Heartbreaker

by Karen Robards

  “Okay, okay!” He seemed to reconsider. He looked down, looked up, and appeared to come to a decision. Lynn watched warily as he did something to the rope at his waist. The air was growing colder. Gusts were shooting up from the canyon floor, causing the tree to sway, sending her hair—and his—billowing skyward. Lynn realized that she was wet through, and freezing with it. The cold and the fear were making her shiver.

  “Lynn.” The way he said her name put her on red alert. “Lynn, listen to me. I’ve tied myself off so that I can’t drop any lower. I can’t fall. Do you understand that?”

  “You can’t fall,” Lynn repeated, thinking, bully for you.

  “I’m going to swing out and get you. When you feel me touch you I want you to let go of the tree and grab on to me for dear life.”

  “What?” Lynn’s eyes widened as she absorbed the implications of that. She clung tighter to her branches.

  “I’m going to swing out and get you. All you have to do is let go of the tree and grab on to me.”

  “That’s all?” It was hard to pack the appropriate degree of sarcasm into a near-shout. “Have you looked down? We’re about a hundred fifty feet up. What happens if you miss? What happens if the tree uproots? What happens if I can’t hang on—or you can’t? Maybe you can’t fall, but I can.”

  “It’s the only way.”

  “It can’t be!”

  “It is unless you can think of something better.”

  Lynn thought.

  A gust of wind shooting up from the canyon floor made the tree bob. Lynn felt her body slipping lower as the net shifted beneath her, and she gripped the branches even harder.

  Her gaze fixed on Jess.

  She couldn’t stay where she was forever, that was clear. She wasn’t even sure she could stay put much longer. Already her fingers were starting to cramp from holding on so tight. Her legs were going to sleep. Her feet felt cold and wet and dead.

  Just like she would be if he grabbed for her, missed, and she fell.

  Lynn shuddered at the thought.

  But what were the alternatives? Was there an alternative?

  He couldn’t climb out along the delicate fir. It might break beneath his weight; it might uproot. She couldn’t climb down the tree to him; she could barely turn her head without putting herself in mortal jeopardy.

  If he threw her a rope she couldn’t let go to catch it, much less tie it around herself.

  He couldn’t leap out into space and tie the rope around her waist for her.

  Lynn stared up at the lowering sky. She thought of Rory, of her mother, of her job. She thought of how much she didn’t want to die.

  And she came to a reluctant realization: If there was another way, she couldn’t discover it.

  Which left his way.

  “Lynn?”

  “Okay,” she said.

  “Okay?”

  “Yes!” Her voice was panicky. If he gave her too much time to think, she was afraid she would tell him to forget it after all. She would just stay in the tree until she rotted—or fell.

  “Okay. I’m going to jump out and grab you. Remember, I can’t fall. Once you grab on to me, you can’t fall. This is safer than it sounds, I promise. I’ll grab you, you grab me, and you can’t fall.”

  “Okay.” If her voice was shaky it was nothing compared to the way her skin felt. Fear, icy cold, raced up and down her spine. Her life depended on a stunt that she wouldn’t wish on a professional trapeze artist.

  She couldn’t do it.

  “Here I come!” With that warning, Jess leaped out from the sheer face of the rock.

  9

  LYNN SAW HIM COMING and braced herself for her leap to safety—or tried to. It was hard to brace oneself when enmeshed in a web of flimsy branches, she quickly discovered. Impossible, in fact.

  “Now!” Jess shouted, crashing into the evergreen beside her and grabbing her wrist. His gloved hand was strong and warm—and the only thing that kept Lynn from plunging to the rocky ground below as she was knocked from her safety net.

  She dropped like a stone. Terror shot through her body in an icy-cold rush.

  Screaming, she plummeted through the fragile foliage, clawing at the air, kicking, doing everything she could to latch on to the one thing that might save her: Jess.

  Her flailing arm hit his leg. Her pink-polished nails dug furrows in the surprising slickness of his jeans as she tried fruitlessly to hang on.

  Her other arm was all but yanked from its socket as his grip on her wrist arrested her fall. Gulping air, stomach clenching, Lynn hung from Jess’s hand and ankle like a rag doll and stared saucer-eyed at the white-capped backbone of mountains stretching away into the distance as she, Jess, and the rope arced back toward the cliff.

  Below her, the pine forest was a blue-green blur. The icy-white river rushing through the gray canyon seemed to shimmy. Overhead, the clouds with their sky-riding goshawks were equally unstable.

  Jess’s grip on her wrist was so tight that the blood flow to her hand felt permanently cut off. Lynn tried to flex her fingers but found she could barely move them. She could only dangle in space, at the mercy of his strength—or lack of it.

  Without warning she slammed backward into the rock wall. The breath was knocked out of her, and she saw a burst of multicolored stars. For a brief moment she didn’t care if he dropped her or not, didn’t care about anything except the pain in the back of her head, in her shoulder blades and left hip. His grip on her wrist seemed to slacken.…

  Just like that, lightning-fast, she was falling. Her stomach shot into her throat.

  And fall she did, but not far. Her arm was almost jerked out of its socket again as he grabbed her wrist once more. The fright of the near fall banished all consciousness of the pain in her head. She began to struggle, kicking and clawing at nothing as she tried to climb the air to safety.

  “Hold still!” It was a roar, and it penetrated her panic. Lynn realized that she was making it difficult for Jess to keep his hold on her wrist. The mist had made her skin wet and slippery. What if he should lose his grip again?

  She went as still as a rabbit with a dog nearby, deadweight as she hung from his hand.

  Then his other hand joined the first around her wrist. Lynn reached up blindly as she felt herself being hauled upward. The pain in her shoulder was excruciating—but it was nothing next to her fear of falling.

  His feet were braced against the rock wall so that his body formed a near forty-five-degree angle with the cliff, she realized as she touched his boot, gripped the sturdy denim of his jeans, and held on for all she was worth. Absurdly, a vivid picture of herself plummeting to earth clutching his jeans while he dangled from the rope in his shorts—briefs?—flashed through her mind.

  His grip on her wrist shifted, seemed to slip. Her heart stopped. Then his gloved fingers were curling around her other wrist too.

  Lynn let go of his leg as he began to pull her up the length of his body. She looked up at him, watching the effort in his face, fighting the urge to grab at him or move in any way that might undermine his attempt.

  “Got ya,” he said with satisfaction as he hauled her up and across his body. Panting, Lynn climbed atop him. Her feet found his left one where it was braced against the cliff, and she used it for leverage as if it were part of the mountain. With her feet beneath her she pushed herself up and hiked one leg over the rope that secured him to the clifftop. His hands released her wrists. One arm wrapped tightly around her waist. The other hand grabbed the rope, steadying them both.

  Her whole body now sprawled on top of his. Her arms locked around his neck.

  For a few moments she just lay against his body, trembling with exhaustion and the aftermath of fear.

  He held her close as Lynn absorbed his warm, solid strength and realized that she was—relatively—safe.

  “Good thing you’re not fat,” he grunted in her ear.

  Lynn laughed. That she could surprised her. It felt good, life-affirming.r />
  Glancing over his shoulder and down, she located her daughter. The bright pink poncho stood out like a beacon against the bleakness of the rock.

  “Get Rory,” she said.

  “Yeah.”

  For a moment longer, though, they remained unmoving. Lynn realized that Jess was winded too. She also realized that she was not exactly rescued. True, she no longer hung in a tree fifteen stories above the ground. Instead, she clung to a man dangling from a rope the same fifteen stories up. If this was rescue, it was by a matter of degrees only.

  “So where’s the rope that hauls me up?” she asked. Her cheek lay against his shoulder. The rope coiled around his torso made hard little ridges beneath her breasts. She could feel the movement of his chest as he breathed. Considering their situation, she felt surprisingly secure—until she looked past him at the vastness of the pristine peaks rising all around them and calculated the distance to the ground.

  “We’re not going up. We’re going down. That broken shelf is too unstable to take a chance on it shifting again.”

  Lynn saw the sense in that. She had witnessed what happened when Jenny was pulled over the slab.

  “Can you get us down?” she asked.

  “I got you out of the tree, didn’t I?”

  “Yes, you did.”

  “So trust me.”

  Lynn didn’t answer.

  “You ever done any mountain climbing?”

  “No.”

  “Figures.” He sounded resigned. “Okay. As long as we stay where we are I can hold on to you and you can hold on to me and you’re not going to fall. Once we start moving down it’s going to be a different story.”

  “It is?” Lynn felt a renewed rush of fear.

  “I’m going to need my hands. I can’t hang on to you and rappel at the same time. What I’m going to do is tie you to me.”

  “You have to get Rory.”

  “I’m going to get her, don’t worry. First things first. We can’t move unless you do what I tell you. When I say so, I want you to turn over so that your back is against my chest. I want you to put your feet on the cliff, your hands on the rope, and I want you to walk down the mountain with me.”

  Lynn shuddered at the thought of moving.

  “Okay,” she said.

  “Right now I need you to let go of my neck and kind of lean to one side so I can get this rope off.”

  “Okay.” Lynn released her stranglehold on his neck and leaned to the side—but not without first clamping on to fistfuls of the soft flannel at either side of his waist. The taut rope that was their lifeline brushed the inside of her thigh reassuringly.

  “You’re not gonna fall.” Jess gave her a brief, crooked smile as he reached into his pocket for something—a folding knife, Lynn discovered—and then pulled the neat coils of rope over his head.

  “How much weight will this rope support?” Lynn visually measured the meager thickness of the nylon braid.

  “Plenty. Three hundred pounds, easy.” Securing the loops over one arm, he opened the knife with his teeth. “Maybe a little more. Like I said, it’s a good thing you’re not fat.”

  “What would you have done if I was?”

  A ghost of a laugh shook him. “Sent Owen.”

  The reply made Lynn smile.

  “Okay.” He finished sawing a length of rope and restored the knife to his pocket. The remaining loops were shrugged back over his head and arm. “Now I want you to turn around.”

  “Just … like … that … huh?” To her own ears, Lynn’s voice sounded hollow.

  “I won’t let you fall, I promise.” His left arm was solid around her waist.

  “Oh, God.”

  “You can do it. Just let go of my shirt and swing your leg over the rope.”

  “Oh, God.”

  Trying not to even consider the possibility that she might fall, Lynn wriggled across him so that her right hipbone was positioned more or less on top of where his belly button should be, giving her plenty of room to roll over without losing contact with his body. She slid her left leg up and over the rope, let go of his shirt, and flipped onto her back with about as much grace as a landed fish flopping about on a riverbank.

  “Jesus Christ!”

  His feet lost their purchase on the cliff. He cursed as his legs slid straight down. Lynn screeched and grabbed for the rope. It seared her palms as she dropped.

  His arm around her waist stopped her. For a frantic, twisting moment they dangled from the end of the rope. Somehow Jess managed to brace his feet against the cliff again and climb once more to form an angle with the mountain. Seconds later Lynn was lying atop him, facing up this time, holding on to the rope for dear life.

  “Whew!” he said in her ear.

  Lynn closed her eyes, said a silent prayer, and opened them again.

  “You okay?”

  She nodded. She was so shaken she didn’t trust herself to speak.

  “Good. Now shift your leg here over the rope—that’s it. Carefully.”

  He nudged her right leg. Lynn straddled the rope. She felt his hands moving at her waist.

  “You can’t fall now. I’ve got us tied together. Ready to start down?”

  Lynn nodded again.

  “Just lay back against me and do what I tell you. All right?”

  Lynn took a deep breath. That near fall had been terrifying—but it did no good to dwell on it. Let it go, she told herself, just let it go.

  “Om,” she chanted under her breath, trying for a state of Zenlike calm. Meditation was something she routinely did when under stress, and it never failed to strengthen her.

  “What?”

  “I’m ready.”

  “We’re just going to walk down the mountain. All you have to do is lean against me and walk. Got it?”

  Lynn nodded, trying not to om out loud.

  “Here we go.”

  Jess began to move, and Lynn found herself moving with him. She abandoned her calming chant to concentrate. His legs were beneath hers. His back was behind hers. His arms reached around her waist to grasp the rope that rose between both their legs. His gloved hands slid down the thin braid just below hers.

  They were backing down a vertical granite slope that felt as slick as a monument.

  She couldn’t fall unless he did, Lynn told herself.

  “We’re going to have to jump over a crevasse in the cliff face. Here, put these on.”

  With one hand he let go of the rope, drew his left glove off with his teeth, and held it while she thrust her hand inside. The buttery yellow leather was thin and warm from his hand. It was also a great deal too large.

  “It’s too big,” she objected as he reversed his grip to draw off the other glove. “You keep them.”

  “We’re going to slide down the rope. Without something to protect your hands you might not be able to hold on.”

  That silenced Lynn. Her palms already burned from the fall he had arrested, and it had lasted only a few seconds. The idea of falling so terrified her by now that she would have done anything to prevent it from happening—even taking his gloves while he suffered the rope bare-handed.

  She rationalized it by telling herself that his skin was much tougher than hers.

  Jess helped her with the other glove. Feet braced against chiseled layers of rock, newly gloved hands gripping the rope, Lynn waited, trying not to shiver.

  Om ran through her mind in an endless loop. Om, om.

  “When I say go I want you to push out from the cliff with your feet and let the rope slide through your hands. Just kind of rest against me and let yourself drop. It’s not far, only about ten feet. Are you ready?”

  Oh, God. Lynn nodded. Beneath her, she felt his muscles tense.

  “Go!”

  10

  LYNN PUSHED OFF from the cliff at the same time Jess did, not so much by choice but because his powerful thrust took her with him. The rope slid through her hands. Again, this was more by accident than design.

  The
sensation of falling made her stomach shoot into her throat. If she ever got down off this mountain, Lynn vowed, she would never so much as climb up on a kitchen stool again.

  Jess swooped back in toward the cliff. Cradled by his body, Lynn perforce had to do likewise. Her slippery-soled boots made jarring contact with the rock wall. His chest thudded into her back. Knocked off balance, Lynn’s feet slipped. She tilted forward, her knees crashing into rock. Her fingers clenched the rope. Her sliding feet hit the toes of Jess’s boots and stopped. His body, now solidly in place, steadied her. Regaining her balance, she climbed into a precarious position and tried to ignore the quivering of her limbs.

  Om.

  “You’re doing great,” he spoke in her ear.

  By glancing up and craning her neck, Lynn could see Rory. They were below her now. The child hung in an almost upright position, her poncho caught on what appeared to be a broken part of the trunk, her arms draped over green-needled branches, her legs straddling another branch. Her perch looked far more secure than the flimsy web that had saved Lynn. Realizing that, Lynn felt her terror for her daughter go down a notch.

  But just a notch. Rory was emphatically not all right. Her eyes were closed. Her face was white as milk. To all appearances she was unconscious.

  “Rory!” Lynn cried. Her daughter didn’t answer, didn’t so much as move a finger in response.

  “She’ll be okay.”

  “You’ve got to get her! Now! Please! Please!”

  “I can’t manage both of you at once. Let me get you down first. Then I’ll come back for her.” His tone was meant to be soothing, Lynn realized. Unfortunately, she was not soothed.

  “She’s unconscious!”

  “At least the way she’s situated she won’t fall.”

  That was true, though the knowledge gave Lynn scant comfort.

  “I can’t do anything about her until you’re on the ground,” Jess insisted calmly. Then he started moving again. Bound together as they were, Lynn had no choice but to move with him. She scarcely took her eyes off her daughter for the rest of the descent. So worried was she about Rory that she wasn’t even frightened any longer—except for her child.