by Linda Seed
Her heart pounded so hard that her vision blurred and her head filled with buzzing panic.
“Jesse! Jesse!”
“Mom!” he called back.
Okay. He can hear me, and he can answer. Okay.
“Are you hurt?” she called down to him.
“Uh … no. I’m scratched a little, that’s all.”
Thank God. Oh, thank God.
The buzzing in her ears began to subside, and her heart slowed a little, though it was still beating way too fast. She took a deep breath, let it out, and told herself to stay calm. He’d fallen, but he was okay. Kids fell all the time.
“Can you climb back up?” she asked him.
She heard sounds—a rustling in the brush far below her—as he tried.
She heard him drawing closer, then, horrified, she heard the sound of him sliding back down to where he’d started. “Mom, I fell again,” he told her.
“Jesse, are you okay?”
“Yeah. I just can’t get up there.”
She assessed her situation. She could climb down to him, but then what if they both were stuck down there with Gavin up here on the trail alone? He was only four years old. She couldn’t take the risk that he’d be left up here on his own.
“Okay. Just sit tight, honey, I’m going to call for help.” She pulled out her cell phone, but the screen said NO SERVICE. She could feel herself starting to panic, but she couldn’t do that. The boys would follow her lead. She needed to be calm, confident, in control.
“Why aren’t you calling?” Gavin asked, his face a mask of fear.
“Sweetie, there’s no cell service here.” She kept her voice matter-of-fact for his sake. “Don’t worry, though, we’re going to figure this out.” She and Gavin could go get help, but that would mean leaving Jesse.
She looked at her phone again and walked a short distance up the trail, hoping to find a pocket of service.
No luck.
He’s okay. We’re all okay. There’s no need to panic. I’ll just think and figure this out.
And she would, she knew that. She just had no idea how.
Quinn couldn’t have said why he picked that particular trail on that particular day. Hiking was like breathing for him. He did it when he needed to clear his head, when he needed to think. He did it when he was sad or lonely or happy or bored. Something about being out there in nature amid the trees and the wind and the birds made him feel right, as though he were in exactly the right place at the right time.
As it happened, he was in the right place at the right time, as far as the family on the trail were concerned.
He’d been walking for a couple of hours, and he was descending the trail on the way back to his van when he heard some kind of commotion up ahead. He couldn’t determine the nature of the commotion, but it sounded like someone was upset.
He rounded a curve in the trail and saw a woman and a kid up ahead. The woman was kneeling on the ground and peering off the side of the trail, and the kid was hanging back, sucking his thumb and crying.
“I want Jesse!” the kid wailed as the woman said something Quinn couldn’t hear.
“Need some help?” Quinn asked.
The woman looked up, and both surprise and relief washed over her—he could see it as clearly as if she had been wearing a costume that she’d now removed.
“Oh, my God. Yes. My son fell into the ravine. He’s six years old. He’s okay, he’s not hurt, but he can’t get back up, and I can’t go down there and leave Gavin alone, and my cell phone isn’t getting a signal, and … I’m rambling. Yes, I need some help. Are you going down to the highway? Could you call the police or somebody when you get there? There should be a signal down there. Call 9-1-1 or the park rangers, or … I don’t know who. Just somebody who can rescue my son?”
Had he thought she’d seemed relieved? Now that she was babbling at him at a thousand miles a minute, it was clear that she was still in mid-panic.
His impressions of the woman hit him in quick bursts: short, maybe no more than five foot three. Late twenties, early thirties. Dark hair in a ponytail, blue eyes, a sprinkling of freckles across her nose that made a person think of the kid she had once been. Her V-neck T-shirt showed an inch of cleavage, and he tried not to look directly at it. Her jeans showed off some lush and extravagant curves—ditto the part about not looking.
At least, not too obviously.
He willed himself to focus. Kid in jeopardy. Right.
He stepped off the trail, peered down toward the drop-off, and called to the kid. “Hey down there. Jesse, is it?”
“Who are you?” The kid sounded scared, so Quinn tried to be soothing.
“I’m Quinn. How far did you fall?” From the sound of his voice, it was maybe twenty feet. Probably no more than that.
“I don’t know,” the kid said. “I didn’t really fall. I just kind of slid.” His voice had taken on a whining quality, probably from fear.
“Okay. You’re not hurt, though?”
“Not really. I scraped my knees.”
“All right.”
“Can you please go down to the highway and call someone?” the woman asked.
“You don’t need me to call someone. I’m someone.” He began climbing down the side of the ravine to get the kid.
“You’re going down there? Oh, my God. Okay. Okay.” The woman was still freaking out, and he let her. If that was what she needed to do, where was the harm?
He climbed down, watching his footing, using tree roots and clumps of bushes to anchor his hands and feet. The thought of poison oak occurred to him, but he didn’t see any, so that was good.
When he got down there, the kid was sitting on the ground, his eyes round with fear. He was wearing shorts, and his knees were bleeding a little, but it didn’t look too bad.
“You must be Jesse.” Quinn offered his hand for the kid to shake. “I don’t see any other six-year-old boys down here, so I’m assuming.”
The kid’s hand felt small and fragile in his. He shook it manfully, then bent down and hooked a finger at his own back. “Here. Climb on.”
“You want me to get on your back?”
“Yeah. Like a piggyback ride. You’ve done piggyback rides, right?”
“Yeah.”
“Okay. Up you go.”
The kid climbed onto his back and grasped him around the neck, nearly choking him. He repositioned the kid’s hands to his shoulders. “Hold on there. Otherwise I’m going to pass out from lack of oxygen before we get up there.”
“Okay. Sorry.”
Once that was settled, he told the boy to hang on and started climbing. While he climbed, going slowly, taking one careful step at a time to avoid falling, he made small talk to keep the kid calm.
“You’re in, what, first grade?”
“I’m supposed to be in kindergarten, but I’m not going because we’re on vacation.”
“You’re skipping school for vacation? That’s gotta be pretty sweet.”
“I guess.”
“How about your brother? Is he skipping school, too?” Quinn kept up the patter to keep the kid calm, and it seemed to be working. They’d made it halfway up to the trail, and the boy was chatting amiably with him.
“He’s only in preschool, but he knows his letters and stuff. His teacher called my mom in for a conference because he’s really quiet and he doesn’t have any friends.”
“Huh. You must like it that he’s quiet, though. No little brother annoying you, yapping about this and that.”
“He talks at home. Just not at school,” Jesse said.
“You know what? I was the opposite.”
The kid was slipping a little on Quinn’s back, so he took a moment to shift him a little higher.
“You were?”
“Oh, sure. I couldn’t keep my trap shut. My teacher had to move my desk away from everyone else’s just so I wouldn’t have anybody to talk to.”
“How’s it coming down there?” The mom’s voice sou
nded shaky, a little shrill.
“Good. We’re almost there,” Quinn told her.
When he hefted himself and the boy up onto level ground and then onto the trail, the woman gasped in relief and snatched the kid off of Quinn’s back and into her arms so fast the boy’s feet probably never touched the ground.
“Jesse. Thank God. I didn’t know how I was going to get you up from there.” She clutched him to her.
“Mom. Let go. You’re hugging me too hard.”
She let go of him with a laugh, then hugged his brother as though she were taking inventory of her offspring.
“Did you get your ball?” Gavin wanted to know.
Jesse pulled the ball out of his pocket and held it up triumphantly.
“At least it wasn’t all for nothing.” The woman ruffled Jesse’s light brown hair with her hand. Then she turned to Quinn. “I can’t thank you enough. You’re a hero.” She held out her hand to him. “I’m Delilah Ballard. You’ve met Jesse. And this is Gavin.”
He shook her hand, feeling a little puffed up about the hero thing. It wasn’t every day he got to rescue a kid and get the gratitude of a pretty woman—though, in his line of work leading wilderness hikes, it wasn’t unprecedented.
“Quinn Monroe. And it was my pleasure.”
She turned her attention to her son’s knees, which were bleeding lightly. She made a fuss over his injuries, pulled a packet of wet wipes out of her day pack, then started dabbing at the boy’s scraped knees. As she worked, Quinn noticed her hands and the fact that her left one didn’t have a ring.
“Mom, ow!”
“I’m sorry if it hurts, but I have to clean this.” She wiped away the blood and gingerly removed bits of dirt and gravel. “Doesn’t look too bad.”
She straightened up, balled up the wipe in her hand, and looked at Quinn. “We wanted to go hiking. It seemed like a simple enough thing to do, but I guess it wasn’t. We’re not exactly outdoorsy.”
That was his cue. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a business card. “If you want to try again, let me know. I lead nature hikes tailored to your needs. Overnight, all day, a few hours—whatever works for you. I know the most scenic spots, and I know the difficulty level of the trails so I can steer you away from potential problems.” He held out the card to her, and she took it.
Delilah held the card in her hand, read it, then tucked it into her back pocket. Under other circumstances when a man offered her his card, she might have thought he was making a move—giving her his contact information not so she could hire him, but so she could give him a call, maybe see him again sometime.
But in this case, she dismissed the thought. The man standing in front of her was stupidly handsome. At no time in her life had Delilah ever attracted the interest of anyone who looked like this.
Dark hair that was thick and wavy, just long enough to curl over his ears. Eyes a mesmerizing green. Facial features that belonged on a marble bust of some Roman general. He was tall—over six feet—with broad shoulders and a trim waist. And that smile—oh, God. He had a way of smiling that said he was imagining what you might look like naked.
But Delilah was just … well, she was just Delilah. She was someone her ex-husband had criticized for being too chubby, too plain, too lacking in sophistication. Too much a mother and not enough a woman. So the card obviously was just business.
“Thanks. I’ll keep that in mind,” she told him. “If we go hiking again. Which, at the moment, I’ll be happy if we never do.”
He laughed amiably. “Fair enough. You want me to walk you three back to your car?”
Quinn delivered them to the turnout where their car was parked without further incident. He stood by while Delilah supervised the buckling of seatbelts and the distribution of snacks and water.
He was particularly attentive when she bent over to pick up a packaged cheese stick that she’d dropped. He couldn’t help admiring the fit of her jeans, which hugged an ass so round and tantalizing that he felt an almost irresistible urge to reach out and caress it.
Since that might ruin his image as a hero to women and children in distress, he shoved his hands in his pockets to keep them from doing anything untoward.
“You guys all set?” he asked.
She turned to him and smiled. He liked her smile, and he liked how small she was in comparison to him—how she had to tip her neck back to look at him. It made him feel like a big, strong man, God help him.
“Thank you again. So much.”
“No problem. You drive safe, now.”
What kind of a lame pickup line was that? You drive safe, now? Was that the state of his game, that he couldn’t think of anything better?
As she drove off, he thought it was better that she was leaving him in her rearview mirror. Just because she wasn’t wearing a ring didn’t mean she wasn’t married. Some married women didn’t wear rings. And even if she was single, she had kids, and Quinn wasn’t the type for that. He didn’t have the interest, and he didn’t have the patience to deal with someone else’s children.
He’d liked Jesse, though, and that Gavin kid had been cute as hell.
Still. He wasn’t going there. If she called, he would offer to lead a hike, as he would for any other client.
That was all.
Chapter 4
“I’m telling you, he was like some mythical god emerging from the woods to rescue Jesse,” Delilah told Roxanne later that evening when the kids had been fed and bathed and were watching TV before bed. “If it weren’t for the scratches on Jesse’s knees, I would think I imagined the whole thing.”
“So, he gave you his card? Are you going to call him?” Roxanne asked.
“Well, maybe to lead a hike for us, since we obviously can’t be trusted to go on our own. But I’m not going to call him, call him.”
“Was he wearing a ring?”
“No.”
“Were you?”
Delilah hesitated. “No. I finally put it in my drawer a few weeks ago.”
“Okay, then. How do you know he didn’t give you his card because he wants to go out with you? How do you know it was just business?”
Delilah barked out a bitter laugh. “You didn’t see him. There’s no way that man gave me his card because he wants to go out with me.”
“How can you be sure?”
“Because he was so hot it was absurd. I mean really ridiculous. He probably dates underwear models. You know, ones who are working on their advanced degrees in astrophysics in their spare time. What would he want with me?”
Roxanne was quiet for a moment, and Delilah felt the lecture coming before she even started to speak.
“Mitch did this to you,” she said.
“Roxanne …”
“He did. He convinced you that weren’t beautiful enough, that you weren’t smart enough or sophisticated enough or … just enough of anything for him. But you are all those things. He was the one who failed the relationship, not you.”
And, damn it, Delilah felt tears spring to her eyes, felt the heat and the pressure of it. She rubbed her eyes with her fingers and took in a shaky breath. “Yeah, well. I don’t want to date anyone, anyway. I’m just … I can’t imagine putting myself through that again.”
“I’m not saying you should marry the guy. Just maybe call him and see what happens.”
“No, thank you.”
“Well.”
“I can’t think about men when I’m still so fucking mad at Mitch. You know? What he did to me is one thing, but abandoning the boys? You should have seen the way they looked at the guy on the trail. Like he was some kind of miracle. They’re so starved for a father—or at least for some strong male figure—that it makes me want to scream or cry or throw something. Jesse can’t stop talking about him.”
“Aww. Poor kid.”
“He keeps saying we should invite this guy over because he did us a favor, and that’s what you do when someone does you a favor. You invite them over. The neighbor brought
us some muffins, so I invited her over for tea, and now Jesse’s fixated on it.”
“Hmm,” Roxanne said. “How hot did you say he is?”
“Like Chris Hemsworth if Chris Hemsworth were maybe ten percent hotter.”
“Maybe inviting him over isn’t the worst idea in the world. But maybe wait long enough for me to fly out there first.”
“You’re hilarious.”
“Who says I’m joking?”
“I’m hanging up now.”
She did, but she felt a little better than she had before she’d called. A little lighter. Talking to her sister always helped.
She set her phone aside and went into the living room to herd her sons to bed.
Quinn spent the rest of the day alone in his house, working.
Cambria—like any other coastal California town—was an expensive place to live. That meant he couldn’t make a living just from guiding tourists on wilderness adventures. He refused to work a nine-to-five job, though—he’d done it before, and he’d hated it with the fiery intensity of a nuclear explosion. Instead, he’d cobbled together multiple freelance gigs to support himself.
He wrote articles for outdoors magazines when he could get the work. The rest of the time, he built websites for a wide range of clients including small businesses, restaurants, even authors and artists.
After rescuing the kid, he’d come home, showered, and started working on a review of backpacking equipment: “ten things to leave out of your pack, and ten things you shouldn’t leave home without.” Everything was lists these days. Or, when he was writing copy for a website, those damned slide shows. Slide shows were the bane of his existence.
When he’d gotten a good start on that, he set it aside and put in some time on a website for a local furniture store. They already had a site, but it was crap. They needed it to be more functional, more intuitive for the user. And, of course, they needed it not to look like hell.