by Ann Evans
It surprised her, just how alone she felt in that moment.
NICK DIDN’T KNOW WHY he should be concerned about her.
Kari Churchill was a grown woman, a woman whose career took her to some pretty out-of-the-way places. So a beautiful, clear day spent alone in the wild backcountry of the national forest ought to be a cinch for someone like her.
That seemed like a sensible argument, but he worried all the same. He did a hundred small chores around Angel Air. There was plenty enough that needed doing, and with Pete’s help he made quite a dent in some of them. But invariably he found himself checking his watch, wondering why the time hadn’t passed more quickly. When three o’clock came, he was inordinately pleased that he could legitimately rev up Raven Two again.
He made the canyon in record time, setting down on the same smooth, flat rock he’d used before. Kari was nowhere in sight and his heart gave a curious little bump.
If she had run into a bear, or lost her footing along one of the trails and tumbled down a ridge…
He told himself to relax a little, go easy. The canyon was big, and he was early. Still, the blades hadn’t completely stopped turning before he jumped down from the cockpit.
Shading his eyes against the strong afternoon sun, he scanned the area. He saw her then, making her way around an outcropping of rocks that formed a natural semicircle near a small pool at the river’s edge. He walked across the dry boulder field to join her.
“Hi,” she said as he approached. “I’m not late. You’re early.”
She’d set her hair free. The play of light made it look as though liquid gold spilled across her shoulders. Her face, unadorned by makeup and tinted pink from the sun, gave her the wholesome girl-next-door look that any photographer in his right mind would love. She wasn’t cover-girl beautiful, but damned close. Some wayward emotion he couldn’t name lifted his senses like a tide.
But as he moved near, he realized something was wrong. Sometime during the hours she’d been out here she’d lost that eager, nervous anticipation. It was more than just the weariness he’d expect from a day spent hiking the canyon. She seemed tense, a little vulnerable. In her eyes he caught a glimpse of something profoundly desolate.
“Did you find what you were looking for?” he asked.
She shook her head. “No. If anything, I’ve got more questions than ever.”
“Want to talk about it?”
“I’m not sure I’d know how to express it.”
“Start with something simple.”
To encourage her, he lowered himself to a nearby ledge. The granite felt warm from the afternoon sun. The light was a sulky amber color, making the marsh grasses along the creek’s edge seem dull and lifeless.
She sat on one of the boulders on the other side of the pool. Lowering her hand, she let her fingertips trail in the water. Her skin was so translucent he could see the veins on the back of her hand like an etching.
“What do you see?” she asked him, glancing down.
He tilted slightly to take a closer look. The water was crystal-clear, only a few feet deep. He wasn’t surprised to spot one or two speckled fish swimming lazily in the current. “Trout,” he said. “Heaven on a dinner plate.”
“Do you think you could catch one?”
“Not without a rod.”
“My father could have,” Kari said, lifting her head. He must have looked skeptical, because she added more firmly, “I’m serious. Did you ever read Mixed Signals? It was one of his earlier books.”
“No.”
She didn’t look offended by that admission. Instead she said, “The main character is an Amazon river guide. In one chapter he catches fish with a piece of string and a bent safety pin. He even seasons it with river algae. Dad was a stickler for research. He told me it was the best fish he’d ever eaten.” As though impatient, she shook the water from her hand. “He would have known how to survive in this place, Nick.”
He inhaled a deep breath and forced himself not to sound too pessimistic. “It’s different in the winter, Kari. And he was injured.”
Straightening, she shook her head. “He’d have managed. The creek runs too fast to freeze over, so there would have been water and the possibility of food. He knew how to build a shelter. I’m not saying he wouldn’t have suffered, but…it shouldn’t have killed him.”
“You may have seen your father as invincible, but he wasn’t. Even the most skilled outdoorsman can get in over his head out here.”
“I know you’re right. I guess that’s not really what’s bothering me. I’m just trying to—”
She stood suddenly, brushing at her jeans with an irritated slapping motion. He heard her sharply indrawn breath against the hush of fading sunlight.
“Kari?”
“I shouldn’t keep you. We should go. It’s getting late.”
The words were crisp, determined. He didn’t try to stop her when she hopped down from the rock, slipped her backpack over one shoulder and began to pick her way across the boulder field back to Raven Two. The conversation had started to make him feel distinctly unsettled. The quickening of his pulse every time he looked at her hadn’t helped, either.
He was glad to leave this place behind, and he could tell that she was, too. They lifted off. After fifteen minutes of awkward small talk, he turned to look at her. Her jaw was clenched so tightly, he could see the muscle jumping over and over again.
“You all right?” he asked.
A hesitation. Then, “I know this is probably asking a lot, but… Is there any way we could not go back to the lodge right now? I don’t feel ready to face anyone. Not just yet.” She added a weak smile. “Does that make sense?”
He realized that he wanted to say no. He didn’t want to spend any more time with Kari. He wanted to be away from her. Away from the unwanted temptation she presented. His heart could do with a little hardening, he realized. But against all will and common sense, he heard himself say, “I know just the place.”
HE TOOK HER to King’s Creek Falls.
Wedged into a little valley between two saw-toothed peaks, the falls weren’t immediately visible when he set Raven Two down in a wide, open meadow sprinkled with late-blooming alpine wildflowers.
Nick shut down the chopper. He got out, encouraging Kari to do the same.
The falls, a rambunctious torrent of water cascading between jutting granite ridges, was no more than a dull roar from where they stood. A five-minute walk through massive stands of lodge-pole pines, past the distinctive orange trunks of Englemann spruce, would bring them face-to-face with the falls in no time.
She stared around her with a delighted smile. “It’s beautiful.”
“You haven’t seen anything yet. Come on. I think we’ve got just enough time before sunset.”
He headed off through the trees at a fast clip and Kari fell into step behind him. “Pop used to bring us up here on camping trips,” he told her. “It’s far enough off the beaten track that it doesn’t get a lot of tourists.”
The air grew damp and cooler as they wove through shadow and light and shadow again. Then the trees fell away and suddenly it was ahead of them, the base of the falls. Between the sheer rock walls, the rapids cascaded six hundred feet in a series of tiered drops, then plunged into a wide, deep pool. Late-afternoon light glistened on its surface, as though someone were skipping stars across the water.
“Oh, Nick,” Kari said, sounding awed. “It’s wonderful.”
“This is my favorite place in the world. When I was in the service, stationed in the desert, you just couldn’t seem to get enough water. I used to lie on my bunk and imagine myself here, stroking my hand back and forth across that pool. Kept me from going crazy sometimes.”
“Do you come here often?”
“When I need down time. Or when things get too difficult at home.”
He frowned, surprised by his own words. He wasn’t in the habit of having these kinds of discussions, not even with the family. Maybe if h
e hadn’t sensed her pain, he might have kept to the polite distance they’d agreed to, but it was too late now. And somehow, suddenly, it didn’t seem so wrong.
She looked at him with troubled, searching eyes. “How are you and Tessa getting along?”
To deflect her scrutiny, he bent to pluck a stray wildflower. Pretty, but badly named. The elk loved lungwort blossoms, and this lonely flower was about the last one left where they stood. “Tessa and I are like two cats stuck in the same sack sometimes,” he admitted. Then he laughed. “I suppose that comes as no surprise to you.”
“Teenage moods are very mercurial. She’ll come around.”
“Soon, I hope. This business with her mother hasn’t helped any, and I’m running out of inventive ways to ground her.” He realized that he’d stripped the flower stalk of its blooms and tossed it away. ‘Pop told me he caught her kissing Kyle Cambridge yesterday. I still haven’t figured out how to handle that.”
“Kyle Cambridge… The boy who got kicked out of school?”
“I see she’s told you about him.”
“A little. Mostly how unfair it all was.”
He muttered a curse. He could just imagine what injustices Tessa had claimed. “She’s too young to be involved with him, but I haven’t been able to convince her of that. She’s as thorny as a cactus when his name comes up. When we’re in the middle of an argument, I don’t even recognize her anymore.”
She’d closed the distance between them without him really being aware of it. Her hand fell on his forearm, offering reassurance. “Fourteen is a very difficult time for teenage girls. Your body, your emotions, are out of control. You feel powerless. Try to be patient with her. I’m not really good with kids, but if there’s anything I can do to help, I’d be happy to. Tessa’s a lovely girl, Nick.”
“She’s very fond of you.” He lifted one dark eyebrow. “I’ll bet you’re better with kids than you know.”
She made a dismissing sound. “I’d make a horrible parent!”
There was a scattering of boulders just behind them, one of them a natural ledge, and Kari hopped up on it, letting her legs dangle over the side. She braced her arms behind her, closed her eyes, and inhaled deeply. He understood the impulse. The cool, pine-scented air, the earthy perfume of peace was irresistible.
“Why do you think you’d make such a bad parent?” he asked, coming up beside her and leaning against the rock.
Opening her eyes, she laughed. “If my mother was alive, she could give you a dozen reasons. I’m impatient. Stubborn. Disorganized. Impractical. I have no impulse control. Once my father promised to give me a pony for Christmas, and when I didn’t get it, I went right into his study and tore up his latest chapter.” She shook her head solemnly. “Luckily he had made a second copy, but I still ended up with no television for a month.”
“Tough break.”
She grinned. “Well, the punishment really only lasted a week. Dad convinced Mom I’d suffered sufficiently.”
He caught himself smiling at her with a certain tender amusement. “I’ll bet you were a Daddy’s girl. Like Tessa used to be with me.”
“And she will be again,” she reassured him. “You’ll see.”
“You ever fight with your father?”
“Sometimes, but not often. He was always larger than life to me. As much as I hated that he could go off and leave us for weeks on end, I was proud of who he was. What he was.”
“You and your mother never went with him?”
“Mom wanted to, but after I was born it wasn’t very practical to drag me along. I know she resented my father for being gone so much of the time, and probably me, as well, for keeping her at home. As a result, the reception he got when he came back from a trip wasn’t always very welcoming. Maybe that’s why he found it so easy to leave the next time.”
“Sounds as if she was the responsible one in the marriage. It’s not very glamorous, but someone has to be.”
He made the observation without thinking, and when he saw Kari frown slightly, he realized she probably objected to it. Frankly, he thought that Madison Churchill, running off on grand adventures that could provide fodder for his next bestseller, coming back home to be greeted by his daughter like a king returned from exile, had probably gotten the better end of that marriage.
He wondered how much Kari recognized the resentment she’d had toward the man’s career. She might have idolized him, but it had been his work she’d attacked in that fit of anger over the pony. She hadn’t taken it out on his car or clothes.
It would be unwise to say anything like that, he decided.
“Oh, look,” she said suddenly, pointing toward the falls. “Look.”
He knew what to expect when he glanced back. It was one of the reasons he loved this place. Sunset had decided to put on a show of its own. The world went crimson and magenta, lavender and gold, painting the rocks with an artist’s palette of color. Along the chute of the falls, the cascading water trailed mists like pastel veils.
They were silent for a while, soaking up the sight of it, the wonder that such a place could actually exist outside of picture books and Hollywood. He’d never brought any woman here. Not even his ex. He wasn’t sure why he’d brought Kari. There were any number of places he could have taken her instead.
As though he’d called her name, she turned her head. She was so close he could see every tiny freckle the sun had laid across her nose, and her face was golden in the fading light. “Thank you for bringing me out here,” she said. “My life feels as if it’s had very little charm in it lately, and I needed something like this.”
He watched her inhale a needed breath and let his gaze drift over her mouth, which was the richest soft red. Dancing at the edge of his consciousness, just out of reach, was the knowledge that he was enjoying this too much. He was too uncomfortably aware of her as a woman, but he’d missed the chance to keep himself aloof, and he knew it.
“I’m sorry you didn’t find whatever it is you were looking for in Elk Creek,” he said. “I sense it was important to you somehow.”
She lowered her head a moment, then gave him an uncertain look. “If I told you why I initially wanted to go there, you’d think I was crazy.”
He thought she was a lot of things, but crazy wasn’t on the list. “Try me.”
She remained silent for a long, long time. Then she said quickly, as though making the sudden decision to get the words out, “With every new book, my father kept a journal—ideas for scenes, plot points, but sometimes no more than his thoughts and observations about the research he did. The one for Hours of Ice was my last gift to him, but they never gave it to my mother as part of his personal…effects. Somehow, it got lost, and I really thought I might be able to find it. Of all the journals he kept, that one seems the most important now.”
He shook his head. “There’s no way it could have survived two years out in the elements. You realize—”
She held up her hand. “I know how foolish that hope was.” She smiled. “Didn’t I tell you I was impractical? Anyway, barring that possibility, I guess I wanted to visit Elk Creek Canyon because I thought I’d feel… I thought I’d be able to sense my father’s presence there. That I’d make some sort of…connection. Not in a weird, ghostly sort of way, but just…closer somehow. I wanted to understand what had made him go there. But I didn’t feel…anything.” She bit her lip and put her hands on her thighs, as though bracing herself for some hurt. “Go ahead and say it. You think I’m crazy.”
He wasn’t good at this sort of thing. He didn’t want to lie to her, but he knew he would handle it badly. He’d hurt her. And he didn’t want to do that.
He exhaled a careful breath. “I don’t think you’re crazy,” he said slowly. “I think you’re a loving daughter who hasn’t accepted her father’s death yet. You didn’t get to say goodbye. As much as I hate today’s psychological buzzwords, it’s only natural that you’re looking for some kind of closure.”
She stared
at him. He watched her throat work. He thought she might cry then, and his gut clenched tight. But she kept her composure.
“I miss him,” she said, and it was only because he was listening closely that he heard the catch in her voice. “In spite of all the ways he was careless with my mother’s feelings, and mine, there isn’t a day that goes by I don’t wish I could see him just one more time.”
He could see in the tightness of her mouth what that statement had cost her. She must have loved her father a great deal, and he was suddenly reminded of the way he’d felt when his commanding officer had called him into his office to say Sam had suffered a stroke. The plane ride home had felt as though it had taken forever, and all Nick had been able to think about was how many regrets there would be if his father died before he could see him one last time. The cramped terror in Nick’s gut hadn’t eased up until Sam had opened his eyes and tried to smile at him. But Kari hadn’t been given that final gift, and he could imagine how much she had needed it.
He wanted the right response to come to him, but in the end, all he could think to say was, “I suppose we’d all make any bargain we could to get a second chance.”
She shifted uncomfortably, as though trying to shake off her sadness, but unable to. “Isn’t it awful sometimes…to realize that none of us get through life unscathed?”
Unwilling or unable to stop himself, Nick lifted his hand and brushed the back of his fingers along her cheek. He didn’t know when it had happened, but somehow her pain and anguish had become his own. He sank down into the depths of that extraordinary moment, put his hand behind her neck, and pulled her close. Kissing her seemed the most natural thing in the world.
So much hurt, he thought. Just let me take it away. Just for a little while.
He kissed her gently, meeting her mouth in a long, sensuous caress. She made a little sound as her breath stopped in her throat, then she opened for him. He could feel her letting out her tension, letting her worries go as they tasted one another, in no great hurry, patient and slow and tender, content to explore.