Operation Mountain Recovery

by Justine Davis

  Quinn didn’t ask, but now that he knew what it said, Brady played it back on Speaker.

  He heard a low, distressed sound and turned to see Ashley with her hands over her face. That muffled her words, but they were still clear enough. “She must be so worried. I should just go home.”

  The only one that beat him to her side was Cutter. The dog leaned in and put his head on her knee as Brady sat beside her. She lowered her hands, but unlike before, she didn’t reach to pet the dog, and he could see tears glistening in those green eyes. It reminded him of how she’d looked before, which emphasized the contrast of how she’d been these last couple of days. It also sparked in him a powerful urge to push back this tide that seemed to threaten to swamp her all over again.

  Pushed by an instinct he didn’t question, he took one of her hands in his own and gently tugged the other over to rest on the dog’s head. He wasn’t about to question the animal’s knack for comfort just now. In fact he was fairly convinced it was much greater than his own.

  “We’ll do whatever you want, Ashley,” he said. “But there’s something off about this. All of it. Let us figure it out.”

  Her expression was anxious as she looked at him. “But won’t you be in trouble if they find out you’ve known where I am all along?”

  That she’d even thought of that made him feel...he wasn’t sure what. “Not your problem.”

  “You’re doing this for me, so yes, it is.”

  He gave her a crooked smile. “As someone recently said to me, some pretty strong ethics there.”

  He got a half smile back for that, and it was enough.

  Chapter 20

  Brady felt the tingle at the back of his neck that told him someone was there. His fingers tightened around his cell phone reflexively.

  He didn’t need to look. The quickening of his pulse told him who it was. Her voice, that voice that did crazy things to the nerves along his spine, whispered over him. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to intrude on your call.”

  “It’s all right.” He tapped the icon that ended the call. “We were done.” He turned around and managed a smile and a gesture toward the snow still surrounding the patio. “It’s weird, sitting here amid this, talking to someone who’s in Arizona in eighty degrees.”

  “Some would say they’re wiser.”

  “My mother among them,” he said, gesturing with the phone before he slid it back into his pocket.

  “You’re close, you and your mother?”

  He nodded. “Oh, we had our moments when I was growing up, but since I hit the age where I realized I didn’t know nearly as much as I thought I did, and she knew a lot more, we’ve done great. Especially since my dad died.”

  “That part still sucks,” she said.

  “Yours was worse,” he answered quietly.

  “Because he left me by his own choice? Maybe. The end result is the same, though.”

  “I had mine a lot longer, too. I was an adult when he died. You were only a child.”

  “Even more pitiful, huh?” she said with a grimace.

  “You’re a lot of things, Ashley Jordan, but you’re not pitiful.”

  She smiled, although it looked like an effort. “So did you tell your mother you’re harboring a fugitive?” That caught him off guard, and he looked away. “I’ll take that as a no.”

  “If this blows up, I don’t want it to touch her.”

  He looked back when he heard her gasp. “I didn’t think of that,” she said, her eyes wide. “Could it? It’s bad enough for you, but—”

  He held up a hand to stop her. “Don’t start worrying about that on top of everything else. She’ll find out eventually, but she’ll be fine.”

  “Will she be angry with you when she does find out? Will it damage your relationship with her?”

  He gave her a crooked smile. “They couldn’t accuse me of anything big enough to make her turn on me.”

  Ashley smiled back, but it was a sad smile. “That’s how I used to feel with my dad. He told me once I could never disappoint him.”

  He felt one of those clicks in his mind. “Why?”

  “What?”

  “What brought on him saying that?”

  “Oh.” Her mouth twisted wryly. “I got into a fight with a girl at school. My mother was furiously upset because I made a scene, but my dad just said he’d have been angry if I hadn’t stood up for myself.”

  “Was your mother always...critical?”

  “Kind of,” she said, although she sounded uncomfortable. “Back then, anyway. But like you and your mom, after my father died, we did much better.”

  He wasn’t sure he liked the analogy. He and his mother had bonded together because they were all they had left. But he wondered, given the way she’d said her parents often argued, if her mother hadn’t been glad. But that didn’t seem quite fair, either. If her father had already been well into his mental decline, he couldn’t imagine what her mother had endured—maybe she had the right to be relieved when it was finally over, even in that ugliest of ways.

  Cutter suddenly appeared at the edge of the patio and sat in the snow, looking at them rather assessingly.

  “Ready to go back in?” Brady asked the dog, then laughed inwardly at himself for having picked up the habit of talking to the animal as if he understood. Cutter merely tilted his head, watching them intently. And never moved. Which Brady supposed was, in effect, an answer.

  “He’s so funny,” Ashley said.

  Brady chuckled, then looked back at Cutter. “You’re going to give new meaning to the phrase freeze your ass off, dog,” he said wryly.

  Ashley laughed, then looked back over her shoulder as someone else came out. “He’s just sitting there, watching us,” she said to Hayley.

  “What he’s doing,” the other woman said with a grin, “is gauging whether he can lure either of you into a snow fight.”

  Brady drew back slightly. “Okay, if you’re going to tell me that on top of everything else, he can make snowballs and toss them, I’m going to have to jump off this train.”

  Quinn had stepped outside in time to hear that and laughed. “No. The snowballs are your bailiwick. He catches and eats them. And when it’s his turn, he just digs up snow in a big spray at you.”

  Ashley laughed again, and for a moment it was as if they were simply a gathering of four people and a clever dog who seemed like a person, a group that liked each other and were content to just spend time together. Friends. And he was startled at the sudden tightness in his chest as he sat there stupidly and wished it was true.

  * * *

  Ashley paused in the entryway to the great room. Brady was on the couch, his long legs stretched out with his sock-clad feet on the coffee table—his boots were on the floor next to him—and what looked like Quinn’s computer on his lap. She stood there for a moment, just looking at him. Which, she thought with a wry inward smile, she could happily do for a very long time.

  Cutter, who had been stationed outside the bathroom when she came out—and probably would have been inside if she hadn’t laughingly shut the door on him—nudged her as if to prod her forward. She stroked his head, marveling anew at the comfort the simple gesture gave.

  “Did I hear a car leave?” She thought she’d heard the sound of tires crunching on snow.

  Brady looked up and smiled. She had the crazy thought she should freeze that image in her mind so she could hang on to it in more desperate moments. It was the best smile she’d ever seen.

  He put his feet down and set the computer on the end table at his elbow. “The snowplow finally made it up here, so Quinn and Hayley decided to see if they could get to town. And if they can, then I can try to make it to my place up the road here. I’d like to see how it did in the snow.”

  She blinked. “You live up here?”

  He nodded. “Abou
t a half a mile farther up.”

  “I...didn’t realize.”

  The smile again, a little crooked this time. “Believe me, my place is nothing so grand as this. Alex Galanis pulled out all the stops.”

  She walked toward him, paused and looked around at the great room. “So you know the guy who owns this?”

  “I do. He’s half the reason I trusted the Foxworths, because I knew what they did for him.”

  “What did they do?”

  “His son ran afoul of some terrorist cabal down in Mexico. They held him for ransom. The government was ‘negotiating’ when he got a finger sent to him, with threats that they’d take his other two kids. Foxworth got his son out and kept the other two safe even though they were in college two thousand miles apart.”

  She knew she was probably gaping at him. “I... Wow.”

  “Yes.” He gave her a wry smile. “Amazing what you can do when you’re not crippled by regulations.”

  And she had these people on her side?

  Cutter came up behind her, between the couch and the coffee table. The dog apparently misjudged the distance, because he bumped her rather hard behind the knees, and she half sat, half fell onto the couch. Beside Brady.

  But not too close. Not as close as she’d like to be.

  “What’s with you?” she asked the dog. “Cranky because they didn’t take you with them?”

  “I gather that was his decision,” Brady said, his tone amused. “They asked if he wanted to go, and his answer was to go lie down outside the door of the bathroom where you were.”

  Ashley laughed. “He is...unique.”

  “They said he’ll be watching over you for the duration.”

  Will you? Or will the call of duty overwhelm you and make you do what you should have done the moment that wanted bulletin came out?

  “I’m so sorry,” she said softly.

  He blinked. “What?”

  “Helping me has put you in an awful position.”

  He let out an audible breath, and his lips compressed for a moment, telling her how accurate her observation had been.

  “It’s a first, anyway,” he muttered.

  She couldn’t help herself, she reached out to brush her fingers over his unshaven jaw. His hand came up, caught her wrist. But instead of pulling her hand away as she’d expected, he held it there. He closed his eyes, and she felt a muscle jump under her touch. Her breath caught, held.

  There was a sudden movement as Cutter jumped up on the couch. It threw her off balance once more, pushed her toward Brady. His eyes snapped open. They were mere inches apart.

  “It was the dog,” she explained. Or tried to. Her voice broke in the middle as his closeness seemed to swamp her. Things she’d never felt before were swirling through her. Heat, urgency and a kind of need she couldn’t even name.

  He was just looking at her, staring, his blue eyes overwhelming, fierce somehow, as if he were feeling the same kind of turmoil she was.

  “Ash,” he murmured, as if the second syllable was too much. She liked the sound of it. Face it, she liked everything about this man, from his looks to his ethics. If he’d had no second thoughts about what he was doing, she doubted she would be so attracted. She was nothing if not a contradiction.

  “Yes,” she whispered back, and as soon as the word escaped, she realized it was the answer to just about anything he might ask of her.

  And then he was kissing her, his lips warm and as fierce as that look in his eyes had been. She realized everything she had been feeling had been merely prelude. His mouth on hers was the spark, and her body responded with an explosion of sensations that was nearly overwhelming. Deep, powerful, irresistible. This, this was what all the fuss was about. It made sense of so much even as it threw her into chaos.

  He deepened the kiss, and at the first touch of his tongue against hers, she felt another surge of heat, and the only thing she could think was that if this was what a kiss did, sex with this man would shatter her completely. And right now she wasn’t sure what, if anything, would be left of her afterward.

  She wasn’t sure she cared.

  With a low, rough groan, he pulled back. He swore under his breath, as if helpless to stop it. For a moment he stared at her, and she saw all the same fire and tumult she’d been feeling in his eyes. He swallowed visibly, as if his throat were as tight as hers.

  “That,” he said, his voice none too steady, “should not have happened.”

  She understood. Why would someone like him want to get involved with a basket case like her? No matter how much better she was feeling, she had to remember that it was only temporary. That her life—her miswired brain was too much for her to handle, so she could hardly ask someone else to deal with it.

  None of which changed the wonder of what she’d just experienced.

  “You’re right,” she said, a little amazed at how steady her voice was. “But forgive me if I’m not sorry it did.”

  His eyes widened for an instant before he said, rather grimly, “I think I likely will be.”

  Chapter 21

  He took his sweet time refilling his mug of coffee. And he needed every second of it.

  Getting up and walking into the kitchen had been an interesting proposition. It had been a long time since he’d been that aroused, and he didn’t think he’d ever been that hot over just a kiss. He lectured himself that it was only a kiss and it wasn’t helping. Neither was remembering what she’d said about Andler making her get a birth control shot, just in case. Although it should, since it was a reminder that she was not in control.

  You can really pick them, can’t you, Crenshaw?

  He kept stirring the coffee, although the teaspoon of sugar had dissolved at least a minute ago. He was stalling. He knew that. And it irked him. He wasn’t usually a coward about facing situations. But this was different, and on some deep, buried level, it scared him.

  You couldn’t just fall for Ginny at the coffee shop. No, you have to get tangled up with a woman whose life is an utter mess.

  Steeling himself, he walked back into the great room. Ashley was still where she’d been on the couch, petting Cutter, who had sprawled out and plopped his head in her lap.

  An enviable position, dog.

  He nearly groaned out loud at his own thought.

  But unlike him, Ash seemed to have regained her equilibrium by the time he came back. No, Ashley, he told himself firmly. Another barrier between them, not using that too-familiar nickname he’d let slip out.

  As he set down his refilled mug, she gestured at the laptop on the table. “What were you looking for?”

  He glanced at the screen as he sat down, hesitated, then shrugged. “I was looking up the medication Dr. Andler had you on. For side effects.”

  “Dr. Andler gave Mom a flyer, the kind that comes with a prescription. She showed it to me.” She sighed. “It might account for some of my...symptoms, but far from all of them.”

  “I know. I read the list.” He picked up the laptop, resumed his former position with his feet up again and denied to himself that he was using both computer and position as a barrier. “I know those drugs help people, but...”

  “I hated taking it. It made me so foggy all the time. Not like the pain meds did, but constant. Like there was a layer of gauze between me and the world. Even the colors weren’t right. The sky wasn’t as blue, the trees as green or—” she gestured toward the patio “—the snow as white. Not like they are now.”

  “And that’s when you started having memory problems,” he said, remembering the chronology she’d written out at Quinn’s request. “After you started taking it.”

  “Yes. But Dr. Andler said I’d be having those anyway, as things...progressed. Just like my father did.”

  “Just like he expected you to have,” he corrected, thinking of what Quinn had said abou
t Dr. Sebastian and not going into this with any preconceived ideas.

  Ashley got it. “Do you really think she’s right?”

  The hope welled up in her voice and her expression as she looked at him. He hated to quash it, but he felt required to point out the obvious. “I’m not qualified to judge that.”

  “But you have instincts. Good ones. Those gut feelings, right?”

  “Yes, but they’re unhelpfully nonspecific. All they’re telling me is that there’s something off about all of this.”

  Cutter’s head came up, and he let out a short, sharp yip that sounded weirdly like agreement. Ashley obviously thought so, too, because she smiled and said, “He agrees, I think.”

  “I’m getting to the point where I don’t put anything past that dog,” Brady said. Then, after a few moments while she stroked the dog and leaned over to nuzzle him, and he fought down the wish that she’d do the same to him, he asked, “It’s been how long off the meds now?”

  “Today is day twelve.” She gave him a rather wan smile. “I guess I was lucky about the pain pills. If I had any withdrawal symptoms from the other meds, they were hidden.”

  “Traded one fog for another, huh?”

  “Exactly,” she said, relieved he understood.

  “And you haven’t felt...worse? Shakier? I mean, you don’t seem at all confused, or uncertain, but I’m not in your head.”

  For an instant her eyes widened and her breath caught. As if she’d stopped herself from saying something. After a moment, steady now, she answered. “No. I feel...wonderful, all things considered. Mentally I feel sharp, clearheaded, and my memory’s been fine.”

  He nodded. “That’s how it seems.”

  She grimaced, and from her tone when she spoke, he guessed she was feeling compelled to be honest, just as he had been. “But Dr. Andler told me if I stopped taking the medication, it would seem that way...until my next break. Which would likely be worse than ever before.”

  “Are you feeling like you need to go back on them?”

  “No!” She grimaced, as if the very thought made her shiver.