Her Mountain Man

by Cindi Myers

  She was about to tell him as much when they rounded a sharp curve and she looked out over…nothing.

  Or rather, a lot of empty space, below which was a valley painted in green and gold. The ground fell away sharply a scant foot from the side of the Jeep. She held on to her seat belt and bit back a gasp.

  Paul seemed oblivious. He steered the Jeep over and around potholes and rocks, whistling under his breath. “What happens if we meet another car?” she asked.

  “Uphill traffic has the right of way, so they’d have to back up.”

  He inched the Jeep around a series of hairpin curves, tires spinning in the gravel. Sierra bit her lip to keep from crying out. No matter what, she refused to let Paul see she was frightened.

  Suddenly he slammed on the brakes. The back end of the Jeep skidded sideways in the gravel. Indy let out an excited bark and Sierra yelped. “What’s wrong?”

  “Look, up there on that rock.” Paul pointed to his side of the road, to a pile of rock at the base of the cliff walls. “It’s a marmot.”

  She stared at the fat, furry animal, about the size of a small dog. “You sent us into a skid to point out a marmot?”

  “Aww, that wasn’t much of a skid. Did you bring a camera with you?”

  “Why? Do you want your picture taken with the marmot?”

  “That’s not a bad idea,” he laughed, “but there’s probably better scenery around than that.”

  He grinned, flashing white teeth. In the sun, gold flecks sparkled in his eyes, and a two-day growth of beard gave him the ruggedly handsome look Hollywood stars worked hard to cultivate. Her girlfriends would no doubt agree with her that he qualified as better scenery.

  “I didn’t bring a camera,” she said. “The magazine will be sending a photographer later.”

  He started the Jeep forward again. They were above tree line now, and the air was considerably cooler. Sierra retrieved her jacket from the backseat and put it on. She decided to avoid looking to the side or down and focus on staring straight ahead. She normally wasn’t afraid of heights, but the sheer drop at her side was unnerving.

  A carved wooden sign declared their arrival at the top of the pass. Paul parked the Jeep over to the side and they climbed out. “Check out this view,” he said, spreading his arms wide. “Isn’t it incredible?”

  The mountains rose around them, their snowcapped peaks startlingly white against a turquoise-blue sky. Brilliant sun illuminated a kaleidoscope of red rock, golden aspen, dark green fir and rich brown earth. The colors were almost too vivid, the sun too bright. She felt lost in such vastness, like Alice plunged down the rabbit hole—she was in a world where she didn’t quite fit, yet fascinated by her surroundings.

  “That tallest peak—the one that comes to a sharp point—is Mount Sneffels,” Paul said. “You’ll see it in ads and on postcards all over the place around here. The wide peak next to it is Wilson Peak. The sort of rounded one is Teakettle Mountain, and that one over there is Gilpin Peak.”

  “Have you climbed any of them?” she asked.

  “I’ve climbed them all. Most of them aren’t technical. You could climb them.”

  “Ha! Not me. If I want to be on top of something tall, I’ll ride the elevator to the top of the Empire State Building.”

  “I know you went hiking with your dad, but did you ever climb with him? I mean, other than that training climb he carried you up when you were a baby.”

  “I told you, I don’t remember that one. And no, I never climbed with him.” She stooped and picked up a handful of gravel and began tossing pellets out into the bottomless valley below.

  “I figured he would have had you out there with him as soon as you could carry a pack.”

  “I guess by the time I was old enough, he’d changed his mind.” She ignored the ache in her chest. If her father had ever asked her to climb with him, she had no memory of it—she remembered only her longing to be with him, and his silence on the subject. “My mother wouldn’t have let me go with him, anyway,” she said. “It was dangerous enough for a man, let alone a child.”

  “These mountains aren’t dangerous. Schoolkids around here climb them all the time.”

  “Next you’ll tell me they all know how to kill and skin an elk before their tenth birthday.”

  “Hey, I’m telling you the truth. Just a few days ago the paper ran pictures of a bunch of fifth-graders on top of Matterhorn Peak. That’s that one right there, to the left of Wilson.”

  She still couldn’t tell if he was putting her on or not. If he thought he could tease her, maybe it was time she turned the tables a little. “Is your secret swimming hole anywhere near here?” she asked.

  To her amusement, the tips of his ears reddened. “Who told you about that?”

  “Kelly said I should ask you about it—that it would make a great story for my article.”

  “Just wait till I see her again.” He turned toward the Jeep. “Come on, let’s eat lunch.”

  “You have to tell me the story,” she said, following him to the car. “Or I could just ask Kelly.”

  “I’ll tell you, but you have to promise not to use it in your article.”

  “Aww, come on. It can’t be that bad.”

  “You have to swear,” he said.

  She held up her right hand, palm out. “I swear. What’s the story?”

  He leaned into the backseat and pulled out a plastic tote bag. “We’d better eat in the Jeep,” he said. “There’s really no place else to sit.”

  Practicing patience, she slid into the passenger seat and accepted the sandwich he handed her.

  “Hope you like turkey,” he said. “It’s on cranberry wheat, from the Timberline Deli. There’s chips, too.” He fed Indy a potato chip.

  “Thanks. So what about the swimming hole?”

  “I’ll get to that.” He unwrapped his own sandwich and arranged it on the console between them, then handed her a bottle of water.

  He opened another bottle and took a long drink. “Okay, here’s the story. Which—I remind you—you promised to not reveal in your article.”

  “I promised, I won’t. Get on with it.”

  “A few years back, I went hiking above Red Mountain Pass. It was a hot day, even for the mountains. I was on a trail I’d found on an old map and it showed a spring alongside a creek up there, so I decided to try to find it.

  “I passed a bunch of No Trespassing signs, but ignored them. I mean, this was way up, where there weren’t any roads. I didn’t think anyone possibly lived there.”

  “So the spring is your private swimming hole?” What was so potentially incriminating about that?

  “Not mine. I found it, all right. It wasn’t very big, but big enough for one person to soak. I stripped off and slipped in. After that long climb, it felt great. The next thing I know a bullet whizzes over my head and this old guy comes storming out of the trees, cussing and waving his hands around.”

  “Who was it?”

  “Some old guy who’d set up a mining claim. He had an old camper back in there that he’d pulled up with a four-wheel-drive truck.”

  “And he was the one who’d put up the No Trespassing signs.”

  “Exactly. He was really bent out of shape about me being there. I tried to apologize and explain, but he wouldn’t hear it. He grabbed up my clothes and ordered me out of there.”

  “He took your clothes?”

  “Yeah. I bargained with him to let me keep my boots and my pack, or I might not have made it down, but he wouldn’t give back anything else. He told me if I didn’t leave in a hurry, he’d shoot me and bury me in an old mine shaft. I didn’t know if he was bluffing or not, but I didn’t want to take a chance.”

  “You had to hike out of there naked?”

  “Yep.”

  The fact that he was blushing made the story all the more real. She could only imagine the looks he must have gotten, strolling into town wearing only hiking boots and a backpack. “What did you do when you got back to
town?” she asked.

  “I had a bandanna in my pack and made a kind of loincloth, so I wasn’t completely indecent. But of course word got around.” He made a face. “Not my best moment.”

  She tried to hold back the laughter, but it was no use. The image of him strolling into town in his bandanna loincloth was too priceless.

  “Come on,” he said. “It isn’t that funny.”

  “It’s just so…so not how I pictured you.”

  “You mean you haven’t been fantasizing about me naked? I have to say I’m really disappointed.”

  She fought down a blush of her own. Okay, so she was physically attracted to this guy. He was good-looking and funny and her hormones had decided to respond to him, but she was too much of a professional to let him know about it. “I had this idea that you’d be this macho he-man, really full of himself,” she said.

  “Is that the kind of guy you usually hang out with?”

  “No. But in my experience, anyone who’s fanatical about a sport or a hobby or a job has that kind of personality.”

  “And you think I’m a fanatic?”

  “I think anyone who regularly risks death for the sake of getting to the top of a mountain qualifies as a fanatic.”

  He gestured out the window, at the panorama in front of them. “Take this view and multiply it to the tenth power,” he said. “It’s incredible, and once you’ve experienced it, you want to experience it again and again. Plus, there’s this tremendous sense of accomplishment, that you did this really difficult thing, and didn’t let the hardships defeat you.”

  “Are you saying there’s nothing down below that compares?”

  “Not that I’ve found yet.”

  “What about love? People say that’s the ultimate high.”

  “I’ve never been in love.” His eyes met hers. “What do you think? Do you think love is the ultimate high?”

  She wanted to turn away, as if looking into his eyes too long would reveal all her secret hopes and fears. Of course, that was ridiculous, so she held his gaze and kept her voice even. “I’ve never been in love, either,” she admitted. “But I hope so. Why else would people go through so much for it? Why have so many songs and stories and works of art been created in homage to it?”

  “You could say the same thing about mountains. Maybe that feeling I get when I’m up there is similar to being in love.”

  “You can’t love an inanimate object that way.”

  “For a woman who says she’s never been in love, you sound as if you know a lot about it.”

  “Only because I know what it should be. What I want it to be.” Now it was her turn to try to read his feelings in his eyes. How could he compare the adrenaline rush of physical accomplishment with warm, emotional feelings? “Enjoying doing something, or even that feeling of accomplishment you talked about, isn’t the same as love,” she said.

  “If you say so.” He looked away. “I want to make it into Telluride while there’s still plenty of time to look around.”

  Coward, she thought, and bit into her sandwich. Maybe mountain climbing attracted men who weren’t capable of sharing their feelings with others. Her father had certainly fallen into that category.

  And yet—when he’d been telling her about his embarrassment at the hot springs, Paul hadn’t seemed at all arrogant or distant or incapable of love. She’d liked that Paul. The real man, the one she should portray in her article, probably lay somewhere between those two extremes. The mystery, as it had been from the first, was how to persuade that man to show himself, to her and to her readers.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  THEY MADE IT DOWN the mountain to Telluride, where a tour of Telluride’s boutiques, followed by dinner at a three-star restaurant, improved Sierra’s mood considerably. Indy had settled down in the backseat of the Jeep while Paul and Sierra explored the town. Despite his admitted preference for the great outdoors, Paul had waited without complaint as Sierra tried on clothes and shoes, and had even offered to carry her packages. If he could be that good a sport after the hard time she’d given him on the mountain, maybe there was hope for the man yet.

  “I fulfilled my part of the bargain, spending the day getting to know you,” she said as the waiter delivered the Irish coffee she’d ordered in lieu of dessert. “Now we really need to get back to the formal interview.”

  “We’ve got plenty of time,” he said. “Let’s not spoil dinner with a bunch of boring talk about me.”

  “You’re terribly modest for someone who’s supposedly one of the best in his field.”

  “Trying to flatter me into submission?” He hit her with another of his engaging smiles. “I promise I’ll tell you everything you want to know,” he said. “But let’s not spoil tonight. Tell me more about you.”

  His continued stalling intrigued her. Did he have some secret he was hiding? If so, what was the best way to get him to reveal it? “I filled you in on the basics last night,” she said.

  “Then let’s go beyond the basics. I already know you don’t like climbing mountains—what do you like to do? Any hobbies? Do you collect ceramic frogs or take belly-dancing lessons or read Sanskrit in your spare time?”

  She laughed. “No, no, and no.”

  “So what do you like to do? You must have a life outside of your writing.”

  “I collect netsuke—little Japanese carvings that were designed to attach items to the sash of a man’s kimono.”

  “I know what they are,” he said. “I should have guessed.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “Your father had a fantastic collection.”

  “He did not! You’re making that up.”

  “I am not. They were donated to the Denver Museum of Nature and Science upon his death. You didn’t know?”

  She shook her head, confused. Her father had given her her very first netsuke, red coral carved into the shape of a dragon, when she was nine years old. He’d gotten it while in Japan for a winter climb of Mount Fuji. “It must have been something he picked up after my mother and I moved away.”

  She couldn’t believe she hadn’t known this about him. She’d been fourteen when he died, and he’d left everything to her mother. She must have disposed of the netsuke collection—but why hadn’t she mentioned it to Sierra?

  “How do you know so much about my dad?” she asked Paul. How did he know more than she did?

  “I already told you that documentary inspired me to want to climb. Dallas isn’t exactly a climbing mecca, so I had to learn about the sport from books and movies, like your dad’s. I decided that in order to succeed, I should model myself after the top climbers—your dad was one of the best, so I read everything I could about him, to try to learn all his secrets.”

  “What secrets did you uncover?” She kept her voice light, but she steeled herself for some shocking revelation—another family, a drug habit. After the news about the netsuke, she realized how much of a stranger her father had been.

  “Climbing secrets,” Paul said. “I unearthed an old interview where he talked about a new route up K2. He never got a chance to climb it, but I did last year.”

  “You climbed all his routes, didn’t you?” she said, remembering her research.

  “I still have a few to go.”

  “That’s what you were doing on McKinley—retracing his last climb.”

  “Right.” The waiter brought the bill and Paul took out his wallet. “I know that’s what you came here to talk about, and I promise I’ll tell you everything,” he said. “But can it wait until tomorrow? I’m having a good time tonight, and it’s not a pleasant subject.”

  “All right.” For a man who’d been missing, either literally or figuratively, for much of her life, her father still elicited such strong emotions in her. She would never look at her netsuke collection the same way now, wondering if he’d owned a similar piece, or if he’d thought of her when he began his own collection.

  “Are you ready to go?” Paul asked.

&nb
sp; “Yes.” She’d had too much of her father, and maybe too much of Paul, for one day.

  They walked in silence to the Jeep, past bars whose open doors spilled music and restaurant patios lit with strings of paper lanterns. Sierra might have been walking through the East Village. She felt a sharp pang of homesickness.

  But there was nothing of New York in the drive back to Ouray, the highway a black ribbon winding past blacker countryside, without even the light from a home appearing for miles. The only illumination was from the millions of stars overhead, like glitter scattered with a heavy hand. Sierra shivered and drew her coat more tightly around her. Everything about this place, from the towering mountains to the vast star-strewn sky, seemed designed to emphasize man’s insignificance. Some people claimed the big city was impersonal, but she couldn’t agree less. This emptiness was far more lonely and demoralizing to her.

  Paul parked in front of the hotel and came around to help her out, though that was unnecessary. He took her hand and held it. “Thanks for humoring me and coming with me today,” he said. “I had a good time.”

  “I had a better time than I expected,” she said. “And you’re right—seeing you in your element, as it were, will add to my article. What time should we meet tomorrow?”

  “Look me up whenever you’re ready. No rush.” He leaned close. She caught the scent of warm male skin—soap, sweat and spice—then felt the caress of his lips, soft on her cheek. “Good night,” he murmured, then released her.

  “Good night,” she mumbled, and hurried blindly into the hotel, her cheek still burning from the kiss.

  It had been such an unexpected gesture, so gentle and courtly, even. Her whole body was warmed by it.

  Paul definitely had a knack for throwing her off balance. Was it a skill he’d cultivated, or was it something in her that was responding to him in such unexpected ways?