He could talk about climbing and about Victor, but there were some parts of his personal life he never mentioned to anyone. Call it superstition, but not talking about bad memories was his way of keeping them safely behind locked doors. If he wanted to rehash his past, he’d see a therapist, not a reporter.

“I thought we could conduct the interview at your house,” Sierra said. “I want to see where you live.”

At least he’d cleaned up the place since that first day. “It’s nothing special,” he said. “But you’re welcome to see it.” Conducting the interview at his house wasn’t a bad idea. If the conversation got too personal, he could always show her pictures or souvenirs from his expeditions. He’d play the part of the reckless mountaineer—that was what magazines wanted, wasn’t it?

If she asked what drove him, he’d keep his answers vague. If George Mallory could announce that he wanted to climb Everest “because it’s there” that ought to be good enough for Paul Teasdale.

“Let me stash my gear and I’ll be right with you,” Paul said, and went back outside to unload the Jeep.

Sierra moved to the bookshelf to study the photos there—Paul with grinning Sherpas, Paul and Josh on what might have been their trip to Everest, Paul with a puppy that must have been Indy, Paul with an attractive older couple—his parents?

Then she spotted the framed eight-by-ten at the back of the grouping and caught her breath. The man in the photo grinned at her with an expression as familiar as her own face in the mirror, and just as much a part of her.

She stared at the photograph of her father in his prime. She’d been there the day the photographer from
National Geographic
had visited their house. Her father was smiling at
her
in this picture—she was just off camera, making faces at him from behind the photographer’s left shoulder.

She’d been nine, still at the stage where she thought of her dad as a superhero. He could do anything, from conquering distant mountains to fixing a flat on her bicycle. He’d lived at home for nine months before this photograph was taken, only going on short trips to speak about his exploits or to meet with sponsors of his next expedition. Sierra had grown used to the idea that he’d be with them forever, and even her mother was happier than Sierra could remember.

The day after the photographer left, their world fell apart again. Victor announced that
National Geographic
was sponsoring an expedition to Kilimanjaro, and he would leave the next week for four months.

“It’s a good picture of him, don’t you think?”

She hadn’t heard Paul return to the house. He walked over to stand beside her. “He looks really relaxed and happy,” he said.

She nodded, unable to speak. “He was looking at me when that picture was taken,” she said. “He was smiling at
me.
”

She turned away from the photographs and walked to the sofa. “Should we get started with the interview?”

“We should have lunch first.”

“I’m not hungry.”

“After that climb, I am. Come on into the kitchen. You can talk to me while I fix us something to eat.”

The kitchen was as simple and lovely as the living room, with cabinets painted a soft green and matching stone countertops. The deep sink might have been original to the house, though the side-by-side refrigerator was obviously newer.

She sat at the square wooden table and watched as he pulled various bowls and packages from the refrigerator and cabinets. She noted the full spice rack, various bottles of oils and marinades and the professional-quality cookware. “You cook,” she said.

“When I have the time. I like to eat. Mountaineering food has come a long way since your father’s day, but weeks of those freeze-dried rations really make a man appreciate fresh food.”

She remembered a Sunday dinner: roast beef, mashed potatoes, green beans, sliced tomatoes, rolls and an enormous chocolate cake. “I dream about your cooking when I’m away,” her father had told her mother when he’d finished eating. Her mother had beamed at him, though Sierra couldn’t help think that it would have been far more romantic if he’d said he dreamed about her mother while he was away, and not merely her cooking.

Paul set part of a roast chicken, a container of hummus, a wedge of Swiss cheese, bread, crackers and various condiments on the table, then handed her a plate. “You might as well eat,” he said. “There’s plenty.”

She put some hummus, cheese and crackers on her plate. “What’s your favorite food?” she asked.

“Cheese enchiladas. I could eat them every day.”

She made note of this. He laughed. “You’re going to put that in your article?”

“I don’t know. I won’t know what I’ll include until I sit down to write. I have an idea for how I want to shape the article, but you have to supply the details.” She took out her tape recorder and set it in the middle of the table. “Starting now.”

He stared at the recorder and took a long drink of water. He set down his glass and sat back in his chair. “My first big climb was Everest,” he said. “I was eighteen, I’d just graduated high school and I hooked up with a group of tourists for a guided climb. The trip cost the equivalent of a semester’s college tuition.”

“What did your parents think of you spending that kind of money on a climb instead of college?”

“My mother cried. Not because she was upset about the money, but because she was worried I’d be hurt.”

“Were
you
worried you’d be hurt?”

“Are you kidding? I was an eighteen-year-old guy. There’s probably a survey somewhere that shows guys that age all think they’re invincible.”

“Do you still think you’re invincible? Is that a quality necessary for mountain climbing?”

His expression sobered. “Climbing makes you very aware of your mortality,” he said. “Brash climbers don’t last long.”

Finally they seemed to be getting somewhere with this interview. “Did something specific happen to teach you that lesson?” she asked.

“I realized later why they charged so much for that tourist climb,” he said. “We were all so ignorant. I thought I had skills because I’d climbed a lot of fourteeners in Colorado and California, but I was as green as the rest.” He shook his head. “We didn’t even make it to the top because a storm blew in. After that, I decided to apprentice myself to someone who knew what he was doing. I signed on with George Gantry. He was your father’s former partner, you know.”

She nodded. She had memories of a large, loud man with wild blond hair like a lion’s mane visiting the house and swooping her into his arms. “How about a kiss for Uncle George?” he’d shout. “What was George like to work for?” she asked.

“He was a tyrant. If you asked him that same question, he’d cheerfully agree. In exchange for a spot on his team, I got to be his slave—fetching and carrying and doing whatever he told me to do. But I learned a lot about climbing. George was a blowhard on flat land but on a mountain he had incredible skills. He told me your father had taught him everything.”

“What kind of things?” she asked.

“How to read a mountain to find the best route. How to judge weather. How to push on through the tough patches.” He leaned forward, expression intense. “People think climbing is all about the physical challenges, operating in thin air, steep slopes, unpredictable terrain and bad weather. But the real obstacles in climbing are the mental ones.”

“Such as?”

He broke a cracker in half and contemplated the pieces. “There’s a point in every climb when you want to quit. You’re tired, everything hurts, your body is sick from not having enough oxygen. Maybe the food is getting to you, or the constant wind, or the stink of your own body from not having bathed in a week. You reach a point where you want to throw all your gear over the side of a cliff and go home.”

“So why don’t you?” she asked. “Why put yourself through all that?”

“Different people find different reasons. It could be a desire for fame, or the craving to see what the world looks like at the top, or wanting to beat out a competitor.”

“Yes, but what drives you?” she asked.

He tossed the broken cracker aside. “I’m stubborn. I just hate to give up. I won’t quit.”

Sierra didn’t try to hide her disappointment. “So climbing mountains is all about stubbornness? All that suffering and effort just so you can say you didn’t quit?”

He laughed. “Hey, I never said I was deep. Every climber has something that gets them to the top. For me, it’s obstinance.”

She shook her head. “There has to be more to it than that. What made you so stubborn?”

“I can’t help you there.” He ate a cracker.

She tried another tack. “How did you end up working for George Gantry?”

“I asked him for a job. Begged, really.”

“Why George?”

“Because he was one of the best climbers active at the time. And because he had been your father’s partner.”

Her father again. “It always comes back to my dad with you, doesn’t it?”

“The climbing community isn’t that large,” Paul said. “At that time he’d only been dead a couple of years, so his influence was still felt. Most of his records were still intact. I’d made up my mind to be the best and if the best climber wasn’t alive to teach me, I’d have to learn from the people he’d taught.”

“You never met my father, so how is it he’s exerted such a huge influence on your life?”

Paul shrugged. “There are some people we connect with, for whatever reason. Why does one person become mentor for another? Why are some people lifelong enemies? Why do two people fall in love?” He shoved his half-empty plate aside. “What do you think your father would think about the two of us meeting?”

“I don’t know what my father would think,” she said. “I don’t even know what I think.” Her feelings about Paul were too mixed up with her feelings about her father. Being with Paul forced her to think more about her dad than she had in years, but Paul himself occupied another large portion of her thoughts. Her attraction to him was both inconvenient and unsettling.